i tried to read emily wilson's translation of the odyssey last night but couldn't get through more than a page. for one thing the formatting in my epub edition was all messed up. i also think most poetry is pretentious and hard to understand its literal meanings. instead i read stephen fry's odyssey written in prose, which was much easier to understand. it's actually pretty good, fleshed out some aftermaths of the trojan war, like the pillaging and raping and taking the women as slave concubines. i don't remember any of this from my high school iliad.

today was my day off and i wasn't able to sleep late, instead waking up early. i decided to go for a run. it took a bit to get ready because my spotif++ app wouldn't work anymore. i downloaded a newer version that required installing a CA certificate on my pixel phone. the app itself was still a little wonky but it worked, i could at least listen to my movie podcast while i ran. weather this morning was warm and humid. i don't mind the warmth, but the humidity made everything soupy.

i walked down to the river before discovering that whole section is now off limits due to construction. i had to walk on the side of memorial drive across from the river, down to the JFK bridge intersection before i could cross over. a dumpy indian woman ran passed me. i thought she was going to be slow but she ended up putting some distance between us. it's been almost a month since my last run. out of running shape plus the humidity made for a slow run today. after crossing the eliot bridge, i had to cross the street to the mount auburn hospital side of the road. even then eventually the road disappeared and i was on mt.auburn street. i took a shortcut through longfellow park, cutting through the lesley divinity campus.

i stopped by the community garden. the was still damp from yesterday's rainstorm so i didn't need to water. there was also no butterfly pea flowers so i left. walking home, i found a weber kettle grill somebody had thrown out. it was a little dusty but everything looked good. the handle on the grill was slightly bent and the plastic melted. this was a 22" grill, larger than my 18". i decided to noisily push it home.

after a shower i ate a pastry my 2nd aunt got for my from flushing. it'd been sitting on the kitchen counter for nearly 2 weeks, but it was slightly spoiled. there were a few mold spots (which i picked off) but the pasty itself tasted sour, like the milk or the egg had gone bad. i ate it anyway.

i went outside to wash the newfound kettle grill. the previous owner never cleaned out the ash, which attracted moisture and rusted the 3-section cleaning fins. the other thing missing was the ash pan underneath the grill. i went online to look for replacement parts. the cleaning fins cost just $12, but the ash pan was $30. i wonder if i can just use a large metal pizza dish since the clips are still intact, just missing the pan.

i took the ebike to belmont. i brought my two orchids, i simply don't get enough sun in my house to keep them happy. they'll have a happier home living outside underneath the shade of the maple tree with the other orchids. i replanted them in their pots as they were jostled during the trip. i grabbed one of the potted pileas for jen. if she wants more, i have plenty more, plus surplus tradescantia. i also wanted to reapply sedgehammer on the front lawn as i noticed some sedges reemerging. however i thought it was too hot, might come in the morning when it's cooler. instead i did some weeding in the raised beds, pulling up purslanes, wild morning glories, grasses, and some other weeds. while rummaging in the beds, i noticed the longhorn peppers already have a bunch of peppers ready to harvest. nobody noticed because they're low to the ground and green.

i stopped by the cafe. there were only 2 passion flowers today. the passion fruit continues to grow, it hasn't aborted which is a good sign. i noticed one of the leaves on my pilea in the rear basket was starting to get black from being sun scorched. my 2nd aunt was wearing a facemask. my mother said she my 2nd aunt has a cold and my mother also called me today to ask me to work so my 2nd aunt could go home. on top that, today was super busy compared to yesterday.

i went home and switched to my trek allant. i grabbed some plastic seltzer bottles to deposit and went to market basket. the sky was looking ominous. i remembered i had some prescriptions so i made a quick walgreens detour. at market basket i made 50¢ in deposit. i got some ground pork for my mother and some lemonade for myself. i bumped into victor who was videochatting with his son while grocery shopping. coming back, i bumped into him walking home. the sky continued to darken, and a check of the doppler radar showed a thin band of intense thunderstorms heading our way. i watched in real time as it started to rain, then downpour, then flood the streets. the storm drains were so full, they were spouting rain water lik geysers. it was a good thing i didn't apply sedgehammer today, otherwise it would've all washed away.

just as quickly as it started, it quickly ended as well. i was hoping the sun would come out, which would be perfect rainbow weather. it was bright but still overcast. i walked out onto beacon street and didn't see any rainbows.

after another shower i settled in with some thai-flavored chicken feet and a can of hard cider. i fell asleep briefly around 6:30pm, waking up an hour later to close the blinds.

for dinner i heated up some leftover beef noodle soup. not a great idea on a warm night, as i ended up sweating like crazy. turns out it was only warm inside the house (80 degrees), while outside it was in the 60's.

i ordered some replacement parts for the weber grill, should arrive tomorrow and friday. i got a dedicated ash pan but also a stainless steel pizza fan ($9) that might also work and save me some money. i want to try this smoked chicken thigh recipe once i get the grill operational.

i woke up early to start the work week. i had plenty of time to go down to the community garden. i probably didn't need to water since it'd rain later in the evening, but didn't like the idea of my plants baking in the sun all day. i was there more to harvest butterfly pea flowers, which there was one today. that makes a grand total of 4 flowers.

approaching the cafe, i saw somebody had thrown out one of those tumbling composters. i was going to carry it to the cafe, but when i checked the condition, it was missing the panel doors and a rat had chewed a large hole on the side.

i left for trader joe's (TJ) soon after i got to the cafe to get some supplies. i also went there to deposit a check for my parents. the young indian teller had a very soft voice, i could barely hear her despite wearing my hearing aids. at TJ's i got some baby cucumbers and bananas, enough to last us for the week. i was looking for the white chicory i saw last week but they mowed the grass so all the flowers are gone for now.

