the temperature was down to 18 degrees as i headed to the cafe this morning to work. cold yes, but it wasn't too bad, not like it was a few weeks ago during that brutally cold snap. once again i was the first person to arrive at the shop. i cooked 4 cups of rice and boiled some water on the induction cookers. since my parents are going on vacation for a week in april, i've been training to see if i can do all the kitchen tasks, while my sister works the front of the cafe. there really isn't too much left for me to learn, the only two things left are how to make fried rice and pad thai.

it got really busy right around opening time for about an hour, a rapid succession of orders. it made me worried, like maybe today would be a really busy day. my 2nd aunt showed up right when my sister and i were fulfilling an order. then around noontime - normally a busy period - we didn't have any business for an hour, before customers started showing up again after 1pm. my father showed up for a little while. i thought he was here to force me to work the front of the cafe again, but he was here to clean up the basement in preparation for the electrician visit on monday, when they replacing the entire electrical panel and adding a few more outlets. he returned home in the early afternoon.

my sister's godmother showed up later in the afternoon. not to help but rather to pick up some letters that was sent to her at my sister's place. there might've also been some ulterior motives, as i saw her and my sister speaking in hushed tones.

even with the limited hours and the cold weather outside, we still managed to make the second most of all the days this week, other than wednesday. after we closed at 4pm, i gathered up my things and head to belmont.

it was snowing at that point, but just flurries, as it was far too cold (temperature in the lower 20's) for any serious precipitation.

i got to my parents' place by 4:30pm. my mother told me they'd gone out to the waltham ocean state job lot earlier today. apparently business at that OSJL store is so good, they expanded into the nearby space that used to be a rite aid, so now there's even more inventory. my mother bought a bunch of yarn while my father bought another pajama bottom.

i had nothing to do but snack while waiting for dinner. i did replace the hot water faucet cartridge in the bathroom sink, it was an easy switch, and the new cartridge doesn't leak anymore. maybe at some point we'll take apart the old cartridge and take a look inside. i have a feeling maybe an o-ring needs replacing, and the old cartridge will be good as new. it's a ceramic cartridge after all, those things should be breaking, compared with compression cartridges.

for dinner we had a mix of dishes, from stirfry tofu to stirfry bokchoi, to pickled radish eggs and sliced pork. because of the snow, my parents insisted i drive one of the cars back to cambridge, but i was adamant on biking back. despite the possibility of slipping on some black ice, taking the bike was the right choice, as there are no good parking spots where i live. the ones available, you need to back over clumps of frozen snow and ice.

it took me twice as long to ride back, as i pedaled gingerly, keeping the bike moving in a straight line, avoiding possible patches of ice or snow, and all the while trying to stay far enough away from oncoming traffic so i don't get clipped by any cars.

a package waited for me on the doorstep. i couldn't remember what it was, turned out it was two pairs of pants i ordered from gap outlet on a whim.

after a shower, i settled in to an evening of basketball watching, with a nationally broadcast game between the celtics and 76ers. it was an exciting game, with philly being in 3rd place on the eastern conference, just 3 games behind boston. a lost tonight would've placed the celtics in 2nd place behind the bucks, who've been on a 13 game winning streak (which included a celtics lost in overtime). the 76ers had joel embiid, james harden, and pj tucker. embiid was a force tonight, seeming to shoot at will, and went to the foul line a bunch of times, making all his shots except one. embiid finished with 41 points. philly had the lead initially, but boston was always right there within striking distance. momentum shifted to the celtics in the 2nd half, but even then, the final minutes was pretty intense. in the final seconds, the game was tied, with the ball in celtics' possession. of course it was jayson tatum taking the final shot, a 3 pointer no less. with no time out left, embiid had no choice but to heft the ball all the way across the court. like a miracle, the ball went in for a long distance 3-pointer, but upon review, it was after the buzzer. celtics won, 110-107.

i also spent most of the evening microwave shopping, now that it doesn't look like my old GE microwave can be saved. it still bothers me though, having no idea why it doesn't work anymore. in hindsight, yes, i'd say the microwave has been acting a little weird lately, like it was struggling to heat. but all things i put in the oven came out fine despite the low energy sounds. could there be a hidden blown fuse i'm not checking? anyway, microwave shopping online, is there a supply chain issue with these ovens? because the choices seem limited. are people just not buying microwaves anymore? i'm looking for an oven that closely matches what i had, which is 1.1 cu.ft. i did toy with the idea of going smaller - like maybe 0.9 cu.ft. - but at that size, my microwave steaming container would be too large to spin on the turntable. at the size i want, there's only a few choices, and some of them are no longer in stock, which made me think it's a supply chain issue. there's also all these new fancy features like sensor cooking and wifi which i don't need, or weird hybrid ovens that combine a microwave with an air fryer.

WWY contacted me this morning, asked if i had a chat GPT account she could borrow, since she can't create one with her china credentials. she wanted to play around with the AI bot, see what all the hype was about. i gave her my username and password, she finally managed to log into the server.