i arrived at the cafe the same time as my parents this morning. my father and i lifted the old charbroil grill out of the car before i wheeled it to my sister's backyard for disposal tomorrow morning.

my eyes were so itchy when i got to the cafe. i never used to get spring allergies, but as i get older, i've become more susceptible. pollen dust is everywhere, coating everything outside. i took an allergy tablet which seemed to help.

it was a busy day. it didn't feel that busy, but we had a steady stream of customers, and by day's end it looked like we made a decent profit with at least 42 sales. was it the weather? temperature reached 80's today. however it was very windy and we had to close the patio umbrella. tomorrow looks to be a repeat except temperatures in the 70's.

this is the second week of the new normal, where both my father and i have the day off on wednesday. as part of that preparation, we prepared some foods ahead of time so my mother won't have to do it tomorrow. i cooked a new batch of tea eggs while my father fried a new batch of salt & pepper chicken.

for lunch my mother reheated last night's leftover sour fish broth and mixed it with some rice. we also had ingredients for making pastrami sandwiches and smoked sprat sandwiches but didn't make either.

after work i went back to my sister's place to push the old grill onto the curb for pickup. a neighbor actually asked if he could have the grill, before i told him it wasn't working and we'd already stripped it for parts. charbroil grill you served us well. my sister just happened to be taking esmei home. over the weekend esmei stole a bunch of packaged quail eggs, and ever since then has been having diarrhea. even worse, my sister found esmei eating her own poop. now nobody wants to kiss that dirty dog.

i had a chance to briefly check out the grow closet this morning, but did a more thorough inspection when i got home. 6 pre-germinated bitter melon seeds i planted on 4/20 have sprouted, while 4 more are still pending. that combined with the 6 that already germinated weeks ago gives me 12 bitter melons, which is probably enough. however i noticed some activity in the wet-napkin-in-bowl bitter melon seeds. those i started 4/25 (last friday) and 4 days later some have actually sprouted. 3 white bitter melons, and 3 regular (green) bitter melons. i removed the hard shells because some of them had mold, but the seedlings themselves seemed fine. i planted them in the pots i had for the haymarket kabocha seeds that never sprouted. based on previously results, it'll probably take a week before they emerge from the soil.

i started my seeds late this season, but i think it all worked out in the end. by the time i'm ready to transplant these seedlings outside (in a few more weeks), it'll be warm enough for them to grow. in seasons past when i transplanted when it's still cold, it seems to stunt the seedlings and it takes them a while before they get growing again.

i preheated the oven while i took a shower. when i got out i heated a frozen pizza. it took 30 minutes to bake. by the time it was done, it was just in time for the 8:30pm start time between the magic-celtics.

game 5 was back in boston. i'm starting to notice a common celtics strategy. either they blow out opponents from the start, or they keep the game within single digits in the first half then come out the second half with pistols firing. that's what happened tonight. magic lead for much of the first half, but in the second half the celtics went on a massive run, leading by as much as 34 points. without paolo banchero - on the bench in the second half with 5 fouls - orlando's offensive started to crumble. for some reason franz wagner also appeared to be afraid to shoot the ball. celtics win 89-120, and advance to the conference semi-finals. they'll face either pistons or knicks. that series looks to be extended by 2 more games as detroit beat new york tonight, tying the series 2-2. pacers beat the bucks tonight, advancing to the next round to face off against the cavaliers. indiana just might be cleveland kryptonite: during the regular season, the pacers beat the cavs three out of four times.

i started my monday morning with an inspection of the grow closet. by the time i finally got out of bed at 10am, the grow lights had already been opened for 2 hours. a few of the bitter melons i planted on 4/20 have finally started to poke out of the soil 8 days later. these were seeds i pre-germinated using the wet-napkin-ziploc method back on 4/11. a select few (6) i planted on 4/18 - those were the ones that already had long roots and the best chance to survive. the rest eventually pre-germinated on 4/20, but had barely sprouted from the seeds. i removed the hard shells and planted those into pots (10). if i can get these to all germinate, then i'll finally have enough bitter melon seedlings that i don't need to grow any more.

the hyacinth bean seedlings are starting to outgrow the closet so i decided to move them outside onto my back deck. temperature today would reach the mid-70's so plenty warm enough. i also moved out my prayer plants and some umbrella plants.

i went to walgreens to pick up some prescriptions. they'd been ready since last week but i didn't have time to get them. i kept receiving text and phone reminders. only the thiazide and irbesartan were ready, the ezetimibe won't be available until tomorrow. next stop was nearby market basket to get some bean sprouts for the cafe (my father and i forgot to get them on saturday). i also wanted to get some more meats for the weber grill, but when i called my mother earlier, she said we were having sour fish broth for dinner tonight instead.

once i returned home, i packed up my things and left for the cafe. i dropped off the bean sprouts, but also unpacked foods from the freezer into the fridge so they could be defrosted for tomorrow. the plumbers were here, working in the basement. i didn't know what they were doing, and they even put a tarp over the doorway. later i found out from my sister that they finally recemented the basement floor after they chiseled open a large trough to access and replace the rusty drainage pipe.

