Sunday, February 28, 2010

Now what do I do at night?

Oh, Olympics, how I love you.  You captivate me with your impressive showings of athleticism, emotional and tear-inducing life stories, NBC's truly ridiculous amount of coverage, CURLING, and general awesomeness.  I'm a total Olympics junkie and have spent a slightly obscene number of hours taking in the Vancouver games.

Take that, TrinityOk, the opening ceremony is not the most fascinating thing, but you know how awesome it is with DVR?  Skip the boring parts.  It's life-changing, it really is...the DVR, not the opening ceremony.

Now I give you...random Olympic musings.Pride for your country.  Waiting four years for your next opportunity.  Eeekk!!  It gets me all worked up for these people.

Oh, and I liked how the Vancouver bouquets weren't too girly.  Nice and green, suitable for the feminine and masculine of all disciplines.  Then the boys didn't have to feel too silly holding their flowers.


Female figure skating: yes, there's a part of me that would like every skater from South Korea and Japan to totally bust it on their triple jumps so America can make it on the podium.  But they're also carrying the weight of a nation on their shoulders.  Anything less than gold and these gals are shunned.  Dang.

I love all the stories.  The sheer joy of those first time medal winners.  How everyone comes together.  Mushy mushy!


I get all warm and fuzzy cheering for my fellow Americans...or for the single athlete from countries like Turkey and Hong Kong who want nothing more than just the chance to compete at the Olympics. What guts it must take to make it all the way to the Olympics and go it alone, knowing that you don't have a real shot at a medal, but you can sure as hell take to the Olympic ice and make the most of it.  I knew I would never be a stellar athlete and realized early on that my brain power would lead me down a more successful path than any other muscle in my body...but maybe I'll take up curling or archery so I can go to the Olympics.  Ok, not happening.  But I am slightly intrigued by this "shuffleboard on ice" business. 


The Olympics are waaaaaay better on DVR.  Love you, Olympics, but sometimes I do need to skip a little bit of you along the way.


I will never, never get tired of listening to our national anthem while one of our proud athletes stands atop the podium.  I'm also somewhat inspired to actually learn the words to "Oh Canada" past the dramatic opening "Oh Ca-na-da".  It could be fun - give a little shout-out to our neighbors to the north.


I'm totally a gasper.  Most of my Olympics viewing is done from the privacy of my couch, and Harrison really doesn't care about my reactions at all, but when I was home in A-town with the family for a few days, they were exposed to my...enthusiastic...level of viewing.  My poor sister.  Between my dad and I gasping and exclaiming, she didn't even really need to watch the television - we told the story through our sharply dramatic intakes of air and bold exclamations.  All while chanting "U-S-A, U-S-A," or perhaps rooting on Canada in a sport that our great nation particularly sucks at (ah-hem, curling...again with the curling!  Maybe I do have a shot at the team...).


Oh, and thank goodness this time zone lends itself to decent watching times.  Some live viewing is much better than recorded everything.  Although as I take in the closing ceremonies and NBC's take on the games, I realize I could have many hours of my life back had I just waited for this highlight reel of the last two weeks.  Oh well.  Then I wouldn't know as much as I do about curling.

2 comments:

Crazy Newt said...

I think it was a good idea to end the games with the gold medal hockey final - Canada is pretty much all about hockey, in case you didn't know. ;)

We kind of went nuts last night - my little corner of the woods was overjoyed and CRAZY. Lots of fun!

Re: Curling - it's a weird sport, eh? But strangely hypnotizing. I keep wanting to get my friends to go curling with me, but no one will go - so there's little chance I'll ever find out if I'm good at it. But, hey, if you want to practice for curling, just sweep your kitchen umpteen times a day!

Erin said...

Oh, you crazy Canadians - I think I got just a hint of hockey madness that resonates throughout your fine land.

There's actually a curling club here close to D.C. - might have to go check it out after I do some serious sweeping of the kitchen floor to warm up!