i watered my houseplants this morning with an old bottle of aquarium water. it smelled kind of like rotten egg, which i took as a good thing, as it meant there was probably a lot of fermented microbes and nutrients in the water.

at 9:30am i was out running errands before i had to go to the cafe. temperature was cold - lower 40's - but that was expected and i dressed for the weather. i biked to whole foods first to return the shelf pin jig. then i went to walgreens to pick up my mystery prescription. mystery because even though they called me twice, never once did i successfully answer the call, so i wasn't sure what was waiting for me at the pharmacy, just that i had a prescription. an old lady was ahead of me in line, a real local townie. "you guys never have my prescription! this never happens at the other pharmacies. my husband need his drugs now. i'm going shopping but when i come back i expect to have my prescription filled." she basically cowed them to fulfill her order. i wouldn't want to work at a pharmacy and have to deal with people like her. no wonder pharmacists are in short supply: who wants to be chewed out by customers every day? when it was my turn at the desk, i found out i had two prescription: thiazide and irbersartan. thiazide was ready, but irbersartan wouldn't be available until noontime. i briefly toyed with the idea of throwing a tantrum like the old lady, but told the pharmacist i'd come back tomorrow for the irbersartan, and left with just my thiazide.

i headed directly to the cafe afterwards, got there by 10am. i usually don't get to cafe until 11-11:30am, but casey's daughter has been ordering takeouts every wednesday morning for her children and their friends at BB&N, so i arrived early to held assemble the order. there were just 6 bentos today, so my help wasn't too important. casey showed up herself at 11am to pick up the orders. she gave us a few sugar pumpkins as a parting gift. later she called back to tell my mother they wouldn't be coming in on friday because of the veteran's day holiday. in fact, the school is also taking the day off on thursday as well.

i showed my father some slim pantry carts and he thought it was a good idea. i even used the VR mode so we can see what a potential cart would look like in the kitchen. my mother wasn't as convinced until i told her they cost less than $20 so she agreed to get one. the cart i wanted initially had the right dimensions to fit in the space between the refrigerator and work table, but the spaces between the shelves were too short - about 10" - that most of our bottles wouldn't even fit. later i did some more searching on amazon and found a tall thin cart with 4 shelves. it's actually too tall, but we can use it as 3 shelves cart in which case it'd fit, with plenty of space between each shelves. after consulting with my parents, i ordered one, due to arrive on friday.

i like buying things for the cafe that can make it more efficient. i've only noticed these little areas that can be improved after having started working there, otherwise i'd never known about. little things, like getting a long work table, or magnetic knife holders, or more hooks for our above sink shelves. there are also things my father suggested, like a ticker holder or a folding side table, that we use so much now, can't imagine what working at the cafe was like without them.

my sister swung by today, taking a walk with the local dog whisperer to offer some training advice for esmei. later she took her dog on a playdate with her friend out in the waltham forest. esmei was alone in the car and i went to go see her. she was very obedient, just hanging out in the vehicle, not crying at all. there were helicopters flying overhead and she was curious as to what the noises were.

i made another batch of tea eggs with the tetley tea bags. i tried one of the tetley eggs from last time. not sure if it's the spice packet or tea bags, but these new tetley tea eggs seem to have more flavor. i simmered for 2 hours to maximize the flavor.

in the late afternoon my parents cooked up some new curly noodles and tried them with a fresh batch of zhajiang sauce. they're thinking about using these noodles for our ramen, just have to figure out how to source them and how much they cost per serving (about 120g). i almost never use my own supply but made an exception in those case as we were testing out a new dish.

about an hour later my parents started making a new batch of vegetarian buns. my mother wanted to put it off until tomorrow, but they're making beef noodle soup broth tomorrow and won't have time to make the buns so it had to be today. i left after they finished making the buns, around 5pm. it was a decent day business-wise, it didn't seem like we had that many customers, but those that did visit all ordered a lot.

back at home, i put the cover over my motorcycle in preparation for the rain expected for tomorrow. especially since i already washed it yesterday. i also got a water bill from my upstairs neighbor in the amount of $200, which included 2 quarters.

the celtics-76ers game started at 7pm. philly came out strong, but celtics still kept a lead in the first quarter. in the 2nd quarter it was all about the 76ers as they pushed a 61-54 lead into halftime. 3rd quarter was a mess for both teams, as dueling defenses nullified both offenses, with boston scoring just 17 while philly had 20. in the 4th quarter boston dominated, even after they were down by a dozen points with less than 2 minutes left in the game. boston managed to tie the game, but the 76ers came back and managed to win it 106-103. once again, i'm sad the celtics lost, but this was ane exciting game. boston return to play philly again next wednesday (weird schedule), so they'll have a change to even the score. jaylen brown played like garbage, couldn't buy a bucket, but made some heroic 3-pointers late in the game to help us tie it. payton pritchard once again got zero points. i think when he plays against larger teams, it's impossible for him to score. he has to find other ways to help us win.

at halftime i went to star market to score some polar seltzer on sale: buy 2 get 2 free. each 12-pack was $6.99, so i ended up paying $14 plus the can deposit. i'm glad i came when i did, seems like i'm not the only one in love with the seltzer, as the polar stuff was almost cleaned out. when i came back i made a meatball sub for dinner. i heated up the frozen meatballs in the microwave before baking them in the oven for 5 minutes along with the bread before assembling the sandwich and baking them one more time. it was okay, but the meatballs were still lukewarm at best. tomorrow i may try baking them for longer (20+ minutes) to really warm them up before eating.