i didn't get to my parents' place until almost noontime. while my father was preparing lunch, i was outside dividing up the sundisc daffodils that never force bloomed. i'll plant them in the ground instead, hopefully they'll bloom again next spring.

for lunch i had: a scallion pancake mixed with an egg rolled up with some pork floss, some melba toast crackers with tabouli salad, a leftover grilled chicken drumstick, and some jiuniang with purple glutinous rice balls. the tangyuan didn't seem to be cooked all the way through, usually they have a chewy consistency. or maybe these were just bad tangyuan, because they tasted kind of solid.

i was back outside pulling up the few dandelions i saw on the lawn (just a few, years of vigilante manual dandelion weeding has made the grass virtually dandelion free). i then went with my mother on a walk. spring is the best time to explore the neighborhood as all the flowers are in bloom. every week something different is flowering. today, a lot of kwanzan cherries, some leftover flowering pear trees, a lot of crabapples (mostly soon-to-flower, but a few in sunny locations were already putting on a show). there were also some early season lilacs in bloom, and we saw many dogwoods. magnolias seemed to be post-peak. the most interesting thing i saw was a red quince; it didn't have many flowers, but the ones that bloomed were a red i'd never seen in quince before.

my mother and i walked to watertown. we noticed a new thai restaurant - cha yen thai cookery - that might be worth trying in the future. my mother was more interested in hafez house of kebab, maybe get a kebab dinner takeout one of these days. we went to sevan bakery to look around. not wanting to leave empty handed, my mother got a salty yogurt drink and some cinnamon black tea while i got some turkish delights. we meandered our way back to belmont, traversing the watertown hill. we also visited the newly expanded and renovated handy spa - now renamed handy liquors. it's yet another indian owned liquor store, seems to have a good selection. an assortment of korean soju, some sake, no woodchuck hard cider though (only angry orchard). they also had a selection of cigars. gone are the candy case which was a childhood staple, but i can't imagine too many children going to the liquor store to buy candy. and no magazine racks either.

we finally returned home almost 2 hours later around 3pm.

my father wheeled out our old charbroil grill, looking to see if we could strip out any useful parts before we throw it out. i discovered the rusted deteriorating drip pan can actually be removed (without tools) and possibly replaced. that means it's totally possible to continue using our old grill, just needed to buy a replacement drip pan and some new crossover tubes. but we already have the weber genesis which is a much better grill compared to the charbroil. should one day the weber need to be replaced, we'll probably get another weber gas grill, we love it so much in the short time we've used it.

so in the end we decided to get rid of the charbroil. yeah we can still use it, but it doesn't heat as well as the weber, and needs some replacement parts before we can get it to work. we stripped out the igniter, which we replaced back in september 2018 ($8.29). we were surprised to discover that it too operated on a battery, i always though it created sparks through some other natural process. i thought about stripping out the side burner, but without a stand it wasn't very useful. we removed the gas connector hose, keeping it as a spare (though it's shorter than the weber hose). we're saving the enamel cast iron cooking grates as well, maybe use it for our fire pit. belmont charges $25 to dispose a used grill, but it's free in cambridge (just need to notify them ahead of time), so we put the charbroil in the car. it just barely fits if we remove the lid.

next we went to work on the single stage snowblower. with winter over, we can finally get around to replacing the carburetors and getting the snowblowers ready for next season. the single stage toro power clear also needs replacement paddles. but first we needed to remove a single stuck screw preventing us from taking off the case and getting access to the interior. back during the winter i tried everything from WD-40 to using an impact driver, but the screw is too rusted shut. my father suggested trying the manual impact driver. he pounded the driver with a rubber mallet. i could see the head of the impact driver turning, but the screw still seemed stuck. however at the very least it was loose now. my father wanted to use the screw extractor, but i told him that was a last resort, and we should try the electric impact driver. sure enough, a quick trigger pull on the electric impact driver loosened the screw right up. since it was getting late (4pm), we decided to postpone our snowblower repairs until wednesday.

i cancelled our shared netflix account today. we've been a member for the past 12 years, but the price keeps going up (currently $17.99/month) as netflix finds new ways to make money off of customers (like not allowing people to share accounts). plus we hardly ever watch netflix. today was the last day to cancel before the next billing cycle.

i didn't water any plants in the grow room today. instead i moved outside all the wintering peppers as well as the jasmines. temperature tonight will reach 50 degrees, but they should be able to survive that. the primary reason to move them outside is the fungus gnat infestation is getting out of control, particularly the potted peppers. just putting them outside, i could already see all the fungus gnats flying away. since i'm going to be back on wednesday, i'll water the houseplants then.

