the only thing i had to do this morning was go out for a run. the temperature was at 38 degrees but sunny. unfortunately i didn't realize how windy it was - with gusts of 30mph. that meant the wind chill was 26 degrees. but the cold is the ultimate motivator to keep on running. i didn't leave the house until 10:45am and got back exactly an hour later. i saw a mother fussing with her baby carriage and then unknowingly dropped a small knitted mitten. there were some harvard students walking about but none of them noticed. i picked up the mitten and chased the surprised mother down to return it. a lesley shuttle bus driver - who was stopped at the lights - saw my display of altruism and smiled.
after a shower, i had some of bruce and jack's leftover short ribs. it looked a little dry so i heated it up on the stove with the sauce, which softened up the meat. the final result was amazingly delicious, the sauce fragrant with the wine braise, the beef fork tender. it was so good i licked the plate afterwards. it's rare eating something this savory and delicious so early in the day. afterwards the house smelled like mouthwatering short ribs.
i watched the memorial service for rosalynn carter (96) today. jimmy carter (99) was wheeled into the atlanta church despite receiving hospice care at home 140 miles away. all the former and current first ladies attended the service (including melania trump), as well as president clinton and biden.
i spent the afternoon trying to figure out what i wanted to make for dinner the rest of the week. at first it was going to be new england clam chowder, then maybe japanese gyudon (but my jar of benishoga pickled ginger was in belmont), but finally settled on hot dogs because i was too lazy to cook. i still got the ingredients for chowder and gyudon, but won't make them until next week (i might make the chowder for my parents this weekend though).
i left for market basket around 3pm, with just an hour left before sunset. i also bought some ingredients for making fruit smoothies, trying to work in more bananas (potassium) into my diet to fight my fatigue. i got home by 3:45pm.
i made a pair of beef hot dogs for dinner, washed it down with some black tea.
the big event of tonight was the NBA in-season tournament (IST) games. 13-4 celtics at home were facing the 5-13 bulls. boston was in a good position to win but they needed to win in big numbers in order to grab the wild card spot otherwise they'd be eliminated tonight from the IST. celtics were still without porzingis, out with a calf injury, but they had everyone else, including jrue holiday. celtics were up 31-20 by the first quarter, so they were on pace for a blowout game. indeed that looked like as one point they were nearly 40 points above the bulls. normally in a blowout game the coach would sit the starters and let the bench play in what's known as garbage time. but because the celtics needed to pad up the score in order to have a big point differential (the deciding factor in IST tie-break), they kept scoring. finally in the 4th quarter mazzulla decided to let up and sat down all the starters with minutes left in the game. celtics won 124-97, with +27 point differential. would it be enough to get the wild card?
that depended on the other teams in our group. currently orlando was ahead, so boston needed the nets to beat the raptors, but not by too much otherwise it'd affect the point differential. when brooklyn finally beat toronto tonight, their cumulative point differential was +20. so i figured boston made it to the wild card. what i didn't realize was boston had actually won their group, beating out the magic, who only had a +22 point differential. to make matters worse, the knicks trounced the hornets tonight 115-91, giving them a cumulative IST point differential of +42, so they take the eastern wild card spot, not the magic. so everything worked out in the end. the 4 teams in the IST quarterfinals are the celtics, knicks, pacers, and bucks. knicks (4) play at the bucks (1), while the celtics (3) play at the pacers (2). good news is none of those other teams have beaten boston yet this season. celtics beat the pacers by 51 points back in early november. win or loss, just making it into the quarterfinals means every player gets at least $50K. if they win the IST championship, the prize money is $500K per player.