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my mother made both my father and i take a covid test when we got to work this morning. both our tests were negative, while my mother reamins positive (and masked). yes, both my parents were still coughing, no, my sister is still AWOL despite the fact that she should be working.

my parents roasted the marinated charsiu from yesterday while my father cut up all the pork fat and rendered it into crispy fried lard plus a large container of filtered pork grease. he made so much fried lard he's going to save some to add to our minced pork recipe next time for additional flavor/texture.

annie the new upstairs tenant has decided to move out only after 1-1/2 months of living in the apartment. not sure the reason, heard she's going to move elsewhere with a roommate. i think she's the only tenant ever to move out because she didn't like the place. it's not the coolest place, but the rent is cheap (utilities included) and close to her work place. i don't think she's going to find a better deal, but i can understand if she wants to live with friends and maybe have a better apartment where she can be more social.

the work day otherwise was fairly routine. it started off like we weren't going to get any customers, got busy around lunchtime, then business sort of tapered off after that. oh, kathy called this morning with a bento box order for her grandsons and classmates, gave us just an hour to prepare everything. her grandkids just came back late last night from a 2 week trip from taiwan, their second visit to the island this year. that's how rich people vacation! and here i am it's been a decade since i last visited taiwan.

my mother made some more soup in the morning which i had with some rice. in the early afternoon we finished the leftover corned beef, making three reuben sandwiches.

later i took a quick run to trader joe's. just as i read online, TJ has raised their banana prices to now 23¢ a banana.

weichen stopped by to eat in the early evening. i asked him about the person he said wanted to rent out my spare bedroom for a week at the end of march. he said yes that was still happening, she's arriving saturday night, he's going to take her to my place. it'd be nice he kind of told me ahead of time instead of me having to ask him.

my mother packed me a bento box when we closed the cafe.

when i got home i did a little cleaning. i have just 4 days to tidy up before this supposed one week roommate shows up. not sure when i'll have time to do any of that, since i'm at work all day, and when i come back in the evening i don't want to do anything but watch a little tv, have dinner, and then go to bed.

i only did a little bit of cleaning tonight. most of it was spent figuring out how many cups i have for my seedlings. as to which seeds to grow, i haven't decided yet, hopefully i can do that tomorrow and finally plant them. i know i want some long beans, blue beans, hyacinth beans, bitter melons, a few flowers. my father also brought back some seeds from taiwan, luffa gourd and kabocha squash.

the forecast is for pouring rain all of tomorrow. i'm either going to walk to the cafe or get adventurous and break in my rain pants by riding the bike. i'm leaning towards rainy morning bike ride, filming the whole thing in 360 camera.

what day is it? i'm not sure. i think it's tuesday. on tuesdays i have to work. i woke up early because my scheduled heating prematurely warmed up the house as i had made adjustments last tuesday. it was cold and foggy outside. i stopped by walgreens on my way to the cafe to get some fisherman's friend cough drops. a check online said they were in stock ($5.99), but i had to circle the store 3 times before i finally saw them.

my father was already at the cafe by the time i arrived a 9:15am. my mother was a no show: she'd drive herself to work later in the early afternoon. my father said my sister might show up for work today, but given what i knew about her, that wasn't going to happen.

my mother tried to get to the cafe before noontime, but she said the honda made a very loud and weird noise when she tried to drive it so she went back to the house. i ended up driving to belmont to pick her up, the whole time she was complaining how fast i was driving.

because my mother was still covid-positive, she wore a mask the whole time and worked in the back kitchen, while my father worked the front. despite not having covid, my father still had a persistent cough (i thought the fisherman's friend was working at first, before he started coughing again).

highlights today included a cameo appearance by the vegetarian indian economist grad student who went to california for school but returned to town for spring break and made it a point to visit the cafe. it got so busy during the lunchtime period that we nearly ran out of rice, with none left in the freezer. the moment i cooked 3 cups of rice in the rice cooker, business quickly tapered off again. i also cooked black soy noodles 3 times and made a new batch of tea eggs.

my father had a hernia consultation in burlington scheduled for 2:40pm. he left early - 1:45pm - when it didn't look very busy at the cafe. that was one of the reasons why my mother asked my sister to come in to work today, so my mother could stay home nursing her covid. but my sister didn't even have the courtesy to respond. regardless, my father wasn't gone for very long, came back a bit after an hour. the surgeon recommended a laparoscopic inguinal hernia repair procedure, to be scheduled in a month.

the second half of the day went by pretty quickly even though we didn't have many customers. i was on the phone with square for over an hour, trying to resolve two cancelled online orders from yesterday that ended up not getting cancelled. there was an option to refund the orders, but i still had to pay square for the transaction fees. this was obviously a square error, and seems like a scam. the fees itself amounted to just a few dollars, but it was the principle of it. i ended up talking with 4 different representatives. the first one wouldn't even talk with me after i told him my name, because i wasn't the account creator. i called again, pretending to be father, which worked. they kept transferring me after 15-20 minutes of being on hold, after they couldn't figure out how to resolve the issue. the final guy i spoke with told me to refund the orders and that he'd speak with his boss to rescind the transaction fees. he managed to get rid of the fees, but he said it was a one-time courtesy request, and that they wouldn't do it again in the future. so the next time i want to cancel an order, not only do i need to cancel it on the app, but i also need to cancel square to confirm.

