Sunday, February 28, 2010

and the always enjoyable giant inflatable beaver

Bob Costas says some silly things almost every time he opens his mouth (must be a side effect of the cryogenic freezing he goes under between each Olympics to keep him from aging), but his comment about the giant inflatable beavers during the closing ceremonies was particularly choice.

I can't believe the Olympics are over -- with the end of both the Olympics and the conference planning that had consumed every waking moment of the past few months, I'm not quite sure what to do with myself. It almost feels like I've graduated from college or something and have an entirely clean slate of untapped possibility ahead of me. Clearly that's a massive overreaction, given that my sole participation in the Games is watching is compulsively, and I don't do any training in the years between Olympics (other than hyping it up any chance I get). But, my March will be v. different from my February -- and hopefully it will be different in a way that keeps me on track to have a full rough draft of my second book by mid-April so that I can edit and finish it in time for my self-set June deadline. Crazy, right? But, if I'm going to be a novelist, I have to set a pace and stick with it, and that's the pace I need to set if I'm going to be not just a novelist, but a novelist who escapes from the gilded cage that is my current job for an equally gilded (but less cagey) paradise of self-supporting writing.

Anyway, dreams of writing glory aside, I adored these Olympics -- and I cannot WAIT for Sochi in 2014. The graft, the scandals, and the corruption leading up to the Games in Russia will be awe-inspiring. I'm really tempted to try to go to those Games; Sochi is on the Black Sea, closer to Georgia than to Moscow, and will likely be a complete madhouse, so London in 2012 would probably be a better choice. But, I do love me some good chaos, and the first non-boycotted Games on Russian soil would likely provide just that.

Now, sadly, I should go to bed, and weep warm, salty tears over the closing of the past two weeks. Luckily, 2012 is only two years away! While I will be thirty years old during those Games (perish the thought), I don't think I'm going to retire from the sport of obsessive watching just yet...I have a few more Olympics in me before I have to make any difficult decisions.

Oh, and the rest of my day was fine too, thanks for asking - Samovar, some writing, a conversation with my parents, the finale of my tax preparations, and laundry (which Adit says is my version of a party). And now, goodbye Vancouver, goodbye Olympics, goodbye February (and happy birthday to Santy Claude), goodbye two weeks of limited sleep -- hello March!

No comments: