from there we went up the fellsway across medford street to super 88. it was just a quick stop, we picked up a few things, including century eggs and pickled mustard (zha cai).
next stop was costco. i haven't been to costco for nearly a month. i picked up a pair of eddie bauer jogger pants and matching hooded jacket. i searched for eggs but the only thing they had was liquid eggs in cartons, so the national egg shortage has finally hit costco. my mother bought a hot dog while we were leaving, she and my father took turns eating it.
traveling on the revere beach parkway, we went to restaurant depot to get our eggs. despite the retail shortage, eggs can still be purchased in commercial capacity for businesses. not only that, but prices on these eggs seem to be coming down as well: we paid $40 for a box of 15 dozen medium eggs. my father also got some clear clamshell food containers.
next was the chelsea market basket. this is where we get our pork, and had the butcher ground them up in fine and sausage consistency. we also got bone-in spare ribs for the congee recipe my sister would be making on wednesday. the most impressive thing i saw was the 3-D super bowl sculpture formed from 12-pack soda cases. they must have a special guy that does this because i've seen similar displays (though much smaller) at my neighborhood market basket in somerville.
final stop was bianco & sons for our chinese sausages, before taking route 16 to the cafe to drop off the supplies. for some reason traffic was very light and we made it back in record time, just 17 minutes.
my father had brought the adjustable tablet stand so i was able to see it in action. it looks pretty good sitting next to the grubhub tablet. now we just have to wait and see if there's enough of a metal base to shield the tablet wifi from microwave interference.
we got to my parents' place by 1:15pm. i had some leftover rice porridge for a late lunch. my parents were also reheating some frozen buffalo wings they got, until we realized they were raw. instead of cooking them in the toaster oven, i brought them outside and grilled them on the barbecue. i looked up instructions, supposed you're supposed to grill them in medium heat (350°) for anywhere from 18-22 minutes. i never grilled wings before, but they turned out pretty well, despite scorching them a little bit. but it was just a little surface char, the skin was still very crispy, and the chicken was cooked all the way through.
my father has taken renewed interest in the aeroponics, ever since we added some supplemental led lights. i saw him frequently going into the sunroom to check on the plants progress. he says the seedlings seem to be greener now, and they no longer lean towards the low horizon sun, but rather are growing straight up now. i'm a bit worried that many of the seedlings are too leggy, and could topple once they really start to leaf out. i could pile up more LECA pellets for support, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there. temperature tonight will drop down to 24°, but i think it'll stay warmer enough in the sunroom that the seedlings will stay alive. tomorrow morning looks to be a sunny day (at least the first half), so the sunroom will warm up.
in the late afternoon i went down to the basement grow room to water the plants. i inspected them yesterday and the soil seemed to be moist enough, but checking again today i figured it wouldn't hurt to water them again. i ended up adding another 2ft led grow light to the shelf. now in the basement alone there are 7 2ft grow lights; at 24W per light, they take up a total of 168W, which is about the same wattage as one of our big suspended LED grow light.
while watering, i spouted some small mealybugs on one of the orchids. i rinsed it off in the sink and sprayed it with insecticidal soap. i wanted to switch out one of the belle of india jasmine to a new location. while removing the two jasmines on the left adjustable shelving, i spotted a clump of mealybug infestation on the regular jasmine. i ended up bringing both plants outside so i could inspect them in detail. the infestation on the regular jasmine was too much that i simply pruned off the affected branch. i then sprayed both plants with insecticidal soap before bringing them back inside. we didn't have any mealybug issues in the first few months the plants were inside. i think the reason might be the systemic insecticide granules i'm using are losing their efficacy. i thought they're supposed to last for 4 months, but the website says only 8 weeks. so i may need to reapply more granules.
the 20g jar of GENNEL G107 silver thermal paste finally arrived in the early evening. my father took a break from making dinner to help me repair the broken induction cooker. earlier i'd already removed most of the dried old thermal paste (with cotton swabs and alcohol) from the sensors in the middle of the copper heating coil. we then scraped off the old black high heat silicone from the bottom of the thermal glass plate. next we applied a bead of new black silicone around the gasket outside of the induction cooker. we applied some new thermal paste to the sensors. then we put the glass back onto the cooker. supposedly it takes 24 hours to cure, but my father will bring it back to the cafe tomorrow to put into action. we still have enough high temperature black silicone and thermal paste to redo the application a few more times if it doesn't take. so the cost of repair was $10 for the thermal paste and $9 for the high heat silicone.
for dinner we had leftover sour vegetable fish stew and my mother cooked up some tripe. 
i discovered the mysterious crunchy fish in the stew is actually grass carp, which is a common farm fish in china. apparently when they're fed a diet of beans, the flesh turns flakey to crunchy. crunchy grass carp costs more and apparently it's a staple in hot pot (though i've never had it before until this weekend).
my father gave me a ride back to cambridge. with my neighbors not due to return until tomorrow night, i have another day of peace and quiet to look forward to.
i heard about the turkey earthquake last night before going to bed. a 7.8 earthquake and at that time reports of a few hundred deaths. awful, but not catastrophic. but then this morning i saw the news and the death toll had reached into the thousands, with the numbers increasing every hour. i watched videos of building collapsing and aerial view of cities completely destroyed. it seems surreal, with so much suffering happening right now in turkey and syria, not to mention the everlasting war in ukraine, that life here is quite normal. even on the local news, the earthquake story was buried 8 minutes into the broadcast (the world news however gave it the proper lead).