my parents called in the late morning with a crazy story about how some neighbors of theirs wandered into the cafe after getting locked out of their house and whether or not i knew the number of a locksmith. it was a couple from denmark who live on appleton street, the woman didn't even have her shoes on at the time, walking around in the cold in her socks. i tried looking for the landlord first, but when they called the number nobody answered (could've been an old number). i finally found a cambridge-based locksmith, gave him a call, told him the situation, and gave him the cafe number so he could call when he arrived. my mother called me back sometime after noontime when the locksmith finally showed up.
i had several lunch options but decided to make myself a western omelette as i had some diced ham that needed to be finished before going bad. i also added a bunch of other ingredients: chopped scallions, onions, parmesan cheese, mexican bean salsa, and some sriracha sauce.
i had to finally get some groceries today so in the afternoon i biked down to market basket. the local landscape is now dotted with frozen snow piles but the 
streets for the most part have been cleared of snow and safe enough to ride. it was a cold day and i regret not wearing my sherpa fleece jacket as i made my way to the supermarket. there was a sale on chicken thighs (89¢/lbs.) and i found a honey-garlic slow cooker chicken recipe i wanted to try. unfortunately by the time i got home (after 3pm) it was a little too late to get started on the slow-cook recipe. besides, i had some leftover pizza i needed to finish anyway, so i'll cook the chicken thighs tomorrow. at the supermarket i saw some people with dirt on their forehead; that's when i realized it was ash wednesday.
not feeling i had enough exercise, i grabbed a shovel from the basement and went to town trying to clear out a heavily frozen parking spot right in front of my house. there used to be a girl (jess) who lived down the street who would go around clearing out spots. she's since moved out of the neighborhood, so i took it upon myself to continue her charity work. i cleared as much as i could before i got tired. there's simply too much snow, it's going to take several days. good news is it's going to rain on sunday and temperature will be in the 50's on monday so hopefully there will be plenty of melting.
today was a great solar day, but some clouds started appearing in the afternoon that prevented us from reaching 40kWh+ (just 39.10kWh, not too bad). the weather will be like this all into saturday, so maybe we'll get 3 more days of solid production before sunday's snow then rain.
my pink curing salt (8oz. $5.99) arrived today ahead of schedule (i was expecting it until friday). it didn't come in a self-sealing packet so i decided to transfer it to a small canning jar. it had a moist clumpy consistency, like brown sugar. i was tempted to taste it (the pink looks delicious) but the nitrite is toxic. while cleaning up, i got a little curing salt on my hand and it hurt afterwards because it seeped into some skin cracks. now i'm one step closer to make corned beef. when i looked at the latest circular today however, i saw that next week all the supermarkets are having sales on raw corned beef that have already been brined with curing salt. so maybe i didn't need to get my own pink salt after all to enjoy delicious corned beef. i could still do a taste test comparison because homemade corned beef and ready made corned beef.
sandy came home by 6pm and disappeared into her bedroom. i heard her chatting with kelvin for the first hour then nothing. she never came out to make dinner, not even to use the bathroom. it's already well past 1am, i think she just fell asleep (with the lights on). this is also a pattern with her: at least once a week, she will seclude herself in her room and i won't see her the entire night. it's kind of weird but i don't mind, not have to worry about cooking smells and leaves the living room all to myself. i had a bowl of thousand island dressing salad while waiting for my 2 slices of pizza to heat up in the toaster oven.