maybe i can be a full-time landlord. if i manage to rent out my place every month for a whole year, i will make enough money that i don't need to work for another year. it'd be terrible, and i don't think i can live with a roommate for that long a period, but just something i was thinking of. with that in mind, mary left the house around noontime. i wasn't sure where she went, but i figured it had something to do with lunch. she did come back around 2pm, while i was still home.

i left around 2:30pm, taking the bus into belmont. it was still cold outside, and it took a while for my legs to warm up, but by the time i reached harvard square, i was hot enough to remove my hat. i asked one of the MBTA attendants if they had anymore charlie cards, and he pulled out a thick stack from his jacket, and gave me two. in belmont i wanted to retrieve my bicycle, which had been sitting in the backyard since thursday. i wanted to get it back home since it was going to rain tomorrow and i didn't want the bike to freeze solid afterwards.

my parents came home a short time afterwards. earlier i'd seen chickadees and juncos, a song sparrow and a carolina wren. my mother told me that the squirrel had failed to get to the suet feeder ever since i reduced the counterweight, but now it's discovered the globe feeder, and managed to climb up without a problem, scattering the seeds all about. i will need to made an adjustment to the slinky trap. i sort of don't mind for the time being, because that means the squirrel with scatter the seeds all about, giving the ground-pecking birds a chance to eat.

there was a bit of snow by the time i rode back to cambridge, so i was pretty careful with my riding, watching out for slippery spots, going slow around turns. i made it home with any incident.

in the evening i helped mary figure out if her china mobile sim card was broken or was it her nokia phone (it was the phone). she also smelled burning plastic in her room as a frayed laptop cord burned itself out. i'm afraid to think what would happen if nobody was home, i'm pretty sure it would've burned down the house. this is why i'm terrible of leaving her alone with the house. later, she thought she heard sometimes coming from the alleyway. i went to investigate, it was nothing. i told her if somebody was outside, she could see footprints in the snow. that seemed to alleviate some of her unfounded concerns. at least she didn't burst out crying this time.