i finally put up my tibetan prayer flags (purchased in ganzi back in october 2013) after rediscovering them at my parents' place yesterday. combined that with my solar-powered tibetan prayer wheels and all the snow makes me feel like i'm in tibet (chuanxi at least)! i like the way they flutter in the wind, but all the dancing of the shadows constantly fools my peripheral vision into thinking there is somebody out back.

my parents picked me up in the late afternoon. today was chinese new year AKA the spring festival. it's the year of the goat, or sheep, or ram - in chinese they don't make any distinctions between those animals.

around 4:30 (less than an hour before sunset) my father and i climbed the roof to clear off the snow. drifts had accumulated snow upwards of 3 feet between the area of the regular roof and the sunroom roof (not as sloped). i don't think there was any danger of roof collapse, but better safe than sorry, especially if it's going to rain over the weekend. there was snow from at least 4 separate snowstorms, and the consistency would alternate between icy crust, soft powder, and compacted snow (at the bottom). the worst part of clearing snow off the roof is afterwards you have all this snow on the ground you have to clear away, like shoveling a second time. and the snow that gets dropped down ends up being very compact hard snow so it's even harder to get rid of. i have very bad snow shoveling mechanics, more brute force than finesse, so towards the end i was pretty tired and sore. it was already getting dark as i climbed down the ladder to work on clearing a new path out of the snow we dropped. it was also cold but at the time i didn't really notice because i was so worked up from the shoveling. later when i went inside my face was blown red from the cold winds outside.

hailey now expects 2 treats after dinner. this is because on a few occasions who thought it'd be funny if we let her choose which treat she wanted: a bland rawhide curl or a flavored twisted bully (those are her favorite). but apparently she thought we were going to give her both, so afterwards she'd coming look for the second treat. now she just expects two, otherwise she will sit and pester us until we give her the second one.