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basically, a whole lot of nothing today. i never left the house because the weather was once more cold and wet. actually, that's not true, i did leave the house in the early evening to go buy some stouffer's frozen meals that were on sale at star market. i know i can make my own but sometimes it's more convenient to heat up a brick of frozen lasagna in the microwave. before i discovered the art of lasagna-making, the only times i ever got to eat it was in the form of frozen dinners. i used to get those 2 lbs. hungry man lasagna meal; they're not the tastiest thing in the world, so my threshold for bad lasagna is pretty great. stouffer's lasagna is actually pretty good though, as far as frozen lasagnas are concerned (i also have a weakness for their french bread pizzas).

i stayed home and watched the name of the rose (that monk talk i had with bruce yesterday inspired me to look up this old film) followed by a small battle bc marathon on the history channel. alex stopped by in the late afternoon. he returned a bunch of my traveling books and let me borrow a dSLR CCD cleaning kit somebody had given him. a lot of it isn't really useful with the exception of a magnifying loupe with a built-in LED light for spot checking any dust on the sensor. i ended up using it in conjunction with my special cleaning swabs to wipe off the dust off of my CCD. alex was here to ask me some final advice before he departs for asia for the next few months. i envy him, he's going to have a good time. at the very least i can live vicariously through his photos once he starts sending them. the one good thing i did today was set up a little makeshift grow house for an african violet that'd seen better days, and my fern plant that i accidently left outside along with my vegetable seedlings and almost died from the cold (ferns are more sensitive than vegetables when it comes to the low temperature). i used one of my aquarium fluorescent lights balanced on some jars and pots.

in the evening, after a dinner of microwaved chicken parmigiana and spaghetti, i watched the lakers nuggets game. the nuggets did have the lead at one point, but it was more of a statement game from the lakers to show the world that they deserved to be in the NBA finals. the nuggets were thoroughly defeated and i changed the channel by the 4th quarter knowing there was no way they could come back. besides, jay leno's last tonight show was on, and i had to watch that. i'd forgotten that the arsenio hall show was still on when leno took over the reigns of the tonight show in 1992. this last show wasn't so sad since leno is basically moving his talk show to 10:00 starting in september with just a name change. it's a sad day for television programming though, because NBC is essentially cutting 5 hours worth of shows to make room for leno. a part of me wants leno to fail, just so normal shows can come back again, but knowing how the networks operate, NBC might just fill those slots with more cheap reality tv fodder or inane primetime game shows. at least some of the other cable networks are picking up the slack, like USA and AMC.

went on a little spending spree tonight, bought an USB/SATA hard drive docking station ($30) along with a 1.5 terabyte ATA hard drive that was on sale ($118). i was also thinking about getting a replacement mp3 player for my one that i thought was broken, but turns out it was the headphones that was broken, not the player itself. so now i'm searching for a set of new headphones, but i think i'll just get the koss plugs i had before, cheap but effective.