after dropping off my mother at the cafe at 8:30am, my father swung by my place to pick me up. i'd been up since 7:30am, clearing the snow from the sidewalk and backyard. it was that dry and powdery kind of snow, less shoveling, more sweeping. my father and i finished clearing the area around the cafe by 9:30am before heading to belmont. my mother finally tried one of the 3x baking powder blueberry muffins, she said it tasted bitter from all that extra baking powder and was barely edible.

it took my father about 20 minutes to sweep the powdery snow off of the solar panels with the roof rake. he drove me back home by 10:30am.

sandy finally woke up by 11:30am, after i've already spent the morning shoveling snow. i already knew she wasn't going to work but i asked anyway. "because when i woke up this morning it was still snowing," she told me. she also asked her advisor if she could work from home and he said yes (her advisor also wasn't in the office, off at a conference).

in the afternoon i walked down to rite aid to pick up my diovan prescription. like the albuterol inhaler i picked up yesterday, the diovan (aka valsartan the generic name) was also free. maybe there's been a change in my prescription drug co-payment, i won't know until i go for a refill next month.

my doctor has switched me from losartan to valsartan (names get confusing) in the hopes that it might work better. both are angiotensin II receptor blockers. i've been on valsartan before (back when it was name brand diovan and the pill shaped like a sunflower seed) so this is nothing new. what is new is i'm taking in combination with two other blood pressure drugs, thiazide and amlodipine. i take all my drugs before bed as my doctor said some of them are more effect that way, but i take thiazide in the morning because that's the one that makes me pee more often and if i take it at night i'm liable to wake up mid-morning to go use the bathroom.

the february electricity bill for belmont showed up yesterday. despite the extra production compared to last year, we still had to pay a little bit for electricity, just $1.27 (subtracted from the $160 credit). this is probably the last month where we pay; we should be generating a surplus of electricity beginning in march that should last until mid-autumn.

my replacement ace teah umbrella arrived today. when i got in touch with customer support they said they'd be sending me a new umbrella free of charge. it sounded nice but i didn't believe it'd happen, so this was a nice surprise. unfortunately this new umbrella doesn't work very well, it can't automatically open unless i pull the umbrella into the handle. it's a minor annoyance, at least i got a new umbrella out of it even if it doesn't work 100%. ace teah: excellent customer support, so-so products.

i made risotto for dinner. sandy peeked her head into the kitchen asking if i needed help. when i said no, she went back to the living room. i was a little offended; even though i said i didn't need help, that didn't mean she should just go away. courtesy dictates she sticks around to chat, or at least watch how i cook the risotto. not only was she disinterested, i felt like i was her personal chef. actually this happened as well when i made the quiche. she was chatting with kelvin in her room the whole time, and was surprised that the pie was already in the oven. maybe it's a generational thing, but it seemed rude. rest assured i won't bother cooking for her ever again.

as for the risotto, it turned out pretty well, although i could've cut down on the parmesan cheese which made it a bit salty but still very savory. sandy ended up eating nearly half after seeing me scoop half the portion as well. what little was left i'll save for dinner tomorrow night. we ate while watching anthony bourdain on pluto tv.