kevin was still asleep, surprisingly, even though i slept later than him last night. i microwaved the two muffins and after logging the meal in the predict 2 app, ate it with some hot water (didn't want to deal with the hassle of logging a hot tea). these seems to be the same muffins i had yesterday, just plain and greasy. they're rather tasteless, not unpleasant, but like eating a sweet warm sponge. later i went to use the bathroom and take a shower. when i got out kevin was finally awake.
the US census office finally contacted me today, i knew it was a matter of time. no surprise, they've temporarily suspended their operations due to the coronavirus, will reevaluate in 2 weeks. this means all training programs have been put on hold pending review.
i was already making lunch before my 3 hours fast was even over at 12:20pm. kevin was speaking with someone on the phone in his bedroom. i went to the bathroom and discovered pee around the toilet, the paper towels partially soaked. swearing profusely, i had no choice but to clean it up first before i made my lunch. when he finally came out of his bedroom, i was pretty angry, and told him what he did. he went into the bathroom to take a look, "i already cleaned it up," i told him.
this was my first meal with ingredients i couldn't easily scan the barcode. i'm also starting to get the hang of it. when it asks to take a photo, it doesn't mean the individual ingredients, but rather the finished meal. and you can take as many photos as you want. i only partially thawed the frozen spinach before squeezing it dry; when i added it to the omelette, it was still cold, not sure if it managed to warm up in the pan, but i didn't notice it when i ate since everything else was warm.
i ate while watching the latest coronavirus press conference, with donald trump front and center, and his advisors behind him standing at attention. he's been doing this every day this week around noontime, cutting into my local news broadcast. i think in lieu of his campaign rally in front a crowd of people (no longer possible because of the coronavirus, but it was up to trump, he'd still be having them, deadly disease or not), trump has decided that these daily updates would be the perfect platform for him to be on television every day. but if we're all about social distancing, how smart is it to crowd everyone on a podium, just to listen to trump pontificate for an hour or more? and often times he goes off script, and goes on one of his many politically charged tirades. the fact that he can be joking about the deep state, or calling someone a bad reporter for asking a tough question, while all across the country americans are scared, really says something about him.
in the early afternoon i decided to ride down to my parents' place to borrow the car for this weekend. with my on-going predict 2 study, i won't be able to exercise while i'm fasting, which means no biking if i want to get to belmont. plus, another chance to visit pokestops and occupy gyms.
when i got to my parents' place, on the doorstep was a small clear plastic bag with some white stuff on the inside. i thought nothing of it, figured maybe my sister left it behind as she often does with hailey's poop, just leaving it on the doorstep like an offering instead of throwing it away, though the size and color was unusual. my mother saw it as well, didn't know what it was, so we just pushed it to the side.
i do a lot of snacking when i go over to my parents' place. just out of habit, i grabbed some preserved sweet olives and ate them before realizing i had to log everything i eat or drink. suddenly every time i snack becomes a whole production where i have to weigh out with a scale how much i'm going to eat, describe the food (whether from a list of unbranded items or from the UPC if it's in the database), and finally take a photo of it. not only that, ideally snacks should be spaced 2 hours apart, so if i want to follow the rules, there are just a few snacking opportunities in a given day. if nothing else, doing the study definitely puts a curb to careless snacking.
the temperature today was supposed to hit the 70's, but it only reached the upper 60's at most. it was definitely warm though, and humid, felt more like spring-summer weather than late march. i went out in the backyard to take some photos of the emerging plants. the lupines have been growing for a few weeks now, in the perennial bed behind the garage, and the small newly-opened perennial bed in the southwestern corner of the house by the rain barrel. there's also at least lupine growing besides the hydrangea.
there are also other perennials emerging, including shasta daisies, red chrysanthemums, and foxgloves. i transplanted a lot of foxgloves to the perennial bed below the grape trellis, but a lot seemed to have disappeared, or maybe just haven't emerged yet, though they seem to be able to stay somewhat green through the winter, especially the extremely mild winter we've experienced this year. there are also foxgloves in the behind-garage perennial bed, as well as raised bed 3. if we need more foxgloves we'll just relocated from that bed, they shouldn't be growing in there anyway, takes up precious vegetable growing space.
there are also numerous money plants, whether second season ready to flower this year, or brand new seedlings. i casted a lot of seeds all over the garden, there should be plenty of money plants around.
