i arrived by 10am, we left soon afterwards. my mother - who said she wasn't coming with us - decided to go after all, if nothing else, to make sure we didn't forget anything.
for some reason it was busy at baifu. the last time i came here was before my parents returned home from taiwan/japan. it's been 5 weeks, this was their first time visiting baifu since coming back.
we returned to cambridge by cutting through backbay and kenmore square to get onto storrow drive. we arrived at the cafe around noontime, dropped off the supplies, before returning to belmont. my sister had just left with esmei, after seeing nobody was home.
i made pastrami on rye sandwich. it also gave me a chance to use some of my homemade sauerkraut. i also added some swiss cheese and a layer of hot brown mustard. it was okay, but my mother said she prefers reuben sandwiches instead. i still have two packages of corned beef in my fridge, i might bring it over for next weekend.
my father went to the backyard to clean up our new weber grill some more. he scraped the cookbox and washed the drip tray. i had a better look at the crossover tube: even though it still works, it's pretty corroded so i ended up ordering a new one off of ebay ($14, arriving next week). my father cleaned up the ignitor switch and it started working after we reassembled it back onto the grill. my father discovered we actually had 5 flavorizer bars (weber's special name for what essentially are burner protectors), a pair stacked on top of each other. turns out we had the flavorizers set up wrong, they should sit underneath the stainless steel cooking grates so they not only cover up the burners but much of the drip tray as well. we ran the grill for 10 minutes on preheat to cook off any remaining smells and residue. we plan on buying a slab of memphis ribs from costco tomorrow and giving the grill a test drive. my father has used this weber before, when my sister had a barbecue in her backyard many years ago. i don't think at the time he appreciated all the design elements that went into the grill.
i was trying to talk my mother into taking a walk around the neighborhood. she didn't want to go at first, but finally relented after she managed to talk my father into coming along as well. i just wanted to be outside so i could take photos of the flowering trees. i wanted to walk down to watertown but that was too far so we just meandered through the belmont neighborhood, coming back around the reservoir.
by the time we got back, game 1 of the magic-celtics playoff series was already in progress (started at 3pm). i had it on in the background while i was doing other things. i'd check the score periodically, to make sure the celtics were winning.
i helped my father move all the osmanthus and other plants from the bedroom into the sunroom. the fungus gnat infestation is getting out of hand, my mother complained about breathing in gnats while she was sleeping.
i made gyudon for dinner. i skipped making poached eggs because it was too much of a hassle, but i think gyudon without the egg seems to be missing something.
i biked home after dinner. jeff was around the house today, putting stuff in the basement. he left me some hard cider on my back porch. paul left the step ladder in the alleyway, by my motion sensor floodlight. i think maybe he was trying to figure out why it wasn't working. if he asked me i could've told him: i turned it off because the tarp flapping in the wind was causing the light to turn on and off.
it's been a few days since i last checked my seeds and seedlings. i grabbed the ziploc bags with the luffa and bitter melon seeds. 2 "ebay" luffa seeds had sprouted and 6 luffa seeds from last season's harvest. i also soaked 10 bitter melon seeds that had sprouted but seemed to have dried yet; the soaking seemed to have rejuvenated the seedlings, so i ended up planting those as well. when i checked my other seeds, i noticed some of the kabocha squash have germinated. it was only the 5 "ebay" remainder seeds; none of the 7 seeds i harvested from a sweet kabocha squash purchased from haymarket had germinated. i think there's a pretty good chance they'll never germinate. i remember from last year we soaked those haymarket seeds too long so many of them had already germinated in the water. i ended up sprouting a new batch of kabocha seeds using the wet paper napkin in a covered bowl trick. one bowl has haymarket kabocha seeds, the other bowl has some late season kabocha seeds. it's still early enough that if these new batches don't sprout, i have time to buy seeds online and sprout them. i noticed some thai basils have sprouted, as well as a bunch of tiny foxglove seedlings. the hot peppers have not sprouted yet. the half dozen luffa seeds that i started on wet paper napkins then transplanted into pots all seem to be growing well. so many seeds have sprouted, i ended up putting out the led lights on two more grow closet shelves.