i actually thought about going on a run this morning, until i looked outside and saw it was still wet from last night's rain. wet and barely in the 40's were enough reasons to make me stay home instead. i did end up doing two loads of laundry: one a bunch of dirty clothes, the second my deadsheets after i found my duvet cover was blood-stained from all my late night scratching. i stain-treated all the blood spots i could find, but some of them were old (how dirty is this duvet?) so a few of the stains had already set. i also washed the sheets from the guest bedroom, which i'd been meaning to do after DC left back in november. i should've washed them earlier because there were drool stains on the bed sheets, which i'd never seen before (man must sleep like a pig).
noontime was wall-to-wall political events: joe biden was giving a speech about immigration reforms, the house was holding a seventh speaker vote, and MA was swearing in its first elected woman and lesbian governor. i ended up watching the house vote and inauguration ceremony both on my computer and tv. i also threw a frozen cordon bleu in the oven and had that for lunch.
i listened to a bit of maura healey's inauguration speech. even though she grew up in NH, her family has irish roots in MA for nearly 300 years. i knew she played basketball, but didn't realize she played while attending harvard as an undergraduate. i was also surprised that after college she went to europe to play in the professional women's basketball league for a few years (at the time the WNBA didn't exist yet).
later in the afternoon i started watching west wing because i kept hearing references made to the show. i'd never seen west wing, the idea of a white house drama that didn't involve keifer sutherland as the designated survivor just wasn't interesting for me. but i watched what i thought was the pilot episode just to see what i was missing while having a korean cup of noodles. turns out my streaming source had the episodes all mixed up, and the one that i watched ("isaac and ishmael") was a 9/11-related episode from their third season. it was okay, but didn't knock my socks off. maybe i was watch the real pilot episode instead.
my 3/8"x1/2" PVC adapters arrived via UPS today. they came too late - 3:30pm - so i couldn't race back to belmont to try and see if they fit on my aeroponics pump. the threaded 3/8" end has a tapering which makes me worried they won't fit into the pump correctly. if the weather is cooperative, i may go to belmont tomorrow and test out these adapters. i bought 4 just so the $5 shipping is split up 4 ways, so each adapters ended up costing me $2.
the house speaker vote went into an 11th round today, with no leeway given from the 21 republican members who didn't vote for mccarthy. yesterday they all lined up behind donalds, their symbolic figurehead. today, the 21 "rebel" votes went to donalds, hern, trump (!), and one person voting present. i was listening to the michael moore podcast and an idea he pitched was convincing a handful of moderate republicans who won in blue biden districts. it sounded pretty genius, but later i thought about it and the reason why it wouldn't work is as soon as republicans found out their members were defecting, the ultraconservatives would then vote for mccarthy, to prevent democratic minority jefferies from stealing the speakership a republican majority house. i think i'll watch the drama for one more day (since nothing else good on tv) before just tuning it out until there's a major break in the stalemate.
i worked on updating 2022 blog posts. after filling in some december gaps, i'm now working on october. it shouldn't take this long, but i was also distracted by television and watching the political talking heads discussing what was happening.
for dinner i originally thought about heating up a frozen pizza, but i wasn't that hungry, so i boiled some thin noodles and mixed in a spice packet with some scallions and pickled mustard greens. i ate while watching the celtics game, only after i first checked the score to make sure boston was getting blown out like the last game. celtics were in fact leading the mavericks by 15 points in dallas. mavericks were having a bad night, nothing was falling for them, but the celtics desperately needed a rebound game from getting owned by the OKC thunders.