the roads and sidewalks this morning was slick with ice and melted puddles from last night. any errands i planned on running would have to wait until the afternoon for the ice to completely melt. i ate lunch - some granola with yogurt - while playing a late morning session of cyberpunk.

it was almost 2pm before i stopped. i got dressed and ready to go out. i saw my opposite door neighbor shoveling out his driveway so i went and helped him out, my bit of exercise for the day. i asked him about his norwegian flag bumper sticker and he told me that his father was norwegian and he'd spend summers in norway with family.

i got my bike and sprayed the rusty chain and drivetrain with finish line 1-step cleaner and lubricant spray. that stopped the grinding sound i started hearing the past few days. no ice in the roads but plenty of puddles. i didn't mind, free bike wash whenever i rode over one with my legs lifted. i grabbed two bags of recyclable plastic bottles to deposit, got $1.05 in returns. a sale on prosciutto made my look up ingredients for making a prosciutto sandwich: mozzarella cheese, pesto, tomato, arugula, on a baguette. i also got a few cafe items, including bananas and milk.

it was so warm, i almost didn't need a jacket. temperature today reached 53 degrees, which feels downright summery after so many weeks of below freezing daytime temperature. i came home and baked some fish sticks in the oven. while that was going on, i took a quick trip to star market to grab some polar seltzer and mandarin oranges on sale.

any semblance of a constructive day off went out the window once i started up cyberpunk again. i think i have close to 200 hours of accumulated gameplay at this point. i didn't stop until almost 9pm. i'm finishing up a bunch of missions. yesterday i finished the judy alvarez one and went diving in her own town which was flooded for the dam. today i helped kerry eurodyne set a luxury yacht on fire. i also helped panam rescue saul the leader of the aldecaldos. that leaves the only mission left in original cyberpunk is to met hanako at embers, which i know not to do because that essentially ends the whole game. so now i'm returning to dogtown and doing phantom liberty quests.

i made a prosciutto sandwich for dinner. it was okay, but the prosciutto wasn't very salty, and most of the flavor was from the pesto i used as a paste.

last night i started watching stumble, the new NBC cheerleading comedy. the cast features taran killam, and the show does remind me of single parents, sort of this fast-paced multiple-jokes slightly-absurdist style.

the days are starting to become a blur. is it the weekend? or do i have to go to work today? took me a while to figure it out. my parents were already at the cafe by the time i biked there. since we began using the backup batch of tea eggs, i started a new backup batch. i left the eggs to warm up over some hot water before steaming them. none of the eggs exploded this time, only one of them had a crack.

chinese new year - the spring festival - starts on the second new moon after the winter equinox. 15 days afterwards the new year celebration ends on a full moon - the lantern festival. today was that day. as tradition, people eat glutinous rice balls on this day. my father cooked some frozen sesame-paste-filled rice balls along with my homemade jiuniang. it has a sour taste now, which means the sugar that was converted into alcohol is now turning into lactic acid, a sign of over-fermentation. that's why after 3 days of outside fermentation, the jiuniang should go in the fridge to slow down the process and to keep it sweet.

i checked on the progress of the 4 hyacinth bulbs i'm forcing to bloom. all of them have started to produce roots, with the jan bos variety the strongest grower. the blue jacket seems the weakest, and barely sprouted. the water looked cloudy so i decided to change it. that's when i discovered all the bulbs had mold. i removed as much as i could and tried not to get the bulb wet when i put them back into the vase. i also found two more forcing vases and selected two blue jacket and jan bos bulbs that had already sprouted. later i took out all the bulbs and organized them into egg cartons so they wouldn't get moldy.

today was a terribly slow day. we didn't get our first customer until 12:30pm. was it the weather? but it didn't start snowing until the afternoon. once it transitioned to sleet in the late afternoon into the early evening, business really took a nosedive. the last half hour before we closed we actually got an ubereats order and a pickup order.

