i left the house early, went down to the post office to drop off state tax returns for myself and my sister. i'm glad i did it that way, as there was a long line inside.
i got to the cafe by 10:30am, the first person there. i started by boiling some water and cooking 5 cups of rice. i was starting to think nobody else was coming to work today before my sister finally showed up. with my 2nd aunt on vacation, my father was subbing for her; i didn't think he'd come (or come late) but he showed right at 11am.
we had zero customers for the first hour we were opened. we spent that time doing prep work. i was in the basement rearranging the drink shelves. i was also cleaning up all the ceiling debris from when the electricians came by to do some work back in february-march.
because my 2nd aunt and i share our location histories, i can see where she in europe. this morning it was venice, then by the time i got to the cafe, it looked like she was getting a ride to port city of trieste. she then disappeared for a few hours, most likely because she accidentally shut down her phone because she has a bad habit of pressing down the power button for long periods of time. when we saw her again, she was at dragonja, between croatia and slovenia. the fact that i can see her means google fi is working on her phone and she has internet access while she's in europe. i was also amazed by the technology, and imagined my month-long southeast asia and china trips 20 years ago had i had this level of GPS tracking.
customers started showing up around noontime, and then it didn't stop until we closed. it was the second busiest day this week, almost beating wednesday when we had both regular business and catering business profits. my sister didn't get crazy today, mostly because my father was there, and how can work both the front and back of the cafe.
a few days ago i brought over my 5" calphalon santoku knife to the cafe. i actually found that knife in a box of unwanted kitchen tools a while back, if you can believe it. i wasn't using it at home, and figured it'd be better served at the cafe. that knife has now become the go-to knife for everyone working in the kitchen area. the santoku has some heft to it, and feels good in the hand, both qualities making it easy to cut things with.
i heated up some spanakopita for lunch. i shared with my father and sister, but i ended up eating most of it.
we closed promptly at 4pm, and my father and i both left around 4:15pm. i put my heavy backpack in the car so i wouldn't have to carry it while i biked to belmont. first thing i noticed when i got to my parent's house was all the sprouted grass seedlings on the lawn. this was not the case just yesterday, i saw a few seedlings at best, but today the reseeded lawn was covered with green stubbles. supposedly after this week (the official 2-week mark), i can stop watering so often, just a few times a week is okay. i might want to get a second opinion on that though, but it makes sense, now that the grass has sprouted.
saturdays are weird. i'm only in belmont for a few hours - just enough time to grab some dinner before returning home - and not much time to do anything else. i watched the hawks-celtics game (first of the series). i was happy to see it was a blowout on boston's part, but games like that isn't too exciting to watch, so i just had it in the background. earlier at the cafe my father was saying he might need to replace his motorola phone. so we ended up buying a renewed pixel 6 for $240 in coral. but my mother made us cancel the order after a few minutes, because she said we ought to get a phone with more memory. so i bought a renewed pixel 6 in black with 256GB of memory instead of just 128GB for $300, due to arrive next friday. now i'm waiting to see if my mother wants to upgrade her samsung phone as well.
because my father had worked all day, it was my mother preparing dinner tonight. she made some fuqifeipian with honeycomb tripe, along with some xuelihong salted mustard greens and a tomato egg stirfry. i didn't care much for the stirfry, i was happy to eat my rice with just the tripe alone.
i finally returned home around 8pm. it was a little chilly - temperature at 55 degrees. that's actually normal for this time of the year, but after a few days of 90 degrees weather, go back to the 50's was a bit jarring. plus i only had a light jacket, but i soon warmed up after a few minutes of pedalling.
after a shower, i watched the last playoff game of the day between the warriors and kings. sacramento had the number 3 seed while golden state came in as the 6th seed. but don't let their low ranking fool you, 4x champions warriors are a title contender. it ended up being a really exciting game. the kings haven't won a playoff game in 17 years, and it looked like history would repeat itself tonight, but they came back from double digit deficit to eventually win the game, 126-123. de'aaron fox stood out in a breakthrough performance, i had to look up his pedigree, surprised he was drafted in the same class as jason tatum.
i did some evening grow closet maintenance. many of my seeds have sprouted, but some are still missing. like the bitter melons, all have germinated except one. when i dug into the soil, i found the seed, which seemed to be lifeless, so i replaced it with a new one. only half the blue beans have sprouted, i'm still going to hold off on those. i also replanted two squash seeds. most concerning are the hyacinth beans. from last season i know they're notoriously difficult to germinate for some reason. the seeds are prone to rotting. out of the 12 i planted, only 2 sprouted. the remaining seeds were either dormant or rotting. so i ended up replanting 10 new hyacinth seeds. i thinned out two tomato seedlings. none of the independence day tomatoes have sprouted yet, which is surprising, given they're new seeds in bought in 2023. a bunch of nigellas have sprouted, as well as a box of snapdragons. snapdragon seedlings are tiny, and likewise their seedlings. it's going to be a challenge keeping them alive. i moved the flower seedlings to the last open spot in my grow closet. i'm still waiting for the long horn screw hot pepper and water spinach seeds that i ordered last tuesday to arrive. they should be here this weekend.
my 2nd aunt once again accidentally shut down her phone so i wasn't able to track her. when i tried again tonight, it looked like she'd turned her phone back on. she was in koper, slovenia this morning. i can also see her google photos, it looks like she hadn't taken any photos yet, or her photos app setting is set so it doesn't back up via data.
i tried the new knockoff oral-b electronic toothbrush head i bought off of temu. they resemble the oral-b precision clean heads, which oral-b sells for $18.99 for a pair. these temu knockoffs were just $1.88 for 4. materially the knockoffs look a little different, and i don't know how well they'll do. it probably doesn't have the fading color indicator of authentic oral-b brush heads. whatever the case may be, i can't imagine paying $10 for a replacement brush head, even if it only needs replacing every 3 months. there must be something like 3-4x markup for these things.