my father had the oil changed on the honda element recently, but the mechanic forgot to reset the oil life indicator so the dashboard still flashes the oil change light. but he said it was something we can change on our own so i went online and looked it up and found the directions, which was a combination of turning on the ignition and pressing the select/reset knob for either 5 or 10 seconds. my father tried it out and it actually worked, the oil change light is finally off and the oil life is back to 100%.
afterwards we went on an errand run, first to the chase bank branch in belmont center, where my mother was depositing some money for my taiwanese cousin's daughter who's attending graduate school at NYU. my parents were gone for a long time - more than 15 minutes - and afterwards told me what happened. this particular branch had just opened for about 2 weeks. staffed with nearly a dozen employees, they hardly ever get any customers, since banks aren't like regular stores, customers won't simply wander in because they're window shopping. i think they tried to get my parents to sign up for more services, which my parents politely listened to but left empty-handed. my mother trashed to deposit some cash but the bank didn't allow cash deposits unless the account holder was present, but they do allow check deposits, which my mother ended up doing. they finally told them they had to leave because i was waiting in the car. "how old is your son?" they asked. "he's a 45-year old man," they said. ha ha.
next stop was the waltham market basket for some cafe supplies. there was a sale on snapples, we stocked up with 4 cases. we went to the market basket liquor next store, i've always wanted to check it out but we're always pressed for time whenever we're here except for today. it was really nice, large and empty, we mostly had the whole place to ourselves with just a handful of other customers. somebody had spilled an expensive bottle of liquor and its fragrance filled the store. we were hoping to find some chinese baijiu, but all their "exotic asian wines" were relegated to a small section, and mostly japanese sake with a few korean soju. it's a crime that a drink enjoyed by 1 billion people doesn't have a single representative in this store yet there's an infinite selection of red wines neatly organized by variety and country. in the end, my father got a 6-pack of asahi beer, my mother a bottle of sangria, and me a box of mixed wood chuck specialty hard ciders.
we finally returned to belmont by 2:45pm. since the weather was cool enough, we simply left a lot of cafe supplies in the car, to be stocked tomorrow morning.
die lotus die! the sooner all their leaves shrivel up, the sooner i can finally move them into the basement for winter storage. but thanks to global warming, the greater boston area probably won't experience a killing frost until mid-november. until then the lotus leaves are slowly succumbing to the cooler weather. at this point i don't even have a mesh cover over the barrel, just some chicken wires surrounding it. i doubt any curious raccoons would try to gain access to the lotuses at this stage.
with all this rain we've been experiencing, the rain barrels were all filled to maximum capacity. typically i'd try to use up some of that stored rain water, but it'd rained already the past few days, the lawn nor the garden needed any additional watering.
since we moved the dragon fruit cactuses onto the folding table and turned on the 100W xeccon LED grow light yesterday, i didn't see anymore fungus gnats in the cactus soil. unfortunately they seemed to have relocated to the potted jasmine soil. i suspected our mosquito bit spiked water supply wasn't working, so i went outside and refilled the bucket. however, now i'm thinking maybe the UV led's in the grow lights are killing the beneficial bacteria in the water. i need to find a cover for the bucket. we also installed a ratchet hanger for the xeccon grow light, now it's easier to lower and raise.
since i planted my garlics, all leftover garlics are free to be eaten. but now i want to plant another small patch of garlic, not for the bulbs but rather for the garlic shoots. i don't need large cloves for those, small leftover cloves will do just fine.
production today wasn't as terrible as yesterday, but still kind of awful, in the single digits. with 3 days remaining in october and the forecast looking to be cloudy and rainy the rest of the week, i'm kind of worried that we won't even be able to break last october's low production record, although we just 38kWh to put us over.
we bought 2 different kind of wings: barbecue (heated, $5.99/lbs.) and buffalo (refrigerated, $7.99 box). while we snacked on the barbecue wings as an afternoon snack, we heated up the buffalo wings in the toaster oven. i tried i can of wood chuck pearsecco. it's okay, but not my favorite. i found it kind of bland (i don't get the difference between regular and dry) and i couldn't taste any pear flavor. it was more like drinking champagne. the alcohol content however is slightly higher at 6.1% instead of the usual 5% for amber. for dinner we had egg & tomato noodles.
i returned home around 7pm. it'd stopped raining but it was still wet outside. i wiped the rain off my bike seat before leaving. after a shower, i watched monday night football, a game between the dolphins (0-6) and steelers (2-4). it surprises me that pittsburgh isn't doing so well. sure, new england beat them in the season opener, and they lost a lot of weapons including quarterback roethlisberger, as well as antonio brown and le'veon bell. i've always thought if i wasn't a pats fan, i would root for the steelers. yet at the same time i was also rooting for miami tonight, with former offensive coach brian flores at the helm. it sucks he isn't doing as well as he should, and hasn't won a game this season, i hope they don't fire him after just one bad season. maybe the dolphins decided this is a rebuilding year, and looking to tank the season for a high draft pick. anyway, the steelers ended up beating the dolphins, even though miami had the lead in the first quarter, 14-0, and it looked like game over for pittsburgh. but the dolphins never scored again after that first quarter, while the steelers ended up winning, 27-14.
(it's well past 3am and i'm still updating this blog entry.)