i've had itchy blisters on my hands for the past few weeks. mostly on my left hand on the meaty part below my thumb, but new blisters have formed on the side of my hand as well. i think the culprit is the watering spray gun, i'm allergic to the cheap chinese plastic/rubber. so starting today i'm wearing gloves before i water. i watered the back and front yard before taking the marin bike to the community garden to water there. i also brought a solution of calcium chloride to spray on my tomatoes, which still continue to get blossom end rot. by the time i was in the garden it was already 10am and getting hot. i wasn't sure if i should spray, but did it anyway.

next i went to market basket to get some supplies. i took the ebike because i figured i'd go to the cafe afterwards then to belmont to do some gardening. i stopped by whole foods first to return a 100 amp solar panel disconnect switch. i forgot i can't lock my ebike to the market basket bike stand with a u-lock because i can only lock it from the center post. fortunately there wasn't anyone else parked there at the time so i parked leaning against the bike stand, taking up 3 spots. i got milks and orange juice, salt, sugar, corn starch and a large jug of vinegar. i was carrying so much in my basket i wished i pushed a cart instead.

i stopped by the house to drop off a jar of salsa before continuing to the cafe. i got there a bit after 11am. i drop off the supplies. my pixel 9 pro arrived last night, my father brought it to the cafe. i took one look at it and realized there was a deep scratch on the screen. for a refurbished in excellent condition, there shouldn't be any screen scratches. so already i was thinking about i returning it.

i took the new phone and continued to belmont. at my parents' place was my latest aliexpress order. just little bits and pieces, like bolts, a helmet gopro strap, a vegetable peeler, a mi fitness band charging adapter. i also bought a pair of replacement wrist straps for the mi band but i ordered black and got purple instead. i contacted aliexpress to return them.

i set the new pixel phone as an unregistered user just to test it out. it's not too different from my pixel 7, with the exception of the cameras. it has wide angle, 1x, 2x, 5x, and macro. it can also do 30x zoom through cropping. i went outside to take some test photos. i like the macro, made me realize how much i miss taking macro photos. the 5x optical zoom is also useful, gives me better reach. the colors on the pixel 9 pro seem better than on my pixel 7, but could just be because of the screen, which is brighter on the new phone.

another reason why i came to belmont was to recharge the battery on my ebike. i wanted to take a ride to everett-malden-medford, and needed a fully charged battery. i estimate it'd take 2 hours to fully charge from 60%, so i had some time to kill.

i decided to fly the drone to check out some neighboring constructions. i also checked out the large oak tree in our neighborhood. it's easily the largest tree in the area, but we were always curious as to how tall it actually was. one way to estimate is to fly the drone so i was horizontal with the top of the tree. the drone told me it was about 85 feet. a tree that tall is typically 80-150 years old. i also checked out our backyard garden from above. the trellis takes up a good portion of the lawn.

i used two grow bags to plant some seeds. these were grow bags that used to support kabocha squashes before all they died. i sifted the soil to loosen it, added some osmocote slow release fertilizer pellets, then added a new top layer of potting soil. in one grow bag i planted some cilantro seeds (slow bolt variety), in another grow bag i had some bokchoi.

with my ebike battery fully charged, it was time to go. i left by 2pm. it was a little late and i wasn't sure if i still had time to go on my little biking adventure. besides, today was a hot day, not a good idea to be out in the sun for hours.

i got back home. i packed up my things ready to go back out again, but decided i wasn't in the mood for a long bike ride. maybe saturday after work, or maybe next wednesday. instead i grabbed the marin and went down to harvard square to visit michael. the nose pad on my glasses went missing and i was hoping he could replace it. i replaced it with a smaller pad from an older pair of glasses, but that one didn't pivot as well. michael replaced it right away, glasses good as new. he also gave me a few spare nose pads for future fixes. i would've stayed longer to chat, but a customer came in, so i told him i'd come back another time. i saw his gazelle dutch-style bicycle sitting outside.

coming home, decided to take a detour to market basket again. my mother forgot to ask me to get some carrots, so i went back. i didn't have my grocery bags, but market basket has free paper bags. it gave me a chance to test out the new folding baskets on my marin bicycle (wasn't able to test them out this morning because i took my ebike). i grabbed some sushi for lunch. the baskets are big enough to fit a single paper grocery bag each. fit them better than my wald dual rear baskets; yes those things can fit more, but they're tapered at the bottom so sometimes i have to readjust my groceries. not the case for these folding baskets, they fit a grocery bag perfectly.

it was almost 4pm by the time i got home. the contractors were still working, chatting loudly, but it seemed like they were winding down for the day. after a quick shower to wash off my sweat stink, i had the spicy tuna roll for a late lunch.

i continued testing the pixel 9 pro camera. it's pretty good for snapping photos of neighbors from my living room window. the pixel 7 with it's 2x zoom barely has any reach. the 5x on the pixel 9 pro offers more opportunities, and the 30x digital zoom isn't bad either if you don't push it to its maximum and there's good lighting.

i'm closer to buying a new handlebar for my marin bike. amazon carries the sunlite northroad touring handlebar which i really like. they come in two materials - chrome plated steel ($31) or aluminum ($39). the chrome is more durable but heavier and might potentially rust. the aluminum is lighter and rustproof but not as durable and cost more. while i continued searching, i came across a generic brand stainless steel handlebar for $17. it looks very similar to northroad handlebars. it had no reviews and would take about 10 days to arrive, meaning it's probably a direct shipment from china. as if it couldn't get any cheaper, i came across a black-painted aluminum northroad-style handlebar on aliexpress for just $12. later i went down to the basement and took measurements of all the handlebars to make sure i could actually use them. 25.4mm seems like a pretty standard size.

