i had less than an hour to work before i needed to ride my ebike to belmont to meet up with the fence guy from reliable. i started a new batch of tea eggs. since it's been a week now, we tried the 5L jar of makgeolli sona masoori rice. it was sour, but also alcoholic, with barely any sweetness. we decided to let it ferment a bit longer. instead we filtered the 4L jar of properly cooked sona masoori rice with jiuniang yeast. we taste tested it first: not as sour, definitely alcoholic (though how much hard to say), some sweetness, but mostly sour and alcoholic. we poured the content into a nut milk bag and slowly filtered out the liquid. the idea was to add some sugar, which would balance out the taste. however around 9:30am i got a phone call. it was the fence, already at my parents' place. he came 30 minutes early. i told him to wait, and that i'd be there in 10 minutes. i stopped what i was doing and raced to belmont.

i met sean from reliable fence. i shook his hand, big and meaty. first thing he noticed was the license plate on the toyota parked in the driveway. it was an old massachusetts plate with green letters. the last time they issued those was 1987. we never thought about it, but it's actually an antique, something you rarely see these days. sean seemed very excited to see one in person. he told me to keep it as long as possible.

sean had already surveyed the backyard while he was waiting for me to show up. he brought up two issues without me having to point them out: the pussy willow tree in the path of the backyard property line, and the bamboo grove. i was impressed, since eddie from ideal didn't mention them until i brought them up. i asked if they'd put down cement. he said they didn't use to, but now it's standard practice. nowadays pressure treated posts are more environmentally friendly (copper-based treatment), unlike past treatments that used chemicals like arsenic. but due to the formula change, new pressure treated wood don't last as long as old ones. by adding cement, it contributes to the longevity of the posts. he told me how they do it, by pouring dry cement that hardens over time. he said for the post behind the bamboo, they'd need a special fence post since it'd need to be deeper into the ground. he said the replacement fence would be cedar stockade but the boards would be thinner, since they don't make them as wide as our old fence anymore. the pickets would also be more pointed, unlike our current fence, which got worn down over time.

sean told me he had 9 other places to visit today. he worked on the proposal in his truck while i returned to the cafe. by the time i got there, he'd already sent me the contract. price: $4580. so it seems like around $4000 is the going rate. mcdonough was the most expensive, at $4650, but not by too much. the cheapest was ideal at $4250. reliable was in the middle, though closer to mcdonough's price. ideal was cheapest and they seem nice, but there were a few red flags. i don't dought mcdonough would do a good job, but sean from ideal really impressed me with his knowledge about the fencing business and seemed to have an eye for details. reliable is also massachusett's largest fence contractor, so they know what they're doing. sean actually told me the price included a 20% spring discount, but i think that's mostly marketing talk, since all three contractors gave similar prices.

so we ended up going with reliable. to start the project, we needed to sign the contract and to pay a 50% deposit. we could either mail them a check, use zelle, or a credit card (but with a 3% fee). we tried zelle, but the payment wouldn't go through. there was also a $1000 daily limit, so the payment had to be split into multiple parts over the next few days. we tried a few more times with no success, so finally decided to just mail them a check (office in woburn). sean contacted me later in the evening, said he was in belmont tomorrow and could come pick up the check, but i told him i already mailed it out.

my father had already squeezed all the liquids from the fermenting jiuniang rice into a large stainless steel mixing bowl. he also scooped out some liquid and added some sugar. with the added sugar the rice wine flavor was complete: sour, sweet, and alcoholic. he added about half a cup of sugar to the remaining liquid. after we mixed it together, we poured the jiuniang wine into two 1L plastic bottles.

i also mixed the makgeolli we started yesterday. it looked a little dry on top, but turned wet after i finished mixing everything. it needs to be mixed for 3 days before we cap it and let it ferment without oxygen. if we do a taste test, the makgeolli should be very sweet at this stage (if everything is fermenting correctly), with no alcohol.

my godmother showed up in the morning, along with alex who gave her a ride. i showed alex my ebike and he took it on a short test ride down the street and back. they left by late morning once we started to get busy.

so we got busy today. it started around 11am when we got a large online order that included 4 dan dan noodles and 1 vegetable stirfry noodles, which basically exhausted our stock of black soy noodles. i had to make more, as more dan dan noodle orders came in. there a total of 8 dan dan noodle orders today, so i ended up making 3 batches of black soy noodles. after 1pm things slowed down, only to pick back up again around 2pm. in the early evening after 5pm there was another uptick. my mother also sold some knitwear today.

my aunt showed up in the afternoon, had a sausage bento. she also tried our jiuniang wine, said she couldn't taste any alcohol, even though there was definitely some alcohol. after a few hours the bottled wine accumulated enough carbonation that the bottle became super stiff and we had to open the bottles slowly otherwise all the liquid would shoot out. CO2 means it's definitely still fermenting, the yeast turning the sugar into alcohol. we can expect the jiuniang wine to be more alcoholic over time.

i didn't bring anything back after work. since i had my ebike, i went the slightly longer way home. after a shower, i cooked up some spinach ravioli for dinner, and watched the hawks-celtics game. hawks controlled the first half of the game, as well as going into the second half. but it seemed inevitable that the celtics would take over eventually, despite jaylen brown sitting out tonight. celtics had the lead starting from the middle of the 3rd quarter and never game it up. celtics win 102-109.

