ah, the first of february. that meant january is over which means it's time to check the status of my toilet paper roll. it's been a month and i'm still on the same roll i put in the first of january. at that rate, i can buy a 12 pack of toilet paper which would last me for the entire year. what's my secret? for one thing, i'm pretty sparing with the TP. i've learned the art of double wipe. but my big secret is i always hop in the bathtub afterwards and give my undercarriage a good washing, the poor man's bidet if you will. speaking of bidets, i don't know how they'd keep you clean. i get the rinsing part, but without soap, how can you really be clean?

28 degrees this morning meant ice puddles. i dressed warmly, it wasn't too bad, but my eyeballs did start to water from the cold temperature, and it looked like i was crying while biking to the cafe for my wednesday shift.

i configured the new lenovo android tablet so it can print out tickets as well. it involved creating a new station and adding the wireless printer - which the tablet can see across the network. tickets print out different whether off of the ipad or the android tablet. printing from the ipad, it also prints from where it was printed from and 4 digit order code. we're still having intermittent signal loss issue on both the android tablet and the wireless internet printer caused by the microwave. it doesn't happen all the time so it's hard to figure out what the pattern is. possible solutions include getting a different microwave, creating some more shielding, or relocating the wifi router (maybe via wifi extender or possibly a new mesh router configuration). in any case, it's cool now because we can transcribe phone orders onto the android tablet, create a ticket, and the print out the ticket. it'll make taking orders a bit easier.

one of our induction cooktops - the newest one in fact - broke today. it actually broke yesterday but i only found out about it today. apparently the tempered glass cooktop has detached from the body. this is not good because now water is liable to get underneath, short circuiting everything. it's kind of cool to see the guts inside, with the copper induction coil. regardless, my father originally wanted to just epoxy glue the glass surface. i didn't think that was a good idea, in case we ever need to open it up for any reason. instead i bought a 2.7 oz. tube of rutland 500° RTV high heat silicone (black). i also have some thermal paste for the thermal sensor located in the center of the coil. we'll get it fixed up as soon as the special silicone arrives (friday).

for lunch i had a slice of scallion bread stuffed with braised beef. my mother prepared it for me around lunchtime but i wasn't able to eat it until after 2pm because i was busy doing other stuff. the dough for the bread was made using the dough maker that arrived on monday. my father said it worked well, and one of their friends stopped by the cafe yesterday and saw the dough maker and was very impressed with it.

my godmother dropped off a jar of jiuniang a friend of hers gave her. not sure the vintage, but just one taste revealed it was over fermented. jiuniang goes from sweet to alcoholic to sour (vinegar). the jiuniang was right at the midpoint between alcohol and vinegar. the glutinous rice had been consumed so completely it tasted like foam. at this point it's not good for dessert eating but still would work for cooking, especially because the jiuniang flavor is very strong (just not sweet).

my sister screwed up one of her catering orders again, forgot to give a customer his rice. it's actually the same customer who had another order mix-up a month ago. i'd be surprised if he ordered again. my sister - instead of taking responsibility for her mistake - started blaming us. it was our fault because we didn't check the order before hand, our fault because somehow someone moved her rice so she didn't see it. for once i'd like to get through a wednesday where i don't want to see her murdered.

i left the cafe by around 6:30pm. temperature was actually in the lower 30's, so warmer than this morning. my mother packed me some leftovers in a container that i had for dinner soon after i got back home. i watched the nets-celtics game, boston was up 46-16 just in the first quarter. they maintained the lead throughout the rest of the game, the deficit was too great for new jersey to overcome. final score was 139-96.

tom brady retired today. again. the fact that it was his second time retiring made it far less impactful. can we honestly take his word for it, and that he won't come back next season as a last-minute fill-in for some desperate quarterback depleted team? the fact that he unretired to play another year cost him: he lost his family (gisele decided to finally divorce him) and he ended his final run with the only losing season of his carrier. some fans (including bob kraft) are hoping he might retire as a patriot, on some kind of one-day contract. i don't know if brady would do that; it'd mean a lot to his new england fans, but it'd seem at the expense of throw his bucs fans under the bus.