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my upstairs neighbors shoveled the sidewalk this morning, sparing me from having to do it. my father came to pick me up at 11am. there was still snow in the trees and all around us cars were driving with snow on their roofs.

the first thing we did when we arrived in belmont was to clear the snow off the solar panels. my father told me he'd already brushed the snow below the panels, all we had to do was push the snow off. it was the light and fluffy type of snow, about 4-6" worth. some of it had already slid off the main room. there was no rush to get it done since today was a cloudy day anyway, so not too much electricity generation even if the panels were cleared.

i cleared the panels on the right side of the house before my father got on the ladder to clear the sunroom panels. i got on the smaller step ladder in front of the sunroom to clear the snow off the edge with the second foam roof rake as soon as my father pushed it there. later we moved to the left side of the house. it was pretty easy work, the hardest part was just constantly re-adjusting the length of the roof rake pole to reach all the areas. afterwards i went around the backyard looking for rabbit tracks. i saw some that might be rabbits but even now i still can't figure out how they get inside. there hasn't been a lot though, not since i blocked the hole i found underneath the eastern fence behind all the ivy ground cover a few months ago.

back inside, my mother made chicken noodles for lunch served with some homemade chinese-style pickled cucumbers. she was also cooking the chicken feet my father and i got from market basket monday night. instead of frying them, she was simply boiling, which is easier but fried chicken feet is the more delicious method. she also used leftover spice packets, not the one i bought especially for chicken feet. when the feet were finally done cooking and i tried one, they were okay, but didn't have the fall-of-the-bone tenderness as fried feet.

later my father took me to the watertown best buy to pick up my new brother HL-L2370DW laser printer. even though the store was open, i opted for curbside pickup. i felt a little bad, seemed kind of rude and impersonal to not pick it up myself. we parked right outside the entrance, in the fire lane. i clicked on the URL in the text they sent me, which brought me to a website to announce i'd arrived and to let them know the type of car and what color. only then did we see the dedicated curbside pickup parking spots. my father wanted to move the car but an employee from the store already came out with the printer in a box. i showed him the confirmation number on my phone, and he put the box in the open trunk, and that was it.

driving back i saw my mother taking her daily walk around the neighborhood. as soon as i got back to the house, i sent my drone from the backyard in search of my mother. i had a idea where she was walking, but because she was wearing a dark jacket, it was hard to see her 400ft from the sky. i wanted to call but my phone was in use by the drone controller, and i didn't want to leave the drone unattended as i went inside to get my father's phone, so i abandoned the idea. instead i did some simple flying before returning home. the DJI fly app did crash on me, locking up the phone up. it even locked up right when i was bringing it down for a landing. that's when i noticed something: even though the app had locked up, i was still able to control the drone. so the signal never breaks, it's still responsive to the controllers, i just can't see the progress on the screen. i was planning on landing it manually, without the use of the DJI fly app or the camera, just do it by visual alone, but was afraid the drone might not land properly, so i took it above the treeline again to wait for the app to come back online. when it did it started making this loud beeping sound. i thought it was doing an automatic return-to-home manuever, but when i checked the screen, the alert was for low power (4-5 minutes worth) and warning me to land the drone soon.

when twilight came around i went back outside for another flight. the sky looked like there might be a colorful sunset. the half-moon was out, i positioned the drone so the two could be super-imposed for a photo. there was some color but not as much as i'd hoped for. i was planning on coming out again later for some blue hour flight, with the landscape illuminated by street lights and house lights, but it was already time for dinner.

my parents made these meat patties stuffed with pork filling and cooked in the electric baking pan. we also had some sweet adzuki bean soup. my mother hurried me to leave so we could drop off some patties at my sister's place on my way home. i was just going to drop them off but my father said i should check out the newly assembled kitchen island. hailey barked at me when i came inside because i was all masked up and had my hood on. the kitchen looks more organized now, it used to be a hoarder's kitchen.

when my father dropped me off i totally forgot about the printer in the trunk until he reminded me. back inside, i tried to revive my old printer one last time, putting in the old toner from my parents' printer. it gave me an toner error light. i found a way to fix it online, and the printer seemed it was printing, but then it gave me a drum error light, along with the clicking sounds when the printer was turned off. i'm still not satisfied, i still think i can save the old printer. i'm going to take one more stab it it - maybe take apart the printer - before calling it quits. it *can* print, i just need to feed the paper manually. but now there's that new drum error and i don't know what that's about.

before i went to bed i set up my macbook pro to run time machine. i've tried backing up a few times over the past few days, it always seems to get stuck. i'm hoping if i leave it running overnight, it'll have enough time to finally finish a backup.