garlic shoots are emerging from their salt marsh grass cover. this is the time of season where they shine. i have chicken wires over some of the garlic beds, i'm not sure when i should remove them yet, because i'm afraid hungry squirrels and rabbits will dig through the mulch without this protection. in the same garlic bed (RB4) are some forgotten garlic bulbs which have also sprouted on their own. along with that are actually cilantro that have somehow survived the winter. currently they're low to the ground, but give them a few weeks they should be ready for harvesting.
i have columbines growing in two locations: the southeastern perennial bed and the western perennial bed. the ones in the southeast are origami red & white; they grew beautifully last season, but this year they seemed to be a little slow and stunted judging from what's emerged so far. there should be 3 of these plants but i only saw 2 emerging. the ones by the western bed are ones i grew from seeds and also a few that've been there for a few years (also from seeds). that bed is so busy with activity (bulbs, perennials), there doesn't seem to be a lot of nutrients available for the columbines. but the ones i grew from seeds last year but kept in tiny pots until i finally transplanted them into the ground in autumn, i'm hoping they'll do better this year now they have more room to grow. they also haven't flowered yet, hopefully this year they can (blue and white variety).
buds on our 3 flowering trees are beginning to swell: redbud, kwanzan cherry, flowering plum. i believe the plum should be the first to flower, followed by the redbud and then the cherry. raspberries are also started to produce leaf buds. the ones growing in the ground seem to be doing better; the ones in our planters - because my father accidentally pruned them down to the base - will need to made brand new stalks before they can leaf out.
at 3:30pm there was a knock on the door followed by the doorbell. at first we thought it was my sister who got locked out, but when my father peered through the window, he saw it was a belmont police officer. he went out to speak with the police, then came in and asked if any of us noticed the white package on the front steps. i went outside to speak with the officer, told him i noticed it when i got here around 1:30pm. it didn't even dawn on me that it was suspicious, just a little weird. he said at least 8-9 other houses around the neighborhood received the package, but nobody knew who put it there, and somebody got worried and called the police. while we were talking outside, more and more police arrived, including a EMT truck, until there was a whole swarm of cops outside the house. a little girl and her father came walking towards us, she said she saw a pair of twins leaving them outside. the cop noticed we had a webcam mounted on our door. "does that thing work?" he asked. i said sure, then scrubbed through the slow playback to find footage of who left the package.
that's when i realized i could've just as easily look at the alert footage, which was quicker. sure enough, around 1:28pm, a mother and her two little girls on bikes came by our house. they stopped outside, the little girl peddled to our front steps, looked around, and threw something out of her bike basket before leaving. what was it? the footage calmed their nerves, knowing it was a white lady with two little white girls, mostly likely something harmless. but it wasn't conclusive since it was only 12 seconds long, they need to see the little girl actually dropping the package, which the short video clip stopped before getting to that point. that's when i pulled out the memory card from the camera and scrubbed the video on my computer, much faster. at 1:28pm we saw the whole thing, with proof that it was indeed the little girl. i showed the video to other police officers and EMT's who were standing around. they were impressed by the picture quality and asked what kind of camera it was (wyze cam).
suddenly a guy from what looked to be the bomb squad hazardous disposal unit showed up. he was dressed in protective clothing with a face mask and oxygen tank, and went ahead and opened up the package. inside was a disinfectant wipe. everyone breathed a sigh of relief. the police thanked us for our help, said the video saved him a lot of work. he took a video of the still frame on my computer, but i also e-mailed him the video. all that trouble for nothing! earlier he was saying he couldn't believe people could be doing this, especially during this time of coronavirus panic, it was another problem he didn't want to have. but all the police outside our house brought the whole neighborhood over, trying to figure out what was happening.
my original plan was simply to borrow the car and go home, where i had a lovely bowl of instant noodles waiting for me for dinner. i ended up having dinner at my parents' place, my mother made fried rice with spam (i thought the spam was going to be included with the rice but it was actually separate).
in order to accurately log my dinner, i was standing behind my mother while she cooked, asking her what ingredients she added and how much. she got so annoyed that she said it would've been better off if i went back home for dinner. tonight's dinner was actually fairly easy; had it been a more complicated recipe, i'm not sure if i could've listed all the ingredients and their portions.
i decided not to come back to belmont tomorrow, since i had a fairly full day of set breakfast and lunch as well as 3 separate blood tests. in that case i didn't need the car so instead i biked back to cambridge on the fuji.
