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by 10:30am we'd already surpassed as much production as all of last monday, showing you how much weather can affect generation. today's trendline was off compared to the record set more than 3 weeks ago, so we weren't going to break that record, but there's still might be a chance we can reach 50 kWh, which would be pretty good.

i walked down to the community garden in the late morning to water my plants. the zucchini squash had sprouted another seedling, and in just 2 days they seemed to have outgrown the clear plastic container. i dug out the smaller seedling and relocated elsewhere in the plot. the 2nd attempt at seeding cucumbers have finally sprouted after a week had gone by. i also chatted with the gardener in the corner plot behind the raised bed by the entrance. he put in a lot of work in his garden and i asked him if he'd gardened before; actually this is his 4th year and 3rd plot shuffle. when i returned home i watered the front and back yard.

i heated up 2 slices of leftover pizza for lunch. something i ate within the past day or two scratched up the roof of my mouth so it was sensitive. afterwards i rode the motorcycle down to the cafe to take photos while my mother made the meat zongzi. however when i arrived, she told me she'd already finished making them early this morning. i left with 5 refrigerated meat zongzi.

i arrived in belmont sometime after 1pm, with a list of things to do around the house. i went down into the basement and turned on the dehumidifier. i could've done it through the smart plug, but i wanted to see the machine for myself. the humidity sensor said 52%, the dehumidifier was set to 50%. it was using just 70W.

it bothered me that the brackets of the sensor lights were still unpainted and black, so i covered them up with some paint and did some touchup work on the lights themselves. i didn't have to hang them up this time, just sat them flat on a piece of cardboard to dry.

i moved the aquatic Cyperus alternifolius plant to the larger pot, filled it up with fresh water, and added about a dozen mosquito bits kernels (a teaspoon supposedly covered an area of 25 sq. ft), which arrived in the mail today. even though we don't have a problem with mosquitoes in the backyard, this will prevent mosquito larvae from incubating in the water. a while back my father asked me about what types of fish we can get for our potted aquatic garden. not even considering that the water will get awfully hot during the summer, there's the question of what do you do with the fish come winter. my father said he'd just throw them out, but i thought that was too inhumane. he wanted fish to eat the mosquitoes anyway, but if we can control them through chemical means, we don't need the fish anymore. however, i would like to grow some other aquatic plants. some duckweed would be nice, there's also enough room for a lilypad. i just don't know where to buy aquatic plants locally. the only place i can think of is a pet store that sells aquarium plants.

intermittently throughout the day i would also water the lawn and various plants in the backyard. my father said he watered this morning, but i don't think he watered enough because there were a lot of dry patches, especially those out in the full sun. an unintended side effect of watering was flushing out at least one rabbit. if what we thought yesterday was true - that the rabbits are just trapped in the backyard because they can't get out - then there should at least be two rabbits, when i only saw one. maybe one of them managed to get out, hopefully through the door and not through some undiscovered hole underneath the fence. the one rabbit (more like a bunny) that i did find, i tried to chase it so it would escape through the fence door which i left opened. this is really a two person job and the rabbit was slippery, but it just wouldn't leave. not for a lack of trying, at one point i saw it scrambling in the corner by the hawthorn tree trying to escape, but made impossible after i stapled a wire mesh onto the corner. unfortunately i discovered that rabbits had eaten up at least one of my smaller lupine plants. i wasn't that sad because lupines seed a lot, but it takes 2-3 years for it to grow big enough to escape rabbit predation.

i made more ring cup protectors for the seedlings around the new perennial bed. some protection for the remaining lupines, newly emerging korean melon seedlings, and new morning glory and sunflowers.

i'd washed the solar panels 10 days ago and today it needed another washing after i noticed how much pollen was on them, especially the ones mounted on the sunroom. it's really for my own peace of mind since some rain is expected tomorrow (though intermittent and not steady and might even miss our area).

my father asked me to test the antenna reach between their house and the cafe. using the taller antenna, i was able to receive him just fine on both VHF and UHF (using 5W), but he couldn't hear me on VHF and barely heard me (but with a lot of static) on UHF (despite the fact that i was transmitting at 20W). with the shorter antenna it was even worse. i couldn't hear him at all on VHF, and just barely in UHF, and of course he couldn't hear me.

finally, i washed my motorcycle before i left. what i really wanted to do was to remove the windshield and try to buff the scratches off of it, but i decided to tackle that project some other time. i just washed the bike, didn't have time to wax it. it was pretty clean them, felt like a brand new ride, even though i typically keep it in pretty good shape to begin with. i returned to cambridge by 4:30pm.

i've been watching BBC's 'killing eve the past few days, it's my new favorite show. only 8 episode this season, but already renewed for a second season. sandra oh's character really annoys me, but it's something we haven't seen a lot of in crime dramas, the investigator who's a complete mess. the show is also refreshingly funny at times, despite the fact that we're following the exploits of a psychopathic assassin. villanelle is like a female hannibal lecter, charming and deadly at the same time, it's hard to turn away. i'm currently on penultimate episode 7.

monitoring the basement dehumidifier at my parents' place via the smart plug, i noticed it was now using 550W of power. most likely it's because it's running the condenser. it's about the same amount of power used by the TCL dehumidifier. could it be both machines use the same amount of power? and the only reason the TCL used so much that first day (11kWh) was because the basement was humid and it needed a lot of time to dehumidify. because all the days after that, the TCL was only using 3kWh of electricity a day. so maybe the TCL was fine after all and we returned it for nothing. but our old de'longhi seemed to be still working. when my father went down in the basement after work to check out the machine, he saw it was properly pumping water into the sink.

despite a few drops we still managed to break 50kWh+ today at 50.34kWh. it's the first time this month, and the 4th time overall (last month we broke 50kWh+ on three occasions). for the past 9 days production has increased every single day with the exception of yesterday. it's the 5th consecutive day where we made 40kWh+, which ties a record we made back in april.

even though i had some zongzi, i'm saving them for tomorrow, while i tried bruce's meat sauce with some pasta. i still can't believe this was once a pot roast but rendered into a sauce form. it was very good, i could taste some wine. bruce told me there were olives but i couldn't taste them, but i did taste something spicy which i like. i heated up the whole sauce but only ate half, deciding to freeze the rest as i won't be able to eat it until next week, i have too much other stuff to eat.