it's day 5 of my 2nd mung beans experiment. the beans are sprouting but not nearly quick enough. they say typically by day 5 the sprouts are ready. i'm going to give it another day before calling it quits, but i don't think there's going to be much improvement. i've already decided that my 3rd trial will be with the heat mat. i read mung beans sprout the best in 70-80 degrees temperature; my house never gets that warm during the wintertime.

my father came to give me a ride around 11am. earlier he'd taken the honda to get inspected, and went to the cafe to pick up the toro power clear 621 QZE snowblower because it wouldn't start (it'd been sitting in my sister's backyard shed for a few years). however it was too heavy, so we stopped at the cafe so i could help him lift the toro onto the car. from there we went to turf equipment in belmont to get the snowblower serviced. we brought our large craftsman snowblower here to get serviced a few years back, and they had our record on file. we also went to TNT auto so my father could speak with the mechanic to let him know we wanted to tow the toyota to get it fixed.

my father helped me to finally jack up my motorcycle in the garage (i don't like it sitting on the ground during the winter, warps the tires). i tried to exhaust the gasoline left in the carburetor but because the engine was cold and the battery hadn't been charged in months, the engine only ran for a few minutes before it went dead, and we couldn't start it up again. from personally i knew that wasn't enough time to empty the carburetor.

my sister showed up so she could call AAA and get a tow truck to move the toyota. she got the flatbed option so the bumper wouldn't risk getting scratched. AAA told her we might need to wait as long as 2 hours, but a few minutes after the call, a watertown tow truck came cruising down the road. my sister returned home (in hindsight she could've just called from home, didn't have to come out) while my father followed the tow truck to the mechanic.

while my father was gone, i went back to the garage to work on the motorcycle. i removed the side panel so i could get access to the wiring and started the bike using the portable jump starter. i turned the fuel petcock to bleed a bit more gasoline into the carburetor and closed it off again, just so it can run long enough to warm up the engine. i then kept the bike running like that for 7-10 minutes, before it sputtered to a stop. i revved it a few times just to make sure i used up all the fuel before finally removing the battery. i then reassembled the bike, put the cover over it, and there it will stay until i take it back out come mid-spring. i brought the battery inside to trickle charge.

my mother pan-fried some korean bibigo-brand dumplings for lunch. the skin was so thin, they were more wontons than dumplings, and my mother was tempted to just cook them as wontons. it also came with a few packets of soy-vinegar dipping sauce.

we watched as a squirrel was back attacking the bird feeders. it seemed to have learned that if it shakes the horizontal bamboo pole hard enough, it might shake some sunflower seeds onto the ground. i ended up going outside and putting some peanuts in 3 places around the backyard, so the squirrels could have something to eat and not bother with the bird feeders.

we watched from inside the house where a large squirrel found one of the peanut caches soon after i put it there. it fed diligently, eating just the peanuts inside, leaving behind the shells and even the paper husks. behind this squirrel perched on a fence was a smaller squirrel, waiting for the larger squirrel to finish before it could get its chance to feed. unfortunately the big squirrels ate all the peanuts at that site, leaving nothing behind.

i also went around the yard looking for rabbit tracks again. i still can't figure out how it got inside, but my mother actually saw a medium-sized rabbit hop across the yard by the southern fence. using a bamboo stick, i poked around underneath the wood piles, hoping to draw out a rabbit, but it was empty.

i also shoveled off the steering wheel fluid stained ice/snow from the driveway. it was this yellow oil, and instead of dissolving into the snow, it started to grow the more i tried to cover it up with additional snow. i dumped it by the side of the street, the yellow coloring making it looked like a human urinated on the sidewalk since it was more pee than a dog could produce.

while my parents went out for a walk in the afternoon after a lull in the soft rain, i drove to home depot to return a few things. these were screws and bolts and a pipe valve i bought nearly 3 months ago that i was now getting around to returning. tomorrow was the last day so i was cutting it pretty close. i got back home before my parents came back from their run.

my father prepared some more sesame tangyuan in the late afternoon, with the last of some leftover jiuniang. i still have 3 partially finished jars in my fridge.

because it's my father's birthday tomorrow, my mother said we should get something special to eat. originally that something special was just hamburgers, but in the end we decided to get some chinese takeout from joyful garden in watertown. my mother called around 5:30pm. because we were paying in cash, there was a special discount because the restaurant didn't have to pay meal tax.

around 5:50pm my sister (who returned to belmont for dinner) drove me down to the watertown mall to pick up our order. there were 5 tables with customers inside the restaurant.

we've had luck with joyful garden in the past, but tonight's order wasn't as good. the lamb with tofu skin was one of the best dishes we ordered last time, but this time around, the lamb was cooked long enough so the meat was a bit tough, not as tender. on the other hand, the poached chicken seemed raw, and my mother was tempted to zap it in the microwave. the deep fried pork intestines was the same as last time, but i forgot how terrible the sauce is, you're better off making your own vinegar & soy dipping sauce. my sister ordered the short ribs with string beans, it's such a common dish it's not even worth mentioning, but the flavor was sort of bland, would've preferred a korean BBQ-style short ribs instead. seems like the only good thing we ordered was the salt & pepper shrimps. they were as big as my palm, we'd never seen shrimps so large before.

immediately after dinner my sister was in a rush to leave so i packed up my things so i could get a ride home.

i caught the women's final freeski big air. to be honest, i was hoping for eileen gu to lose. but she went big, and her final jump was amazing, elevating her from third to first place, knocking off the french skier to second place, who was so inconsolable eileen had to comfort her afterwards instead of celebrating her gold victory.