i woke up this morning with a torn hangnail. i don't know how it happened, but i checked my bedsheets for blood but couldn't find any. it hurts something fierce until i put a waterproof bandaid over it.

my mother wants me to make another japanese cheesecake this weekend, so i packed up all my equipment and ingredients in a large box and tied it to the back of my bicycle as i rode to the cafe this morning. i took the bicycle because my motorcycle was parked in a good spot and i didn't want to give it up, with a rainstorm arriving tomorrow night and street cleaning monday and tuesday. besides, the weather was relatively warm (upper 40's), and i haven't biked to belmont since this spring.

i arrived at the cafe around 10:20am. my sister took the day off (told us just yesterday), so my parents had to come to work today. after cooking 5 cups of rice, i took stock of the drink fridge and made several trips down to the basement to refill the inventory. my parents showed up while i was doing that.

my sister ended up showing up around 11:30am with esmei, didn't need to take the entire day off after all, so she was able to work. my parents stuck around, partly because my aunt and matthew showed up unexpectedly at the cafe, partly because they made a batch of chicken curry and needed to wait for it to cool before dividing it into individual containers.

we only had a handful of customers, but many made big orders. a lot of them decided to eat-in, to the point where we had to do some furniture arranging to make more tables and seats and available. today was the most profitable day this week, but 40% of that was based on knitwear sale, as several customers came to buy my mother's handicraft. if we disregarded the non-food sales, today was an average day. a customer actually called asking if they can buy additional taiwanese paocai. i hate customers who ask for substitutions, it makes the order more complicated. so of course i said no, but told him i'd just give him some extra paocai. later when my mother heard what i did, she lamented that i had no head for business. it's not that i don't want to make more profit, it's just that making the paocai is so labor intensive, to have a customer just easily buy a whole container's worth seems unfair. maybe we'll reevaluate paocai sales for next year, i guess i could make more and sell them if there really is a high demand.

i didn't eat anything or drink anything all day. my stomach was grumbling but i'm used to working hungry, saving my appetite for dinner. we closed at 4pm and didn't leave until 4:30pm. i rode the bicycle to belmont, my parents passing me midway.

one reason why i wanted to bike was to try out the newly installed huron avenue bike lane along fresh pond. a part of me thinks it's a great idea, and makes for safer riding; another part of me thinks it's stupid and they made the streets more narrow and dangerous, plus both inbound and outbound cycle tracks are on the same side of the street, so when you're going inbound, you have to "change lanes" a few times to stay on the bike lane. regardless, riding in the cycle track was pretty effortless, especially going outbound.

my mother had already decided she wanted fried chicken tonight in the form of fried thai chicken bones from what da chick. she had a theory that the fried bones would be freshly prepared earlier in the weekend that waiting until monday. so we made an order online and my father and i left to go pick it up. my mother was excited to be eating thai chicken rice again, but she saw the fried chicken and realized they were refried chickens.

my father told me the aolithium battery finally gave out this morning. he'd been running the 12v car refrigerator off the battery for 6-1/2 days. our old DIY LiFePO4 batteries we could only ever get 2 days of battery life off of them, even though they're all rated 100Ah. however we never ran our old batteries down to 0%, which we read harms the battery and reduces overall battery life. but aolithium actually encourages customers to run the battery down to zero, and that may actually be the more practical way to use these batteries. when my father tried to recharge the aolithium with the taiwanese-purchased car battery charger (with LiFePO4 functionality), it wouldn't charge. he was afraid the battery might be damaged, but when we found our variable DC power supply, we were able to charge with that. apparently the car charger won't charge the battery if the voltage is too low. my father planned on charging the battery with the DC power supply for a little bit before switching to the car charger which has smart charging.

i left belmont around 7pm. back on the huron avenue cycle track, having to change which side of the street i was riding a few times wasn't as big a deal as i thought. maybe because there wasn't a lot of traffic, i might think otherwise if i had to wait for cars. my feeling still stands though: the way the cycle tracks is currently designed, it's more dangerous riding inbound due to the lane changes. i look forward to some future bike-car accidents before cambridge spent more tax dollars to redo the cycle tracks.

i changed my waterproof bandaid when i got home. i changed it already twice at work, because i kept getting my finger wet, and when water gets on the hangnail wound, it really hurts. i changed the bandaid so i could shower and at first it was okay, but water still managed to seep underneath the bandaid so it started hurting again and i ended up taking it off.

alex sent me a christmas present from tokyo: a singing sanrio christmas card and a set of samurai-themed chopsticks. the package actually arrived yesterday, but i only saw it this morning. the sanrio card is especially creative. it sings an electronic christmas tune and flashes some lights when you press a button, which is already pretty cool. but press the button again, and it actually plays a different christmas song, at least 10 different tunes. japan has all the coolest stuff!

i caught a few NBA games. nothing of any importance, i was rooting against teams that might challenge the celtics' standings. i did watch the end of the pacers-timberwolves game. i thought indiana was losing until i saw they had the lead. what surprised me was they were without some starters, including haliburton. but they could only sustain their offense for so long before minnesota exerted its dominance and won the game in the end, 127-109. i also caught the nets-warriors game, tied in the final few minutes. golden state won that with some inspired shooting, 124-120.