after a greek yogurt for lunch, i took the motorcycle to belmont in the afternoon, where my mother told me she was making fried porkchops for dinner. i helped my father look for our rain barrel hole saws 
but they seemed to have disappeared. we did find a few mandrels so at least we don't need to get those. we ended up just ordering the 2 hole saw sizes we need: 1-1/16" (dewalt D180017 $6.87, arriving monday) for the 3/4" bulkhead fitting, 1-5/8" (milwaukee 49-56-0092 $9.66, arriving tomorrow) for the 1-1/4" outflow adapter.
my mother told me our next door neighbors are going solar as well. my father said he saw them dropping off solar panels and other equipment at the house. not sure if they'll be installing anytime soon however, as our neighbors are also repainting their house, so they might have to wait until the house is finished painted before the panels can go up. i'm not as jealous as these neighbors as our opposite door neighbors; these neighbors with their split level roofs would be able to generate as much electricity compared to us (unlike our opposite neighbors who do make more than us with their optimal solar roof).
i did some spraying today, it's been 10 days since i last applied serenade on the grapes, they're due for another application. it's hard to tell if the biological fungicide is working or not, but since the last time i removed all the black rot infected leaves and sprayed serenade, i haven't seen any new infection, so take that how you will. i also climbed a ladder and sprayed our flowering cherry and kv plum; i haven't seen any signs of diseases this season, i'm just being proactive instead of waiting for signs of infection. my father and i also pruned a few branches off of the hawthorn.
i found some mealybugs on a jasmine and sprayed it with insecticidal soap. a wolf spider got caught in the crossfire, i thought they were immune to the soap spray, but when i tried to rescue it, it was already on its back with its legs curled up. i also reapplied the ant bait gel. when i did it a few days ago, i think some of my applications were just water and not actual gel; this time i made sure to squeeze out a small dot of gel.
it was too hot outside to be doing very much gardening, as i went back indoors to snack on my salty sunflowers and rummage around online. my also tried taking apart one of the impact sprinklers, still not working after my father doused it again with WD40. we couldn't remove the sprinkler head from the base but did manage to remove the spray nozzle to see the plastic filter inside. the filter seemed to be fused within the nozzle, wasn't able to remove it without damaging it so we put it back the way we found it. i'll bring my crescent wrenches next time so we can try removing the sprinkler head.
it was still cool in the house without the use of AC, which haven't been installed yet. the only thing running was an oscillating fan and the blinds slightly closed to make the living room darker. my mother said they didn't need the AC yet, but i have a feeling we'll be installing them by the weekend. it costs us nothing to run the AC's since we have our electricity surplus, but they take up precious window space.
as promised, my mother made fried porkchops. i thought it was going to be some kind of tonkatsu and even brought some special tonkatsu sauce, but there was no panko breading, just flour. still, it tasted pretty good, and i even got some more rice as there was too much food for just a itty bit of served rice.
after dinner my father and i used the foodsaver machine he bought a while back to vacuum seal some ancient books that belonged to pansusu. i don't know if vacuum sealing is the best option, but my father thought it'd preserve them better, prevent molding and yellowing at least. we tried two books. these are old chinese text made from stone rubbing, with cedar wood front and back covers. the foodsaver machine was finicky, we had to fiddle with it to get it to seal one end then vacuum the other end before sealing that. i wasn't sure if it'd work, particularly since the wood cover corners were sharp, but it actually successfully sealed up the books. we also vacuum sealed two japanese pickled radishes as a test earlier.
we didn't make 50kWh+ today but it was close (49.9kWh), off by just 100Wh. if you rounded up though, that's practically 50kWh, so it still counts. that's still pretty good production give how cloudy it was today: first high altitude wispy cirrus clouds before small clumps of cumulous clouds started forming at lower elevation due to the humidity.
after a shower, i retreated to the living room with some seltzer, some grapes, and a plum. i also finished a package of mint milano cookies, so it wasn't all healthystan.