4 passion flowers today on the passion vines. my father noticed something special about one of the flowers: it was forming a passion fruit! even though they normally don't self-pollinate, occasionally flowers will fruit. or maybe a nearby neighbor has passion flowers as well and by luck we got a successful cross-pollination. currently the fruit is the size of a large olive.

i made two batches of black soy noodles and a new batch of tea eggs. i also ran the ice machine in the basement and collected 9 boxes of ice by day's end. other than that it was an easy day and as easy week as well since we replenished a lot of our stock last week. charsiu pork was a little low so we roasted a new batch. chicken stock also decreasing, will need to thaw them today, marinate tomorrow, and deep fry on thursday. and already i'm thinking about the weekend, thinking about where we'll go. most likely the needham restaurant depot on monday, might also visit the russian supermarket and the new newton asian market.

today was a slow day. we weren't able to make our daily average. a handful of delivery orders and a bunch of online orders. not a lot of walk-in customers. don't blame them, the weather looked like it might rain. original forecast said rain would begin around 1pm, but the latest update said not until 4-5pm, during the evening commute.

my mother made some scallion bread. i ate a few stuffed with braised beef.

i went home early around 4pm when it looked like it was going to rain. once it started it wasn't going to stop. i felt bad leaving my parents by themselves, but if it did start raining, we wouldn't have very many customers anyway. i left with some more scallion bread and braised beef. the rain had already started by then, a light shower, enough to dampen my clothes but not a soaking. i put the rain cover on my motorcycle when i got back. i bumped into the mailman and we chatted briefly about spain's world cup victory.

seems like i made the right decision to leave early, as the rain started to pick up, the sky darkened, then the downpours began. there was no way i could ride my bike under these conditions without getting seriously soaked. the heavy rain beating against the back of my air conditioner was deafening. this wet weather is much needed and will hopefully refill our rain barrels. will it save our lawn though, much of which have already turned yellow? that i doubt.

i fell asleep on the couch around 6:30pm, woke up an hour later. i had some dinner, then took a shower. i watched terminator 2 on pluto.tv. i recently read an article featuring the special effects guys talking about how they did the various effects. at the time it was the most cutting edge of visual achievements, bridging practical with the dawn of computer CGI. nothing like it had been seen before. nowadays, a home laptop could easily make those same effects. the movie itself is okay, but i don't like how they turned schwarzenegger's terminator from a killing machine in the first film to a neutered cartoon cyborg with all the funniest lines.

ever since the new christopher nolan's the odyssey came out (the first movie since wonder woman that i'd actually consider watching in the theaters), i've been in a very greek epic state of mind. i watched a youtube video where stephen fry talks about the trojan war. that then led me to an old interview with madelin miller where she speaks about her novel circe. she recommended the new translation of the odyssey by emily wilson. i ended up downloading a bunch of books: the two novels by madeline miller (worthy of a reread), odyssey by stephen fry, and emily wilson's translation. can't wait to delve into them tonight.

i was still in bed, about to wake up, casually checking some notifications on my phone. on a whim i decided to take a peek at facebook marketplace. i was surprised the marin kentfield seller replied to me this morning. i figured she was just telling me know somebody else had already bought the bicycle, but actually she told me it was still available. i asked if i could pick it up this morning, she said sure. the ad said boston; it wasn't until she sent me the address that i realized it was jamaica plain. i could get to it via MBTA, but it involved taking the orange line all the way down to forest hill. google maps told me it'd take an hour to get there.

i quickly used the bathroom - didn't even bother taking a shower - before leaving the house by 9:15am. i brought my bike helmet - since i plan on riding back - along with a lock in case there was something wrong with the bike and i needed to ditch it somewhere and come back for it later via car.

this is just the second time this year i've taken the subway. the previous time was back in late january when i had my annual physical at MGH and it was too snowy to ride. i've probably taken the bus more than i have the train. today was the last day the red lin was running before it closes the rest of the month for repairs from alewife to park street. the inbound red line train arrived right when i got to the platform. i got off at downtown crossing and switched to the orange line heading to forest hill. a train just left, but another train came a few minutes later. this was one of the new orange line trains, with hard seats.

i got to forest hill by 10am. i had no idea where to go next, which was actually kind of thrilling. so often i'm surrounded by the familiar, i don't often go somewhere where i have zero bearings. i ended up just walking and seeing where i was going on google map, then figuring out if i was getting closer or farther away. by pure dumb luck i was going in the right direction. the address was 315 forest hills street. i walked east along the arborway, baking in the summer sun, until i found the street i wanted. even then i wasn't sure, because i suddenly found myself in what looked to be a rural place, far away from humanity. i kept walking until i saw some houses. my seller recognized me immediately since i was carrying my bike helmet.

she showed me the marin kentfield parked in the back. earlier she put air in the tires and took it out for a test ride to make sure it was road worthy. she got the bike from broadway bicycle in cambridge 4 years ago. she's only getting rid of it because she got a new bike (specialized) in an estate sale. the bike itself had a bunch of cosmetic damages to the frame, but nothing that would affect its performance. it looked like a bike that had a lot of mileage. a good price at $60, not so much if more. she also gave me a kryptonite u-lock with a pair of keys but she didn't have the mounting bracket.

i was able to ride the bike immediately. i got about a block before i got to give the bike a closer inspection. originally i thought the seat was too high, but it was just right. the seller and me were about the same height. one thing that bothered me was the location of the bottle cage on the down tube. whenever i dismounted, the cage would hit me in the crotch, so i took out my hex tools and removed the cage. what attracted me to the bike initially were the fenders (SKS germany). a set of new fenders would be around $70 - more than the cost of the bike.

i retraced my steps back to the arborway, back to the forest hills station, until i found the entrance to the southwest corridor bike path. i was next to the arboretum; maybe in another time i would've gone inside to take a look, but i had to get back home. the southwest corridor made easy work of getting to mass ave. from mass ave i headed northwest back to cambridge across the MIT bridge. once back in town everything was familiar again and it was effortless to get back home.

