we went to the everett restaurant depot first, to restock our supply of hot beverage paper cups and matching lids. we also found commercial quantity containers of ground ginger which we haven't been able to find elsewhere.
next we went to the super 88 asian supermarket in malden. i've been to enough asian supermarkets that i have a mental index of produce prices, and can instantly figure out if something is cheaper or more expensive. having said that, i still enjoy browsing asian supermarkets because i still find things i've never seen before.
we left super 88 around 12:40pm, with one last stop at nearby bianco & sons (just across the orange line train tracks, though we had to take a long detour to get there) to stock up on chinese sausages.
we got to the cafe by 1:15pm. my mother accidentally spilled a container of pickle juice onto the refrigerated tea eggs. we ended up pouring out all the tea egg brine and reboiling them in a fresh batch of tea brine. while we waited for the eggs to come to a boil, we continued unpacking. we finally left around 1:50pm.
back at the house, my parents fried some frozen dumplings for a late lunch. these dumplings previously had been in the accidentally defrosted basement freezer and refrozen, so they were all stuck together in a large clump.
i was outside working soon afterwards. my father mowed the lawn last weekend, but we needed to mow again, as the cooling weather has induced the grass to start growing again. before i could mow the lawn, i first wanted to prune some bushes in front of the house. i used a pair of hedge shears to shape the bushes into round shapes. my father came out to help around 3:30pm using the corded electric hedge trimmer. i personally prefer the more tedious manual hedge shears because it doesn't seem to shred the bushes like the electric trimmer, but the trimmer is definitely faste, and easier to shape with.
around 4:30pm were we finally able to mow the lawn. my father mowed while i gathered up all the bush clippings into garden refuse bins. i also went to the back and moved some plant stands out of the way of the oncoming mower. when my father periodically dumped grass clippings into the compost heap, i also sifted everything with a pitchfork. i finally dumped our remaining chicken manure into the compost. i uncovered a few large beetle grubs, couldn't tell what kind they were. how they can survive the intense heat inside the compost is a mystery. even i was surprised when digging up the center of the heap i felt some tremendous warmth.
another thing i wanted to do was patch up some bare spots on the lawn. we ran out of ran, so i might come back and finish the job tomorrow, especially since there might be a few showers on tuesday and definitely more rain wednesday (rain = free watering).
all our temu and amazon purchases arrived today. from amazon we received our spool of 100ft 12 gauge landscape wire. it was surprisingly heavy, which is a sign of quality material. we currently don't need the landscape wire for the time being as my father has rewired our portable 100W solar panels using the extra 10 gauge copper clad aluminum wires we bought back in 2019. it seems to transmit ample current from the panels to recharge our lithium batteries, and the wires don't feel any hotter. we'll save the landscape wire for some future projects.
from temu came a pair of MC4 solar cabling splitters. they seem pretty industrial, and have some weight to them despite seemingly made from plastic with a bit of metal on the inside. originally my father was going to use the splitters to connect 2 100W solar panels in parallel to fast charge the lithium battery, but now he's going to use them to split the power from a single 100W solar panel and have it charge two separate batteries each with their own controller. also in the temu package was 6 set of MC4 connectors, and a tuya-compatible wifi smart switch for DC 7-32V. the switch was much smaller than i imagined, about the size of a tic-tac container but twice as thick. i plan on using it to remotely control our 12v transfer pump, so we can use it to water the front lawn using rain barrel water.
for dinner my parents made stinky tofu soup they got from super 88. they added some white fish flakes and some additional non-stinky tofu. my mother also cooked the readymade steamed stinky tofu my 2nd aunt got for me last week. that stinky tofu smelled awful, but tasted like regular bland tofu. the stinky tofu that came with the soup package had more flavor, but wasn't as stinky. it was pretty delicious and i could've easily ate another serving (mixed with rice), but stopped at just one bowl.
i didn't get back home until 8pm. my aliexpress package arrived as well, jeff put it on my back porch. there was a pair of pearl izumi riding gloves, to replace the one that i lost. these seem like knockoffs, because the build quality wasn't as good nor the material. a little disappointed, but these were just $6 including shipping, so not a big deal.
next up was a pair of adjustable clamps, the same kind that i use for my gopro, except these feature clamps on both ends, though it did come with a ball point adapter for mounting a gopro camera. these were actually kind of pricey at $15/piece (i even ordered them during the tax-free holiday but they still charged me taxes anyway). they're designed for mounting a selfie stick onto a motorcycle, with two points of contact for maximum stability.
that brings up to the last item in the package, a 9ft long carbon fiber extensible selfie stick. this too was kind of expensive at $18, but it'll allow me to mount an action camera on my motorcycle high up so i can film 3rd person POV videos. i still have to figure out where to mount the clamps, and some system to secure the camera so it doesn't unwind itself from the selfie stick mount due to the vibrations.