6:30pm closing time came before we even knew it. the weather was still foggy and cold as i pedaled back home. i went to the basement and brought up some trays and plastic cups for seed planting. i was too tired to clean the kitchen, hopefully i'll get around to it tomorrow or even in the morning if i'm feeling ambitious. march is already over and i haven't started any indoor seeds yet.

for dinner i reheated the last of my leftover lentil & rice. i think tomorrow i'll make some gyudon for dinner, eat that for three days.

even though we agreed he'd leave at 9:30am, my father called at 9:20am this morning saying he was already waiting outside. i was still in the bathroom so i quickly finished, got dressed, gathered up my things, and went outside.

we were running early and costco wouldn't even be opened until 10am. but my father was coughing so much in the car, we decided to stop at target first to get some cough drops and cough medicine. it's been a while since i've been to this target. they've expanded their food department while locking up a bunch of essentials behind glass cabinets.

costco was already opened when we got there. the only thing i needed were large bags of miracle-gro potting soil, which is what i use to germinate my seeds. i didn't see any and thought maybe they were in stock anymore. however they moved all the potting and garden soil to the center of the store, and we bought two bags ($11/each). we also got a few things for the cafe. costco was surprisingly unbusy today, and we didn't even have to wait in line to checkout.

next stop was restaurant depot, where my father needed to get cake flour for the vegetarian buns. this place was the complete opposite of costco in that it was insanely crowded. seems like all the small business restaurants in the area where shopping there today. the lines to checkout was a congested mess. don't shop at restaurant depot on mondays if you can avoid it, sundays are better. we only had about half a dozen items but waited longer to checkout than we did to shop. we we behind a guy who was buying 3 carts of restaurant supplies. outside in the parking lot i saw the tipico restaurant truck that i saw earlier at costco. seems like everyone's running the same supply circuit.

final stop was the chelsea market basket. when is this place never crowded? there was that one time i came by myself early saturday evening, there weren't many people then. my father stocked up on pork butts, his favorite thing to horde. here i saw a few people i remember seeing from both costco and restaurant depot. i wonder if they remember seeing me as well?

we finally left by 11:45am. it took us more than half an hour to drive to the cafe to drop off the supplies. besides unloading, we also defrosted some stuff we needed for this coming week. there was already an online takeout order scheduled for tomorrow morning. my father said it was probably a mistake (customers don't realize we're closed on mondays) so i texted the customer to ask and he confirmed it was indeed a mistake, so i cancelled the order. the same thing happened again later in the afternoon.

we didn't get to belmont until 1pm. i thought we were having some leftover corned beef for lunch but my mother already prepared some noodles for us.

there wasn't a lot of time to relax because at 2:15pm my father and i drove my 2nd aunt to the airport. she still tested positive for covid, so we both masked up before my 2nd aunt got into the car. as if there wasn't enough covid going around, she told us that my 2nd uncle also tested positive too. the drive to logan took nearly half an hour. we dropped off my 2nd aunt at terminal B departure for her united airline flight to san francisco then taipei.

the ride back was faster, just a bit over 20 minutes. since the honda hadn't been driven in over a month, my father put the trickle charger on the battery. i was busy doing some spring cleaning in the backyard. belmont resumes garden refuse pickup next week (april) so we can finally empty some refuse bins that've been full since the end of fall.

i weeded the raised beds, pulling up purple deadnettle and stray grass. i pruned some dead perennial stalks and added compost to the peonies, columbine, monkshood, chinese aster, hardy chrysanthemums, and hydrangeas. i then planted some lupine seeds in the bed behind the garden. in RB1 and RB2 i planted a row of oregon sugar pod II. this is the first spring where we've had raised bed fencing, which will protect the tender peas from rabbit predators. i finally finished by 6pm and went inside for dinner.

my father was making dinner, some salted fish, some tomatoes & eggs, some mushrooms & chicken. my mother came out of her bedroom to collect a plate of food and then retreated back to her room. after dinner my father gave me a ride back home. we stopped by the cafe to bring out the compost and recycle bins. total travel distance today was nearly 39 miles. i spent 2 hours 45 minutes riding in the car.

my LED RGB strip lights came today. remember i got both a regular plain "naked" version ($10) and a more robust neon rope version ($30). i'm not even going to bother opening the neon rope, i'm pretty sure i'm going to return it. the regular LED RGB strip light is more than enough. i unspooled the light and tested it out to make sure it was working. i then wrapped it around my foyer doorframe, affixed temporarily with scotch tape. the individually addressable RGBIC led's are cool, but i don't like how you can see the individual led's, they don't blend into each other. maybe on the neon rope light it might be better, but at 3x the price it's not worth it. it also connects to the tuya/smart life app, with many options. a little disappointed there aren't more presets though. to program your own color combination requires a bit of practice. i'm also concerned about how much electricity it uses. the specs say it uses 12W, which is way more than my string fairy lights. but i'd normally run it with just 15% brightness, so i wonder if that means it only uses 15% power? i'll need to check it with a smart plug meter.

celtics played the hawks tonight. boston dominated in the first half, leading by 30 points. it looked like a done deal but the celtics collapsed in the second half, poor defense which contributed to poor offense. hawks made timely shots, clawed their way back, and ended up winning the game, 118-120. celtics was without derrick white and jrue holiday, two key defensive guys. hawks was without trae young, still out from finger ligament surgery at the end of february. good thing is we play the hawks again thursday night, so hopefully we can get some payback.

i bought the soundcore anker space A40 earbuds for my mother ($50). i tested them out tonight, honestly, i can't tell the difference between these earbuds and my motast earbuds ($30). the motast has 140H playtime while the soundcore is only 50H. i also like how the mostat has audio feedback, a woman's voice tells you when your earbuds are paired or turned off. i'll probably end up returning the A40 and go with something else.