for dinner i ate the other leftover piece of steak. i ate it cold with some mango kefir drink.

i switched from my trek allant to my marin kentfield CS2. i grabbed the kryptonite kryptolok. because it's so thin, i can lock it between the two bars on my rear rack, a perfect storage place, no need to get a frame mount.

after watering, i added miracle-gro tomato plant food water soluble fertilizer, both in the lone pepper plant in my backyard as well as all my grow bag plants in the community garden. i used a rubber tub to mix the pink powder, with the garden hose in high blast to quickly dissolve everything.

i set the timer for the ice machine to start at 7:30am so we can already get some ice made before we even opened the cafe. i'm going to do this from now on, no reason why we have to be there for the ice machine to run. the only catch is sometimes the ice will get stuck in the tray, causing the machine to stop making ice until the obstruction is removed. that only happens when the ice machine is nearly full. i could probably start the ice machine at 6:30am and still be safe.

my father cooked two of the haymarket leeks. they had enough sugar that if he didn't stir them often enough in the pot, they'll scorch to the bottom. he also added some smoked ham. when the soup was finally done, nobody seemed interested in tasting it. i filled a small bowl for myself. it tasted like corn chowder, that rich and savory combined with a buttery sweetness. the ham added some salty flavor. is this what french onion soup tastes like?

6 passion flowers bloomed today. 3 of them were bunched together by the lantana.

today wasn't too hot - 70's - with a early day overcast that finally cleared up towards the later half of the day. i figured it might be a busy day so i set up the patio deck. the only person who used it was a hairdresser from next door who sat there during lunch surfing on her phone and drinking a miso soup.

we were busy during lunchtime, but business tapered off around 2pm. each hour afterwards business started to pick up again. we always had something to do so the day went by quick. during a brief period where my father was at my sister's place and my mother in the back calling my california aunt, i was in the charge of the cafe. a woman cafe in ordering some zhajiang noodles. she also wanted it to be spicy, "more than sriracha," she told me. that gave me the green light to show her my collection of homemade hot sauces. i gave her the chili oil sauce with sichuan peppercorn oil. she - martha - was also an architect and gave us some advice on how we could better display our cafe signs.

today wasn't our best day this month, but it ranked 4th, so not bad. here's hoping it's the start of a profitable week. it's probably the last week in august where we can expect to get good business. the final week of august everyone will be away on their last summer vacation week and i expect that week to be slow.

my parents stayed behind to eat some steamed red snappers for dinner. i left with leftover leek soup and two leftover steaks. the marin was effortless to ride, but the wide handlebars felt a little awkward; i should change them out the first chance i get. returning home, i picked up two wooden boxes somebody had tossed out. they were heavy, not wooden wine crates. if i wanted to convert them to bike baskets they might be a little too rugged. i could fill them with soil and turn them into plant boxes.

after a shower, i reheated the soup on the stove. i ate a piece of steak cold, too lazy to try and warm it up (afraid it might get too tough). i watched a streaming broadcast of the red sox diamondback game before i realized it was playing on our local channel 38. red sox won 9-4.

it rained overnight. not sure how much, but the sun shade over the backyard was sagging from rain drops and there were a few puddles in the streets. my parents came to pick me up at 10am for a supply run. my mother had to stop inside to use the bathroom.

first stop was the everett costco, not too many people on a monday morning. we came here for eggs, all 15 dozen. paying took a long time because my father got in a line behind two guys with platform trucks full of supplies.

next to went to nazar, the turkish supermarket in medford hidden off of river's edge drive. my parents were excited to see some of the foods they saw back in turkey, but the selection was underwhelming. things we were hoping to find - pomegranate tea, squash seeds, turkish delights, turkish pepper (nordic salty licorice) - they didn't have. the place wasn't entirely dead, about half a dozen customers came in while we were there. nazar also has a butcher deli and an adjoining cafeteria that sells homemade sweets like balkava. we bought a few things so we didn't leave empty handed, but the middle eastern-armenia-greek markets in belmont-watertown have better selection and closer to where we live. we parked in the parking garage (free) but found out later there were plenty of parking in front of the supermarket. there was also an adjoining park that looked promising.

from nazar it was just a short ride to malden 88 asian supermarket. there was a bunch of mini electric folding bikes parked outside. that seems to be a very popular mode of transportation for little asian ladies. i've always scoffed at the idea of these tiny folding ebikes, but i was examining one and it has a lot of features: disc brakes, front fork shocks and seatpost suspension. if it's cheap and functional, who cares if it looks dorky or like a child's toy? we bought a few things but i was in no mood for shopping as i needed to use the bathroom. seems like i wasn't the only one, as a white guy (looked like a tweaker) came up to me and asked if this place had a bathroom ("i was thinking the same thing," i told him). i told him to try the social security office next door.

our last stop was bianco & sons for chinese sausages. they only had a single box left. while coming down the stairs, my mother and i watched as my father nearly toppled over and smashed his head. fortunately he was holding on to the handrail.

we cut through davis square to get to the cafe. while my parents unloaded (we didn't really buy all that much), i had a chance to finally use the bathroom. we returned to belmont after we finished unloading.

my mother fried some slavic hunter sausages and eggs, as well as pan-frying some frozen gyozas we got from costco. the dumplings weren't anything special. we ate while watching a recording of the noontime channel 5 news broadcast.

my father didn't bother watering this morning, and turned off the drip irrigation as well, thinking that last night's rain was enough to satiate the plants. but when we looked outside, some of the luffa leaves were drooping, so we ran the drip irrigation for half an hour. last night's rain apparently wasn't quite enough. for next season, we either continue using these solar-powered drip irrigation system or figure out something more substantial if we want to continue planting in grow bags.

