i left for boston at 8:40am this morning. first stop was haymarket, which i haven't been since early february, more than 2 months ago. i was in search of gold nugget oranges - i remember they're usually available this time of the year - but no vendors carried them. in the end my haul: 2 bags of mandarin oranges ($3 each), bundle of swiss chard ($1.50), black plums (4 for $2), nectarines (4 for $2), sleeve of garlic ($2), box of blackberries ($2).

next i went to chinatown. i visited c-mart first to get some mirin (ming's market doesn't carry any, i got some kikkoman brand for $5.49). they also seemed to have a sale on baby bokchoi ($1.48/lbs) so i got two bags. i then headed to ming's market. i was shocked to learn that they were selling bokchoi for just 69¢/lbs. price comparison shopping fail! i finished gathering supplies - including some hair dye my father wanted (bigen 6, $7.99) - before finally leaving by 10:20am.

returning home, i decided to take the longer but more scenic way following the charles river all the way back to cambridge. i set up my 360 camera so i could capture all the cherry blossoms i'd pass by. the ride took 36 minutes, i cut through harvard square to gt back home by 11am.

i didn't stay too long, just enough to change out of my sweat-soaked clothes before heading to the cafe. i didn't get there until 11:15am. my mother said they pretty busy, already fulfilling 3 ubereats takeout orders.

i went over to my sister's place to grab ahold of esmei while my sister administered some medication: eye drops, ear drops, ear cleaning. esmei was having none of it, buckling like a miniature bull. we put the hood on her to calm her down, it only mildly worked.

we made more today than we did last friday. it was busy around lunchtime, and then it got busy again an hour before closing.

in the afternoon (when my aunt stopped by) business was slow enough for me to go fly my drone from the parking lot. i flew as far as mt.auburn hospital (where i spent the day on wednesday) and fresh pond plaza. i was trying to spot hidden flowering cherry trees in the neighborhood. my sister came back with esmei and we watched how she'd react to the drone. she heard it first before spotting it in the sky. i made the drone approach her and she started barking. esmei only barks for two reasons: when she hears another dog in distress or when she senses danger. the drone was something she'd never seen before, and the fact that it was making a loud noise told her it was dangerous.

i went to go help my sister hold esmei while she got her medicine. afterwards my sister brush esmei with a special dog grooming brush (a shedding blade), designed to remove tough undercoat. esmei seemed to like the brushing and calmed down after previously trying to bite us while we were giving her medication. my sister also let esmei out into the backyard, where she found her bone and tried to bury it in the mulch, using her nose as a shovel.

my sister was out having a late lunch early dinner with her friend, and esmei was home alone. i went back to her place around 5pm to turn on the webcam and to check up on esmei. she was wearing her cone which i took off, but after she started scratching at her face again with her hind leg, i put the cone back on.

my parents cooked up the swiss chard in the afternoon. i like the color, the crunch, and the taste. is it supposed to taste slightly sweet, or did my parents add something to it? anyway, i could eat chard every day if i had to. my mother even asked me earlier if i only bought one, hinting that next time i should get more.

close to closing time i started making gyudon. that was basically one of the main reasons why i went to chinatown today, to get some mirin for the recipe. gyudon is dead simple to make, the hardest part is getting some shaved beef. it also requires an onion, and i guess finding some beni shoga is probably the most difficult item. while i was finishing making the gyudon, my mother fried 3 eggs. we split up the portion so each of us could have a third. my parents were eating after we closed, while i was still busy in the kitchen cleaning. my mother already finished by the time i was done. so i ended up deciding to take home the gyudon instead.

i ate immediately after getting home around 7pm. there was a package on my doorstep, my replacement waterpik hose assembly kit had arrived about a week early. the bulls-heat play-in tournament game was on. the winner would face off against the celtics sunday afternoon. the expectation was the bulls would win, after the heat jimmy butler to injury for the next few weeks. but never count out miami, they played amazingly, pushing their lead to as much as 29 points. heat won 91-112.

i look forward to sleeping tonight. it's going to rain tomorrow morning, so that's my excuse to not do anything tomorrow morning but to sleep in late. i just need to be at the cafe by 10:30am, which feels like a luxury.

i went to market basket this morning. i came here looking for mirin but couldn't find any. instead i got some random stuff, like kettle potato chips and ice cream. i didn't get to the cafe until 9:15am. my father cooked the rice today, 7 cups. my mother showed up a bit later from walking.

my parents made some kielbasa and pan-fried tofu for breakfast, which i had a little bit. my father also made crispy pork lard, which i had a lot, finishing the whole bowl. later in the afternoon my father made some hot sweet grass jelly soup with crushed peanuts.

right when we opened up we got an online delivery order. the rice hadn't even finished cooking yet. i accidentally hit the "ready" button which meant ubereats was searching for a driver. fortunately it took a while to find one, in which time we were finally able to assemble the order (a pair of bento boxes). at times it was busy - especially during the lunch period - but we didn't make all that much, only half of what we made yesterday, though we still beat last thursday's earnings by a few dollars.

my sister showed up with esmei in the early afternoon. esmei might seem like a small-medium dog, but she's deceptively heavy, weighing as much as a 5 gallon water cooler bottle. she's also surprisingly strong for her size, tugging and biting at her leash.

