from bed i checked the webcams this morning. expecting to see the aftermath of a deluge, instead i saw calm and no flooding. so i probably didn't need to move my motorcycle after all late last night. my parents went on a baifu/foodpak supply run in south boston. my mother called me around 10am. they'd already finished shopping and were returning to cambridge. she asked if i needed a ride, but i told her i'd take the motorcycle instead since it'd already stopped raining.

i got to belmont around 11:30am. i was telling my father about my plan to go to my 2nd aunt's place to take a look at her electricity meter. ever since they started charging her for electricity at her apartment, her usage have been abnormally high. her latest bill for november showed over 400kWh of usage, the most ever, more than even my sister, who leaves all her lights on all the time and has multiple dehumidifier and purifiers running 24/7. when i called her this morning, she decided to turn off the power to her apartment and waited a few hours to check if her meter has increased. anyway, we came up with another solution, which is to install a local electricity meter inside her circuit breaker cabinet. we found one that looked promising, able to monitor 220V voltage with wifi monitoring, for just $45. we have a energy meter on our circuit box, connected to the hot water heater. i finally figured out how to reset it after the meter had been stuck on 999Wh for a while now.

i had some korean beef dumplings for lunch. it had already turned cold so my father heated it up in the microwave for me.

my sister showed up unexpectedly in the afternoon. we always know it's her because we hear esmei running fast through the house, looking for food. they stopped in belmont before a puppy playdate with her friend anna's golden retriever puppy. the retriever puppy was small enough a few weeks ago to be bullied by esmei, but now the puppy is the same size as esmei.

my sister arrived just when my parents were heading back to boston again, this time for a bone density scan in kenmore square.

esmei went out into the backyard and immediately got the zoomies, running around in a blur. when she was younger she'd crash into things, but now she's much more coordinated, running over and under obstacles like a death-defying stunt performer. it seemed to have tired her out because she suddenly ran inside the house to rest. the trick is to tire her out during the day so she'll sleep throughout the night after dinner. once again i left the front door open so she could look outside instead of going through the house looking for things to chew. later my sister left with esmei.

i was in the backyard raking the last of the leaves underneath the maple tree. there's no more garden refuse pickup in belmont, so the three barrels of dead leaves will have to wait until spring before they can be disposed of (or maybe i'll use them as mulch somewhere). the maple tree could also use some more pruning come late winter. it takes just a single season for dozens of new suckers to form on the branch ends.

the seedlings i'm growing in our raised beds are not growing as fast as i'd hoped. it's already mid-december and they're still not large enough to harvest yet. i think it's simply too cold for them to thrive. the fact that they're still alive is enough of a miracle, despite nighttime temperature dipping in the 20's a few times a week. as soon as it doesn't snow, i'll let them grow. once we get our first large snowstorm, i have to take down the wire fencing so when i clear the snow off the solar panels on the roof they won't collapse the fencing. once that happens, they raised beds will be unprotected and rabbits will come into the backyard and eat up all the tender greens. hopefully the few inches of rain we got last night will help them grow better.

i spent an hour watering all the houseplants, starting with the few upstairs, before heading down into the basement grow room. i took the quarantine orchid and money plant outside and sprayed them with neem oil. while inspecting the other plants, i spotted some tiny mealybugs on the tips of the gardenia, so i moved it outside and sprayed it with neem as well. otherwise all the other plants seem pest-free. my formerly-dead potted pennywort continues to survive, now about a dozen circular leaves are poking out of the sphagnum moss. the yellow sticky traps i set out last week were relatively free of gnats, so maybe my preemptive Bti watering treatment will mean a fungus-gnat free indoor growing season. our new spider farmer grow light has actually been saving us some money. that strand of devices (including two big grow lights and an oscillating fan) normally uses 2.14kWh of electricity a day, but after i replaced one of the grow lights with the spider farmer light, it now only uses 1.97 kWh, a saves of 170Wh a day. that might not sound like a lot, but over the course of the winter, that comes out to a savings of 25 kWh, all because i upgraded one of the grow lights. i'm actually tempted to replace the last remaining blurple grow light, knowing i can get a new light that's not only brighter but uses less electricity.

my parents returned home while i was finishing up with the grow room. my father and i continued researching 3rd party firmware updates for the quansheng UV-K5 transceiver, something we didn't even realize we could do. we bought those radios back in march, used them for a bit, but then explored other projects. the last time we did with the quansheng was program them using CHIRP, which had only recently started for the UV-K5. another thing my father noticed today was there's no received transmission squawk on the UV-K5 as there is on our baofeng, ruyage, and TYT. the UV-K5 is the only radio that received clearly. i ended up doing some research, i think i might've found out what the problem is, i'll try to fix it next weekend.

my mother stir-fried some salted pork my 2nd aunt had made with some chinese celery. she added some hot peppers for flavoring, not realizing how hot they were (i wonder if these were hot peppers harvested from the backyard, because i grew some this season that were deceptively spicy despite their mild appearance).

i got back home by 6:45pm. i had football and basketball games on in the background as i surfed the web after a shower. i drank some jasmine green tea and downloaded the photos and videos i took today.