i woke up a little early so i could pack up my beef jerky. unfortunately it's cold enough in my kitchen that condensation formed inside the enclosed dehydrator, leaving my jerky strips a bit wet. i packed a jar and left the rest to dry out with the dehydrator door open.

i went to star market to look for some holiday ham on sale but this particular store didn't have any (i kind of have this suspicious that a lot of star market sale items are too good to be true and don't actually exist, it's just to get customers into the store). instead i got some seedless red grapes (that turned out to be a little sour) and a box of cream cheese (cabot, $2.99).

my father brought the anker solix C2000 gen 2 to the cafe. at 40 lbs. it's not as heavy as i thought (though still heavy); i thought it'd be the same weight as our marine battery - which is the heaviest battery we own - but that's 60+ lbs. he had the C2000 connected to the mini fridge, which didn't use any power after the compressor stopped running.

i helped my father sync up the portable power station to the anker phone app. he was able to lower the charge power from 1800W (which draws so much electricity it trips the surge protector) to a more manageable 800W. we also updated the firmware, after which we got a little power graph display in the app. the thing my father seems to like the most about the C2000 is how quiet it is. even with a high power draw (which we'd test later), you can barely hear the internal fan running. the LED display is also cool, shows you how much electricity is being used, what percentage of the battery power still remains, and an estimate of how many hours you can expect to run everything with the current loads.

we used the C2000 to run the rice cooker when we cooked an additional 3 cups of rice. it used close o 700W of power, but once the rice was cooked and in keep warm mode, it used zero power. that used up about 7% of the battery. when then did a heavy load test using one of the induction cooktops. we set it to 1800W to boil a pot of water. the C2000 said it was using 1700W. the unit warmed up a little bit, the fan kicked in, but you hardly knew it was running. that little test used up 20% of battery. that's something we'd never be able to do with our DIY LiFePO4 battery setup, where our inverter was only rated to 300W.

the only thing remaining left to test on the C2000 is seeing how it charges with a solar power. the XT60-MC4 cable i bought should arrive tomorrow. later my father charged up the C2000. now it only draws 800W of power, and gave us an estimate of 1.2H before it charged from 59% to 90%. it's not 100% because my father set the upper limit to just 90%, which is better for battery life. he also set the lower limit to 20%.

i went over to my sister's place in the morning to borrow her hand mixer. she was still sleeping, but i was whispering to esmei, hoping to call her out. esmei heard noises but didn't recognize who it was so she started barking. most people never get to hear her bark. she came into the living room and saw me and started wagging her tail. she makes a decent guard dog after all.

despite the cold, we were busy today. only 2 ubereats orders. busy around lunchtime and then busy again in the evening. strangest thing was a pair of black girls who came to the cafe in the late morning and left when we closed, nearly 7 hours later. they didn't order much, took over our large round table to work on their macbooks and use our electricity and wifi. one girl even fell asleep in the afternoon. i'd never seen them before, but my mother recognized them. they'd been here before, always stays a long time, one time hogging the table despite us not having enough seats for the other paying customers. at least they were quiet though, despite basically camping out at the cafe for much of the day.

my aunt showed up in the afternoon. she didn't ask to eat anything this time, but i made some movie theater popcorn for everyone to share.

i went ahead and started making another japanese cheesecake. this would be my 4th attempt. i've taken notes from last time, realized what i did wrong, confident i'd get it right this time. for one thing, i used a smaller springform pan and less eggs - just 3. if the cake failed, at least i wouldn't have wasted a bunch of eggs.

for this mini japanese cheesecake, i found the recipe from a japanese youtube video. i couldn't understand what he was saying, but i used youtube's autotranslate close captioning to make sense of it all. for the most part i could follow, his recipe seemed the most straight-forward.

unfortunately i made two fatal mistakes. mistake 1 was adding the egg yolks to the double boiler. i basically cooked the eggs. what i was left with looked like partially-solid scrambled egg yolks. this mixture is supposed to be entirely liquid. mistake 2 was not thoroughly cleaning the meringue mixing bowl. i gave it a quick scrub, but didn't realize that even a hint of grease will prevent the egg whites from forming into peaks. unfortunately that bowl was filled with greasy pulled pork just hours ago. i could tell right away the egg whites were not going to foam up.

i was going to mix everything up and bake it anything, but my parents told me to start over. this is why i only used 3 eggs! unfortunately the cream cheese ingredient couldn't be salvaged, but i still had half a package left. so onwards to attempt no.5.

for my 5th attempt, i combined all the mistakes i made and fixed them. instead of pouring the yolks to the double boiler, i left the mixture to cool a bit before adding them to the yolks in its own mixing bowl. as for the stainless steel meringue bowl, i gave it a most thoroughly cleaning. first i sprayed with alcohol and scrub with a scrubbing pad. i then scrubbed the inside of the bowl with vinegar and a plastic brush. finally i did a third pass this time with dishwashing detergent. i made sure not to touch the inside of the bowl and to wash my own hands to prevent any grease contamination.

the butter-cheese-milk remained liquid as i whisked in the yolks and flour. the egg whites i knew right away they were going to succede. earlier i added the sugar immediately, but this time i waited until i formed some soft peaks before adding the sugar and remixing until they formed into peaks again.

next was the step i got wrong on my 3rd attempt: folding of the meringue. using a whisk, i mixed the egg white foam into the mixture. i then used a spatula to stir the mixture until it was a uniform color and no lumps. i think i might gone wrong here. last time i didn't mix enough, this time i might've mixed too much.

i poured the mixture into the cake pan. recipe calls for 6" (15cm), but my springform was 7". i figured an inch difference wouldn't be that bad. i also formed a high parchment paper collar, making 100% sure none of the batter would rise and overflow like last time. into the oven it went. temperature and time a little different: 10 minutes at a higher 400 degrees, then 50 minutes at 285 degrees, for a total of an hour.

right away things didn't look right. for one thing, the cake wasn't rising. most likely because instead of gently folding i just stirred everything and destroyed a lot of the egg white foam. second, there was no browning. i finally looked it up when the cake was almost done baking, "why doesn't my japanese cheesecake turn brown?" two reasons: oven temperature not hot enough, which i doubt, since this is a pretty fancy oven. second reason: collar too high, blocking heat from penetrating to the cake. that sounded more likely. i trimmed the collar but there was only a few minutes left before the cake was done, so it didn't do anything.

