i stopped by the community garden to water my plot before heading to the cafe. i harvested a bunch of things, including tomatoes (regular and cherry), a taiwanese eggplant, some long beans, and a handful of ground cherries. i also did some pruning of dead tomato branches, but it was really just an excuse to flash my new knife.

as soon as i arrived at the cafe, i set up the tables and chairs on the back patio, vacuumed the place with the cordless levoit, then made 20 new tea eggs. the day started slow, and it was starting to look like we wouldn't get any customers, but then it turned busy. i didn't eat anything with the exception of a perfectly good tea egg that a customer never touched, so when nobody was looking, i ate the whole thing, damn what anybody thinks. my 2nd aunt got come meat buns from chinatown yesterday and brought them to the cafe for us to try; we warmed them up in the steamer, they were pretty good, but very doughy, more like a mantou with some pork filling.

around 3pm i went over to my sister's place to let hailey out into the backyard so she could use the bathroom. i found hailey stretched out on the couch, in an unusually rigid position. when i called her name she didn't answer. i looked for signs of breathing and didn't see anything, and her eyes were partially opened. i thought i saw her snout move, and i had to shake her paw a few times before she finally came back to life. i gave her some treats before she got up and went outside on her own (i helped open the doors) to go pee before coming back inside.

when we closed at 4pm, we were just $30 shy of tying last week's record. all we needed was a single big order to put us over the top. strangely enough, we didn't get a single online order today, nor any phone orders. a lot of chinese sausage bentos, which is surprising, because sausage is the least popular bento choice.

i got my parents' place by 4:30pm. it was so hot, i didn't bother inspecting the backyard. most everything's dead anyway, it's pretty depressing. the drought and the heat has pretty much ruined the growing season.

my parents told me their thermos stainless king 40 oz. beverage bottle had lost its insulating ability. i actually noticed it last weekend, just casually made a comment to my mother, but turns out that was actually true, and the bottle doesn't keep warm (up to 24 hours) like it once did. in the meantime they're using an old insulated dunkin' donuts thermos (with a glass interior), but we're in the market for a large size thermos. we bought ours originally on sale for $20 (2011, 2017), but these things go for $30 nowadays. there's also stanley-brand insulated bottles, they look promising as well, but seem a bit too rugged for our needs. i'm going to bring my own 40 oz. thermos king tomorrow, i'm not using it currently, i only use it during the winter where i keep a bottle of boiling water for making tea.

my father showed me something wrong with his macbook pro: the audio from the right speaker comes out overblown. it could've been software issues, but the left speaker works fine. and the audio via bluetooth earbuds also have no issues, so it seems like a hardware problem. in the meantime my father adjusted the balance so audio only comes from the working left speaker. later in the evening i went onto ebay and ordered a used replacement right speaker for the macbook pro, $8. they sell brand new replacement speaker parts on amazon for double the amount, but they come in pairs, and i only need one. plus they're off-brand, and some reviews said they don't seen as good as the original speakers, that why i went with a used part.

for dinner my mother cooked up some blue beans she'd collected from the backyard. there's a temporary moratorium on blue bean harvesting after my parents opened one of the older pods and saw there was very little beans inside. they've eaten all the beans that've grown so far and we haven't collected any seeds for next year. especially ironic since my father had decided we will be growing a lot of these beans for next year because they're grow fast and produce tasty beans - so tasty in fact we don't have any more seeds for next season.

returning home, i turned on the AC and took a shower. nothing good i television, so i continued watching for all mankind, episode 5.