i guess nobody told my father he had to deep fry a new batch of salt & pepper chicken because we nearly ran out on saturday. we first had to toast the sichuan peppercorn before blending it into fine powder for the marinade on the chicken that had to be defrosted first. after dredging the marinated chicken in coarse sweet potato powder, he deep fried them. the whole thing took much of the morning.

i brought in some china money to give to my mother for their vacation. on a whim i decided to flash the renminbi with a UV light. besides speckled with color UV threads, the paper money also featured an invisible glowing "100" mark that can only be seen with UV light. i also tried it with a NTD$1000 bill and it also had special hidden UV patterns.

it didn't feel like we were that busy today. sure, it got a little crazy around lunchtime, but nothing unusual. so i was surprised when my mother told me we made above our daily average by day's end. that's a good thing, we need all the profit we can make since we're closing the cafe for 2-1/2 weeks at the end of october.

the big news today was another amazon prime day. i told my mother who didn't seem interested at first until i saw her browsing the amazon app for deals. she wanted to get a new set of luggage, was afraid the suitcases she gave me would break, especially since one of them has a bad zipper. i personally prefer a hardshell suitcase versus the traditional soft fabric ones. there was samsonite of course, but a cheap chinese brand kept popping up - coolife - and we ended up getting a set (20-24-28) for $114 in purple. unfortunately it's not due to arrive until next wednesday, so that's cutting it close.

temperature tonight is supposed to drop into the 30's. not enough to frost around the city, but further out in the suburbs and beyond will basically mean the end of the growing season. i loaded up the car with some outdoor deck plants - the indian jasmine and the honeysuckle. the potted passion vine is still out there and should really be moved but difficult because all its vines are intertwined on the deck railing. it will need to be cut out. we're trying to save some of the vines for cuttings, don't know if we'll succeed.

my mother packed me a leftover bento for dinner, some ground beef and fermented long beans from last night. once i got back home, i moved all my outdoor houseplants inside the house. would they have survived the night outdoors? probably, but why risk it? they should be coming inside anyway, so i can set up the automated watering system while i'm gone.

after a shower i had dinner. i spent the rest of the night watching political videos on youtube. i also watched a well-made video recreating the events of apollo 13 using computer animation and actual command center audio during that time.

i woke up at 8am this morning to ride down to market basket to get a few paocai ingredients (vinegar, salt, sugar) then go down to the cafe to make a new batch of paocai. i had 4 large heads of taiwanese cabbage but it was way too much, a total of 27 lbs. i removed the lightest head and was left with a more workable 20 lbs, 19 lbs. after i removed the cores.

it takes about 3 hours to make a batch of taiwanese paocai, from start to finish. working on a day when we're closed allowed me work peacefully. watch some television, refill the drink fridge, vacuum the floor, thaw some foods for tomorrow, water the plants. i ended up making 11 containers of paocai, with a leftover container of sugar vinegar for my mother to use for pickling the cucumbers.

i finally left around 12:30pm. i bumped into my sister walking esmei. esmei was all excited to see me, a farcry from her usual demeanor which is bored indifference. i think she only gets excited when she sees people she recognizes outside of her usual spots.

i got to my parents' place with a bag of frozen wonton my mother would use to make lunch. my sister showed up as well, she had some wonton soup too before leaving.

today was the day where we move the bulk of our outdoor houseplants inside the basement grow room. before we did that, i sprayed everything with a bifenthrin solution (1/2 gallon water to 1/2 tbsp of concentrated bifenthrin) to kill any bugs. i use it primarily to get rid of mealybugs and spider mites. ever since i started using bifenthrin, i don't see them anymore. fungus gnats are a different story. there might be larvae in the soil. for that i use a combination of yellow sticky traps to monitor and trap for adults, and insect growth hormone as a soil drench to kill any larvae in the soil. it worked last season but by the time i figured out what i was doing, it was almost time to move all the plants back outside.

once i finished spraying, we started moving all the plants into the basement. my father and i assembled another metal rack shelving with wheels from parts i've found earlier this year. when it was all over, we had a pretty good looking grow room, all set for the long winter.

back upstairs, i added some more garvee portable AC heat pump commands. the on/off button was more complicated than we thought. not only does it send different IR signals for on and off, but it's also different depending on whether you want turn on cooling or heating.

we had sour fish stew for dinner. my mother also found and harvested three long asian eggplants growing in RB2, which my father stir-fried with some basil KC gave us.

it took me 12 minutes to ride home. not as fast as yesterday but still pretty darn fast.

after a shower, i alternated between the yankees rays game and the falcons saints game. rays won, falcons won.

i ordered a bunch of pants off of amazon, including two pairs of levi jeans that are a bit long. judging on how well they fit, i may take them to taiwan to get them hemmed (much cheaper).

