the new england patriots used to have their super bowl sendoff rally at boston city hall, but since last year they've held it at gillette stadium. it makes more sense, since they can leave from their own facility and head to the nearby providence airport. so it wasn't a big surprise when they announced their rally would be held outside the stadium again. i watched the broadcast on the local news, all channels covering the event, with helicopters buzzing in the air.

as long as i have the ingredients for making omelettes, i'm making omelettes for lunch. to spice things up, i added a lunch salad, but mostly to get rid of my vegetables before they spoiled.

i weighed a few navel oranges before pressing them. the large one weighed 13.4 oz. and produced 5 oz. of orange juice. one of the small ones weighed 6.1 oz. and produced just 2 oz. of juice. after squeezing each orange half, i spooned off the pulp from the juicing cone so it doesn't clog the juicer. i also learned a few days ago that winter (january-february-march) is actually the peak season for orange. it makes sense (like finding clementines in december) but i never put the evidence together before until now.

though temperature was in the 30's, it felt a lot colder because of the overcast and strong winds. there was even a little snow flurry though the main storm wouldn't arrive until later tonight. we still managed to produce 7.09 kWh by day's end, slightly more than yesterday's total.

i learned a neat chartjs trick yesterday: clicking on the legend labels toggle the graph lines on and off. there's a bug if you toggle everything off though.

i went with my parents on a waltham market basket supply run in the afternoon. driving through belmont and waltham, we noticed so many homes with new solar panel installation. some had good orientation, while others make do with what they have, putting panels on east-west-facing roofs. the waltham market basket seemed small compared to the larger chelsea store, but it's still a lot bigger than the somerville one. it was more crowded than we thought for a monday afternoon but i think a lot of that was stress buying in preparation for the small snowstorm starting later tonight.

returning home, we purposely drove by the street behind the back of our house. up until this point, we've only seen the solar panels from the backyard. from the front of the house neighbors would never know we had solar unless they were savvy enough to notice the emergency shutoff switch. from the back, from the rear street, the solar panels were glaringly obvious, like a giant green energy billboard for all the neighbors to see.

i had to stop by the cafe on my way home, to bring out the trash bins. this was something my sister could've easily done since she lives almost next door, but she had the gall to call my parents to remind them, instead of just doing them a favor. my father was going to go and take care of it, but i volunteered since i was heading that way anyway.

i bought a box of twinings pure rooibos red tea ($3.19) from market basket. i love rooibos and celestial seasoning used to have a rooibos-vanilla blend but i haven't seen it in supermarkets for over a year, so maybe they either stop producing it or markets simply don't carry it anymore. rooibos for me has a fruity cigar flavor and a slight sweetness.