yesterday i made a batch of tea eggs (actually my mother took over as i went to the emergency room); today i made another batch, after yesterday's batch was placed in the crock pot when the first batch had been dwindled down to a single egg by day's end. i don't know how many tea eggs i've made, but i still want to up my tea egg game. for instance, i want to try using (cheap) loose leaves instead of tea bags, which is what i've been doing. i feel like loose tea leaves will give me a more authentic flavor.

i also made a batch of sesame peanut sauce, which we use for various noodle dishes.

it was gloomy all day and it started to rain by the afternoon. the morning forecast said it'd be brief, so i didn't bother bringing my rain gear. but by the afternoon it looked like the rain would last into the early part of the evening, right when i'd be going home. close to closing time, i noticed a brief window when it wasn't raining and decided to make a break for it. it was still lightly raining and my jacket and pants got pretty damp, but i managed to escape the medium to heavier rain.

my mother packed me another dinner box to go, a simple chicken stirfry. after a shower, i ate it around 7:30pm.

tomorrow morning i'm making a chinatown-haymarket run, haven't done that in months.

i went to the porter square star market to pick up some boneless chicken thighs, mandarin oranges, and red seedless grapes. i then showed up at the cafe by 9am. i cooked 7 cups of rice just when my parents arrived (my mother walked, my father drove).

that's when my chest started to hurt. sharp enough that i was bent over while still trying to work. my left arm and left leg also felt numb. was it exhaustion, or was it something else? my parents kept pushing me to go to the emergency room and have it checked out. i finally did leave around 10:30am, rode the bike to mt.auburn hospital, even though my father insisted on driving me to the point where he angrily said he was going to close the cafe.

but i made it to the hospital on my own, for better or worse. it then took me a while to find the emergency room, involved going to the other side of the hospital and taking the elevator one floor down to ground level. it didn't seem busy, just 2-3 people in the waiting area. i waited in line while waiting for my turn to check in. when i told the receptionist i was having chest pains, she quickly took my info as an attendant came to take me inside.

this wasn't my first emergency room visit to mt.auburn hospital. i'd been here before, back in july 2009, when i accidentally sliced my thumb in half vertically. in fact, everyone in my family has been here for one thing or another, as this is the closest hospital to where we live and work. my mother was admitted here for a few days back in june 2011 for observation after complaining of chest pains as well. my grand uncle spent some time here in 2015. my father came here for a hernia operation in june 2018 and also when he got 2nd-degree burns on his hand. and my sister had her colonoscopy here in october 2021.

first thing they did was to do an EKG. it took a few minutes to apply all the sticky pads, but the reading itself took just a second or two before i was finished. i then went back to the attendant where i gave him more details about my symptoms, my medical history, and any family history of heart disease/stroke. i then went to an exam room where i climbed onto a stretcher and another nurse attached me to the ECG machine which took readings of my pulse, my oxygen level, and my breathing rate. the nurse also installed an injection plug connector and drew some blood to run some tests (complete blood count, comprehensive metabolic panel, troponin). i then sat in the hospital bed and waited. the attending emergency room doctor came to see me, said she wanted to do a few more tests, including a CT scan and a possible MRI.

at 1pm a friendly attendant named joe came to wheel me into radiology for a CT scan. i've had CT scans before, back at MGH. they inject you with a dye and then you slide into a large donut-shaped device where they scan you with x-rays. this machine was fancy, with the fading purple and blue lights. they injected me with iohexol dye, fed it directly into my injection plug connector so i didn't have to get pricked again with a needle. the whole process was pretty quick. unfortunately, because i hadn't eaten anything all day, and the combination of sliding in and out while the CT machine was rotating perpendicularly quickly gave me motion sickness and i started to have a mild headache and felt nauseous. to make matters worse, once they injected me with the dye, i felt a tremendous warm throughout my body, including down to my groin where it felt like i peed myself.

another attendant wheeled me back to my original exam room. the doctor showed up again a short time later, said everything looked normal. she told me she'd be back again at 3pm to take another blood sample to a second troponin test. and that we were still waiting for radiology to tell us when an MRI would be available, but she told me i might have to wait a long time.

it was only 1:30pm at that point. i called my parents to let them know my status. i saw that the cafe got really busy was thankfully my sister was there helping out. i actually saw her this morning before i went to the hospital; she was taking esmei to the vet to get her bloody lip and eye checked out. later i found out that esmei has allergies (her thick coat apparently is good at trapping pollen).

so i waited. i had the exam room all to myself but the curtain wasn't fully closed so i could see out on the hallway. right outside was a hospital bed directly facing me. throughout the day the bed would have different patients, a total of 3 different people in the time i was there. i was also fascinated by the ECG monitor. i managed to prank the machine by holding my breath for 20 seconds. the monitor started flashing and making an alarm sound, said i was experiencing apnea. the weird thing was nobody came to investigate. i ended up climbing out of bed and hitting the buttons on the screen until i managed to shut off the alarm. at another point i managed to knock off one of the cables attached to one of the ECG pad on my body. i managed to reattach it, stopped the ECG from beeping. there was also a tv controlled by a tethered remote next to the bed. it got a few channels including USA (they were playing an episode of law & order: SVU) but i was in no mood for tv. i could also surf the web on my phone and use the free hospital wifi, but i was conservative with my usage, dimmed the screen, because i wasn't sure how long i'd be there and didn't want to run out of juice. with nothing to do, also fell asleep briefly, but stayed awake most of the time.