my sister briefly came home with esmei. i think she just comes to bitch about something, even though my parents would rather not listen to her complaining on their day off. i saw them coming and quickly lifted up the thawing chicken wings and steaks to higher grounds, so esmei wouldn't get to them like last time. she did something interesting today. there was a rabbit outside so i lifted her up so she could see. she didn't seem interested. later the rabbit came back, and esmei could smell it outside, so she hopped up to the window my herself so she could look at the rabbit. she didn't bark, showed me sign of emotion, but when i let her out into the backyard, she quickly chased after the rabbit.

my mother gave me a haircut. the last time i had it cut was back in january, 7 months ago. enough hair was cut that i could probably make a nice toupee out of it. my father said he also needed a haircut so she gave him a buzzcut afterwards.

for dinner we grilled some wings and new york strip boneless steaks. we started with the wings first, which i salted earlier. 350 degrees on each side, brushed with sweet thai chili sauce afterwards and grilled again until desired crispiness. for the steaks, we increased the temperature to 550 degrees. 3 minutes per side, rotating them at the halfway mark for crosshatching. afterwards we measured until we reached an internal temperature of 130 degrees (medium-rare).

i was happy to see the steaks weren't that salty. yes there was a salty crust (i salted and peppered them earlier, before seasoning again with montreal steak seasoning before they went on the grill) but it kind of works in this case because the cuts were already pretty thick, so it balanced out the unseasoned interior. i had a whole piece myself while my parents shared a piece.

my father gave me a ride back to cambridge. i could've been dropped off at home after our supply run (and gotten to belmont on my own steam), but i wanted to bring two bags of leftover black mulch back to my place so i could spread it in the garden. he helped me unload the mulch into my backyard before leaving.

since there's even side street cleaning tomorrow morning, i had to move my motorcycle. i stashed it on the private way, will move it again either tomorrow or wednesday once my preferred spot opens up again.

after a shower, i watched the end of the red sox diamondbacks game from a streaming website. boston won tonight, 11-1. hopefully this is the beginning of a new winning streak. i spent the rest of the evening watching political videos on youtube. even since trump's 2nd term, i've stayed away from political news for my own sanity. but with the midterm election almost upon us and with the democrats in a good position to take back the house if not the senate, my interest in politics has been renewed.

jeff and michelle left this morning at 4am, an uber came to take them to the airport. i heard nothing, only saw it when i later reviewed the webcam footage.

after watering my back and front yard, i hopped onto my motorcycle and went to the community garden to water. my hyacinth beans have started to flower. my kabocha miraculously has developed two mini squashes. i'm going to need to fertilize if i want to see them grow to maturity. i watered with the broken sprayer off, it was much faster. i picked some more tomatoes and butterfly pea flowers.

i dropped off my vegetables at home before i continued to somerville armory via motorcycle, where there was a fermentation festival happening at 11am. it's pretty much a summer farmer's market, but who fermented food vendors. there was also activities, a raffle, a make-your-own-sauerkraut station, and a live band. it was pretty crowded, i made my way through the dealers, sampled a few items, then went upstairs to get an overhead view of the whole festival. i wanted to buy something, but everything seemed too pricey (farmer's market prices). i didn't see any fermented alcohol drinks (like makgeolli, though to get proper licensing to sell is probably difficult).

i was about to leave empty-handed when i decided to make my own sauerkraut outside. i had to sign a liability waiver first, which i thought was weird, until i realized it's because i'd be cutting up my own cabbage with a very large and sharp knife. the attendants were helpful, but to be honest, this wasn't my first rodeo. i could be giving demonstrations. but i played dumb, let them have something to do. like i asked them the difference between sauerkraut and kimchi, even though i knew answer.

after i shredded the cabbage super fine, they added about 1/2 a tablespoon of salt into a metal bowl. i then massaged the cabbage with dirty hands until they reduced enough to fit inside a 16 oz. mason jar. i also added some spices, included korean pepper flakes, caraway, mustard seeds, dill seeds, and a fresh bay leaf. i left with a small jar of sauerkraut, ready to eat in a few days.

i returned home, grabbed my things, then stopped by the cafe to put away the tea eggs & rice and water the plants. while i was leaving i saw my sister with esmei. esmei seemed excited to see me but when she got close enough to confirm who i was, she totally lost interest. today we had 6 passion flowers.

i didn't get to my parents' place until 12:30pm. while my mother was making me some ham bone broth noodle soup, i went outside to see what my father was up to. he'd elevated all the grow bags and large pots with the plastic plant coasters. he told me in just the few days he's been fertilizing with the new miracle-gro tomato food (it arrived last wednesday night), he could see a stark difference. new vines are thicker, the leaves are bigger, and the fruits don't abort. the addition of a balanced water-soluble fertilizer for vegetables along with our new midday drip irrigation system has given our garden setup a tremendous boost. he only regrets we didn't do this sooner, as there was mid-summer lull when everything had fruited and nothing new was growing.

i went inside to eat lunch.

today wasn't too hot. the worst thing about being outside wasn't the heat, it was the mosquitoes. they bit me in the small bare spots between my shoes and jean cuffs. i ran back inside to grab the thermacells. my father collected a bunch of giant japanese red mustard seeds. i shredded the pile of egg cartons into our rotating compost drum. all the vegetables that my father had thrown inside weeks ago had now turned into a dark smelly sludge. the egg cartons will hopefully balance it out (compost should be 2/3 dry ingredients and only 1/3 wet ingredients).

i watched drive on pluto.tv and fell asleep on the zero gravity chair. i woke up with my arms completely numb from pressing my elbows into the armrests.

for dinner my mother made a basil & eggplant dish using vegetables harvested from the backyard. she also made a smoked ham stirfry with long horn peppers. the peppers were mostly innocuous, out of the 5 she used, only one was hot.

