So, you're wondering where the hell I've been? Well, alright then!
Last Friday Adam and I had dinner with friends at their house in Issaquah. (I love the Native American place names in Western Washington! Tacoma, Spokane, Kitsap, Issaquah -- they're so lovely!) The next day, both I and the hostess came down with food poisoning. But while I only suffered (moderately) on Saturday, she was still in hospital yesterday. Hope she gets better soon!
Other than that, well, the Olympics are on! I must confess that I really like the Olympics. Whenever somebody wins a big race, I get teary and feel a knot in my throat. It's great! As an ESPN anchor remarked last week, the Olympics are not so much about sports as they are about schmaltz. I mean, sure, there are world-class athletes competing in extraordinary feats of strength and skill (except for such events as synchronized diving and trampoline, which are kinda silly, really) and beating world records, blah blah blah, but ... where's the sports? For sports to feel like sports you need time. You need the anticipation building up to the season or the tournament, the excitement of the tournament or the season, the reporters, the gossip, the obnoxious or outrageous characters, the oh-no-you-didn't statements, the controversies and so on. You get a little bit of that at the Olympics, but it is all so crammed into two weeks that it feels surreal. Which it is. Allow me an analogy: the Olympics are like the whipped cream, while sports are like the mocha (yeah, so I live in Seattle!). Still, since it looks like my patience for most movies has dropped to a level similar to my Dad's, who hasn't been able to sit through a single flick in 15 years, the Olympics are one of the only pretexts I have left to sit in front of the television clutching a tissue, tears running down my cheeks. Oh, yeah, baby!