around 3:30pm a nurse (fallon) came in to draw some blood for the troponin test. i asked her how much longer i had to wait, she said she didn't know.

i held on for another 2 hours until i couldn't take it anymore. by then it was 5:30pm. not only was i hungry because i hadn't eaten all day, but i was also thirsty from not having anything to drink either. plus it'd been 4 hours since the last time a doctor saw me. i just wanted to leave. but that was easier said than done. the remote had a button to call the nurse. i used it 3 times, each time they said somebody would be right with me, before i waited another 15-30 minutes. seems like they'd abandoned me. i even walked out a few times, asking for help. they said they'd send someone to my exam room but that never happened.

by 6:30pm i'd taken off all the wires on my body and gotten dressed. the only thing i couldn't remove was the needle sticking out of my arm. when i finally snagged a nurse, she asked me if i was insisting on leaving despite doctor's orders. she said she'd find the doctor. i wait almost another half hour before a doctor finally showed up. it wasn't the same doctor from earlier, but i didn't care at that point. he understood my predicament, said ideally we'd do an MRI scan, but even he didn't know when one would be available (would i have to stay overnight, unfed?). he said it might've been a migraine, which can sometimes do weird things like numb one side of the body. regardless, he okayed my departure. the nurse came back to remove the injection plug and gave me my paperwork. i apologized to her for being snappy earlier, she understood, knew i was just hangry.

i was finally out of the hospital by 7pm. i called my parents, who had insisted on coming to visit me at the hospital. i told them i was going home. they said they'd already prepared dinner for me, and that i had to come by the cafe to pick it up. it was getting dark and i didn't have my bike lights, but i went to the cafe anyway as it was along the way. i grabbed the bento box and returned home, finally getting back by 7:30pm.

i ate immediately, tasted like the best thing in the world after having spent the entire day without any food.

so after having spent the entire day in the emergency room, i still don't know what i was suffering from. the mt.auburn hospital doctor told me to talk with my primary care physician and possibly scheduling an MRI to take a more detailed look at the blood vessels going to my brain to rule out the possibility of a mini-stroke. i personally think it's exhaustion from working 10 weeks straight with any rest. today turned out to be super busy at the cafe, the second busiest day this year, and i'd missed all the excitement. it was actually the first time in 10 weeks where i wasn't working, but i wouldn't count it as a day off since i spent it in emergency room hell confined to a hospital bed in an exam room surrounded by sick and injured people.

i went to star market to get some seltzer and oranges before leaving for work. i arrived before my parents, cooked 7 cups of rice.

today was a slow day, we barely made half of what we made last tuesday. reason? it's spring break for public schools. so it looks be to slow the rest of the week.

i got a chance to try out the fermented hot sauce i made last night with some leftover sauerkraut stew from last night. the color is pretty amazing - a vibrant red. however as far as hot sauces are concerned, it's actually not that good. it's spicy (from the chili peppers) and vinegary (from the fermentation), but doesn't have any additional complexity. it very similar to sambal oelek - indonesia hot sauce. i did some online research on chinese hot sauces and looks like it's usually made from frying. i've never made hot sauce like that before but i'm going to for next time.

my father went to go see his doctor in the late afternoon. it was just a pre-check before his hernia operation next month, but he used it as an opportunity to ask his primary care doctor about a whole slew of other medical issues, including his persistent cough which he still has since coming back from taiwan weeks ago. his doctor prescribed some benzonatate. my sister had a few pills which she gave me father, but now he has his own supply.

i went to see go esmei around 5pm after my sister gave me the door codes to her back doors. esmei was wearing a canine onesie to prevent her from licking or chewing her stitchings. she wasn't particularly excited to see me. she slowly came out of her playpen and made a beeline to the backyard. i let her outside to get some sun and noticed she had a bloody abrasion on the right corner of her mouth. my sister returned home and said it was because esmei keeps scratching that area. esmei also had som abrasion around her right eye. my sister took a photo to send the vet.

when i got home i spent some time snacking while watching some youtube videos. i didn't have dinner until after 8pm, reheated some leftover sauerkraut stew my mother gave me mixed with leftover rice.

i was still asleep when my mother called me this morning at 9am. she found new flights from quebec city to boston via toronto. i got up to check on the computer. i ended up booking 4 tickets - my mother, my father, my 2nd aunt, and my taiwanese aunt. air canada also plays that game where they nickle and dime the passengers. everything costs money, from baggage, to seat selection, even what time you board the plane.

i was going to go watch the boston marathon today. i didn't go last year because of bad weather. the last time i went was 2022. i used the blog entry for that date as a guide. that time i left by 11am, so that's what i was shooting for. in terms of equipment, i brought my 50-250mm lens and my wide angle lens. i also brought the insta360 X3 camera and the gopro. large bags are discouraged but i couldn't carry everything in my small mountainsmith lumbar pack so i had to upgrade to a messenger bag. temperature was in the 60's so i wore just a pair of navy chinos and a white polo shirt. i opted to take the fuji (like last time), which would get me there a little faster.

