i woke up at 9am and found li in the living room working from his laptop. he'd already gone out in search of breakfast, grabbed some single serving pies from star market, an apple pie for himself, a pecan pie for me. i told him he could work from the dining table which was more comfortable, he decided to give it a try, though he was thinking about going down to astrophysicist center where they had an exclusive private office with a window view for him to use.

i left around 10am, walking down to the cafe. i brought my umbrella but it was right during a lull in the rainstorm so i didn't have to use it. my sister called asking if i needed a ride but i was almost at the cafe.

it didn't look like we'd get any business on this rainy saturday. my roommate li showed up for lunch before heading to the office. after he left, things got a little busy, enough so that the day wasn't a loss. my mother kept wondering why we didn't have a single deliver order, figuring people wouldn't want to come out in the rain for food.

i made a new batch of tea eggs for next week (simmered for 2 hours). i also had time to make a new batch (10) of tea egg spices.

my godmother showed up to clean out more of her stuff from the cafe basement. my father got angry with my sister who seemed to be saying she had to remove everything.

my 2nd aunt and godmother continued cleaning while my parents and i closed up shop and returned to belmont.

first thing i did when i arrived was to go out into the backyard and take down all the potted houseplants from the wire racks. strong winds are forecasted for tomorrow (30mph), enough to topple them. later this weekend we'll also need to bring in some tender houseplants, as the temperature will drop into the 30's by monday-tuesday. i also checked out the seedlings growing in the raised beds. the one spot doing the best was where i dumped all the dried daikon radish bits. i didn't think there was any seeds left and actually though nothing would grow from there, but now there seems to be a carpet of radish seedlings. it also helps that this is the first season where we've caged up the raised beds, preventing rabbits from eating up the new seedlings. the rain barrels are all to capacity, and i continue to regret that we still haven't attached lisa's rain barrel. however, before the first frost arrives, we'll need to empty our tanks anyway (to prevent our connectors from getting freeze damaged), so the days of rain barrels are numbered.

after dinner my father and i checked out BMS's and LiFePO4 cells on aliexpress. he suspects one of his lithium battery pack has a bad BMS, which explains why it can no longer run the 12v portable fridge without shutting down (only way to "boot" it back up is to zap it briefly with a DC charger).

li tried contacting me on wechat, i only saw it after the fact. he couldn't get into the house. i called him back, and managed to troubleshoot the problem. the issue was he forgot to turn the doorknob once the deadbolt was unlocked. once that happened he was finally able to get him.

before dropping me off back at home, we stopped at the cafe to put the cooling tea eggs and beef noodle broth into the fridge and freezers. it was still raining.

li was camped out in the living. he couldn't figure out how to open some of the lamps (controlled by remote) but managed to work the television. for dinner he got some vietnamese pho takeout (that's how he got stuck outside, coming back from picking up his food order). we decided to have dim sum in chinatown by 10am, which meant we'd have to leave by 9:30am.