my sister showed up with esmei in the early evening right before dinner. esmei hopped out of the car herself and headed directly into the house. in the backyard she was finding grass to eat. she seemed listless at first, until i gave her a bamboo stick to chew. she ran away with the stick hoping we'd chase her, or push the stick to our legs, hoping we'd play tug with her. my sister took her home before we eat.

we had sour fish broth for dinner, served over rice. maybe my father added to much water, but the broth wasn't very sour, a little on the bland side. every once in a while i'd eat a peppercorn that gave me a flash of flavors. there was a lot of cabbage, a lot of fish, and a lot of tofu.

no celtics game tonight, so i was able to go home and take a shower before settling in to watch some other NBA action. the cavs destroyed the heat: the score at halftime was 72-33. cleveland sweeps miami, awaiting the winner of the pacers-bucks series (most likely indiana, as they lead 3-1 and milwaukee lost lillard yesterday for the post-season due to an achilles' injury).

i was heading into boston to catch the greek parade today. it didn't start until 1pm so i had the morning to kill. i spent a good chunk tending to my grow closet. i basically have to check every day now because the seedlings are growing so fast. i miscounted yesterday: i currently have about 15 luffa seedlings, of various vintage and germination methods. i also have a lot of kabocha seedlings, though my only wants to plant a few because they're too much hassle to raise for just a few squashes. the seedlings i have the least are bitter melons. a lot of seeds i tried to germinate got moldy, so right now i just have 6 bitter melons. i still need to divide my tiny snapdragon seedlings.

i finally left the house by 11:40am. i took my fuji bike because it was faster. weather today was cooler than yesterday, overcast, and still a little bit of rain in the morning. happening at the same as the greek parade was the boston japanese festival happening on the common. i decided to take a look before going to the parade. it looked like a lot of japanese food vendors and the long lines of people waiting to get food. there was a main stage holding various cultural events. when i got there the cosplay fashion show was about to start. there was only about a dozen participants, and the only one i recognized was a charizard. there were some cosplayers attending the festival that looked way better than the fashion show participants.

around 12:30pm i started making my way to copley square. i parked my bike along the fence of the public garden. because of ongoing renovations, copley square itself seemed to be sealed off, so there wasn't a lot of people in the area. i went to my usual spot, the southeastern corner of boylston and dartmouth. i stood there and waited for the parade to start.

it's been a few years since i saw the greek parade. the last time was all the way back in 2022. the few other times i missed it was either because of very bad weather or i simply forgot what day it was supposed to happen. i'm still not sure what kind of clout the greeks have that they can hold a parade in the middle of boston. the puerto rican parade used to be in boston as well, but has been relegated to roxbury in recent years. the only other boston parade i can think of is the pride parade in june.

weather-wise, today was a relatively good day. the sky was bright, intermittently cloudy and sunny. it was also extremely windy. good for all the greek flags, but i was afraid some of them would topple over. it was so windy i was glad i wore all those layers and zipped up both jackets to keep warm. i saw mayor wu dressed in greek blue. it was much of the same as years past, but this year there were also some haitian, dominican, and chinese groups marching with the greeks as well in a show of solidarity.

i was shooting with my 55-250mm telephoto lens, at f/8 1/1600 sec. midway through i must've accidentally hit a dial and pushed the shutter speed to 1/4000 sec. the exposures still came out okay but it pushed up the ISO so the photos were slightly grainier. i think there's a function on my canon 80D where i can lock the buttons so i don't accidentally adjust the settings.

the greek parade was over by 2pm. i retrieved my bike, mounted my gopro, and followed the procession from behind for a few blocks before i detoured back onto commonwealth avenue. i rode to mass ave then crossed the MIT bridge back into cambridge.

i made a stop a mulan to get half a smoked duck for my mother. she'd been talking about it since last week, and even mentioned it to me a few days ago. when i got back i called her to let her know i wouldn't get to belmont until a bit later and that i got her her duck.

i was going to take a shower before leaving, but figured i was going to get sweaty again anyway biking to my parents' place, so i packed up my things and left. i stopped by the cafe to put away the tea eggs and leftover rice before finally reaching belmont by 3:30pm.

my father was outside trying to unlock the three screws holding the weber grill burners in place so we couldn't replace the broken crossover tube that arrived yesterday. my father was using the manual reversible impact driver. he managed to get 2 of the screws loose, but the one further inside was stuck solid. he even sprayed some WD-40 but it was no use. socket wrenches just stripped the rusted nut. we finally gave up. the grill was still working even with a busted crossover tube.

we left the grill to preheat to get rid of the WD-40 smell first before cooking some meats my mother had marinated with some barbecue sauce: a bag of chicken wings and three cuts of pork chops. we grilled everything at medium-high. because the wings were smaller, they seemed to cook faster. when i brought them inside and tried one, it was still a little raw, so i brought them back outside for more grilling. even though the meat thermometer said 155-160 degrees, we should've let it cook until it was actually 165 degrees. meats like chicken and pork you can eat it raw like you can with beef.