i wasn't in any particular rush this morning, making the most of my sunday. until my mother called, asking me when i wanted to leave for baifu. i didn't think they were going today. so i quickly gathered my things - including the two packages of corned beef in the fridge - and biked for belmont by 11:20am. temperature outside was below freezing, and all the rain that fell last night left ice puddles. i had to circle back after traveling 4 blocks when i realized i forgot to bring the butter. i also stopped by the cafe to put away the tea eggs in the fridge and to check the basement to see if the slow cooker was there (it wasn't).

i didn't make it to belmont until almost noontime. my mother was going to make me some dumplings for lunch, but i said i wasn't very hungry, and can eat when we get back from baifu. i did however start cooking one of the corned beefs in the slow cooker. we used to add vegetables to the broth (onions, cabbage, potatoes), but we discovered we had no appetite for boiled vegetables, and prefer just the corned beef instead. so that's how i cook it, submerge it with enough water, adding a few tablespoons of pickling spice, and leave the slow cooker on high for the rest of the day.

my mother didn't end up going with us, she wanted to stay home and rest. she also complained about how she couldn't taste anything.

it took us half an hour to drive to baifu/foodpack in the south end. there were hardly any customers there, sunday is a slow day since most asian restaurants are opened today. come back tomorrow monday and this place will be crowded as monday is when many asian restaurants are closed, so it's a supply run day for them. my father made a shopping list but of course he left it back at the house. i had to call my mother and asked her to send a photo of the list. we got all the things we wanted, including taro powder for the boba tea.

we started heading back around 1:20pm. my mother called me. she was speaking loud enough that my father heard her over the phone. she told me she wasn't feeling well so she tested again for covid. this time she got the dreaded double line indicating she was positive. this after we've been working together at the cafe all last week. could i be positive as well? but i tested twice already and both times were negative.

we got to the cafe by 1:45pm to unload the supplies. this is only the first half of our weekend supply run. tomorrow we need to hit costco-restaurant depot-market basket. not to mention then driving my 2nd aunt to the airport in the afternoon. so much for resting on the weekend.

we returned to belmont a bit after 2pm. my mother was in bed but woke up wearing a facemask to make my father take a covid test. we nervously waited for the results: negative! later i took one as well. i didn't have any symptoms, and i already took a test yesterday that showed negative, but i did one anyway just to see if my status had changed. like my father i tested negative as well. how my mother contracted covid again is a mystery. maybe it never left her system and just resurfaced? she was coming down from the flu which she contracted days before she was about to leave taiwan. the only symptoms she had was a persistent cough and complaints of not being able to taste anything. lost of taste seems more like a covid symptom though, but i remember having bad colds where i lost my sense of taste as well.

my father made me some dumplings for lunch while i was outside refilling the bird feeder. i got my parents to try the rosaluna mezcal. my father said it smelled like paint. my mother - despite her inability to taste anything - did notice the smoky aftertaste. she also said it was "spicy" even though it's only 40% alcohol. i'm not sure if neither of them liked it.

in the afternoon both my parents were napping in separate rooms, to lessen any chance of disease spreading.

i spent an hour watering the house plants. one of the hanging holiday cactuses sprouted a single flower. must've been that month long period where i turned down the thermostat and the grow room temperature was in the 50's inducing the cactus to flower. i didn't see any other buds though. the orchids are forming their flower spikes, but i think the low overhead led grow lights is giving them issues as the spikes have started to curl in on itself. a few spikes have also started to branch out, which i take as a good sign, more potential flowers. i didn't see any fungus gnats. on the gardenia i saw some mealybug remnants which i sprayed with alcohol. likewise on one of the smaller jasmines i saw some glistening sticky residue - which is the telltale sign of mealybug feeding - but i didn't see them. i sprayed anyway, as a precaution. i'm still not used to the dual spider farmer white led grow light panels. but i have data that backs up i'm saving some electricity: before when i had a blurple grow light and one spider farmer light, i used 1.98 kWh of electricity on that power strip. ever since i replaced the blurple with another spider farmer, i'm now only using 1.77 kWh of electricity per day. doesn't seem like a lot, but over time (let's assume i run the grow room for half the year), that comes out to 38kWh of savings.

it was getting late and both my parents were still asleep. i thought about just going home, but what about the corned beef? thankfully my father finally woke up and helped me prepare the reuben sandwiches. after he sliced the corned beef, he buttered the rye bread slices and grilled them in a pan. later i'd take the bread, add swiss cheese slices, and heat them again in the air fryer oven for a minute to melt the cheese. then i'd assemble the reuben sandwich: corned beef, sauerkraut, russian dressing. cut the sandwich in half and serve.

both my father and i finished our sandwich before my mother finally woke up looking for something to eat. she grabbed half a reuben and went back to the bedroom, where she ate in partial darkness from bed, still complaining that she couldn't taste anything.

i finally biked home around 7:40pm. temperature was still the same as this morning - below freezing - now with added darkness. i hadn't biked to my parents' place in over a month (all the times i came i drove here), so i wasn't used to all the hills, which gave me a workout.

i started watching the japanese anime delicious in dungeon on netflix. i'm usually not a fan of anime, but this series is more like a cooking show where they prepare and eat all the different imaginary creatures they encounter while descending a dungeon.

the rain was pouring this morning. not only that but cold rain with the temperature in the upper 30's. i woke up around 9:30am to get ready for work. my mother called asking if i needed a ride and seemed relieved when i said i'd walk, which meant they could sleep in a little bit more. i walked down to the cafe by 10:15am, taking me a little over 20 minutes to get there. i wore my quick-drying hiking pants with a pair of thermal underwear underneath. i used my umbrella to keep my backpack dry, the sleeves of my supposedly waterproof jacket getting more soaked the longer i walked.

