i woke up at 9:30am this morning. after a shower, i had some granola with yogurt for breakfast. i left the house by 11:30am to clear the snow off the solar panels at my parents' house. it snowed a little bit last night, but of course my upstairs neighbors didn't do any shoveling. i went in search of my shovel but couldn't find it so had to use the backup shovel instead. when i finally finished and left, i saw the missing shovel used as a space saver in an empty parking space. we don't do space spacers here. unless you're entitled like my upstairs neighbors. another neighbor a few houses down has bothered to shovel his sidewalk. somebody had thrown a shovel onto his porch to remind him of his civic obligations.

i got to harvard station, cutting through the science building in the process. according to the digital schedule board, the next bus wasn't until another 11 minutes. but it arrived early and i only had to wait a few minutes. there were only a handful of people on the bus. two young men climbed in the back. an older chinese woman wearing a face mask sat across from me (i knew she was chinese because i overheard a phone conversation she had to someone telling them they were almost home). also across from me was an old black lady with glasses who sat facing the back of the bus, her thin legs underneath the armrest, feasting on a burrito. due to the ongoing mt.auburn street condo demolition, the route took a detour through brattle street. when i got dropped off in belmont, the sidewalks were mostly cleared, but i did have to step out onto the street a few times to avoid spots where the neighbors didn't shovel.

first thing i did when i got to belmont was to use the bathroom. i then went outside and went to work. my father didn't shovel the backyard steps so i had to do that first. he normally clears out a path through the backyard, but snowblower got a flat tire so he never finished, just made it as far as the first raised bed. i got my drone and sent it into the air to survey the roof. there was some clearing on the top right corner, courtesy of the strong northeasterly winds. in fact, there was hardly any snow on the northern-facing roof.

i started clearing from the right side, by the sunroom entrance, above the dining room. i tapped the snow with the roof rake, it felt like a solid piece of ice. if it was all frozen, there was nothing i could do. i gave the snow pile a hard tap, and realized the icy part is just on the surface with softer snow underneath. as long as i can get through the icy crust, i should be able to clear the snow.

so i managed to rake off the ice crust and snow, but there was still a layer of snow-covered ice on the panels i couldn't remove. i'll just have to rely on the power of the sun to heat up the exposed solar panel surfaces and melt the snow.

i moved onto the sunroom. from the ground level i first used the extended roof rake to clear off the edges. i then climbed a ladder and used the roof rake to pull and push off the snow. i could only reach the lower half, and just like before, there was a snow-covered ice layer i couldn't scrape off. while up on the ladder, i smelled something fragrant, like someone was cooking indian food. i wonder if it's the indian couple that lives a few houses down?

i finally moved to the left side of the house, above the basement door. because i adjusted some of the wooden planks above that entrance, there was no snow in the stairwell. i climbed the platform ladder and used the extended roof rake to clear the snow. this was the easiest section, with the pitched roof, all i had to do was break off a piece of the snow and it'd just slide down by itself. i was about a third done when i heard a voice in the backyard. it was my father who came home to see what i was up to. he called me earlier this morning before i left, warned me not to climb up to the roof. i said i wouldn't, but i was going to anyway. now that he was here, it gave me even more impetus to climb the roof and clear some of the snow by shoveling it directly.

i cleared the remaining panels on the main roof before working on the sunroom roof. my father was down below using the extended roof rake to clear the remaining snow on the panels on the left side of the house. i managed to clear a bunch of sunroom panels completely, but a little more than half was still covered in that snow-covered ice i couldn't remove. i'm sure if i worked at it some more i could clear it off completely, but i'd already been clearing the snow for 2 hours and was starting to get tired. the forecast for the next few days will be warm and sunny anyway (friday might actually hit 50 degrees), so there will be plenty of melting. i climbed off the roof and called it a day.

my father has been tinkering with the hybrid hot water heating schedule. the default temperature is 120 degrees, but during the day when we have surplus electricity from the solar panel and when nobody is home, he sets it to 130 degrees. that way at night the water heater can just operate from the residual overheating. but 130 degrees is pretty hot. you can get third degrees burns from a 30 second exposure to 130 degrees water. so i tested the water in belmont today, just to see how hot it gets in the afternoon. 130 degrees might as well be boiling water because i could barely touch it without flinching. so the heating schedule might need to be adjusted.

the last thing i did was to fly the drone one last time, this time to survey my work. my father was going to give me a ride home. i went to the garage and grabbed my box of hyacinth bulbs. i got these for forcing, they've been chilled long enough. i took a peek inside the box, a few of the bulbs were already sprouting.

leaving the house, we saw an older indian man shoveling in front of the indian couple's house. my father said the parents were visiting, which reminded me of the indian food smell i noticed earlier. maybe they're making some home-cooked meals.

everywhere were signs of melting. puddles in the street, shrinking snow piles, buried cars emerging from the snow. the city was also doing its part continuing to clear the roads, especially commercial drags.

i got back home by 3:30pm. i didn't even bother changing out of my clothes. everything i was wearing today was either synthetic or wool, and everything had already dried. i noticed i managed to crack the tempered glass screen protector on my phone. i replaced it just last month. i've cracked a bunch of screen protectors while clearing snow from the roof because i have my phone in my pocket and i'm leaning up against the ladder. it gave me a chance to try the screens i got from aliexpress. there was a reason why they were so cheap: they're not the right size! they're slightly smaller than my usual screen protector. i put it on anyway, then went to amazon and ordered a few correctly-sized versions.