the final results were okay. the smaller wings were done, some of the thicker drumsticks were still a little iffy. the skin was crispy, and i ate them with garlic parmesan sauce. the pork chops were done, but unfortunately my mother didn't marinate them long enough so they were mostly bland. i ate a piece with some ketchup.

later my father and i went back outside to take another crack at releasing the grill burners. we disassembled the manifold so the burners could be pulled out, hoping we can release them without having to unscrew that stuck nut. the one burner was still firmly attached; however, the two other burners were loose, which gave us enough clearance to install the new stainless steel crossover tube. we reassembled everything and turned on the burners to see how they operated. for the most part it was blue flames. ideally we'd want to remove the burners and blow compressed air through them to clean out any ash or other debris. but that's a project for the future. for the time being the weber grill is operating at 100% again.

it was getting close to 7pm. my mother was going to heat up some frozen costco kimbap for dinner. i asked if i could take them home and reheat them myself since the celtics-magic game was starting at 7pm. i then rode back to cambridge - windy conditions and all. it actually wasn't too bad, my outer jacket is semi wind resistant, so i stayed warm for the most part.

i started watching the game when i got home. orlando led to begin the game, but by the second half of the first quarter boston seized control of the lead, which they never relinquished except a brief period in the second quarter and with 4 minutes left in the game when the magic managed to tie briefly before the celtics got the lead for good. it was a good game that ended in victory - 107-98 - but it was a tough game. no flagrant fouls this time, but the magic continued to play physical, and there were a few testy exchanges. game 5 is on tuesday.

during halftime i reheated the kimbap as well as a korean-inspired onigiri coated in spicy sauce and stuffed with cheese. i ate two mandarins for dessert.

my father went to the cafe early this morning to cook some rice before going to trader joe's to get some supplies. they didn't have any cilantro so he decided to go to market basket. when he called to let me know, i told him to just pick me up (9:30am) so he wouldn't have to double back. since it was raining all day, it'd save me the trouble of getting to the cafe without getting soaked. we ended up getting a lot of supplies at market basket, enough so we wouldn't have to do a supply run this weekend. we didn't get to the cafe until 10am.

i started roasting some defrosted charsiu pork, while my father was reheating some ramen broth to portion out. there was also some defrosted minced pork that needed dividing as well. my father also cut up some pork butts he bought before we marinate everything to make more charsiu pork. before we opened, he left to go pick up my 2nd aunt so she wouldn't have to walk in the pouring rain.

i let my 2nd aunt borrow my fabric shaver. when she came on thursday, she wanted me to help her buy a new couch, to replace the one she bought less than 2 years ago. i thought the couch had collapsed or deformed, but later i found out none of that true. instead the fabric was started to pill, and she just needed a fabric shaver to make it like new again. i taught her how to use it but i have a feeling she's going to forget how.

with the bad weather, we weren't sure if it was going to be busy today. logically it'd seem like it'd be a slow day, but we've also had bad weather days where we were busy, so hard to say. so when we opened, we only had one customer, a girl who came in and ordered a few things for takeout but ended up eating here (that's one of my pet peeves). from that point we didn't have another customer until 12:45pm. suddenly it got really busy. i was in the bathroom when the phone rang and ran out to answer it. when i went back to the bathroom, we had a delivery order and i had to run out to confirm the order. around that time more than a dozen teenagers came in to order boba teas.

i had some time in the afternoon to have some leftovers my 2nd aunt brought to the cafe: some kind of beef stirfry and spicy tofu. earlier in the morning esmei made a cameo, soaking wet from walking in the rain.

after we closed, my father gave my 2nd aunt and me rides home.

i checked my grow closet to see if any plants needed watering. i was surprised to see several kabocha squash seedlings poking against the plastic wrap cover i used to keep the soil from drying. they germinated quick, i didn't notice any activity yesterday. these are 2024 kabocha seeds that i pre-sprouted using the wet-napkin-bowl technique on 4/20 (sunday). a bunch of them sprouted just 3 days later - 4/23 (wednesday) - and i planted them into pots. now 3 more days later - 4/26 (saturday) - most of them have emerged from the soil.

elsewhere i noticed a few hot peppers have sprouted finally. i was starting to lose hope, i planted them directly into pots on 4/10, it took more than 2 weeks to see them germinate. but now that i think about it, peppers normally do take a while to emerge. i think also putting them in the warm grow closet helped with the germination as well.

i checked my luffa seeds pre-sprouting in wet-napkin-ziploc bags. no activity in the seeds i bought from ebay, but one seed from a 2024 luffa did sprout. i carefully removed it from the wet napkin, stripped off the shell, and planted it in a pot. including this new addition, i think i have 9 luffa seedlings so far.

finally, i thinned out my tomato seedlings. you'll recall that i didn't check on them daily when i was growing them, so they'd already sprouted a few days by the time i saw them. because they were grown in the dark, they came up very thin and spindly. besides thinning out the extra seedlings, i also added more soil to the pots to gave the seedlings more support. hopefully growing directly underneath the led lights will force them to grow straight.