i ended up leaving by 10:40am. i headed to my usual spot, the 40km mark, right before kenmore square, at the intersection of boston beacon street and maitland street. i followed the charles river and crossed into boston via the BU bridge. it took a little over 20 minutes to get there. i had my gopro set to timewarp capture.

by the time i arrived the wheelchair division was just passing through. nice warm weather like today is actually bad for runners because it causes them to overheat. so i was expecting them to show up later than sooner. the first men runners didn't appear until about 11:30am. the first women runners about 12pm. i was trying something new today. normally i used in aperture priority mode set to f/8, for maximum clarity. but just recently i picked up a tip from an online sports photographer that he always shoots in shutter priority, with the shutter speed no less than 1/1600th of second. so that's what i've been doing recently, anything that moves, or shooting from inside a moving car. it causes my aperture to change, but it's worth it for sharp (non-blurry) photos.

marathons are hard to photograph. runners go by so quickly, and there are so many, it's hard to pick out a good subject. plus i showed up early to see the frontrunners, but there's a long time gap between them and the rest of the normal runners to show up. about 30k runners participate in the boston marathon. by the time i left, i only saw runners from the 10k field, would've had to wait another 30-60 minutes before seeing the 20k runners. i tried slowly my shutter speed so i could get a blur of runners. that didn't quite work because it was so bright out, the photos became overexposed. as i was about to leave my spot, i decided to use my 360 camera. i extended it on the 3ft pole and mounted it to the top of the metal barricade. it looked kind of weird, like i had an antenna.

there's something really graceful and beautiful about a runner's body. i especially like to capture them in profile, where you can see all their muscles at work. it's amazing how much endurance these marathon runners have. they've already ran 25 miles and are still running fast enough that it looks like they're sprinting. it's inspirational, makes me want to go running this week.

i finally left by spot around 1:30pm. i then went southwest down beacon street, towards the direction of coolidge corner in brookline. i mounted the 360 camera on the pole attached to my handlebar. i probably looked weird riding around with a pole sticking out of my bike. i rode gingerly, as the extension pole had a tendency to wobble, and i didn't want it falling over along with the camera.

i stopped a few times to get photos, until i reached coolidge corner. by then it was 2pm. i followed harvard avenue towards brighton-allston, all the way through harvard square to get home. it took about 20 minutes.

i gathered up my things and left for belmont by 2:30pm. my parents had already gone on a waltham supply run, hitting both costco and market basket. my father also went to the post office and mailed off their tax returns. my mother reheated some leftover noodles my father didn't finish for lunch.

i ended up taking about 1200 photos from the marathon. i didn't get many good shots, maybe a handful at most, a rather unsatisfying and disappointing outing. i also reviewed some of the 360 footage, it's going to take some time to edit them so they're presentable. 360 videos feel a lot like 3D photos, in that they're cool but not very easy to view.

i also got a tan from being out in the sun all day. it's an uneven tan, the top of my left forearm since that was the part of my body that was facing the sun, the left side of my nose. my dream is to one day have an even tan.

one of things i had to do today was water the grow room plants. i ended up moving all the jasmine plants outside so they can get some real sun. later i'd move them all into the sunroom, so they can be acclimated to the outdoor weather and eventually moved outside. without the jasmines in the grow room i was able to turn off one of the spiderfarmer led grow lights. i removed the other spiderfarmer light and put it underneath the gardenia. currently it still hasn't developed any flower buds yet.

too bad i was at the marathon today, because the nice weather (temperature actually hit the 70's) would've made for a great gardening day. i still got some outdoor gardening done though. those peas i planted back in march? they finally sprouted, 3 weeks later. it's the first full season where the raised beds are protected by a cage, so we made get a good crop of peas this spring. i also planted the swiss chard seeds i got on saturday. the seed packet only came with two seeds! i planted them in RB0, in a pile of cambridge compost. the last thing i did was fill up the birdfeeder. i was afraid all the sunflower shells underneath the feeder was going to kill the grass. it actually had the opposite effect. with so much bird activity around the feeder, the accumulate of bird poop has actually fertilized that patch of grass so it's greener and thicker than the surrounding lawn. next winter more birdfeeders!

for dinner my father made a sauerkraut stew, fill of enoki mushrooms, meatballs, and tofu. he also added some shrimps but i didn't eat any.

i returned home by 7pm. temperature was still in the 60's but with the setting sun it was starting to become cooler. thankfully i brought a pullover thinking it might get cold. it was warm inside the house though, and warm enough that the furnace never kicked in the entire night.

my oven light gasket arrived today. it came in a box when they could've just sent me the gasket in an envelope. unfortunately the gasket was a little small, and not as thick as the original gasket. i ended up forcing the gasket (which is really just a thin fiberglass ring) onto the glass and then screwing everything into place. i won't know if it holds or not until the next time i use the oven. i reassembled the oven, taping the schematic diagram back onto the bottom of the oven tray.