i took the motorcycle today because street cleaning is tomorrow so i needed to move my bike anyway. i was lucky when i came back home there was a small spot already waiting for me in front of the house.

i woke up at 8am to water my plants (backyard, front yard, community garden) before heading down to haymarket. i didn't leave cambridge until 9am. it took only 20 minutes to get to haymarket. there aren't too many signposts to park my ebike. one post in particular - i've parked there in the past - wasn't even attached to the ground and could simply be lifted. i ended up parking at a signpost facing congress street.

haymarket was bustling with people. nice summer morning brings people outside. my mother asked me to get garlic and bananas. she also told me to look out for longans or lychees (didn't see any). i was hoping to score some passion fruit but no luck. there wasn't too many exotic produce. my haul: 2 sleeves of garlic ($4), 2 bunches of bananas ($2), 2+ lbs. of longhorn peppers ($2), mini watermelon ($2), and 3 jumbo leeks ($2).

i left by 9:45am, got home 20 minutes later. i had enough time to run to star market and get some watermelons on sale ($4.99/each). i then left for the cafe.

my mother was already there, having walked to work today. i had high hopes today would be a busy day so i set up the patio deck for potential customers. we only had one passion flower today.

my father showed up at 11am, with my 2nd aunt appearing soon afterwards. he came to make a batch of curry chicken. he also cut up the bitter melons and freezing the pieces for smoothies. he also pickled some bitter melons, a crispy spicy sweet and sour cold dish. after he finished he returned home. my mother and 2nd aunt would portion out the curry later, after i lowered the temperature in a pot of cold water.

the day started promising, a few customers right when we opened. but after that first hour business quickly tapered off. i guess the weather was just too nice today, everyone was out enjoying the weekend. we only had a total of 11 customers today, including little moustache and his girlfriend. she even ordered a bitter melon smoothie.

my 2nd aunt brought some foods she got from the russian supermarket in allston, including dark chocolates with a strong cherry liquor filling. she also brought a bitter melon a friend of hers gave her that was massive, almost as big as our luffas. i think it's a different variety, but could also be front extensive fertilization.

i went home after work, left with a box of watermelon.

after putting away the ebike, i brought out the marin bike so i try to install a rear rack. i have an ibera touring rack but the previous owner had shortened the mounting rods. so i bought a new pair online ($18), arrived today. the new rods were fine, but the stays on the marin bike frame for a rear rack was too narrow, while the rods themselves ended in a zigzag configuration that made it impossible to attach to the stays. i ended up using my backup monostay adapter: one end mounts to the seatpost, the other end to the rear rack mounting rods. this worked, but i don't know how sturdy it is.

after i did that i attached the two wald folding baskets to the rear rack (i removed them from my ross road bike on thursday). i could've used rubberized p-clamps, but ended up using the original metal hose clamps i removed when i took off the rear baskets.

when it was all done, i took the bike around the block on a test ride. this bike will be my beater bike. makes me wonder if i should install the wald double rear basket rack instead (or leave it on my trek utility bike). the one thing i'm still thinking about replacing is the handlebars. they're very wide, i want a more swept-back style. it's kind of a hassle because it also means having to redo the cabling (braking and shifting).

i bumped it jeff on his way back from the supermarket. apparently they got back early, i wasn't expecting them until tonight. they're not here for long, they have an early 5:30am flight back to san francisco. he also has a video conference tomorrow where the watertown biotech company will formally make him an offer. he's not sure if he wants the position, he's itching for another company here in boston. he also told me he'd be back, whether to wrap up things with his current company, or to take more interviews. "it's not aloha just yet," he said.

i ended up heating a frozen brick of lasagna for dinner. afterwards i had some watermelon. i ate while watching the red sox pirates game which was broadcasting on the local fox channel, a rare treat (so i didn't have to find an illegal stream). it was an exciting game, sox win 4-0. they scored 3 runs on the 9th inning, but the only run they needed was back in the 2nd when wilyer abreu hit a solo homerun. sox are just 2 games behind the yankees.

today was the busiest day this week, which isn't saying much, considering the profit from tuesday-wednesday-thursday were all higher than today. but it gives us some hope that heading into tomorrow saturday our final work day we might make som good profit, especially since i heard the weather tomorrow will be very good. of course good summer weather can also drive customers away as they go off on weekend trips.

contractors didn't come this morning. seems like they finished their work yesterday, which was basically clearing the backyard and erecting a fence. it's chain-link but they also put a green sun shade over it for some reason (attached with zip ties). elsewhere in my community garden, i'm finally getting a flourish of eggplants, but they're all so small. i think i need to fertilize my grow bag again, this time with the new miracle-gro garden fertilizer i got his week. i'm also getting a bunch of what i thought were jalapeño peppers but i don't remember planting them so i think they might be serrano peppers instead, which look similar to jalapeño but 2-3x hotter.