i finished my pasta salad in the early evening while watching OKC vs memphis game. without ja morant due to injury, memphis had no chance and lost 117-115, getting swept in the playoffs.

later in the evening i had the chicken caesar salad my sister's godmother gave us on thursday. it came in a little kit, i added some croutons that i had.

i got an e-mail from google informing me that my nest thermostat (2nd generation) would no longer be support by the end of october. it'll still work manually, but i wouldn't be able to communicate with it via app, essentially losing all of its smart functions. i'm hoping maybe will open source the firmware and some smart people will develop a solution for legacy nest thermostats. until late november, google will offer an upgrade path to a 4th generation nest thermostat for $150. combined with a masssave $100 rebate for a smart thermostat, the final price will be $50. however i don't like the design of the latest nest. goes without saying that a lot of people on the nest subreddit are not happy. i might look into some other smart thermostats, but i really like the turning dial design of the nest, reminds me of a classic honeywell mercury-switch thermostat.

i went to pick up some prescriptions for my parents at harvard vanguard this morning before continuing to boston to visit haymarket. i got to haymarket around 9am. once again there were no gold nugget oranges to be found. are they even available this season? i left with some large-sized mandarins (12 for $4), a bag of smaller mandarin oranges ($3), and 2 containers of fuyu persimmons ($6). i thought about getting some swordfish steaks from the fishmonger, but i wasn't sure i could get it home without it getting battered in the bike baskets nor did i want to carry stinking fish in my messenger bag. maybe next time.

i started heading back around 9:20am. the weather today was grey with temperature in the lower 60's, just cold enough that i wore a light jacket that i took off once i got to boston. heading back to cambridge though, it started to rain, which i didn't see in the forecast. i took shelter underneath the overhang of an office building on hampshire street once the rain started falling heavily. i checked the doppler radar and sure enough, that was a long band of rain passing through boston. it didn't look like it was going to stop anytime soon, the estimate said by 11am. i couldn't just wait there for 1-1/2 hours. after a few minutes, it looked like the rain was letting up, so i continued towards the cafe, still another 20 minutes away.

the rain wasn't too bad, i got damp but i didn't get soaked. at one point i was riding behind somebody with a CfA backpack, he must've thought i was following him because we were both heading in the same direction. it was almost 10am by the time i finally arrived at the cafe.

business today was decent, not too busy, not too slow either. we made above our daily average, and beat last friday's earnings. in fact, every day this week we did better than last week, with the exception of tuesday. one of the chinese astrophysicists called the cafe around lunchtime. "i'm coming to the cafe right now, go quickly prepare 4 beef noodle soup." i almost hung up the phone. this asshole is a regular, always calls beforehand, always in that condescending tone, like nobody ever taught him manners. i was very much tempted to spit in his food.

my mother made some rice noodle soup in the early afternoon for lunch. when my aunt showed up a bit later, she had some as well. i gave her a container of persimmons. she brought some "mystery" food she had at the yunnan restaurant in the south end, something that appeared to be rice gelatin, and something else that seemed to be reconstituted mushrooms coated in spices.

my sister took esmei to get an allergy shot. how come dogs can get them but i've never heard of humans getting a shot for allergies. my sister said esmei didn't like it and was crying in the doctor's office.

i came home with some leftover beef noodle soup broth. it was all the parts we don't sell to customers, the tendons and leftover fatty bits. those are actually the most flavorful parts of beef. i didn't eat right away, spend some time tending to my grow closet. some of the few remaining kabocha seeds (from 2024) i had in a covered bowl on top of wet paper napkins had sprouted. i picked them out and planted them into pots. i tossed out the haymarket seeds because they didn't seem to be germinating. i set up two more wet-napkin-in-bowl setup for some bitter melon seeds: some that supposedly came from a white bitter melon, and some from normal green bitter melons. originally i was going to do the wet-napkin-in-ziploc-bag method, but i like the bowl method better because i can easily see if a seed has sprouted or not, there's no mystery.

i also helped out a few seedlings from their hard shells: one of the luffa seedlings from leftover ebay seeds, and a hyacinth bean seedling that was encased in its hard dried shell.

i started watching the celtics-magic game. this was a must-win for orlando, since i don't think team has ever come back to win after a 0-3 deficit (i may be wrong, but it's not a good thing to be down 0-3). celtics seemed to be in control going into halftime, but the second half of the game celtics had zero energy. in fact, they only scored 11 points in the 3rd quarter. boston still back to get within a single possession in the final seconds, but couldn't complete the comeback. magic wins, 93-95.

i made my beef noodle soup during halftime, washed it down with some stowe hard cider.

i also finally downloaded all the photos off of my pixel 7 phone. i was starting to run out of space on the phone and couldn't take anymore photos. i still need to sort through the photos, put them into individually dated folders. maybe that's something i do tomorrow after work.

a city inspector showed up this morning. it gave us a scare, because we thought it was the health inspector. turns out it was the city plumbing inspector, here to check out the space next door to make sure all the new pipe work is up to code to pass inspection.

