we started breaking into the batch of tea eggs i made just yesterday, so i had to make another batch for next week. my mother made rice noodles for everyone again; originally it was supposed to be lunch, but we got busy, and didn't eat until later in the afternoon.
the big question of the day was: will it rain today? it was definitely overcast and humid, but morning doppler radar showed no storm activities all across the east coast. but by afternoon - like magic - intense storms started spontaneously showing up. in the late afternoon i went outside and brought in the patio furniture and took down the umbrella once again, before it started raining. it wasn't much - a sprinkling of big fat drops - but the radar showed it would eventually get worse.
a good rain shower would be we wouldn't have to water the lawn but more importantly it would refill our rain barrels which are now running empty after we've been watering the front and back lawn with it. it'd been such a wet summer, we never had to worry about how much water was in our rain barrels until now. plus we also weren't using the stored rain water very much precisely because it was raining so often. but we've gone through a bit of a dry spell recently, i can't remember the last time we had a good soaking rain.
i didn't even notice when it was time to close the cafe. that also happened to coincide with the most intense rain period of the time. at first i thought i could ride my motorcycle to belmont in time, but it had already started to rain. yes i could still do it, but i'd be soaking wet. so after we closed, i rode with my parents in the car to belmont, with the idea that i would get a ride back to the cafe later so i can retrieve my motorcycle. as we drove, the rain got progressively worse, to the point where you could barely see out the windshield, like driving underwater.
as soon as we arrived, i went out with an umbrella to check our rain barrels. all the open-lid catch barrels were full, but the intermediate storage barrels were in various stages of refilling. a fast intense rainstorm is bad because our rain barrel system doesn't have time to distribute the water to the various interconnected barrels. the best kind of rain is a slow and steady rain that lasts for a long time. nevertheless, i figured we refilled maybe 60-70% of our barrels, enough so we can water again if we need to. the long rain forecast also shows rain for the next few days, so free watering plus refilling the barrels to maximum capacity. we also need to install lisa's rain barrel at some point, we haven't had time. that would give us an additional 50 gallons of capacity.
for dinner my father made fried rice. he wasn't doing a good enough job so my mother took his place. i didn't realize they used my sweet apple chicken sausages, which i got for outdoor grilling.
i watched history in the making as 19-year old american tennis player coco gauff won her first grand slam at the US open, beating sabalenka 2-6 6-3 6-2. in a weird quirk of world tennis ranking, sabelenka (rank no.2) will become no.1, while coco becomes no.3 from no.8. men's singles final championship is tomorrow at 4pm between medvedev and djokovic. i'm rooting for the serbian.
my father gave me a ride back to the cafe a bit before 7pm, during a lull in the rainstorm. we didn't get anymore torrential rain other than that burst in the late afternoon, but there was periodic nuisance drizzle, something i wanted to avoid riding in. i retrieved my motorcycle and rode the rest of the way home.
it felt like an oven inside my house. i opened all the windows and turned on all the fans, trying to create some airflow. my need for cool breeze is only tempered by my paranoia that a burglar might try to break into the house if i leave all the windows open when i go to sleep. so before bed, i close up most of the windows.
my felt weather stripping for windows arrived from temu a few days ago but i was able to pick it today. i then tried replacing the weather stripping in my bathroom window.
these weather strips sit in these tracks along the perimeter of the window sash. i replaced the top one first, because it was the easiest to get out. temu only had dark colored weather stripping (my original are white), but once installed, you can't really see them anyway (especially not from the inside). the new strips were a little bit longer, but since they compress, it wasn't an issue. the old strips had a plastic spine that made it more rigid, the new strips were just soft rolls.
i was satisfied with my first test, but then decided i wanted to replace the weather stripping on the vertical sides as well. these were harder to remove, because it involved removing the sash from the window frame. after consulting a youtube video, i managed to remove the bottom sash. using a pair of pliers, i was able to pull out a bit of the old weather stripping from the groove track and the rest was easy to slide out. after replacing the two vertical weather strips, i reinstalled the sash.
now i just need to wait for the weather to turn cold enough so i can see if the window is still leaking cold air. i also found out there are two more additional vertical weather stripping, on the sides of the sash facing the sides of the window frame. i can probably replace these as well, but they're more visible, i would definitely notice the dark colored felt. i did find a source of white felt weather stripping on ebay though. if replacing the weather stripping end up working well, i'll get some white ones to replace the sides.