i woke up this morning to the sounds of water rushing through pipes, which got me worried that maybe some plumbing had burst and was pouring water inside the walls of the house. turns out it was just paul, sprucing up the garden for the next tenant, running both outdoor hoses on soaker mode, which was causing that horrible noise in the pipes. i went out to get the bike to return to market basket for some more supplies (lavender scented trash bags, kleenex, ice cream) and pumped into paul in the backyard. he told me marti was arriving on monday and that he was leaving soon, returning to the island.

coming back from market basket, i rummaged through a 10 gallon fish tank somebody had thrown out. it included a lighted hood which i didn't need (it was fluorescent anyway, nowadays everyone's going LED) but i did take a bottle of API accu-clear and a water pump with an aeration stone.

i had a bowl of plain yogurt with granola for lunch before biking to belmont to dogsit hailey for a few hours, at the very least let her outside to go to the bathroom. i found her sleeping on the couch, but she snapped awake once i arrived, eager to go outside - not to use the bathroom, but rather to play with the solar fountain. the sky was overcast so the fountain was only a dribble at best. instead i hooked up the lawn sprinkler again, this time turning down the water pressure so the sprays wouldn't be as tall and imposing. hailey played with that for a while, getting completely wet and tired, but would still occasionally run to the solar fountain to check if it was working again.

i was able to coax her inside the house, where i toweled her dry before she went indoors. the bedroom doors were closed, so later i found her sleeping on top of the carpet in the bathroom. i opened up one of the bedrooms so she could sleep on the bed even though it's bad for her because she can't jump that high.

in the few hours i stayed in belmont, i was able to sneak back out in the backyard to do a quick survey. i checked the perimeters, the woodchuck seemed to have continued digging along the eastern fence, but no matter how hard it tried, it couldn't get through the buried wire fencing.

i left around 3pm, timed to get back home before it started raining around 4pm. business was slow (my mother reasoned it was because of the approaching labor day weekend) so my parents closed up the cafe early and went home. the rain steadily picked up and my father was able to send me some videos of the rain barrels in action, collecting water. he's got all 6 barrels connected together, once we have enough water we can test our solar-powered-battery water pump which we've never used before.

because of the overcast, there wasn't much production today, yet we still managed to make 20kWh+. at one point during the day we got as high as 7.67kW before everything came crashing down. the 3 days remaining in august, we will break a new record and be the 3rd most productive month if we can make more than 70kWh, which we will most definitely do based on the weather forecast going into the weekend.

for dinner i had some leftover chicken tikka masala. i've got enough for one more serving tomorrow night, but then i have to figure out what i'm going to have for dinner on friday.

later in the evening it got a little scary, as the steady rain evolved into loud torrential downpours beating on the windowpanes. good for rain barrels, but made me afraid water would come in from the window AC. which reminds me: sometime next week i'm uninstalling it. it will already be september after all.