6 passion flowers bloomed today. there's a logic to how they flower, one after another along each strand of vine. it hasn't grown new vines but instead keep elongating the existing ones. it's kind of amazing how it can still send nutrients and water so far away from the main plant. i keep thinking eventually it'll reach its limit, but so far it just continues to grow longer. so much so that we've had to double back the vines because we're running out of room. my father and i are thinking about buying some commercial passion fruits and trying to grow those seeds. of course it takes 2-3 years before a passion vine will be mature enough to flower. with my backyard now so sunny, i'm wonder if i can't grow a passion vine screen on my deck.

that master lock key locker i played around with yesterday, admiring its ingenuity, i now don't think it's that clever. i couldn't understand how it was setting the new combination, how it's able to "record" the sequence. turns out, that's not what it's actually doing. i found out by punching in the numbers but in a different order, and i was still able to open the safe box. it's not actually remembering the sequence, but rather just the numbers. you could just as easily set it with just one number, or all the numbers. the "sequence" is just an illusion, whatever helps you to remember the numbers.

we were busy between 11-1pm. even that wasn't too impressive, but we did have a steady stream of customers. by day's end we had over 30 customers. when we get numbers like that, that usually corresponds to some good profit.

my mother made all sorts of bread using the electric skillet. she started with some adzuki bean paste filled mochi cake (glutinous rice flour). then she made another scallion bread. she did all this in case my aunt showed up, which she did in the early afternoon. she managed to get binbin to come as well, along with her two kids, so it was a mini family reunion of sorts.

my new iphone 9 pro - which was supposed to arrive today - has been delayed. amazon sent me a notice telling me it won't arrive until next weekend. it's annoying but i can wait another week. my biggest fear is they'll somehow cancel the order. i won't be able to get a better deal, especially since i bought it during tax-free weekend so i saved a chunk there as well. i'm also hoping it's not a supply issue, and when i do get the phone it's not what i ordered.

the 16" gro pro NX level plant elevators arrived today as well, sent to belmont.

my mother packed me some leftover bento for dinner, some smoked ham stirfry with zucchini and bean beans. it would've been luffa but my parents already ate it all and the rest they gave away to people. doesn't matter because in another week or two we'll have a new batch of luffas.

contractors in cambridge are not allowed to start working until 7am. but nothing in the city's bylaws say anything about showing up at 6:30am and chatting loudly in spanish until the work day begins. as soon as 7am rolled around, they restarted their demolition. i heard some heavy machinery by the time i left.

after watering my own house, i left for the community garden, before finally showing up at the cafe. temperature wasn't terribly hot - 70's in the morning, 80's by afternoon - but it was still humid so we didn't bother setting up the patio deck. 4 passion flowers bloomed today.

in the late morning i took a quick trip to trader joe's after seeing we were nearly out of bananas. i also got some baby cucumbers and edamame beans. coming back required cutting across fresh pond. but the hardest part is traveling up concord avenue, where the street is too narrowly to have dedicated bike lanes. most of the time i just rode on the sidewalk.

we were busy today from 12-3pm. after 3pm we barely saw any customers, though we did have one big takeout order in the evening but the customer paid in cash. profit has the same for the past 3 days. we make above our daily average, but nothing particularly noteworthy otherwise. last week was better, but then we barely saw some business friday and saturday. hopefully that won't be the case this week.

my mother made some scallion bread. i made a new batch of tea eggs and 3 batches of black soy noodles. my father finished a batch of beef noodle soup which we portioned out by the end of the day. that meant leftover beef noodle soup for dinner tonight. my sister got the left-behind masterlock outdoor combination key box from the next door bakery. i figured out how to reset the combination. i went down to the basement and removed the two rear folding baskets from my old ross road bike. i plan on putting it on my marin once i get a rear rack properly installed. i had a late lunch of of chicken broth rice noodles.

the day went by pretty quickly, i was back at home before i knew it.

i heated up the leftover beef noodle soup for dinner. afterwards i had some leftover pineapple. its juices made the inside of my mouth hurt afterwards, it like somehow tenderized my gums.

i installed the chinese AI app doubao on my phone last night. the interface is all in chinese, but they're intuitive enough that you can figure out the settings even without knowing the language. it can natively understand both chinese and english. you can write prompts for the AI, but it's much easier to use voice recognition. doubao responds back in a friendly conversational voice. speaking of which, there are many different voices to choose from, as well as dialects, both english and chinese. i made it talk back to me in scottish and sichuan.

i wanted to test out its AI image generation capability. i found an image of esmei and uploaded it into doubao. i then asked it this: can you make a new photo with this dog wearing a birthday costume in a style of renaissance painting? i wasn't expecting too much, didn't even know if it could do it or not. what i got back was pretty amazing. it managed to capture esmei perfectly. too perfectly, as it flawlessly matched her fur pattern even though from the photo you could see all those details. which makes me think it actually secretly looked through my other photos to gather more data. best part it was all free, none of that daily 10 token deal with google's AI image generation (the number of filter have been drastically curtailed since june).

i then asked it the same thing but to do it in a comic book illustration style. what about making it look like a 3D printed painted miniature model? the result was pretty good. it even gave me a few recommendations. more realistic hand-painted? like custom desk ornament? or as a cute chibi miniature. i tried the chibi miniature. i then combined all my previous descriptions, so it created a chibi miniature esmei in a renaissance-style wearing a birthday outfit with her name on a plaque on the base. the more descriptions you give it, the more details the result.

i had a good night's sleep but only slept for 5-1/2 hours because the contractors starting working on their demolition beginning at 7am. because of the way the houses here are built, the sound gets funneled through the alleyways so it sounded like it was coming from the front not the back. i put on a t-shirt and went to the 2nd floor deck to collect my gopro. i was hoping to catch some perseid meteor action, but the light pollution was just too great, the seemingly black sky looking grey in the 30-seconds frame exposure.

the morning sun was still blocked by some tall pine trees that belonged to a different backyard neighbor, so it was still shady in the backyard for now. it's not until when the sun comes out will i get to see what happens.

normally on a wednesday morning i might go out running, but i decided to skip it today. my reasoning? hemorrhoids! i had a flare up over the weekend. i could probably still run, but i didn't want to aggravate my condition, and decided it was better if i rested today.

i watered the front and backyard, before doing some weeding and pruning some ivy vines and coleus flower stalks. i then biked to the community garden to water there. i bumped into gail, we chatted for a bit. i found out the beans with the white flowers she was growing were string beans. she also had a bunch of late-season small-flower asters which had yet to bloom.

