someone from small appliance called me this morning. it was an unknown number so i didn't pick up, but the person left a voicemail message. apparently the price on the t-fal heating element had gone up. it was no longer $41 but $51 instead. and "to protect ourselves" they no longer accepted credit card but wanted us to send a personal check instead. it was also a final sale (no return) and it'd take up to 2 months to arrive. knowing that a chinese knockoff of the same deep fryer costs just $80, it just wasn't worth it. i'm sure they're legit, but it all seemed really suspicious.
i opened up the old broken heating element assembly to see if i could get any info about the reset switch. it was manufactured by a chinese company called changzhou foland with model number WQS-240N and a rating of 400V 16A 50/60Hz. i managed to find something similar on alibaba.com from a company called heng guan. the part itself doesn't cost too much - $1-5 - but the company only sells in bulk amount with a minimum of 100 units. i don't need 100 i just need one. plus they seem to be out of stock, so even if i managed to somehow order just one, they don't have anymore left. another idea i thought of is to buy a cheap deep fryer of similar specs - temu has a 3.5L model for $42 - and pilfer the working reset element. (much later i managed to find the original manufacturer website for the thermo cut out reset assembly, but no ordering info).
drew texted me around 1:20pm to let me know his plane from pittsburgh just landed at logan airport. i'd already warned him about the red line closure, and how shuttle buses were being used as a temporary substitute. he warned me he had a new look when he arrived, i told him i wasn't sure if i should be excited or scared. he ended up being on the bus in traffic for nearly 2 hours before finally reaching my place. as for the new look, i spotted him on my webcam, wearing a curly blonde richard simmon's wig.
for lunch my mother reheated the leftover sour fish stew from last night and added some rice noodles.
business-wise, it was an average day, busy around lunch time and a little bit in the evening before we closed.
when i got home, i wheeled my bike into the backyard to lock it up and saw drew working from the kitchen. he was not wearing the new look i saw earlier. he was minutes away from a zoom meeting. on the counter was the rent money. i left him alone but not before throwing a frozen pizza in the oven and baking it for half an hour. i ate 4 slices, leaving the rest for drew.
later we did some catching up. one interesting thing drew told me was he was surprised by how early the sun sets here (around 4pm). back home in pittsburgh, because of its more western geography, the sun doesn't set until around 5pm. he also had a nightmare bus ride from boston to cambridge, including a nanny with a toddler who decided to go number 2 on the bus.
drew went to bed around 10pm and planned on waking up at 6am to do some school administration stuff. i adjusted my scheduled heating accordingly. in the background was the cavaliers-celtics game. while talking with drew, i was also watching the game from the corner of my eye. boston managed to defeat the 15-0 undefeated cleveland, though the cavaliers did storm back after being down a large deficit, got close to catching to the celtics, but boston always had an answer. celtics also shot an insane amount of 3's, half of which went in.