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my sister gave me a ride to my parents' place around noontime. i brought the 8qt instant pot as i wasn't using it but my parents could use it to proof dough. my parents went to russo's this morning, and stopped by OSJL to get some suet cakes for the feeder. there are so many rabbit snow prints in the backyard but i can't seem to find how they're coming inside. after putting away some tools in the garage, we did managed to trap a large rabbit who wasn't able to get away. it first tried the eastern fence to the front of the house but was unsuccessful. it then ran to the southeastern corner of the yard where the rain barrels were and then disappeared. i have to wait until the next snowstorm to trace where the snow prints are coming from.

one of the first things i did when i got to belmont was to test my dji mini 2 drone. i was secretly hoping that the reason why it didn't work yesterday was simply because there was still some water inside the drone. that turned out to be exactly the case because i managed to turn on the drone just fine, without all the errors i encountered yesterday.

for lunch my mother made some tangyuan (i supplied the glutinous rice flour from my house) and my father made the jiu niang soup with the sweet v4 jiu niang. i had a bowl along with some leftover christmas ham. the salty smokiness really compliments the warm complex sweetness of the jiu niang. afterwards i went outside to test fly the drone to make sure it was entirely working.

the drone flew without any problems, just like it was before i crashed it. that saves me the inconvenience of having to sent it back to DJI to get a replacement and saves me $49. so the secret seems to be if you get your drone wet, let it dry first before trying to fly it again, because chances are it still might work. i wasn't planning on flying it too far, but i did get it close to burbank elementary school before the RC signal went down by 50% (the house was in the way of getting a clear signal) so i issued an RTH order for the drone to automatically return home. i stopped it before it could come in for a landing because it looked like it was too close to the very same evergreen it crashed into yesterday. i managed to bring it down in the launching pad without any issues.

sunday used to mean football but the games are almost an afterthought now these days. there was the patriots-dolphins game at 1pm which i watched intermittently. new england ended up losing, eliminating them from playoff contention. even if we won, we'd still need to win the last 2 remaining games and have some other teams lose so we could get a playoff spot. and had we gone into the post-season, most likely we'd be eliminated in the first round based on how poorly the patriots have been playing. it's unfamiliar territory for patriots fans.

in the late afternoon it snowed for a little bit. not enough to shovel, but enough of a dusting to cover up the solar panels. hopefully the snow will simply melt away tomorrow morning.

after dinner i got a ride back to cambridge from my father.