the marin kentfield rode very well. at first the chain would kind of stutter, until i shifted the front cogs to the middle gear, which fixed that problem. the saddle has an single-axis suspension seat post, which made for a much smoother ride going over bumps. it's inspired me to get suspension seat posts for my other bike, or the very least my ebike which has a very bumpy ride. the handlebars are straight and for some reason very wide. if i get the chance i want to replace it with a northroad-style handlebar. the stem is adjustable, which unlike most of the bikes i own which are fixed. the shifters are for 3x8. the bike must've lived outside all season long because the plastic windows were all hazy. my seller told me she had the rubber grips replaced. the front wheel felt a little loose, and only when i got home did i discover the quick-release wasn't properly tightened. once i did that the front wheel was very stable. maybe it's just because it's a new bike for me, but it felt fast, faster than any of my other bikes (not counting the ebike). i was easily passing people. could it be the lighter frame? i really like the 700c wheels though. it makes the bike tall enough that i can no longer sit on the seat and put my feet on the ground, but bigger wheels allow me to go faster with less effort.

i got home by 11:30am, stopping briefly on a street corner to pick up some mason jars and two aldi grocery bags. i gave the marin kentfield another inspection. i believe this is a 2017 marin kentfield CS2. more recent kentfield bikes all have disc brakes. i'd love to have a regular with disc brakes, but all the disc brake bikes i see on marketplace are hundreds of dollars.

i moved my motorcycle to the other side of the street because of street cleaning. i bumped into susan - on her way to the gym - who told me that dennis got a new neurologist. i got my ebike from the basement and went to the community garden first to water my plants. i picked off a single butterfly pea flower. i then went to market basket to get a few supplies for the cafe tomorrow. coming back, i came across two stainless steel shelving racks for a wire shelving unit. i carefully tied them to the back of my rear basket with bungie netting before very gingerly biking home, making sure now to hit any parked cars, or have any sudden stops.

i unloaded the shelving racks, picked up my stuff, then rode to the cafe to drop off the supplies and water the plants. there was 5 passion fruit flowers today.

it was almost 1pm by the time i made it to my parents' place. turns out they were out as well, going with my sister to fresh pond to take esmei out for a walk. they'd just gotten back and hadn't eaten yet. my mother made wonton soup and we also snacked on some more cherries and lychees.

out in the backyard, my father has been pruning the bottom leaves from our bean stalks, to provide better air circulation. the bottom leaves were a mess anyway, very crowded. all the luffas are getting bigger day by day. i saw a green june bug in our compost bin. i hurriedly went inside to grab my camera, my flash, and my flash bouncer. but by the time i set everything up, the beetle flew away. i haven't seen one of these june bugs in a long time. maybe they're the ones laying eggs in the compost bin, making those giant grubs i see when i dig up the compost come fall and spring.

days seem so empty now without the excitement of afternoon world cup games. watching the news on the zero gravity chair, i managed to doze off briefly.

my mother had already informed us a few days ago that we were having persian koobideh for dinner. around 5:30pm she came out and asked me to order online 3 beef koobideh ($21/each) from vanak cafe. my father and i went to go pick it up later.

it was just like all the times we had it before. this time - probably a cost cutting measure - instead of half a grilled onion, it was just a few shaved pieces. i was the only person to finish everything - both my parents had leftovers.

i went home afterwards. because i didn't take my motorcycle, i didn't have to worry about finding a parking spot. after stashing the ebike in the basement, i watered my front and back yard, before walking over to jen's place and water her yard as well.

i took my first shower of the day. there was nothing good on television, so i ended up watching a dodgers-phillies game. phillies had an early 4-run lead starting from the 2nd inning, the dodgers were playing catchup. the final score was 7-10, phillies win. the red sox extend their winning streak to 14 games.

i woke up at 8am this morning to attend the community garden summer work day. they had one back in the spring on a saturday but i couldn't make it. i went there via bike, got there exactly at 9am. ruth was in charge, there was no sign-up (after they realized nobody really checks attendance anyway) nor name tags. there was a list of things to do, myself and a few others volunteered for weeding duty.

most of the weeds i dug up were crabgrass. there was so much of it in some places it wasn't worth removing. i worked at my own place, found a little quiet corner of the garden where i could just pull up weeds between bricks and paver stones. more and more people started showing up. i introduced myself to a fellow gardener, a guy named ely. later he showed me his 3-year plot, next to anne's. i worked until 10:40am, grabbed a few minutes to water my plot (no butterfly pea flowers), before riding home.

i packed up my things then took the motorcycle to the cafe (street cleaning tomorrow morning so i had to move it anyway). my parents did job cleaning up yesterday after i left work early, so there was nothing to put away. i took out the expandable hose and watered the patio plants along with the garlic chive bed. the passion vine had 6 flowers today.

i got to my parents' place a bit before noon. my father gave me a tour of the flourishing luffa plants since i last saw them 5 days ago. a few small luffa gourds had split apart because he watered too much; those he cut off because they wouldn't mature properly. all the potted kabocha squash plants were wilting. a careful check revealed they all had some borer damage, i must've missed a bunch of eggs the last i checked. i injected the wounds with concentrated Btk solution, a few tiny borer worms even emerged, trying to escape the bacterial poison. honestly, not sure if it's even worth trying to grow squashes anymore, with the amount of vine borer infestation we get every summer. next spring i'm going to try some beneficial nematodes to kill them before they hatch. i might also try some kaolin clay spray to camouflage the squash plants. as disheartening it is to watch squash succumb to these parasites, squash are so easy to grow, grow so fast, and producing full-grown fruits is pretty rewarding.

my mother made a pan-fried a crispy egg pancake stuffed with costco hot dog strips. my sister showed up with esmei afterwards. she was trying to get my mother to go on a walk with her, but my mother wanted to stay home to watch the world cup final.

the game started at 3pm between argentina and spain. it was a rough affair, scoreless throughout regulation time. seems like spain was always on the offense, while argentina barely tried to score. what was there strategy? hoping to get to the penalty stage and win it that way? you give spain enough chances, eventually they'll score.

this was the first world cup final that featured an extended half time performance, similar to our super bowl. it featured madonna, BTS, and shakira, a little something of everything.

the scoreless game continued in the second half. argentina didn't make it any easier when one of their players got a second yellow card in stoppage time, which became an immediate red card. argentina then had to play extra time down a man. it felt like relief when spain finally scored a goal at the 106 minutes mark. at least something was happening. argentina - impotent throughout the game - could not equalize. spain won 1-0.