feeling hungry, i baked a dozen or so fish sticks in the oven. i made a larger batch of tartar sauce this time, but still managed to finish it all.

i played a few hours of cyberpunk. i'm currently doing the mission where i help judy exact revenge on the people who killed evelyn. i finished the "killing in the name" quest where i followed the location of a bunch of routers which led me to a false fortune telling machine in pacifica. that was a weird mission, but gave me a lot of practice driving since many of the locations were pretty remote. stealing cars for el capitan also gives me driving practice. often times i'm under attack from the people i stole the car from, and the stolen car gets pretty beat up, but el capitan is always happy with the delivery regardless of condition.

for dinner i made another chicken caesar salad. i didn't get diarrhea this time, so it wasn't the chicken salad that made me ill last night. afterwards i had some blood orange.

i ordered a few more things from aliexpress: bike wheel reflectors (the plastic screws on mine broke when i removed the old reflectors from my bike wheel), autosensing tail light, stainless steel #10-31 1/2" screws (cheaper than home depot), M5 locknuts (to secure the new tail light bracket), screw hole nylon cable ties (for tying the condensate hose to the ceiling), gopro tripod mount adapters (mine broke), bottle cage (replacement), and a wifi temperature sensor with LCD display (for the hybrid water heater).

i transferred some gopro videos onto an external hard drive. just 50GB of video took forever to copy. when i went to batch adjust the creation dates, that also took a while.

yesterday felt like a week, something about a blizzard makes the time go slower. the only way to get to the cafe is to walk. i left around 8:30am. for the most part sidewalks were cleared, but every once in a while i'd come across a house that didn't bother to shovel, the snow already trampled by foot traffic. my most challenging obstacle wasn't the snow but rather a group of large turkeys blocking my path at one point. i shooed them away which seemed to work, showing no fear, asserting my dominance.

i made it to the cafe around 9am. the next door bakery and hair studio were both closed. no sooner had i dropped off my bag that i was back outside shoveling snow. the snow clearing company we hired plowed the parking lot, but they did a rough job. they buried the trash cans and they clear out the basement stairwell. they also left a mound of snow against the side of the building. i spent an hour digging everything out, removing layers as i went, until i was finally just in my pullover.

my mother made some jiuniang soup when i came back inside along with some homemade glutinous rice balls.

my sister showed up in the late morning, to supervise the snow removal crew, to walk esmei, and to retrieve her car from the alewife parking garage. earlier i made steps in the giant snowbank so esmei could climb over it. the snow might've been too soft because she didn't make it to the top.

we didn't know what to expect in terms of business, but around noontime we got super busy. it only lasted for that hour, then went back to being slow. a lot of bento orders, nearly exhausted our supply of tea eggs, and i almost made a new batch.

i left around 3:30pm via car to market basket. originally it was just to pick up a few things (bean sprouts, pho noodles), but my mother kept adding to my grocery list until i nearly had 30 items. i was afraid i'd forget something. this was the kind of list we made for a weekend supply run, not a quick visit on a weekday afternoon. i took with me two bags of glass jars and aluminum cans for recycling but the machines would only take the pepsi cans and nothing else, despite all these drinks purchased from MB. instead of throwing them out, i put them back inside the car. while grabbing an empty shopping cart, i found one that a customer had forgotten and left a case of mini ginger ale. i put that inside the car before finally making it inside the supermarket.

i had so many things to get i needed a shopping cart (i usually just use a handheld basket). i managed to get everything from my grocery list. when i went to go pay, i realized i forgot the chinese sausages and potatoes. so after i finished paying, i put everything inside the car before coming back to buy the handful of things i forgot.

i didn't make it back to the cafe until 4:30pm, an hour later. my sister came by with esmei. this time we managed to get her to climb the giant snow pile by coaxing her with dog treats. put a treat at the very top of the mound was enough incentive for esmei to climb the snow bank. it's so tall we can't see over it, while esmei disappeared for a time.

i cooked some italian sausages with fennel in the air fryer (350 degrees 25 minutes). it was so good i ate two, leaving the rest for my parents.

the rest of the day ended pretty quickly. sunset wasn't until 5:30pm, dusk around 6pm, as each day we get more daylight. my parents were talking about the coyote they spotted outside the house on saturday. we managed to capture it on webcam. a neighbor's dog was barking incessantly, until you see a coyote lurking along the side of a neighbor's house. it didn't seem very afraid, and just casually walked away.

my parents forgot i walked to the cafe this morning and insisted on giving me a ride. i opted to walk, road conditions to my house and back are not that great, especially on the smaller side roads. two way streets become one way streets, as snow banks cause the roads to shrink.

it made it home by 7pm. after a shower, i made some modified chicken caesar salad. later i had a few bouts of diarrhea. was it the chicken? the creamy caesar dressing? the salad? whatever it was, it made my butt very angry.

i wasn't planning on it but ended up watching trump's state of the union address, or at least had it in the background while i played cyberpunk. it was a rambling diatribe of lies that lasted for nearly 2 hours.

when i woke up this morning to check out how snow we got overnight, i couldn't see out my living room windows as they were all covered up with snow. all the local channels had round-the-clock blizzard coverage. WCVB (5) is my jam, but i also checked out some of the other networks. on WBZ (4) a field reporter out by the coast saw a mouse that was being buffeted by the winds and went to go pick it up. he moved the mouse to a bush, but the wind blew it away like a piece of leaf. the reporter himself fell a few times from the wind.

