something else i noticed: the kitchen circuit breaker had popped again! it happened last night when kevin was using both the microwave and the electric kettle at the same time. i forgot to warn him that using both appliances simultaneously will pop the breaker. i guess he wasn't paying attention because he did it again this morning. i went down to the basement to reset the circuit, but saw that the breaker hadn't been triggered. so i came back upstairs and checked again. the aquarium light was off, which made me think it was a circuit thing, but when i checked, the filter was still running (silently, because i recently did a water change), just the light timer hadn't turned on yet. turns out it was the GFCI that popped, nothing to do with the basement. i don't know why it sometimes trigger the GFCI outlet and sometimes the basement breaker; it'd be a lot easier if only the GFCI popped, because i can easily reset it from the outlet.
when i went to go use the bathroom, i spent the first few minutes on my hands and knees cleaning up the pee on the floor. i'm going to have to have the talk with kevin tonight. one thing if it's just a few drops (though that's not good either), it's quite another when it looks like you're purposely missing the bowl. i never have this problem with female roommates, though with them it's mainly their hair that gets everywhere. then when i used the shower, kevin had played around with the shower head so instead of a spray, it was a long stream pointing directly down. not sure what he was doing that required this adjustment, but the back wall behind the shower head was all soaked, and i had to clean that up as well. all this sounds annoying, but i've dealt with it long enough that it doesn't bother me at all, i've become quite zen about roommates' idiosyncrasies. i'm like the state farm insurance guy, if it happens, i've seen it.
my mother called to let me know they were going on a quick supply run to chinatown, and that i should go to their place as my sister's dog was home. today's weather was surprisingly warm, upper 40's with mostly sunny skies (with a smattering of thin clouds). when i arrived, i let hailey out into the backyard and refilled the birdfeeder. i also washed the outer shroud while i was at it, to prevent bird diseases from spreading. for some strange reason i didn't see any birds today, when in the past they were everywhere. i wonder if the heating oil spill had anything to do with it? the fumes making them sick, driving them away? but the smell was mostly gone, i only smelled it still because i accidentally kept some tainted leaves in a paper bag in the sunroom.
in the afternoon i went downstairs to the basement grow room to check on the plants. i'd never seen it more buggy, there were essentially an infestation, with flying bugs crawling everywhere, not just on the plants, but the walls and shelves and lights. it was absolutely disgusting. as it wasn't very cold outside, i ended up moving all the plants in the backyard so i could spray with insecticidal soap and then give all the plants a rinse with the garden hose. i don't know if it's going to do anything, since it's not just the adult flying insects, but all the eggs and larvae living in the dirt below. my father's been watering with Bti-treated water, but it's been months now and it hasn't been working. either he hasn't been strictly following the regimen, or maybe the UV-leds in our grow lights is killing off the beneficial bacteria before they can work their magic. i also applied some diatomaceous earth powder to the dragon fruit cactuses.
my parents came home around that time. they ended up not going to chinatown after all, but instead were at the cafe helping my aunt.
i spent the day obsessively remotely checking my router repeatedly, waiting for my roommate to return home so i can turn up the heat for him. fortunately today was a warm day, so the temperature in the house didn't drop very much since i heated it up this morning. i could really use a wyze sense contact/motion sensor to turn on the heat only when somebody is home. this sounds like a job for the raspberry pi, it'd be a fun little project to rig up for next week.
i played a screener of knives out for my parents before switching over to the season 12 murdoch mysteries marathon for my mother. knives out was a pretty good mystery movie, i was surprised when i saw rian johnson had directed it.
today was the last sunny day of december, as the forecast for the next few days will be rainy. that means this month will go down in history as one of the worst performing months, second to last only to january 2018, when we first got the solar panels and didn't know yet how to clean them when it snowed. i was hoping it'd at least be better than november 2018, which was another a bad month, but it needs over 60kWh more of production to beat it, and we'll be lucky to get half that.
i biked home after dinner. checking my router remotely one final time, i was surprised my roommate still wasn't home. however, he was there when i finally got back 20 minutes later. he was at his office all day after all. looks like he's going to be that kind of roommate, one who i rarely see and works all the time, even on weekends. he told me he had a big lunch so wasn't too hungry tonight - he ate 2/3 of the quiche he bought yesterday. for dinner, it was a glass of milk and some bread. i thought maybe he was going to make a sandwich, but he was going to have the bread as-is. he did ask if he could use my ketchup - since last night when he wanted to put "tomato sauce" (ketchup) on his pasta, he's been trying to sample some of my ketchup. i gave him a choice between regular and organic, he picked the unopened organic option. though it seems sad, i can't be responsible for his food choices. as long as he's not cooking and making a mess of the kitchen, i'm happy with whatever he eats.
i did ask kevin if he used the microwave and the electric tea kettle this morning. he said no, although i don't know how the GFCI outlet could've popped off otherwise.
a mysterious UPS package came for me today, kevin brought it inside when he got home first (also: he didn't lock the front door). i couldn't imagine what it was from the size of the box, but it suddenly dawned on me that maybe it was the replacement chain wax. sure enough it was, which is really amazing considering i only contacted the seller late yesterday morning in california, and they had it expressed shipped to me so it'd arrive the next day on a saturday no less. that means i can still get some lube action this weekend, both on the motorcycle chain and my bicycle.