i went back to bed and slept for another hour before finally getting out of bed at 10am. i checked the cafe message and saw that my father was already at the cafe. he was there this morning to clean out the grease trap. he didn't ask me for help, but having cleaned the grease trap myself, it's a lot easier with help, so i quickly used the bathroom and got ready to leave for the cafe.
i got there a little bit after 11am. i didn't see my father, but there was a pile of broken bottles and spilled liquids mixed with powder all over the kitchen floor. my mind couldn't process what i was looking at, before i heard my father speaking. he was hidden behind the sink, with a dislodged shelf counter on his back. apparently he knocked into the shelving unit, collapsing the whole thing, with everything falling on top of him and onto the floor. because he was in the middle of cleaning the grease trap, he was basically stuck, so he decided to clean the grease first before climbing out to clean up the mess later.
luckily i was there, and i started the clean-up while my father continued dredging the grease from the trap, which involved spooning smelly clumps of congealed fat and dumping them into double-lined trash bags for disposal. a bottle of black vinegar had smashed opened, not only pouring pungent sticky vinegar everywhere, but spraying shards of glass as well. i soaked up the vinegar with paper towels before carefully picking up the glass pieces. i even managed to get a glass shard stuck in my nail bed before pulling it out.
after my father finished cleaning the grease trap, we reassembled the shelving unit after giving each individual shelves a good washing. then we rinsed everything that'd been sprayed with vinegar, before my father finally mopped the floor. he originally thought he'd be finished by 12pm - but because of the shelf collapse, it took us to 2pm before we were done.
we left for belmont, me on the bicycle, my father following behind me. i accidentally dropped my keys and turned back to pick them up before i watched my father run over them with the car. fortunately they were okay, keys are a lot tougher than they appear.
my mother was waiting for us to get back, laughing at my father because he told her he'd be done by noon. then i told her about the accident, and how it took the both of us to clean, that's why we were late. my mother made wonton soup for lunch.
surfing the web on my phone, i was shocked to learn that fox news fired tucker carlson today. i still remember him from when he used to have a nightly show on MSNBC, with rachel maddow as his occasional guest. he never seemed crazy until fox hired him and he became a right-wing media demagogue. fox news has a bad track record of their star "news" personalities leaving in disgrace (bill o'reilly comes to mind). elsewhere in cable news, by total coincidence CNN fired don lemon, for accusations of misogyny and misbehaviour. i could see him going to work at fox news. they'd love to have a gay black man fulfill their diversity quota, especially one cancelled by liberal elite wokeness. don lemon, the next rising star of fox news!
immediately after lunch, my father and i were outside building more raised bed fences. my father came up with a way for a single person to build a fence piece by first flattening a length of chicken wire. we made 5 more (for a total of 6), enough to completely protect a single raised bed (we made a single fence last weekend as a test). brace pieces faced inwards on the long sides, but outwards on the short sides so the fencing can sit flush with no gaps. we used soft plant twist ties to keep the fences together. i was willing to build more fences but my father suggested just cutting up the furring strips we needed, and build them next weekend.
in between working on the fences, i was draining two leaking storage rain barrels. i knew one of them was leaking from yesterday, but i discovered another was a small leak today. originally i was going to dump the water in the other rain barrels, but those are already near capacity, no more space left. so i ended up draining the barrels and pouring the water into a 20 gallon plastic trash can and a pair of 12 gallon plastic whiskey barrels. when the rain barrels were empty enough to lift, i tilted them upside down to drain the remaining water so i could have completely dry barrels to work on. i scraped off the old caulk with an awl then applied some new silicone. they need to cure for 24 hours before i can fill them back up with water.
it was well after 5pm when we finally went back inside the house. one of the first things i did when i got to belmont was to recharge my drained macbook pro. it took about 3 hours until the charge cable led went from red to green, meaning it was fully charged. having a new battery makes me feel like i have a brand new computer.
instead of burger king, my mother actually made dinner, some pan-fried steaks, mustard green stirfry, and a tomato and eggs stirfry. there was also more sour bamboo shoots leftovers. my father was so tired he had no appetite for dinner.
i left for cambridge around 7:30pm. once again i wasn't able to finish all the gardening tasks i had to do, so i need to come back again tomorrow to do things like weed the backyard (i saw some dandelions) and water the grow room plants.
the bucks vs. heat playoff game was already starting by the time i got back. i played the game on my phone so i could hear it while i took a shower. it was an amazing game, and i was rooting for the heat (up 2-1) just because the bucks seem like one of the few teams (if not the only) in the eastern conference that could challenge the celtics. miami trailed throughout, but finally got the lead in the 4th quarter. jimmy butler was amazing, scoring 56 points, almost single-handedly willed the heat to a victory, despite having two key players out for the rest of the season. it got to a point where he couldn't miss. when the heat eventually won the game, i was so happy for them. if not for the celtics, i would totally root for the heat. now the bucks are in serious trouble, down 1-3. do NBA teams ever come back from a 1-3 deficit? it's almost unimaginable to think that the 1st seed milwaukee - with the best record in the NBA this season - could actually be eliminated by the 8th seed miami.