i had some leftover hot and sour soup and leftover mantou with pork floss and pickled mustard green for lunch in belmont.

a lot of house finch activities at the feeders. there was also a lone song sparrow, which looked similar to a female house finch. there was also a pair of squirrels trying to get seeds from the feeder.

i put out some peanuts which a squirrel with a skin disease managed to discover, although not before a bluejay swooped down a few times to take some peanuts for itself. apparently that's a thing: bluejays love peanuts. put out shelled peanuts outside, sooner or later bluejays will find them (if the squirrels don't get to them first).

i found out a few days ago via facebook (which i only visit a handful of times a year, usually by accident) that there was a chinese lunar new year celebration happening at belmont center this afternoon. my mother and i went to investigate. originally she wanted to walk there, but it was just too far. my father ended up driving and dropping us off, so we could just walk back instead.

think of how many chinese people have to live in belmont for them to be able to have a chinese new year celebration in the town center. it was a little lackluster though, just some tables set up with crafts for children, free snacks, and then the other tables were local businesses trying to attract chinese customers. they had it front of belmont's savings bank, and there were just a big crowd of people outside. there was also supposed to be lion dancers, but after we circled the tables twice (and collected some snacks and freebies like a mug and some toothbrushes), we decided to leave.

about halfway home we heard lion dancing drums.

in the early evening i went to the backyard to fly the drone and get some sunset photos. i also set up my gopro outside to take a sunset time lapse. the sunset ended up not being that spectacular. when i went outside again later to collect the camera, i saw something scurrying underneath the bird feeder. it take me a few seconds to realize it was actually a large rabbit. when i tried to follow it to see where it'd go, it ran away to the other side of the yard.

for dinner my mother cooked up a spicy wood ear & ham stirfry and a spicy salad. my father fried up some breaded fish.

when i returned to cambridge, my new kenda tire was on the doorstep. it was rolled up into a small coil. all the tires i've received in the past were shipped flat, so i was confused at first as to what it might be. the rubber smell was really strong though, so i put the tire at the back end of the house so i wouldn't have to smell the fumes.