Inauguration in Primetime

Jeff and I had an Inauguration Party last night. It was just the two of us, but we figured it would be fun, and it was. We bought some sweets, a cable to connect the computer to the stereo for sound, and planned to order BBQ sandwiches. While McDelivery would have been the most "American" choice, we just couldn't do it. And yes, they call McDonald's delivery "McDelivery."

Anyway, the inauguration stuff was scheduled to start around 6 pm for us. We started searching for a way to watch it streamed, and found C-SPAN was pretty good. I was getting restless, waiting for some action, and Jeff fell asleep on the couch. Streaming video from TV networks isn't very good - we only get a few seconds at a time before it stops to buffer, and sometimes it never starts again. Hm. Then C-SPAN switched to covering some House proceeding. Boring! So I started looking for a better stream. Turns out Facebook and CNN.com teamed up to broadcast the event. Cool! It was perfect! Very few glitches, and the ones that did happen were smooth and they somehow managed to not miss any words.

I have to say, the best part of the whole thing was watching TV in English. We had my computer connected to the TV and the stereo, and it was like we were getting regular TV, but much clearer and without commercials. Even the silly repetitions by the anchors were amusing (at least the first 3 times they told us why Cheney was in a wheelchair).

In all, we had a good time. After, we were able to talk to some family members about it. Then we watched a movie. I have to say, having the inauguration not during work was quite nice. They should reconsider the time of day so people can watch at home in the evening!