my tongbaechu kimchi was finally bubbling today, a sign that it's fermenting. i wasn't sure if i wanted to put in the fridge just yet because i like my kimchi on the sour side, and the longer i leave it out, the more sour it'll get. making fermented foods takes patience, as the food you make sometimes might take days or even weeks and months before it's finally read to eat.

i went to return a bunch of cans and bottles at the deposit machines in front of star market. i only got through a few glass bottles before the screen told me it was full and spit out my ticket. i had better luck with the cans, depositing them all. i got about $2 worth of deposits, which i used at the supermarket to buy blue diamond almonds ($3/can) and popcorners ($2.50/bag) on sale.

after squeezing out a bottle of fresh orange juice (i still have navel oranges in my fridge), i rode the bike to the cafe around 2pm to get the remote control for the samsung HDTV my father gave me yesterday. the remote was at my sister's place. she said hailey had her eyelid scratched; i started calling her dog "scarface." my mother was just about to leave with my sister's godmother; they were heading to market basket to see if they sold any live lobsters and to ask if they could package them up for travel; my sister's godmother is going to california next week to work as a nanny for a few months, and the people there asked her if she could bring some live lobsters. when i first heard about it i thought it was a preposterous idea, of course you can't smuggle live animals aboard a plane. but then i went online and read that it's actually perfectly legal, a lot of airplanes allow live lobsters to be carried on domestic flights. but it's sort of a dick move on the part of her employer, don't they sell lobsters on the west coast? sure, it's probably more expensive, but it beats asking someone the tremendous hassle to bring live ones.

my father notices some tiny frost had began to form on the radiator fins inside the industrial freezer. this might be natural, but he reset the timer so it was on a defrost cycle again. he also noticed that the voltage drops to around 90V sometimes, when it should always be around 120V. from yesterday's energy record it seems that this old freezer uses 13kWh of energy a day. assuming electricity costs 22¢/kWh, that's $2.86 of electricity usage per day, or $85.80/month just to operate this industrial freezer. compare that with our new GE upright freezer in the basement, which is energystar compliant: it's estimated to use 495kWh a year, or just 1.356kWh a day (30¢ a day). that's 10x cheaper versus the industrial freezer. at this point we need to do some math. maybe the old freezer still works, maybe the defrost issue can be repaired, but if it costs $1000/year just to operate it, it might make more sense to buy another enerystar upright freezer. of course the GE values are estimates: we can find out for sure by measuring it with the smart plug.

when i got back home i decided to put the kimchi in the refrigerator. my father was worried with the temperature being so high that it might not only make the kimchi ferment faster, but also increase unwanted bacterial growth and potentially spoiling the whole batch. traditional kimchi is fermented in a vessel with a small mouth so the total suface area exposed to area is reduced; i have mine basically sitting in a plastic lasagna container, with a large surface area that could go bad at any point. the container also airtight. if i want to get really fancy, i should look into an airtight container to store my tongbaechu kimchi. i did taste it, cut off a little piece, and it definitely tasted sour. once in the fridge it will continue to ferment, but not as fast as it'd if it sat outside, but also reducing the risk of spoiling.

i set up the 27" HDTV in the guest bedroom for now. 27" is not that big, but for a small room it seems perfect. i had to rescan all the airwave channels as i don't get as many channels as my sister's place (up on a hill, better reception). it's actually not too bad, and the tv can also play media files so i can watch some downloaded content as well.

today we only made half the potential production compared to a record peak day. too many cloud cover and it was a hazy hot humid day overall.

i boiled the rest (10) of my frozen chinese dumplings for dinner while watching the warriors-pelicans game on ESPN streaming via roku. i'm rooting for the pelicans because rajon rondo is their point guard. a few hours later i was still hungry and heated up some pizza rolls (10) in the toaster oven. i finished the rest of my cubed cantaloupe for dessert.