when the cheesecake came out, it was definitely a soft solid, unlike the almost liquid cake of last time. it had a lovely jiggle. i unhooked the springform and removed it from the cake. i also took off the parchment paper. sure it wasn't very taller (could be because i used a 7" instead of a 6"), and sure there was no browning, but other than that, it was a decent cake. the cake was unbelievably soft. there was no dense wet layer, it was spongey throughout. it was very eggy, but you could also taste the cream cheese. biting into it had the similar sensation when you bit into cotton candy: you expect something solid, but what you bite into is mostly air. it's like eating a sweet delicious eggy cloud. immediately my parents were thinking, oh, we could probably sell this a the cafe. i'm happy i finally made a cake, but still not satisfied that it wasn't perfect. that's why i'm thinking about baking another one tomorrow. my 6th attempt.

i went over to my sister's place to give her a slice of japanese cheesecake. i was looking for esmei, who was hiding in her tent.

after we closed, i went home with a bento box of pulled pork and rice.

when i got home, i packed the now dried jerky into jars. i used the bathroom and took a shower before eating dinner. i ate while watching episode 7 of pluribus. it's one of the slowest episodes so far, nothing really happens except manousos fainting in the jungle while trying to get to carol, and carol rejoining the pluribus because loneliness was starting to drive her crazy.

sleeping on freshly laundered bedsheets in the cold of winter underneath a warm comforter is one of the greatest joys in life. temperature outside this morning was in the 30's, but it felt way colder because of the strong winds - 30-50mph. it was so windy that the cafe front door kept getting blown open throughout the day.

most likely the weather, but today was a slow day. the bitter cold kept customers way, but we did get an uptick in delivery orders. my father made a batch of zhajiang noodle sauce. i made a new batch of tea eggs with half old eggs and half new eggs. my burnt lip made it hard to eat, and whenever i opened my mouth just a bit too wide, it'd split the wound. i basically spent the day with the taste of blood in my mouth. my sister bought some shawarmas but they weren't that good - plus they were a challenge to eat as well as being very messy. i personally prefer gyros instead, on a soft pita with tzatziki.

we didn't have any customers for the final 2 hours we were opened. my parents fried some spring rolls and we ate that for dinner before closing.

my father called me when i got back home, said the anker SOLIX C2000 gen 2 portable power station had arrived more than a week early. he was going to charge it up before playing with it. it only came with a thick AC charging cable and a DC cigarette adapter cable. i went online and bought an XT60 to MC4 adapter cable so we can try charging the battery with a solar panel this weekend.

i didn't start preparing my beef jerky until 9pm. when i went to take out the two bags of marinating beef strips, i discovered one of the bags had leaked marinade all over the bottom of the fridge. so i ended up spending half an hour cleaning that up. it then took another half hour layering out all the raw jerky strips onto the 6 wire trays. 6-1/2 lbs of eye round filled up a 6 trays with a little bit of room left over. i set the dehydrator to 165 degrees for 4 hours, starting at 10pm. i'm going to let it run and then cool overnight, ready for packaging tomorrow morning. i also laid out a bunch of empty jars. i've found that the hot air coming out of the dehydrator is a good way to dry these jars. goes without saying the whole house smelled of beef jerky the rest of the night.

celtics lost to the bucks, 101-116, a milwaukee team that's 2-8 in their last 10 games, while boston was 8-2. there was also a thursday night football game on amazon prime between the falcons and buccaneers. i turned it off with about 5 minutes to go and tampa bay up by 2 touchdowns. i thought they'd win for sure. so imagine my surprise when the final score was 29-28 in atlanta's favor. i missed a great comeback game! it was actually 5 minutes to go in only the 3rd quarter, the falcons had the entire 4th to mount their comeback.

do i have phantosmia? this has happened already a few times, where i smell something in the early morning prior to waking up. it's not a dream, i'm semi-awake, but sometimes i smell perfume, or something else fragrant. this morning i thought i smelled fresh wood chips but when i sniffed again it was gone. smell hallucinations could be a sign of neurological conditions. if it keeps on happening i may have to speak with my doctor.

i made my to-do list of about a dozen things i had to do today. each one was a little side mission, would i be able to do them all?

i started by going to the porter square star market to pick up some beef eye rounds on sale ($4.99/lbs) for making a new batch of jerky. the butcher was just putting out some new stock, and he let me pick fresh from his cart. while i was there i also got some fried chicken on sale, couldn't resist.

i went to return a bunch of things my mother had bought online. first stop was whole foods, to return 2 jackets and a makeup cream. i then swung back and went to walgreens to pick up my amlodipine prescription before stopping at the UPS store to drop off some estée lauder makeup my mother was returning. i then went to market basket to replenish my jerky marinade ingredients. i went with cheaper market basket brand whenever i can, surprised there was MB modena-imported balsamic vinegar ($2.99) and soy sauce ($1.50). unfortunately there's no substitute for liquid smoke ($2.69). i noticed wrights has two flavors, hickory and mesquite. i might try mesquite next time.

i returned home to have some fried chicken while watching the news.

afterwards i had some at-home side quests to work on. i did two loads of laundry, including my bedsheet which had a few blood stains from late night itchy dry skin scratching. i used bleach to perform a magic trick. i didn't think it'd work, but after a few minutes, i returned to the tub and couldn't find the stains anymore. once again the power of chlorine comes through! i washed those sheets along with a package of new sheets i bought. i used the vinegar-baking soda technique: 1 cup of white vinegar on a hot water cycle, followed by 1/2 cup of baking soda during the rinse cycle to neutralize the vinegar smell.

i got a chance to see myself in the bathroom mirror. the pasta burn on my lips i sustained yesterday looks like i got a bloody split lip from either a fight or an accident. when i was eating earlier, whenever i went to wipe my mouth, there was a little bit of blood on the napkin. i also can't open my mouth too wide otherwise it splits open the wound.

i got to use my mother's cordless glue gun and reattach half a dozen globes that'd fallen off my christmas lights. i applied too much glue to a few of them so that the led couldn't full reinsert inside the globes.

while my bedsheets were still washing, i left for belmont for some more side quests. since my motorcycle was in the garage, i took the ebike.

in belmont i found my ebike charger. i grabbed a bottle of corn syrup for making korean rice cakes. but my main reason for being in belmont was to put away the rain barrels. winter kind of snuck up on us suddenly. my father partially disassembled our rain barrel setup, but the barrels are all still out there, still connected to gutter downspouts. most importantly were the group of black rain barrels next to the sun room: those have to be moved, otherwise there's no space to put up our ladder for clearing snow off of the solar panels. there was still water inside the barrels, which have turned to ice, so the barrels can't be emptied. because of that, they were too heavy to move, so i only moved enough of them to put up a ladder, while leaving the rest.

while i was outside, i also put up the birdfeeders. the soil inside raised bed 0 was soft enough to insert two shepherd's poles so i can attach a long bamboo pole and hang up the two feeders - a suet and a seeds feeder. unfortunately the ground thaw only applied to the raised beds. i was feeling lucky and thought i could plant some bulbs in the southwestern corner of the yard but when i tried to dig with a shovel, it was like hitting cement.

