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.

i returned to market basket this morning, mostly because i'm a masochist. it was wet outside, with barely a sprinkle, with more serious rain later. i wore my full blown rain gear, jacket, pants, rubber boots. market basket wasn't as busy as i thought, the bike racks were empty, with plenty of empty parking spots. seems like most folks did their panic shopping yesterday before the storm. i got some ingredients for making reuben sandwiches (rye bread, swiss cheese, russian dressing). i also wanted to get some more perdue oven stuffer chickens on sale but they didn't seem to have anymore left (fortunately star market is having a sale on the same chicken this week).

i had enough time to return home and use the bathroom before leaving for the cafe. for some reason my t-shirt was completely sweat-soaked from that little supermarket jaunt. maybe it was the rain jacket, which doesn't breathe very well. rain had stopped for the time being that i just wore my rain jacket over a pair of jeans. i brought my rain pants just in case it got rainy after work.

i made a new batch of tea eggs. now that i'm egg piercing, that's the part that makes me the most nervous. even though i only need to make a tiny hole on the fat end, i still manage to crack an egg or two while making a batch. during the steaming process, eggs can also crack open. something i found out about pierced eggs besides having a perfect egg shape is they hold on to their shells better so they don't lose their shells during the simmering process, something that used to happen to a few eggs every batch.

because of the rain there was barely any business today. in total we only had about a dozen sales.

fei fei and her family came to visit us in the afternoon. their flight tomorrow back to hawaii (via seattle) was still on schedule. however by the time they left the cafe, the airline notified them that their flight from boston to seattle had been cancelled.

after work i didn't bother putting on my rain pants even though there was a slight drizzle. i figured i would be changing out of my clothes anyway, not a big deal if i get a little damp. riding home i passed by some puddles, which got me thinking: puddles are actually a sign that a road isn't properly graded. a properly built road doesn't have puddles because the rain water always has a place to properly drain.

my new camera lens arrived yesterday, my parents brought it to the cafe. i opened up the package when i got home: a used EF-S 18-135mm USM IS that i bought for $190 (including shipping and taxes and discount). i wasn't sure about the quality but the lens was near-mint, with no dust particles inside the lens. i screwed on the 67mm low-profile UV lens before using the lens. it's surprisingly heavy. 18-135mm has an optical zoom ratio of 7.5x. that's longer than my 55-250mm lens, which has a 4.5x zoom. that gives the 18-135mm a more substantial zoom feel when used. focusing, it's just as fast and silent as the 55-250mm which uses STM.

after a shower, i made some popcorn with the zippy popcorn maker. i made 6 oz. and added half a tablespoon of flavacol and half a tablespoon of garam masala. it came out okay, but still nothing like the indian popcorn i ate as a kid in first grade, which was the best popcorn i've ever had. i turned on my air purifier to get rid of the popcorn smell.

for dinner i had a leftover bento my mother prepared for me: leftover fermented long beans with ground beef and leftover bitter melon stirfry.

while looking up the specs for the 18-135mm, i discovered an unexpected feature: it has a close focusing distance of 15 inches, which makes it great for close-up photography. i tested against my 55-250mm (33 inches minimum focusing distance) and 18-200mm (20 inches minimum); maybe i'm biased because it's a new lens, but images seem much clearer, especially compared to the 18-200mm, which this new place will be replacing. however it can't compare to my 60mm macro lens, which has a 1x magnification; the 18-135mm has a 0.28x maximum magnification at best.

i watched it rain between the slits in my venetian blinds. every once in a while a strong gust of wind would cause the trees outside to roar and seemingly buckle the house.

i went to market basket this morning to get a few things for the cafe. there were just 3 bikes on the bike stand. inside, milks and breads are still well stocked. when i left though, the bike stand was completely full, likewise the parking lot. i pity anyone going to the supermarket today, it's going to be crazy as people stock up before the storm.

i was the first to arrive at the cafe. i bumped into gustavo who told me the inspector was coming today to take a look at their place. once they pass inspection, the bakery should be all set to open.