i made it to belmont by 10am via ebike. the thing i noticed immediately when i got to my parents' house was how green the front lawn was from all the stubbles of grass seedlings. it's just been 2 weeks since we aerated and reseeded the lawn. the grass is about a 2 inch tall right now. once they reach the 3 inch mark we need to mow it. at some point in november we'll need to apply a winter fertilizer, one that's high in potassium to strengthen the grass roots for winter.

my father and i left for a baifu/chinatown run shortly afterwards. my mother already told us yesterday she wasn't coming and didn't change her mind. she made a supply list that i gave to my father. we went via storrow drive, getting off at kenmore and connecting to mass avenue by the berklee music school the rest of the way to baifu. there was a line getting into the parking lot, they closed the other side so all cars had to enter and leave through the same entrance which created a jam.

there's never really any browsing at baifu; we grab what we want and leave. of the two brands of bubble tea ingredients, the warehouse seemed to be running low on bossen products. their taro powder is the best, but since they didn't have any in stock, we went with possmei gold taro which is more expensive but supposedly better than possmei regular taro powder. baifu also did have any three elephant brand medium size pho rice noodles we use for our pad thai.

check out took a while because the register girl miscounted and basically had to redo everything until she figured out which item she missed. if she only put the items she scanned in a box there would be all this confusion. all the cart helpers basically abandoned us, even carlos our usual guy. we ended up having to push the cart ourselves and load everything into the car. during the transit, we dropped a can of sesame oil. a miracle it didn't explode, but the can was severely dented. my father said to keep it (i don't think baifu would take it back anyway), we could always pour the content into the old can. a cart pusher actually had the audacity to come and try help us load (fishing for tips) even though we were almost finished. i waved him off.

next we went to ming's market on chinatown's outskirt. passing through mass and cass, there's hardly any homeless drug users anymore, though we still managed to see a few, with their telltale zombified shuffling. continued police presence drives them away. we also saw some group giving them food and supplies, not sure if it was legit. i read a lot of religious groups do this without permission from the city, trying to help when it just perpetuates the problem.

there was no shopping carts at ming's market. either a bunch of them got stolen or they simply don't have enough. what they did have were smaller plastic shopping baskets with wheels and extendable handle. we used that one instead even though it wasn't large enough to hold everything. we ended up carrying the heads of cabbage in the grocery bags.

there was some major drama while we tried to load up the car. another car was parked so close to use i could open the driver side door to open the rear swing door. i saw there was a guy inside the car so i was tried to be car, but there was simply no clear, and i could hear the door opening and bouncing off his car. i thought nothing of it, until the man got out of his car and started screaming at me that i damaged his car. there wasn't even enough space for me to turn around to see what was happening, i was so trapped in that space. finally i managed to free myself and see what he was talking about. there was a small nick on his door handle. yes, i could've caused it, but it could've also happened when he got out of his car and slammed his door against my door. besides, he was driving an old car with plenty of other scratches, just like our car. who cares if there's one more scratch? i looked to the other side of his car, which was just empty space. if he was so worried about someone hitting his car, why didn't he park farther away? the fact that he was freaking out triggered something in me and i started shouting back at him. he said something about apologizing, but i didn't feel like i did anything wrong. he then started swearing at me so i shouted back at him. it was at that point my father came around to see what was going on. i told the guy to shut the hell up and get back inside his car. he said he was going to call the police. i said go ahead. i asked him if his was wife inside the supermarket. i told him to call her out so we could settle it. he went to get his wife, at which time i told my father to get in the car so we could drive away. the man ran up behind our car to try and stop us, and then went to the drive side door to pull my father out. i jumped out ready to punch the guy. there was a shoving match. people were watching. finally someone came to break up the tussle. the man went to take a photo of our license plate, we did the same to his car. i was so angry at one point i kicked his car, which was all i could to do to not punch him. i honestly don't know what happened. if only the man approached the situation calmly, instead of going crazy. and the swearing! it was in english, but he had an accent, which kind of made it funny, like he was using some bad words he learned. i would've been happy to apologize, even though i personally don't think i did anything wrong given how close he parked to us. but i wasn't going to back down to him after he escalated, and if he wanted to ruin his sunday morning, i was more than happy to oblige. i hope he looks at that little dent on his door handle every time he gets into his car and think of me. as for me, other than this post, i intend to forgot all about him.

driving back along storrow drive, there was serious traffic going inbound to kenmore square from both directions. we were in cambridge outbound lane so it didn't affect us, but had we left for baifu a little later, that would've been us stuck in bumper to bumper traffic all the way down storrow drive.

we stopped at the cafe to drop off the supplies. my father took out two large boxes of frozen raw boneless chicken thighs that need to be marinated on tuesday and then deep fried as we're low on salt & pepper chicken. i got 4 large taiwanese cabbages which i'll come tomorrow morning to turn them into paocai (it'll tak 3 hours). i weighed them before we left, about 7 lbs. each, enough to make enough paocai to last us until we get back from vacation.

