it was actually sunny this morning, we even reached 6kW. that only last for a few hours, the false hope of a sunny day before it grew progressively darker, until an hour of strong downpours in the afternoon.

i didn't leave the house all day, trying to figure out the issue with my macbook pro battery. i noticed it a few days ago, seemed to coincide with a system update, that my battery wouldn't fully charge to 100%. i thought nothing of it at first, until i also noticed it thought the power cable was plugged in when it wasn't, or would work fine on battery until a point when it would stop updating the battery status. last night was when i started to troubleshoot the program. the power would work fine for a while after a fresh restart, then stop updating the battery status. no amount of PRAM or SMC reset did the trick. i even power cycled the battery today, ran it until it was empty, then left it to sleep for 5 hours before charging it back up again. that didn't fix the problem. the battery itself seems to be okay, because i can get it to show me the real status from the manual battery level indicator on the side of the machine, plus i can go for several hours on a charge. it seems to be more software related. i even updated the SMC version but that didn't fix the problem either. tomorrow i'll trying running the machine in safe mode to see if that fixes anything. if that does, at least i'll know what the problem is, and i can fix it by installing the system, which is a terrible pain, but something i know how to do at least. if it's still broken, then i'm at a loss for solutions, and might want to replace the battery as a last ditch effort, even though i'm not sure that would fix it. i looked online and a lot of people have battery/power issues with their macs, but it's usually fixable by resetting the SMC, which didn't work in my case.

the big news today was the suicide death of kate spade. up until a few years ago i knew nothing about her, but after having gone gift shopping for friends in china, i've been educated in the world of name brand hand bags. the company - which she left 10 years ago but continues to use her name as a brand - distanced itself from the tragedy by reminding people the eponymous designer herself hasn't been involved with the company for a decade, but still extended their sympathies to her friends and family. supposedly she hung herself, which seems like a grisly way to die, why not just overdose on sleeping pills? this is a morbid topic, but hanging deaths seem to be a popular choice with celebrity suicides. the last famous person i can remember who died from suicide was robin williams, and it was also from hanging.

i heated a blueberry muffin for lunch along with a glass of milk. midday snacks was a bowl of carrots then later new york bagel crisps with tabouli salad. dinner was a combination of boiled frozen cheese raviolis in tomato sauce, a salad, and some moro blood oranges. trying to keep it healthy, at least for a day!

dave and christine had another package delivered, a large square box from wayfair (a picture frame? a wall mirror?). i brought it inside for safe keeping. later in the evening i put out the trash. now that we've been separately organics from the regular disposables, i've discovered i don't produce enough waste to warrant throwing out my trash every week. i can go 2-3 weeks before i need to get rid of the garbage.

with my upstairs neighbors gone you'd think it'd be nice and quiet around here but you'd be wrong. apparently they forgot to turn off the air conditioner before they left, so it's been running non-stop for the past few days. it's one of those old units built into the wall, and it's loud enough at a nights to be annoying. so far it's been cold so i keep on the windows shut, but once summer really comes around i like to sleep with my windows opened and i probably won't be able to do that with their AC running.