i went to the dollar store this morning looking for a suitable container for my tongbaechu kimchi, which have been sitting on my kitchen table since friday night. they've been fermenting (and making my whole house smell like kimchi) but one thing i noticed is the shallow containers i've been using have been drying up the top of the kimchi since they're not submerged. i need a deeper container, one that i can layer the cabbage pieces on top of each other. after a brief search i found the perfect receptacle, 12 cups capacity, with a special lid that allows ventilation. i bought 3 of these containers. i also stopped by star market to get some cheesecloth ($4) for my father to drain the fermented glutinous rice wine.

i moved the fermenting kimchi into the 3 containers i bought, they fit perfectly. hopefully now this will keep the kimchi from drying out. i noticed today that for a short time my kitchen actually gets a fair bit of sun, and sun and kimchi don't kimchi, as kimchi prefer to ferment in the dark. maybe i can put the kimchi in a box, give them a few more days to ferment, before moving them into the fridge.

i discovered this morning that google has brought back the screenshot power button in its latest android system update for the pixel phones. that was one of my main gripes when i transitioned from android 10 to 11, the loss of screenshot power button on any pixel phones using 2-button navigation. why they ever removed it is a mystery, it seems they want everyone to be using gesture control navigation instead. i'd been using the button + volume down to manually capture screenshots; i've been doing so long i've gotten used to it, and will now need to relearn how to take screenshots with just the power button again.

i took the motorcycle to belmont. even though we weren't expecting any rain today, it was cloudy for much of the day and very windy as well. i had some thin chicken noodles soup for lunch. afterwards my father and i went to waverley square to drop off some fermented sweet glutinous rice for my godmother, before heading to burlington to check on binbin's place.

a neighbor had parked in her driveway but she was still in the car when i asked her if she was leaving. "do you want me to move it?" she asked, which was a stupid question because technically she's not allowed to park there. it was 57°F inside the house, cold, but not cold enough to turn on the furnace just yet. we unplugged the refrigerator and turned off the water to the outdoor faucet. while in the basement we saw they had an instant pot; i just so happened to be thinking about getting one myself, and could practice with this one to see if i want to make the investment, so we took it with us. it didn't have a plug, but any standard computer plug would work.

i've been trying to find a place for the 2 eufy 2k indoor cameras i got last week. one of the camera will go to the cafe and i haven't set it up yet. the one at my parents' place was pointing into the backyard but it's southern facing and the sun shines on it all day which will eventually damage the camera. instead i moved it so it's now pointing out onto the street. that's actually a great place because it captures everything very clearly. the eufy has better (more accurate) human detection and saved all instances of when somebody walks in front of the house as events that can be reviewed. placed flushed against the window, there's no reflection other than a bit on the sides. i replaced the memory card, from the 128GB sandisk extreme to a smaller PNY 64GB. the sandisk card is too good for a webcam, i'm saving it for my eventual drone. i turned on the continuous recording option, a 64GB card will record 6 days of 2K video.

my father and i tried to rearrange the wood piles on the southeastern corner and southern part of the backyard, but didn't make much progress other than deciding we'll eventually pile all the wood along the southern fence. as for the space along the southeastern corner, that's where we'll store the unused rain barrels. we fixed the western fence between our property and our neighbors, as it was falling over. a dangerously thorny rose bush prevented us from getting close to the fence before we pruned it back. i noticed one of the indoor pepper plants was starting to get some aphids so i brought it outside along with the thai basil and sprayed it with some insecticidal soap. i put salt marsh grass on top of RB4. my father reconnected the last of the gutter downspouts and disconnected all the rain barrels after draining them.

a few hours before dinner we finally finished cooking our duck feet. earlier my mother soaked it in brine for 4+ hours. then we finally cooked it with some sauces for another hour. my parents said it was too salty and rinsed it with some hot water which made it taste better, but i was fine with the super salty. we then spent the next hour snacking on spicy duck feet, my father drinking his scotch, my mother her plum wine, and me with my woodchuck pearsecco (dry cider).

nobody was really hungry for dinner. my father fixed me a bowl of tonkatsu-flavored momosan ramen. the oil packet that came with the noodles had a very pungent almost-repulsive smell, but the noodles tasted fine. i like it better than the tokyo chicken i had on saturday.

i sped back to cambridge in 10 minutes. i don't normally ride fast (i just stick to the speed limit), but i wanted to see how quickly i could get home, and 10 minutes seems to be a good time, with a few traffic light stops (4) along the way. if i had green the whole way, i could make it back home in 6-7 minutes.