my father came back from trader joe's. besides salmon, he also picked up some edamame, looks like they're back in stock again. since we used up all the black soy noodles yesterday, i was making another batch before i had to leave by 9:30am to pick up the pair of sawhorses on alpine street. when i got there, the sawhorses were left out on the front steps. i put them in the car and texted a thank you to the seller.

back at the cafe i made another batch of black soy noodles. i also cut up some baguette and served them with sliced peppercorn brie and salami. the peppercorn gave the salami a raw taste that was a little weird. i tried to get regular brie but they only had generic or petite size, so i tried the peppercorn one even though it was more expensive.

i couldn't resist and got some oat nog. i gave it a taste test. because it doesn't have any milk, it's not as rich as regular egg nog. honestly, it'd be hard to tell it wasn't real egg nog because it's still very sweet with hints of warming spices like cinnamon and nutmeg. i was shocked when i checked the ingredients. not only did it not have milk, but it didn't have eggs either. it's basically an ultra-vegan version of egg nog, for people with food allergies. no dairy, no gluten, no peanuts, no soy, no tree eggs, all natural flavors. it's okay, but i think i'll just get regular egg nog next time, or make my own.

we got slammed today during lunchtime. we basically made more than half of today's profit all during that one hour. i find it kind of exciting, to be suddenly bombarded with 5-7 orders simultaneously. time goes by a lot quicker.

i found out today my father bought the heat pump portable air conditioner even after i told him it wouldn't work for our winter because the exhaust hoses aren't insulated. he spent something lik $300, bought it off of tiktok of all places. all the reviews i saw online were people who lived in areas like florida and texas where they never experience freezing temperatures and might occasionally use the heat pump function to make a little bit of heat during a few chilly winter nights. here in new england we don't have that luxury. heat is crucial, and when you appliance isn't even insulated from the subzero temperature outside, it's basically garbage.

in the early evening we roasted the perdue oven stuffer chicken my father brined yesterday. we set it on roast with convection at 400 degrees for 75 minutes. my father pat dried the skin and applied a layer of oil for crispiness. after 45 minutes we put a tinfoil over the chicken to keep it from burning. around 6:30pm the timer went off. when i checked with a meat thermometer, the temperature was still only 150 degrees, so we roasted it for another 15 minutes past closing time. my mother was complaining until the chicken was finally done. meat thermometer check read 165-170 degrees.

i stuck around to have a taste before leaving. the chicken was cooked to perfection, crispy skin (like peking duck), tender meat. unfortunately the brine wasn't salty enough so the flavor didn't fully penetrate and the chicken was bland. it tasted better after we made a white pepper-salt dipping sauce. my mother asked me to buy two more oven stuffer chickens.

with the nor'easter epicenter just offshore, the sky tonight was this eerily beautiful pastel shade of magenta to periwinkle. my father said this was pre-hurricane weather. it was already dark by the time i headed home but i had my bike lights. i could also feel some rain drops though it wasn't supposed to rain until later this evening.

i brought home the oat nog (seems like i'm the only person who would drink it) and a leftover whopper for dinner. after a shower, i heated up the patty before eating the burger, washed down with some oat nog.

i watched the latest resident evil (2026) film after hearing some good stuff about the movie. other than that the film was good and wasn't a direct sequel to the franchise but a reboot, i knew hardly anything about it. i was pleasantly surprised. there were some original horror elements i'd never seen before. parts of the movie is shot in a POV style, which mimics the game play. the version i watched was a telesync bootleg. i'm hoping to watch the genuine version when it comes out on streaming.

after watering my garden plot, i went to the cafe via small back roads to avoid the ongoing construction in linnaean street. my father startd the day by deep frying a new batch of salt & pepper chicken. my sister wasn't home so my mother took esmei out for a walk before feeding her an egg.

a lunchtime spike followed by an evening spike. we made above our daily average. a pair of customers came in close to closing and stayed until almost 7pm before we finally kicked them out. we used up all the black soy noodles - including the two new batches i made - and barely had any rice left.