the award ceremony turned political (farcical?) when trump was invited to present the medals and trophies. FIFA also invited the mexican president and the canadian prime minister, but that was for show, this was all a play act to stroke trump's fragile ego. would trump not even show up, after scapegoating spain for not allowing trump to stage his war machines in his iranian war and threatening an 100% embargo? but of course trump would show, the man is feckless in his craving for attention. the spanish players were graceful all, shaking trump's hand (i wonder if any of them gave him an extra hard squeeze?) as he put the medal around their necks. what happened next is so cringe it makes me nauseous just thinking about it. instead of getting off the stage, trump positioned himself to center stage as the spanish players were about to celebrate their hard won victory. trump shuffled off to the side, but still wouldn't leave. FIFA president infantino had to rush across the stage to politely ask trump to exit, but trump stood firm as the fireworks fired off behind the players while they lifted the world cup trophy. trump finally meandered off, like an old man with dementia who accidentally got out of his house.

and just like that the 2026 world cup is over. messi was crying after he received his 2nd place medal, as the argentinian fans serenaded him from the stands. would this be his last world cup? is the reality of true retirement from football fast approaching? it's been a fun month watching these matches. i love international sports competitions like the world cup and the olympics. women's world cup is next summer in brazil, can't wait.

for dinner my mother made a stirfry with some more garden-harvested swiss chard. at this rate i don't think they'll last long enough for next season. probably just easier to grow them again from seeds. she also made a stirfry with tofu squares, hot peppers, and salted pork. my aunt called my father, said they were right outside. she bought some lychees from the new natick asian supermarket and gave them to use to try. what's special about these lychees are their incredibly small seeds. they were also super juicy, squirting everywhere.

i got back home by 7:40pm. since it rained yesterday, i didn't have to water jen's front and backyard, but i did it anyway because i had some spare time, plus i was curious to see their backyard. i didn't realize how exposed their backyard is to their neighbors, with nothing but low chain link fences between the property lines. that sort of openness actually made their backyard feel more expansive. their yard was very shady, but all the canopy trees belonged to nearby neighbors, they had no trees of their own. i was surprised to find so many potted plants in the backyard. i've always thought jen as a lightweight gardener since she got her plot after i've already been gardening for well over a decade, but it looks like she has quite the green thumb. there was a table with orchids, and various shade-tolerant flowers. i was very impressed. so i watered the front then the back, even filling up a watering can to water the handful of potted plants on the multi-tiered deck.

facebook marketplace sent me a local deal on a bicycle: a marin kentfield step-thru hybrid for just $60. it even includes fenders and a lock. google lens showed me it was a CS2 with 700c wheels. i went ahead and contacted the boston seller but didn't hear back. chances are they already have some buyers lined up. i really like the marin kentfield. latest models all include disc brakes, but this one doesn't (older model). at this price though, even with rim brakes, it's still a steal. maybe i'll get lucky and the seller will contact me in the morning. otherwise i'll keep on looking for a replacement for my trek utility bike.

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just a little behind-the-scene detail, but this post tonight features a new color scheme called "periwrinkle". the last color scheme i created was more than 7 years ago, "pistachio".

woke up before 8am, left by 8:30am. went first to the community garden to water and check on my butterfly pea. no flowers this morning. next i went to whole foods to return a pair of wired earbuds i bought off of amazon for my mother but she didn't want them anymore. i then went down cambridge street though lechmere/cambridge crossing to haymarket. i got there by 9am. my haul: 4 lbs. of rainier cherries ($10), 3 bunches of scallions ($2), cilantro ($1), sleeve of garlic ($2), a ripe pineapple ($1), 3 yellow dragon fruits ($5). i bought the cherries from otto, president of the haymarket pushcart association. i always hear him chatting about sports with the customers, and i've always been jealous. but today he asked me who i think will win the world cup, spain or argentina. i've been accepted in his inner circle! i told him argentina, because i was rooting for messi to repeat. he said he just hopes the world cup will bring more american interests for soccer.

i went up tremont street and headed to ming's market to get the rest of my supplies. the city is in the process of removing all the coin parking meters and replacing them with zone coded parking you can only access via an app. the parking meter were i usually park was only partially removed, so i could still lock my ebike this time. i got pad thai noodles ($2.19/package) and tianjin preserved vegetable ($4.79). i also got the last three remaining packages of chacha salted squash seeds for my mother. they didn't have lychees but they did have longans at $8.99/lbs.

since i still had an hour before i needed to be at the cafe, i decided to go to hong kong eatery in chinatown proper to get some duck for my mother and some thai-style chicken feet for myself. i ended up getting the wrong thing - chicken instead of duck. learning from last time, i also asked for no bag (otherwise they'll charge you for one without asking).

i finally headed back to cambridge, getting to the cafe right at 10:30am. while parking my bike i saw my mother walking to the cafe. while grabbing the foods i purchased from hong kong eatery, one of the box slipped out of my hands and crashed onto the parking lot asphalt, spilling my thai-flavored chicken feet. after all that work to safely bring it home, i butter finger everything onto the floor. i picked up the pieces and my mother gave it a rinse, figured i could still eat it because eating food off the floor is just something i do.

i went outside and washed off the food stain from the parking lot. i also watered the plants. there were 3 passion flowers today. a mother and daughter walked by and asked if the white flowers were jasmine. she said they walk by every night and the smell is amazing. i started setting up the patio deck but it was really windy and threatened to teat the umbrella off its foundation, so i closed back up the umbrella and put away the chairs and tables.

my 2nd aunt showed up for work, we haven't seen her in almost 2 weeks. she told us all the amazing things she ate at flushing. unfortunately she's not in the habit of taking food photos so we couldn't see any of them. my father showed up a bit after noontime.

we were busy today, which was a surprise. it's been a busy week overall. even though today we made the least amount, we still made above our daily average. once again, beef noodle soup was unexpectedly popular. our long-held belief that people only crave beef noodle soup during the colder seasons might need an update. but the most popular item today was the bento, which are easy to prepare. sometimes i wish we just sold bentos and bubble tea, and don't bother with the other stuff.