given that we were busy the past two days, i figured today would be more of the same, especially since temperature was supposed to reach the 60's, the warmest day this week. but trying to predict whether we'll be busy or not is impossible, as today was shaping up to be a slow day. technically it was warm, but the sky was overcast so it felt colder.

the lull gave me time to make some smoked sprat bagel sandwiches with sliced onions, cucumbers, dill, and capers. for my money, white fish salad is still the way to go for a far more delicious bagel sandwich. smoked sprats are okay, but they can be a little bland, and messy to eat with all that fish oil.

heading into 2pm did we finally get busy. nothing crazy, but a sudden stream of customers. why didn't them come earlier? who knows. chinese sausage was the most popular bento variety, we sold half a dozen, when normally we might get one or two. once again we exhausted our tea egg supply, i'll need to make a fresh batch tomorrow.

ideal fence got in touch with me. eddie wasn't able to send the estimate to my e-mail, so he took a photo and texted me the estimate instead. he's asking for $4250 for a wooden fence, or $4000 for a vinyl. the way he was talking, it sounded like vinyl was going to be way cheaper, but only just $250 difference.

given that our latest rice fermentation experiments will end in failure, i decided to make a proper batch of makgeolli with the leftover bag of nuruk and 5lbs. of long-grain glutinous rice. first i had to soak the rice for 2 hours. at 4pm i steamed the rice for 40 minutes, switching the pans at the midway point. i then dumped the cooked rice into a large stainless steel dish and stirred the rice to help it cool faster. i boiled nearly 3L of water, then left it to cool. to help the rice cool faster, as soon as it was warm enough to touch, i broke apart the rice by hand and separated them into smaller clumps.

my godmother called the cafe today, spoke with my mother. she'd been back home from taiwan for a week now, but wasn't able to visit us because alex took her car. she could probably get to the cafe by bus, but i don't think she's ever taken public transportation before.

from 5pm until we closed we got busy again. my mother left early around 6pm to walk home, after cooking some pork & pepper stirfry and fulfilling what turned out to be our last order of the day (beef noodle soup and bento for here).

my father helped me mix the rice with the water (2.3L) before we added the nuruk. we reconstituted the nuruk in some water to form a slurry, but it would've been easier just to dump the nuruk powder directly onto the rice and water to mix. we then scooped the mixture into our 7L jar. the makgeolli should be ready by next thursday. my father decided he wouldn't add any additional water to see if that'll make any difference.

after we closed for the day, we heard people talking outside. turns out it was my sister speaking with a prospective baker who wants to buy the business from the currently vacating bakery. they also gave her some samples, a strawberry cream sandwich and a tiramisu sandwich. i had a few bites of the tiramisu sandwich: the bread was salty and savory from the butter, dusted in dark chocolate, with a tiramisu filling. it was pretty good. if these guys can actually take over that'd be great. we actually got a lot of new business by having a bakery next door.

i left with some pork & pepper bento my mother had already packed for me. first thing i did when i got home was to e-file my sister's godmother's federal taxes. hopefully it worked, i'll ask my mother to ask tomorrow. i also replied to paul about the fensu fence contractor he met yesterday. they want $800 to just replace the gate, or $1900 to replace the whole thing including the post. paul told me they were gone for the next 2 weeks.

after a shower i ate my bento. there was a knicks-hornets game, i watched just to see if no.3 new york would lose, provide a little separation against the no.2 seed celtics. sure enough, knicks lost, now boston is a game ahead. unfortunately the knicks have an easier remaining schedule. but after the celtics beat the thunder last night, i can easily beat their remaining opponents. the april 9th celtics-knicks game is going to be key.

old habits die hard: i went back to cyberpunk again. yes i finished the game, but i went back to a previous save, one where i impersonate aurore cassel. in this mission, instead of siding with reed, i betray him to help songbird escape. alex managed to kill kurt hansen (i didn't have the pleasure, so i wasn't able to loot his iconic weapons), while evil AI-possessed songbird and i escape the stadium. i didn't have erebus, but i still had plenty of formidable weapons in my stash. the barghest militia was no match.

i woke up at my normal time of 8am but instead of going to work i went to my parents' place to meet up with someone from ideal fence to do an estimate. my mother called me while i was enroute via ebike. i forgot what she told me but i found out she was walking to the cafe. i thought i might see her (walking) or my father (driving) but didn't see neither of them.

i arrived in belmont around 9am. the appointment wasn't until 9:30am so i had some time to kill. i decided to go out in the front yard and trim some bushes with the ladder. 9:30am came and ideal fence still hadn't shown up yet. i kept working until they finally called, said they were about to arrive.

eddie showed up from ideal fence, an older gentleman. he was gone last week, i asked if he was on vacation. he said he went to florida and north carolina. i asked about the weather, figuring it'd be warmer, but he said they had a few cold days. once again eddie pushed for vinyl fences. "just get it done and never have to think about it again!" i told him to give me two estimates so we can decide (the other being cedar wood picket fence). he measured the fence length (only once), 81 ft. he asked if we wanted "take away" which meant if we wanted them to take away our old fence. i was the one who pointed out the bamboo (he said it wouldn't be a problem) and the pussy willow tree. he said we could fence the tree so it'd be an issue for our backyard neighbor, or we could cut it. as long as the trunk is flush to the ground, they could work with it. i asked if they would put down cement, he said yes. when i told him my parents own a cafe, he said he actually spoke with my sister, who called them to put up barricades in front of the electric meters. i asked him about turn around time, he said 2-3 weeks. he could have an estimate for me by tomorrow. he saw my electric bike and asked a bunch of questions. how fast do they go? how far can they travel? how much does it weigh?

