even on my day off i'm doing supply runs for the cafe. like this morning, going to chinatown to get some asian ingredients that we weren't able to source from costco or market basket yesterday. things like chestnuts, which they had at market basket, but it was $4 for a tiny 3 oz. bag, while in chinatown i knew i could get much more for less. i also gathered some asian vegetables like daikon and taiwanese cabbage. my mother called to ask me to get some more dried bamboo leaves for her zongzi. i got so much stuff i ended up forgetting to get the plum drinks that were on sale (2/99¢ if the price can be believed); i may go back to chinatown again on thursday.
i went to ming's market first, and was going to go to c-mart to get a few more things (tofu squares, vietnamese hot sauce), when i called my mother who told me not to bother. so i left chinatown before noontime, riding 6 miles to the cafe, getting there around 12:30pm. it was right around lunchtime and it got so busy i ended up getting stuck there helping, and stayed for 2 hours. even on my day off i'm still working at the cafe. during that time i made a batch of soy sauce noodles and a fresh batch of tea eggs.
i finally returned home by 2:30pm. it looked like it might rain earlier, and when i got to my bike it was slightly damp, so there must've been a brief shower while i was at the cafe. i ended up cooking a chicken cordon bleu for lunch, the 35 minutes bake time giving me plenty of time to use the bathroom again and take another quick shower.
i left the house around 4pm, first to walgreens to pick up my cholesterol medication prescription, then to market basket for some groceries for this week. once again i'm too lazy to cook, and bought a few frozen meals to tide me over for this week before i'm off to flushing for the weekend. coming back, i saw a neighbor had tossed out an o-cedar easywring spin mop & bucket. i went back to check it out, it still seemed pretty new, so i grabbed and stashed it in the basement, will present it to my parents at some point.
after 5pm i started another timer, waiting to see when my roommate will come home. typically she gets back between 5-6pm, but occasionally there's some kind of astrophysicist-related social outing, like a dinner, which was what happened tonight. a postdoc was leaving for arizona, he had a house party with chinese takeout from zoe's. my roommate went, she met so many chinese researchers there she'd never seen before. she didn't get back home until 8pm. i also told her that i'd be gone this weekend.
i put a frozen lasagna in the oven around 7pm and was ready to eat by 8pm. how do you eat your lasagna? a large serving like the one tonight, i cut it up into 16 bite-size squares. i had some lemonade and later had some cherries.
later in the evening i soaked my merrell moab waterproof hiking shoes in some revivex microbial odor eliminator solution before leaving them in a large plastic basin to dry. i hope it dries by the weekend, because these are the shoes i'm planning on wearing for new york, since the weather forecast says it's going to be rainy.