hailey was at my parents' house when i got there late this morning. for some reason she now gets afraid when i try to pet her and will run away. however, she insisted i take her out into the backyard, which is what i did. i was told she had problems going up and down the stairs but she was fine.

for lunch i had some ing'er soup and radish cakes.

afterwards my father and i started trying to fix the various plumbing issues around the house, starting with the kitchen. it has a standard ball faucet which has been leaking for weeks. the first step was to turn off the shutoff valves. that's when we realized the cold water works, but the hot water didn't. the issue is most likely the washer had fallen off at some point. unable to shut off the water, we couldn't fix the ktichen faucet, so moved on to our second plumbing project.

the hot water handle in the bathroom sink leaks water from the baseplate whenever we turn it on. the repair would involve removing the hot stem assembly and either replacing a washer or replacing the whole assembly. the shutoff valves for the bathroom sink seemed to be working, although there was still a little bit of hot water coming through, but we didn't think that'd be a big deal. when we tried to remove the stem, it wouldn't budge, and my father was afraid of damaging the assembly in the back of the sink. so with two plumbing issues that we couldn't easily solve on our own, we decided hiring a professional plumber would be the wiser choice. when i turned the shutoff valves back on however, the hot water shutoff started leaking. when i tried to turn the nut to make it seal tighter, that didn't seem to help. the leak seems to be coming from the shutoff handle stem itself, which seemed like the same problem we had with our outdoor front yard faucet, meaning it needed to be repacked with graphite rope.

if a plumber does come, he could also fix a few more issues: replace the laundry shutoff valves, fix the leaking laundry sink, and replace the hot water assembly in the bathtub.

all the fixes seem like something we could do ourselves in theory. so tomorrow i'm going to bring some tools from home and see if i can knock out a fix or two, or at least have a better understanding what the problems are, like we replacement parts we need. after that if we still need a plumber, i wouldn't object. i just want to exhaust all possible solutions first before paying someone to fix it.

i got to try the ajvar today, the roasted pepper spread from macedonia that i picked up from market basket a few weeks ago. because it's smoked, it has this bitter taste that's also slightly sweet. there's also a spiciness to it because of the peppers. it's an interesting spread and i like it, but not enough that i'd be buying it again.

i took a short nap in the late afternoon. during that time my sister returned to retrieve hailey. my mother wanted to get some chinese takeout, but because my sister wasn't interested, she made dinner instead: shaved steak stirfry and some tofu stirfry.

i helped my father order a pair of collapsible wall-mounted brackets. he's thinking about installing a makeshift table for the cafe that can fold down from the wall for when we need additional space to place orders and foods.

i took a shower after i came home. tonight was the NBA all-stars game and i was prepared to watch that, but less than a quarter, i got really bored. it wasn't really competitive, nobody was playing defense, seemed like a bunch of NBA players goofing off on the court for 48 minutes.