a snowstorm like this needed to be shoveled in parts. i got dressed and went outside by 9:40am to do my first act of shoveling. i had on my waterproof winter outfit - fleece hoodie underneath a rain jacket and rain pants over rubber boots. it wasn't cold enough to warrant wool mittens so i just had on some thick winter gloves. i wore my gopro camera on my head to take a time warp video.

the blizzard of 2026 is notable for its winds, strong enough to carve out strange geometric shapes in the snow. there were also snow drifts, so some spots barely had any snow, but other areas were up to 2 feet. i seemed to be the only one out shoveling, though it looked like don had shoveled his sidewalk at some point though it was already covered in fresh snow.

i started by shoveling a path into the backyard. snow drift had piled a bunch of snow behind the alleyway door so it was hard to open. the snow was heavier than the the storm a few weeks ago, but not too bad. wet snow holds together better so easier to clear in some ways, just slightly heavier. i couldn't tell just how much snow already fell. in a quiet place i measured about 6 inches, but elsewhere in the backyard the snow drift piled up to 1-1/2 feet. i cleared out a spot for my bicycle and cleared out the area around my furnace vent so it wouldn't automatically shut off because it can't get enough oxygen.

i only got about half way before i turned around and started shoveling the sidewalk. one problem was where to put all this snow. fortunately i live in between two large snow piles. it still involved a little bit of walking with each shovelful, but i didn't have to dump it in my backyard like i was doing during the last snowstorm. the door acted like a natural wind break when i was shoveling the alley way; but out on the sidewalk i was totally exposed, and whenever there was a strong breeze, i turned my back to the northeast so i wouldn't get a face full of snow. the shovel at times acted like a wind sail. i discovered if i held the handle to my chest, i could use it to brace myself whenever the winds came.

once the sidewalk was done, i cleared out a path out onto the street. the snow i cleared here i moved across the street to another large snow pile. once that was done, i went back and finished clearing the path into the backyard. where were my neighbors? this is the second large snowstorm this winter where i essentially did all the shoveling. i noticed some tree branches had fallen on top of their car.

it took me about an hour before i finished and came inside. it felt longer than that though, i was basically working out non-stop for an hour. i'll probably feel some aches in my back tomorrow morning, maybe also my right wrist.

i used the bathroom then took a shower. i then made lunch: scrambled eggs with feta chese, pan-fried kielbasa, and chocolate milk. this was my reward after all that shoveling. i parked in front of the television and watched more storm coverage. i was happy to see that market basket decided to close all their stores by noontime. i was most worried about all those supermarket workers; owners should've closed for the day so the employees wouldn't have to come early to work only to leave a few hours later. the south shore was getting hammered, with some places getting almost 3ft of snow. i used a plastic spatula to scrape off some of the ice on my window so i could look outside.

after lunch i played some cyberpunk. i finished the mission where the samurai gets back together with former bandmates to play one last concert. while i was wandering the city waiting for nightfall for the performance to start, i ended up renting a crappy apartment. i thought all the apartments you can get would be better than the default unit, but apparently i was wrong. i've accumulated so much money in-game, i can afford to get a more luxurious place. i mainly use apartments to dump my stash and change my outfits.

i saw my upstairs neighbors finally coming out of the house. not to shovel, but to dig out their car. i was tempted to go outside and put them on a guilt trip but wasn't worth my time. checking the webcams, i saw my father going out and clearing the snow in the afternoon. he pushed the 2-stage snowblower from the garage and made quick work of the driveway and sidewalk.

i went out for my second shoveling around 4:30pm. by then the snow and the wind were tapering off. a lot of neighbors were clearing their sidewalks and digging out their cars. i bumped into don, who told me this was his fourth shoveling of the day. 2-3" had fallen since the last time i shoveled, but hard to gauge a total snowfall due to wind drifts. later i think i read online that a little over a foot of snow fell in cambridge. this time around it only took me half an hour to clear the backyard path, the sidewalk, and a path out to the street.

back inside the house, i did a load of laundry. i was also supposed to organize some accounting data in sheets for the cafe, but couldn't get myself to do it. instead i watched a bunch of youtube videos and snacked on some pita chip pretzels. i had a few glasses of black tea to keep me warm.

dinner came in the form of frozen fish sticks. i had a craving since last week and bought a bunch on wednesday. while they were baking in the oven, i made some tartar sauce: mayonnaise, relish, lemon juice. can't remember the last time i had fish sticks. takes me back to elementary school meals and childhood frozen tv dinners. afterwards i had some blood oranges.

i eventually did get around to importing some data into sheets. i'm still missing a few banking/credit card transaction numbers that i wasn't able to get due to security verification code that required my father's phone; i'll take the laptop to work tomorrow and hopefully collect all the data i need there. i'm expecting it to be a slow work day tomorrow. i believe the schools and city offices are still closed.

first thing i did this morning was to check for olympics update. i was dismayed to see that eileen gu won gold for women's halfpipe freestyle, but i supposed it was inevitable. say what you will about her, but she's really good in freestyle skiing. her follow countrywoman li fanghui won silver while british zoe atkin won bronze. atkin is a mirror image of gu: biracial (father british, mother malaysian-chinese), dual citizen (UK, US), grew up in the US (doesn't even have a british accent), goes to school at stanford. they even look like (though gu is taller). yet nobody calls out atkin for competing for the UK instead of the US, though the UK allows dual citizenship just like the US.