the last thing i needed to do was go downstairs to the grow room to set up some yellow sticky traps. i didn't get around to doing it on monday. besides catching fungus gnats, it also gives me an idea of just how many gnats there are. it'll tell me whether if i need to reapply some more insect growth hormone.

i left belmont by 3pm. when i got home, i walked to the dollar store to get more nail polish. i wanted something for my kryptonite chain lock key. that chain has a dayglo orange lock, so i was hoping to find a matching color. there was a glow-in-the-dark dayglo orange polish, but i was swayed by the mirror effect nail polish. i got one that looked orange, but when i applied it to my key, it was more bronze than anything else. it went on pretty well, but if i don't like it, i can always remove it with acetone and try a different color.

for dinner i finished the turkey chili from yesterday and ate a few more pieces of fried chicken.

i actually managed to finish pretty much everything on my to-do list. the only thing left was to made some jerky with the eye rounds i bought this morning. i started the first steps around 7:30pm.

the two eye rounds i bought totalled 6-1/2 lbs. i figured that weight would come down a little after i trim off a bit of the fat. i cut the rounds into slabs and put them in the freezer to harden them up before cutting. while that was going on, i made the marinade. i was making some sweet & spicy jerky, that was a pretty delicious recipe. the last time i made it was for 5 lbs. of beef. i basically used the same portions, just increased the amounts by a little bit. i also remembered to add the curing salt this time.

after 30 minutes i took out some eye round pieces from the freezer and started slicing. some were solid but most of them were still soft which made it harder to slice. i cut up about half before putting the rounds back in the freezer to harden some more.

30 minutes later the beef had hardened enough for slicing. like last time, there was enough beef that i had to separate them into two freezer bags. i noticed the marinade was fizzing: was this a side effect of the curing salt? i poured half the marinade into each freezer bag. using a gloved hand, i mixed the beef strips so all pieces would be exposed to the marinade, before zipping them up. i put the freezer bags in the fridge, let the beef marinate for about 24 hours before dehydrating them tomorrow night.

temperature in the teens this morning as i set off to work. i stopped by star market first to grab some oranges on sale and look for some eye rounds for making another batch of jerky. this particular star market didn't have any so i'll have to go to the porter square store tomorrow instead. i got caught chatting with my opposite door neighbor (he's lived here for over a decade, i still don't know his name), and while we were talking, some random person just decided to join in our conversation.

as soon as i got to the cafe i left again for a trader joe supply run. i picked up some baby cucumbers and frozen edamame.

i set up the new 8" onn tablet that arrived last week. it's to replace the square up 8" lenovo tablet, which periodically will lose its ability to connect to wifi unless i restart. most important was to pair it with the wifi receipt printer. once i got everything set up, i turned off the old tablet so there wouldn't be any conflicts. the new tablet seems to be working well, and much faster than the old tablet. the only thing i don't like about it is the screen seems to have a slight bluish hue. i haven't been able to change the color profile.

today felt like a repeat of last week: a slow tuesday due to bad weather. last week it was the snow (rain here in cambridge), while today it was the bitter cold. it made sense we got a bunch of delivery orders, nobody wanted to come out in the cold. business wasn't too bad actually, we got busy around lunchtime and then again in the evening.

my father spent the day preparing a new batch of beef noodle soup. he made the bone broth at home over the weekend and brought it to the cafe today to be incorporated with the beef shank chunks. he also cut up all the pork butts we got from waltham on sunday. they were exquisite cuts, with fine marbling, will make some tasty roasted charsiu pork. they were too good to be turned into pulled pork, so he cut them all for charsiu pork marinating.

in the afternoon we had some pasta for lunch. i made the bolognese sauce earlier, using a jar of rao's homemade roasted garlic tomato sauce. this was my first time trying rao's, not sure what all the hype's about. the sauce didn't taste anything special, but the final result tasted pretty good, not sure if it was the sauce or the way i cooked it. we had it with barilla cavatappi pasta. i tried taste testing one of the noodles to see if it was done cooking and ended up burning my lower lip to the point where the skin turned white and it hurt like a bastard.

i made popcorn again. my mother brought all my popcorn ingredients from belmont. i used a heavy bottom pot and this time measured out how much corn kernel i was using so i could add the recommended amount of flavacol instead of just improvising. i had almost 4 oz. of kernel; the recommended amount of flavacol for 6 oz. was just 1/2 tbsp. and here i was adding 1-1/2 tbsp of flavacol to all the popcorn i made before! i went with 1/2 tbsp this time, but even that might've been a little too much.

in the early evening i cooled down the beef noodle soup broth using the pot-in-pot method. i cooled a pot at a time, much easier to manage. besides, we only have one large lobster pot to fit our 16qt stainless steel pots. it's much easier to cool down liquids when the weather is cold: the water from the tap was 50 degrees, it cooled down the 120 degrees beef noodle soup in no time. later my mother worked to portion everything out.

in the evening we got a few more orders. one person called, with a special request to purchase a whole tomago. then an online order came in with nearly the exact same order, which left us a little confused, but was different enough so we knew it was a different person. then we got another grubhub delivery order. it was quite the plate spinning trying to fulfill all these orders without getting them mixed up.

my sister went out to dinner again, leaving esmei home alone without food. i don't know why she doesn't leave us instructions to feed her dog. i went to go check on esmei, but more importantly to turn on the dog cam so i could see her remotely. she was sleeping, didn't seem particularly hungry, or playful, or needed to use the bathroom. she went back to sleep a bit later before i left.

our last order of the day was an ubereats order. nothing i hate more than a last minute ubereats order, because sometimes it can take a while before it can find a driver, and ubereats doesn't care if your store is about to close. the longest we've had to wait for a driver to show up was 30 minutes after we already closed. today, it was just 5 minutes after closing.

when i got back home, i wrote a check for my upstairs neighbor to pay my share of the gutter cleaning this season. they booked a guy without asking me first, but it saves me the trouble of trying to find one myself. bruce texted me, asked if i was home. i went over to his place to get the flan ramekins and he also gave me a big bowl of turkey chili they'd made. after a shower, i heated it up and ate it while watching P2 on pluto.tv. if you didn't tell me it was turkey, i would've thought it was beef. it was very hearty, i only ate half (plus i had that big pasta lunch, so i wasn't too hungry).

my parents went to medford center for their annual eye exam. past 2 years i've taken the bus and met them there afterwards so i can drive the car while we go on a supply run. but since my father and i already made one yesterday, all they had to do was return home after their appointment. however my mother called me, said they were going to malden 88 to get a few things (baby bokchoi, scallions, baby cucumbers).

