marti came home late last night, so this morning i left her package on the doorsteps so she could find it. after the cold weather yesterday that saw my room temperature plunge to 61°F, i sort of expected today to be cold as well. so when i biked down to michael's to look for lanyard clips however, i was surprised by how warm it was. i couldn't find any lanyard clips in the jewelry making aisle, but i did pick up a box of lobster claw enclosures. i had a 60% coupon which dropped the price to about a $1. i changed into a pair of shorts when i got back home before biking (fuji) to my parents' place.

my sister was there when i arrived. she told me that hailey had destroyed the large plastic tray while playing with the solar water fountain outside. i had some leftover rice porridge for lunch.

i helped my father set up a shelving unit in our basement grow room. these are elfa brand, which i never heard of before but sounded fancy, like they're italian.

the hardest part was figuring out where the studs were inside the wall. we did that yesterday but when we checked again today, we were getting different readings. not sure if it's because there are too much background interference or it's because we need to upgrade our stud finder. after we marked our spots, my father began drilling. thankfully the 3 areas where we thought had studs turned out to be true. as for the other areas, we secured those points using metal winged toggle anchors. once the top track was securing anchored, the vertical bars simply hung off of them without additional screws. brackets went into the bars, and we used leftover wooden planks of varying sizes for the shelves.

i brought the diffuser into the basement to mask some of the mildew odor. it wasn't so bad today, but i think it was because we worked with the door open in the grow room, which provided enough ventilation. i added some lily-of-the-valley essential oil scent to the diffuser.

the bucket of water we use to water the grow room plants with have been dosed with mosquito bits; not to control the mosquitoes, but rather to keep fungus gnats from taking hold in the soil. the water i get from our rain water barrel, feels like i'm getting water from a well every time i do it, except instead of well water, it's actually rain water.

another thing we did was to move all the led grow lights to one power strip, and all the fluorescent lights to another strip. the idea is sometimes it's hard to see clearly under the led grow lights, so whenever we need to check on the plants, we can simply turn off all the led's and then temporarily turn on the fluorescent lights.

i noticed a few yellowing leaves on one of the potted jasmines. it'd be annoying if we did all this work to keep the jasmines alive during the winter and they end up not surviving into next season. my father did notice that the jasmine flower buds - yes they're still flowering - aren't as large as when they're growing naturally outside.

the second CMG-2420 solar charge controller arrived in the mail today. i won it in another ebay bid for $5.50. my father went downstairs into the basement to swap out our old generic blue controller with this new one. unfortunately it was already 5pm and we weren't getting any sun so we couldn't see the controller in action.

i arrived today via fuji bike, fearing that it might rain in the evening by the time i was returning home, and that i could either leave the smaller bike in the garage or take it with me if i got a ride home. but the doppler radar showed that it wasn't going to rain until probably 8pm at the earliest, so after dinner i managed to bike home without getting rained on. even though i'd just charged up the batteries on my front wheel light, it went off after about a few blocks. when i got back home i checked the lights in the basement. doesn't seem to be a battery or battery case issue, seems more like a wire pulling problem. i jostled the lights and they seem to be working better now, i'll test it again over the weekend.

i got home in time to catch monday night football between the browns and the 49ers. after kansas city chiefs lost to the colts last night, only new england and san francisco are the only two undefeated teams this season. former patriots backup QB stud jimmy garoppolo did us proud, spanking cleveland to a 31-3 victory.