i made some chicory coffee with the aeropress when i arrived in belmont a few hours later. by then the temperature was in the upper 40's, far more comfortable. there was hardly any wind and it felt much warmer out in the sun, warmer compared to yesterday at least. my parents thought nothing special of the coffee, and thought i added too much half & half. i think i prepare my coffee based on color: i like mine a tan color, not medium or dark brown. a coffee like that uses up a lot of diary. you know, the same color as a typical dunkin' donut regular coffee with sugar and cream, that's how i like my coffee to be.
i'd tilled rb1 yesterday, today i tilled rb2. i also tilled the little strip on the end where i grew garlic this past season. i will continue to grow garlic here, but for the greens only, and tiny garlic cloves at that.
i installed one of my new wyze cams on the front door window yesterday. today i secured the 15ft usb power cable with some sticky tack. it's been up since yesterday, but it has never once captured anyone walking by the house; instead it seems every time a car drives by the house at night, it triggers an motion alarm recording.
right before the start of the football games at 1pm, i made some more italian subs for lunch, using up all the ingredients i'd brought yesterday. my sister happened to be home and ate a whole sub, while both my parents just had a half. i had an entire sub myself only because i didn't have breakfast. i washed it down with a can of woodchuck belgian white hard cider. very light, not particularly sweet, i still prefer the amber flavor.
my father continued to populate the grow table underneath the xeccon (aka vander) COB grow light. he said the hot thai pepper plant i saved plus the thai basil plant are doing especially well under the LED lights. another thing i noticed is there seemed to be less fungus gnats. i still saw a few which i sprayed with insecticidal soap, but far less than what it was like before, so i think maybe the mosquito bits are finally working.
in the afternoon i went outside to measure the diameter of the lotus barrel, so i know what size of round plastic wash basin to get for the lotus pots.
sunset was around 4:30pm, it's going to take some getting used to. the end of daylight savings time also seemed to coincide with the weather suddenly turning colder. winter seems to be around the corner and there's rumblings of a snow shower friday morning.
daylight savings time ended today, so production shifted by one hour. even though today we had a perfect curve yet again, production was a little less compared to yesterday, and this will be the case until the late december equinox. so far this november production has been pretty great despite the diminishing returns each day. today we broke the 100kWh total production barrier: it took just 3 days what it took 6 days to accomplish back in october.
i biked home soon after dinner. last night my front light ran out of battery but luckily i still had plenty of illumination from my wheel lights. i made sure tonight my batteries were fully charged. it was cold but not too bad, warmed up after a few minutes, and i wasn't the least bit sweaty when i made it back. it was 58°F inside my house (56°F if you believe what my nest thermostat was telling me). i'm still not ready to turn on my heat yet, so i just used the electric oscillating space heater to warm up my living room a few degrees. but it's definitely chilly inside my house. i feel it most in my nose, which feels icy.
the patriots-ravens game was tonight. some have argued that new england hasn't faced a good team since going 8-0. tonight was the first test to see how the patriots would do against some decent competition. baltimore was 5-2 coming into this game. the first part of the first half was all ravens, who jumped to a 17-0 lead. the announcers were saying how this was a paradigm shift, a changing of the guards, but new england came back to bring the score to 17-13 going into halftime. pats had possession starting the second half, and the offense seemed to be clicking, but edelman fumbled the ball (i still think he was down by contact, his knee was already on the ground when the ball came out) which was picked by a ravens player for a touchdown.
that seemed to be the beginning of the end. the score was still close though, 24-20, but the ravens broke out in the 4th quarter, scoring 13 points while blanketing new england. nothing seemed to be going right for the pats, most surprisingly the defense, which was so dominant in the previous 8 games. the ravens seemed to have found the answer for the patriots tonight and they took advantage of that. i think the lost is a good thing for the patriots. i never thought they would go a perfect season, a loss was bound to happen sooner or later. they didn't lose any players to injuries tonight, which is a blessing. and the W will keep them humble, as they learn from their mistakes. patriots go into a bye next weekend; i pray for the eagles when new england visit philadelphia on 11/17, the pats will be itching to make up for all the errors they made tonight.