after eddie left, i went to work on the toyota, applying 3 coats of rain-x to the windshield and windows, and a coat of anti-fog inside the windshield.

next i put back some of the rain barrels. there was still water in some of them, a result of the frozen ice inside finally melting.

i then started some backyard tree pruning. i trimmed a few branches on the hawthorn. that is a scary tree. it looks fairly innocuous, but the branches have long 2-inch thorns which can cause some serious damage. the cut branches have to be treated carefully, cut into smaller pieces so nobody accidentally gets stabbed.

i trimmed the maple tree, focusing on tall suckers facing the south side of the tree. it was fairly easy to cut them down using the cordless ego pole saw. i learned it's much easier to trim the branches at at the midway point instead of cutting them at the base. afterwards i can go back and clean up the leftover bases. cutting down the branches is the easy (though more dangerous) part; the hard part is reducing all the cut branches for garden refuse pickup, which isn't until 2 more weeks. i had a few close calls when branches came crashing down. i did sustain a bunch of cuts on my forearm.

the last thing i did was to dump half a bag of chicken manure into each raised bed (except for RB3) before adding half a trash can of leftover shredded leaves. this should've been done in late fall or early winter, so the material can compost and be ready for planting by spring. but winter snuck up on us so fast, we didn't have time to do any of that stuff before the ground froze solid and it started snowing. the chicken manure smelled awful, we purchased them back in november 2024, so it had two winters to decompose inside of tightly sealed bags, but the smell only seemed to get stronger. hopefully the rain that's supposed to fall on thursday-friday will help get rid of some of that smell.

i left belmont by 1:20pm. i took with me the 2-gallon garden pump sprayer that still had 3/4 gallon of horticultural oil. i'd stripped down to my t-shirt because i warmed up from working in the backyard and didn't bother to put my jacket on. i immediately regretted that decision as it was actually still kind of cold with temperature in the 50's.

i went to the cafe. i grabbed the sprayer and went to my sister's place to spray her rhododendron bushes which had a terrible azalea bark scale infestation last summer. the plastic nozzle on the sprayer was semi-clogged, so not sure how well the oil sprayed out, but i could always reapply it again in a few weeks when the weather warms up. i only started using horticultural oil last summer (to treat a scale infestation on the cherry plum tree), so i'm still not sure how well it works, but all the literature i found said to use it against scale insects.

back at the cafe, i made a new batch of tea eggs. i've got my recipe down to a science, i can start a new batch in under 30 minutes using the steam technique, then leave it simmering on low heat on the induction cooktop for 2 hours. the only thing about the recipe i want to change is the brand of tea i use. through trial and error, i've found the best tea to be red rose tea bags. but for authenticity and maximum flavor, i really want to try loose black tea.

my mother made me some rice noodle mixed with ground pork, garlic chives, and bean sprouts. it didn't look too appetizing but it was pretty delicious (maybe because i was hungry from working all those hours in the backyard).

my sister's godmother showed up. she was here so i could give her her tax returns. she'll e-file her federal tax (where she owes money) but will need to mail her state tax (no refund or payment). she needs to add money to her checking account and will let me know by tomorrow so i can e-file her federal tax return.

i finally returned home by 3pm. i spent a little time cleaning the chain on my ebike. the rust i saw a few days ago and thought had disappeared was back again. it's only surface rust at this time, and i was able to clean it off completely using finish line 1-stp cleaner and lubricant. i sprayed a first coat before wiping it clean with a paper towel, followed by a second coat. what the bike really needs is a more thorough wash but i'm going to wait until the weather warms up to take out the garden hose.

i switched to my trek utility bike and went to market basket to get some cafe supplies and to find tonight's dinner. i decided on some frozen spinach ravioli with a ready made jarred pasta sauce.

i got back home by 4pm.

i finished cyberpunk tonight, finally met hanako at embers. there seemed to be 3 ending choices, i picked the one where i let silverhand take over my body so he could enlist the help of rogue to destroy arasaka once and for all. it involved defeating the final boss monster adam smasher after he murders rogue in an ambush. i was then given another choice, to let silverhand take over my body forever, or return to my body knowing i don't have long to live. the game ends with judy breaking up with me, me being the owner of the afterlife bar and going on one last mission to outer space. cue credits and a few poignant video messages from people i've meet during the game. they're leaving messages, but it's left unsaid whether V survives the space mission or not. the game then allows me to go back to night city, but with all the gigs and missions finished, there wasn't anything to do but sightsee.

i had dinner around 8:30pm, my aforementioned spinach ravioli with pasta sauce. i ate while watching the thunder-celtics game. it was a tough game, with OKC in a position to win for 3/4 of the game, but the celtics turned it around in the 4th quarter to break OKC's win streak. piston lost tonight, so the celtics are now 4 games behind detroit with 10 games left. the knicks are nipping at celtics' heel, 1/2 game behind.

