there was a cooler in the trunk but it wasn't the battery-powered compressor fridge we bought, so we were afraid some frozen foods would spoil before we got them to the cafe. so for the rest of the supply run we were under a countdown. next time we should bring the car fridge - if nothing else - just to test it out in field.
we drove up quincy street to get onto highland avenue before crossing the fellsway bridge to get to the everett costco. while my father and i were slowly browsing all the appliances, my mother had already collected all the things we needed into the shopping cart.
next we went to super 88 in malden by around 11:30am. here we gathered some asian ingredients. they happened to have chicken legs so we got some of those as well.
the final stop on our supply run was to bianco & sons to get some chinese sausages. we returned by cutting across medford-somerville, through davis square. my parents dropped me off at my place before they went to the cafe. i retrieved my motorcycle and met them there just as soon as they arrived to help them unload the supplies. we finally left by 1pm.
i had some leftover thai chicken rice for lunch. i played charlie wilson's war (2007) for my father on netflix. while he was watching that, i went outside and flew my drone for a little bit. it's been a while, so all the batteries were depleted, so i basically had 10 minutes of flight before the alarm started beeping warning me about a forced landing. thankfully it managed to maneuver it back above the backyard before it crash landed on some neighbor's property.
my father and i were outside around 5pm. he was gathering equipment to wok-fry some jumbo shrimps outside while later pruning some more grape vines. the reliance grapes continue to turn more purple. my father tried one, said it was still sour. the concord grapes remain green, and more distressingly i've found several mummy grape fruits, so fungus diseases still continue to exist in the grape vines despite our pruning efforts and vigilante fungicide spraying. definitely better than how it used to be, when all grapes turned to shriveled mummified raisins. not much we can do but continue proper grape care, with both pruning and spraying. we may also get rid of the concord grapes, grow some other varieties that are less susceptible to diseases.
i found our supply of chinese licorice root slices. unfortunately the bag was filled with dead bugs and the roots peppered with holes. my father said we could buy a new package as they're fairly cheap, but in the meantime, for our own testing purposes, i can still used the insect chewed root slices for making my tea egg blend.
i put up the hummingbird feeder, hung it from the double shepherd's pole shared with a hanging boston fern. i used a solution of 1 part sugar to 4 parts water. while trying to hang the feeder i ended up spilling a got amount of sugar water. i also added a baffle to keep the rain water out. i'd never seen hummingbirds before in belmont so who knows if we'll get any visitors. they're only here for another month or so before they all migrate south to warmer climes.
my father cooked the shrimps in the outdoor wok. the wok has a second handle with a wooden grip that's slowly burning off from repeated exposure to high propane flames. the shrimps were okay, but i wasn't able to taste any wok hei.
after dinner my parents were out in the backyard picking blue bean pods. i was supervising, making sure my mother didn't accidentally snip off additional tendrils, or take too many beans. leave some for next season!
i returned home around 7:30pm. i set the gopro as a self-facing camera, shooting a 1s interval time lapse. after reviewing the video, i think a time warp video would've been the better option. maybe it was the light quality, but i seemed mostly blurry for much of the video. there's street cleaning tomorrow so i parked on the safe side of the street (wasn't hard to miss, the other side was completely empty of cars). i also swept the sidewalk a little bit, so any leaf debris can be cleaned up by the street sweeper. as it's going to rain tomorrow morning, i also put the rain cover on the bike.
breaking news came this evening when trump's 4th indictment was made public. this time the state of georgia fulton country georgia charged him with election interference in the 2020 election. this one seemed more serious as the prosecutors have extensive recorded phone conversations of trump pressuring various republican officials to change the election results. the indictment not only included trump, but 18 other co-conspirators as well, and involved using RICO statutes, which normally are used against mobsters (somewhat fitting). the news was so big, georgia's fulton county's attorney general had a brief press conference close to midnight.