nothing makes me happier at the cafe then when a customer finishes his entire meal, and nothing annoys me more when a customer hardly touches his food. it makes me wonder, "was there something wrong with the food so they didn't eat any of it?" but it's hard to fathom the minds of customers: some people will simply order and not eat, the food could be perfectly fine. i also dislike picky eaters. picky eaters are narrow-minded, set in their ways, unable to accept anything new or different. the only kind of picky eater that i can tolerate is someone who lets me know ahead of time not to include something they won't eat, so it won't go to waste when i include it and then have to toss it out. there is so much waste in the food service industry. at least we compost anything perishable.

business has been slow the first week of the new year. we did okay this saturday, a period around 12-1pm where we got really busy for a while, and then things tapered down quick. i made tea eggs, i cooked some black noodles, i prepared dumplings, i made green tea, i washed the oil dispenser. i also seemed to be the only person doing any cleaning while my sister and 2nd aunt were out front chatting with customers. my parents did make a surprise cameo appearance after my mother's morning arlington teeth cleaning appointment. they came to get some home supplies before leaving. my mother made some scallion bread yesterday and left be a few pieces. i also ate a sponge cake my 2nd aunt had gotten me when she was in chinatown earlier this morning for her own dental appointment.

i left a bit after 4pm. i asked my parents to take my heavy backpack, so i could ride to belmont unencumbered. i did have the foresight to take my keys and bike lights. it was cold today, but still warmer than average, with temperature in the upper 30's. first thing i did when i arrived was to check and see if the PVC adapter i bought online would fit my pump. just as i feared, the 3/8" thread was the wrong size and didn't fit the pump. the 1/2" slip-on end fit a 1/2" PVC pipe perfectly though.

i was relegated to simply inserting the barbed fitting of the provided pump adapters into the 1/2" PVC pipe. it wasn't the best solution, and the connect could come loose from jostling, but it seemed to work when i tested it last weekend. i then went and prepared the rockwool starter plugs. i decided to grow 3 chinese celery and 9 mustard green. i also thought about doing some japanese red mustard, but my mother said nobody eats those, so i didn't. the celery seeds were so tiny, i added two seeds per plug. the mustard seeds were bigger, and i just added one seed per plug. i then wet the plugs and left them to germinate. the instructions said celery can germinate at 50 degrees, while the mustards need a temperature of 60 degrees.

when my father woke up from his nap, we were trying to figure out a solution to attach the pvc pipe to the provided barbed pump adapters. they come in two sizes, one that seems to fit 1/2" tubing and another for 3/4" tubings. the 1/2" adapter is slightly too small for the 1/2" PVC pipe, while the 3/4" adapter is slightly too large. with some force, i can kind of push about 1/2" of the 3/4" barbed adapter into a PVC, and that was going to be my fallback solution. but we discovered a 1/2" tubing will actually fit inside of a 1/2" PVC pipe, while the 1/2" adapter will fit inside of the 1/2" tubing. so i cut off a short segment of 1/2" tubing and used it as a sleeve for the 1/2" adapter so it could fit inside of the 1/2" PVC. it wasn't a perfect fit, but tight enough so there wouldn't be any leaking, with the 1/2" tubing acting like a washer/o-ring. so that was going to be the solution. but playing around with the PVC and 3/4" adapter, i actually managed to push at least an inch of the barbed end into the 1/2" PVC pipe. how was this possible? turns out the original 10ft 1/2" PVC has a slightly larger diameter compared to the 2ft 1/2" PVC i bought later. the 3/4" adapter will fit inside of the old PVC pipe but not the new PVC pipe. but since the size difference was so small, i found a tube of silicone grease (food safe), lubed up the barb, and sure enough, i managed to push it into the PVC pipe. so that's my solution. basically i paid $8 for this online adapters for nothing, when i actually didn't need any additional adapters, since what i had already worked.

my mother made a chicken and chinese celery stirfry and a mustard green stirfry, while my father made a radish & egg pancake. i returned home after dinner.

on my doorsteps were two packages. one was the items i ordered from widgetco, the other a different clear case for my pixel 7 that i got off of ebay ($4.49). the case is made with a grippier soft TPU material, so it's less likely to slip from my hands. for some reason there's a cutout on top of the phone, i think maybe for a sim card tray, but the tray on the pixel 7 is actually on the side. when i checked the original listing, the case that i got looked different from the one that i ordered. i could return it, but i'd have to pay for shipping, and it's not worth it. in the meantime, i'm still searching for that perfect pixel 7 case.

the widgetco package had better results. the wood plugs fit my barstool perfectly, and the 3mm brass shelf pins were a perfect fit on my bathroom shelf, finally fixing something i'd been waiting 20 years to repair.