my mother scared me this morning, i thought something was wrong when she called me so early. she just wanted to wish me a happy birthday on the time i was born, 8:40am, and to remind me to cook two soft-boiled eggs, a birthday tradition. i did as she asked, but i cooked it wrong, overcooked the eggs so they were more hard-boiled than soft-boiled, and i added sugar to the boiling water instead of later to the bowl, so it wasn't that sweet.

in the late morning i went down to the cafe to deliver the xiaomi mi band 4 that arrived yesterday. i gave the new band 4 to my mother while my father inherited her old but trusty mi band 2, even though my father could've taken advantage more of the new features, like text receiving and caller id display. i'll just get another mi band whenever there's a sale (though i'll probably have to wait a while, since china has basically shut down due to the coronavirus outbreak). my mother didn't really notice any difference with her new mi band 4, other than a weather forecast display. she didn't have enough space on her phone to download the watch face replacement app, so she just got the default face, which is boring and lacking in vital info.

i biked down to harvard square to get some bonchon korean spicy fried chicken, which is my new birthday tradition (in the past it used to be just fried chicken). i got 2 orders of their half & half (soy garlic and spicy, $8.95), 8 wings a piece. last year i got the combo but the drumsticks just weren't satisfying enough, too much meat, not enough of that crispy flavorful skin. i biked back to the cafe via brattle street to drop off the chicken, before returning home to feast.

the wings themselves were tiny, but bonchon sort of makes up for it with a choice of 2 sides (i picked radish and coleslaw). just 8 wasn't enough, i could've easily had 2x or 3x as much. the bonchon spicy is really spicy, if you have the least bit problem with spicy food, i'd recommend the soy garlic instead. after finishing the chicken, i stayed in a warm and fuzzy food coma while watching the first episode of the witcher on netflix.

i left the house again at 2pm, to return some seltzer cans and get some groceries. it's a short rest of the week, i just need to get enough to make dinner for 2 more nights. i left with mostly snacks. i wanted to get some more tony's chocolonely (it was really good) but they were all sold out! actually, there was a single bar of dark chocolate, but that's my least favorite chocolate flavor. i came home and carefully stashed the bike underneath the tarp, with a snow then rain storm arriving for much of tomorrow.

we had good production today, 31.93kWh, just the second time we managed to break the 30kWh+ barrier (the other time being my father/aunt's birthday when we 33.89kWh). i'm actually sort of surprised because it got a little overcast and hazy by the afternoon, but by that point we'd already made most of our electricity.

kevin came home at 5pm, another early return for him. he must've had another errand, otherwise he wouldn't be home so early. the neck scarf he ordered off of amazon arrived. he microwaved something for dinner as soon as he got back, but later around 8pm he was cooking again, making his lunch for tomorrow. with the amount of disposable income that he has, i'm surprised he doesn't eat out more, although there isn't a lot of dining options around his workplace.

as for me, i heated up the combo dish my mother had prepared for me when i was at the cafe. kevin was using the microwave at the time, steaming some vegetables, but said i could take out his bowl first. he had everything covered in a glass lid until i warned him that the lid actually has a metal wash and screw where the knob attached; i told him to use a plate instead. he must've of done this before, but glad i found out before the microwave suffered any catastrophic failure due to arcing. later kevin was in his room exercising, moaning and panting and knocking his weights into the door and furniture. i yelled at him to please be careful and not destroy the house.

my father called to ask me to tune in to the waltham hill repeater, where somebody was selling some used ham radio equipment. i could receive the net on the baofeng with the stock antenna but it was a little staticky, so i ended up turning on the power supply and the VHF amplifier along with the external antenna to get better reception. by that point the seller was starting to wind down his sale. all i heard was "ICOM" and "extra power supply." later i heard a talk between the moderator and a natick high school kid who just get his license (technician but upgraded to general) and was using a baofeng to connect to the repeater. the moderator was saying how natick is normally a dead zone and the kid admitted his house is situated on a hill with good line of sight.