there was steady rain this morning. so much so that i called my mother asking if i could come to the cafe a bit later (around 11am), hoping by then the rain would've tapered off. so i waited anxiously, refreshing the doppler radar every so often to get the latest update. i didn't have a good night's sleep last night, probably didn't actually fall asleep until 6am. i didn't get out of bed until 10am. paul sent me an e-mail saying they were leaving for thanksgiving and wouldn't be back until saturday afternoon. i thanked him for the courtesy message, but i think his main motive was to let me know he had a package coming, otherwise they wouldn't bother telling me at all.

by 11am it was still raining. so i dug out my long raincoat that i bought when i was hiking through the jungles of southwest china, finally had a chance to use it. it kept my upper body dry, but it opened up at the bottom when i pedaled the bike so my jeans and shoes were slightly damp when i finally got to the cafe.

i was secretly hoping i didn't have to work at the cafe today due to the rain, and that there'd be no customers. turns out it was the exact opposite, today was the 2nd busiest day of november. which is actually a good thing because we're only opened 2 days this week due to thanksgiving.

i had some yiner mushroom soup but my father overcooked it so the fungus dissolved into a gelatinous blob. we had so much scallion thatmy mother made some scallion bread in the afternoon. my sister visited the cafe a few times, on her way back from a last minute supply run. because it was rainy, she didn't bring over esmei. though the bulk of the rain was over by the afternoon, it actually continued rain for the rest of the day into the evening, just an annoying drizzle. by the time i left around 5pm, it was still raining.

once i got home i went over to bruce's place to drop off two flan. he appreciated the ramekins, said jack collects them (one reason being the work "ramekin" is fun to day) and that i might not get them back.

for dinner i made a bagel ham egg cheese sandwich. when i went to use my electric kettle to boil some water, i noticed it wasn't running anymore. i've had this aroma AWK-115S electric kettle for over 13 years now. i totally forgot but i actually bought it used from craig's list for $8, so who knows how old it actually is. it's served me well, and i even repaired it at one point (2016) when it stopped working. i took it apart to look at the inside but i didn't write down how i fixed it last time and i couldn't make too much sense over the electronic guts. so instead i went online and bought a new electric kettle on sale (early black friday) for $20 (amazon). i'll try to tinker with the broken kettle a little bit more, if i can bring it back to life again i'll return the new kettle. i ended up boiling some water with the stovetop kettle, haven't used that in a while.

i waited all day for tonight's basketball game between the bucks and celtics. both teams made serious upgrades to this season's roster, trading good players to get better players. the bucks traded jrue holiday to acquire damian lillard, then jrue holiday got traded to the celtics from the blazers. celtics came out firing, at one point early in the game they lead as much as 20 points. celtics won every quarter except for the 4th, but don't let the final score fool you - 119-116 - boston was very much in command of this game. bucks made it interesting in the final few minutes, but the celtics still had answers and won in the end. here's an interesting stat: boston played just 8 players, and all of them were in double digits except for jrue holiday who only had 5 (but contributed in other ways, like defensively). celtics were so firmly in control that i wasn't even paying attention for much of the game. 76ers also lost today, so now both the bucks and philly are 10-5 while the celtics advance to 12-3. in the east, there are 4 teams tied for second with a 10-5 records: bucks, 76ers, magic, and heat. boston play the magic on friday, a weird weekday afternoon game in orlando.