but it's just the price i pay...destiny is calling me

Well, I'm back in California...and was very relieved to discover that Olympics primetime coverage doesn't start until eight here, which means that I didn't miss anything! I didn't even miss synchronized diving, which has to be the stupidest sport ever. If you don't pick people who are the same height and weight (and for some reason some teams picked people who were several inches different), they're destined to spin, twist, and hit the water at different times. So what's the point? If you're too stupid to match the athletes to each other, then clearly the sport is a joke. Hmph.

I watched the almost-heartbreaking silver-medal finish of the US men's gymnastics team, which wasn't completely heart-breaking considering that it was the first medal of any color for the team in twenty years. I also watched the bronze-medal finish of Michael Phelps in the intense 200-meter freestyle. This whole Olympics thing is playing havoc with my typical avid devotion to the Google news page; it's now almost reflexive for me to check the news after I check my email, but if I check the news, then I'll most likely spoil things like swimming and gymnastics. That means that I can't look at the news on any day until midnight :( By the time I'm awake again in the morning, competition is already going fast and furious, so I'm pretty much out of the news loop for the next two weeks. Too bad.

Anyway, Claudia picked me up at the airport, which was lovely, and we had an amusing experience of going to and then leaving Marie Callendar's before the server brought our water, since we looked at the menu and then realized that neither of us had any interest in any of the food there. So we got take-out Chinese instead and watched some gymnastics. Now, though, I should sleep--it's going to be a busy four days at work, and all I really want is more vacation.

And, shout-out to Austria/Stanford--that winning combination got a silver in one of the swimming races (by Markus Rogan), marking the first swimming medal in like 92 years for Austria. Now if only they gave medals in CS, Loro could have its very own Austrian Olympian. I'm sure we also could have gotten the gold in the general insanity team competition. That would have been so much fun!