i had a few hours to run errands this morning before it started raining. i went out and put the bikes away in the basement. sometime after noontime the rain began to fall. for lunch i ate a leftover section of honey mustard chicken finger sub (mama magoo) along with a smoothie. later for a snack i finished the rest of the pulgiese bread (russo's) with an olive oil-garlic-salt dipping sauce.

i called sunrun this morning to ask about solar power installation. sunrun is the company selected by costco to do their solar contracts. i already called yesterday but later in the evening they sent my father an e-mail saying their services wasn't available for their area. i called this morning just to confirm. the guy i talked to was friendly enough, and even knew that one of my parents' neighbors recently got solar as well. alas, he didn't know why sunrun doesn't do business in belmont, especially since they have a local branch nearby (waltham). he had to ask his supervisor, who echoed the same confusion. the guy i spoke with said it may be municipal related, and that's when i remembered that belmont actually has its own electricity company. belmont may in fact have an exclusive rights license to a particular company. i did some research online and found that belmont had a solar rebate program last year, and they used a company called direct energy solar. i called them and scheduled a consultation appointment next week. i also contacted another company called sunbug solar; not sure if they're allowed to install in belmont, e-mail communicating with them to set up an appointment as well.

there was some drama in the late afternoon. my mother told me earlier that my grandmother - who was supposed to arrive here tomorrow morning from san jose california - wasn't feeling well and was thinking about cancelling her trip. my mother then called me up hours later asking me about cancelling the ticket for a refund. trying to get a refund on a plane ticket is like getting your wisdom teeth pulled. first of all, i didn't have any information, as nobody could remember where we ordered the tickets from. everyone checked their e-mails but nobody could seem to find anything. finally my father found something in his inbox, that the tickets were purchased from cheapoair.com. with a name like that, i'd be very surprised to see any money back.

i called cheapoair. i couldn't understand the woman i was speaking with, our connection was bad and she had a thick accent. had the tickets been directly purchased from jetblue, they have a policy of a $150 penalty for a refund on the remaining ticket amount. but cheapoair had no such policy when you buy jetblue through them, and the woman told me that the ticket was in fact non-refundable. however, for $50 she could put the ticket on hold for a year, and then another $150 to change the dates. so essentially $200, i don't know why she phrased in that weird way, because you can have one with the other. the roundtrip ticket itself cost $400, so we'd end up paying another 50% just to use that ticket on a later date.

i called my mother back to let her know. it didn't seem like we had any options, and the least expensive choice was simply to let the ticket expire in a matter of hours. but then minutes later my father called me back, told me not to do anything, as my grandmother was reconsidering, and may in fact decide to come to boston after all. nobody confirmed it with me until i called my mother back at 8pm. she said my grandmother would be coming and staying until the end of the month.

karen came home around 4:30pm. i figured she'd be home early, since her work in providence technically ended at 11am. she and her coworker ended up going to a tulip garden but did get caught in some rain. she left again around 8pm, to meet up with her coworker friend for dinner and drinks at a nearby restaurant (cambridge common).

after she left i took a shower then finished the last of my pulled chicken sandwich. i watched an NBA playoff game streaming from the roku ESPN channel, between cleveland and toronto (cavaliers won, series now at 3-0).

a while back i wrote a drop app that strips off the geotag data from my photos. i've sort of tweaked it over the years to make it easier to use, but it's still a hassle dragging files onto the app. today i figured out a way to turn those same commands into an apple service, so i could just highlight the files then right click to select "remove geotag" and viola!