i brought an old avocado i had in my fridge to the cafe and made some avocado toast for breakfast. even though the avocado was probably more than a month old, it was still good on the inside. the avocado i made wasn't that good, maybe i added too much salt, maybe the olive oil wasn't very fresh.

my 2nd aunt showed up in the late morning. she came to the cafe on her off day so i could help her buy a roundtrip ticket to california where she plans on vacationing for 3 weeks starting next week. the ticket cost $300; there was no direct flights to san jose so the total flight time takes about 8 hours instead of the usual 6 to fly cross-country.

for lunch i ate some dumplings my 2nd aunt had made.

the most popular item today was minced braised pork bento and zhajiang noodles. the same two items kept showing up on the order tickets, we thought it was a glitch. vegetable stir fry noodles was also very popular for some reason. we ended up beating last thursday profit.

my sister's godmother showed up in the late afternoon. she along with my mother and 2nd aunt all went out to the fresh pond mall. they didn't get back until 5:30pm.

i got a text from john around 5pm. he said he was thinking about coming in to cambridge tonight, and asked if i'd be interested in getting some food. i said yes but told him i wouldn't be home until 7pm. i ended up leaving work a little early - 6pm - so i could go home and clean up the place. i did the trick where i piled everything into a box and threw it into the guest room. i then gave the house a quick vacuum before taking a quick shower.

john showed up exactly at 7pm. we chatted for a bit. he told me he was still deciding between moving back to brooklyn or resettling in the greater boston area. he really loves natick but was surprised by how expensive it was despite by a good distance from boston. he was able to get out tonight because will was showing the trailer to his "senior thesis" student film. we went out for food around 7:30pm.

we ended up going to stokes pizza just a short walk away from my house. i'd ordered there a few times with drew when he was in town, so i was familiar with their wood fire pizza. we each for a 12" pizza: john went with the sausage and onions, i had the porky (bacon, sausage, pepperoni). john also got the mayflower sweet temptation (8.5% alcohol), a stout beer, while i went with the hudson north standard cider (5% alcohol). the text on the beer menu was so tiny, john had to take out his reading glasses read the selection. john told me about walking around jerusalem, how it attracts tourists from those with no vested interested to fanatics who experience religious euphoria when they see the holy sites. he also told me about his animal encounters on mohonk mountain, from coming face to face with a black bear, to a porcupine in full threat display, to almost stepping on a rattlesnake.

when it came time to go, john treated me to dinner. we walked back to my place. after using the bathroom, he drove back to natick. originally they were scheduled to stay until the end of may, but might extend their rental for an additional month as will's graduation isn't until june.

i should have people over more often, as i couldn't believe how clean the house was compared to just a few hours ago. which shows the house wasn't really that dirty, just a little cluttered.

had the strangest dream last night again. couldn't remember much of it after i woke up, but it was travel related, like missing my transportation, or having my bags go missing.

i was going to go running this morning, but maybe i was procrastinating, and spend the first hour after waking up setting up fans in my grow closet. id already put one fan on the top shelf - a plug-in fan. the two others fans in the remaining shelves would be powered by a power supply unit pilfered from a computer. it's an unwieldy way to supply powers to some 12v computer fans, but those were the spare parts i had on hand, and it seemed to work okay.

after i set up the fans, i went to inspect the germinating seeds on the heat mat in the guest bedroom. some of the kabocha seeds in my wet napkin bowl setup have sprouted. the seeds from the haymarket squash germinate, but don't seem to have enough energy to sustain growth after that and the little root sprouts all seem to shrivel back up. the squash seeds harvested from one of our late season kabocha seem to be doing better, with very healthy sprouts. none of the wet napkin ziploc luffa seeds have sprouted (besides the ones i already harvested a few days ago), but there seemed to be action in the wet napkin ziploc bitter melon seeds from 5 days ago. sprout they did, but every one of them also had mold growing, and i ended up just tossing them. i got more bitter melon seeds from my father, those are much healthier and aren't coated in mold. it's funny, i briefly soaked these moldy bitter melon seeds in diluted hydrogen peroxide with the hopes of killing off the spores. that only seemed to make it worse. i turned off my heating mat and placed the ziploc luffa seeds on top of the grow lights to keep them warm.

i did a lot bit of work with the hyacinth bean seedlings. even though i planted 2 seeds per pot, only one of them double sprouted. 3 other pots never had any seeds germinate. into those pots i planted some new seeds.

i finally left for my run by 10:40am. it was warm enough (upper 50's, sunny) that i could wear just running shorts and a t-shirt. paul was outside cleaning up our front garden. it's been well over a month since my last run back in march. i blame the fact that i caught a cold followed by cold and wet weather which kept me from running. i stopped occasionally to take photos of flowering trees and bulbs. right now all the white callery pears are in bloom (if you can get over the awful smell), pink weeping flowering cherries, and white service berries. by eliot bridge there are some lovely flowering cherries. one of them is a pink that reminds me of okame cherries but it isn't (okame cherries have all finished blooming weeks ago). there's also another pink cherry, i think it might be an akebono variety. on the top of ash street is a cherry with tiny delicate pink and white flowers, i don't know what variety. magnolias are also blooming, in various shades of pink and white and yellow.