i was the first to arrive. on a normal saturday i work with my sister and 2nd aunt, both of which are missing in action. my sister on another psychotic break, my 2nd aunt stressing over her covid diagnosis and blaming the month-long work schedule for depleting her immune system and causing her to get sick. my parents showed up a short time later, both of whom should be resting at home instead, nursing their cough. the only constant is me. i come in early, i leave late, i don't ask for days off.

i cooked 4 cups of rice this morning, since we still had a bunch left over from yesterday. with the rainy weather i thought maybe today would be a slow day but that wasn't the case. as soon as we opened at 11am we started getting customers, both walk-ins and online orders. when it gets busy like that so early, that's usually a sign that it's going to be busy throughout the day. it was busy from 11-12pm then 2-4pm. the cold rain didn't seem to faze these customers.

my 2nd aunt wanted to come to the cafe today. not sure the reason, maybe just to hang out before she leaves for taiwan on monday. she definitely wasn't coming in to work. my mother called to tell her to just stay home instead, given the bad weather outside. my 2nd aunt tested again this morning, still positive for covid. i tested myself as well because i woke up this morning with a sore throat. i used one of the non-expired tests hoping for more accuracy. like all the other times i tested, i passed by failing: i was negative for covid. most likely my sore throat was due to sleeping in a dry room. i'm seriously starting to think i'm impervious to the coronavirus. i probably get my immune system from my mother, who contracted covid in taiwan, but it took her just two days before she tested negative again, with barely any symptoms.

my mother made some more chicken soup today. i had some mixed with rice.

we sold a bunch of salmon bento even though we took it off the menu. just some repeat customers. only my sister knows how to prepare it, but my mother improvised. we also received a big online order during our final hour. the customer left us with a $13 tip.

i told my parents i was going to go home after work instead of going to belmont. i still had some leftover food i needed to finish up, and my parents wouldn't have to stress about making dinner. i planned on walking home, but it was raining even harder than this morning, so i got a ride home instead.

those few hours on saturday when i get back home after working all week are the best. i can finally exhale, knowing i don't have to work until tuesday (though not true, i still need to do a supply run over the weekend). i snacked on some rice crackers, ate a box of mike & ike, and drank some hot cinnamon tea. i even had a bowl of tonkotsu ramen noodles. lounging on the couch surfing the web with the laptop, i fell asleep briefly. the rain was beating heavily against the house, felt like i was on a ship in a storm. i woke up at 7pm to turn up the heat and lights because it was getting cold and dark.

there was a celtics-bulls game starting at 8pm. bulls played tough, with 18 lead changes throughout the game, so had multiple opportunities to win. like many of the celtics' recent games, opponents were competitive in the first half, but boston wore them down eventually to win in the end. final score was 124-113. boston needs another win to lock up the number 1 seed in the eastern conference. they need 6 more victories to lock up the overall number 1 seed in the NBA.

i made dinner during halftime, reheated some rice porridge.

i ordered a pair of new roku tv remote for my 2nd uncle. according to my 2nd aunt, he already broken the replacement one i got him back in september, the buttons don't work anymore. this time i got him two remotes, so he can have a backup in case it breaks again. i also got the ligency smart neon rope light 16.4ft ($30). i'm getting it to replace the led light strip around the door frame between the hallway foyer and the living room. that light strip turns on every night, but it's starting to get old and the led's are getting dim. the replacement light that i got uses RGBIC led's which are individually addressable, so you can assign different colors to different sections of the strip. i may not need the neon type because it might stand out too much; simple RGBIC light strips might be enough, cheaper too, and easier to install. these are also compatible with our smart life/tuya app.

update: i ended up getting another 16.4ft RGBIC LED light strip for $10 (LISTOCASA brand) - normally $29. these are regular flat-types, not neon cord. compared that to non-RGBIC LED strips: govee 100ft LED strip light (with app control) sells for just $11. but those can only display a single color at a time.

this morning was a repeat of yesterday: i woke up at 8am, went to market basket for some supplies, then headed straight to the cafe by 9am. temperature was colder this morning, but without the strong winds, it didn't feel as cold as yesterday. still, the brisk morning air made my eyes tear up and by the time i arrived at the supermarket it looked like i'd been crying. i was there to get some bean sprouts, cilantro, and tomatoes. i also picked up some scallions.

like yesterday, i was the first to arrive at the cafe. i wasn't sure who else would come to work today. my father? my mother? my estranged sister? my 2nd aunt? my parents ended up showing up to work. they were surprised to see me: not the fact that i was at the cafe today, but rather how early i was. typically when i help up at the cafe, i don't show up until 10-11am. my parents don't know the version of me that's been working at the cafe for over a month, showing up at 9am to open up the store. my sister however didn't show up. she doesn't work on fridays anyway, but even if she wanted to, she burned so many bridges yesterday, it'd be pretty awkward to come to the cafe as if nothing happened.

today i roasted a box of charsiu pork and made a batch of tea eggs. my mother grilled all the marinated salmon that's been in the fridge for a few days. first half of the day felt slow, the second half felt fast. i went to the nearby library and picked up 4 boxes of free covid tests courtesy of the city of cambridge. it was a busy day, and we managed to beat last friday's profit. in the afternoon during a lull i biked down to trader joe's to get some baby cucumbers, edamame, and noodles. i also got some spicy tempura seaweed snack, which is now my favorite trader joe's snack food. it reminds me of fried fish skin, but with seaweed. i tried to get my mother to try a piece but she refused so i finished the bag.