we finally returned to belmont around 12:40pm. my mother made chicken rice noodle for lunch.

my sister brought esmei to belmont. esmei was full of energy because my sister hadn't taken her on a long walk yet. we let her out into the backyard at one point, she didn't come back even after we called her multiple times. back inside the house, she eventually got bored, got a bout of the zoomies and ran underneath the bed to hide. my sister finally took her home.

i set up the wifi IR blaster. it wasn't hard, although garvee wasn't a brand that showed up in their list of products, so i made it learn the remote button functions manually. even though the garve AC heat pump uses the same on/off button to turn on/off the unit, the button actually emits two different signals depending on whether it's on or off. once the IR blaster learned the two commands, we set up a test timer to see if it'll automatically turn on the garvee and then turn it off. when the time came, it performed like magic. most importantly was turning it off. the whole reason why i got the IR blaster was so we could turn off the unit gently (like with the remote) instead of just cutting off the power (like using the smart plug). it has to close (shut down) gently because it has to perform a few functions like fold back the fins and cycle cool air into the unit.

there was a football game! between the patriots and bills! after new england's poor performance the past three games, i was pretty sure we'd lose. so imagine my surprise when the pats managed to hold their own, going toe to toe with buffalo. even more shocking was new england actually winning 29-26. both sides made mistakes, both sides made good play, and honestly the game could've gone either way. talent and grit were definitely factors, but so was luck. patriots gave the bills their first lose in their new stadium, which is fitting. the kind of generational damage tom brady did to the bills (a record 33-3) makes buffalo still questioning themselves whenever they face the patriots.

a bunch more aliexpress items arrived yesterday, some my father already opened. it included a warsun 2000 lumen flashlight that takes 18650 and 21700 rechargeable lithium batteries. for $13 it's okay but you definitely get what you pay for. there was an adjustable phone lanyard which was better than the one my mother got from temu, i gave it to my father to use on his vacation, i have my own wrist lanyard and i just might buy another one off of aliexpress. i got a portable luggage scale which will come in handy when i come back from vacation. a CR2032 battery wasn't included. i also got a new bracelet for my mi fitness band, a translucent blue-green with colored polka dots. my mother said it looked like something a child would wear.

for dinner my parents made ground beef with fermented long beans and a swiss chard stirfry. every time we eat swiss chard my father mentions how amazing these plants are, that we can eat them practically all year round. we also grew some bokchoi but those have a bitter taste, maybe they're too old. swiss chards are more mellow, though they do have a beet flavor to them.

it took me just 11 minutes to get home, i was flying on the ebike. i don't think i ever stopped for a red light until i was almost home. it takes longer to drive than the time i made on the ebike. no wonder i prefer taking it over my motorcycle, which is now stashed away in the garage.

after a shower, i watched some more political videos on youtube. with the midterm election just a month away and with democrats slated to make major gains, i've been following more political coverage than ever before.

i went to market basket this morning to get some bean sprouts before i left for the cafe early around 10am. my parents showed up about the same time. along with a new batch of tea eggs, i also made two batches of black soy noodles.

temperature today reached 70 but it was in the 60's for most of the day, which is where we should be this time of the year.

my father cut down the monster luffa that was growing in RB3. he noticed it was rotting and decided to cut it down to help save it. he peeled off the skin to reveal a lovely piece of luffa sponge in the middle. he managed to shake out the seeds like a piggy bank. some of the seeds were undeveloped, but most of the seeds look viable enough to be planted next season. as for the luffa, he washed it a few times to clean off any residual flesh before we left it hanging to dry. we have a second luffa we reserved for seed harvesting by the bitter melon trellis on the western bed.

the cambridge bowtie ride rode by the cafe in the late morning. i was going to join them, but i've done it enough years that the novelty has worn off. it didn't look like a big turnout.

for the first 3 hours after we opened it was busy. we made above our daily average, making it a very profitable first week of october. we would've made more except my father let someone eat free after he said he'd come back later with the money. we never saw that person again.

my father made another stirfry of luffa gourd mixed with fried tofu and eggs. i don't think we have very many luffas left anymore, having given away more than half and eating the rest ourselves. luffas were a tremendous success this season. it's a vegetable that we like to eat that we can't find in any asian supermarkets and we figured out how to grow them big with our raised platform trellises, growing in grow bags with fertilized drip irrigation. i think next year my father wants to grow even more, we're planning on clearing out RB3 and converting that into a luffa bed. next year we've decided not to grow anymore squashes or tomatoes in the raised beds. instead it's going to be okras, swiss chards, some peppers, and roselles.

we also roasted the 6 lbs. whole chicken that'd been marinating in the fridge since thursday. after taking out the chicken from the brine, i wiped it dry with paper towels before my father sprayed a coat of vegetable oil. we set the timer for 90 minutes, roasted at 400 degrees with convection for 20 minutes before lowering the temperature to 375 degrees. my mother put a piece of tin foil over the chicken at the midway mark to help it from burning. it came out the perfect temperature, between 160-170 degrees. my father added more salt to the brine this time, so the chicken had just the right amount of saltiness this time.