conditions commuting home was terrible. it had snowed enough that the transition to rain that was supposed to wash everything away just turned the snow into slush. and once it got dark, temperature dropped, so that slush started to freeze. it was still light enough that the city didn't even bother cleaning the streets, so what little bike lanes existed were covered in snow. the safest place to ride was actually in the streets, in the wheel well of car traffic. and it wasn't rain that was falling, but sleet. i came prepared with my rain pants and rain jacket so i was relatively warm, but the ride home was a struggle. observatory hill was basically a mount of ice, it's a miracle i made it to the top without crashing. on the descent i dismounted and walked the bike, there was no way i would've been able to stop on the icy slope. once in flat ground i got back on the bike, but it was a miserably cold and wet ride.

after a shower i ate the bento my mother packed me, a shredded pork and tofu stirfry on rice. i was hungry, having not eaten anything all day (or drank anything) other than the jiuniang soup.

my parents came to pick me up after 9am this morning for a monday supply run. temperature this morning was cold - in the teens - but it's something we're already used to by now. our first stop was the everett costco. because we have a business account, we can go in an hour early. the parking lot was still pretty empty when we first arrived. inside the warehouse was peaceful and calm with only a handful of customers. by the time we left around 10am, the place was just starting to open up for regular customers. we were disappointed that we didn't see the el tipico van.

next stop was the everett restaurant depot. my father got a case of fresh chicken thighs and my mother found her tripe. i was curious as to what the wholesale egg prices are these days; the cheapest i saw was $24.75 for 15 dozen large eggs which comes out to 13.75¢ an egg. we also got some 3-compartment bento box containers.

we didn't need to go to market basket. instead we went to the 99 supermarket in malden, a 10 minutes drive away. here we bought a bunch of asian supplies, like yellow pickled daikon radishes and jasmine rice. they even had truffle sunflower seeds and sea salt sunflower seeds. 99 has great selection, and a vast selection of snacks, but their prices still can't compare to chinatown. now that c-mart has exited boston chinatown and the only remaining large supermarket is ming's, i'm worried prices there will go up with no competition.

it was 11:30am by the time we were finished with shopping. with no more stops left, we ate lunch at the flaming grill & buffet next door. my 2nd aunt's senior group brings them here at least once a week for lunch. it's $14 a person between 11-3:30pm. dinner buffet is $20 a person. weekends the price goes up to $21. all the waiters and waitresses were chinese, while the entire kitchen staff seemed to be hispanic.

buffets are rigged: they make more the less you eat, so there are a lot of foods that can quickly fill you up. the assortment of sushi looks delicious, but eating a few can quickly make you feel full because of the rice. there are also various meat dishes, but your average person will quickly feel full after a few fried fish or chicken pieces. having said that, the spread was pretty impressive. maybe because we can soon after they opened, so everything was still fresh.

in my first round, i had some fried wings, fried white fish, fried chicken, some spicy salmon rolls, coconut shrimp, chicken gao's chicken, and a bowl of hot & sour soup. i was already full after that. but i went back for round 2, this time getting some fried salted fish, beef stirfry, edamame beans, mango gelatin, a pineapple slice, and a piece of plantain. round 3 i tried the seafood soup, a bean paste zongzi, some mussels, a mint cream dessert, and more mango gelatin. i finished with some orange sherbet ice cream.

the most insane coincidence happened when a family friend (nancy) whom we haven't seen in ages was just sitting a few tables down, having lunch with her son. she came to chat with us whenever her son was out collecting more food.

for $14 it's an amazing bargain. there was so much stuff i didn't even try, like the salad and fruit bar, or the flaming grill where they cook the food for you, or the different assortment of ice cream, or the desserts (pies and cakes). i wouldn't mind going back. it's actually doable by public transportation, as the 109 bus will go there from harvard square. there's also an option where you can pack a buffet takeout, and i saw a bunch of people (delivery drivers?) stuffing to-go boxes.

right next door to flaming grill was a dollar tree, so of course we paid a visit. my mother was looking for cheap yarn but none of them caught her fancy. we left with some kleenex tissue packets.

coming back, we went the most direct route down broadway (route 99), the main commercial drag of everett. we then connected to route 16 west, cutting through tufts and davis square to the cafe by 1:20pm.