when i finally got out of bed, i watched the US-canadian hockey game in the bathroom before taking a shower. i watched the end on television, when the game went into overtime. here's an olympic hockey rule i didn't know: while it's still sudden death, it's 3 players versus 3 players, not including the goalkeepers. why do they do that? is it just to make the game go faster? canada got the puck first but wasn't able to score. when the US got the puck, they managed to score immediately, winning the gold. it happened so quickly it almost didn't seem real. canada will now go on suicide watch. our northern neighbors return home with just 5 gold: men's dual moguls freestyle skiing, women's big air freestyle skiing, women's team pursuit, men's 500m short track speed skating, and men's curling.

i moved my boxed christmas lights and furnace filters down into the basement. i also moved my trek utility bike before taking out my ebike for the ride to belmont. i installed the new tail light bracket. i stopped by the cafe to put away the tea eggs and leftover rice. i was going to shovel some of the snow pile but it was frozen solid and needed a heavy spade to break it apart. not that it'd make any difference, since 2ft of heavy wet snow will be waiting for us tomorrow.

i refilled the birdfeeder when i got to my parents' place. the suet feeder had dropped to the ground, its cover open, the two suet cakes gone. with no more suet cakes left, i temporarily brought in that feeder. while checking to see how much snow there was on the solar panels (not worth cleaning, grey day, plus it'll all be covered up in snow by tomorrow anyway), i noticed the quince bush had been entirely stripped bare of its bark by rabbits.

i came back inside for lunch. my mother made some scrambled eggs with hunter sausage, and a mug of instant matcha latte.

i got a chance to go down to the basement to see the new hybrid hot water heater. my father set up a bucket to catch any condensate but it's so dry during the winter the hot water heater doesn't make any condensation (more of a summer thing). i saw the corrosion inside the pipe fitting of the old water heater. i didn't realize that it's actually kind of old, manufactured november 2015, so already 10 years old. it would probably work for a few more years with diminished productivity, it's a good thing we're replacing it. the old unit had an estimated annual energy cost of $555 while the new hybrid hot water heater has an annual cost of $117. so the unit will pay for itself after a few years.

after finding a short screw, i fixed the cheap easel and put on one of the 100W solar panels. i reset the screws on my tail light bracket, dribbling some blue loctite on the screw threads to prevent them from working themselves loose again. finally i went down to the basement steps and shoveled out all the snow.

my gnatrol powder arrived a few days ago but i don't plan on watering with it until next weekend. i'm giving the houseplants some more time to dry out before i'll do a thorough soil drench with this concentrated Bti. i ended up only watering the orchids and pennyworts.

i ordered a condensate pump for the hybrid hot water heater (little giant VCMA-15UL $43). it's currently not producing any condensation because it's simply too dry in the basement, but better to get one anyway one for the eventuality. i have a similar pump for my own forced air furnace so i know how thet work. we also went down to the basement and measured the distance (40-50ft) from the hot water heater to the basement sink, where we'll drain the water. i bought a 50ft length of 3/8" ID 1/2" OD clear food-grade vinyl tubing ($14).

my father took my mother to the nail salon in the late afternoon. while they were gone, i made a batch of popcorn. my father came back and started making some braised fish for dinner. before he could leave to go pick up my mother after i reminded him, my mother had already walked back home.

we had dinner early, around 5pm. beside the fish (not my favorite) there was also some asparagus. i returned home around 6pm, putting the ebike away in the basement.

after a shower, it was back to cyberpunk. tried to steal a car for a gig (failed), tested out some weapons on gang members, took some photos. since i'll be home all day tomorrow, there'll be plenty more time for cyberpunk when i'm not outside shoveling snow.

my mother called me at 9:30am to let me know they'd already finished their supply run to costco. since they were heading back to the cafe, she said they could give me a ride. i opted to get to work on my own. i had to do a bit of shoveling first before i left, clearing the sidewalk. about an inch worth of wet heavy snow fell overnight. i didn't have time to clear a path into the backyard before i left via bike. the roads were mostly clear, just a few slushy patches that i was able to simply ride through with the bike.

when i arrived at the cafe, my mother was putting away the supplies they'd bought while my father went to go pick up my 2nd aunt. besides costco, they also went to bianco & sons to get some chinese sausages followed by aldi's. they said because they went so early, there was hardly any traffic and the stores weren't too busy yet.

i asked my father about the heat pump hot water heater, less than 24 hours later. was the basement cold? he couldn't tell if it was because of the water heater because he left the basement door open to run a length of garden hose to drain the old hot water tank. was it noisy? he said he couldn't hear it from upstairs, and even if we put it near where he originally wanted it - by the washer and dryer - closer to the bedrooms - he said he still wouldn't be able to hear it from upstairs. he had it in energy saving mode yesterday but switched to heat pump only mode, which saves the most electricity though at the expense of fast hot water heating. he'll have to do some trial and error to find the optimal hot water heating setting. he also increased the hot water temperature to 120 degrees, which is the recommended value, not yet hot enough to be scalding.

the latest forecast for the monday snowstorm now seems like the worst case scenario: 16-24" in the boston area. just a few days ago they were saying the storm might blow out to sea, but now it looks like this one might be worse than the snowstorm we had a few weeks ago that also dumped 2ft of snow. that was a dry powdery snow with little wind; the monday storm will be wet and heavy combined with strong winds.

i made a new batch of tea eggs. i was going to do it yesterday, but we still had a lot and i was afraid this new batch wouldn't get used until thursday. so i waited a day - today - to make the batch, so it wouldn't sit too long. despite letting the eggs come to room temperature first, one of them still cracked and leaked out of the shell. i also roasted a batch of charsiu pork. my father marinated a bunch of chicken thighs we'd been defrosting in the fridge for the past few days.