i got back home by 11:50am, paul was still working outside. i took the time to replace the bulbs in our alley motion sensing lights. my upstairs neighbors replaced them over the weekend because the lights wasn't working, not realizing i actually control the light from my kitchen with a switch. they replaced them with high powered cool white (5000K) lights. i put back my old bulbs which are warm and not as bright.

i planted the wet-napkin-in-bowl germinated haymarket kabocha seeds. yes they sprouted, but not fully. maybe the seeds weren't fully mature, that's why they can't germinate properly. i ended up reusing 7 pots that had haymarket kabocha seeds that never sprouted. i dug out the old seeds (all dead) and planted these newly sprouted seeds. whether they'll take i can't be sure, give it a few more days to see if there's any activity. i planted all the wet-napkin-in-bowl germinated seeds from last summer's homegrown kabocha squash, those sprouted just fine. i planted 10 new pots.

i managed to download all 3 episodes of andor last night. i watched the first few minutes and they looked good. after reheating some frozen pastry i found in the fridge for lunch, i sat down to watch the first episode. disney is releasing 3 episodes every week. i'm going to watch them slow, savor and enjoy each one like some delicious morsel.

originally i wanted to go to my parents' place today and do some backyard gardening, especially since my father had the day off today and was home. in the end i decided against it, figured i could always garden over the weekend. instead i fell upon my usual wednesday activity which is to visit market basket for groceries. i thought about making a cheese-broccoli-pasta dish, but changed my mind when i saw all the frozen pizza in the freezer taking up valuable space. pizza for dinner it is! it was warm enough that i only wore a t-shirt and long pants as i biked to the supermarket. i got a few things, including barilla pasta on sale and a gallon of whole milk.

after i came home i made banana milk with the milk i got and the old black bananas sitting on the kitchen counter. the banana was still good though a bit gooey on the inside. i added about 2/3 glass of milk, a drop of vanilla extract, and some honey. the final result didn't taste like korean banana milk. it wasn't sweet enough, and more thin than thick. i could add more sugar, but bananas are already pretty sweet. i'll try some fresh banana next time, maybe that might make a difference.

i'd forgotten i had a few amazon things to return. i got back on my bike and went to the nearby whole foods. i returned a box of charbroil crossover tubes and two charbroil compatible thermometers, now that our old charbroil grill no longer works.

later i had some trader joe's kimbap as a late snack. kimbap is like korean sushi. my mother told me that the frozen package doesn't need to be heated and can be eaten cold as-is once it's properly thawed. it's actually pretty good, and if i get some soy sauce with wasabi and ginger slices, it'll feel just like a sushi experience.

i finally finished watching dandadan after 12 episodes. season 2 comes out in july, and a movie bridging the two seasons will be out in june (the equivalent of 3 episodes).

i also finished the 3 episodes of andor. andor stealing an experimental x-wing, the beginning of the ghorman massacre, a chandrillian wedding, and imperial immigration sweep to find those working with proper visas. can't wait until next tuesday when another 3 new episodes will air.

for dinner i had some cold pasta salad i got from market basket earlier. combined with the kimbap i had earlier, that was enough food to tide me over. i ate while watching game 2 between the magic-celtics. jayson tatum wasn't playing due to a wrist injury he suffered in the last game. the most the magic ever led was by 1 point, and that was in the first quarter. all other times the celtics dominated, winning it 100-109. porzingis sustained an elbow to the forehead in the 3rd quarter which produced a gushing gash wound. he came out with a large bandaid on his forehead to continue playing.

i woke up with terrible pains all over my face. just as i'd feared, i sunburnt my forehead as well as my nose. any stretching off the tight skin caused pain. after a shower i put on some moisturizing cream which seemed to help. i imagine the skin will start peeling off over the next few days.

my parents and i had just arrived at the cafe when my sister showed up and started chewing us out about the patio umbrella. i didn't need this to start my work week, and i kept asking my sister to go, but she got more belligerent. that set off a chain reaction where both my father and i said we didn't want to work today, so my sister could try her hand working at the cafe with my mother (it was my mother's suggestion after all). i got dressed and was ready to leave, while my father just took off. i didn't want to leave my mother alone at the cafe and my sister wasn't answering her phone, so i stayed.

other than that, today was fairly normal. my father did come back in the late morning. he didn't go home after all, but went to get a pedicure for his feet that are more like claws. it didn't seem too busy, but by the afternoon we were surprised by the profit, and we made our daily average. my mother said it was april spring vacation week for the public school, which i confirmed. didn't realize so much of our business is dependent on the public schools.