my aunt showed up in the afternoon wearing a mask after hearing about my parents coming down from both covid and the flu. my mother gave my aunt 20 lbs. worth of taiwanese food treats. my sister's godmother also showed up later, to pick up a few things my parents brought back for her (including some hair dye).

yesterday after testing positive at home, my 2nd aunt went to see a doctor to get a professional test. she had to wait 24 hours before getting her results back, so my mother told her to come to the cafe and test using one of the new tests i grabbed from the library. so she showed up in the afternoon to retest and got another positive result, no denying she had covid. i tested last night and was negative (even though i felt weird enough to test), and when i told my sister that 2nd aunt has covid, my sister tested and got negative as well. so who knows how my 2nd aunt got it. she's been very careful, wearing a facemask whenever she's outside. so it's ironic that the person who takes the greatest care in not getting covid ended up getting it. having just recently contracted covid in taiwan (my father twice contracted), my parents were not afraid in the least. i was a little wary though since i've never had covid. in the past i joked about wanting to get it because i didn't want to feel left out, but if i got it i wouldn't be able to help out at the cafe. eventually my 2nd aunt did go back home. i also gave her copies of her tax returns so she can bring them back and get my 2nd uncle to sign them too before i mail them off for her.

i found the missing yeti mug magslider out on the street, probably near where my sister found the mug originally. i think it must've rolled out of a car. the magslider itself was in rough shape, ran over a few times but still working. fortunately the replacement magslider i ordered on wednesday arrived today. it worked very well, my father used it to drink some hot tea.

i didn't eat all day but then had some chicken soup my mother had been slow-cooking all day. i added some rice to make a savory rice and chicken soup dish. i also tried some smoked jujubes my mother bought in taiwan.

when i finally got back home, i snacked on some salted sunflower seeds, some leftover hot fries, and a few pieces of double salted licorice. the celtic-pistons game started at 7pm so i started watching, didn't make dinner until halftime, which was just reheating some more leftover rice porridge. tatum, horford, and holiday all sat out. brown, tillman, porzingis, white, and pritchard started. pistons made it interesting for the first quarter and a half. but by the middle of the 2nd quarter, celtics began to dominate and never looked back. the lead hovered around 20 points for the entire second half. celtics won 129-102. it's the first of a back-to-back road trip. they play the bulls tomorrow. most likely the starters who sat tonight will play in that game.

i woke up at 8am so i could ride down to market basket before work and pick up a few things. mostly i was gathering ingredients for making some reuben sandwiches this weekend with the corned beef i bought 2 weeks ago: pickling spice, rye bread, sauerkraut, swiss cheese. the only thing i didn't need was the russian dressing which i still have some left over from last march.

afterwards i went to the cafe. there was a strong headwind, at times blowing so hard it held me stationary while i pedaled. the wind also made it feel much colder, probably wind chills in the teens.

i got to the cafe before anyone else. i wasn't surprised to see my father back at work, but this time my mother came as well. she seemed better than tuesday morning when i picked them up at the airport. they brought bags of goodies from taiwan. when my sister finally showed up for work, she was angry that both my parents were there. her reasoning was they should be at home recuperating from their cough. for some reason she focused all her anger on me even though i had no idea why she was so worked up. she also dredged up past grievances from the past month, though my parents had no idea what her stream of conscious ranting was all about. i thought i could distract my sister be telling her about the food poisoning customer call i took last night. that only made her even more angry. it turned into a very ugly shouting match, until my sister finally stormed off, cafe be damned. this is how my sister welcomes my parents back to work.

after my sister was gone, calmness once again returned to the cafe. both my parents would have stretches where they seemed perfectly healthy, punctuates by fits of uncontrollable coughing. the poor customers, we must've scared away some of them, seeing them coughing while making their food. it wasn't a good look. but neither one of them could leave, as my 2nd aunt inexplicably didn't show up for work. i think she sort of just assumed her services would no longer be needed.

at one point i went out to move the car. that's when i saw my sister taking esmei out. i tried to say hi to esmei but my sister jerked her collar and told her dog to quickly get inside the car. i just went around to the other side and opened the door so i could give esmei some pets. seeing me with esmei seemed to calm my sister for the time being, and she told me she called the food poisoning customer to assuage the situation. i also called my mother out to see esmei, whom she hasn't seen in over a month. my mother also said esmei had gotten fatter, i think it's just her winter coat.

it was so windy today, the wind kept blowing our front door open, jingling the door chime, making us think all day long that new customers were coming into the cafe when it fact it was just ghosts.

thursday is our slow day but we actually made some good profit, highest amount this week, though it's been a lackluster week overall compared to past weeks. the private schools are still on vacation, and maybe the grey and windy cold weather kept customers home. kathy made a surprise phone call and ordered two bentos for her contractors. too lazy to get out of her car, she called to say she was outside. when i went to deliver her order, she didn't give me enough money, said she'd pay me back next time. xiaojun showed up. xiaojun who can't take a hint, with both my parents coughing and my mother hunched over trying to take a nap, decided it'd be a great time to come and chat for an hour. at least we weren't busy during that time. finally my 2nd aunt showed up in the afternoon. not to work, but came with the result of an at-home covid test that looked positive. she'd scheduled an emergency appointment with her doctor later in the afternoon to confirm if it's actually covid. her greatest fear is to be struck down with a virus before her month-long trip to taiwan on monday. she also brought some portuguese egg tarts she bought from chinatown yesterday.

i grilled a new batch of chinese sausages today. i also cut up two yellow pickled daikons. tomorrow i'll probably need to roast some charsiu pork and make a new batch of tea eggs. it also dawned on me that i've worked every single day since my parents went on vacation. both my sister and my 2nd aunt have taken days off, but i'm the constant, the first to arrive at the cafe every morning. by the afternoon my parents said i could go home early, but then we got busy, and that idea went out the window.