in the afternoon i casually checked the weather. i hadn't seen the forecast since yesterday morning. that strong rainstorm that was scheduled to arrive around 8-9pm tonight? well, it was coming early. like now. i confirmed this with the doppler radar, which showed a large blob of heavy rain out by worcester, soon to arrive in cambridge. once it starts to rain, it wouldn't stop until after 5pm. there was about 2 hours left before we closed, so i opted to go home early. with the arriving rain i didn't think there'd be much customers, but they still managed to get 7 more sales, including our regular crystal.

a few minutes before i got home, it started to drizzle lightly. so i made the right decision to leave early. i put the ebike away in the basement.

highlight of the day was the world cup match between england and france for 3rd place starting at 5pm. after a shower, i hunkered down with my "fell on the floor" edition of thai-style chicken feet. i kept looking for impurities like gravel but it was surprisingly clean. of all the places i could dropped them, parking lot surface wasn't the worst option.

while waiting for the game to start, i watched a little bit of godfather part II on pluto.tv. godfather is like catnip for me, whenever it's on i have to watch it. i ended up going down a rabbit hole researching don fanucci, the gangster vito corleone guns down in his first execution. why did he accept less money? was he really well connected? all those questions answered the further i searched.

the france-england world cup game was probably one of the most exciting matches of this year's world cup. english coach sat out team captain harry kane and jude bellingham, as well the prime goalkeeper. that didn't seem to matter though, as england scored its first goal at 3 minutes. that started an onslaught that ended with 4 goals by halftime. france was essentially finished. the only question was would england push it to 8-0? but gallic pride manifested itself in the second half, when france managed to score 3 goals. england finally scored again on a penalty kick, bringing the score to 5-3, but france scored another goal in stoppage time, making it 5-4. could england hold on? or could france equalize and force extra time? jude bellingham was substituted into the game late. he made it count with about a minute left in the game when he scored a goal for england, bringing the score to 6-4. game ended, england wins the bronze medal. the only good news for france is mbappe managed to score 2 more goals, so he's in good shape to win the golden boot award. but what an exciting game! i wish all world cup games could be like this: low penalty, lots of offense, shifting momentum swings.

my mother also made some scallion bread today. she opted not to sprinkle any sesame seeds, which made for a cleaner bread. she gave me the rest when i went home early, along with some watermelon and cherries. so i ate that the rest of the day. i had leftover beef noodle soup from yesterday but decided to freeze it for next week, wasn't in the mood tonight.

coming home early also allowed me to do two loads of laundry. i've skipped doing it the past two weeks because it's been so hot and i didn't want to further heat up the house by running the dryer.

i harvested another butterfly pea flower from the garden this morning before heading to the cafe. i took a quick trip to trader joe's before we opened, getting some supplies (cucumbers, spinach). coming back, i spotted some white mutated chicory growing a grass bank by the fresh pond rotary. i'm tempted to mark it somehow and come back for the seeds so i can grow this rare variant.

today there as just 2 passion flowers. they didn't fully open until almost 11am due to some hazy condition blocking out the sun.

my mother made some rice noodle soup in the late morning. i managed to have some before we started getting busy.

today was the busiest day this week. in just one hour (12pm) we made half the day's profit. it started when that rude chinese astrophysicist called the cafe asking us to prepare a bowl of beef noodle soup for him. normally i'd be super annoyed, but today he said he wanted 6 bowls as he was bringing coworkers. not enough time to get angry, we started scrambling to cook enough noodles and heat enough beef noodle soup. it went downhill from there as more customers came in, as well as incoming online orders. did everyone just decide to order at the same time?

the most popular item today was beef noodle soup. we nearly exhausted our supply, but fortunate my father was making a new batch today. veggy buns were also very popular. we also had a few customers sit outside on the patio deck as today wasn't so hot and humid. the deck has gotten very little use this season. makes us wonder if we should continue to have it.

my godmother brought her grandkids to the cafe in the late morning, but left once we started getting busy. my aunt came around at 1pm, right after we survived a gauntlet of customer orders.

i made more drink experiments using faux lime juice, mint syrup, and italian sparkling water. i was basically making virgin carbonated mojitos. i feel like it's still missing a key ingredient (other than alcohol). maybe a dash of bitters to add another dimension.

i watered the outdoor plants in the early evening because i noticed they were kind of dry. only later did i find out my father didn't water at all this morning.

my parents finished out the day by portioning the beef noodle soup stock into individual servings before i brought them downstairs to put in the freezers. i went home with some leftover beef noodle soup.

riding back, i saw somebody had thrown out a gray enameled dutch oven pot. it was small enough (4qt?) for me to put it in my messenger bag. when i got back home, i watered the front and back yard before going inside to check out my new dutch oven. it's a brandani brand, which i found out is a brand you'd typically find in tj maxx or homegoods, not one of the better name brands, but still serviceable. i have a cast iron dutch oven that i only use to make no knead before that i haven't used in a while. i want to try some recipes with this enameled dutch oven, maybe make some beef stews, maybe make a sour dough no-knead bread.

i didn't have the beef noodle soup for dinner - saving it for tomorrow night. instead i finished the last two juicaihezi from yesterday.

i have ants in the house again. i found out this morning when i grabbed a glass to clean from the living room and saw a few ants climbing around inside. i had some pink lemonade last night, so there must be some residual sugar left in the glass. sugar ants are easy to treat. i opened up a terro liquid ant bait and set it on the windowsill where the ants were coming in. i can expect to see a lot of ants feeding on the bait for a week, and then afterwards they'll be all gone. the thing i learned last summer when i had ants is they have a schedule. i thought they'd feed 24/7, but the ants i had only came out during the daytime and at night they all disappeared.

i went to the garden to water this morning. the butterfly pea flower bud i saw yesterday had bloomed this morning. there's competing theory on when's the best time to harvest: some say early morning, just as soon as the flowers open. others say after a day, after the flowers had time to close and shrivel up. i decided to take the fresh flower so i could show my parents. i noticed on the vine another emerging flower bud. that's my incentive to come back tomorrow morning to check for another flower. it takes 10-15 flowers to make just a single ounce tincture (using 40% alcohol).

