i installed the 2nd aquarium CO2 checker this morning. it has a similar "musical note" design but a different style. the direction said to add 15 drops of indicator solution, which only filled the bulb halfway. the solution was blue, but hopefully it'll change color later today.

i left for belmont around 11am. i had some braised eggs my godmother made, along with a chicken feet. my father had stripped off the old controller bar from the broken 100W flexible solar panel, but he still couldn't get any voltage readings from the bare connectors. i did some research online: flexible panels are notorious for failing because there's poor heat dissipation, and when there's no voltage, it's pretty much impossible to fix. my father also stripped the 50w flexible panel, but that one too had zero voltage. so we bought a replacement controller bar for nothing ($10), but my father said to keep it.

we left for a supply run at 12:20pm, to the waltham costco followed by market basket. costco was not too busy for a change. i picked up a shedrain windpro umbrella for $10, supposed able to withstand windspeeds of 75mph.

around 2pm we were at market basket, which was busier. my father made a beeline to the meat department, to score some choice pork cuts. i saw various customers hauling potted chrysanthemums and got two of my own, each just $5.50 (9"). i'm going to plant them in the wine barrel planters in front of my house, which currently just have some weeds growing.

we left waltham around 2:30pm, didn't get back to cambridge until almost 3pm. we stopped at the cafe first to drop off the supplies, before heading to belmont.

i had a piece of sourdough raisin bread along with some more braised chicken feet. this was a rare weekend where we didn't do any garden work, other than reconnecting all the rain barrels. i did go outside to check one of the barrels, it was filled to capacity, no leaks. one of the fencing for RB0 had fallen over and i think a rabbit got into the bed. fortunately there wasn't anything to eat but very tiny mustard seedlings.

i helped my father installed the new wooliis-brand battery monitor we ordered off of aliexpress. we opened the battery box and disconnected some wires to get access to the lid. my father cut a larger rectangular opening for the display. i tried crimping some ring terminals to a pair of wires but either the ring terminals were faulty or the crimping tool wasn't working, so it didn't really work. the wires were also very thin. my father ended up crimping the terminals manually with pliers before covering them with heatshrink. he also soldered the two wires to the communication cables going into the meter display. the meter features a ringed hall sensor which we attached to the red positive 6AWG cable. once we connected everything, the monitor display was flashing. i fixed that my reconnecting the communication cable. the second problem was an incessant beeping, which was probably the high/low alarm. i fixed that by reseting the monitor. with that the monitor started working. it assumed the battery was fully charged, and displayed a capacity of 100Ah. we connected the battery to our MPPT controller, then turned on the DC load to power our 12v refrigerator. the display showed new numbers, the voltage (13.3V), the current (2.6A), power (34.5W), power-time (8Wh), the capacity (99%, 99Ah), and even a time remaining estimate (38.2 hours). the wooliis battery monitor works a lot better than the DROK battery monitor on our other LiFePO4 battery. the wooliis even has a display option where it turns off the display if there's no current running.

for dinner my father cooked up some smoked pork with backyard broad beans. i returned home a bit after 7pm.

i wrapped up frances' package, promised her i'd ship it out tomorrow. i hid her diamond earrings in a package of earring backs. i was trying to be careful, opening the package with an x-acto knife, but i still made a mess of it. hopefully the package doesn't get inspected by customs. even though it's a rather small box, the shipping cost was still insane, $76. it took me a while to fill out the shipping form, the customs declaration is a lot more detailed than what it used to be. plus, certain items are restricted by norwegian customs, like jewelry and makeup, so i didn't bother writing those items on the customs form.

there was a monday night football game on ABC/ESPN between the seahawks and giants. it was a boring game, final score 24-3, i stopped watching after the first half. instead, i continued to absorb online analysis of the jrue holiday trade.