another thing i did today was do my 2nd aunt's taxes before she leaves. i asked my father to bring in his laptop, the only computer we have new enough to run the taxing software. last year i used H&R block even though i've always been a turbotax man myself only because it was still compatible with my computer. this year however, both H&R block and turbotax have upped their macos requirement. there's really no reason for it, nothing fancy about these programs that would require the latest and fastest computers. sometimes i think it's all a conspiracy they've hatched up with apple to force customers to buying a new computer. anyway, because of this, i've decided to go back to turbotax, even though it's more expensive. turbotax requires macos monterey (12), which is the OS my father runs on his laptop. after buying and installing the software, i couldn't get it to import last year's tax returns even though supposedly it should be able to. so i had to enter all the info manually again. not a big deal, and even with manual entry, i was able to finish my 2nd aunt's taxes in about 10 minutes. i'm hoping to do my own taxes this weekend, just to get it out of the way. there's a good chance i owe the IRS some money.

the first half of the day dragged a bit, but the second half went by pretty fast. it got busy during the final hour we were opened, which probably made the time go much faster. we nearly ran out of rain so i ended up cooking just 2 more cups in the auxiliary rice cooker, which we ended up not using.

after getting back home and changing out of my smelly work clothes, i lounged around on the couch, surfing the web on the computer until i got drowsy and almost dozed off. i printed out my 2nd aunt's tax returns (federal and state) and went online to petition immigration services to fix the typo on my 2nd uncle's renewed green card which arrived last week.

i didn't make dinner until after 9pm. learning something from what i saw earlier today, i took some old leftover rice i had in the fridge - the clumpy rice - and boiled it in a pot of water to make rice porridge. i rarely make plain congee, usually it's the pork bone century egg kind, which though easy, takes some time to prep and gather the necessary ingrdients. plain rice porridge is the quintessential asian struggle meal. and even though i don't think i've ever made it before, i still have a lot of complimentary side dishes that goes perfectly with rice porridge. things like pickled cucumbers, wheat gluten, and canned braised eel. it turned out to be a pretty easy yet delicious dinner, i think i'm going to have plain rice porridge more often.

which so much disease going around, i took another at-home covid test this evening. seeing my 2nd aunt's positive result, and finding some throat soreness, i was afraid i might've contracted the coronavirus. unfortunately the test result says otherwise. once again i'm still negative.

my father showed up to work at the cafe this morning, even though he still had a cough, which may or may not be the flu, but definitely not covid (he tested negative twice). he wore a face mask which offered some protection, but was relegated to the back kitchen with me, as my sister feared he'd scare away the customers. he even hid when one of our regulars came in for lunch asking if they'd had returned from vacation yet.

my father came in today primarily to make a new batch of beef noodle soup. today also happened to be the day where my 2nd aunt was busy during our busiest time and couldn't come in to work. when she heard my father was at the cafe, that gave all the excuse she needed not to come in at all. most likely her main reason was she didn't want to get sick herself.

my father cut up two packages of defrosted beef shank (nearly 8 lbs. worth), seared them with some aromatics, before simmering them for a few hours in some beef and chicken stock. later close to closing time, he removed all the beef chunks, separated them into containers, while i lowered the temperature on the broth with the ice paddle. once the broth was down to 75 degrees, my father ladled the soup into each container of beef chunks. we ended up with 28 servings.

my sister brought esmei to the back of the cafe before we opened. it's been over a month since my father's seen esmei, the first thing he said was she looked fat. esmei wasn't particularly excited to see my father, more interested in looking at our hands to see if we were hiding any treats.

my sister disappeared twice to take care of her dog, both times after asking me to go play with esmei, when i was busy with cafe work. she was able to leave for an extended period of time because my father was there, mask and all. thankfully the two times she was gone we weren't very busy.

today was a slow day, unlike yesterday. i think the cloudy weather made it feel later when in fact it was still early. it didn't look like we'd have any customers until lunchtime came around, then the floodgate opened up. from 12 to 2pm we got at least 16 customers, many multiple orders. i rarely work the kitchen with my father, under normal circumstances he'd be out front making the drinks while my mother and i would be in the back assembling the orders. of course working with my father was a lot easier than working with my 2nd aunt, i didn't have to worry about him not knowing what to do. having my father there also was relief for my sister, who seemed less worried that the kitchen wouldn't be able to handle the influx of new orders.

my sister found a yeti rambler mug last week. it seemed like it fell out of a backpack because there was some scratches and a dent. despite the rough tumble, it still held up well. i filled it with some boiling water and my father was impressed by how it kept the water hot. we couldn't understand what the black oval on the lid was for until i looked it up online: apparently it's for the patented magslider that covers up the drinking hole. it must've gotten lost during the fall. later i went online and ordered a replacement magslider.

as the day wore on, my father's coughing became worse and worse. to the point where i thought about asking my 2nd aunt to come in to work tomorrow so my father can stay home and recuperate. but my 2nd aunt also needs her rest, she's been working non-stop with us for the past month as well, when normally she only works once a week on saturdays.

in the late afternoon we received an ubereats order. nothing strange about that, but the delivery was made via uber bicycle, which was something new. when the "driver" arrived i went out to see who it was. it was supposed to be a young woman, but a man came instead...driving a car! so totally false advertising. i remember reading about this: ubereats car drivers disguising themselves as bike riders, hoping to earn extra tips.

we had no customers during the final 30 minutes. my father returned home early, i closed up the cafe because my sister forgot her keys. it was raining a little bit, but nothing too bad. i had my bike lights this time.

