my parents came to pick me up at 10am this morning for a supply run. it was also a chance to give them the japanese cheesecake i made last night. today's agenda was restaurant depot (RD), chelsea market basket (MB), and bianco & sons sausage (B&SS). no costco on this trip, which saved us some time. at RD we got a case of brown eggs. at MB my father basically emptied the pork butt section. at B&SS we got three boxes of chinese sausages. coming back, we stopped at the somerville market basket to get some bean sprouts and roast pork powder (neither of those they had at the flagship chelsea store for some reason). my parents dropped me off back at my place around noontime before they continued to the cafe. i joined a bit later after using the bathroom.

around 1pm we were all in belmont. i got there first and started raking the wet leaves on the front lawn. i spotted a hammerhead worm on the front walk and went inside to get a container of salt to drop the worm into. it wasn't because i was a sadist; hammerhead worms are invasive and can produce by cutting, so all parts must be destroyed otherwise they continue to live. i read something online that said these worms are essentially immortal.

my mother made wonton soup for lunch. that's when my sister dropped by. she said esmei was sleeping in the car so we went outside to see her which woke her up so we decided to bring her inside the house. my mother gave esmei some japanese cheesecake, which my sister later said she wasn't allowed to eat because it has sugar. esmei was pretty tired and fell asleep on the kitchen floor. my sister ended up taking her home. i finished my wonton soup.

my spider farmer SF1000D full spectrum grow light arrived yesterday. i went down to the basement grow room to replace one of the existing plurple led grow light with this new one. it has a very simple design, just a bunch of led's mounted to a metal plate, with a metal heatsink covered driver. there's no on/off switch, no fan. it doesn't look like much, but turn it on and it's amazingly bright. feels like if all the current lights in the grow room were to be combined, they'd equal the light output from the SF1000D. what's even more amazing is that it only uses 100W. our purple grow lights when turned completely (both vegetative and flowering lights) can use up to 240W. i ended up replacing the plurple light above the two belle of india jasmines. i moved it more towards the center of the grow room so it also shines on some nearby plants including a large tray of pileas. the white full spectrum light not only seems brighter, but it's easier on the eyes too, and makes spotting pests and diseases a lot easier. i should've upgraded earlier. next season i'll replace the other plurple grow light with another spider farm full spectrum. the SF1000D is so bright that it makes our formerly white-looking led strip lights seem purplish by comparison.

since i was down there, i decided to water all the plants with Bti-infused water i'd prepared from last weekend. the water was cloudy which was a good sign that it was full of beneficial fungus gnat-killing Bti bacteria. i started with the smaller plants - pileas, prayer plants, spiderworts, jade plant, pennyworts. good news about my pennywort: that one potted pennywort that i accidentally killed because i didn't water it enough, well, it's sprung back to life, sending out tiny new pennywort leaves. pennyworts are essentially a weed, it's very hard to kill them. next i watered the orchids. 3 of our orchids are already developing flower spikes. finally i moved up to the larger potted plants, the jasmines and gardenia. i also took the two mealybug-infected orchid and pilea (growing above the laundry sink) outside and sprayed them thoroughly with neem oil before watering them.

i also set out some yellow sticky traps to capture any flying insects, but mostly as an alert to tell me if i have a fungus gnat issue.

by then my father came down to inspect the grow room. he pruned the dead leaves from our water reed plant. i finished my indoor gardening duty by filling up the bucket with fresh rain water from the outside barrel, so they'll be ready for next time.

earlier i baked a new batch of hazelnuts in the toaster oven. i set the tray higher this time, so they didn't get scorched and tasted a lot better. i also ate an almond pastry my mother had baked.

i helped my father call his bank to reactivate his online account. for some reason CT makes it very hard for business customers. it does it under the auspice of higher security, but it creates a lot of headaches. for example, every 6 months it forces you to create a new password. i've made more than a dozen passwords, so many i can't remember which one i used. also for some reason online account access will purposely break, forcing you to call customer support and having to prove your identity before they'll reset the password.

later in the afternoon our ryobi brushless impact driver kit arrived. it was smaller than i'd imagined. the model of driver was the PSBID01, with 1700in-lbs of torque and an RPM of up to 2900. i was glad it came with variable speed trigger. the lithium batteries are a new design with built-in battery life indicator led's, something our old ryobi lithium battery doesn't have. the charger that came with the kit will only charge lithium batteries; we tried an older NiMH battery and it wouldn't charge.

for dinner we had this beef stew my parents had been simmering for a while. my mother packed my sister's godmother a bento box, as my father was going to go pick her up from the airport around 8pm, and she might be hungry when she got back. before i left, i had a slice of my japanese cheesecake. it was slightly hard but after i warmed it up in the microwave for 30 seconds, it was soft again. definitely very egg, i think i'll get it right the next time i make up.

i got back home a bit before 7:30pm. after a quick shower i settled in to watch the IST game between the celtics and pacers. celtics was without porzingis (still nursing a calf injury), while pacers had superstar haliburton, who didn't play in that 50+ points celtics blowout victory the last time the two teams played. celtics lost 122-112. since it's an elimination game, boston is out of the IST. it was a close game until the 3rd quarter, when the pacers outscored the celtics 37-23. celtics came back to tie it, but the momentum was in indiana's favor (they were playing at home too), and boston just ran out of time. now that the celtics are out of the IST, i hate the IST again. the loss also means the celtics are now 15-5 for the season and are no longer the best team in the NBA: that distinction goes to the 15-4 timberwolves (they don't play until wednesday, versus the hapless spurs).