not a lot of business today. just a smattering around our usual early afternoon brunch period, quiet the rest of the time. my mother steamed and pan-fried a bunch of soup dumplings she bought from costco. i also had some turkey broth soup with daikon radish, dressed up with some rice, white ground pepper, scallions, and pickled mustard.

renee replied to my e-mail today. she said she'd speak with the installers to see if they have any answers to dampen the heat pump compressor noises. she also told me that some people enjoy a bit of white noise for sleeping, which i thought was pure bullshit.

i showed my 2nd aunt how to make sure she was using the right source of payment when she makes a weee order, and how to get rid of the automatically added $7 tip. i also helped her set up auto-payment on her electricity bill. for some reason she doesn't trust eversource for the longest time. for a while she thought they were scamming her and complained incessantly about her bill. but more than a year later, her monthly bill has stabilized, so now she's opting for the convenience of auto-payment. she also asked me to order her some checks, she first asked me 2 weeks ago but i totally forgot.

because it was still daylight when we closed, i biked home the shorter way, riding the wrong way down one way streets. my route was cut short however when a car suddenly appeared, and i ended up taking the long (legal) way home.

when i got back, i totally forgot that the figure skating gala was happening right now. i quickly turned to it and managed to catch the final hour while i opened up my new macbook pro and played some cyberpunk.

i was exploring dogtown today, which is a part of the phantom liberty expansion. i've been avoiding this region of the map because i wanted to play original cyberpunk first. but i've ran out of gigs and missions, so now i'm branching into dogtown. the place feels dangerous, with no police presence, but just the various layers of militia patrols. voodoo boys gang members seem to have a truce with the barghest guards, the two groups existing side by side. i found my first airdrop today, had to fight off a horde of gang members first. i ended up finding two more drops, once was just on the roof of an empty building, another time i was fighting off enough highly skilled enemies that i was starting to worry they might actually get me killed. i found the "legs holding ball in the air" statue that's in the loading screen. the statue is called "mysterium" by elle & marc rolloos 2066-2067. in the "treating symptoms" gig, i got locked in a room with a bunch of killer R Mk.2 robots. i thought i was going to get killed, until i managed to kill the boss robot (glowing yellow when i scanned it) causing all the other robots to self-destruct.

i took a break around 8pm to get something to eat. i ended up having a bowl of instant noodles my parents picked up from japan, toyama black ramen (soy sauce based). it even came with a wafer of mystery meat. it was okay, tastier than your typical american ramen, the noodles were a little hard.

i played some more cyberpunk, but mostly to take photos. i stopped to go take a shower before going to bed.

i bolted out of bed last night, unable to sleep because of the heat pump compressor noise. in the dark i opened up my laptop and wrote an e-mail to renee explaining the grief that her heat pump has been causing me the past few months. that made me feel better and i was finally able to fall asleep.

a bit of good news this morning: the supreme court struck down trump's tariffs in a 6-3 vote. of course trump will find some other illegal way to circumvent the court's ruling, but it's a glimmer of hope that the conservatively-stacked supreme court isn't just a rubber stamp for the administration (which it seems to be so far).

two snowstorms will hit us over the next few days. one will start today, giving us 1-3" of snow. the other one's scheduled for monday will give us 6-10" of snow, a proper nor'easter. i went outside and covered up my bike seat with a plastic bag to keep it dry for the ride home. of course we originally planned on doing a supply run on monday, but with the snow, it looks like we aren't going anywhere. instead my parents will do a quick supply run tomorrow before we open the cafe in the late morning.

my parents made hand-drawn noodles for breakfast. we ate them with some zhajiang noodle sauce and cucumber slices. my aunt showed up in the late morning. "what's there to eat?" she asked. my parents made her a bowl of jiuniang soup. the jiuniang is now slightly carbonated, which means the yeast is converting the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide. keeping them in the fridge will hopefully slow down the process. my aunt left soon afterwards with a jar of jiuniang, some dill dumplings, and a frozen package of homemade chunbing.

two semi-final men's hockey game happened today: canada vs finland, and US vs slovakia. canada was uncharacteristically down 0-2. they had to mount a comeback, scoring their final goal 3-2 with just 30 seconds left in the game, to win it. what surprises me about the canadian team is they're so stacked with talent, yet they've struggled throughout the tournament. they should be destroying their opponents, yet they've only won by the slimmest of margins, including an overtime win their last game. maybe they've been unlucky to be matched up with some really strong opponents. the US on the other hand made quick work of slovakia winning it in 6-2. it really wasn't even that close, slovakia scored in garbage time when it was all but certain the US would be advancing. so now the stage is set for a canada-US final sunday morning. i'm actually rooting for canada. that whole country would be devastated if they lost in the only winter sports they're good at. the canadian women's hockey team already lost to the US yesterday, taking home the silver. i don't know if they could handle another loss. have put the whole country on suicide watch if that happens.

today was the busiest day this month. we were busy around noontime before we had a lull, then a family group came in during 2pm making a big order. not only that, they also bought a trio of hats from my mother. after that we weren't so busy. the snow already falling by late morning and seems like people were more likely heading home to hunker down than eating about getting a bite to eat. also typically end of the day friday we don't get too many customers.

my father finally got in touch yesterday with xiaowu our HVAC guy. he called back today, said he'd meet my father at the house at 2:45pm. maybe it was just a consultation, but knowing xiaowu, he was probably going to install our hybrid hot water heater while he was there. so my father left for belmont. he came back around 4pm, told us the new water heater had been installed.