finally we got busy today, between 1-2pm and then 4-6pm. just a single day we made a third of the profit compared to last week. if the rest of the week is as busy, this will turn out to be a very lucrative week. a lot of bentos, which exhausted our tea egg supply, will need to start using the backup batch tomorrow. we sold everything except for pad thai.

was it the weather? sure it was sunny, but it wasn't that warm, barely in the 40's. while the rest of the country is experiencing early spring warmth, new england is still stuck in a cold pattern that doesn't seem to be ending anytime soon. it might warm up during the day, but the temperature always drops down into the 20-30's at nights.

i put up a sign on the door telling customers we're closed for the week my parents are on vacation. but apparently in got the wrong dates. i thought it was the week of april 5-11th, but they're actually gone the following week 12-18th. so they still have about 3 weeks before they leave. the way my parents were already packing up their suitcases this past week, i thought they were leaving sooner.

my mother taste tested the two fermenting rice in the fido jars. both times she spit it out, utterly putrid. i'm still hopeful that maybe continued fermentation will tranform the rice into something at least drinkable, but it's beginning to look more likely that this was a failed experiment. we didn't use the right kind of rice, nor used the proper fermentation starter (leftover makgeolli lees), nor the right amount of water (too much water in the jiuniang fermentation). but we made instead are large jars of rice-based sour dough starter, and that's not something you can drink. basically not enough sugar was produced, if any. without sugar, the yeast have nothing to eat, so therefore no alcohol either.

esmei burst through the back door in the late afternoon. she heard my mother cracking a hard-boiled egg. so when my father went to feed her some sweet potato skin - something she'd always eat in the past - she spit it out, hoping to get some egg instead.

my lack of sleep caused me to get a little drowsy during the quiet stretches of the day, but thankfully we were busy enough that i stayed awake throughout the day. i went home after work, there was still plenty of daylight, didn't need my bike lights.

i heated up a brick of stouffer's lasagna in the oven for dinner. stouffer changed their recipe a while back, but i feel like maybe they changed it to the old recipe, because it wasn't too bad, just in a much smaller size due to shrinkflation.

after dinner i started my other job, which is playing cyberpunk. with no more new missions or gigs, i basically just roamed around night city, looking for gang members to test out my guns. i like using erebus, the effects are super violent as it banishes their souls beyond the blackwall. every once in a while i'll accidentally trigger a police response, then i'm running around try to find a place to hide waiting for the arrest bulletin to end. i went in search of some easter eggs, like the murk mobile in the old mines. i then drove around the city at 140mph.

my father took my mother to her follow-up medical checkup today at 10am, to get her blood pressure measured and to give some blood samples. after she finished, they came by to pick me up around 10:40am. it was my first time riding in the honda after i gave the windshield the rain-x treatment last weekend. water was still beading on the glass but only because it was misting outside. my father said slightly stronger rain beads right off the windshield like magic.

we dropped off my mother at home before my father and i continued to restaurant depot in needham to get a few supplies. along the way we passed through newton center. a new c-mart is coming soon, after the last one in boston closed recently. this is good news, because it means we can visit this c-mart whenever we make a needham-waltham supply run.

at restaurant depot we got a case of beef shank. for whatever reason, only the needham store carries beef shank. just like how only the everett store has beef tripe. i don't understand why they can both carry the same thing? saves us the trouble of having to shuttle back and forth between the two stores depending on what we need to get. we also got a few boxes of linguine noodles. we thought about getting some eggs too, but the cheapest we saw for large eggs was $30.99 for a case of 15 dozen, which comes out to 17¢ an egg, not as cheap as costco.

coming back from needham via 95/route 2, we stopped by the fresh pond trader joe's. we got some baby cucumbers, edamame, and bananas.

we went to the cafe to drop off the supplies. i was going to stir the fido jars one last time, but my father tried the fermenting rice and said not to bother. like yesterday, they were still bland, which is not a good sign. they're supposed to be sweet at least, meaning the starch is getting properly broken down into sugar, which will then feed the yeast. only thing left to do was to cap the jars and wait until the end of the week to try out our rice wine. hopefully they'll taste okay and not put us in the hospital.

back in belmont, my mother made wonton soup for lunch.

in the late afternoon i ventured down to the basement to check on my plants. for some reason all the overwintering peppers have died. they did well for the first months, but then one by one they just shriveled up and died. can't be because the soil is too dry since it's properly moist. not any kind of insect infestation since there's never any gnats on the traps. does look like diseases either. i'm not too sadden by the turn of events, peppers grow quick, especially if i start new seedlings within the next few weeks.

as for the grow room, i didn't see any signs of flying fungus gnats. nor did i see any new captures on all the yellow sticky traps. after 3 weeks of proper soil drenching with gnatrol, have i finally solved my fungus gnat problem? i didn't bother watering all the plants, just the orchids and pennyworts. i also fertilized the gardenia and watered some osmanthus and small potted jasmines with the leftover fertilizer water.

for dinner my parents made a pot of assorted fish cakes. my mother also made a salted pork stirfry with some longhorn peppers and onions. i ate mostly the salted pork, fish cakes not my favorites, although i did eat some (including some tofu and daikon radish dipped in hot sauce). we ate early, my father gave me a ride back to cambridge by 6pm.