last night i didn't bother putting my ebike in the basement, i just left it in the alleyway underneath a tarp. i did secure the wheel to the frame with the kryptonite cable lock, figured if somebody did try to steal it, they wouldn't be able to simply wheel it out. the entrance to the alleyway is gated, so in order for someone to even see the ebike, they'd have to open the gate and know to check underneath the tarp. regardless, i was a little worried, so was relieved to see the ebike still there this morning, just very cold because i left it outside all night.

i didn't think it was that cold - temperature 38 degrees. i wore my flannel-lined pants, wool socks, and a wool hat underneath my bike helmet. but as i went out, my legs were cold, the exposed skin around my neck, as well as my fingers inside my gloves.

instead of heading to belmont, i stopped by the cafe to defrost some foods for this week and to take down the boston fern so i could water it. only then did i go to my parents' place, around 11:30am. i didn't bother locking the ebike, just stashed it in an inconspicuous corner of the backyard where nobody could see it unless they actually went into the backyard.

i upgraded my mother's imac's os from mojave (10.14) to monterey (12), just so i can get my windscribe VPN to work. that's probably the highest macOS version i can go for this machine. for some reason windscribe still works on my old mojave macbook pro. the whole reason for installing a VPN was so my mother could watch some korean shows. but later i found out she wasn't interested; she's only watching chinese dramas now, even though i remember her telling me they weren't very good a while back.

my parents returned home around noontime. just like me, they went to the cafe to drop off some supplies. we had salmon cream cheese bagel sandwiches for lunch, as well as costco almond croissants.

looking for something to snack, i made another batch of stovetop movie theater popcorn. the heavy bottom lidded pot i used had two short handles on the inside instead of one long handle, so it was a challenge trying to dump out the finished popcorn while making sure none of the still-popping kernels on the bottom exploded out. once again i probably used too much flavacol, as there was a bunch left in the pot afterwards. the popcorn came out well - very movie theater! - but a little salty from the excess flavacol.

my mother was telling me how the toyota was out of windshield wiper fluid. that's mostly my fault, because i emptied the tank on my way back from snowy lowell last week. i went outside to refill it. i found two leftover bottles of windshield fluids - yellow prestone and dayglow orange rain-x. i emptied both bottles both still wasn't able to fill the tank. later i ordered a new bottle online from home depot, to be delivered tomorrow. i used to remember windshield fluid was blue? when did it change to yellow and orange?

a packaged arrived for me, i didn't remember what it was. inside were the bulbs i ordered: 15 blue jacket hyacinth (purple), 15 gipsy queen hyacinth (apricot orange), 15 jan bos hyacinth (magenta), 15 splendid cornelia hyacinth (lilac), 25 mixed checkered fritillaria, and 100 siberia squill (blue). i ordered these a week ago, back when the local weather was too cold. since then, boston had entered a hard freeze, and unfortunately the ground outside has frozen solid. the hyacinths i wasn't planning on planting - i got them so i could force them to bloom indoors during late winter. but the fritillaria and squills? they needed to be planted. i could keep them in the cold garage until early spring and plant them as soon as the ground thaws. but would they survive that long? even then, they would be stunted because they were planted so late, and many wouldn't even flower. another option i read about online is creating a new bed outside with unfrozen soil, plant the bulbs, then cover them up with mulch to keep them relatively insulated. this method would allow them to grow roots so they can hopefully bloom come spring. i just need the weather to cooperate. long range forecast shows we're in a deep freeze for possibly 2 more weeks.

around 2pm i went down to the basement to water the plants in the grow room. this is actually my first time watering since we started the grow room. my father has been watering since then, but not in a regimented way. when i water, i water everything, so all plants will be exposed to the Bti bacteria to kill the fungus gnats. i noticed there was more fungus gnats this time. i haven't installed the yellow sticky traps yet. i may also need to respray with growth hormone, not sure if it's working, or i just have to wait a bit longer to see results. i filled up a bucket with tap water, treated it with amquel+ to neutralize the chloramines, before adding the mosquito bits. all our dug up hot peppers are alive, seem to be doing well, many of them have resprouted new leaves, so that's a promising sign. my father came downstairs to help, we moved around some plants. we finally finished an hour later.

i went outside one last time to take down all the pulley hangers i put on the maple tree for our hanging plants but forgot to take down.

in the late afternoon my father cooked the bag of mussels we bought from market basket yesterday. once again these were small mussels. maybe it's just this season. in years past, we've bought mussels where they were absolutely huge on the inside.

for dinner my parents sliced up some costco calamari while my mother used up some leftover rice to make fried rice. we have leftover flan afterwards.

i didn't even realize it, but the temperature had dropped down to 22 degrees by the time i left. if i felt cold when it was just 38 degrees this morning, i wasn't going to survive a 16 degrees drop. i ended up borrowing a fleece scarf, a pair of long underwear, and some thicker gloves. the additional clothing kept me warm on the ebike, but my hands were still freezing. when it gets this cold, only wool mittens will keep them warm.

monday night football game was between the eagles and chargers. both teams are 8-4, but in difference conferences. chargers ended up winning in overtime in a crazy end zone interception.

i woke up this morning at 9:20am. when i looked at my phone i realized i was going to miss the cambridge winter classic 5K race which starts at 9:30am in cambridgeport. maybe i could get there in 10 minutes, but that was cutting it close. besides, it was 36 degrees outside. it'd be crazy to be sleeping at one moment, waking up to immediately bike a mile in the cold just to watch a race. maybe next year. that's too bad, because i even used a shadow mapping website to figure out the optimum place to stand (between magee and callender street on putnam) to capture the runners in the early morning light.

instead i moseyed about the house, leaving for my parents' place around 11am via ebike. if you recall, my motorcycle is currently in my parents' garage. i haven't officially ended the riding season just yet, but the cold, and intermittent threats of snow, plus all the salt on the road, just might make me call it quits for the year.

for lunch i had a mantou bun stuffed with red roasted pork. my sister showed up unexpectedly. she was in a foul mood because i told her to move her car because my father and i were about to go on a supply run (she has a habit of parking right in front of the driveway) and angry because we mistakenly called her smelly dog hailey. she also got mad when i asked her where esmei peed on the backyard because i was going to go outside and dilute the area otherwise her pee will scorch the lawn. "looks like we're not welcomed," she said before leaving.

my mother stayed home since she was going to the cafe at 2pm to make preparations for the holiday stroll. my father and i decided to do a supply run so we can at least have tomorrow to relax. we went to the waltham costco and market basket because it was closer. we typically don't go on sundays because those two places can be a real nightmare.