4 passion flowers bloomed in the backyard. it was another windy day, we set up the deck chairs and tables but didn't open the umbrella. fei fei and her husband came back in the late afternoon to rummage through the boxes of clothes they left behind when the left cambridge to find some warmer clothes as they weren't prepared for how cold it was.

i tried the mio blood orange hibiscus, it's actually pretty good, when most water flavor enhancers taste terrible and artificial. my days of drinking ice cold drinks are numbered; once the cold arrives it's nothing but hot teas. i had some leftover fermented long beans with ground beef over rice for lunch.

i finally bought my taipei-to-chongqing plane ticket. i thought there was a lot of cheap options, but maybe i waited too long, or maybe there weren't as many options as i thought. the only direct flight to chongqing from taipei is run by sichuan airline, and it's the most expensive at nearly $600 roundtrip for 3-1/2 hours of flight. the cheapest flights are between $300-400, and they all involve some kind of layover, whether that's in shanghai, hong kong, or guangzhou. i picked the 6-1/2 hours flight that stops in guangzhou. it's not an ideal itinerary as it arrives in chongqing around 10:30pm at night. i'll need to book a hotel ahead of time to stay for just one night. so i leave on the 28th and return to taiwan on the 12th.

amazon finally gave me an update on the second google pixel 9 pro phone i ordered back in august. it's not expected to arrive between october 3-5th, so not this weekend but the following weekend. that gives me about 2 weeks to familiarize myself with the phone before i take it with me to taiwan and china.

my father marinated the small perdue oven stuffer chicken i bought yesterday (6 lbs). we're doing it thanksgiving turkey style, with a flavored wet brine. we found a container big enough to hold the whole chicken but also fit inside the fridge. we're going to roast it in the breville smart oven, it's going to smell delicious.

my parents took esmei home as once again my sister wasn't home. my sister fed esmei before she left, so technically there was no reason to take her to belmont. she waited in the car as we closed up the cafe. i helped my parents order an online burger kind special (burgers, wraps, fries). they went to go pick it up after work.

i rode home with a fading magenta sunset behind me. i had my bike lights not so much to see but rather to prevent cars from hitting me from behind. i think i'm going to move the solar wheel lights from my old trek utility to the marin.

i got in touch with a facebook market place person giving away a pair of sawhorses for free. he said i could come pick it up tomorrow in huron village at 9:30am. i could practically walk there!

for dinner i ate the leftover popeyes spicy chicken sandwich from yesterday. i didn't bother heating it up, had it cold. it was actually surprisingly good. i'm going to get it again next time.

even though i slept for 7-1/2 hours last night, it still wasn't enough, as i found myself nodding off at the cafe in the late afternoon as well as back at home in the evening in front of the computer. so i'm going to bed soon, get a bit more sleep.

i woke up at 8:30am this morning. my original plan for today was to ride down to bianco & sons and pick up some chinese sausages (we're nearly out at the cafe). i was all set to go, double checking my route via google maps, when my mother called me. she said she couldn't find her taibaozheng - her chinese mainland travel permit for taiwan residents. without it she can't go to china. she asked me to check the suitcase i brought home a few days ago. i didn't find any travel permit. if she can't find it soon, she'll need to apply for a china visa in her US passport, which will take 2-4 weeks and costs at least $140.

my ebay seller got in touch with me. "how can i tell if i have an old EF-S 18-135mm lens" he asked me. so he was basically as clueless as me. i told him if it was USM, it would say so on the front of the lens. he admitted he made a mistake with his ebay listing description. he cancelled the order for me.

i changed my plans. instead of going to bianco's, i'd go to market basket to get a few supplies, before going to the cafe with my camera to take new passport photos for my mother, should she need them for her potential visa application. riding to market basket, i stopped by the house on properzi way to confirm it is in fact a chestnut tree growing on their front lawn. it looks to be a japanese chestnut (Castanea crenata) based on how large the nut size is. the fact that it has nuts means either it's a special hybrid variety that's self-fertile or there's another chestnut on the property.

i bought mostly supplies for the cafe, nothing for myself. my folding bike baskets were so heavy, they made the bike wobble when i pedaled and i was afraid they might fall off. i stopped at the house to grab my camera equipment and change to my ebike (since i would be going to belmont after the cafe). i left for the cafe. out on the curb somebody that thrown out a small weber kettle grill. i was tempted to grab it, BUT i already have two! my basement can't hold anymore. a bit further along on linnaean street, i saw a stack of plastic pots on the curb. i grabbed all of them, tying them to the back of my rear basket with my bungie netting.

