i thought maybe i could go to chinatown and haymarket today, but the weather said otherwise. i knew there might be snow, but i wasn't prepared for all the rain. today was basically a repeat of yesterday (other than doing laundry), watching the house speaker election coverage and working on blog posts from 2022. i processed about 230+ photos, to be inserted into posts at some point. for lunch i heated up a cup of nissin stir fry noodle rice in the microwave. the instruction said to heat for 4-1/2 minutes, which i thought was a bit high. when i opened up the fridge, whatever was in the cup must've exploded. still, there was enough left over to eat.

in the afternoon the rain transitioned to snow for an hour or two. not enough to stick on the ground, but enough to coat the cars. i went out to get some snacks from star market and also buy a mega million ticket from the liquor store. for dinner i made some luxury korean ramen. later in the evening i checked my lottery ticket: not a single match!

the house had adjourned until 10pm, where they can back for a 14th vote. republicans seemed confident they had the votes to finally elect mccarthy as speaker. but when the votes finally ended, the last to cast his vote was gaetz, who voted present, which wasn't enough for mccarthy to win. we watched as mccarthy walked down to gaetz and i could read his lips saying, "why didn't you vote for me?" it was pretty tense, and another republican congressman came down and had to be physically restrained as it looked like he was going take a swing at gaetz. whatever agreement they made earlier must've gone out the window as the 14th vote failed. republicans resigned themselves to adjourn for the night, but the democrats were forcing them to stay and continue to elect a speaker. democrats looked like they might win out, but gaetz then raced to the front of the chamber to say something to mccarthy, and then suddenly mccarthy was urging all the remaining republicans to vote to stay. it looked like maybe gaetz had a change of heart, and decided to vote for mccarthy after all.

so there was a 15th vote that started close to midnight and lasted into saturday. this time mccarthy did win the vote, and the holdouts all voted present, which was enough to get him his numbers. democrat jeffries gave a fiery speech that was more alliterative rap than your normal boring political address, before handing the ceremonial gavel to mccarthy who then gave his speech. i didn't like his policy proposals, but otherwise i think he gave a pretty good speech himself, almost gave me hope that he and his party won't be assholes the next 2 years.