i finally got around to making my fermented hot sauce. i chopped up some hot anaheim peppers and garlic and left them to ferment in a fido jar for over 2 weeks. tonight i emptied the jar into a strainer and dumped all the fermented peppers and garlic into my small ninja food processor. i then blended everything into a sauce. when i process non-fermented peppers they remain chunky. however when i process fermented peppers, they get blended into a smoother sauce. the final result was a little watery though, and has a strong sour taste because of the fermentation. i'll bring it to the cafe tomorrow. periodically customers ask for hot sauce, which presents me with an opportunity to experiment with homemade hot sauces.

the hose on my waterpik broken tonight, developed a crack where the water would spray out. i went online in search of replacement parts and discovered a market of replacement hose/handle assembly. apparently they break so often, they're designed to be easily replaced. waterpik sells official replacement hose/handle assemblies, but it's $16 plus $6 shipping. there are various knockoffs on amazon, but many have bad reviews. i ended up going with the official waterpik replacement. i bought two to qualify for free shipping, and found a 20% off coupon for a final cost of $27.

tonight i'm finishing the last episode of fallout on amazon prime. i've been watching it in short segments, not because they're bad, but because each episode is so good, i don't want it to ever end. only 8 episodes total this season! although i read somewhere a second season has already been greenlighted.

i woke up at 9am this morning, right when my heat kicked in. knowing it'd rain later, i packed my rain gear and left for belmont by 10am. it took me longer than usual as i stopped to photograph every single flowering cherry tree i saw along the way. like reuniting with old friends whom i haven't seen in a while. cherry blossoms are ephemeral, one must learn to love and appreciate them before they disappear, which will be in a few weeks depending on the weather.

no sooner had i arrived at my parents' place did we leave for a baifu supply run in south boston. today was the only day we could do it, figuring the traffic tomorrow through the city will be crazy because of the boston marathon.

we didn't get to baifu/foodpak express until almost 11am. they have produce but not a lot of selection and the price isn't all that great, so after we bought our supplies, we decided to go to nearby chinatown for cheaper asian produce.

methadone mile is no more but there are still pockets of drug users shooting up in public. the street were tent city was situated is so clean, you couldn't imagine what was here before. a church group offers free food and supplies for the homeless. from the safety of a locked car i witnessed junkies waving needles around and i saw a man passed out on a wheelchair has his friends tried to revive him.

ming's market was crowded but i've seen worse. my father and i were here a few months ago, and i've been to chinatown practically every weekend for supplies weather permitting. for my mother however it's been a while since she was last in chinatown. not sure what it is with chinese people, but there were at least two fights. an angry chinese woman was screaming at a hispanic man. "don't touch me!" she cried. later she struck him several times with some vegetables she was carrying. as typical with chinese, not a single person intervened. i almost went to the hispanic guy and asked if he wanted to press charges, because i saw the whole thing. but he quickly paid for his stuff and left. later an older chinese man started shouting at someone. whether that ended up in violence as well i don't know as we were about to check out. ming's market: come for the cheap asian produce, stay for the fights.

we left chinatown by 12:20pm. traffic wasn't too bad, we arrived at the cafe in just over 20 minutes. after unloading the supplies (for a moment i thought it was monday, since that's usually when we do supply runs), we returned to belmont.

my mother made ho fun (flat rice) noodles for lunch.

it was starting to get a little rainy outside so i didn't do any gardening, not even watering the grow room plants, which i'm saving until tomorrow. the rain prevented my mother from taking a walk, to get her steps in. instead she stomped around the house, artificially inflating her fitness band count. speaking of which, my father lost his fitness band. he still has the wrist band, but the xiaomi band 4 was missing. buying a new one isn't that expensive anyway ($25), but i have a spare i can give him.

there was a wizards-celtics game at 1pm. boston only played their bench players, once more payton pritchard played like an all-star with 38 points and 12 assists. he nearly had a triple-double but only had 9 rebounds. at one point the lead was 24 points. boston won 122-132, their last game of the regular season. the game of course was secondary, this being mike gorman day in boston. the long-time celtics announcer will be retiring after this season, after more than 4 decades being the voice of the celtics on tv. they gave him a touching tribute at halftime and he got choked up a bit.

i finally got around to filing my sister's taxes, after she'd been persistently calling me mother asking if i've filed yet. i already finished them a few days ago, but was still waiting on her bank and credit card info. i wanted to save her some money by filing her state taxes by mail, but she insisted on e-filing for an additional $25. a short time later she called my father and told him both federal and state taxes were rejected. she kept saying something about a pin. i went back into the software to check the returns status, and it said the name and social security numbers didn't match. this was an error on my part, i thought my sister and i shared similar social security numbers except for the last 4 digits, but turns out there was another digit that was different. luckily i was able to change it in turbotax and resend the returns, didn't even have to pay the $25 fee a second time. the federal return was accepted, the state return my sister is still waiting.

my mother made a simple fried rice for dinner. i thought we'd have something better to eat given the amount of goodies we purchased at baifu and chinatown but i was mistaken. she also grilled some leftover salmon.

i headed for home right after dinner, around 6:30pm. by then it was raining lightly outside and didn't seem to be letting up. i wanted to get home while it was still light out, no fun riding home in the dark and the rain. i changed into my rain gear and put the rain cover over my backpack. to make it even more interesting, i had an urge to use the bathroom but it was too late to turn back. fortunately i got home without incident.