i took home a plate of roasted chicken with scallion ginger sauce for dinner. originally i was going to do some bike repair work, but felt too lazy after a week of work, decided to do it wednesday instead.

later in the evening i heard fireworks. i rushed out to the 2nd story deck and launched my drone in the hopes of capturing some fireworks but i was too late. i took some photos before landing the drone.

my google pixel 9 pro phone drama continues. so i bought on back in early august during tax free weekend. when it arrived i noticed a deep scratch on the screen. so i decided to buy another one and send the scratched one back. the price had gone up, i had no choice but to eat the cost. but then i saw the price had dropped briefly, so i cancelled the second order and reorder another pixel at a lower price. the only caveat was it wouldn't arrive until october. not a big deal, i can wait. until i decided i was going on vacation, and now i want to get the phone before i leave. so i waited. then this week amazon gave me some good news: the new phone would arrive this weekend. however i informed me today that it won't get here until thursday. they keep on changing the goal post, i'm worried they'll eventually just cancel the order. or i get the phone and it's in awful condition as well. the funny thing is i still have the original phone from august. if i wanted to i could start using it now. if it still doesn't get here by thursday, that may be my only option.

i watched i love boosters (2026). originally i thought it was going to be an absurdist comedy about a group of women who steal stuff then sell them, before the movie devolved into an absurdist scifi fantasy comedy, along the lines of everything everywhere all at once (2022) or good luck, have fun, don't die (2025).

i went in search of my taiwan subway card, i had one before, just need to find it. i didn't find it but i did find my old chongqing subway cards, a HK subway card (octopus), two ICBC bank cards (i wonder if my money is still there), and a stash of mao red bills, back when china still took cash. even better, i found a bunch of US cash i didn't know i had. did my mother give it to me at some point to keep it safe? or it's simply money i had left over that i didn't deposit into my bank account? in any case, this cash will come in handy for my upcoming vacation.

i harvested 3 red cayenne peppers from the plant growing on the 2nd floor deck. my backyard is now the best place to grow peppers with all the sunshine i get. i don't often see fresh cayenne for sale at the supermarkets. they have a scoville unit of 30-50k, much hotter than jalapeño which is only 2.5-8k, and hotter than serrano which is 10-23k.

weather today was so hot (84 degrees and humid) that i wore my shorts to work. i imagine this is probably the last time thing year i'll be wearing shorts. it felt downright summery.

my new rain jacket finally arrived: nordic outland $40. it's better than the pioneer camp rain jacket i bought back in september 2024 for $55 in that this jacket has armpit vents. you don't know how important vents are until you exercise in them (like ride a bike) and start sweating and it's like a sauna inside the rain jacket.

we got slammed again during lunchtime. the key is not to panic, everyone keeps a level head, survive the next 1-2 hours. by the time it was over, we already made our daily average.

KC and her grandsons came again this afternoon. it's the third time this week, after we haven't seen her for over a year. she brought a potted basil for us. last time she brought an ornamental pepper and an aloe.

after KC left, my aunt showed up. my parents were trying to coordinate with her as to what hotel options before and after my father's childhood friend reunion gathering in shanghai. turns out my aunt already booked the hotel rooms, staying in the same hotel. my parents were trying to save some money and got a cheaper hotel 500m away ($60/night), a room with no window. my aunt guilted them into changing their reservation so they remained at the more expensive hotel ($140/night). my parents were also very concerned if the reservation included breakfast. it doesn't, it's a $15/person addition. i told them they could just grab breakfast at the many shops surrounding the hotel. i showed my father a map of local eating options.

we got busy again in the early evening. not as busy as during lunchtime, but still pretty busy. we even had some customers come in 10 minutes before we were about to close. it was a chinese couple who took the bus just to get here to eat. my father took pity on them and let them eat here instead of having their food to go. when it was all over, we made more than twice our daily average, like getting two days' profit in just one day.

it rained a little bit in the late afternoon. tempest weather station tells me just 0.02" fell. a paltry amount, but any rain is a blessing for our reseeded lawn. it was dry by the time i went home. i put on my rubber spoke lights earlier so i'd have more visibility riding home in the dark. they actually work very well, the only issue i have with them is they use non-rechargeable cell batteries.

i brought home some scallion bread my mother had made. after a shower, i finished the leftover pastries my godmother made along with the bread. there was nothing good on television so i ended up watching some youtube videos about the upcoming elections. i'm actually bummed i won't be here in election day (but i plan on voting by mail). my plan for that day is to stay in my hotel room and watch live political coverage while ordering takeout food.

i went to star market this morning to get a red onion. i paid $2 when i would've paid just $1 at market basket. such is the price discrepancy between the two supermarkets.

