i don't remember ever riding in the back of an audi before. there were individual temperature controls for the back seats. i tried out the motion capture feature on my google pixel 7 phone.
we got to bin bin's place by noontime. there was definitely more snow in burlington. binbin asked how come my father didn't come, my mother gave her some lame excuse that he wasn't feeling well. we didn't bring anything but my mother gave each of her sons a chinese hongbao ($200 each). my aunt brought ingredients to teach binbin how to make some chocolate souffles.
binbin's husband told us about smuggling paxlovid to his parents back in xi'an, who both contracted serious cases of covid. most of binbin's relatives in china got covid as well, with the exception of her parents.
the freezer on their samsung refrigerator broke. it was $900 to fix it, $1400 to buy a new fridge, or get a chest freezer for $200, which is what they did. i wonder if their fridge broke because we left it running on empty for over a year before finally shutting it off. i feel like these fancy fridges with the built-in ice makers would be prone to breaking.
we ate hot pot for lunch, but didn't start eating until almost 2pm. binbin made a dipping sauce of peanut butter mixed with hot pot broth. i tried it, it was not good. i was hoping they'd have some of that sichuan dry hot pot dipping sauce but they didn't seem to have any. fortunately the spicy half of the hot pot had enough spicy oils that i didn't really need any dipping sauce.
binbin's husband let us try some "fake" moutai which he bought from total wine for $30-40 for 375ml. later i looked on the label, it's not the classic moutai, but it's still made by the moutai company so it's authentic. the alcohol itself is made from sorghum and wheat, with added spices from wild celery, longan, gogi berries, and shancha.
it started snowing around 3pm. the forecast i saw this morning said it wouldn't rain until 6-8pm. but snow? maybe because we were away from the coast.
after hot pot i went down to the basement watch anderson play fortnight, which i'd never seen before. it reminded me of multiplayer quake in battle royale mode. by the time i came back upstairs, my sister had left early, which is so typical of her that i wasn't the least bit surprised. we had chocolate souffle for dessert served with a scoop of pistacho ice cream. the souffles came out well even though binbin didn't have a kitchen scale so the chocolate portions had to be estimated (we only started using a kitchen scale a few years ago as well).
we finally left by 4:45pm. originally my mother and i were hoping to get back home before 4pm, so we still had time to hit the waltham costco and market basket. by the time we got home it was well after 5pm. that means tomorrow we have to do another epic supply run, in the snow no less.
i was going to head straight home, but a check of the doppler showed only snow for the time being (just flurries) and it wouldn't rain until after 8pm. so i decided to stick around for dinner (even though i wasn't that hungry, having only just eaten).
i went to the basement to water the houseplants but found out my father already did that. he didn't use the Bti-infused water though, so i'm worried there might be a gnat fly outbreak again, though we've been treating it for months now. i also checked my aeroponic seedlings. only 3 of the mustard greens have germinated, but they've grown too leggy and won't be very healthy for the aeroponics. 6 of the mustards have yet to germinate, i think i'm going to induce them with the heating pad. the chinese celeries have germinated as well. i didn't have time to put them in the net cups, i'll do that tomorrow and start the cycle timer.
unfortunately by the time i left belmont around 6:45pm, it was already raining steadily. good thing i was just going home and wasn't too worried about getting wet. it wasn't too bad, i put my wet jacket on a barstool and left it close to the heating vent to dry overnight along with my wet gloves. i also changed out of my clothes, partly because they were wet, but partly because they stank of hot pot.
there was a bengals-bills game in the afternoon. i was surprised the bengals won (27-10), i thought it was buffalo's year this season. so maybe the fact that they barely beat miami last weekend revealed they weren't as strong as i'd thought. in the evening there was the cowboys-49ers game. it was a low scoring affair, with the teams heading into the halftime with the score 9-6 in san francisco's favor. dallas managed to tie the game in the 3rd quarter, but the 49ers managed to score a touchdown in the 4th which sealed the game for them. final score 19-12. next sunday it's 49ers vs. eagles and bengals vs. chiefs. i'm rooting for san francisco and cincinnati.
i downloaded the latest episode of the last of us and watched it. i also downloaded the latest mayor of kingstown but will watch it later in the week.