it's been a long journey. we first bought the heater back in may, when my father was worried about possible tariffs, so we bought one while the price was low. it took a month to arrive (june) because the package got lost so we had to order a new one. it then sat in the garage for the entire summer, before we finally moved it down into the basement in september. my father then tried in vain to get in touch with xiaowu for nearly 6 months until he finally came today. cost of installation including labor and material? $250. at that price he's basically doing it for free.

the model we got is the rheem proterra 50 gallon smart high efficiency heat pump water heater with leak detection and auto shutoff ($1500). because of its heat pump capability, it can "steal" heat from the air to heat up the water. because of that, it runs cold, like having an air conditioner. as an additional perk, it functions as a dehumidifier, so we no longer have to run one in the basement during the summer. it didn't come with a condensate pump, so we'll need to buy one and install a discharge line to our basement sink which is about 30ft away from the hot water heater. in the meantime, my father has a bucket to catch the condensation water (1-2 gallon per day). my father saw the inside of the our old hot water heater and said it was probably about to fail anyway, since there was blockage inside the output pipe. one key feature of the water heater is its smart capability. my father didn't have time to set it up for wifi yet.

going home was rough. snow was starting to stick, and what was falling was sleet, which seeped through my pants. ice would also occasionally hit my eyes as i very slowly pedaled home. i did my best not to slip and fall, traveling in a straight line, and avoiding any potential slick spots like patches of snow. i was relieved when i finally made it home in one piece.

i logged into the rheem app using the credentials i set up for my father earlier. he had already connected the hot water heater to the internet, and i could see all the settings. it's actually pretty cool, shows the status and usage, set up a heating schedule, change the heating mode. it'll allow us to have granular control of the hot water heater, which is the one appliance that uses up the most electricity.

once again my mother packed me a leftover bento for dinner. it tipped over during transit but none of the content spilled out. i ate after i took a shower.

i played another hour of cyberpunk. i'm afraid to do any new missions, waiting for kenny eurodyne to contact me about the concert venue. i did open up a new gig where i steal cars for reyes, a phantom liberty side quest. i haven't visited doggtown very much (only to check in occasionally to see if they have any iconic weapons for sale), but most of the NPC don't appear elsewhere in night city, so new opportunities to people watch and take photos.

i went to bed at 1:30am last night but didn't go to sleep until 3am because the hum of renee's heat pump compressor kept me awake. i really need to have a serious talk with her. last night wasn't even that cold, but for some reason the compressor ran all night long. eventually i was so exhausted i fell asleep despite the noise.

i forgot to wear my hearing aid when i went to the cafe this morning. i don't really need it, but it allows me to hear orders from the front of the cafe before the ticket prints out. i can also listen to the television sound much better without needing to turn up the volume.

i found my father out in the parking lot trying to reduce the snow pile from from the snowstorm we had weeks ago. if we rely on natural melting, that snow pile won't be entirely gone until may at the earliest. the trick is to break it up a little bit every day and throw that snow onto the parking lot so it can melt faster. after taking off my jacket, i helped him shovel some more snow.

my parents made jiuniang soup with a jar of my homemade jiuniang. my mother rolled up some glutinous rice balls while my father incorporated the eggs into the soup. for an even more traditional dish we need some pink glutinous rice balls as well. when i made them in the past i just used artificial food coloring, but i read the classic way is to use beet juice.

my father fried a small batch of salt & pepper chicken this morning, about 20 servings. that meant all the clothes i was wearing would be saturated with fry oil smell. after he finished, i made a new batch of tea eggs. this time i let the eggs come to room temperature first fo 30 minutes, resting them above a container of hot water i'd later used to steam the eggs. the thinking is these cold eggs crack because of rapid thermal expansion. after steaming them for 15 minutes, 2 of the eggs were still cracked, but they didn't break apart as in past batches. so maybe this is my new technique going forward, allowing the eggs to come to room temperature first before steaming.

for a week that was supposed to be slow because of public school vacation, this week has been surprisingly busy. we made above our daily average every day this week. today we sold well over a dozen bentos, not counting any delivery orders or cash orders. we were busy around lunchtime and then even more so in the evening after 5pm. i say evening but sunset today wasn't until 5:20pm. we change our clocks forward in 2 more weeks, so sunset won't be until almost 7pm. i can go home while there's still some daylight left!

in the early afternoon after it stopped being busy, i made some turkey rollups for lunch. i spent the rest of the afternoon following the women's figure skating competition live on television. i watched history in the making when american alysa liu won gold - despite seemingly having no desire to medal, and skating with a carefree abandon and confidence one gets when there's no pressure to win. i felt bad for the second place silver winner japanese kaori sakamoto (in her last olympics), who won bronze in 2022 but should've won gold if it wasn't for russian shenanigans (competing under the confusing ROC acronym). russians are still competing but under a new acronym - AIN. american amber glenn skated a near perfect performance, and sat at the number one spot for 1-1/2 hours, before the heavyweights sent her down to 5th place. glenn would've medaled as well if she didn't skate a disastrous short program where she skipped a jump, but her performance tonight vindicated her standing as one of the greats.

after we closed, my parents stayed behind to have some dumplings while i was sent home with some leftover beef noodle soup. i took a shower where i moisturized with my aveeno eczema therapy lotion afterwards before having dinner.

