i've been in touch with wu weiyu, reminding her to watch the annular solar eclipse happening in chongqing sunday afternoon. even if it's cloudy they should be able to experience it, as the 96% of the sun will be blocked at its peak, so the sky will get pretty dark. for some reason she thought it was today (saturday china time) until i told her it was actually on sunday. she asked if kevin had moved out, i said yes, but without a roommate, my house has a tendency to get really messy. that segued into a tour of my house through pictures where i showed her all the stuff i have in my kitchen. she was very jealous that i have so much storage space (i didn't even show her the basement). i told her that a house is basically a storage space for all your junk including yourself.

i had the last of my sugar free greek yogurt for lunch, it's so terrible, i'm never going to get it again, only real yogurt for me from now on, none of that fat-free stuff which tastes awful. today was the second day of our subheatwave. my mother called, asked if i'd installed my AC yet, as they had installed theirs, and it was now nice and cool in the house. they really have no reason not to, with all that surplus electricity they generate during the summer from the solar panels. it was still mildly cool in the house - 78-80 degrees - but the temperature was slowly climbing upwards. if these heat continues, very soon i will have to capitulate and install my window AC as well.

i decided to forgo a trip to market basket today as i still have plenty of food in the house. instead, i walked down to the UPS store on somerville avenue to return the rain barrel spigot (too small) then coming back i stopped by star market to pick up a rack of spareribs on sale and some tonic water.

afterwards i went to the community garden to water my plants. hopefully this will be enough as i don't plan on coming back anytime this weekend. returning home, i saw 4 free bikes on the sidewalk. i was tempted to take one or two, if nothing else, strip it for parts (there was some nice fenders on one of them), but the chain and sprockets were so rusted, it was more trouble than it's worth. maybe i could've fixed up one of them and given it to kevin, but he doesn't deserve my altruism.

i stayed home for the rest of the day, the blinds partially closed to prevent indirect sunlight from getting inside the house and warming it up. i started watching taste the nation with padma lakshmi. she seems to be taking up the anthony bourdain mantle of food travelogue. the first episode was about mexican food (el paso/juarez), the 2nd about german food (milwaukee). i'm currently on the 3rd, about indian food.

around 5:30pm i got tired enough to take a short nap, and i didn't wake up until almost 8:30pm, it was still daylight outside, but the sun would soon be setting.

we didn't break 50kWh but we came close, just like yesterday. production was steady for the first half of the day before humidity clouds started forming which was enough to eclipse the sun preventing up from reaching our maximum production potential.

i didn't have dinner until well after 10pm. i was in the kitchen but instead of making food i saw moths again. they seem to congregate in the spice rack cabinet, so i ended up emptying the hole cabinet, putting spices into boxes. a few packaged spices had holes in them and what looks to be moth larvae droppings, so they've definitely been feeding on those. i tossed out as much as i could, and what little i wanted to keep i kept sealed in ziploc bags. hopefully this will finally these annoying moths.

i made yet another meatball sub. one of the last remaining sub roll had mold, saving me from having to eat another sub next week. i can finally move on to different foods! meatball subs are convenient (especially when i make it with frozen meatballs that i reheat in the microwave) but they lack food imagination. now that the weather has finally turned hot, i can start making some of my cold dishes, like hearty greek salad, or pasta salad.