i never get to sleep late on saturdays. sometimes i wake up even earlier than i do on a weekday, and have more stuff to do. such was the case this saturday. i woke up at 8:30am and went down to the cambridge public library to pick up some free earth day compost. there was free 15 minute parking along cambridge street. out of all the people there, i was one of the most prepared, with my industrial handtruck, stacks of large gardening buckets, and my own shovel. i filled 2 rubber tubs and a smaller plastic planting pot. after storing the compost inside the car, i came back to check out the various stands. there was one to sign up for a free energy assessment. i had one done nearly 10 years ago, but i was told a free assessment can be made every 2 years. another table was for the cambridge tree department. a school group of offering free seeds (i grabbed some swiss chard leaves). cambridge public works and its various environmental protection and recycling programs. i finally left by 9:20am.

instead of returning home, i went to cambridge public works on hampshire street to throw out some old lithium ion batteries, some fluorescent bulbs, and a dead samsung camera. i've been meaning to do that for a while now, never could quite around to it (the DPW recycling isn't opened every day, and at inconvenient hours when it does open). those items were just sitting around in my living room for more than a year.

i got back home by 9:40am. i had about 50 minutes or so before i needed to leave for the cafe, so i used the bathroom and took a shower. i decided to move my blue bean seedlings to belmont, the earliest i've ever relocated closet grown seedlings. it's still early april! but the seedlings have started to outgrow the closet. out of 18 seeds i planted, 15 of them germinated. 1 germinated by the seedling rotted, 2 seeds rotten in the soil. those 3 unsuccessful pots i replanted with another blue bean seed.

i finally left by 10:30am, the car parked 2 blocks away, i had to make 2 trips to move all the stuff. i didn't get to the cafe until 10:40am. my mother was already there, having walked from belmont. my father was with the accountant getting their tax returns, he showed up right before we opened.

3 orders came in just when we opened. we ran out of cucumbers so i was asked to make a trader joe's supply run to get some more more as well as some spinach. i thought it'd be busy but on a late saturday morning it was surprisingly calm. i quickly paid and returned to the cafe, where 10 orders came in within an hour. my sister showed up talking about her dog but we were too busy to respond. she seemed to care less that we were super busy, didn't left a finger to help. later my parents tried asking her to come back to work but she refused. she got angry and left. i told her i was going to check up on esmei but my sister said her dog was fine being alone at home.

huang xiansheng stopped by the cafe with his daughter xiaojun. they happened to be in the neighborhood. huang xiansheng and my father talked taiwanese politics. huang xiansheng is in his 90's but looked every bit the picture of health other than some shrinkage. he also didn't have any wrinkles on his face.

we had a strange interaction at the cafe today. a mother brought her child through the kitchen. i asked her what she wanted, she pointed to the bathroom. we thought maybe my father had given her the okay, but when we asked him, he had no idea what was going on. apparently this mother decided on her own to just walk through the kitchen and use our bathroom. "oh, was i not supposed to do that?" she said. we told her because of health code reasons, customers can't use our bathroom because it's located in the kitchen area. she didn't say anything, just shrugged and waited for her son to finish while she watched us work. not only that, the kitchen area is so cramped, with lots of boiling pots of water and sharp knives, there are also liability reasons.

i tried getting into my sister's place a few times, but she changed all the door codes. finally by around 3pm she still wasn't home, i texted her to give me the code so i could check up on her dog. she said she was already home, and that i could visit esmei if i wanted. esmei wasn't wearing a cone, and seemed more animated. we gave her a cabbge core, she snacked on it for a few minutes, before she got distracted and abandoned the core. my sister put a lion's mane cone on esmei but she didn't like it one bit, trying to bite at it.

we didn't make as much as last saturday, but we weren't that far off. we're on course this month to set a new monthly record if we continue at this pace. once we closed, each of my parents drove a car back to belmont while i rode my bike. today i noticed many more flowering trees. a lot of cherries, peaches, pears, forsythias, quinces, hyacinths, daffodils. we haven't seen flowering cherries for 2 years now, since the unnaturally warm winter last season caused many flowering trees to not produce any flower buds.

once i got to my parents' place, my father helped me unload the compost into the backyard. we put trash can lids over them in case it rained. my father was in the garage poking holes into a small milk jug for his makeshift below-ground compost station.

in the sunroom the cherry plum branches i pruned off two weeks ago that i let soak in a bucket of water have all blossomed. in the bedroom one of the orchids has flowered as well.

my mother mentioned something about having chicken for dinner. i thought she was going to make something but she meant ordering from the thai chicken rice place. we noticed they upped the prices on a bunch of their items. fried chicken bones used to be just $6 but now they're $8. likewise, they added $1 on all the chicken rice dishes. my father and i went to go pick up our order a bit before 6pm. it was pretty good, especially the secret sauce. it seems spicier than usual, which i didn't mind.

i returned home around 7pm. i wanted to get home early to watch more episodes of fallout.

there was light to moderate rain this morning. i thought about calling my parents to let them know i'd be delayed in arriving at the cafe, but decided to put on my big boy rain pants and ride to work anyway, rain and all. it wasn't too bad, not like i haven't done it before. on this occasion i put up my 360 camera to capture the wet ride on video.