we had 6 passion flowers today. originally i saw 3, but then i found another, and another, and another. despite their complicated structure, the flowers themselves are very easy to miss if you don't look carefully. based on remaining flower buds, i figured we have maybe 2 more weeks of flowers before they're all gone. once that happens, we're going to trim the vines. that will hopefully induce new vines to grow (flowers only show up on new vines). we will turn the old vines into cuttings, hopefully propagate some passion flower plants to give to others.

i realized today that i've become the curator of the beverage fridge. we got the common sodas like pepsi, coke, diet coke, and a ginger ale. i also added a pink ginger ale that have a few customers. then there are the various flavors of gatorade. followed by an assortment of sanpellegrino fruit sodas. since we're a taiwanese joint, you can't not have some apple sidra and heysong sarsaparilla. for purists, there's the always popular bottled water. we carry two different brands of sparkling water: pellegrino and perrier. pellegrino is one of the few drinks that comes in a glass bottle. a few years back i remember an old lady asking for something that was in a glass bottle and we didn't carry anything like that until now. we also carry ito en green tea, one of the few options that isn't sweetened. finally, diet stewart root beer, which we only have for our one daily customer allen, who has it with every meal. he used to drink IBC diet root beer until there was a supply shortage during the pandemic and we got diet stewart root beer instead, not realizing it was actually his favorite from childhood.

my 2nd aunt was coming back from flushing this morning, got the 10:30am bus. i tracked her progress as she returned to boston. she almost reached MA before her GPS stopped working. did she lose her phone? run out of battery? who knew. phone issues with her is so common we figured it was another glitch. later in the afternoon my mother called her. my 2nd aunt told her her phone ran out of storage midtrip and couldn't function anymore. she asked my 2nd uncle to meet her at south station, but he doesn't have a phone, so there was no way they could contact each other, so my 2nd aunt returned to cambridge by herself, not sure where my 2nd uncle went.

today didn't feel all that busy. yes, we had the typical lunch hour rush, but all other times seemed very low key. so i was surprised to learn by day's end that we made about as much as yesterday and tuesday, both pretty profitable days.

allen our daily regular was supposed to be gone to the cape for vacation. but his car was still in his driveway, even though we didn't see him tuesday or wednesday. today he showed up unexpectedly for lunch. afterward that he told us he was finally leaving for a few weeks.

in the afternoon during a lull i took a trip to the davis square h-mart. it's not too far, but there's no bike lanes for half the trip, as i need to share the narrow roads with car traffic. it's not a fun ride and definitely feels dangerous. i ended up riding on the sidewalk as much as possible. i went to h-mart in search of pad thai noodles - we were down to just 3 servings - and bean sprouts. they had pad thai noodles but they were $2.49 a package; baifu/foodpak sells them for $1.75. so i only bought a single package (3 servings). i looked for nori furikake but they were all sold out. at $3.99 a jar, it's actually the cheapest price in town. h-mart had a sale on laoganma spicy chili crisp for $6.99. same jar sells for $9.99 in chinatown. unfortunately they were all sold out as well, but i meandered to the hot sauce side aisle and saw they still had a few jars left. i also picked up a container of sweet and spicy fried tofu for $5.99.

i came back to the cafe after half an hour. i tried the fried tofu. very tough, very chewy, hard to eat if you have bad teeth. the sweet and spicy didn't taste very korean, not sure the ethnicity. it'd definitely taste better with some gochujang sauce. i still enjoyed it (my father liked it too, my mother barely touched it), would definitely buy again.

my parents made jiucaihezi with the garlic chives my mother harvested this morning from our little parking lot garden plot. they cooked it using their pan-fried cooker machine as well as on the stovetop. i ended up taking home 4 for dinner.

i came home, turned on the inverter AC, went to go take a shower, before eating two jiucaihezi for dinner. trump was making a primetime speech about 2020 election interference and election security. several major networks decided not to carry it live, or only have it available in their online livestream.

i took a trip to market basket before going to the cafe this morning. the sky was already hazy, so much so that the automatic parking lot lights were still on. i had a grocery list of 8 items that i quickly found. half the time i was there was spent in the checkout line as they only had a few lanes opened.

when i got to the cafe i set up my gopro camera outside, hoping to catch one of the passion flowers blooming. i kept readjusting the clamp, trying to find the best angle. gopros are not really designed for this kind of macro time lapse work. it took an hour before the bud finally bloomed, and i didn't have the best angle. i'll try again tomorrow. as for the flowers, there was a total of 9 passion flowers today.

i added 333g of warm water to the reducing lime peels i left in a jar yesterday before blending them in the vitamix. i ended up with 12 oz. of faux lime juice. not sure what i'll do with it, but so many cocktails make use of lime juice, i'm sure i'll find something.

i made another batch of pickled red onion slices. i stuffed a 16 oz. jar with as much thin-sliced red onions i could manage, before pouring in the pickling solution: 1/2 cup of white vinegar, 1/2 cup of warm water, 1 tbsp of sugar, and 1 tsp of salt. i ended up with some solution left over.

by late morning the sky turned orange again. my father kept saying he'd never seen anything like it, like the end of the world. the sun was a red ball in the sky. on top of that, there was a faint smell of wood smoke, something we didn't notice yesterday.

afraid it might rain, my father and i used a folding trolley to move the 3 ikea shelving unit we picked up yesterday. we moved them to the cafe basement. working on such a humid day, i came back inside soaked in sweat.

we were busy from 11-1pm, then another spike in the evening. noodle sales outpaced bento sales, with 4 pad thai. i kept making batches of black soy noodles. i've got it down to science at this point, the hardest part is just the 10 minutes to boil a package of linguine noodles. despite the heat, people continue to buy the beef noodle soup. a biracial couple came in with 3 young and noisy children close to closing time and ordered. one of the kids spilled a smoothie all over the table and floor. the father did his best to clean it up, but after they left we had to mop the floor.

i reconstituted a jar of frozen mojito with italian sparkling water before the start of the world cup match. it was an earlier batch that wasn't blended very well so the ice was more crystal shards than slush. it was also very bitter from the rum. i was already drunk by that point, and thought to myself, "where else can i drink on the job and not get fired?"