yes costco was crowded, but i've seen worse. at least cars weren't parked all the way to the back of the parking lot. we were here to get eggs. we got 20 dozens. egg prices have slowly dropped, it's now a little less than 16¢ an egg. we also wanted to get some yeast but couldn't find it.

market basket was just as crowded. there were no empty parking, we had to wait for someone to leave before taking their spot. my father stocked up on pork butts. he got the butcher department ground a bunch of pork into fine and coarse consistency, but there was something wrong with their machine, and they had to come out and grab some more pork because they'd ruined the previous batch. my father waited for over half an hour while i went through my grocery list collecting all the things we needed. finally the butcher came out and said they could only do fine consistency, that they didn't have the attachment to do coarse ground. we've heard the same excuse at other market baskets as well. do they have just one machine that they swap through their stores, taking turns using?

we finally left around 2:45pm. all our supplies had to share space with a bicycle that was still in the back of the car. we got to the cafe a bit after 3pm. holiday stroll had already started, but my sister was no where close to being finished with her decorating. my mother said this the was last year we'd be doing it, but worth the hassle. most people come just for free food, a better way to spend the day would be to just relax at home during the weekend.

after unloading the supplies, my father and i went back home. earlier my led chistmas lights had arrived. the way they're bundled, when i plugged them in, half was blue-green while the other half was yellow-red. these are globe lights, and have a pastel hue to them. they have a memory feature that remembers the last setting, and came with a remote control but you can also toggle through the settings with a manual button on the plug. can't wait to go back to cambridge and install them on my windows.

my father red roasted some fish for dinner. my mother was angry when she got home because my father had cooked rice, not realizing we had several containers of leftover rice from yesterday and the day before. my parents cooked up some wild mushrooms (butter-garlic-wine) i got from chinatown last weekend and some more from my 2nd aunt.

i rode home after dinner. in the dark i saw a cat-sized creature crossing the road. it went behind a tree, i slowed down to get a better look, thinking it might be a raccoon. but i ended up seeing was a very good look at a red fox. it didn't seem to be afraid, more curious than anything else, just sort of stood there and watched me. i fumbled for my phone, hoping to get a photo, but cars were coming which seemed to spook the fox and it ran into a neighbor's backyard. this is only the second time in my life i've seen a fox. the first time was in the hamptons, when i was driving around dusk and saw a fox trotting in the undergrowth along the side of the road. i think maybe foxes have been in our backyard, because i've seen mysterious droppings. i personally welcome foxes, especially if they eat critters like rabbits and mice.

i started to put up the new christmas lights as soon as i got home. they look a little pastel all bundled up, but stretched out, they have a much pleasant color, more like tradition christmas lights in blue-green-yellow-red. i placed suction cup hooks on the window corners before stringing up the lights. one strand - 33ft - is enough to do two windows (side window and main window). i connected the second strand to the first one (i like the waterproof connector) then continued stringing the third window. there was a lot of lights left over, i just sort of crumpled them together and hid them behind my HTDV.

i plugged them in and went outside to take a look. photos don't do them justice, they're beautiful, very festive. i feel like i'm the only one on my street with christmas lights this year. i don't even celebrate christmas! but i do love colorful led lights. a part of my wonder if i should've gotten color changing lights instead, so there'd be more options to play with them. but i'm happy with these sets, $20 for a pair. my one complaint - besides being too long - is that a lot of the globes in the second strand fell off while i was unwinding them. i got easily glue them back with a glue gun, but kind of poor quality control. i also wonder if i wait until after christmas, can i get even better deals on led string lights.

these lights have all sort of special effects options (blinking, fading), but i just have them as always-on. i used the remote to adjust the brightness - medium-high (3 out of 4). the remote only works if you're close to the plug, they don't go through walls. i put the strands on a smart plug so i can set them on a timer: turn on at dusk, turn off at dawn. the smart plug tells me the two strands use about 4W of power.

the sunday night football game was between the texans-chiefs. i didn't care too much as long as kansas city lost, which they did. they are currently 6-7 and will probably miss the playoffs. the hapless raiders were no match for the broncos who won and are now the no.1 team in the AFC. bills beat the bengals today to keep their record 9-4. they play the patriots next sunday, if they win they still have a chance to capture the AFC east title, so that's going to be a pivotal game. there was also a late afternoon celtics-raptors game. boston beat toronto 121-113. now they're 3rd place in the eastern conference.

i went to sleep early last night - 11pm - just because the previous night i didn't have a good sleep because of diarrhea. i slept for a good 9+ hours. my mother gave a subway coupon that i used to order two sandwiches - american club and sweet onion teriyaki chicken - before riding down there to grab my order before heading to the cafe. i was hoping to get there early so i can start making the japanese cheesecake, but we were so busy i didn't have time to make the cake until later in the afternoon.

my father showed up on his day off to continue making some buns with leftover fillings. i made yet another batch of tea eggs, because my mother wants to sell them tomorrow for the holiday stroll. we found out the two other businesses next door weren't doing it this year, so there's a good chance we'll hardly get any visitors. i can understand why they don't want to do it - strollers basically just come for the free food. a big surprise the bakery isn't doing it, but maybe the owner couldn't hire workers to work extra hours for a non-work event.

only my mother and i had half sandwiches - my father and 2nd aunt weren't interested. my 2nd aunt brought some chinatown xiaolongbao and my father had some of that. they were okay, but i like the ones my parents used to make, eaten with balsamic vinegar dipping sauce. i made some popcorn with a small lidded pan i found. not sure the reason - induction cooktop? pan material? - but some of the popcorn scorched at the bottom. the final result was a little burnt, but even the charred pieces were tasty.

the newly replaced induction cooktop stopped working today, gave us an E2 error. that's an overheating error, something we've never seen before. these cooktops have a built-in which helps to cool the inside, but for some reason that didn't seem to work, and the cooktop felt very hot, both the appliance and the area around. it's brand new so not sure why it failed. rosewill had a 1-year warranty where they'll fix the device but you'll need to ship to them first, not sure how much that'd cost. luckily we have two more brand new backups in the basement, i just pulled up another cooktop.

i started my japanese cheesecake recipe around 2pm. i was cutting it close, as it required 1-1/2 hours of baking. this would be my third attempt. the very first time i made it back in december 2023 it actually came out well. i had no idea what i was doing, i think i just got lucky. the second time i made it was a few weeks later at my parents' place. that's when i learned about not getting any yolk in the egg whites. even though i couldn't beat the whites to stiff peaks, i cooked the cake anyway. it came out not bad, but with a dense wet layer at the bottom half.