it was supposed to be sunny today but once again it was overcast. the sun did pop up briefly in the afternoon, where it suddenly felt warm and humid. what's going on with the weather? i set the automatic sprinkler in belmont to restart watering the lawn at 8am and 3pm. the overcast is actually good for growing grass, keeps the temperature cool and the prevents the sun from drying up the emerging seedlings.

i made a new batch of tea eggs this morning. i used my new egg piercer which worked pretty well. unfortunately the costco eggs we bought were not in good condition, 4 of the eggs were already cracked so i couldn't use them. i saw something today that confirmed my egg piercing is actually working, solid proof. i had two tea eggs, one pierced, one regular. the regular tea egg was missing a big chunk of the bottom due to the air pocket, while the pierced tea egg had a perfect egg shape. another thing i noticed was the pierced egg was darker, like the tea brine had better penetration during the 2-hour simmering process.

i also made a new batch of pickled red onions, which we only serve on our salmon bentos. a jar (which uses one large red onion) lasts about a month. this jar i made might last until i come back from vacation but i'll probably make another jar just to be safe. it's not hard to make anyways: cut onion into thin slices, pour in 1/2 cup of white vinegar with 1/2 cup of warm water, add 1 tbsp of sugar and 1 tsp of salt. my father thinks i can add more sugar, but i think pickled onions should be more sour than sweet.

we had a very busy lunch period. times like that is like a puzzle. how do you prepare a bunch of orders that all came in at the same time? what gets cooked first, figure out the best sequence so everyone gets their order in a timely manner. naturally orders that came in first get priority, but sometimes it makes sense to, say, cook a bunch of noodles at the same time from different orders, or roast items altogether to save time. once you're able to break everything down into quantifiable tasks, getting slammed is not particularly scary.

my mother made some scallion bread today because we bought a huge bag of costco scallions. my father made a new batch of minced pork and brined one of the roast chickens i bought yesterday. my mother wanted to stew the other chicken, make chicken stock, but my father said the chicken was only good for roasting because it had so much meat, not good for making soup.

in the afternoon when we finally did get some sun, a single passion flower managed to bloom. this after many days of no flowers due to the rain and cloudy weather.

i watched a bunch of chongqing videos on youtube, psyching myself up for my return in a few weeks. there seems to be so much things to do, i almost wish i could spend more time there instead of just 2 weeks. i also need to figure out my taiwan itinerary. i learned today that unlike china, taiwan still very much uses cash, especially at the night markets. i need to bring some US dollars and exchange them at the bank when i arrive in taipei.

we got a small uptick in the evening, a single order of three zhajiang noodles by a korean customer. this noodle originated in northern china, so it's no surprise it's also a part of korean cuisine. we should be proud that koreans actually like our zhajiang noodles! that order put us over the top and we managed to make our daily average, which didn't look like it was a possibility for much of the day.

riding back home tonight, i was practically home when i realized i forgot to take the leftover bento my mother prepared for me. so i had no choice but to ride back to the cafe, then ride home, about 10 minutes each way. i didn't get home until almost 7pm.

i started watching obsession (2026) last night. i got through half, but didn't know if i could watch the rest, so i just finished reading the synopsis on wikipedia. tonight i finally watched the rest of the movie. i went into the film having no idea what it was about. based on the title, i thought maybe it was about a psychotic girlfriend. but the movie is actually a fantasy horror that involves making a wish trope. inde navarrette is really great as nikki, got this pixiesque quality that's really appealing. no wonder she's getting major attention these days and now a part of the next marvel movie playing rogue.

it was supposed to be a sunny day today but when i woke up it was overcast and it looked like it'd rained. local tempest weather stations didn't show any precipitation. maybe it was fog condensation?

i went to go return the pair of canon dSLR eyepiece at whole foods before going to market basket for some supplies. milk, ground pork, ground beef, onion. the only thing i got for myself was a chicken parmesan sandwich for lunch.

i came home to pick up a few things before heading to the cafe to drop off the supplies. i then continued on my way to belmont where i had some garden things i needed to do. the grass seeds we sowed two weekend ago have now all sprouted, thanks to the influx of heavy rain over the past weekend. i don't know if we'll see a green lawn before the frost arrives, but at least we laid the foundation for a healthier lawn next season. i removed my ebike battery so i could charge it up with some solar electricity.

the first thing i did was to fly my drone to survey the backyard garden. now with the temperature dropping and less sunlight overall, the garden isn't as green as before. particularly our floating luffa garden, the leaves look very yellow. i imagine in a few weeks we'll we taking everything down. i also flew the drone over to fresh pond, to investigate the new development on the cambridge side. they tore down a single family house, making way for 4 new units. neighbors aren't complaining because they only have two neighbors: the human trafficking house (we never see who lives there yet they keep on expanding the house) and the ranch house next door with the solar panels.

i came back inside to eat lunch. originally i was just going to have half the parmesan chicken sandwich, but after i finished half i was still hungry so decided to eat the other half.