my parents arrived at the cafe the same time i did. while they made morning preparations, i went down to the basement to strip off my wet rain gear including rubber rain boots.

our lunch hour was insanely busy, just waves upon waves of orders. my aunt decided to show up around that time but we didn't have time to take care of her since we were all too busy fielding customers. it wasn't until we finally finished our last order before we made my aunt her order of beef noodle soup.

my sister was also in the cafe intermittently. my mother was feeding her stories about how customers were clamoring for her salmon and pulled pork specials. that ego stroke made her make a new back of pulled pork and also personally take care of a salmon bento pre-order.

it was during that time she was at the cafe that i went to go visit esmei. earlier i tried but she would've give us her new door code (which she changed a few weeks ago) so i wasn't able to get in. this time she purposely left the door unlocked.

i found esmei with her head pressed against the baby gate to the front door. i almost didn't see her because her soft velcro cone was black as well as her head. i noticed noticed because there was a white ring around the edge. the cone was ridiculously oversized for her, about as long as her body. she kept clumsily banging into stuff as she tried to get around the house. she seemed lethargic as i gave her some pets. i watched as she made her way to the kitchen to drink some water but the cone blocked her head from reaching the water bowl. i ended up taking off the cone temporarily so she could drink. with the cone off she was back to her old self, trying to get into the bathroom. after i placed the cone back on, she became lethargic again, and stumbled into her playpen to sleep.

it was slow this morning, fast during lunch, slow again in the afternoon, but fast in the final hour before we finally closed. i thought it'd only rain in the morning but it stayed wet for much of the day, the sky overcast, the sun a no-show.

i ended up riding back to belmont with my parents so i could borrow one of the cars. tomorrow i plan on waking up bright and early to snag some free compost courtesy of cambridge to mark earth day. every person is allowed 20 gallons. i went the past few years with my sister, but she doesn't want any compost this year, so i'm going alone. i brought a handtruck, some buckets, and a shovel. i drove myself back to cambridge and got home around 7pm.

my replacement oven igniter arrived today ($24). it looked exactly like the old igniter, model 501 (future search: "robertshaw oven igniter"). comparing the two igniters, it was obvious how oxidized the "prongs" were on the old igniter. i'm surprised the oven worked for this long before finally failing. the new igniter also fit inside the metal cage perfectly. i crawled inside and underneath my oven to install the new igniter. it was pretty easy, i used my RGB photo light as a flashlight, made not sure to loose any screws, took my time. the hardest part was getting underneath the oven to connect the wires with the wing nuts.

i plugged in the oven and turned it on. the igniter turned orange-yellow immediately, and a few seconds later it ignited the release gas. so the oven was working. but just to make sure, i used a multimeter to measure the AC current running through one of the wires: 3.43A. i can't use my oven just yet, still waiting for the fiberglass oven light cover gasket to arrive (hopefully tomorrow). but it's a good feeling to know i was able to fix my oven and it wasn't anything more serious. if anything, it's better now, ignites only after a few seconds, when my old igniter would take as long as a minute before igniting.

my mother gave me some leftover xuelihong vegetables for dinner, which i ate with some noodles i cooked over the stove. once more there was a celtics game. boston finally rested all their starters, playing only their bench players. tonight we faced the hornets. this was an important game because if we lost, it'd give charlotte a winning record against boston this season. the celtics have a winning record against all other NBA teams except the nuggets. so it was a good thing we won, 98-131. payton pritchard had a monster night with a career-high 31 points plus 11 assists. this was the celtics win i've been waiting to see, just wasn't expecting an all-bench line-up to deliver it.

i got to the cafe today before my parents and cooked 5 cups of rice. today was another restocking day, where my parents made new batches of zhajiang noodle sauce, minced pork, and beef noodle soup. i myself had some leftover zhajiang noodles for lunch after my mother saw me eyeballing her large bowl of noodles. today was an okay day profit wise, we made about the same as last week, with thursday being our traditional slowest day.

my sister took esmei to get spayed this morning (8am) and didn't go pick her up until 4pm, while she was sleeping off the drugs at the vet surgery place. i helped my sister bring esmei into the house. not only did they shave half the fur on her stomach, but they also shaved one of her arms so they could stick in an IV noodle. if she was a short-furred dog maybe it wouldn't look so strange, but because she had a thick coat, the shaved parts look shocking. hopefully her fur grows back fast. esmei still seemed sleepy and was not happy wearing a plastic cone. when she got inside the house, she just plopped down on the ground and went to sleep. my sister swapped out the plastic cone with a softer fabric cone.

other randomness: kathy showed up unexpectedly during a brief busy stretch in the afternoon. she bought some food from trader joe's and asked if she could use our microwave. oj simpson died today, age 76 of cancer. i was in college when i watched oj make his bronco escape on the highway chased by the LAPD. i also watched the trial, and was shocked when they announced his not guilty verdict. that was also the day when i lost my faith in the justice system. justice is different when you're rich and famous.

i returned home after we closed, i did not leave early today. it rained briefly during the early afternoon and most of the day was overcast. it wasn't raining by the time i left, but i had to put a plastic bag over my wet bike seat.