paul has been talking with a handyman who looks to replace our broken basement door for $1260. i agreed, just to give him a victory, since i'm normally the one saying no to any sort of fixes. my share of the repairs comes out to $500. i wrote them a check and slipped it through their mail slot.

for whatever reason, i woke up at 7am this morning, couldn't fall back asleep anymore, even though i went to bed last night at 2am. it wasn't raining yet, but the forecast said rain would come around 10:45am, so i had to leave before then.

i left by 10am. my ebike was still outside underneath the tarp, double locked to my regular trek utility bike. i figured if anyone wanted to steal it, they'd have to go through the hassle of taking both bikes.

i passed by the bakery, which was crowded with people, something like 20 customers inside. it still doesn't make any sense they'll closing by month's end. it's not because of business, they're always busy. i did notice the owner wasn't there, on what will be a busy sunday the second to last weekend before they're gone forever. i also saw an article on boston.com about the closing. the owner must know the writer.

i went to the cafe to put away the tea eggs and leftover rice, and to mix the fermenting rice in the fido jars. all the jars were around room temperature, didn't seem like there was much fermenting. the 4L fido jar - the one with properly cooked rice and 3 crushed yeast balls - looked like nothing was happening. it didn't even have a smell. when i started stirring, it started bubbling. i tasted the metal spatula afterwards, no taste. no sweetness, no sourness, just tasted like cold bland rice. the 5L fido jar was cooking. there was a vigorous amount of bubbling and it smelled like makgeolli, with a slight fruitiness. when i stirred it though, the surface went placid, the opposite of what happened with the smaller fido jar. i tasted the spatula as well, expecting som sort of flavor, but it was just as bland as the previous jar.

i got belmont around 10:30am. i took out the battery from the ebike because it was down to 19%, wasn't sure if i'd have enough juice to make it home. it was probably so slow because i left the bike outside, battery doesn't perform wll in the cold. i went to the garage to find a tarp to cover up the ebike and went inside to charge up the battery.

my father made a fried egg, a taiwanese scallion pancake (which i ate with some pork floss), some hunter sausage, a mug of matcha latte (my mother made that for me), and a tokyo banana cake. my aunt dropped it off last weekend, i wasn't able to try it then. it tastes exactly like a banana and shaped like a banana too. makes me wonder: why not just eat a banana instead?

it was supposed to rain the rest of the day but it didn't really. the midmorning rain never really came, just a very little sprinkle at best. in the afternoon there was about round of rain, but just a light cold drizzle. when the battery finally finished charging 4 hours later, i went outside to put it on the bike and remove the tarp so i could get a free bike wash. i wiped off all the mud stains from a winter of riding.

i finally ordered some stuff from rareseeds. once again i waited too long, and two of the things i wanted - asian asters and taiwanese eggplants - were sold out. i ended up getting seed packets for stevia, serrano tampiqueño hot peppers, heavy hitter okra (it'll be our first time growing okra), blue butterfly pea, and swiss chards.

for dinner we had som reuben sandwiches. i brought a can of sauerkraut that i bought yesterday. my mother also made a potato salad but the sandwich was already filling enough.

i didn't leave for home until 7:20pm, waiting for the rain to stop. i put on my rain pants to stay dry, figured i'd be riding through a lot of leftover puddles.

spent the rest of the night playing cyberpunk. i finished one last gig for mr.hand. turned out to be the very last one, he gifted me a sports car and some maxtac mantis claws. the end is near! only mission left is to meet hanako at embers. maybe there are a few more gigs i haven't done yet. i've resorted to calling random people on my phone list, but nobody's picking up.

i woke up at 8am this morning to ride down to belmont so i could spray our flowering cherry/plum trees with horticultural oil. last season we discovered the cherry plum had an infestation of scale insects and wanted to get ahead of it this season. this morning was the optimal time, and would give about 24 hours worth of dry warm weather for the oil to work.

i opted to use 6 tbsp of oil per gallon of water, making 2 gallons worth in the spray tank. that turned out to be way too much, i probably only needed a gallon for the two trees. i started with the cherry plum first. with the thin high branches i wasn't sure if i was getting complete coverage, basically just hope and pray i did. while spraying, i also discovered some black knots which i promptly removed. while i was applying horticultural oil, my father was busy pruning the grapevine. after the cherry plum i moved on to the kwanzan flowering cherry. this tree is much healthier, partly because it gets more sun, and partly because it has fewer thin branches. it's a very healthy tree, and the branches have started to open up into a wider canopy now. the kwanzan doesn't have any scale issues but i sprayed anyway as a preventative.

my mother left for work around 10am, walking to the cafe. i finished up around 10:40am and rode the ebike to join my mother at work. i was surprised my 2nd aunt was already there, she usually doesn't show up until 11am when we open.

my mother only cooked 4 cups of rice, since we had a lot left over from yesterday (3 boxes worth). she also didn't think we'd be busy today, since it'd been a slow week overall. i had the opposite opinion: with weather approaching the 50's today and sunny, it was shaping up to be a busy day. we got a handful of orders just within the first hour. that was a sign it was going to be busy. around noontime we ran out of rice and my mother had to reheat all the leftover rice from yesterday while i cooked more 4 cups in the backup cooker. just around noontime we already made more in that single hour than all of yesterday combined. i didn't mind we were busy, it made the day go by much faster. we should so many bentos today that i ended up cooking another batch of tea eggs. i only simmered them for one hour this time, since they'll be soaking in tea egg brine all weekend and we probably won't start using this batch until wednesday at the earliest, so they'll have plenty of time to steep.

