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my mother asked me this morning to get a few things from market basket (bean sprouts, onions, baby spinach) before heading to the cafe in the late morning to help out for the day. temperature was a pleasant 70's, i went out in just a t-shirt and jeans. afterwards i stopped by the community garden to do some watering. temperature last night dropped into the lower 50's and i was worried about my seedlings, but they were doing fine. from there i biked directly to the cafe, arriving by around 11am.

we brought out last year's 10ft cantilever umbrella from the basement and set it up next to the parking lot patio deck. fully opened, it covered pretty much the whole patio space, so it worked remarkably well. we filled the 4 plastic base segments with water to give it some weight. we decided not to taken down the umbrella but to just leave it outside (closed when not in use), if somebody wants to steal our old umbrella, it'll just give us an excuse to buy a better model. one benefit of the cantilever umbrella is that it doesn't take up any patio space. however the fact that it's cantilevered can causing stress on the base. even though it looks like it, the umbrella doesn't obstruct the view of the patio web camera inside the window. one thing we noticed was the wind would swing the umbrella arm, no matter how much i tightened it, the umbrella itself acting as a big sail. my father fixed the problem by tying the umbrella with 2 ropes so it wouldn't swing. we also observed the sunlight throughout the day. morning and midday the umbrella provides good shade, but in the late afternoon the sun angle is too low to prevent it from evading the umbrella, but thankfully it's normally not that hot by that time.

my parents chopped up the skinny daikon radishes they pulled from their backyard raised bed and used it as soup ingredients. we had a customer today (a girl) who ate 3 tea eggs, never seem that before, she must really love her eggs. she also parked her car in the lot and them disappeared for over an hour; my sister nearly had her car towed. my mother made some spicy tofu in the late afternoon for lunch, i wasn't going to have any, but i was so hungry i decided to have a bowl after all. we ended up boiling two batches of eggs as we had some many bento box orders.

i finally left the cafe around 5:15pm. not before getting my father to agree to buy a pair of crimping pliers for low gauge wires and a set of low gauge 9" cable cutter. we'll need these tools to make 6 AWG terminal wires for our lithium battery boxes. i was tempted to stop by the garden again, but i was carrying some refrigerated groceries i bought this morning (tofu, cheese), and decided to just go home instead. when i got back i went across the street to star market to look for boneless chicken thighs but they were all out. i'll try again tomorrow, if they don't have it i might need to visit porter square star market.

finished watching pachinko. i'd known for a week that there was going to be a season 2, but even that didn't prepare me for the disappointment when i realized after 8 episodes of the season 1, the storylines were no closer to be resolved. i felt like i got ripped off. however, if i really want to know about the story, it is based on a book, and i could just read the book instead, like what i did with game of thrones. or, just read the wikipedia entry. but i don't want to spoil it for myself.

ann texted me tonight, asking if she could have a bitter melon seedling again. this after i gave her one last week and then she returned it, saying she didn't have any room to grow it. if i really wanted to, i could get a seedling from my parents' place (we haven't planted them yet), but i told ann i'd already planted them. when you return a gift i gave you, you can't have it back.

the main event of the day was game 5 between the celtics and heat in miami. the game started at 8:30pm, i reheated some leftover congee beforehand so i could eat dinner and watch the game at the same time.

i was nervous for the celtics. the series seemed to be alternating wins, and i figured since boston won the last game, there was a pretty good chance miami would win tonight, at home no less. neither team played well in the first half, both struggled to find offense. the heat seemed to be struggling more, but neither team could pull away, and miami ended up finishing the first half with a 5 point lead, the first time this has happened in the series where it wasn't just a blowout going into halftime. coming into the 2nd half, the celtics suddenly started finding their groove; shots were falling that weren't falling before, their defense picked up as well. the heat still seemed to be a slump despite having the lead, but the celtics continued to chip away and took back the lead, then kept building on it. you could feel boston pulling away, and could sense that miami was slowly falling apart as a result. the final score was 93-80. game 6 is friday night, celtics will be looking to close out the series and hopefully enter the finals.