after we unloaded everything, we went to my parents' house. i helped my mother with some laundry before watering the plants in the basement. today i was using my new package of gnatrol WDG for a soil drench treatment. while mosquito bits is 2.86% Bti, gnatrol powder is 37.4% Bti. for light infestation, the recommended amount is 1 tsp per gallon, while 3 tsp for a heavy infestation. for my 5 gallon bucket i ended up only adding 3 tsp, since i figured this was a maintenance application due to the fact that i have been watering with Bti, but just in a smaller concentration. if i follow the instructions accordingly, a total of 3 treatments should completely get rid of my fungus gnat problem.

besides watering, i also replaced the yellow sticky trap. this will allow me to more precisely monitor the gnat level. i also discovered the basement dehumidifier tank hadn't been emptied since the end of autumn and was now full of mold and slime. i brought the tank upstairs and scrubbed it clean with alcohol and water.

even though we had a big lunch, we also had a big dinner. we reheated the leftovers from yesterday, but my father also made pan-fried shrimps and my mother made a fresh mustard green stirfry. definitely a lot of eating today.

my father gave me a ride back to cambridge. celtics were playing again in a back-to-back, this time in milwaukee against the bucks. this seemed like a loss on paper, with jaylen brown out due to illness while neemias queta was out due to rest. but payton pritchard led the offensive with 25 points, whil hugo gonzalez had a monster game starting for the first time, with 18 points, 16 rebounds, and 3 steals. derrick white also scored 18 plus 9 assists. final score was 108-81.

i replaced the remote sensor for my acurite weather station. i got the replacement sensor a month ago but didn't have time to swap it out. i also wasn't quite sure if the old sensor was broken or it was just naturally warmer in my backyard. like when i got home tonight, the sensor said 30 degrees outside, while my nest thermostat said it was 22 degrees, and the google weather app said 20 degrees - a maximum of 10 degrees difference. when i finally replaced the sensor, i was happy to see the sensor reading 22 degrees - which seemed more accurate. but as the night wore on and the outdoor temperature dropped, the sensor still read 22 degrees, while the temperature dropped to 16 degrees.

my lack of sleep is causing me to doze off again. i had this problem a while back, and fixed it by going to sleep a few hours early. i'm hoping to go to bed by midnight, since once again i'll need to wake up early for a long day supply run tomorrow.

it was snowing this morning. it looked like a lot but the forecast said a dusting at most in the boston area, and would stop by the afternoon.

all that shoveling i did yesterday was for naught: i saw last night that somebody had dumped snow in the empty space i shoveled out. i checked my webcam and discovered it was my next door neighbor jennifer. she was digging out her car (buried since last monday's blizzard) and for whatever reason thought the empty space behind her car was a perfectly good spot to dump all the snow when she could've shoveled the snow onto the large snow pile across the street. it makes me think she's a self-absorbed psycho if she thought that was an okay thing to do.

so before i left for belmont, i spent another half hour shoveling. while the snow was soft yesterday because of all the melting, this morning it had refreezed into icy clumps. i had to chisel out the snow pile. i was very much tempted to dump all that snow back onto jennifer's car.

i took my ebike to belmont. for once i didn't have to stop by the cafe, as we'd already put everything away into the fridge and freezer. it was still snowing when i left, but stopped by the time i got to my parents' place.

i went outside to refill the birdfeeder with sunflower seeds and add two suet cakes to the suet feeder.

my mother made noodle soup for lunch, along with some smoked ham and korean kimchi. this was a store bought brand my 2nd aunt purchased, it's okay but a little on the sweet side.

my father told me while refilling the windshield wiper fluid on the honda he discovered a squirrel had made a nest in the engine. not only that, but it chewed the washer hose in half. we were trying to figure out how to repair it. we went outside to take a look, and saw that a pair of straight hose connectors would fix it. upon closer examination, we also saw the squirrel had chewed through the casing of another wire and possibly severing that cable as well. i pulled up the honda service manual to see what that wire connected to, i believe it's for the right front impact sensor.

