so we had that big grubhub order today, set for pickup around noontime. 17 bento boxes, half a dozen buns, a noodle, a curry. my father had already prepared all the boxes and containers, and filled them with cold side dishes that didn't need to be warm. once delivery time got close, we'd finally assembled. however we ran into a snag, when we suddenly started getting orders in on top of the large takeout order we needed to fulfill. we ran two rice cookers just so we'd have enough rice. i emptied one cooker that had 16 cups of cooked rice. honestly, it wasn't too crazy, and i actually prefer these big orders instead of many small orders, as long as we get advanced warning. once 12pm arrived and we had all the orders out, we could finally breathe a sigh of relief.
after that it wasn't too busy today. we left my sister making her catered meals in the kitchen, even though once again she was running late, despite pushing the pickup time back an hour. regardless of time, she will always procrastinate until the last possible moment.
in the early afternoon during a lull, i was tasked with a supply run to trader joe's to get some persian cucumbers, spinach, edamame beans, and noodles. i noticed they also sold potted gardenias. if only people knew how difficult it was to keep them alive and flowering!
i told my father about the quansheng UV-K5, a handheld radio i discovered last night, that someone online said was a baofeng killer. about the size and price of a baofeng, it not only can send/receive on UHF/VHF frequencies, but it can also receive 50MHz to 600MHz, including airbands. it can also copy frequencies, and copy programming from one radio to another. plus it uses usb type-c charging. price? $20-30. the radio just got its FCC license a few weeks ago and only recently been on the market. after looking over the specs, my father said he wanted to get one. because it was so inexpensive, he suggested we get two. i told him i'd go onto aliexpress later today and order them.
i brought the 7" knipex pliers wrench so i could try removing the faucet stem from the kitchen sink because the faucet will leak if the handles aren't closed tightly enough. this was one of the main reasons why i paid nearly $100 for the pliers wrenches, just to remove the faucet stem. the stem unscrewed without resistance. i tried unscrewing it by hand but i couldn't budge it, but with the wrench it was effortless. the cartridge came off but it didn't look anything like the pictures i saw. there was a washer on a stem with a spring on the inside. i took some photos and reassembled the stem cartridge. much later i realized the actual stem cartridge itself was still embedded inside the faucet assembly, and what i removed was just the threaded stem. in any case, using the pliers wrench the cartridges can be removed with ease.
regarding the second rice cooker we used today, it's a tayama-brand we bought last year during tax free weekend for just $30. it sounded like a japanese company, i think that was one reason why i got it, but it's actually a disguised chinese company, and search online reveals almost nothing about the company, other than it has a US headquarter in california. the cooker itself isn't very good, something we found out the first time we used it. the measurement markings in the cooking pot aren't accurate and the rice scorches at the bottom. we would've returned it except my father already threw out the box. the rice cooker we currently use is an old 10-cups zojirushi model that's long been discontinued. despite it's age, it's still reliable, though the plastic steam valve has a tendency to fall out every once in a while. we'll get another rice cooker at some point (maybe a backup, maybe a replacement), and we already know the make and model, the latest zojirushi 10-cup cooker that sells for $140. zojirushi also made a bunch of smart cookers, but those cook too slowly; the simple cook/warm models cook much faster and the rice still come out pretty good compared to most other cookers.
feifei gave us a digital caliper they'd bought, after seeing that i put a digital caliper in my temu shopping cart. they'd actually bought two for some reason, so they had an unwanted extra. while it's true i need a digital caliper, i don't need one *that large*. when i first saw it i thought it was a joke. digital calipers normally are like 6-8" long, but this one was 12" long. when would i ever need to accurately measure something that big? i looked up the price too, wasn't cheap at $55.
my sister has a terrible system of keeping track of her orders, using color-coded markers and some weird code, which is prone to errors, and seems like every week we get one of the orders wrong. today it was the scallion bread my mother made, we found out we didn't make enough. 
actually we did, but we ate what we thought were leftovers, and ended up not having enough. so my mother quickly had to make some dough and let it rise before baking. my father had put the bowl over a pot of boiling soup, but i told them they can use the proofing function on the breville oven. the default setting is 85°F for an hour, but my father set the timer to just 30 minutes. it actually did a really good job, the fermented dough came out very puffy and made for very good scallion bread.
before i left, i helped my sister bring up the bed mattress she ordered online, for the new upstairs tenant arriving on friday night. i don't know how good a mattress can be if i can roll it up and fit it inside of a box, and be light enough that one person can easily lift it. i didn't leave the cafe until after 6pm.
it was still light out when i got home. my upstairs neighbors finally tossed out their christmas tree now that it's officially spring. of course it's too late for cambridge to pick it up, so i wasn't surprised it still outside on the curb. fortunately i think garden refuse pickup will begin next month, so they'll probably get it then.
i came home with three pieces of scallion bread which became my dinner. and yes, time machine finally managed to back up. it said it finished around 12:45pm. basically, time machine took an entire 24 hours to back up my mac. i'm glad it's finally over, but sort of annoyed it took this long. yes it's true i haven't backed up since last october, but still, it's unrealistic to think someone would just leave their machine open for so long, waiting for time machine to finish.
i ordered a pair of quansheng UV-K5 radios off of aliexpress. i found a seller selling for $25/each with free shipping. the radios are due to arrive in about 2 weeks. i did some more research on the radios. i found out you can't name the channels like you can with the baofeng, so they're just frequencies, which isn't ideal. maybe that feature can be added in a future firmware update (just wishful thinking). the UV-K5 is so new, there's hardly any info about the it other than from a few youtubers who got their hands on the radio a month or so ago.
a fire truck was outside the house later in the evening. not sure the reason, i should've turned on my baofeng and tried to listen in on the fire department radio. maybe it was a welfare check. i actually hope something did happen to those neighbors, ever since they turned what used to be free common parking into private parking.
the last thing i did tonight was make a quick ordering page using google sheets, so i can show my sister how to organize her weekly meals so everyone can understand. it's super simple with a spreadsheet.