i didn't stay long. long enough to take some passport photos for my parents (which i'll print out at walgreens), and for my 2nd aunt and my sister to show up. i found out it wasn't just my mother's taibaozheng that went missing, but my father's too. this makes more sense and it means they were put away together, not accidentally falling out of a passport. my mother kept blaming my father for taking them on their most recent turkey trip. why? because my father thought if full-blown war brought out in the region, maybe the chinese government would rescue them if the US government abandoned them.

i left for belmont. on the front steps was another aliexpress bike handlebar. i also ordered some lawn sprinklers from home depot that were supposed to come today. my plan at my parents' place was to clean up the basement grow room so i can move some delicate outdoor houseplants indoors so the nor'easter this weekend won't blow them away. i was basically there from 11am to 2pm. after i cleaned the grow room (untouched since we moved out all our plants at the end of spring), i brought out all the trays and dishes and rinsed them clean in the backyard. i ended up not moving all the plants, just the orchids and the holiday cactuses. orchids because they're very light and always got blown over after a major storm, and the cactuses because they don't like soggy soil. a funny thing about one of the orchids: it's multiple flower spikes have already finished flowering, but the tips are still alive. does that mean it might flower again? i'll need to repot most of these orchids at some point since they're all growing crooked. i should've done it during the summer.

i left a bit after 2pm. not home but the relatively new popeyes at the border of watertown-newton. the place has gotten some bad reviews online but i wanted to try it for myself, my love for fried chicken is that great. i signed up on the app and created my own bundle for $20: 6 pieces sweet & spicy wings, 3 piece classic chicken, 1 spicy chicken sandwich, 1 cajun fries, and 1 cole slaw. i rode the ebike to pick it up. i tried the arsenal street cycle track to get to watertown center. that area was a mess, with no bike infrastructure, so i was basically competing for street space with cars.

the newton popeyes is takeout only, there's no sit down space other than a counter with a few chairs. there were three wall-mounted ordering kiosks, so i could've ordered there instead. actually, i think that's the only way you can order there, there's no live human ordering. it all feels a bit impersonal. i saw a large bag that was probably my order. i asked one of the employees there - an unsmiling man with a prison tattoo on his face - if it was my order. he didn't say anything, just pointed to it, like he didn't care who took the order.

riding back, after cutting through watertown center, i decided to take mt.auburn street instead. that turned out to be a big mistake. unlike arsenal, there's no bike infrastructure. i was either riding in the street with cars, riding in empty parking lanes until i came across a parked car, or riding on the sidewalk. at one point my handlebar fell out from my rear basket, clattering on the street. i turned back to get it, almost getting hit by oncoming traffic. i should've gone arsenal street instead even though that was the longer way.

i finally got home by 3pm, excited to have my popeyes for lunch. the food was already cold but i didn't mind. i started with the cole slaw: nicely chopped but very bland. almost felt like i was eating a plain salad with tiny pieces of vegetables. the cajun fries were good, but i like fries of all varieties. the sweet & spicy wings remind me of bonchon wings. very crispy wings, the sauce was okay, a bit too sweet and salty, not enough heat. i think they'd go better with bonchon spicy sauce! the wings came with a dipping sauce - bayou buffalo - a very thin and vinegary hot sauce. i tried it one time, didn't like it. for the classic chicken i ate a drumstick and a thigh. it came with a bonus biscuit, very salty but i like it. chicken was also very crispy. i saved the sandwich for dinner. i washed everything down with some hudson north big apple imperial cider.

i went out around 4pm to replace the handlebar on the trek fx hybrid with the new one that just arrived. there was a few cosmetic damage from falling off my bike earlier, but it wasn't too bad. the old aluminum handlebar was made with a soft metal because the shifter managed to scratch it all up when i took it off. the new handlebar is the same as the one on my marin - black northroad style. one problem i noticed right away was it stretched out the cabling even more than the previous handlebar, to the point where the shifters and brakes are hanging at an awkward angle. i'll need to redo the cabling next week. i really like this new handlebar though, makes the bike feel better to ride. i test rode it around the block, so much more comfortable. unfortunately the stretched cabling made an annoying creaking sound.