while the cut-up butter and cream cheese were melting in the double boiler, i began to separate the yolks from the egg whites. i used a separate bowl to do this, in case i accidentally break a yolk i don't contaminate the rest of the egg whites. i did a pretty good job. the egg whites did have little white globs of chalazae but those are okay to have. i was supposed to have one less egg yolk so i could use it for my egg nog recipe, but i made a mistake and still ended up with 8 egg yolks.

i also prepared my 9" springform pan, spraying the inside with pam before layering on the parchment paper. here i made a fatal mistake: i cut the parchment so it only as high as the pan. i shouldn't made them taller (forming a collar), to prevent the rising cake from spilling over the pan. i failed to write about it in my notes (although past photos showed i clearly used a collar).

i couldn't really get the cream cheese to melt, it was still lumpy. once i whisked in the milk though, the mixture evened out. i poured the mixture in a bowl with the mixed egg yolks then mixed in the flour and corn starch. i left that to cool while i worked on the egg whites.

the key to making the japanese cheesecake puffy is to beat the egg whites until they form soft peaks. for some reason i had stiff peaks in my recipe notes. earlier i went over to my sister's place to find my sister's old hand mixer - a GE model from the 60's. it didn't take long for the clear egg whites to turn white then foamy. i kept beating them until i got stiff peaks, then gradually incorporated the sugar until stiff peaks reformed. stiff peaks could be another reason why the cheesecake eventually failed.

next i was supposed to fold the foamy egg whites into the butter-cheese-milk mixture. i always thought folding was just gently stir the mixture together a few times. so i did that, but when i poured the combined mixture into the springform pan, i realized i made a fatal mistake, as there was yellow unmixed mixture still at the bottom of the bowl. the mixture also filled the pan in lumps, and spilled out the sides because i didn't have a parchment paper collar.

by that point it was too late to go back. i poured in the boiling water into the rectangular pan holding the springform pan, and put everything into the oven. baked at 320°F for 25 minutes, then 280°F for another 55 minutes. the cake was rising - which was a good thing - but it was flowing outwards such that a chunk of cake actually broke off and fell into the water bath.

while the cheesecake was baking, i used the leftover egg yolks to make some egg nog:

i was supposed to have 6 egg yolks but forgot to take an extra from the cheesecake recipe. it's not very hard to make, and slowly combining with the hot milk with hopefully kill any potential egg pathogens. adding cinnamon is okay, but i actually don't really like the taste of nutmeg (reminds me of cleaning products), so now the egg now has an off taste. very thick, very sweet, not like the store-bought egg nog, but i honestly prefer the store-bought version because it's the only one i know! but if i ever find myself with extra egg yolks, i'll know what to do with them.

back to the cheesecake: there was still 15 minutes to go but i decided to take out the cheesecake because it was already 4pm and closing time. it seemed puffy enough, but touching the outer layer revealed a still gooey interior inside. so i continued baking for 15 minutes. but even then that wasn't enough. the cake probably needs another 30+ minutes of baking to fully solidify. i took it out anyway and there was no way we could eat it. i'd already removed it from the springform pan and flipped it upside down. my sister suggested baking it some more, so i put it back in the oven at 350° for 15 minutes. but just after a few minutes of baking, the top of the cake (actually the bottom) started to scorch. so i took it out again. my mother wanted to flip it over, but instead of flipping, she kind of slid the cake, and it smeared across the table in a gooey crumbled mess. parts of it was edible, but it did not look appetizing. it smelled good though, eggs and sugar. my mother divided it up into containers and gave everyone a piece.

stayed behind to clean up while everyone left. it was almost 5pm by then.

so what went wrong? a bunch of things. i didn't have a parchment paper collar for the springform pan. i beat the egg whites too much, soft peaks instead of stiff peaks. i didn't properly fold the foamy egg whites into the rest of the mixture. and despite covering the bottom of the springform pan with heavy duty aluminum foil, water still got to the bottom through condensation. i wonder if investing in a solid round 9" cake pan would be better for this cheesecake. i almost want to try again next week, knowing what i know now. 4th time's the charm!

while taking a shower back at home, i realized tonight there was a holiday drone show in boston. i have two more saturdays to go if i want to see it. i'm just too dejected from a baking failure to want to get to boston tonight.

for dinner i ate the rest of the leftover subway sandwiches. there was nothing good on television, so i watched seven on pluto.tv, followed by the end of panic room (a david fincher filmography kind of night).

not sure what i ate, but i woke up in the middle of the night at 4am to use the bathroom. could it have been all that hot honey i ate? but why have a reaction so many hours late? i also felt a bit nauseous before returning to bed. when i got up for work i had another episode.

temperature this morning was in the teens. you know it's cold when there's white frost (or is that salt?) all over the roads. i pulled out my norwegian merino long underwear and wore my columbia 3-in-1 interchange jacket. i don't wear it often because it makes me look like a balloon, but it's the warmest jacket i own.

if it wasn't for that big order in the evening, this friday would've been a slow day. we had our usual customers, but the extreme cold weather definitely affected business. we did get a bunch of delivery orders though, makes sense when people don't want to go out to pick up an order.

we did some more prep work, making sure we had enough pickled ingredients to fill all 47 bento boxes. i made two batches of tea eggs yesterday, but made another batch for tomorrow since we were running low. i was down to a single tea egg spice packet, so i made more, 20 new packets, should last us a month or two. my father gathered up enough empty bento boxes and figured out how many large bags (10) it'd take to hold them all.

my sister's godmother showed up to pick up a letter. normally my sister takes care of these things, but asking her for a favor is like pulling teeth, so she wanted me to do it. when i hesitated, my father took it up himself to write the letter using AI translation from chinese to english. i thought it seemed pretty professional, but still wasn't good enough for my sister's godmother, who then came to the cafe with a letter she wrote herself so my father can sign it.

xiaowu came to the cafe to fix our sandwich prep table refrigerator. actually, he sent one of his workers. he said the problem was the compressor didn't have any air and refilled it a tank he had in his van. cost? $100. my father asked if he knew how to install a hybrid hot water heater, but the HVAC guy said to contact xiaowu to make the arrangements. xiaowu himself is leaving for china soon on a 2 week trip. hopefully he'll finally get in touch with us when he gets back to do the hot water tank installation.

around 2pm my mother warmed up some turkey broth so we could have noodles for a late lunch. my aunt showed up right around that time, "i'm hungry, what's there to eat?" so we offered her a bowl of turkey noodle soup.

around 3pm we started cooking them rice. we ran 3 rice cookers, each cooking 8-9 cups, close to the maximum. our two zojirushi are our workhorse cookers, but we also dug up a generic brand cooker from the basement. there's a reason why hardly use it and i thought it was because it scorched the rice, but actually it's because it makes soggy rice. we also brought out the instant pots - not to cook rice - but to keep them warm since we'd probably need more than just 3 rice cookers' worth (actually, an instant pot will also cook rice, but we've never used that function before, maybe next time).