i checked on the progress of our fermenting rice. the 5L jar with makgeolli lees added was bubbling like crazy. i took temperature measurements for each jar. the 5L and the 4L both read 65.8 degrees, which was just 0.2 degrees more than the countertop temperature. the two quart jars were much warmer, both read 66.2 degrees. i opened up the fido jars to give them a stir. the 5L makgeolli lees rice i could already smell the makgeolli flavor through the paper towel cap. the jar was dense with rice, i could barely stir it. the rice itself seemed to have crumbled. the 4L jar with the properly cooked rice and just juniang yeast balls didn't seem like it was doing very much. it had a very faint rotten smell, like the rice was going bad. when i stirred it up a lot of bubbles suddenly started rising from the rice, so there's definitely fermentation going on. i took another smell, didn't smell anything, but at least the foul smell was gone. the fido jars became warmer after i stirred them, to the same temperature as the smaller quart jars.

we tried some leftover makgeolli from the fridge. it's had two weeks to ferment now. it wasn't as sweet anymore, and there seemed to be more alcohol, to the point where it tasted dry and slightly astringent, reminded me of champagne. still very good, but definitely a more mature flavor.

my father showed up around closing time even though my mother told him she was going to walk home after work. i don't know if she did walk home, because i left while my mother was still packing up foods to take home. because i had the ebike, i took the long way home, gave me a few more bonus minutes of riding. i noticed what looked to be rust on the chain but after i rode it the rust seemed to have disappeared. still, it'd be a good thing to rinse the bike, so much road salt and dirt splashes on the white frame.

i went to star market after i got home, to grab a can of sauerkraut for the corned beef and some chex mix. i couldn't find it before because i was looking for a bigger bag until i saw them in smaller shrink-sized bags.

after a shower i settled in for a nice saturday evening of cyberpunk. it seems to be true that the game is nearly over. i'm still getting a few gigs, but it makes me sad since each finished mission just means i'm that much closer to the actual end. i met up with reed who said his good bye. assisting so mi in her suicide ruined the lives of so many characters, from reed, to the president, to so mi. i thought her death was the only option, but apparently you could allow her to live and she ends up going into space just to get away from the blackwall AI. maybe i'll try that option in some future playthrough. i managed to craft the iconic power submachine gun erebus which is like a weapon from hell, sending screaming victims into cyberspace beyond the blackwall through the guidance of a built-in AI that periodically talks to the user.

i reheated the last of my gyudon for dinner than had some blood orange slices.

i packed my rain pants since the forecast said rain after work.

i borrowed the car around 11am and drove to my parents' place to meet up with the mcdonough fence guy. i brought back a corned beef for the slow cooker so my parents could have it for dinner when they returned home. cole showed up a bit before 11:30am. we went out to the backyard to see the fence. at first he thought we wanted to replace the low western fence, which he said was "a million years old" until he saw the broken pieces of the southern fence. he took quick measurements with a tape measure. i asked him if he ever considered using a laser measure: he has one, but prefers the tape measure since most properties aren't that big to begin with. he saw right away we had a cutout for the pussy willow and what used to be apple tree; i told him we'd cut down the willow before they start working.

cole said the fence we currently have looks like something you'd buy from home depot; i personally don't think it's too bad, lasted us 30+ years. i asked about the material, he said cedar wood, like the fence our eastern neighbor put up a while back. would they also replace the posts? he said yes, replaced with thicker 5" diameter posts. he said overall it looks to be a pretty straight-forward job, and he could send me an estimate by tonight. while he was getting into his truck, i asked if this was a busy time for them, springtime yes, today he has 4 more house calls, one to newton, one to somerville. the other busy time is fall, when a lot of landscaping projects happen and people who held off on replacing their fence all year now want to get it down before winter.

i got back to the cafe around 11:40am, surprised my parents that i returned so soon. i was worried it'd get busy while i was gone, which turned out to be unwarranted. not sure what was happening today, but we barely had any customers. i don't even think we had a single online order, no any phone orders. there was a brief peak around 1pm, but that was yet. a regular customer even remarked that business seemed slow. today was probably one of the single worst days so far this year. nevertheless, the time seemed to go by fast, and before we knew it, it was time to go home.

i had some instant century egg rice porridge for a late breakfast when i returned from belmont. in the late afternoon i cooked all the fennel italian sausages in the air fryer. there was an issue of new yorker magazine, sent to the cafe by accident (wrong address). i didn't realize that a single issue of this weekly magazin is now $10.99. that's crazy expensive! i read a few articles, usually i find this magazine at the doctor's office.