first thing i did when i got home was throw a brick of lasagna in the oven. tonight i was taking a breaking from leftover lentil and rice, going with the old standby of frozen lasagna instead. i timed it so by the time it finished baking, i could eat and watch the bucks-celtics game. other than the first few minutes of the game when the bucks had a 2-point lead, the celtics lead throughout the rest of the game, by as much as 21 points. bucks was without giannis, while the celtics was without jrue holiday and sam hauser. the final score - 119-122 - was a lot closer than i would've liked, but a win is a win. celtics wasn't able to send a statement to the bucks, and despite the loss, the bucks left the game knowing that even without their MVP player, they narrowly came to beating the celtics.

got a weird phone call around 8:30pm tonight. it was a call to the cafe that was rerouted to my phone. normally i wouldn't pick up during off hours, but i was curious so i answered. it was a customer who ate there this afternoon. he said he got food poisoning from the cafe and wanted to let us know. never mind that the customer didn't think it was weird that somebody actually answered his phone call even though we were already closed. i was very careful with my words, sympathetic but not apologetic, understanding but not accusatory. i thanked him for letting me know, told him i hoped he felt better and i'd look into our food preparation practices. in all the years the cafe has been opened, we've never once had a food poisoning complaint.

i woke up at 7:20am this morning to get ready for my remote nutritionist meeting at 8am. i logged into zoom by 7:50am and waited. at 8am my nutritionist showed up. the meeting itself wasn't anything special. i didn't learn anything i didn't already know. i basically talked about my eating habits. she basically told me smaller portions with more proteins (if meat turkey or chicken, otherwise bean or tofu) and vegetables. i was finished by 8:40m.

i left for the cafe by 8:50am, stopping at the nearby speedway to get $40 worth of gas. there was enough time for me to open up the shop, as i couldn't trust my sister to do it. also she saw me while walking esmei which gave her additional incentive not to come early. i reheated the tea eggs. turned on all the ordering tablets. cooked 6 cups of rice. my sister didn't show up until 9:30am, right when i was about to unlock the front door.

my 2nd aunt showed up right when i was about to leave for the airport at 9:40am. she made some crumbled salmon stirfry for my mother, along with some fruits.

i hate driving to the airport even though i've done it a bunch of times. i always get really nervous, afraid i might take the wrong exit, get in the wrong lane, or maybe crash the car in the tunnels.

i made it to the cellphone lot by 10am, right when my parents' plane landed. then i waited. i brought the quansheng radio where i could listen to departing and arriving air traffic. i also had my phone and was browsing through reddit. i kept checking the map to see when my parents would show up, meaning they turned on their phone, but i didn't see anything. i even left them a voicemail via line, asking them to give me an update. i waited for nearly an hour before my mother finally called me close to 11am. it was my father on the line, he said they'd already left the terminal with their luggage and was waiting outside.

google map told me it'd take 8 minutes of circling the airport to get to terminal E arrival, but there was actually a shortcut that brought me in front of terminal E in less than a minute. i saw my parents waiting. i don't think they were expecting to see me so soon, i even flashed the lights but they didn't recognize me until i got out of the car and popped open the trunk. my mother was unmasked and coughing. i'd already put on my facemask, didn't want to catch the flu. for some reason they now had 5 suitcases even though they originally left with just 4. each one of pretty heavy, requiring two people to lift it into the trunk.

my father got in the driver's seat and drove us back. i found an extra mask in the back seat and gave it to my mother. my father originally planned on working today, but we convinced him to at least rest for a day in case he was still contagious being in close proximity with my mother who was still showing flu symptoms. so instead they dropped me off at the cafe around 11:30am before they continued home.

not sure what i was planning for this week, but didn't plan on both my parents being sick and me having to work again indefinitely. how much longer would i have to endure this relentless schedule? a week? two weeks? my 2nd aunt leaves for her own taiwan trip on monday, so there's no way it'd go beyond this week.

after a month though, by now i'm used to the grind. the trick is to not think about it too much. it also helps that today wasn't all that busy. we reached our average profit. there was a busy stretch around lunchtime, but after that things tapered off significantly. my 2nd aunt - who's a hypochondriac - wore a facemask for much of the day, afraid that i might've contracted something from my mother, didn't want to get sick before her trip next week. i made a new batch of tea eggs and a new batch of boba pearls (half a package, 5 boxes).

around 2:40pm i took esmei out for a half-hour walk. temperature today was in the 40's which wouldn't be all that bad except it was also very windy. esmei pooped first then later peed. at one point we were spooked by a black pitbull puppy. he was behind a chain link fence, but the door was unlocked and he managed to get out and follow esmei around. i led him back to his house and closed the front gate, but he can still easily get out from the side, but that wasn't my problem.

even before i had close contact with my virus-ridden parents i wasn't feeling very well. i was coughing this morning and felt a stiffness in my body. could be nothing more than tree pollen allergy and sleeping wrong on the bed. there was also some pain in my gut, but could just be because i was hungry and didn't eat or drink anything all day.

the day went by pretty fast. by the end of the day my 2nd aunt sprung some surprise news on us: she wouldn't be able to come in tomorrow because her apartment was getting fumigated. normally my 2nd uncle would be in charge of letting in the exterminators, but he had a doctor's appointment tomorrow, so my 2nd aunt needed to be there. i said there was nothing to worry about, that my father could come in tomorrow. that's when my sister got really angry with me, said he couldn't come to work because he was contagious, said i didn't care about my parents' health. she said she could run the cafe on her, which caused both my 2nd aunt and me to laugh. that just made her angrier.

