February is nearly done, its warmed enough to maybe put away the thermals, and the sun is still out when I close my work laptop at the end of the day. Eastercon is hovering on the horizon, whispering about deadlines.

Last weekend I finally made the effort to watch the local Lunar New Year parade, I’d caught bits of it previously but since I had morning errands in town and the weather was (mostly) quite nice, I followed the crowds till I found a gap along the parade route and watched the whole thing. It was surprisingly chaotic from a crowd managment perspective but overall a lot of fun. The best part was probably how many children where there and how excited they all were. After the parade I wandered down Sotwell Street, which was closed to traffic and full of people crowding into the restaurants and led to a little funfair and some craft stalls, all packed with families. Before calling it a day, I got some gyoza and a bao bun from one of a handful of places that were also selling street food from the door – it was the only one taking card, next year I will definitely bring cash and explore my options more widely.