my sister brought esmei into the cafe. a normal dog would bark if it wanted something, but esmei is more of a whimpering crying dog. she associates the cafe with hard-boiled eggs and look forward to visiting just so she can get a protein treat. afterwards i went to go see her while she waited in the car. she completely ignored me, waiting for my sister to show up and take her out.

the game was between england and argentina. the first half was boring, no score. in the second half england scored a goal at 55 minutes. it seemed they were on their way to the finals if they can just hang on to the lead. instead of trying to score more goals, they just played defense, allowing argentina to go on offense. it was a valiant effort by england, but when you offer argentina multiple scoring opportunities, eventually they're going to score. with just minutes left in regulation, argentina scored at 85 minutes. england was too late to adjust - still in defensive mode - and allowed another goal in extra time. by that point it was too little too late. desperation mounted for england until the referee finally called the game. argentina wins 2-1. england - who had argentina on the ropes - will play for 3rd place against france. to be honest, that may actually be a good game, two former empires once again vying for a prize (third place but still a prize).

there was a faint beeping in the back kitchen. i searched everywhere - downstairs, outside - until i realized it was the upstairs upright freezer. the beeping was a high temperature warning. i grabbed the infrared thermometer and scanned the inside: 7 degrees on the top, 18 degrees at the bottom. we normally have the freezer set to 6 degrees. was the freezer dying? we had a GE upright freezer die on us a few years ago. the fix was just to replace the evaporator fan which cost an obscene $200 for a simple part (GE sold it for $300+ so that was actually a bargain). but first we decluttered the inside a bit, realized the two vents were blocked. we cleared away the area next to the freezer to allow more circulation. one of the side was warm to the touch so my father also removed a bunch of items attached with fridge magnets before blowing a fan to cool the outside. about an hour later i took another temperature reading: up and down were both 7 degrees now. so whatever we did worked and the freezer isn't broken.

i had some trader joe's frozen food to eat so i didn't take anything home for dinner. i bumped into my moroccan mailman, back from vacation. he actually didn't go back to morocco this year but opted to stay home instead. i asked him who he thinks will win the world cup, he said spain.

i watered my back and front yard, before walking down to the community garden to water my plot. there was actually a lot of people - most of them i didn't recognize (a new generation of gardeners). david was there however, so i chatted with him most of the time. he didn't like the hazy weather, said it was bad for the plants. he told me about a new bento restaurant that opened up on mass ave, they charge $18 for their bentos. i'd like to try one out of professional curiosity. in my garden, i noticed a butterfly pea flower bud. i thought they'd be blue but the flower bud was actually purple. i'll come back tomorrow to harvest it.

after i came home, i went to star market to stock up on some polar 1L drinks on sale. i was walking behind a pair of latinas wearing argentina football jerseys: one had the classic pale blue and white stripes, while the other had the dark blue jersey. star market had a collection of cocktail mixers, sweetened lime juice was $3.99 while simple syrup was also $3.99. when i left it was just about sunset. i heard it was going to be beautiful. there were some colors, but nothing truly vibrant. later from the slits in my venetian blinds i could see bands of magenta in sky. by that point i was too lazy to go back outside.

i found a 1/2L clamp-top glass jar when i came home from my parents' monday evening. it still worked but the rubber gasket wasn't the right size. after washing the jar, i replaced the gasket with a spare fido-jar gasket. it was the perfect size and now the jar is as good as new. clamp-top glass jars is one of those things if i see lying out on the curb i have to take it.

for dinner i tried trader joe's spicy alfredo fusilloni pasta with gochujang sauce. i didn't understand the instructions as there was no mention of warming up any sauce packets. when i opened up the package i realized why: the sauce portion were frozen and cut into squares (like butter) that would melt when you heated the pasta. the pasta itself was okay - i wouldn't know it was korean flavored unless you told me but it was spicy - but the portions seemed small for such a large package. i undercooked the pasta so they were a little chewy, if i were to have this again i'd cook the noodles an extra few minutes.

there were actually people in the garden this morning when i went to go water: gene, the gardener growing a bunch of dahlias, and my neighbor jen. both were leaving by the time i showed up.

my days have become a blur, i had a hard time remembering what day it was. it was hot and humid enough today that we didn't bother setting up the patio deck, figured no sane person would want to eat outside when there was cool free AC indoors. that gave the passion flowers plenty of sunshine, as 5 flowers opened today. or so i thought, because by late morning the sky turned a dusky orange. i've seen this before: wildfire smoke. sure enough, forest fire smoke from ontario was engulfing much of northeastern US. so much so that it actually lowered the temperature, as today was supposed to be a super hot day but only ended up just a normal hot day. the sun was a red ball in the sky through the haze.

i made batches of black soy noodles and tea eggs. my parents cut the salmon steaks into strips, marinated them, before roasting in the oven. my mother thought our regular customer allen was going to show up today even though my father said he was going to the cape. we had his foods ready but he never came even though his car was still in his driveway.

it didn't feel like it but we got busy today, give us a good start for the rest of the week. lunchtime was busy, midafternoon we had another spike, and finally one last spike in the evening. a customer came in and ordered 2 dozen tea eggs for thursday. looks like i'll need to make another batch tomorrow. who orders that many tea eggs? honestly, a lot cheaper and easier if they just made their own. the amount they're paying is enough to buy a month long supply of eggs.

my sister informed us a neighbor was tossing out some stuff. my father and i went out to rummage. we managed to pick up 3 ikea kallax shelving units (2x4 square storage cases) and a cordless waterpik.

close to 3pm i made a batch of mojito to coincide with the world cup match. during the initial blend - with simple syrup and rum and peeled lime and mint leaves - i added a cup of ice. in the secondary blend i added 3 more cups. that was enough to make 4 servings. however we didn't drink any since we still had to work, and i left the mojitos in the freezer. i did save the lime peels, 20g worth this time, will soaked them sugar-salt-acid then turn them into faux lime juice tomorrow.