back inside, i ordered a windshield washer hose kit for $4.99. it included 4m of tubing and an assortment of hose connectors, which is what we actually wanted. i could've ordered it from aliexpress for cheaper, but i didn't want to wait the 10 days for it to arrive. we also ordered a pair of dual air chuck set to replace the broken ones on our air compressor.

my father and i went down to the basement to figure out where to put the condensate pump. to make it work, we need to rewire the furnace switch to a switch outlet combo so we can power the pump. we also discovered we can run the discharge tubing along the cold water piping, attached with zip ties.

we had dinner early, around 5:30pm, before it even got dark. my mother made a stirfry of ground beef with the last of fermented long beans, while my father made a sour fish stew.

i returned home after dinner, speeding back to cambridge on the ebike. google maps tracked my total travel time of just 12 minutes, faster than if i went by car/motorcycle.

there was a primetime sixers-celtics game on NBC tonight. boston ended up winning (98-114) behind a dominating performance by neemias queta who scored 27 points and 17 rebounds. celtics are still no.2 in the eastern conference, 5-1/2 games behind the pistons, 1-1/2 games ahead of the knicks (who crushed the spurs at madison square garden this afternoon).

on the cyperpunk front, i helped kerry eurodyne sneak backstage to confront the members of a j-pop band doing a cover of one of his songs. turns out they were getting played by the managers and studio, hoping to cash in without the artists' permissions. i also stoled a bunch of cars for el capitan. these missions fall into 2 categories: time sensitive delivery or evade police/gangs delivery. the evasive deliveries are the toughest ones, i've failed a few of them. i'm not sure how to lose a tail if i'm being followed, i'll need to look online for some tips.

i woke up at 8am this saturday to get to the cafe by 9am so i could start making a new batch of taiwanese paocai before we open at 11am. that meant instead of sleeping a little later, i only got 6 hours of sleep before i woke up. i already knew about the US/israeli attack on iran last night, and continued to read updates on the situation. trump delivered a taped message after the attack. one of his reasons is to prevent iran from developing nuclear weapons that can reach the US. but i think the real reason is he's trying to create a diversion from people finding out he molested underage girls on epstein island. that a draft dodger is willing to send american soldiers to their deaths and kill scores of iranians as well is pretty on-brand for trump.

the last time i made paocai it took me 4 hours. i bought 4 large heads of cabbage from market basket. advertised as "chinese flat cabbage", each was individually wrapped and labeled with the weight so i didn't have to weigh them myself. i had about 20 lbs. of cabbage (at $1.29/lbs.), 19 lbs. after i removed the cores. these were good quality cabbage, crispy like iceberg lettuce, easy to pry apart by hand. using 19 lbs. as the official weight, i added 19 tbsp of salt. i then left it to reduce for at least an hour, occasionally coming by and mixing the cabbage. while that was happening, i vacuumed the floor and mopped the salt stains after spraying some vinegar solution. i also cooked 7 cups of rice, and emptied the remaining rice into our rice bucket.

my parents showed up around 10:30am. it was my father we noticed i hadn't reduced any carrots yet, so he helped me shred some carrots with a mandoline. we got a big ubereats order soon after we officially opened. it was a delayed order - self pick-up at noon - but it put a hold on my paocai and i wasn't able to finish it until after the order went out.

after rinsing the cabbage and squeezing out as much liquid as i could, i added 9 cups of sugar and 9-1/2 cups of vinegar. i then mixed everything together with some chopped thai chili peppers and sichuan peppercorn. i managed to divide everything up into a dozen 32-oz. containers with an extra 13th container that was partially filled.

we got busy around noontime and then business tapered off after that, to the point where we didn't get a single customer after 3pm. my father went home in the early afternoon after my mother told him she was going to walk home because the weather was so warm - approaching the 50's. my father called me back later to tell me he managed to fix the flat snowblower tire using a ratchet strap and the air compressor.

after we closed, my mother and 2nd aunt went over to the upstairs apartment to empty the fridge so it can be unplugged since nobody lives there anymore. because there was still daylight out, i went home the quicker way, riding the wrong way down one way streets. when i got back, i spent half an hour shoveling snow from the curbside snow pile just to help out with the melting.