i got back home by 11am. the sun was now shining on the deck. behind the sun screen it was dim but still bright. in the backyard garden, the sun screen didn't really cast a shadow. that confused me and made me wonder if it was even working. but when you look on the ground, you can see the screen was casting a shadow, just not a deep one. it's essentially mimicking the dappled sunlight effect you get from underneath a shady tree. i moved my potted pepper plant to a different section of the yard that got full sun the entire day.

for lunch i finished the rest of the leftover barbecue. i then biked to market basket to get some groceries. i stopped to admire the harlequin glorybower, now blooming. the flowers smell like cloves.

i returned home and switched to my ebike. i also brought all my eclipse glasses. i went outside to take a look at the sun, which already had a small bite. the only way you'd be able to see this is with eclipse glasses. i went to the cafe to drop off some supplies. the 8-12" plant stands arrived, my father and i put went outside and put a few underneath our potted plants, including the passion fruit vine. we looked at the sun with the eclipse glasses, the bite was getting bigger. maximum would be at 2pm, when we get 16% coverage. eliza in brittany france will get 95% coverage.

i continued on my way to belmont. i was here primarily to wait for my facebook marketplace seller in lexington to contact me about the two metal sawhorses he was trying to sell for $10. he told me he might be free this afternoon, otherwise 4pm. i kept waiting for him to text me. finally by 4pm i went back to facebook marketplace and saw that the items had already been sold. so it seems like he sold it somebody else and just ghosted me. i didn't take it personally, not the first time it's happened to me. but the seller actually did finally text me, gave me some story that he ran over one of the sawhorses with his car and then threw out the other one. who knows if that's true or not. it depends entirely if you're trusting of others or more cynical.

while i was waiting for my seller to contact me (unbeknownst the items were already gone), i was the backyard taking photos of the eclipse with my 70-300mm telephoto lens with an eclipse filter taped to the front. i didn't dare look through the viewer, but instead used the LCD screen. there wasn't too much to see. i also discovered i could take eclipse photos with my phone using the filter and lowering the brightness to near zero.

i weeded the front yard (purslane, oxalis, dandelions, nutsedges, crabgrass, spurges, ragweeds), my t-shirt completely soaked, salty sweat dripping into my eyes and coating my glasses. afterwards i mowed the lawn, starting with the front, working to the back. there's a small chance it might rain overnight and possibly some tomorrow, so it's a good time to mow.

i arrived in belmont after the drip irrigation had gone off so i wasn't able to see it in action. the pots were wet, so it worked, and none of the luffa or bitter melon leaves were drooping, which is what we wanted. the two water buckets were already half full. currently all the full-size luffas have been harvested, with the exception of one fruit in our western garden. that one we intend to leave for seeds, but it's getting so heavy, i'm afraid it'll tear itself off the vine before it has a change to mature. i also some a bunch of long beans, thin but not thick enough yet. long beans are really easy to miss.

i got back home around 4:30pm. i was in the basement inspecting my marin bike. i've been meaning to install a rear rack, so i can either put a full-size basket or some collapsible side baskets. i have a small collection of rear racks, but none of them seem to fit. a few are also missing mounting hardware. i found on ibera rear rack that looks promising. i finally went back inside because even in the basement i was getting eaten alive by mosquitoes.

google came out with their new line of pixel phones - pixel 11. a lot of the details had already been leaked, including prices. this series seem very underwhelming. while buy a new pixel when an old one performs nearly the same but at a cheaper price? the base model pixel 11 starts at $900, while the pro starts at $1100. with the announcement today, i was curious to see if the price of old pixels would drop, particularly the pixel 9 pro 256GB model i bought over the weekend (due to arrive in a few more days). prices have not dropped, and in many cases have gone up. i paid $528 for an excellent grade refurbished, you can't find a deal like that now. the cheapest one i've seen lists for $550.

my sister finally saw the AI generated esmei model. she gave me some input while i quickly churned out new versions. i went through 13 iterations, tweaking the outfit, fur colors, and ear shape. ear shape got particularly crazy, at one point creating 2 pairs of ears.

for dinner i baked a chicken pot pie in the oven for an hour. since that was going to warm up the house, i figured i would also do a load of laundry.

i ate while watching the red sox-blue jays game. i'm for sure jinxing the team because they lost again tonight, 5th in a row, ever since i started watching. the pot pie wasn't that good, a little bland.

every morning i have to water three gardens: my backyard, my community garden plot, and the cafe patio plants. if only it'd rain! that would save me from watering duty. there was a team of spanish-speaking demolition contractors emptying debris from inside the house and putting them into a construction dumpster. i waved to one of them as he saw me on the 2nd floor balcony. in the community garden, gene was there working on his plot. there was a tangle of garden hoses; as a courtesy, i told him i would take care of it, and had to spend several minutes untangling the mess. finally there was the cafe. today 5 passion flower bloomed. there hasn't been a single day without at least one passion vine flower.

today seemed very promising, as we had two ubereats deliveries early in the morning. but then it wasn't very busy after that. there were a few lunchtime customers but when i checked the sales summary we barely made any profit. it was starting to look like a very bleak day. what saved us was a few large orders after 5pm. just a few orders finally put us over the daily average.

