the advancing sunrise and the higher sun angle is compelling me to wake up earlier it seems. kevin probably wasn't expecting me to be up that early and was in the bathroom. after he vacated, i gave it a while for the air to dissipate before finally using the bathroom myself. kevin started preparing his lunch around 11:30am, a big affair with a lot of sizzle. i took the opportunity to do a load of laundry, since everyone was up and kevin wasn't taking one of his naps. he finished cooking by noontime, actually split me a portion of a chicken dish he made (大盘鸡) which he said he had in xinjiang. to me it tasted just like chicken with potatoes and a host of other vegetables (celery, jalapeno peppers, onions, ginger). he warned me it was spicy which turned out to be true. for a guy who's never really cooked before, he's gotten better at it since the months he's lived here. of course he has all the equipment and spices and condiments at his disposal.

i was going to make another bagel sandwich, but that chicken dish was filling enough that it became my lunch. while kevin disappeared in his bedroom (probably to take a nap), i took a walk to my community garden to check on the condition of my garlic chives, if they're big enough to harvest.

i didn't really plan on it, but i ended up spending an hour terraforming my plot, which mainly involved weeding (grass and creeping buttercups) and tilling the soil. there was nobody else in the garden, just me and my face mask. it got warm enough that i stripped down to my t-shirt. i noticed my next door garden neighbor was passive-aggressively marking his territory with a string border and even tossed a brick into my garden, killing some emerging day lilies. the problem with my plot is there's still too much leftover plants from the previous gardener that i don't have the heart to just dig up so i can start with a fresh garden slate. i relocated a few foxgloves, striped mallows, and garlic chives. i dug up a clump of irises i didn't want. at one point my neighbor carrie was coming out of the park with her kids and we recognized each other despite the face masks. "your hair is getting really long!" she remarked. "you should see me without the mask, i have a beard too," i informed her.

my coronavirus relief check was supposed to arrive in the mail today (it was sent out yesterday) but it didn't arrive yet. i did manage to finally update the bank account info for my parents on the irs.gov portal, so they will get their money through direct deposit instead of a check, though a tentative date is still unknown. my sister already got her check over the weekend, and my 2nd aunt got it last week. my other aunt in california she received her check the very first day they were sending it out. originally i had all these wild plans on how to spend the money, but it's just going to use it to pay for my hom owner insurance, which has now ballooned to $1200, so the check will just cover it. so much for stimulus money.

the latest coronavirus news today is that 54 residents have died of the coronavirus at the courtyard nursing care center in medford, with 117 more residents testing positive as well as 42 staff members. this was the place my father and i went to go check out back in mid-december 2017 when we were trying to find a nursing home for my grand uncle (not realizing he would pass away more than 2 weeks later). it seemed like a really great place, but there was a wait list for entry and there was very little chance we'd get a spot. but it hits close to home, knowing that so many people there have been affected by the coronavirus. what's happening at these senior homes should be considered a crime. are the staff even taking the proper precautions? one thing for a worker to get sick, but when a senior with preexisting conditions get the coronavirus, more often than not it's a death sentence. this isn't just isolated to courtyard, all the other nursing homes we checked out have many cases. massachusetts government doesn't release actual numbers for these places, but there are a many pages of nursing home /assisted living case data in their daily update (last i checked 1/3 of the data related to these locations): numbers are either below 10, between 10-30, and above 30. neville center and sancta maria nursing both have greater than 30 cases.

today we broke another production record for 2020. conditions were ideal: clear blue sky, bright sun, wasn't too warm. but my midday i started seeing a smattering of clouds, and by the afternoon we were only up 40kWh, and i didn't think we could make up the difference in order to reach 50kWh+. i was wrong about that, we ended up generating 53.62kWh of electricity today. not a perfect bell curve, but perfect bell curves don't make record productions either.

for dinner i heated up 3 leftover jiucaihexi, leaving me with 2 more for tomorrow night. i've been meaning to go out and get some salad ingredients, but it was already too late, figured i'd do that tomorrow. i also had some blood orange, washed it all down with a can of pomegranate polar seltzer.