i went back outside to redo the sprinkler in the center front lawn. we've been using a turret sprinkler but it doesn't give us good coverage. i bought 5 melnor plastic sprinkler spikes to give them a try. first i had replace the garden hose. the sprinkler had been using a 50ft hose, which was a waste. i measured the distance and i only need 16ft. so i cut a length of 16ft from a spool of old garden hose and attached a male and female fittings, using a bowl of boiling water to soften the rubber. i then attached the sprinkler spike and turned on the water. the spike can only adjust the degree of spray and magnitude. the adjustments are a bit coarse. i used an umbrella to block the water spray as i made my adjustments. i set the sprinkler in the middle of the lawn, with a 360 circular pattern.

i cleaned up RB4. there was a bunch of quickweed growing inside the raised bed that nobody ever pulled out. they kind of remind me of tiny asters and they are in fact part of the asteraceae family. when i was weeding them they gave off a distinctive scent. i also trimmed some tomato plants. i would've pulled them out but there were still some green tomatoes ready to ripen. i wore the thermacell but i kept getting swarmed with hungry mosquitoes. i wore a long sleeve and jeans which gave me some protective, but they bit my face and the back of my neck, even biting through the garden gloves i wore. afterwards i discovered even though i turned on the butane, i didn't properly ignite the repellent.

i left around 2pm. the ebike battery was only 60% charged, i'll charge it again this weekend, 60% is more than enough to get my back home.

i stopped by the mt.auburn star market to look for roaster chickens on sale. i was going to take them straight home but decided to drop them off at the cafe so my father can begin marinating one of them for roasting.

when i got to the cafe i saw KC pulling up into the parking lot. her grandson got out and headed into the cafe from the back door. he saw me but didn't say hello. KC asked for my help to take some stuff out of her car. "why can't your grandson help you?" i asked her. she mumbled something about how his hands were already full. what a spoiled little shit. my godmother was also at the cafe. there was way too many people so i quickly left, taking some pastries my godmother had made.

i went to my community garden to do some cleaning. i pulled out all the spent garlic chive flowers. i removed the dead cherry tomato plant. i trimmed some hyacinth vines. my serrano peppers are finally now starting to change colors. i'm not confident they'll turn red before i leave. i might have to harvest them as green peppers. i'll dig up the plant and keep it alive over the winter.

i got back home by 3pm. i went to my nearby star market to get some cosmic crispy apples on sale ($1.49/lbs). i came home and made a brown cow - essentially a root beer and vanilla ice cream frappe. i used to get them all the time from rancatore. the one i made didn't taste the same. i'll have to revisit one of their stores to refamiliarize myself with the taste.

i wanted to work on my bicycles, but i was afraid there might be too many mosquitoes out in the backyard, so decided against it. i need to replace the cabling on the trek hybrid before i can ride it. i also want to install the kickstand now that my replacement screws have finally arrived. maybe i'll do that saturday morning or afternoon.

i rescheduled my GI appointment, which was in mid-november, but i'll still be on vacation at that point. i scheduled it for the first week of december.

i did a load of laundry. for one thing they needed to be washed, but a secondary benefit is the dryer can warm up the house.

i've been eyeing a 14" weber smokey mountain for sale on facebook marketplace for $50 in waltham. brand new, a 14" smoker costs $289 so that's a steal. however, 14" is on the small side. but if i'm just starting out, maybe a smaller smoker is the right choice, in case i decide smoking isn't just for me. anyway, i've been watching a bunch of barbecue smoking videos on youtube.

i took a shower before dinner. my bathtub started to drain slowly again despite emptying the hair catcher, so i plunged it tonight using two plungers. they seemed to clear the obstruction, bathtub drain working again. i heated 4 of my godmother's pastries. i wasn't sure what to expect. they were savory, but i didn't know what was the filling. when tasted them, they reminded me of chicken pot pie. the crust was a little hard but i didn't mind.

i watched game 2 of the red sox yankees series. red sox lost 2-9. there was some hope for boston at the top of the 6th inning, when a red sox player hit a homerun, putting the score at 1-2. but the wheels came off at the bottom of the 6th, as the yankees went on to score 6 runs. i turned off the television after that.

after arriving at the cafe, i went to trader joe's for a quick supply run: baby cucumbers, bananas, edamame. i also bought some classic trader joe's canvas tote bags to use as gifts when i see former coworker friends in china. i think my other gifts will be halloween candy, as many of them have kids, and what kid doesn't love candy?

there was no passion flowers today. in fact, the few times i came by the cafe over the weekend during the nor'easter, i never once saw flowers. something to do with the lack of sunshine and cool weather prevents them from flowering. i also noticed some of the leaves turning yellow. this variety of blue passion flower doesn't lose foliage like native passiflora. at some point next month we'll need to prune off all the vines and put the passion flower away in grow room storage. we'll keep some of the vines and see if we can propagate them from cuttings.