inside the house, i spent another hour sitting on the toilet surfing the web on my phone before taking a shower. my mother packed me a leftover bento which i had for dinner.

i played 3 hours of cyberpunk, including judy's pisces quest. i had to replay it twice because the first time i killed maiko, which angered judy, but the second time i still ended up killing maiko because she pulled a melee weapon and started attacking me. i tried going non-lethal with my katana but it didn't work. judy was upset but still gave me a kiss. i also stole an arasaka behemoth truck for el capitan after using stealth to search for it on a container ship. my reward was a herrera outlaw "weiler" luxury vehicle fitted for combat.

i went to the davis square h-mart this morning before work. there's no direct route there, as all roads lead out of davis square, so it involves riding a circuitous route. there was also the additional challenge of navigating through the snow. fortunately i was going against the flow of traffic and there weren't too many cars.

i got to h-mart right when they just opened. none of their fresh foods were on the shelves just yet, and employees were still busy restocking the aisles and sweeping the floors. speaking of which, all the people who work there seem to be hispanic, while the handful of early morning customers were all asian. i needed to get pho rice noodles and bean sprouts, both items i knew h-mart had from my previous reconnaissance visit.

since i was already there, i also checked out what else they had. i was ecstatic when i found packages of nuruk in the rice aisle. nuruk is the essential fermenting agent for making traditional korean makgeolli (rustic rice wine). with this i can convert glutinous rice into drinkable alcohol, mark off another item on my fermentation checklist. what surprised me was not only did h-mart have nuruk, but it seemed to be very popular because there were only a few packages left. i also grabbed some banana milk. when i went to go pay, i realized my bag of nuruk was leaking. i breathed in some of the dust, it had a sweet flavor. the cashier told me i could grab a replacement bag as i quickly raced back and grabbed another one.

riding from h-mart to the cafe is even more of a challenge, especially since there's a lengthy section that doesn't have bike lanes so i needed to ride as close to the shoulder as possible, while at the same time avoiding wiping out into the snow banks. that's why i wore my helmet today, just in case i crashed so i don't get brain damage.

i made it to the cafe by 9:30am. contractors came last night and removed the huge snow bank taking up a large section of the parking lot. they did a pretty good job, like magic now that the snow is gone. it wasn't cheap though, $350/hour was the quote my sister gave us; they were supposed to work only 2 hours but might've gone over to 3 hours. from the webcam i saw a bobcat and a dump truck, with a crew of several people.

my mother could've guessed i went to h-mart since i got to work so late, but still seemed surprised even though i told her yesterday what i was going to do. she made jiuniang which i had a serving, but i was busy with other stuff that by the time i ate my dessert soup was cold. my mother also made some glutinous rice cake stuffed with pitted jujubes and coated in sugar and sesame powder. i air fried the fresh kielbasa i bought yesterday. there was nothing special about the taste, your typical generic sausage, though i still prefer the hillshire farm fully cooked smoked kielbasas.

we got super busy today between 12-1pm. we made more in that one hour than on some days. earlier i was telling my mother it was going to be busy today. my predictions are often wrong, but i saw how warm it was today (sunny and above freezing), optimal conditions for drawing customers. bentos were the most popular choice, but we also did brisk sales on beef noodle soups and pad thai noodles. i made at least 2 batches of black soy noodles, and an equal amount of dumplings. i also cooked up some boba pearls and roasted a box of charsiu pork. that was a close one, we were down to two servings, and my father had to quickly thaw a box of frozen marinated charsiu before we roasted a small batch just so we'd have something to sell.

my father discovered today that the prices on our printed menus (made by my sister) are all wrong. when i asked her about it, she said it was okay because she put in a disclaimer that prices are subject to change. still, it's a bad look, and my sister doesn't seem to want to change it even though it's fundamental for a business to have accurate pricing for customers. i told my parents i would redo the menus. i think the ones my sister did look pretty amateurish, so it'd be a good thing to replace them.