reading the cooking instruction on our bag of indian sona masoori rice, we found out you're supposed to use 2 cups of water for 1 cup of rice. that's why the rice we cooked yesterday seemed so dry, because we used the typical 1:1 ratio for asian rice. so we decided to make a new batch using sona masoori rice, putting it in a 4L fido jar i had at the cafe. we used about 660g of rice. this time around the rice came out fluffy, although still individually grained (due to low starch content). after we rinsed the rice in cold water to lower the temperature, my father mixed in 3 grounded juniang yeast balls. we didn't want to completely fill the fido jar, so we put some rice in a 1-quart wide-mouth jar. to that jar we added some makgeolli lees, basically recreating the rice fermentation experiment from yesterday. we then topped both jars with water until all the rice was submerged.

we stirred the fermenting rice in the 5L fido jar, which is what you're supposed to do for the first 3 days when making makgeolli. just a day later, there didn't seem to be any signs of fermentation. the rice itself at a very faint foul odor, like what wet rice would smell like if you left it outside. we had a feeling this batch was going to go bad. so in order to save it, we dumped everything out into a large stainless steel bowl and added several clumps of makgeolli lees. we reconstituted the lees in water (turning it back into a slurry) before adding it to the rice. we then put all the rice back inside the 5L fido jar.

that makgeolli lees is still pretty potent despite being in the fridge for a week. as soon as we refilled the 5L jar with rice and lees, we could see bubbling action. we also added two teaspoon of sugar to this jar, not sure if it was necessary, but give the yeast something to feed on while bacteria converts the rice starch to sugar. it wasn't just bubbles: using an infrared temperature gun, the two new rice jars we made today were both at 63.3 degrees, while the 1-quart jar of slightly cooked sona masoori rice with makgeolli lees was 67.2 degrees, and the 5L fido jar was 65.3 degrees.

i left work early for a change. i had my eye on the weather and the doppler radar showed rainstorms on boston's doorstep. if i left early, i could avoid getting soaked. so i left around 6:10pm. i already felt a few drops of rain, but otherwise i escaped unscathed.

mcdonough fence got back to me with a quote. my mother guessed $2000, my father was thinking $3500, while i went with $4000. actual price? $4650. so i was closer, but even i was a little shocked, didn't think it'd be that expensive. included in the price is also concrete bases to set the pressure treated posts, something i don't think many other fence contractors would do. if we agree to let mcdonough do the work, we just need to pay them half the amount and then we'll be put on their installation waitlist. i still have contractors to see on wednesday and friday.

for dinner i some leftover gyudon. i brought home some more rice from the cafe, we barely used the 7-cups we cooked this morning. i played cyberpunk for 4 hours until midnight. i finished the save songbird mission, the game actually rolled the credits afterwards. i thought maybe the entire game was over at that point, but i found myself back in my apartment, waiting for a phone call from reed. besides that, i have just one more mission left, to meek hanako at embers. i know that is the last mission that officially ends the game.

this morning my parents made a batch of vegetable buns while i made a batch of tea eggs. i also brought the two heads of cabbage i bought yesterday and turned them into sauerkraut. what would've taken me a hour to shred took my parents a combined total of just 10 minutes. i figured out i had 3198g of cabbage, so i added 2% salt - 64g - to reduce the cabbage. i also added 2 tsp of caraway seeds and 4 cloves of chopped garlic. the recipe asked for mustard seeds but they were in belmont so i didn't add them.

my mother told me that the bakery next door is closing by the final weekend of this month. that came as a total shock because they hardly been open for more than 6 months. they've been so busy too, except we rarely see the owner. plus she has so many hires, must be hard trying to make a profit despite the good business. she told my sister the reason is family related, and she's looking to relocate to texas of all places.

i bought a packet of nissin geki spicy hot chicken ramen that i had for lunch in the afternoon. it's nissin's answer to buldak spicy korean ramen, down to the cartoon mascot (a lion?). the ramen was definitely spicier than your typical instant noodle, but it didn't exactly taste like buldak (which is super spicy). the noodle itself is thick and wavy. one word of caution: it's incredibly salty (2100g) so don't drink the broth.

we also fermented some indian sona masoori rice. not sure where we got it from, probably left behind by one of the astrophysicists. apparently it's a premium rice in india, but not a rice for the chinese palate. it's not a good rice for making rice wine because of its low starch content. because of that the grains don't really stick together once cooked. we cooked 1kg of sona masoori rice in the rice cooker. when it finished it didn't even looked cooked because the grains looked so dry. we rinsed the rice in cold water until it cooled down. instead of nuruk we mixed in two grounded jiuniang yeast balls. my father then scooped the rice mix into a 5L fido jar. we saved about a quarter and mixed it with some leftover makgeolli lees just as a side experiment. into the fido jar we added 1.5L of cold water to keep the rice submerged. as for the sona masoori makgeolli jar we added enough water to cover the rice. now we wait to see if anything will ferment.

we were busy around lunchtime, then not so much the rest of the day. we didn't make our daily average based on square profit alone, but combined with a handful of ubereats and grubhub orders, we did make more than average. my father left in the late afternoon for his 4:30pm physical. my aunt showed up afterwards looking for something to eat before her tennis match. we watched a taiwanese couple's videoblog of their independent trip to istanbul.

when i returned home there was a fancy sports car parked outside my house. it was an aston martin vanquish. brand new (2026), the base price of this car costs more than the price of my house - $433k). however this particular model from 2014-2016 sells for just $80-100k. still a lot of money, but not buy-a-house money.

after a shower, i went to star market to get more cabbage on sale. i then came back and made gyudon for dinner.