i brought up the long folding table and started assembling the cold ingredients into the bento boxes. this would save us time, all we needed was fill it up with rice, tea egg, and choice of meat.

my sister came over to drop off some packages that got delivered to her address. one of the items was a new 7" tablet to replace the one we're currently using for square that will occasionally lose its ability to connect to wifi until we reboot it. i didn't have time to play with it much, will set it up some other time. my sister saw us assembling the bento boxes. we purposely didn't tell her we had a big order because we didn't want her help because she can be super bossy. but apparently she had no intention of helping anyway, because she was going out to dinner.

we started assembling the warm bento ingredients around 4:30pm. that gave us an hour before people from the harvard taiwanese club show up at 5:30pm to pick up the order. since it was all bento, it was actually pretty easy to assemble, like a conveyer belt. my mother warmed up the pork/chicken and scooped the rice, while i peeled the tea eggs. she chopped up the meats and placed it in the bento while i drizzle on the sauce and sprinkle the sesame seeds before writing what kind of bento it was on the box. i then handed the bentos to my father we assembled them into bags.

it took us exactly an hour to assemble everything. thank god it wasn't very busy, so no new orders to interrupt our works, just a few drink orders. the taiwanese students actually showed up right when we were about to finish.

there was a problem however: three students showed up on foot, no car. their plan was to walk back to harvard campus with their order, which would probably take half an hour. given how cold it was outside (in the 20's), the food would be cold (and nicely jostled) by the time they made it back. my father elected to drive them to their destination along with their order. these students were definitely "children" in that they didn't have a good plan.

once they were gone and my father came back (he didn't bring his phone), we breathed a sigh of relief. another successful big order!

for dinner i cooked up some frozen cheese ravioli with some leftover pasta sauce. now that the NBA is no longer on TNT/TBS, i seem to be missing a lot of celtics games. i totally forgot there was a lakers-celtics game tonight on amazon prime. i hate watching sports on amazon because i can't surf other channels like i can when i watch on youtube tv. this was supposed to be a marquee game, but with lebron james and luka doncic both sitting out, it wasn't a surprise that boston ended up beating them soundly, 105-126. celtics have been playing very well of late, climbing into the 4th position in the eastern conference, behind the pistons, knicks, and raptors.

we're entering one of the coldest stretch so far this year. i packed up all my things - including ingredients and equipment for making japanese cheesecake and egg nog - and headed to the cafe. i spotted a velotric in the wild, with a lovely sea foam color. i thought it was a breeze, but it's actually a discover 2. if you didn't know, you might've mistaken it for a regular bicycle. passing by my sister's place, i picked up a 5500A car battery jumper (yaberauto) that was delivered there this earlier this morning.

this morning was the first time using the newly-painted bike lock key. no more fiddling with my keychain to find the right key, i can pick it out right away. it worked so well, i kind of want to color-code my other keys as well. guess i'll be buying more nail polish.

my father went to buy some pork butts from market basket soon after he got to the cafe. someone from the harvard taiwanese student club called this morning, spoke with my mother to confirm a 47 bento order for tomorrow evening. kind of last minute, but this is a very big order, and not too much hassle for us to put together. so today was about doing the prep for tomorrow, making sure we have enough materials to assemble everything.

my parents made a new batch of veggie buns this morning while i made two new batches of tea eggs. most of the eggs will get used up tomorrow for the big order, so there's a very good chance i'll need to make another batch on saturday. i'm nearly out of tea egg spices as well, i'll need to make more.

we had toasted bagels for breakfast along with salmon cream cheese. i sliced some onions and stuffed them into the sandwiches for additional flavor. we ate late morning but then it got busy and by the time i returned to my half-eaten sandwich, it was already cold.

unfortunately there was no time today to make cheesecake nor egg nog. maybe tomorrow then.

we were busy during lunch time, but not so much after that. profit-wise it wasn't too bad - made above our daily average at least - but still only half of what my parents made yesterday.

my apple magsafe 3 cable wasn't able to be delivered because nobody signed for it. my sister put up a bunch of post-it notes on her front door, telling the deliveryman to drop off the package at the cafe instead. but i wasn't sure if that'd work, so in the afternoon - during a lull - went to my sister's place and waited for the UPS van to arrive. my sister wasn't home, took esmei to rock meadows and promptly got lost in the woods because her phone ran out of juice and she couldn't use the gps anymore. i basically stood by the window like a crazy person and waited for 20 minutes before deciding that was crazy. i didn't care if the cable didn't get delivered today, i'll just order a new one. UPS now charges for the service of holding the package at an UPS location ($8), rescheduling the delivery ($12), or delivering to a different address ($17). so i went back to the cafe, and a few minutes later, a UPS guy shows up.

we roasted a batch of charsiu pork. my mother made brownies. we baked a new batch of chinese sausages. i suggested we deep fry the salt & pepper chicken today as well, because it'll be super cold tomorrow, and we won't be able to leave the window and door open for ventilation without freezing to death in the kitchen. my father still wanted to do it tomorrow, but after giving it some thought, decided today was the better day. besides, he already marinated a large batch of chicken yesterday, and they needed to be deep fried before they went bad.

earlier when i went over to my sister's place to check if my apple package had arrived yet, i picked up an amazon package for me that was delivered to her place. inside was a new desk lamp and two boxes of 2.6 gallon compost bags. the lamp was for my father, he doesn't have any light by the cash register, and when he eats there after we close, he's only illuminated by the glow of his laptop screen. the light worked very well, very bright, with the ability to change hues (warm to cool) and brightness. we also tried one of the compost bags. instead of rolls, they come in boxed dispensers. the bags are very similar to our old bags, except these are just 9¢ a piece while the previous bags were 11¢s; each.

we ended up having dinner at the cafe, noodles with turkey broth. a girl called the cafe 2 minutes before we closed. "can i order a charsiu bento? i live right around the corner, i can come pick it up right away." we originally weren't even going to answer the phone, but she called twice, and i thought maybe it was an emergency. "we're about to close," i told her. "okay," she replied, then hung up. i think if she came in person and made the order we'd definitely make it for her, but not if she calls when we're closing. there was also a teenage boy using our wifi to play games on his phone. "do you need anything else?" i asked him. he said no. "we close at 6:30pm." he said he knew that, and would leave at 6:30pm, but it was already 6:30pm, and he still didn't go. so i turned off the wifi. the left immediately.

my parents drove home after work. somebody had left the door ajar in the honda a few days ago so the battery was drained. my father used the old jump starter to restart the car so they could drive it back along with the other car. i took my bike. temperature had dropped into freezing temperature by then, and would reach the low teens overnight.

