temperature barely crept into the 50's today, overcast throughout, with a little bit of rain in the late evening. it wasn't a slow day at the cafe but we didn't set any records, the weather too cold and too raw to lure customers. the busiest time was around noon, and the final 1-1/2 hours saw zero sales. i get the feeling tomorrow will be different though, sunny with temperature in the upper 60's. i have to steel myself for a busy day.
during a lull period in the afternoon, i tested huy fong's 3 different hot sauces: sriracha, chili garlic sauce, and sambal oelek chili paste. chili garlic is the hot sauce of choice in my family, so i'm most familiar with that one. chili garlic seems similar to sambal oelek (an indonesian hot sauce), but sambal oelek doesn't contain garlic, it has a more watery consistency, and a stronger vinegar taste. sambal oelek reminds me of a spicy salsa dip. as for sriracha, it's too sweet to be considered a real hot sauce, it's more of a novelty condiment, or for those times when i want spicy and that's the only thing available.
before i left the house this morning, i set up the clamp light with the grow led bulb so my emerging tomato seedlings could grow. that's when i noticed the purple serrano peppers have also started to germinate. later in the early evening i finally got around to partially setting up my grow closet. normally it's 3 racks, but since i was only using a single rack (middle) for the time being, i hung 3 2ft led strip lights. by that point more seedlings had emerged such that i ended up taking off the plastic wrap and putting them all under the lights. they currently sit in my plastic 1020 growing trays. the trays don't fit very well in shelf racks - i may go back to gravel on plastic cafeteria trays - but they are better for accidental spills, which occasionally do happen with just flat gravel trays. finally i put up a single computer fan: the little bit of breeze helps with air circulation but more importantly the gentle vibration makes the stems grow thicker.
coming home around 3:30pm, i paid a visit to the community garden to check on my plot for the very first time this season. so much weed! particularly grass. i need to come one of these days and really work on my garden. my monkshood doing very well, very much thriving. the smaller monkshood seemed to have survived being uprooted last season. there's also a lot of juicy garlic chives, i don't know if they'll get stolen like they did last year. i also wonder if i need to replace my grow bags, they're kind of falling apart; at the very least i need to supplement the grow bag soil.
i ended up staying for half an hour in the garden because i decided to do some drone flying as there was nobody around. i sat by the bench near the corner entrance and launched my dji mini 2 from the bit of paved area. i took a few photos of the community garden, then decided to fly down beacon street and see how far i could get before i lost connection. i nearly got to the kirkland-washington intersection before i lost communication with the drone. even though i was no longer getting any video, in my experience i can still fly the drone blind, so i started backing up the drone and moving in the garden so i could see a clearer view of the sky. eventually i regained signal again and was able to glide it back to the launch point.
back at home, i went to star market briefly. there was a sale on red seedless grapes, 89¢/lbs, with a limit of just 2 bags, but each bag only contained a tiny amount of grapes, so i decided not to get them. instead of got two bags of chips that were on sale, until i went to go pay and discovered one of them was full price. star market fooled me again! you need a special degree in order to work star market's byzantine discounting system.
i had some german potato salad waiting at home that i bought on tuesday. it was basically just sliced potatoes with a bit of onion and olive oil, nothing very special, i wouldn't even call it a salad. i was afraid it'd gone bad but there wasn't any smells, though the oil looked sticky. i didn't get sick afterwards, so apparently it's still edible.
later in the evening i made myself a peppered ham sandwich again.