then we had another fight right around closing time. two customers came in asking if they could stil order. my sister was in the bathroom at the time, my 2nd aunt took the order, but i told the customers we were closing and they had to get their food to go. when my sister came out and heard what happened, she got angry with me again, said if the customers want to eat here they can eat here, regardless of the time. i already had my jacket on and was ready to go, but ended up staying and cooking the noodles before my sister angrily told me to leave. so i did (retrieving my stashed bike from the shed). later when i checked the webcams, i saw my sister and 2nd aunt didn't close the cafe until 7pm. i had legit reasons to get home, one of them being i didn't bring my bike lights and wouldn't be able to ride in the dark.

a surprise greeted me when i got back home. new sign posts new installed in front of my house. apparently the parking spot in front of renee's place is now a designated handicapped parking spot, so nobody can park there but her. i gave her points for gaming the system, but it's an asshole move on her part, especially since there are now so few parking spots left as residents of the private way near where we used to be able to park freely converted all those spots to private parking spaces. it doesn't affect me that much because i don't have a car but i occasionally borrow one and now there's one less parking space.

i didn't have dinner until 9pm, reheated some leftover mujaddara from last night.

i took one of the abbott lollipop-style home covid test, just to make sure i didn't contract the coronavirus. it was negative. so whatever was ailing me today is not covid related. could just be fatigue.

by the time i woke up this morning, my parents were already in korea. they were staying overnight at the airport hotel before catching their connecting flight in the morning direct to boston, about a 13 hours flight. i sent my father a few recorded audio messages.

i left the house around 10am to make my supply run. first stop was to the medford ALDI, where i got some baby cucumbers and scallions. i then made a detour to ocean state job lot to pick up some flower and vegetable seeds. i got some millet for my sister.

next i went to the super 88 market in malden. originally all i was going to get was some bokchoi, but i also picked up some black soy milk and some pickled daikon radishes. they also had boba ice tea flavor powder but they didn't have taro.

the final stop was to the chelsea market basket. instead of getting on the highway, i got there via everett main street. it's more direct, but slower since it goes through some commercial and residential areas.

the main thing i needed to get from market basket was some diet stewart root beer, which is a favorite for one of our cafe regulars. the somerville market basket never carries it, so once a month we need to come out to the chelsea flagship store to stock up (the waltham store will occasionally carry it, but not always). i also got half an italian sub for lunch.

i left chelsea around 12:30pm, took half an hour to drive back to the cafe to drop off the supplies. not only that but i was also taking stuff out from the freezer and defrosting them in the fridge so they'll be ready for when we open tomorrow. i ended up spending half an hour there before finally getting home by 1:30pm.

my sister said she was coming over my place with esmei around 2pm after a vet appointment (2nd lyme disease vaccine and some blood work). i quickly did some cleaning and vacuumed the house so it'd be somewhat dog ready. my sister dropped off esmei and left to get lunch from the crepe store. i ended up dogsitting in my own house for the next 20 minutes, following esmei where ever she went to make sure she wasn't getting into any mischief. she tried a few times - rummaging through the living room trash can, sniffing at the bag of organic manure i had near the back of the house, and pulling out a half-eaten bag of potato chips. she just really likes to explore. eventually she got bored and i found her on the guest bedroom bed. fortunately my sister came back and took esmei with her.

only then - close to 3pm - did i finally eat lunch. the italian sub was okay, i added some banana peppers to give it more kick.

later i went to star market to get a few things. that corned beef and cabbage sale? only the weekend! so i missed it by a day. fortunately i already got some corned beef the previous weekend. instead i got some carrots and some clementine oranges.

i stayed home the rest of the day.

around 6:30pm - just when i was about to make dinner - my parents finally got in touch with me via videochat. they were less than 2 hours away from leaving korea, still in their hotel room. so my mother didn't contract covid for a second time but instead got the flu. my father didn't get covid again, but he tested this morning and finally got a negative result. what is going on in taiwan? is it just a cesspool of communicable diseases?

mujaddara (lentil rice)
(3-6 serving)

3 onions, sliced thin
1/4 cup olive oil

275g (1-1/4 cups) lentils
700g (3 cups) water
1 tsp cumin

200g (1 cup) rice
2 tbsp fried onion oil
handful fried onion
1-1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper

tzatziki
bean salad


fry onion in olive oil until golden brown, stirring constantly (20+ minutes). dry caramelized onion on wire rack, saving fried onion oil. cook lentil in water, high heat, add cumin, once boiling, reduce to medium-high and cook covered for 8 minutes. add/mix rice, onion oil, fried onion, salt & pepper. level off, add water if necessary to submerge everything. cook covered high 2 minutes. cook covered low 20 minutes. serve with fried onion topping, tzatziki, and bean salad.

i started making dinner after 7pm. i was making lentil & rice again. i used the black lentil i got from market basket, which looked exactly like the high end black beluga lentils i had previously. the hardest part of the recipe is caramelizing the onion slices, which takes a long time and there are no shortcuts. today it took me half an hour. i added more olive oil this time so i'd get more leftover onion oil. i then went ahead with the rest of the recipe.

i didn't eat until 9:30pm. originally i planned on finishing the mujaddara by the time the pistons-celtics game started at 7:30pm. it was already the 4th quarter by the time i ate. tonight was a special night, where all the hosts and commentators were women. it was also a great game, celtics won 94-119. brown, porzingis, and white were back in the lineup, while tatum, horford, holiday, and hauser all sat out. derrick white scored his first career triple double, stat i thought he would've had a long time ago given his production. next game is wednesday night at home against the bucks. that should be a good game.