the game was between france and spain. france had a 40%+ chance of winning the world cup this year. i think they bought into their own hype. especially since today was bastille day, the french figured they couldn't lose. i've watched a lot of sports and have seen many times the favored team not win. spain scored at the 22 minutes mark with a penalty kick. that as basically a freebie. but france simply could not score a goal with all the talent they had. when spain scored again at 58 minutes, it started to look bleak for france. when the game finally ended and spain won 2-0, it was shocking.

in honor of sam neill, once i got back home and took a shower, i sat down to dinner (a leftover bento my mother made me) and watched the hunt for red october (1990) via pluto.tv on demand. yes there were commercial breaks but just a few, not enough to get too annoying. i must've seen red october when i was a kid, rented it on VHS. i must not have liked it because i barely remember anything from the movie. it's kind of a cerebral espionage yarn, the sort of stuff i appreciate more as an adult. i spoiled it by reading the full synopsis during a lull but even knowing what was going to happen, i still really enjoyed the film. it's a real guy's movie, other than jack ryan's wife (played by gates mcfadden, star trek doctor beverly crusher) and the few mentions of the soviet submarine captain's wife, there are no other women characters in the film.

the first news i saw this morning was the death of sam neill, age 78. the very first film i remember seeing him in was the thriller dead calm (1989) which also starred a young nicole kidman and billy zane. however i completely forgot he played damien in omen III (1981) which i would've definitely have seen as well. there was of course all the jurassic parks movies, but the two movies of his i love the most were from the 1990's: in the mouth of madness (1994) - one of the most unsettling horror i've ever seen - and event horizon (1997) - gothic space terror. i wasn't aware of his new zealand roots, i always thought he was british from his accent.

i found turkey poop on the sidewalk. afraid that people would step on it and cause a mess, i brought out the hose and rinsed off the sidewalk. i then ebiked to the community garden to water my plants, before getting to the cafe around 10am to water the plants there. the passion flowers were just about to open, i counted 6 today.

my mother didn't expect me to show up so early, thought i wouldn't get there until noontime. so my parents quickly got ready so we could do a waltham-cambridge supply run. yes i know, because we did a saturday morning supply run i said we didn't need to make another. but there were still things we were missing, like eggs and salmon.

we went to the waltham costco. we parked in the rightmost parking area, underneath a row of trees to give the car some shade. it is however an inconvenient spot as we needed to wheel our shopping cart between the parked cars in order to get into the store. costco today wasn't too busy. we got our eggs here, 180 eggs. this will last us 2 weeks. they've already started putting out the halloween decorates - and it's not even mid-july yet. this store carried ITO EN green tea, which we sell at the cafe. unfortunately we already bought two cases on saturday (about the same price). it's one of the few popular drinks we carry that isn't sweet. while waiting to pay, i saw a 100 inches hisense U6 HDTV on a cart with a taped reserved note. how do you even bring that thing home? it wouldn't fit most cars. later i looked up the price: $1700.

typically we make a trip to nearby market basket, but today we skipped that, and headed directly back to cambridge via the highway. passing through fresh pond we stopped at the trader joe's to get a few things (scallions, cucumbers, milk, bananas, salmon). my father stayed in the car with the AC running so the few frozen things we bought wouldn't completely thaw out in a hot car.

we arrived at the cafe around 12:30pm. after unloading the supplies and thawing out this week's foods, we returned to belmont.

for lunch i had some leftover pizza from yesterday and a slice of costco peach cake.

i checked our basement temperature/humidity sensor. after i turned on our dehumidifier yesterday, the humidity in the basement dramatically dropped, from 66% down to about 50%. the basement also felt a lot cooler too. when we got our rheem hybrid heat pump hot water heater, one of the things we were hoping for was it'd cool the basement and keep it less humid. yes it does take in some of that moisture to heat the water, but just not enough to dehumidify the basement. a dedicated dehumidifier is a lot more efficient. the rheem still saves us a lot of money though (versus a traditional electric hot water tank), and the ability to set up schedules and change the way it heats water is handy.

my father and i spent the rest of the afternoon working in the backyard. he pruned back some overgrowth by the western bed, pulling up spent money plants and foxgloves, tying back the honeysuckles. hopefully these steps will give more sun access to our bitter melon plants. they're all still alive, but nowhere as robust at the few bitter melons we're growing in our grow bags. my father said next year he's going to grow all the bitter melons from bottomless grow bags. i mixed a large bucket of miracle-gro general fertilizer and doused the bitter melons. we collected some foxglove seeds from dried foxglove flowers. we also collected a bunch of money plant seeds which we'll sprinkle on our southern border by the new fence.

i also weeded the raised beds. in the past i've put down salt marsh hay to keep the weeds from sprouting, but i've found it just gives pests a place to hide, so i stopped mulching. a lot of purslanes, a lot of cypress vines (particularly RB4, it's essentially a weed at this point), and another weed i couldn't identify. i pruned the tomatoes a little bit, reroutes some branches. finally, we manually strung up some bean stalks to the trellis lines, those that were having a hard time finding them naturally.

i spotted a few more vine borer holes on our squash stems and injected them with BTk solution. that stuff has a strong stinky smell and the odor is impossible to wash off you hands once it dries. another strange thing i noticed is one of our swiss chards has bolted and producing seeds. i thought they were biennials, but apparently this sometimes happen when plants get so stressed they forgo a season of growth and start making seeds.

in the late afternoon we went back inside the house. my sister stopped by briefly, didn't even take esmei out of the car, just told us to come out if we wanted to see her. it's esmei's birthday today, she's 3 years old now. my sister was taking her to a dog birthday party at her friend's house.

for dinner my mother stewed a pot of chicken wings with tofu and mushrooms.

after i returned home, i spent a good amount of time watering the front and back yard. i wasn't planning on it, but once again i noticed turkey poop on the sidewalk. i saw a suspicious-looking guy walking down the street casually tossing out pieces of bread. i asked him what he was doing, he said he was feeding the turkeys. i told him to stop it - not because of the turkeys (which i hate) - but because we have a neighborhood rat problem.

nothing good on television tonight. i ended up watching a bunch of youtube videos, learning about how to turn a cheap PC into a linux server for streaming videos, music, and even a photo cloud server.