that combination of onion slices reduced in homemade teriyaki sauce reminds me so much of japanese cuisine. the recipe is so easy to make, i'm surprise i don't make it more often.

after dinner i played cyberpunk. i stopped right before the mission to rescue so mi from maxtac.

a bit of drama this morning as i couldn't remember if i took my pills last night. oh the joys of getting old! (although i've been on high blood pressure medication since my 20's). i have a nightly routine, where i put my single daytime medication out on the table after i take my other pills to remind me to take it in the morning. but i didn't see the bottle this morning, which would indicate i didn't take my medication last night. i could've taken them all this morning, but i didn't want to accidentally double dose if i made a mistake, and drop my blood pressure too much. i even took a few blood pressure measurements, but didn't see any drastically higher pressure, so i decided not to take any pills.

i left for a market basket run this morning at 10am but got stuck chatting with my neighbors victor and susan and didn't actually leave about a half hour later. victor invited me to a poetry/lecture on easter sunday in his backyard. susan told us the pillsbury house down the street that was sold last year will be demolished by the new owners.

it was cold this morning, below freezing. i had to wear a hat and gloves to stay comfortable. most of the stuff i got from market basket was for the cafe. only thing for m was a brick of frozen lasagna, some altoids, and a package of blood oranges.

i returned to the house to pick up some frozen dumplings before heading to the cafe. after dropping off the supplies, i went down to the basement to take all the remaining bulbs and then drove the car to belmont to do some yard work.

i first took down the screen netting from the grapevines. they were sort of successful in that it made it harder for critters to get to the grapes, but it also prevented us from getting to the grapes as well, to the point where we didn't even bother harvesting them this past season. they were also a pain to put up so we left them in the grapes throughout the winter. i was taking them down now to allow us to prune the grapevines. i did a bit of pruning myself, but stopped because i had other things to do.

my original plan was to pot some hyacinth bulbs so they could be displayed at the cafe once they started blooming. but i've sort of grown bored with bulb forcing, especially since some bulbs grew moldy during the winter storage in the garage, and of the bulbs i did try to grow in forcing vases, not all of them were successful. i decided the best thing to do would be to plant them in the garden instead. besides hyacinth bulbs, i also had a package of scilla bulbs and fritillary bulbs. those bulbs were not in very good shape, and think they mostly all dried up. nevertheless, i was going to plant them anyway, with the hopes that maybe a few might still be viable. trying to find a place to plant them, i ended up digging up the plot that used to be our garlic chive bed - southwestern corner of the backyard - underneath the hawthorn tree. the soil had already thawed, just a thin crust of icy dirt that i broke apart with a spade. i sprinkled the scilla and fritillary bulbs then buried them. of the hyacinths, i planted them underneath the grapevine, taking the best bulbs. those that were left over i planted them with the scilla and fritillary.

i did some basic cleanup, managed to fill two garden refuse bins. i raked our shady eastern perennial bed, as well as the shady western perennial bed with the wild gingers. i chased two large rabbits out of the backyard and uncovered an empty rabbit nest in the large raspberry pot. it's still very early in the season, but already things are growing. i forgot i'd planted some snowdrops, those poked out from underneath the grapevines. they must be doing well because there seemed to be more of them, so they're propagating. i planted some scillas a season or two ago, and they're also starting to come up. the daffodils i divided up a few years ago are emerging. at this rate i may need to divide them up again.

using the platform ladder, i did a bit of maple tree pruning. just removed a few suckers, nothing too major. i'll need my father's help to tackle some of the more challenging branches. sap dripped out from the fresh cuts, enough so that it felt like it was raining standing underneath the tree.

i left around 2:30pm, returned the car to the cafe. we tried one of the bottled makgeolli. it continues to produce gas, so much so that the cap was bulging, but the bottle was intact otherwise. it took forever to vent. because it had a few more days to ferment, the alcohol content is probably even greater than what it was before. it's essentially milky jiuniang soda with an unknown amount of alcohol.

my mother packed me another bento for lunch. when i got home i ran some errands first. i delivered some catalogs and magazine that were accidentally sent to me months ago. i went to gail's house on sacramento street to drop off my community garden fee ($15). i paid a second visit to market basket because i forgot to get bean sprouts this morning. when i returned, i went to star market to get some cabbage on sale (to make a fresh batch of my annual sauerkraut) and more corned beef. when i came home for good, i didn't eat my bento until 4:30pm. that ended up being my dinner.

starting at 5pm i played cyberpunk for the next 4-1/2 hours. i played the mission to rescue so mi. that involved impersonating the cassel twins by hijacking their car and remotely driving it to a secure location. what i didn't expect was for reed and alex to just murder the twins. aurore cassel was my favorite character! we then met kurt hansen at the stadium. so mi ended up betraying us and getting possessed by an evil AI. she went on a killing spree, murdering everyone in the stadium (no more herold lowe arms dealer and his iconic weapons), before getting captured by maxtac.

i started feeling hungry again around 10pm, so i heated up some pizza rolls. like an idiot, i grabbed the tray with my tongs but them promptly dropped everything onto the kitchen floor. i picked everything up, cleaned up the carpet the best i could, then ate the pizza rolls cautiously, making sure i wasn't eating anything gross off of the floor.

i made sure to take my medication this time around.