when i called back my census supervisor, i found her very chatty. at one point she told me she spilled wine on her laptop one time, killing the computer, which also happened to have headshots for her comedy career. all i wanted to know was: when will my training get fixed? she told me she'd contact her higher ups and said not to worry, they'd give me additional time to complete my training besides the allotted 6 days. she texted me a few times throughout the day, asked me to be patient, that there seems to be others with the same problem. i didn't hear from her after that, the problem is still unfixed as of this evening. so my census training is on temporary hiatus until their IT department can figure out what went wrong.
in the meantime, it gave me a chance to clean my aquarium, which hadn't been cleaned since mid-may, more than 2 months ago, it didn't seem that long ago. all my big ideas of more frequent water changes to curb the spread of hair algae was just hype. i would've put it off even longer were it not for the fact that when i was feeding my fish this morning, i noticed there was only 3 tetras now (from an original of 11 back in september 2017). when i looked around for the others, i saw a dead fish tangled in the roots of one of the aquatic plants. when you have dead fish in the tank, that's a good time to clean.
it took me 1-1/2 hours to clean the tank. nothing fancy, wash the hagen aquaclear filter, replace the activated carbon, pull out any hair algae, scrub the algae off the glass with a magic eraser (a trick i only recently discovered), siphon out a bucket of dirty fish tank water (1/3 tank), replace that with treated water, use the dirty water to feed the plants. at one point i thought my infrared thermometer was broken because the tapwater was reading the same as everything else in my kitchen, temperature in the mid-70's. i even replaced the battery. turns out that's normal, the temperature of tap water in the summertime on a hot day is the same as room temperature. that's good to know, no need to do a temperature check when i replace the water.
by then it was 12:30pm, i thought i'd missed the noontime news broadcast, but i still managed to watch it because it got pushed back by some mayor's announcement. after a yogurt, i went to market basket in the afternoon for some groceries. it actually rained a bit in the early morning, so there were some puddles. i called my father earlier, asking if our rain barrels had filled yet. apparently it didn't rain much in belmont, there was only an inch increase of water at best.
around 5pm i felt a bit sleepy and decided to take a quick nap, waking up at 6pm to catch the news.
for dinner i grilled some chicken breast and made a caesar salad. it was a weird combination, the hot chicken combined with the cold salad. next time i should use cold grilled chicken instead. there also wasn't a lot of flavor. caesar salad is like a beginner's salad; i've already graduated to deluxe greek and pasta salads, can't go back to those bland salad days.
no matter how hard i tried, i couldn't lower the room temperature, which sat at 82 degrees, while outside it was a cool mid-70's and dropping. i ended up having to run the AC for a few hours just to cool down the house, which then returned to the 80's once i turned off the AC. it rained in the evening, to my surprise. i knew there was a possibility but with so many false starts, i've sort of given up hope. i heard the rumbling and flash of thunder before i heard the pelting of hard rain. it rained for a good amount, i have no doubt our rain barrels are filled now. i was going to cover up my motorcycle earlier, but decided against it as there was some sticky tree sap all over the bike, it could use a free bike wash.