every single one of these solar companies decided to call me just before lunch. i was on the phone with ryan from boston solar when i heard the sound of call waiting. new england clean energy (hudson) left me a message so i called them back. while i was talking with amy (making an appointment for thursday for roy to pay us a visit), i heard two more call waiting interruptions. one was from a new york area code (islip) so i assumed it was level solar, the other a number from athol, perhaps united solar. none of them left a voicemail but level solar sent me an e-mail with some contact info. as it was already lunchtime, i waited until the early afternoon to call them back. i talked with a young man named norrin, who was adamant that i speak face-to-face with an agent first before giving me a quote. i made an appointment for friday 11am. later in the afternoon, united solar called me (from a brookline number, not the one from athol) and we made an appointment for friday 3pm. so just in a span of a day i managed to talk with 4 different solar energy companies and book appointments with 3 of them. i made more progress in a day than we did the past few months. hopefully these appointments will go quick, since we're already familiar with how solar works. we just need prices.
maybe not going with direct energy solar is a good thing. jonathan did say they weren't the cheapest (nor the most expensive), so maybe we can get the price down even further; although the price direct energy gave us was the lowest of all the solar companies we've talked to so far (amergy, american solar).
i planned on going to market basket to get some groceries. tonight i was thinking of making either chicken lasagna or chicken tikka masala (boneless chicken thighs were on sale) (a more complicated recipe that involves broiling on a non-stick wire rack). as it was a hot day, i didn't want to cook, so finally decided some tuna fish sandwich would be best. then i realized i actually have a lot of food in the refrigerator. yes, mostly breakfast food, but there was enough in the house that i didn't need groceries this week. so i ended up not going. the only time i left the house was to move the bicycles to the basement and relocate my motorcycle onto my street before covering it up.
GC came home around 6:30pm. he immediately paid me next month's rent. i rarely have a roommate who pays on time. he explained to me why it was only 3/4th of the total because he would be leaving for amherst either on the 10th (thursday) or 11th (friday), depending on whether or not a former classmate can come pick him up. originally i was just going to charge him for the entire month regardless, but i didn't contest his reasoning. no sense making him pay for a week he's not here, and he won't be coming back either, going directly from amherst to logan airport on his way back to alabama.
shortly after GC came home, it suddenly started to rain. torrential downpour, the kind that quickly flooded the streets. it didn't last very long, 20-30 minutes at most. glad i didn't go water my garden plot since this more than takes care of the watering.
for dinner i made some sausage oatmeal. earlier, for lunch, it was an onion bagel with salmon cream cheese. GC didn't do any seafood again tonight, so it meant another stink-free evening. he retired to his bedroom after dinner, even though earlier he was asking me about westworld on HBO.
i noticed the light in GC's bedroom were closed around 9:30pm. did he go to sleep already? but when it came time for my own bedtime, i noticed they were open again. then around 1:30am i heard cooking in the kitchen that last for an hour. GC is a slow (and loud) chopper, it could take him 15-20 minutes to chop all the vegetables for his stew. at least he wasn't whistling, which is something he likes to do occasionally. i was curious to investigate but decided to give GC some privacy as he works out his new weird schedule. he's gone in 24 more days anyway (3 more weekends).