sandy and i both have our weekend routines. without her boyfriend here she's kind of a homebody. on saturdays she does a load of laundry and goes down to market basket for some groceries. on weekends i go to my parents place and usually leave before she wakes up (although i have my suspicions that she purposely sleeps late so i won't be here by the time she gets out of bed). this morning i was planning on seeing the cambridge spring classic 5k road race starting out of central square but when my alarm clock went off at 9am i decided sleep was more important. it wasn't a themed contest anyway, though i'm sure some running groups will come in costumes. maybe next spring, these running events are actually quite common all across the city.

the fuji ride was unremarkable, temperature warmer than yesterday, with less winds. i chewed a piece of grape gum to pass the time, wanted to listen to some music along the way but my bluetooth headphones needed recharging. since street cleaning doesn't start until next month, the bike lanes are still cluttered with road salt, pot hole gravel, twigs, and thawed trash, so i try to be careful when i ride.

my father pan-fried some leftover homemade chinese dumplings for lunch when i arrived. my mother complained that he didn't turn on the ventilator hood high enough so the kitchen still smelled of oil. yesterday she was also complaining that the dumpling skin was too thin which meant they'd break more easily when boiling, but that's actually a good thing when it comes to pan-frying as skin become extra crispy.

around noontime my father and i went outside to prune the hedges in front of the house. they're so tall they eclipse the house and it's not a good look. standing on ladders, we started with loppers and pruning shears, before graduating to power tools. our electric chainsaw wasn't cutting very well (dull chains) so we moved on to the electric pole saw. it got warm enough that i worked comfortably in a t-shirt. while my father pruned, i was busy tackling the mess of overgrown honeysuckle vines by the western fence. adding to the challenge was a rose bush behind within, and i ended up scratching the hell out of my bare arms, looked like i was in a knife fight. i tried coaxing my mother out a few times to join us in the spring cleaning, but she was settled in for an afternoon of knitting and watching indian crime dramas on netflix.

besides the pruning i also did some raking, clearing the thatch from the lawn. there was more material than usual because during the fall i set the lawnmower on mulch mode so a lot of leaf litter had mixed in with the grass. my mother finally did come out to see what was going on, bringing my father a container of tea. we finished by 3pm, dragging all the bins into the garage as garden refuse collection won't be until 2 weeks.

we're not breaking 40kWh+ but we're still doing well in terms of production for yesterday and today, 38.77kWh and 39.77kWh respectively. so far we've made 728kWh total for march, which nearly ties our total production of 732kWh from march 2018. we'll definitely break that by tomorrow, and if we get a few more sunny days, we'll break the april 2018 production record as well (861kWh).

dinner was a repeat of yesterday's lunch, sauerkraut stew mixed with rice. no squid this time around, but plenty of pork belly dipped in garlic-hot pepper-soy sauce. my mother also made some potato threads which very tasty, a lot of vinegar, a lot of salt, and a lot of white ground pepper.

i returned to cambridge by 7:20pm, the sky still at twilight, the faint trace of the setting sun on the horizon. sandy must've made pasta for dinner because the house didn't smell bad when i came home. she'd already finished eating and was working on the living room floor again, her ipad opened to a video view of kelvin sitting at their apartment back home in england. i took a shower, the hot water aggravating the numerous cuts on my arms.

watching sandy eating her clementines made me hungry for oranges as well, so i made a quick trip to star market to grab some while they were still on sale this weekend. unfortunately they were all sold out (just empty boxes) and i wasn't in the mood to walk down to the porter square star market. in the end i bought some frozen dinners on sale and a bag of mesquite barbecue cape cod potato chips.

sandy went to bed a bit before midnight, taking the charger with her as well as her laptop. i take that to be a very good sign that just maybe she's going to work tomorrow morning and i can have the house to myself for a few hours. regardless, it did leave me about an hour to finish this blog posting (unfortunately my webserver seems to be down so i can post it just yet; update: the reason is because i had my torguard VPN turned on. sometimes my webhost doesn't work on VPN for some reason). the peace and quiet affords me a clarity and resolve i haven't experienced in a week.