why are my blue beans growing crazy fast? i swear, they must've grown another inch or two since yesterday. i'm hoping it'll be warm enough next week that i can plant these seedlings. it's only april! but this is climate change april, where our growing season starts much earlier than before. my hyacinth beans have sprouted, but only one per pot, when i planted two per pot. this means despite my success, they still only have a 50% germination rate. i now have two buttercup squash seedlings. i dug in the soil to check on the kabocha seeds. i noticed some white mold but the seeds don't feel squishy, which is a good sign. hopefully the other 5 seeds will sprout eventually.

for dinner i heated up a brick of frozen lasagna in the microwave. honestly, that seems to be the better and faster way to heat some of this frozen food. frankly, it tasted the same whether it was from the oven or the microwave. the fact that i didn't use my oven is because i'm still waiting for my igniter to arrive, now scheduled for a saturday delivery. i ate while watching the knicks-celtics game. i know these games are meaningless for the celtics, but it start smarts when they get blown out. don't let the 118-109 score fool you: the knicks were up by 31 at one point. honestly, celtics should just play their bench guys instead, because they actually brought the game down to single digits within the final minutes of the game, had a real chance to steal the game from the knicks. alas, that was not meant to be. knicks ended up winning. i really hope i don't see these lazy celtics come playoffs, otherwise it's going to be an early exit. especially on a day when they announced jrue holiday signing a 4-year $135 million extension with the team!

to be honest, all day long i wanted to come home so i could watch fallout, the new amazon prime series that dropped yesterday. i only got halfway through the first episode last night before i fell asleep. i'm going to prepare for bed and finish the first episode, maybe watch another one.

i woke up at 8:30am this morning - the latest i can get up and still make it to the cafe by around 9am to prepare. i took a peek inside my grow closet - the blue bean seedlings are already 4 inches tall, growing much faster than i anticipated. i'll need to raise the grow lights soon. it was another warm day - temperature close to 60's, blue sky, white clouds. i was the first to arrive at work. my parents were late and i thought maybe they took an early morning supply run to malden 88 but they didn't go.

kathy called sometime after 10am, said her grandsons and classmates wanted a charsiu and sausage combo bento today. because the younger grandson has a gluten allergy, my mother substituted chicken instead of sausage for his meal. kathy showed up early - about 10:30am - while we were still preparing the bentos. she took her car to get fixed and they gave her a loaner vehicle - a 2024 chrysler pacifica hybrid. she didn't know how to drive it and asked my father for help. the pacifica can run either on gasoline or battery, and has a port to recharge the battery.

unlike yesterday, today was a slow day. i think not being as busy is one big reason. when it's busy, time seems to go by so fast. when it's not busy, time seems to go by slowly. so that should be a good indicator whether a day is good or not by how fast it seemed to have gone by. nevertheless, we did manage to get close to last wednesday's profit. and in terms of overall customers, we we off by yesterday only by 2 customers.

i made another batch of tea eggs after having made a new one just yesterday. i also made a new batch of tea egg spices. customers love our tea eggs. i use a combination of 8 chinese spices and i don't use any soy sauce so the eggs are totally gluten-free. my only regret is the spice grinder i use doesn't have a coarse grind option, so it's easy to grind the spices into powder, which isn't the consistency i want.

my sister showed up around 4:30pm, back from spending several days up in new hampshire. while she's enjoying her bed and breakfast (i'm guessing she spent over $1000), my parents and i are slaving away at the cafe. everyone is walking on eggshells around her, afraid to set her off. of course we want - need - her to come back to work, but nobody wants to bring it up for fear of triggering her once more. of course i could care less about my sister, i just wanted to see esmei. it's esmei's last day before she gets spayed tomorrow morning. they're go to shave off a chunk of long fur on her stomach area. i gave her a piece of cabbage core which she was enjoy at first before dropping it when she got distracted.

i left the cafe a bit early today - about 10 minutes early - in order to beat some rain clouds heading into the boston area. on my way back i picked through a pile of sidewalk treasures and ended up with a squirrel buster plus bird feeder (sells for $115) and a gilmour oscillating circular sprinkler with metal spike base. the bird feeder is massive, can easily handle 5 lbs. of bird seeds.

first thing i did when i got home was to wire some small fans for inside the grow closet. i use an old computer power supply unit (PSU) to run the 12v fans. unfortunately the wires i stripped out of an old length of ethernet cable is too thin and weak to use. i did find some suitable copper wires but i only have enough to run one fan. i'll try finding some more wires this weekend. fortunately the 3rd (topmost) layer of seedlings have yet to germinate. those include bitter melons, white luffa gourds, and eggplants. like i mentioned this morning, a bunch of blue beans have sprouted. likewise the long beans. hyacinth beans have also germinated, but required some manual assistance to remove the dried seed shells. one kabocha squash has germinated, and one buttercup squash. tomatoes, both cherries and cloudy day tomatoes have sprouted, independence day tomatoes seem like a dud (i may transplant some spare cloudy day seedlings).

i had some leftover scallion bread from yesterday as a snack. i didn't eat dinner until 9pm, a bento my mother prepared for me consisting of leftover ham & chinese celery stirfry with a potato stirfry she cooked up right before we closed.