i ordered another EF-S 18-135mm lens off of ebay. this time i made sure it was USM. i couldn't find any good deals, the cheapest clean lens i could find was $195 including taxes and shipping, $30 more than the non-USM lens i bought and cancelled. that was after i signed up and paid with klarna and received a $10 off coupon. i never heard of klarna, it's an online payment service where you can split your payment into installments. it's basically online buying for people who don't have the money to pay something off all at once, an online installment plan broker if you will. they get you when you're late with your payment or miss a payment, with 30%+ interest rate. i think it's a predatory scam service, but if it gets me a $10 discount i'm willing to try it. it split my payment into 4 installments, but i just went to their website and ended up paying all the installments.

my mother called me in the evening. i had a feeling it was going to be some good news. she said she found their taibaozheng. it was stashed inside of a notepad she brought with her to turkey. since they didn't need the china travel permits, she put them in the notepad and forgot about it. she actually put the notepad inside a desk drawer, and there was a good chance it would've never been found, until my mother had an epiphany and decided to look for the notepad. crisis adverted!

for dinner i finished the rest of the chicken but didn't have an appetite for the sandwich. i'll save that for tomorrow. i ate while watching the red sox guardians game. red sox won 1-0. these last few remaining games before the playoffs are basically meaningless since the post-season bracket is pretty much all set. but it's just a way for boston to work out some kinks, stay sharp, get some momentum going into the playoffs. it seems very likely the red sox will face the yankees.

the home depot sprinklers finally arrived around 8:30pm. i didn't bother calling my father to bring in the package. he'll see it tomorrow morning.

i contacted a few more people on my vacation trip: my two cousins and chengdu lisa li. my older cousin suggested i bring a bottle of whiskey for my taiwanese uncle. i'm not sure if i'll be able to go to chengdu, but i might try since the two cities are not very far apart.

i went to harvard vanguard to pick up two prescriptions for my father. they were actually ready yesterday but he didn't tell me until i got to belmont. as i was leaving, i saw outside on the sidewalk a large enamel-coated canning pot, practically brand new. i strapped it to the back of my bike and went to the cafe. we already have one, also something i found out on the curb. we use it not for canning, but for cooling large batches of hot foods (like beef noodle soup) before we divide into single serving containers.

the 6 passion flowers i saw yesterday were still opened this morning. something about not getting enough sunlight prevents them from closing. it's weird that after all these months, the plant continues to produce flowers every single day. 2 new flowers today.

here are all the things i did this morning: made a new batch of tea eggs, piercing each egg before steaming; made 10 boxes of ice cubes; made 2 batches of black soy noodles; took out the frozen charsiu and marinated chicken to defrost; set up the back deck (minus umbrella, too windy) and watered the plants; cooked a batch of pre-cooked market basket edamame; fixed the beeping CO detector in the basement that's been beeping for weeks because of low battery. the detector sat underneath the bakery, it must've drove them crazy, but they never said anything.

fei fei and her husband william returned to cambridge. they're here for a week, bringing their 2 year old son with them. they lived in the upstairs apartment during the pandemic, and when they left they moved to germany before settling in hawaii. william showed up first, bringing with him some hawaiian goodies like macadamia nuts and pineapple soft chew candy. later in the afternoon fei fei showed up with her son. she left with my sister to walk esmei.

we were busy around lunchtime but most of the day was just a steady stream of customers. we made more than our daily average and more than last tuesday's profit. overall a good day, nothing too crazy, everything was in stock.

my sister brought a bunch of shawarmas. i had half a beef sandwich and got to take home a chicken shawarma for dinner. shawarmas are okay, but i prefer greek gyros, feels healthier.

i discovered today that the 18-135mm lens i ordered last night is actually a first generation lens. as such, it doesn't have USM but instead use a slower and noisier micro motor. the ebay listing said USM, but i think it was a mistake. if i was smart enough to check the photos i would've known it was the older lens. so i tried asking the seller if it's in fact a USM lens then i used ebay's option to cancel an order. not sure if i'll succeed, but if the seller ships out the lens, i'll contest the purchase with ebay, letting them know it was false advertisement and i want my money back.