i try to limit myself daily to the amount of trump news. the headline today was how trump didn't take air force one back from the NATO summit in turkey due to threats of an iranian assassination attempt. so what's the big deal? there was a high amount of subterfuge, as trump was seen getting onboard the plane, but then disembarked by hiding in a catering container, to be flown home in a different plane. protecting the president is not an issue here; the issue is nobody on air force one knew about it, and the plane flown anyway, to act as a decoy. if the threat was so credible that trump (and his retinue of hegseth, rubio and the treasury secretary) had to secretly switch planes, why even fly it at all? everyone onboard the airforce one - including the press corp - were enlisted without consent to potentially die for trump in the event of an attack. alas, this is just a drop in the bucket of the awful things trump has done. and his MAGA supporters will still support him regardless, using some kind of mental gymnastics to justify what he did. the one good thing is now i have an image of trump cowering in fear as the secret service push him inside a catering container so iranians don't kill him. please someone make an AI short clip of this, i'd love to see it.

i was planning on figuring out a way to install deepask AI assistant pro on my father pixel phone. but in the meantime he could try some alternatives. i read deepseek is a very popular chinese AI app. he actually installed the app on his phone, just never activated it. he signed in using his google account. he asked it to plan out a china travel itinerary. it was okay, but wasn't very detailed. i also heard my father saying he was using doubao, another popular chinese AI app developed by bytedance (the creator of tiktok). apparently he was calling deepask doubao, which isn't surprising since they both have a similar icon - a woman's head. what if we tried the actual doubao app? i went looking for it on the google store, there was something with the same name, but it had nothing to do with AI search. so apparently it's not available on the google store (unless you're in china). the reasoning is foreign and domestic regulations (also a dose of spyware for the chinese audience), just like how bytedance had two version of tiktok (douyin in china). however, i simply went to the official doubao (豆包) website to download the apk (did a search for "豆包 apk"). i installed it and gave it to my father to test. he asked it to create a china travel itinerary. after a few seconds of thinking, it gave him a very detailed itinerary. so he should've been using doubao from the start, not deepask, which seems to be a knockoff. as to what purpose, who knows. but doubao is infinitely better.

my parents picked a box of bitter melons for the cafe. i made a new sign on the illuminated acrylic board advertising bitter melon smoothies. they were unusually popular last summer, both with curious customers and those we already enjoy bitter melon drinks.

in the early afternoon my father steamed a bunch of small soup buns. we each had 8 pieces. i also ate some leftover grilled wings from last night.

my father continued to test doubao. it has a live translation function where it can speak back chinese input as english in 300 different accents. even when i was whispering to my father, it caught what i was saying on the microphone and translated to chinese/english depending on what language i was using. it also has an immersive photo AI mode like google lens, but you can speak to it, and it'll reply back as if it was a live person, telling you what you're looking at based on the live camera image. can chatgpt do this?

my 2nd aunt unexpectedly showed up today, stopping by before her tennis match. stopping by to eat that is, as she kept asking for food. my sister showed up in the late afternoon, said she was going to kittery with her korean friend and esmei. seemed kind of late to be driving up to maine to do some shopping, but that's the kind of easy life she lives.

i ran over to my sister's place to pick up some packages before we finally closed the cafe for the day. it was my two different sets of black shade cloth (40-50% shading, 12x8 $20, 6x8 $18) and an assortment package ball bungee cords ($7.99, 6, 9, 11 inches).

as soon as i got home i went into the backyard to install the shade cloth. i did my patio deck first using the 6x8 ft shade cloth. i wasn't sure how to install it and originally i was going to drape it from the 2nd story deck. that left a big gap at the bottom. so i lowered the shade cloth, tying the upper corners with 11 inch bungie cords to the two supporting columns while using the same 11 inch bungie cords for the lower corners. i then used 9 inch bungie cords fo the sides and the bottom. it worked surprisingly well. the shade cloth had grommets which made it easy to attach the bungie ball cords. i could still see through it, not sure if people can see me from the other side. at 40% there's minimal light blockage, still enough light to grow crops. it's enough to keep plants from burning.

i then set up the second shade cloth, from my deck to the fence. this one was a little worried, because i could only find 12x8 ft size, but the distance from deck to fence is actually 14 ft. fortunately bungie cords can stretch, and i also used the smaller 6 inch bungie cord as an extension. the final result worked really well, very taut. this one is 40-50% shading. it offers more shade yet at the same time still allowing some sunlight to filter through. i'm hoping this one will mimic what our previous oak tree was doing to our backyard.

the ultimate test will be tomorrow, where i get to experience how much shade (and temperature lowering) the shade clothes will provide.

for dinner i had some leftover barbecue, including a piece of porkchop, some grilled zucchinis, and chicken wings.

before bed, i grabbed my gopro 9 and set up an astrophotography time-lapse video on the 2nd story deck. i had my thermacell but i still got bit by mosquitoes.

even though it was cool last night, there was hardly any breeze so it still felt warm. i left most windows opened but the indoor temperature only went down a few degrees. i watered the backyard. i could hear banging noises coming from the gutted house in our backyard. i gathered my things and left for the community garden to water my plot. the only other person there was gretchen. i picked a few ripe tomatoes. i ate some cherry tomatoes, which tasted weird, until i remembered i sprayed them with calcium chloride, that's why they tasted a bit salty.

from there i went to the cafe to water the plants and bring out some frozen foods to thaw in the fridge. there wasn't any passion flowers when i arrived, but by time i got the hose ready for watering, 5 new flowers opened up.

i got to my parents' place around 10:45am. it was still early enough that i saw all the double violet-pink long bean flowers. looks like we're going to get a good crop of beans this year, these kind as well as the blue beans (flat beans) which were already flowering a few weeks ago. there was no more blue butterfly pea flowers, but a lot of spent blossoms. blossoms need to be picked off or the plants stop making flowers, thinking it's already made enough. a few had turned into green seed pods, we'll have some seeds for next season.

my father was busy tweaking the drip irrigation setup. he added a second bucket, paired with the previous bucket through some clear tubing so the feeder hose will draw water from both buckets. he also added some miracle-gro fertilizer to give the plants some additional boost. i tried connecting the irrigation hub to the wifi. it came close a few times but always failed in the end. i wonder if the metal trellis isn't causing some kind of signal interference. in hindsight, we could've gotten the non-wifi version which was $11 cheaper.

