t
o
n
y
a
n
g
'
s
 
w
e
b
l
o
g


i rode the bicycle to belmont (instead of taking the motorcycle) for several reasons: to get some exercise, to test out my new cruiser bike seat, and to replenish my pokemon supplies. kind of sad to admit, but catching pokemon was the more important of the three reasons. i managed to occupy 4 gyms which will definitely get me at least 50 coins. the route i take apparently doesn't get high traffic volume so i can typically defend a gym for a day, if not longer. as far as exercise, i hardly did any biking this past week, just went to market basket. even then, my body was still in shape and i wasn't lacking in endurance as i climbed hills. finally, the new saddle was fine, hardly noticed any difference while riding (though i still think it looks ridiculously thicc), which is a good thing. i sit too far forward and at one point realized i still had plenty of cushioning in the back, that i can really sit back and pamper my butt.

while my father spent most of the day organizing the garage, i was in the backyard doing an assortment of garden work: plant the eggplants and peppers, replant buttercup squash seeds (3rd time), put collars around all seedlings, weed the raised beds, water the backyard. the lupine aphid problem seems to be fixed since we didn't need to use the insecticidal soap spray today.

we also fertilized the orchids will special orchid fertilizer as well as the jasmines and gardenia with standard miracle-gro blue fertilizer. i occasionally ran the hose for hailey to play with (video: warning large file size 33MB). i managed to chat with our backyard neighbor, asked him if he pruned our tree, told him we didn't mind but to ask us first; i could've raised a big stink (like the fact that he trespassed to damage our property) but decided to keep it civil for the sake of being neighborly.

in the late afternoon i suddenly realized today was the postponed launch of the spacex rocket ship. i quickly switched to youtube tv where i saw the launch had already happened more than 15 minutes ago. i'm happy it was successful, but i part of me was kind of expecting something awful to happen, given NASA's track record with manned space flights. i have to remember that tomorrow around 12:30pm they're going to be docking with the international space station, i don't want to miss that when it happens.

my mother made some pan-fried raviolis for lunch with the leftover chinese dumplings from yesterday. for dinner, she made some salted fish flakes with cilantro and ginger as well as some red roasted beef stew. my father also finally cut up that large watermelon i bought during memorial day weekend. although it looks pale, it was actually surprisingly sweet and crispy and juice.

throughout the day we kept seeing bunnies in the backyard. it's difficult to drive them out because they're good at avoidance, and once they hide in the thicket of spiderworts and ornamental grasses, it's impossible to find them again. we've blocked all the entrance points, not sure how they're getting in, but my theory is these rabbits were stuck here to begin with, not that they came in anew. fortunately we have a live trap. after my father set it up, we put in a stick of celery. i wanted to hide it somewhere so the rabbit would more likely run through the trap, but my father wanted it further out so he could see it from inside the house.

today's production of 50.07kWh was a pleasant surprise, i was hoping for maybe 20kWh+ at best, knowing that it was going to be cloudy, at least for the first half of the day. that meant so far we've had 11 days in may that was 50kWh+. not only that, but with today's high production, it guarantees that we will break the all-time monthly production record previously set in july. this is because tomorrow's forecast is for a clear blue sky day. we may not hit 50kWh+ (though i'm hopeful) but it's going to be very close and we just need about 20kWh+ to beat the record. the month of may will end in style solar production-wise.

i adjusted the bike seat when i returned home. it started tilting backwards while i was riding. besides tightening up the bolt, i also moved the seat forward so i don't have to sit so far back from the handlebars. it'll try riding it again tomorrow to see if there's any improvements.