today was the start of fall. sunset was at 6:41pm. after i got home and took a shower, i changed into some sweat pants. i ate the chicken shawarma cold. later in the evening i tossed out the trash, one of my least favorite things to do.

i watched the end of oak street. a movie that was completely off my radar, it only caught my attention when i saw a glimpse of the trailer with someone running through the suburb chased by a dinosaur. i didn't even know who was in it so was surprised to see anne hathaway and ewan mcgregor. another surprise: the story takes place in the 80's, though those looking for 80's nostalgia might look elsewhere. i have a feeling they did this so they can take away cell phones (which would change the story) and have hathaway's character use a typewriter (another plot point).

i spent too much time backing up my photos last night so didn't fall asleep until almost 4am. i was listening to sarah vowell's 2015 lafayette in the somewhat united states on audio book. i wish there was some way the audio book app can know when i fall asleep and automatically pause the audio. just the simple fact of turning off the audio manually stirs me back awake and i have a harder time getting unconscious.

i slept for only 5 hours before waking up at 9am. even though my parents weren't doing a supply run today didn't mean i wasn't running one myself to collect a few needed items. but first i needed to water my yard and the garden. i haven't watered in a few days, hoping it'd rain yesterday when it never did. however when i went outside, i saw puddles in the street and the ground was wet. did we get more rain overnight? but when i checked a few local tempest weather stations, none of them said it rained. i ended up not watering.

i went to walgreens to pick up a prescription that'd been ready since last week. once again the pharmacist asked me if i wanted to get my flu shot. i told her i already got it at another walgreens, along with my covid vaccine. she seemed very happy with my decision.

i was wearing a jacket but it made me too hot so i returned home briefly to drop it off before continuing via ebike to the allston trader joe's. i was in search of edamame beans. they too didn't have it, which means the supply problem is more extensive that i thought. i wanted to ask one of the workers about it but i couldn't find anyone available and i doubt they'd know either. i grabbed some baby cucumbers, baby spinach, a bottle of rum and a bottle of triple-sec (for future cocktails), and a case of big apple imperial cider.

i stopped by the community garden to check on my plot. while i was there i decided to water, figured if i did it today i wouldn't have to do it tomorrow. the only person there was richard tending to his garden. he removed all the diseased leaves, leaving behind two pumpkins. one was orange, the other one - though a decent size - was still speckled green. he told me about his son is really into acorns these days and they collected a bunch and tried to eat them after getting rid of the bitter tannin. he said they tasted pretty good.

i returned home, grabbed my things, and left around 11am. i stopped by the cafe to defrost some foods for tomorrow and to pick up some eggs and frozen chicken wings for my mother. outside there were 6 passion flowers. the soil was still wet so i didn't bother watering.

the sky this morning was a combination of long strands of high wispy cirrus clouds mixed with lower cirrostratus clouds, both going in different directions. i stopped a few times to take photos.

when i got to belmont i told my father we should put down more grass seeds. the scotts thick'r lawn we got was actually to improve preexisting lawn, not to reseed a badly damaged lawn. i wanted to warn him this morning before he watered the grass, but he actually didn't water yet because like me, he saw it'd rained last night.

we had a little bit of grass seeds left from last year. my father used the drop spreader to apply the grass seeds. we got about a quarter of the front yard down before we ran out of seeds.

we went to home depot to get more seeds. grass seeds have become incredibly expensive. the manufacturers also add fillers to the grass seeds so they can give you less while making you pay more, a subset of the shrinkflation problem plaguing virtually everything we buy these days. i grabbed a 16 lbs. bag of scotts rapid grass. when we went to pay however, it rang up as $100. granted, i knew it was pretty expensive, but i thought it was $60, not $100. we went back and got a bag of cheaper grass seeds (20 lbs. pennington rebels sun and shade grass seed six, $60) before returning home.

the rebels grass didn't have setting instructions for our drop spreader but i used the setting we had before, which was 16-1/2. while my father continued adding more grass seeds to the front yard, i tried to sprinkle some peat moss on top of the grass seeds. it wasn't working out too well, the wind blew some of the peat moss away. we decided to skip that step, go directly to watering. while my father watered, i took the drop spreader into the backyard and put down some seeds in a few bare spots (not much).

