with less than 48 hours to go before the weekend snowstorm, meteorologists have a clearer picture of what's going to happen on saturday. the consensus as of this morning was a snowfall forecast of 12-18" which is pretty substantial. the last time we had over a foot of snow was december 2020, over a year ago.

i searched my kitchen this morning for a container large enough that i can sit my plastic colander in. all my pots were either too small or shallow. i thought about using a stock pot but before i could do that, i realized the plastic bowl of my salad spinner is a perfect fit, as well as my plastic punch bowl.

for lunch i heated up a spicy jamaican beef patty and mixed a glass of hot matcha latte.

i wanted to help my parents out by getting some chinese new year ingredients for them. but my mother was against the idea, she wanted fresh ingredients, and asked my father to go early tomorrow morning. i'd be afraid to go to masket basket the day before a big snowstorm. not so much the crowd of people and long lines, more so the difficulty in finding a parking spot. of course i always go by bike, so parking isn't a problem for me.

so instead in the afternoon i biked to the cafe to drop off some frozen boneless chicken thighs i bought last week, then went to my parents' house to clean before our chinese new year dinner on sunday (since i won't be there on saturday, i'll be hunkered down at home waiting out the snowstorm).

by the time i got to belmont it was already kind of late, 3:45pm. i checked out the MPPT solar battery charging setup before going into the grow room to check on the plants. i killed a few mealybugs on the gardenia, and some potential mealybugs on the left front floor jasmine and one of the second shelf jasmines. i went back to the batteries and set up a wyze cam so we can read the numbers remotely. i also moved some containers so it was easier to get to the batteries instead of walking around the obstacles.

i also went outside to refill the bird feeder (it was half full). i checked the suet feeder more closely, there were bite marks from where the squirrel tried to get into the cage. it almost made me regret leaving more peanuts for the squirrels to eat. i looked inside the row cover, the daikon radishes look mostly dead. i would try to dig them up if the frozen wasn't already frozen solid.

only then did i finally start cleaning the house. i moved some items around: space heater into the sunroom, collected all the gingko nuts into a jar, moved the 2 zero gravity chairs into the basement. i then started vacuuming; i vacuumed over the weekend, but you can never get enough vacuuming. midway through my vacuuming, my parents came home early around 5:30pm. watching the news, the updated forecast was for 24+ inches of snow in the boston area.

originally my mother wanted to order burger king for dinner, but my father ended up making hot & sour soup and we ate that with some mantou stuffed with pork floss and pickled mustard greens.

my 100 KF94 masks arrived in belmont a few days ago. i thought they'd come in a single box, but they actually came in individually sealed packages, 10 masks per box. are they authentic? who knows. i haven't used them yet (i've never used a KF94 mask before) but they look authentic. inside there's even an inspection tag, but it's all in chinese, which means these were manufactured in china, not korea. but i'd imagine the bulk of korean KF94 masks are all made in china anyway. i'll know more once i start using them. in the meantime i've been using my KN95 masks. i like those because the material is pretty durable and i can fold it completely flat and put it in my jacket pocket.

my father told me he ordered an EPEVER eBox-WIFI-01 RS485 remote monitoring adapter for MPTT charge controllers from his favorite online vendor vevor. i wasn't sure if it'll work with our HQST MPPT controller but we'll find out when it arrives.

i didn't leave until 8pm. temperature was 22°F, but i've since acclimated to the cold temperature. it helps that i naturally warm up after a few minutes of biking.

day 7 of my mung beans experiment: they're definitely growing, but growing at a slow rate. they're edible as-is, maybe i can turn them into a stunted bean sprout banchan, or add them to soups as additional and nutritional garnish.