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"you got your seatbelt on?" tom brady said to me this morning while i was still in bed. i haven't spoken to him since his other more famous namesake left the patriots for the buccaneers. he already called on saturday, about a letter from the MA tax office regarding earned income credit. as a tax preparer himself, he made it known the urgency of the letter and wanted to send it to me immediately, having never taken the EIC for any of his own clients. i told him i'd come by the house tomorrow to pick up the mail, he was fine with that solution.

but we didn't go to the house this weekend (going later this week), and apparently he didn't return the letter either, because he called me again this morning in regards to the letter. he wanted the name and address of binbin's accountant so he can send them a threatening letter for negligent tax filing. i wasn't sure why he wanted to get involved, but i told him i'd call him back and went in search of the address. bad news: i couldn't find beatrice's address, but i wasn't sure if she even does taxes. good news: i got in touch with binbin, who told me she prepared the taxes herself.

i called back tom and told him binbin did her own taxes. that sort of calmed him down, because now there was nobody to blame. he also said a few things that i found questionable. earlier he said something about "trump cutting through all that [red tape]," which hinted me that he was a trump supporter. but in case i didn't get the message, he told me himself, "you might've guessed i'm a trump supporter," and then went on a mini-tirade about only allowing educated immigrants into the country, and none of those from the southern states. before he left, he told me he was born in 1945 (before the end of WWII), and said "they should bring back boxcars." at first i thought he meant toy boxcars, but he said no, and said he'd leave it at that. did he mean nazi boxcars? sending unwanted to concentration camps?

around noontime i suddenly remembered i had to return the predict 2 study sensors. instead of running it to the post office, i simply dropped the package in the nearby mailbox.

for lunch i made an omelette with the leftover cubed ham and a bit of chopped onions and leftover parmesan cheese. kevin was crowding the kitchen, i had prepare my food in the strangest of places, in the sink and on top of the trash can lid. for most of my meals, i can make it faster than he can and i finish my food in a matter of minutes, while he's still busy cooking.

all of kevin's bold talk about going to the supermarket yesterday, that didn't happen tonight, even though according to his logic, it was the perfect day to go since it was still raining. maybe he'll go tomorrow, but i won't be home tomorrow, so i won't be able to enjoy my brief moment of solitude.

i discovered today that the cough drops i got from dollar tree - assured brand - is the exact same cough drops i get from market basket. the out packaging is different, but inside the wrappers are exactly the same and the drops taste the same. don't know how much i paid at MB but if it's anything more than 99¢ then the dollar tree brand is cheaper. i don't know what i have constitutes a cough. if i'm not drinking something hot or sucking on a cough drop, then i have this phlegmy cough. because it's a wet cough, it makes me think it's not a coronavirus symptom. it is however annoying and scary when somebody spots me coughing.

in the afternoon i had to deal with my sister's failing wifi again. now that we have a new cablemodem, the problem is most likely wire related, in which case we're at the mercy of comcast to get a technician over to the house. i waited on the phone for nearly 40 minutes before i got an agent. fortunately my agent was a nice guy (american). there are two kinds of appointments: outdoor and indoor. comcast doesn't do indoor appointments unless the internet is completely dead; otherwise they just issue some credit for the spotty internet service and get an agent once the coronavirus pandemic is over. the other kind of appointment is for outdoor service, and those aren't scheduled to a specific time but rather just a specific day. regardless if they come or not, i won't get notified, so it's impossible to know if they actually did anything. besides the wire, the only other thing i can think of that's causing the intermittent internet is a bad splitter. i was going to ride down to my sister's place to replace it but it was rainy and getting late.

besides, julie and i set up an appointment to do some skype chatting at 5pm. she got in touch with me earlier, asking if i was okay, filling me in on some details on how she's surviving the coronavirus. funny enough, i was just thinking about her these past few days, debating whether i should write her an e-mail asking her what was up.

it took a while to connect. there seemed to be something wonkey with her skype account. i tried getting in touch with her via facetime but i couldn't connect to her iphone because i wasn't using an iphone myself. there was also the option of zoom, but i've only used that once. finally she managed to connect using a different skype account and using their online service instead of the desktop app.

i haven't seen julie in a few years. we chatted for about 1-1/2 hours, before she had to leave to go pick up her boyfriend chris.

since saturday i knew were weren't going to break march 2019's production record of 968kWh. we'll be lucky this month if we can break the 900kWh mark (need about 11kWh of production tomorrow). if we're lucky and can make over 25kWh, we can break may 2019's production record (we've already broken april 2019).

for dinner i ended up making a bagel sandwich (who said bagels are for lunches only?) with kielbasa sausages and some leftover jarred sauerkraut. the store bought sauerkraut was shredded so fine, it was a mash of crunchy sour cabbages. next time i make sauerkraut i should just shredded my cabbage with a processor.