watering the lawn can be tedious work, so we set up three sprinklers in the front yard, running off of a timer we can control via wifi app. we spent some time tweaking the sprinklers to get maximum coverage. the melnor minimax spike sprinkler and the melnor oscillating sprinkler sled were the easiest to adjust. the third sprinkler was a turret sprinkler with 8 different patterns. i chose the rectangular pattern but the spray doesn't come out evening. i have a pulsating spiked sprinkler i might replace it with at some future date (found it, never used it before). we finally got it adjusted the way we wanted, but not before i got totally soaked.

it was almost 2pm before i came inside for lunch. my mother mixed some luffa gourd soup my father made this morning with the steamed leftover minced pork egg. it wasn't too bad. i also had some homemade soy milk.

i helped my father uninstall the two AC: one in the living room (a floor unit with double ventilation hoses mounted on the window) and one in the bedroom. the bedroom one was the midea inverter AC. it looked like it'd be difficult to uninstall, but it was actually pretty easy.

i went outside to try taking some focus stacked macro insect photos. i lowered the power on my flash so it's fire in sync with the shutter curtain. but i kept getting all the other settings wrong, like shutter speed and aperture. photos were either too overblown saturated or nearly black. it's something i probably need to tinker with for a while before i can get it right. there were tons of bumble bees on the yellow goldenrods and the purple asters, those were my test subjects. unfortunately while i was standing there trying to get some decent photos, i was also being eaten alive by mosquitoes. i finally fled inside after receiving more than half a dozen bites on the back of my arms and even my feet.

5 hours of sleep just isn't enough. i was lying in the zero gravity chair watching MSNBC and quickly fell asleep. when i woke back up, i went outside to take some photos with the pixel 9 pro.

for dinner we had some more swiss chard plus a pot of slow-cooked wings. the chicken was falling off the bone.

i wasn't the only one sleepy, my father went to bed immediately after dinner. i stuck around to finish drinking my seltzer before finally returning home. i took the zippy popcorn maker so i could try making some flavored popcorn at home. passing by huron and concord, i saw the citgo gas station on the corner seemed to be getting torn down. i've never gotten gas there, it's always so expensive, but kind of doesn't surprise me the owner decided to call it quits and sell the property.

i tried the big apple imperial cider. i learned that imperial cider just means any cider with a high alcohol content, 8% or more. it was okay, but nothing special. maybe not as sweet as i'd like, a bit dry because of the high alcohol content.

i watched the giants-rams game on ESPN. this was the new giants with renewed relevancy after hiring esteemed coach john harbaugh. they beat the cowboys in their first game of the season, and were one of the new favorites. all that changed when starting QB jaxon dart sustained a legs/hip injury that took him out of the game in the first quarter. the backup QB was not good, and the rams just basically feasted on new york as they floundered, wishing for the game to end so they could regroup after losing their QB for who knows how long. final score 6-28 rams win.

i bought a used canon EF-S 18-135mm f3.5-5.6 IS USM lens off of ebay for $155, $165 after taxes. i've been shopping for a new lens to bring with me on my vacation. my goto lens is the canon EF-S 55-250mm zoom, but i wanted something to complement it. the 18-135mm was a kit lens that came packaged with the canon 80D when it was first introduced back in february 2016. there are various versions of the lens, including one that uses silent STM focusing instead (good for videos). but the USM focus is the fastest version. original price was $600. i had my eye on another 18-135mm but it got sold recently. that gave me the impetus to get this one. 18-135mm is commonly considered a walking around lens, since it goes with wide to zoom. the only other lens i have that's a walking around lens is the EF-S 18-200mm superzoom. that used to be my favorite, but i've since found it slow and heavy. it uses a conventional DC micro motor which is both slow and noisy. compare that with the 55-250mm which uses STM focus technology. after this i don't plan on buying anymore lenses. my next camera purchase will probably be a mirrorless: smaller, faster, and some includes built-in image stabilization (IBIS). i'm thinking the R7 (APS-C, not full frame).