i decided to reuse my grillo sweet and spicy pickle brine by pickling some more cucumber slices. not sure if it'll work, but worth a try. i had some leftover ribs for lunch, and later in the afternoon my mother made trader joe's taiwanese scallion pancakes. because i only slept for 6 hours last night, i felt tired by day's end.

i left the cafe with some leftover barbecue while i ate soon after i got home. the long-waited season 2 of andor premieres on disney+ tonight. i can't watch it as soon as it airs at 9pm, but will have to wait for it to become available on torrent.

hoping to go to bed early tonight. wait up tomorrow, go run, get some errands done on my one day off.

content forthcoming...

i woke up at 9am and left the house by 9:30am, heading to belmont for a baifu supply run in the south end. i found my fuji 3D camera last night and took a few photos of cherry blossoms. it's been a windy past few days, and already some cherry trees have lost a good amount of flower petals.

i arrived by 10am, we left soon afterwards. my mother - who said she wasn't coming with us - decided to go after all, if nothing else, to make sure we didn't forget anything.

for some reason it was busy at baifu. the last time i came here was before my parents returned home from taiwan/japan. it's been 5 weeks, this was their first time visiting baifu since coming back.

we returned to cambridge by cutting through backbay and kenmore square to get onto storrow drive. we arrived at the cafe around noontime, dropped off the supplies, before returning to belmont. my sister had just left with esmei, after seeing nobody was home.

i made pastrami on rye sandwich. it also gave me a chance to use some of my homemade sauerkraut. i also added some swiss cheese and a layer of hot brown mustard. it was okay, but my mother said she prefers reuben sandwiches instead. i still have two packages of corned beef in my fridge, i might bring it over for next weekend.

my father went to the backyard to clean up our new weber grill some more. he scraped the cookbox and washed the drip tray. i had a better look at the crossover tube: even though it still works, it's pretty corroded so i ended up ordering a new one off of ebay ($14, arriving next week). my father cleaned up the ignitor switch and it started working after we reassembled it back onto the grill. my father discovered we actually had 5 flavorizer bars (weber's special name for what essentially are burner protectors), a pair stacked on top of each other. turns out we had the flavorizers set up wrong, they should sit underneath the stainless steel cooking grates so they not only cover up the burners but much of the drip tray as well. we ran the grill for 10 minutes on preheat to cook off any remaining smells and residue. we plan on buying a slab of memphis ribs from costco tomorrow and giving the grill a test drive. my father has used this weber before, when my sister had a barbecue in her backyard many years ago. i don't think at the time he appreciated all the design elements that went into the grill.

i was trying to talk my mother into taking a walk around the neighborhood. she didn't want to go at first, but finally relented after she managed to talk my father into coming along as well. i just wanted to be outside so i could take photos of the flowering trees. i wanted to walk down to watertown but that was too far so we just meandered through the belmont neighborhood, coming back around the reservoir.

by the time we got back, game 1 of the magic-celtics playoff series was already in progress (started at 3pm). i had it on in the background while i was doing other things. i'd check the score periodically, to make sure the celtics were winning.

i helped my father move all the osmanthus and other plants from the bedroom into the sunroom. the fungus gnat infestation is getting out of hand, my mother complained about breathing in gnats while she was sleeping.

i made gyudon for dinner. i skipped making poached eggs because it was too much of a hassle, but i think gyudon without the egg seems to be missing something.

i biked home after dinner. jeff was around the house today, putting stuff in the basement. he left me some hard cider on my back porch. paul left the step ladder in the alleyway, by my motion sensor floodlight. i think maybe he was trying to figure out why it wasn't working. if he asked me i could've told him: i turned it off because the tarp flapping in the wind was causing the light to turn on and off.

it's been a few days since i last checked my seeds and seedlings. i grabbed the ziploc bags with the luffa and bitter melon seeds. 2 "ebay" luffa seeds had sprouted and 6 luffa seeds from last season's harvest. i also soaked 10 bitter melon seeds that had sprouted but seemed to have dried yet; the soaking seemed to have rejuvenated the seedlings, so i ended up planting those as well. when i checked my other seeds, i noticed some of the kabocha squash have germinated. it was only the 5 "ebay" remainder seeds; none of the 7 seeds i harvested from a sweet kabocha squash purchased from haymarket had germinated. i think there's a pretty good chance they'll never germinate. i remember from last year we soaked those haymarket seeds too long so many of them had already germinated in the water. i ended up sprouting a new batch of kabocha seeds using the wet paper napkin in a covered bowl trick. one bowl has haymarket kabocha seeds, the other bowl has some late season kabocha seeds. it's still early enough that if these new batches don't sprout, i have time to buy seeds online and sprout them. i noticed some thai basils have sprouted, as well as a bunch of tiny foxglove seedlings. the hot peppers have not sprouted yet. the half dozen luffa seeds that i started on wet paper napkins then transplanted into pots all seem to be growing well. so many seeds have sprouted, i ended up putting out the led lights on two more grow closet shelves.