my aunt showed up around 3:30pm, after coming back from her acupuncture appointment. she had a bowl of beef noodle soup before returning home to work. she said that matthew plans on buying an electric snowblower before next season. i think a lot of people have the same idea and snowblowers will sell like hot cakes.

today ended up being the busiest day this year so far. i have a feeling tomorrow (saturday) might be even busier, with temperature getting close to 50 degrees. i need to brace myself for that possibility. i'm going to work a few hours early so i can make my taiwanese paocai. the last batch i made was back in mid-december.

with all the melting that's been happening, every day it gets a little easier to bike with reduced snow. i made it back home by 7pm. a shower, then i finished the last of my mixed salad blend. i used some expired japanese kewpie sesame dressing, it's still good. since i didn't have any chicken left, i opened a can of stabbur-makrell (in tomato sauce) for some protein.

neil sedaka died today age 86. he wrote so many hit songs, from the 50's, 60's, and 70's. he set the soundtrack for many generations of americans.

every thursday feels like a tuesday for me, coming back to work after a day off. to think: we had a blizzard on monday that dumped almost 2ft of snow and already by thursday i can ride my bike on the road. it wasn't all perfect, especially smaller side streets that still had some slippery slushy snow patches. but i managed to make it to the cafe without crashing. in the 30 minutes before we opened, i went outside with a shovel and a spade and worked to clear some snow from the enormous snow bank taking up a third of the parking lot. i've been shoveling everyday this week. my right lower back hurts, as well as my left knee, left glutes, and left arm. i even managed to pull my tricep muscles.

my father deep fried a new batch of salt & pepper chicken this morning. that of course meant all the clothes i was wearing today would be saturated in oil smell and would need to be washed. after that he made swirly bread that had a filling of sesame paste and ground fennel seeds. it was well made but a little bland, would've been better if it was scallion bread with more salt. i made a new batch of tea eggs. my mother made a batch of 5-spice pulled pork.

i went to the basement to select some hyacinth bulbs for forcing. it's actually a little late in the season, since soon actual hyacinths will be blooming outdoors - provided the snow can melt within the next few weeks. when i opened the box of bulbs, i saw right away that rodents had gotten to the bulbs. the hyacinths were too busy, but the scilla bulbs were just right and they managed to eat a bunch. i should've planted the scilla in late fall early winter but the ground was already frozen by the time i received these bulbs. some of the scilla bulbs also had some mold. back to the hyacinths, i picked the largest healthiest ones from each group: splendid cornelia (pink), blue jacket (purple), jan bos (magenta), and gypsy queen (salmon). i have so many bulbs, i will also have to force them to bloom en mass, in a shallow bowl with potting soil.

we were busy between 12-2pm, compared to yesterday, when we had barely any customers. by day's end we made about the same as tuesday. with just 2 days left in february, it doesn't look like we're going to be beat last february's profit. pad thai was one of the most popular items, to the point where we almost ran out of pad thai noodles (i'll need to go to the davis square h-mart tomorrow morning to get some).

i went to market basket again for a supply run around 2pm. i just have 2 more containers of taiwanese paocai and i need to make more. i need taiwanese cabbage, which can only be sourced from an asian supermarket. however i found out on tuesday that market basket sells them as well, and pretty good sizes. selling at $1.29/lbs, it's probably more expensive, but if it saves me a trip to chinatown, it's worth the few extra dollars. i had a much smaller shopping list this time, and managed to get everything.

in the late afternoon i made some tea egg spice packets. i'd already gathered up all the spices on tuesday but didn't have time to grind them. while scooping them out into tea bags (10g), i was interrupted by jeana who came in to ask for my help to reattach her basement suction hose. i came back and finished portioning out the spices.

we had a little bit of business in the evening but not too much. from the kitchen window i could see a brilliant magenta sunset and i went out to take some photos.

i dumped all my oily smelling clothes when i got back home and took a shower. for dinner i made the last of my chicken caesar salad. i still have half a bag of salad left, which i'll finish tomorrow night, minus chicken.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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