i was surprised that my parents were already at the cafe, getting a head start on making a fresh batch of beef noodle soup. i tuned to MSNBC intermittently throughout the day, even though the real coverage wouldn't start until the evening, when polls close.
we got two ubereats orders early in the morning. that's usually a sign that we'll be busy, as customers are already thinking about food so early. sure enough, the period between 11am to 1pm we were completely swamped with orders. for some reason fried rice was one of the most popular item, like the zeitgeist all had a craving for fried rice. i don't even think our fried rice is anything special, compared to an authentic chinese restaurant that prepare it in a wok. but we have a customer base that seems to love it.
michael called in the afternoon, said he was having an issue with his computer where he couldn't display his contacts. around 2pm when we had a lull in business, i biked down to his store to see what happened. his outlook database had a crash and couldn't be recovered. after we ran the inbox repair tool, outlook wouldn't even open after that. after manually making a copy of his corrupted files, i had no choice but revert to his last backup, which was back in june. things worked after that, but 5 months worth of customers' data was missing. i spent nearly 2 hours fixing the problem, finally leaving by 4pm. any later and it'd be dark and i didn't bring my lights. my original plan was also to visit trader joe's to get a few things, but i didn't have time, went directly back to the cafe.
i was afraid it'd be busy when i was gone and my parents would be swamped with orders, but luckily it was very quiet during my absence. during that time my parents managed to roast some charsiu pork, start a batch of boba pearls, and fry two boxes of salt & pepper chicken. my father told me the deep fryer was starting to malfunction. he had to jostle the heating element to get it to work. the issue was the fryer would stop heating before it reached the desired temperature. we tested it again, it started heating up, but turned off before it reached temperature. even when we turned it up, it wouldn't heat, and in fact the heating element seemed completely dead. t-fal doesn't seem sell replacement heating elements (not in the US anyway). i'll try calling them tomorrow to figure out a solution. in the meantime my father asked me to order another t-fal ultimate EZ clean deep fryer ($118). even though the one we had broke, in the year since we've had it, it worked very well.
we picked up some more business beginning at 5pm. our last customers didn't leave until closing time. my mother roasted some lamb earlier and packed me some for dinner while my parents at the cafe before going home. i didn't get back home until after 7pm.
i ate dinner immediately, while it was still warm, parked myself in front of the tv watching MSNBC live election coverage. as the evening progressed, results were coming in. everything seemed overwhelming in favor of trump. there was no good news for harris. iowa, a state that recently polled in favor of harris, instead went to trump. trump won his first battleground state of north carolina, with georgia a very possible second. of the remaining swing states, all of them leaned republican. it felt like 2016 all over again. i started to get that queasy feeling. at some point i turned of the tv. everything was either too close to call or too early to call. all those hopeful signs that harris would sweep seemed wishful thinking in retrospect. the michael moore prediction, the stories i read of republicans voting for harris, none of it might matter now. pennsylvania is the big prize. whichever candidate wins that state will probably take the whole thing. with 89% reporting, harris is still trailing trump by 3% or about 80,000 votes in that state. i hear democrats talking about the red mirage before the blue wave. the last glimmer of hope i suppose.
i'm not staying up to watch anymore. going to bed and pretend this whole thing never happened.