it's nice to have dinner at the cafe and come home not having to cook. i can just relax the rest of the evening. after a shower i turned on the tv to watch some thursday night football. however the whole house seems to be vibrating because my upstairs neighbors were blasting their music on maximum volume. you think i was living below a bunch of teenagers, not a pair of entitled retirees. just when i was thinking they weren't so bad (they did after all cleaned the backyard), they do something to remind me why i hate them and wish for their imminent demise. i was tempted to text them and politely ask them to turn it down, but i've tried that before and it didn't end well. so i grabbed my bluetooth speaker, put it up as close to the ceiling as possible (on top of my bookcase), and blasted the audio from thursday night football. it didn't make them shut up, but it did make me feel better. they finally turned it down an hour later.

the game was between the cowboys and lions. with the patriots not making it to the playoffs last year, i was rooting for detroit. dallas looked like they were going to lose, but made it competitive by almost tying in the second half. but the lions won in the end, and now it looks like the cowboys might not get into the playoffs, or they'll need a lot of help from other teams.

i found my klein voltage tester at the cafe and used it tonight to test the broken led string light. i thought i was making progress, but it ended in failure. besides, i don't have anymore spare led's. my fear is maybe there are more than one dead led's. i tried my best to fix it, but it's probably easier if i just buy a new strand. so i went on amazon to find a replacement. i measured my three living room window yesterday and the length i needed was 34ft. after an exhaustive search, i decided on a 100 globe LED 33ft strand (JMEXSUSS, $16). it has a remote but no app. i realized i didn't need an app, i just wanted a simple strand with fixed christmas-colored lights. it has a memory function so i can use it with my own timer. another candidate was a $30 strand that did have an app. i like that i can change the colors, but then thought it'd be exhausting changing the colors all the time to reflect holidays and whatnot. besides, $30 was more than i was willing to spent for christmas lights; for that price i could get a 6x6ft led curtain.

with the patriots on a bye this weekend, looks like it's going to be a quiet week football wise. looking at the schedule, the late afternoon broncos-raiders game looks interesting because if denver loses, new england will become the first seed in the AFC. bengals-bills game also worth watching: if buffalo loses, i believe new england clinches the AFC east title. bengals aren't going into the playoffs, but the return of joe burrow has made them dangerous again.

update: i found out i measured my living room windows wrong. what i need isn't 34ft by 43ft. luckily there's a 100 globe LED strand exactly 43ft for sale for $10. i wanted to get that one originally, but it was too long. but now it's the perfect fit! it's due to arrive sunday, i'll try to install it sunday night. that leaves me a 3-1/2 weeks window where i can properly display these lights without looking like a crazy everyday-is-christmas person.

2nd update: just discovered that "43ft" actually means 33ft of actual light and 10ft of extension. so not sure how that's going to work. i'll keep it regardless, just to have something to play with. they can be daisy-chained together to form a longer strand, maybe i'll use them as outdoor lights.

3rd update: i ended up buying a second strand! now i have 66ft of light. i'm going to try and do all 4 sides of each window.

i was tempted to go for a run this morning, my one day off. but not only was it cold outside (30's) but there were still some icy spots. although it mostly rained here in cambridge yesterday, it did snow overnight so there was snow on cars and grassy services. i decided to play it safe, go running some other time.

i squandered my morning. i had big plans to try making another japanese cheesecake. with the leftover yolks i'd use it to make homemade egg nog. i also looked up recipes for portuguese egg tarts, found a promising filipino recipe that could make use of leftover pie crusts i had in the fridge. before i knew it, it was lunchtime so i ate a hot dog pastry i bought yesterday in lowell.

i went to the community garden to collect my milk crates. i made two trips, stacked the crates on the back of my bicycle and slowly wheeled it home. along the way i picked up a cocktail shaker set somebody had thrown out ($22). it includes a cocktail shaker, mixing spoon, strainer, ice tongs, wine key, muddler, liquor pourers (2), and a jigger, all in a bamboo stand. the second time i was in the garden i bumped into anne-marie, cleaning out her plot for the season.

next i went to whole foods to return the knockoff magsafe 3 cable. my genuine apple magsafe 3 was supposed to get delivered at my sister's place today, but UPS required a signature so they didn't leave the package. a signature for a cable? i went to the UPS website to change delivery location but it wasn't an option, restricted by apple. while i was at whole foods, i saw an ad for raos pasta sauce on sale ($5.99 24 oz) so i went in and bought a jar, roasted garlic.

i went to market basket to get some cheesecake ingredients. i called my mother who asked me to get some milk for the cafe. my original plan was to ride to belmont to pick up the double boiler i needed for making both the cheesecake and egg nog (in hindsight, i could've probably rigged something up with a pyrex bowl and a saucepan). but if i made the cheesecake at home, i wouldn't be able to deliver it to my mother until tomorrow - when the cheesecake is already cold. so i decided instead to make the cheesecake at the cafe tomorrow. i had other reasons for not wanting to ride to belmont. since i'd be taking the ebike, i didn't want it to get coated with all the salt the city and town have been sprinkling on the roads.

i decided to put up some christmas lights. went down to the basement to find my bag of led string lights. i must've had these for almost 20 years, the aging plastic starting to smell. before i strung them up, i decided to test them first. 2 strands still worked, but on the 3rd strand only half the lights lit up. i couldn't fix it and thought about buying a new set.

i added more insulation to the gap off my french door. turns out i didn't have to do too much, a lot of the insulation i put up last winter was still there.

i went to the dollar store to get some nail polish. i had the bright idea - inspired by my father - to paint my bicycle lock key. it always takes me a few seconds to find that key on the keychain, i figured if i could color-code it somehow, it'd save me some time. they had all sorts of colors and finishes, but in the end i picked a metallic blue polish. i also got some snacks while i was there.

i painted the lock key when i got home. i did a few coats, it seemed to be working well. the whole house did smell like nail polish for a few hours afterwards.

i went out one last time, to the star market parking lot. the weatherman today said we'd get a colorful sunset, so i was out there waiting to capture it with my wide-angle lens. it was colorful, but i've seen better sunsets. i went home after the colors faded.

it was insanely busy at the cafe today. not only that, but organizers from the harvard taiwanese club came to the cafe to inquire about a big order for friday. they bargained for a cheaper price on bento boxes, and went back to their student at large to decide if they want to order with us (so it's not a sure thing yet, we'll find out by tomorrow). i called my mother afterwards, she said today was easily the busiest day of the entire year, like two days worth of profit in just one day.

for dinner i had the last of the lowell pastries, a pork floss bun. there was nothing good on television. i watched a bunch of youtube videos before switching to pluto.tv.