even though today was overcast, i set up the patio deck anyway. at the very least i could air out the soaked wooden patio furniture, let them dry a bit. while about to tie the cinch clip to the deck railing, i saw a bug. it took me a few seconds to realize it was a spotted lanternfly. i've been reading about these invasive insects for years, how they're slowly taking over the US, destroying crops and trees as they go. i also know that you're supposed to kill it as soon as you see one. before i did that though, i asked my parents to come out and see it. and instead of killing it, i captured it in a jar. it seemed to be slow moving.

maybe people were still gunshy about coming out after a weekend deluge of rain, because it was a slow day. it felt like a repeat of saturday. in the afternoon we had some leftovers for lunch, i ate a bunch of roasted chicken in scallion ginger oil dipping sauce.

my sister confirmed fei fei and her family managed to catch their flight for hawaii, after being stuck in boston for the past few days due to the nor'easter.

KC showed up around 5pm. we haven't seen her since her husband passed away last year. unfortunately she came right when we got our evening bump. we ended up making about half of today's profit in just under an hour, putting us over our daily average.

i'm not used to it being dark when i get home. i still remember when i used to have plenty of sunlight left. this is how you know the season is changing. we are in the dark period now.

for dinner i found an old leftover package of starchy spicy instant potato noodles. the date on it said 2023, but that's probably the manufacture date, not the expiration (they do it backwards in china). i didn't have any vegetables in the house but threw in an old egg - so old there was barely any egg white and a just a sticky yolk rolled out of the shell. it was okay, but makes me excited about my asian trip, where i plan on eating something delicious every day.

my father was telling me that the garvee heat pump air conditioner remembers its previous setting when you turn it on using a smart plug. that means we can remotely trigger it turn on the middle of the day to warm up the house when nobody's there. turning it off is a different story though. you can't simply just cut the power with the smart plug, because the unit has to go through a brief cooling cycle. but that got me thinking: surely there must exist a device that can be controlled via wifi that sends out infrared remote signals? sure enough they exist, they're called smart wifi IR blasters. they can be triggered via wifi to broadcast an IR remote signal. you can use it to basically control anything that uses an IR remote, like a television, or in our case, a portable heat pump air conditioner. so we can use it in conjunction with a timer to turn on and off, problem solved. i ordered a used one off of amazon ($15), due to arrive thursday.

i watched game 1 of the red sox yankees wild card series. it's best out of 3 and all games are played in the bronx. boston has been in a scoring slump to end the regular season and the seems like the slump continues. while the yankees' bats got hot, the red sox went cold. boston lost 0-9. i turned off the tv when the yankees player (a MA native no less) hit his second homerun of the game for a grand slam.

i finally watched backrooms (2026). it's a horror film inspired by creepypasta, so i was already out of its key demographics, having zero idea what creepypasta even is (nor remotely interested). it feels like a movie that dials up the scare factor at the sake of coherency. the vibe is definitely creepy. the premise is kind of interesting - a hidden doorway that takes you to another dimension of endless near empty rooms. the performances are good - i was surprised chiwetel ejiofor was in this movie. when the "monster" is finally revealed, i wasn't surprised because earlier in a wall mural the monster's silhouette looked like he was wearing a pirate's hat. the movie sort of reminded me of longlegs 2024 - very disturbing, very scary, but with a story that didn't quite make sense in the end.

went with my parents on a everett-malden supply run starting at 10:30am. the rain continued, another 0.67 inches fell throughout the day. we went to costco to get eggs. i was expecting it to be empty due to the weather but it was surprisingly busy. i saw a 5.4 qt green pan pop maker. it looked like the zippy, but without the double paddles. the pot is stainless steel, so it'd work on an induction stove. i couldn't find a price. leaving costco, we saw the tipico restaurant truck.

next we went to the malden 88 asian supermarket. we were looking for yellow pickled daikon radishes. they had some, though kind of expensive ($10 package), but we had no choice to buy. the store was dim, as electricians went around the store replacing the fluorescent bulbs with leds i'm assuming. i noticed they had a stock of chinese-labeled (imported?) pepsi and coke. they also had special flavors, like strawberry coke or peach pepsi.

our final stop was bianco and sons. my father was gone for a while so we thought maybe they ran out of chinese sausages again, but he came out with 4 boxes. he said they had to go in the back to get them.

after we stopped by the cafe to drop off the supplies, we returned to belmont around 1pm. we made reuben sandwiches for lunch with the leftover corned beef. my mother also got some costco shrimp cocktails.

my father tried running the garvee air conditioner heat pump using two hoses instead of one: an exhaust and an intake. it worked pretty well but we still weren't sure about the intake hose. he searched for answers using chinese AI doubao, which pointed us to a whynter heat pump air conditioner. its manual said to remove the intake hose for heating, but not to use heating if the temperature (indoor?) dips below 45 degrees. we also installed a condensate pump to automatically remove the water from the garvee. we had a long hose, ran it all the way to the kitchen sink when we could've just easily pumped the water out the window.