i played an hour of cyberpunk, no gigs, just wandered around the city. i found a new place for clothes shopping, then tested out weapons on some unsuspecting arasaka security guards. i then called up one of my newly purchased cars (the cthulhu) and drove it over 100mph through the city with the intend of driving it off of the highway. that turned out to be impossible as highways all have barricades that prevent drivers from flying off the roads. i ended up having to jettison the car as it sustains so much damage it self-destructed. i then did more weapons testing on a gang war between scavengers and animals.

i read the good news this morning: mikaeala shiffrin finally won gold after failing to get any medals in the 2022 winter beijing olympics and unsuccessful in her events thus far at the milan cortino olympics. it's been a long 8 years wait, with her father/coach having passed away during that time. it's quite a redemption story. also chin finally got some gold medals, two of their athletes won gold in individual men and women freestyle skiing aerials. it was starting to become downright humiliating since china won 9 gold in the last winter games.

i went to market basket around 11am before the forecast of rain in the afternoon. temperature was close to the 40's. i decided to shovel some snow pack out onto the street with the hopes that they might melt faster.

i bought two bags of cans and bottles to deposit, clear up some room in my kitchen. i wasn't sure what i wanted to eat, but got a few things, including fish sticks and pasta. i got in the wrong line, the woman was buying hundreds of dollars worth of groceries using food stamps but she wanted to do a split payment, so it took a long time to process her groceries. i stood there and vegged out, wasn't in any particular hurry. there was already a light drizzle by the time i left, my bike seat slightly damp.

i cooked up some kielbasa and scrambled eggs (with feta cheese) for lunch, washed down with chocolate milk. all that protein really hit the spot. i ran my air purifier in the kitchen to get rid of some of the cooking smell. i ate while watching the canadian-czech hockey game. it was a close one, but canada won in sudden death overtime. i can't even fathom what would happen had canadian hockey been eliminated. i think canada would implode from the devastation. elsewhere, the US beat sweden in overtime to advance as well.

i played some cyberpunk. i started the mission where johhny silverhand takes rogue on a date to the drive-in movies. the date finished abruptly, which prompted johnny to track down former bandmate kerry eurodyne. one thing led to another, and they decided to get the band back together again for one last concert. that meant tracking down each band member and getting them to agree to do it.

my amazon purchase of more wide-mouth quart-size canning jars arrived today around 4pm. they're compatible with my wide-mouth rubber-seal plastic lids. i like these new jars because they're simple and don't have any brand marking, just measurement marks.

feeling hungry, i had some instant spicy & sour glass noodles that my parents brought back from taiwan a year ago but i only recently rediscovered i had them in a brown paper bag in the guest bedroom. i ate them in the early evening which was enough to last me for the rest of the night.

i played a little more cyberpunk, but mostly trying to figure out how to take videos of the game action. i tried the built-in macos screenshot saver, but it wouldn't save the audio. several online places recommended OBS studio, but i couldn't get it to work. it either didn't recognize the game screen, or cropped it, or saved the video with the window frame. i then looked for an alternative paid solution, but didn't try it yet.

i bought some oranges from market basket's reduced price produce rack. i cut some up thinking they were navel oranges but they were actually blood oranges. after i finished eating, i threw out the trash. it had stopped raining by then. the transition to snow that was supposed to happen overnight never happened because it was too warm.

i finally got around to downloading the 3000+ photos from my camera's memory card onto the hard drive backup. i sort in the photos into dated folders, but to make all of those directories was too tedious, so i figured out how to do it using terminal commands:

cd /Volumes/5TB2020/Photos/2026

cat 2026_date_folder_names.txt | xargs mkdir

i auto-created a list of folders using sheets and exported the list as a txt file. i then used a few terminal commands to quickly create those folders. it worked very well and saved me the hassle of having to make them manually.

i'm still trying to find a good photo cataloging app for the new mac. since media pro doesn't work with apple silicon chips, i need to find an alternative. neofinder might be a potential solution, since it can also import old media pro catalogs. capture one studio pro is another possibility. they originally bought the source code for media pro before deciding to kill it for their more expensive pro level photo tool, but i think they incorporated some media pro UI elements. i need to sit down this weekend and make a decision which one i want to use. after that i can finally complete my migration from my old mac to the new mac.

i didn't feel like i had much of a weekend. i was basically at the cafe every day, even on my days off. and now today i was back at work. soon after i arrived i took off to trader joe's to get some supplies. for the most part the roads were cleared, but a big semi truck was parked on the bike lane near the gas station next to dunkin' donuts. i noticed my metal cup holder was cracked; not a problem, should be easy to replace, but the cold weather takes a toll on bike accessories.

with school vacation this week, we were expecting today to be a slow day. and it seemed like that at first, just a trickle of business around lunchtime. but between 1-3pm it got really busy. after 3pm all the customers suddenly disappeared, only to come back after 5pm for another spike in business. we sold a lot of bentos, but chicken curry was once again a surprisingly popular option, with no less than 4 orders. it used to be we'd get maybe one curry order a week if we were lucky.

my parents made another batch of dumplings around lunchtime followed by some chunbing bread for the turkey. i had 4 turkey rollups, gave me thanksgiving deja vu. i also had some ximilu dessert soup, although the tiny tapioca balls have lost all their colors.

we finally figured out how to descale the nespresso machine. we were waiting for my sister to do it because she's the only who's done it in the past, but she said she didn't remember. had i known she had no clue, i would've gone online and researched the procedures myself. i found an official nespresso video demonstrating the steps for our machine model.

my mother's shingle rash has pretty much disappeared. she took the last of her shingles virus medication last night.

