i don't remember the last time i slept in the guest bedroom, it's been a while. the mattress felt a little soft, but the room was warm. i slept well, but i could feel my back aching, the soft mattress didn't help. when the scheduled heating kicked in at 9am, the room became super hot, to the point where i couldn't go back to sleep anymore. i surfed the web for half in hour in bed before finally waking up. i could barely move, my back was killing me. i took two ibuprofen and hobbles around the house, waiting for the drug to kick in.

the glutinous rice had been fermenting for 13-1/2 hours by this morning. i opened up the instant pot to check on the progress. the rice grains weren't hollowed out like all my previous attempts, ans there was a little bit of liquid. the rice looked clean, no mold. i can't wait until tonight (24 hours fermentation later) to see how the jiu niang turned out.

i was going to take the bicycle (would've made my back ache even worse), but decided at the last minute to take the motorcycle instead. a couple of reasons: better for my back, a small snowstorm tomorrow monday, and a bigger one wednesday-thursday. the fact that the meteorologists couldn't even give a rough estimate of the total snowfall amount meant it could either be nothing or a big deal. there was a lull on tuesday where i could put the motorcycle in storage if the weather news was bad, but i decided to do it today, on perhaps the last warm day of the year (temperature in the upper 50's).

first thing i did was to fill the tank. i fueled up less than 2 weeks ago, but i haven't been riding it, so the tank was still full, i ended up spending 77¢ on gasoline. when i arrived in belmont, i poured an ounce of star tron enzyme fuel stabilizer into the tank and took the bike on a short ride to let the treatment mix with the fuel. i brought my drone and stopped by the hill of underwood playground to do some flying. up in the air 400 ft, i could see the newly constructed high school. i also flew towards belmont center, but got a little nervous: i was about 1000ft away, strong signal, but i couldn't see the drone anymore and i didn't want to lose it over traffic or any place populated, so i told the drone to return-to-home (RTH).

only then did i finally return to my parents' place. my father had already moved out one of the cars and was clearing stuff out of the garage to make room for the motorcycle. after i had some kimchi fried rice for lunch, i moved out most of the houseplants from the basement grow room so i could spray them all with neem oil. i only made a quart of solution, but that was plenty to spray all of them with some still left over. since i was in the backyard, i took the opportunity to fly the drone (with the same battery from earlier), just a quick up in the air rotation then back again.

i moved the motorcycle to the driveway and gave it good wash, i like to get it clean before putting it away for storage. when i came back inside, my parents had made another scallion bread. this time the dough had a better rise so the bread was puffier.

earlier this morning when i tried to get into the garage i couldn't lift the garage door. i finally managed to push it up but with some effort. later my father told me one of the extension springs had snapped off. i couldn't figure out the strength for the replacement spring but took some measurement with the caliper to get an estimate based on the length of coils. the broken spring seemed to be for 120 lbs. but the closest i could find for sale was for 130 lbs.

my father and i went to home depot in the late afternoon to pick up the garage door springs. these type of springs are color coded, and the ones we picked up was yellow (130 lbs.). even though we only needed one, they came in pairs ($23.47 for the set).

back at the house we installed the spring using two step ladders. it seemed a little dangerous, like at any moment a finger or a hand might get caught in the falling door. in fact, at one point the door did come loose and came crashing done, fortunately nobody got hurt. later when we removed the broken piece of the old spring, i saw it was painted blue - 140 lbs. strength extension spring. at some future date we might replace the other spring just so both of them have the same tension strength (and both are new). the package also came with steel cables which we didn't use (though they might be useful for mounting led grow lights).

finally i moved the motorcycle into the garage. as it was getting late, we didn't jack up the bike yet, we could wait until next weekend, there's no rush. besides, if this midweek snowstorm is a bust, i could still keep on riding the motorcycle (even though it'd be uncomfortable as the temperature continues to drop). it was already near dark as we moved our houseplants back inside.

in the evening my father and i grilled some pork cutlets outside on the barbecue. we had that and some crunchy jellyfish for dinner. afterwards my father gave me a ride back to cambridge.

i did another load of laundry, this time a hamper of dirty clothes. i also washed my cloth face mask while i was at it, soaking it in some oxiclean before rinsing out by hand.

around 10pm the jiu niang was finally ready. i opened one of the jars and a strong alcohol aroma knocked me back a little bit. i tasted some of the rice. sour! another failure. i tasted it a few times, thinking maybe i made a mistake, but the rice was sour every single time. i then tasted some of the rice wine. that was actually a little bit sweeter. either i'm tasting it too late or too early, it's hard to tell. i'm going to leave it in the instant pot to fermented overnight, see if the taste improves by morning.