i watered the orchids in the basement. i was tempted to move them outside so they can get automatically watered from the rain, but i noticed the night time temperature next week will drop into the 40's, so it's time to move them inside anyway. afterwards i took my new 18-135mm lens and went out into the backyard to take some photos.

for dinner my father made a stirfry with luffa gourd and fried tofu squares. afterwards my father gave me a ride home.

in the evening i used my ffmpeg script on my new macbook pro to compile a few movies from the photos i took the last time i was in chongqing back in 2016.

throughout the night i'd hear the sounds of intermittent heavy rain beating against the side of the house. it was relentless, felt like i was sleeping on a boat during a heavy storm.

i woke up at 9am. i told my father yesterday to come pick me up at 11am so i had 2 hours to get ready. it was still raining outside with no sign of letup. the streets were littered with wind blown leaves and small branches.

when my father finally came, we stopped by the cafe so i could put away the tea eggs. there was a branch caught underneath the car that my father pulled out with a bamboo pole.

when we arrived in belmont it smelled like burning plastic inside the house. turns out my father left an empty pan on an active stovetop when he went to go pick me up; luckily mother discovered it and turned it off. for lunch my mother made rice noodle soup with the savory chicken stock she made yesterday.

my mother told me feifei and her family can't leave for hawaii until tuesday, the earliest they can get a return flight. fortunately they can stay in the upstairs apartment as long as they like, though i don't know when my sister's contractors will come back to work.

the rest of my aliexpress order came in. it included a wrist lanyard for my phone, hex bolts for the bicycle kickstand (i really hope it's the right size, this is my third attempt), a hardshell carrying case for my hearing aid, a dSLR eyecup (this one actually fit for a change), a bunch of materials for fixing the broken airbag sensor wire for the honda element, and a handlebar extender (a little bit too wide). i also got another egg piercer, this one had a magnetic base so i can stick it on the metal panel.

i saw my father's garvee¹ portable air conditioner with heat pump that he bought for $300. it produces water when it's in heat mode but doesn't have a pump to siphon out the water nor can the tank be removed to empty. instead it just has a drain valve at the bottom of the unit. that's why my father has to jack up the unit with a stack of bricks to have enough elevation to drain the tank. running in heat mode, it did warm up the living room, so it's not a scam, it works. it also only uses 700W of power. my father only attached the exhaust hose, which was putting out cold air, as it should for a heat pump. the rest of the day he was trying to figure out a way to insulate the window exhaust.

i went outside and put down some garden hose guide stakes. they lift up the hose so it doesn't sit on the lawn and kill the grass. a set of melnor plastic stake sprinklers arrived as well, but since it was still raining outside, i didn't bother going out and swapping the preexisting lawn sprinklers. an interesting thing about the melnor stake sprinklers: they're actually made in taiwan. i haven't seen something non-electronic made in taiwan for a long time.

my parents defrosted a frozen vacuumed sealed package of corned beef last night. i put it in the slow cooker with some pickling spices set on high temperature. i left it to cook for 4 hours before turning the heat to low.

there was a patriots-jaguars game in the early afternoon. best that it gets forgotten because new england was totally ineffective, losing 6-35. it's still too early to panic, but this was not a very good game. hey, at least the red sox are in the post-season! yankees-red sox series coming up! game 1 starts tuesday.

i went outside into the backyard in the afternoon to take a survey of the garden. passing through the sunroom, i smelled the most amazing fragrance, courtesy of the osmanthus. a few tiny flowers were blooming, but that was enough to scent the whole room. it was just a light sprinkle outside, but a few minutes later it turned into a downpour. by the time i ran back inside the house i was already soaked. in total, more than 2 inches of rain fell today. it's the good type of rain too, slow duration, soaks deeply into the ground instead of running off. i'm curious how our recently aerated and reseeded lawn will respond to so much beneficial rain.

no surprise, we had reuben sandwiches for dinner. corned beef served on rye bread, swiss cheese, russian dressing, and homemade sauerkraut.

my father gave me a ride back home afterwards. it was still raining with some light fog. it was hard to see, and a few times we were surprised by sudden pedestrians wearing all black clothing crossing the street.

after a shower, i went to work on my file sorting script for automatically moving photos into corresponding dated folders. i used google's gemini AI to tweak the script, adding a failsafe so it wouldn't rewrite files with similar names, and sorting the photos into folders one level up. i did a few tests with small batches (backed up just in case), increasing them gradually, until i was confident enough to sort larger folders with thousands of folders. even on my old circa 2013 macbook pro it managed to sort everything in just a few seconds, what would probably take me manually to do the entire day.

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¹ i discovered that garvee is actually an onlne retailer similar to vevor, where they sell a myriad of inexpensive equipments under their own brand name. everything from garden supplies to power tools to home furniture.