my mother boiled some homemade dumplings for lunch. the secret of delicious dumplings is the sauce. i made a mixture of huy fong chili garlic sauce with laoganma chili crisps and soy sauce and vinegar. if i really wanted to take it up another level, i'd also add some chopped cilantro and minced garlic.

after lunch my parents went to the bank in fresh pond. i went outside to check on the drip irrigation, which was set to go off at 1pm, watering for 30 minutes. there was no activity in the emitters. when i checked the display, i noticed the clock was wrong, 1am instead of 1pm. i added a few minutes to the start time and waited for the pump to start watering. it worked like a charm, fast dripping into each grow bag and large pot. i noticed a bumble bee floating in the bucket. it must've fallen in when trying to get a drink of water. i fished it out with my finger and was happy to see it was still alive. that happiness was short lived when i felt a sudden surge of pain in my finger tip. i dropped my phone and threw the bumble bee away as a reflex. that's not nice, i was only trying to save your life! i've been stung by a bumble bee before, but on my leg, where it didn't hurt too much. the fingertip was a different story. pulsating, searing pain. i went inside and looked up "bee sting treatment". unless you're allergic (which i'm not), the best thing to do is take some pain killers and ice the wound. i grabbed an ice cube from the freezer and pressed it against my finger. i also learned that only female bumble bees sting, and they don't die like honey bees. bumble bee venom is also more painful than honey bee venom. it said that the pain goes away on its own after a while. 10 minutes of holding the ice cube was enough that my fingertip wasn't in throbbing pain anymore. i went outside to find my phone, lying in the grass.

my parents came back from the bank. my father showed me a second flush of new female flowers coming from our grow bag luffas. he estimates we'll probably harvest another 20 luffas. we watched the drip irrigation in progress. there isn't much to see since the emitters are buried below ground, but eventually all the grow bags and pots were dripping water from the bottom, a good sign that they were all probably watered. it didn't use a lot of water but it was still enough to soak all the plants. drip irrigation might be a future way where we extend the usefulness of our rain barrels. that'll definitely be a garden project for next year.

my mother said one of the $20 bill she went to deposit was actually a counterfeit. for some reason the bank didn't take it (aren't they legally supposed to?). from a distance it looks like a genuine $20, but upon closer inspection the quality is poor and missing certain security features like iridescent ink and microfilm security strip. my mother said at least it was only $20. they have no idea which customer slipped them the funny money but now they'll be more vigilante. we don't get too much cash transactions these days anyway, most purchases are credit card.

my sister brought home esmei briefly. we forgot we had some raw chicken wings defrosting on a metal tray sitting on top of a cooler in the kitchen. the first thing esmei did was rush into the kitchen and lick a few chicken wings. thankfully she didn't have time to eat any yet.

looking outside in the late afternoon, none of the luffas or the bitter melons were wilting from the heat. that means the afternoon serving of drip irrigation helped to keep the plants happy and cool.

i was surfing the web for interesting plant seeds and came across roselle hibiscus. apparently you can grow them as an annual and harvest the bright red calyxes for all sorts of uses, from making teas, jams, drinks, and also candied roselle. my father said we should grow them next year instead of tomatoes, which so far this season we still haven't harvested a single fruit from our backyard. so later in the evening i went online and bought a bunch of roselle seeds for next year.

my father has been using the chinese deepask AI assistant pro. a few week ago google removed it from its store and a few days ago my father discovered it stopped working. i tried to install a newer version using an xapk file which requires the use of a third party app (full of ads) for proper installation. once installed though, the app wouldn't run anymore. google play store would intercede, spitting out a "the app installed on your device is not recognized" and wouldn't open up the app. i tried a bunch of different methods, from installing older versions of the app to using a VPN (with a hong kong location) but none of them worked. the weird thing was the app still worked on my mother's phone. so i'll trying extracting her app tomorrow and installing it on my father's phone. that's the final thing i can do. if it still doesn't work, he'll have to use something else. he's been using the app to create an itinerary for a possible china trip in late october.

approaching 6pm my father and i went into the backyard to do some grilling. i defrosted 2 bags of chicken wings earlier, already salt reduced them. my father sliced up the zucchini i found and added some seasoning. we also skewered some okras and grilled them as well. my mother came out with some leftover marinated porkchops which we also grilled.

the wings were good - we didn't scorch them too badly this time - but wings taste the best when they're a day old. the okras were surprisingly savory, we should grill them again next time. the smaller okras were still tender, the larger ones were so woody as to be inedible. cutting them open revealed white pearl seeds. we finished the sangria i made last weekend.

i went home after dinner. pushing my ebike through the backyard, i passed by shady plants continuing to die in the scorching afternoon sun. that rhododendron probably won't survive. they prefer dappled sunlight, not direct heat with no protection. it was getting leggy anyway, wouldn't mind seeing something else in its place.

i watched a stream of the red sox bluejays game while i took a shower. did i jinx the sox? ever since i started following them, they've been losing. they lost their 3rd straight game tonight.

i ordered some more miracle-gro water soluble fertilizer. this time i got their tomato food variety, which is a more balanced 18-18-21. traditional miracle-gro all-purpose plant food is 24-8-16. i also got a new tire pressure gauge, to replace the one that i bought a few years back but my father lost (my theory is he left it outside while working on someething and somebody swiped it). finally i got some slow bolt cilantro. we have a few empty grow bags that i could repurpose as cilantro incubators. we won't be able to harvest until 45-60 days later, but by then the weather will be cooler, perfect for cilantro.