only one jar of our barley jiuniang didn't have mold. actually, it had a little bit, but not like the other jars, where there was a thick carpet of white fuzzy mold. we tasted from the "clean" jar. it smelled faintly of jiuniang, but it tasted sour, slightly carbonated, with a slight sweetness. because we used whole barley, the husks didn't dissolve, which made it harder to eat. the sour taste was too off putting, so we ended up dumping it all.

i went home with some leftover beef stew bento box. after i finished eating, i played a few hours of cyberpunk. i'm still following some small side gigs. i discovered a new favorite weapon, the iconic fenrir power submachine gun that also does shock damage, modified with a hyakume short scope and a TSX tocororo silencer.

i didn't get out of bed until 10am this morning. had a nice restful sleep, my neighbor's heat pump didn't seem to be running as noisy, or maybe it wasn't too cold outside. i watched the latest episode (5) of a knight of seven kingdoms last night before sleeping. the events were pretty faithful to the book, but dunk got more wrecked than i remember, and prince aerion didn't try to backstab him after yielding. there was an extended backstory showing dunk as a boy surviving in flea bottom with his friend rafe and how he met ser arlan of pennytree, who rescued him from a pair of murdering thieves. these elements were not in the original short story (but maybe subsequent tales, or maybe even original content).

my mother called me around 11am, asked for ceramic ramekins for her brown sugar fagao cakes. she tried making them from home last night but the yeast shed used had expired and the recipe failed. my parents were on there way to market basket to get some supplies. when they arrived, i gave them 4 jars of jiuniang as well. they'll give them a taste test, and based on whether they've sweetened since last night, i might make another batch. i have enough glutinous rice to make 4 more jars.

i didn't leave for the cafe until almost 1pm. i went around the corner to get some beers before i went. i bought a 4-pack of frost beer works lush double IPA. i figured it'd be $13 but it was actually $20, wasn't expecting it to be so pricey.

my parents were waiting for me to arrive at the cafe because only i knew the settings for roasting the 13 lbs. turkey in our breville oven. we roasted a small turkey back in november. for a 13 lbs. bird we baked it at 325 degres for 2 hours and 50 minutes. the turkey came out beautifully, but the cook time seemed excessively long. i went online and found instructions specially for the breville oven. this recipe said to use the roast setting with convection at 325 degrees for 2 hours. that seemed a more realistic roast time so that's the setting i used.

my parents tried the jiuniang i gave them, they said it was already pretty sweet, good enough to eat. i noticed the rice grains in the february 12 batch was already floating in liquid, a good sign of successful fermentation.

my parents were busy making all the chinese new year dishes. i helped my father cooked the tiny colored tapioca pearls used for our ximilu dessert soup. we cooked it the same way we cook our boba pearls - boil for 15 minutes, then steam for another 15 minutes, until the pearls become translucent. we then added the cooked taro (in sugar water) along with a can of coconut milk. the soup turned pink (normally it's white) because of the food coloring in the tiny tapioca pearls. my mother also successfully steamed her fagao cakes.

my father went to go pick up my 2nd aunt, while my sister's godmother showed up on her own. when my sister arrived, she let esmei have fre range in the cafe. normally she's not allowed in the kitchen area for food safety reasons, but since we're closed, we allowed her to roam again. she likes to explore and went down to the basement on her own before we called her back. for the most part she was well behaved, didn't try to steal any good. when she got tired she just laid down on the ground and went to sleep.

my aunt and matthew showed up a before 3:30pm. we were having chinese new year eve's dinner early in order to accomodate my aunt, who had a meeting earlier and need to leave by 6pm for a tennis match. matthew brought taiwanese beer but was more interested in the lush double IPA i bought. turns out his old house in vermont is practically neighbors with frost beer works. he ended up drinking two cans, with an alcohol content of 8%.

my parents also made dumplings (pork & dill filling) while my sister made lamb dumplings (pan-fried instead of steamed). while everyone was eating, i was still busy in the kitchen washing the pans so the oil doesn't stick. i also whipped up my own dumpling dipping sauce: soy sauce, hot chili oil sauce, vinegar, chopped garlic, and cilantro.

there was a lot of food but i didn't feel like i ate too much. afterwards my parents made more dumplings for my aunt and matthew to take home. everyone left with leftovers except for me, since i'll be back at the cafe tomorrow morning. we never got a chance to try the jiuniang, even though i had a taste test of a february 13th batch and it was okay but could be sweeter. and we also had a turkey! but nobody really ate it except for me. i much rather prefer eating it with some chunbing bread, hopefully my father will make some tomorrow.

after we finished cleaning up, we took out supplies from the freezer and left them in the fridge to defrost for tomorrow. my sister gave her godmother a ride home while my parents drove my 2nd aunt home. i went home via bike, still keeping my eyes open for my lost tail light. i got back by 6:40pm.

i played some cyberpunk until 9pm. i'm very close to the end, still have unresolved missions with judy and panam, befor meeting hanako at embers. plus i have a bunch of dogtown missions still left to do.

i was still hungry. i finished an asian pear my 2nd aunt gave me weeks ago, and ate the thai chicken feet i bought on wednesday.

i wasn't able to watch too much olympics coverage today, but happy to learn that eileen gu once again wasn't able to win gold (just silver) in her second event. that means china still hasn't won a gold in this winter olympics (3 silvers, 2 bronze).

i spent the evening watching some youtube videos on how to make makgeolli - korean rice wine. it involves buying some nuruk, which is the korean version of jiuniang yeast balls.