Nash Attack

baseball fever

2011-10-09T17:57:00.003-04:00

Something must be wrong with me. It could be a fever. Bird flu. Maybe I've got the SARS. I don't know what it is but something is definitely wrong with me.

Symptoms? Only one. But one is enough.

I'm sitting at home on sunday afternoon and I'm voluntarily... wait for it... I'm voluntarily watching baseball. Alone. By myself. Just me and the tv and a baseball game. And I'm doing it on purpose.

I should probably go to the emergency room.

Here's the thing. I don't HATE baseball. I just don't find much use for it. If tackling was allowed, I would be way more interested. And maybe they should wear short shorts. And tall socks. Yeeeaaa....

I mean, by all counts, I really should be a fan of baseball.

I love hanging out with friends. I love drinking beer. Ergo, I should love baseball.

But I don't. I love the before and after parts and I kind of just endure the middle bit when the baseball part is going on. It's usually made better when I have a group of friends that also want to wander the concourse and buy hats. THEN the middle bit is kind of fun (well, because then it's shopping).

So why I am sitting here on a Sunday afternoon watching baseball on purpose? Because I am a fan of sporting moments. Which makes me an indiscriminate fan of all sports. If something edge-of-your-seat exciting is going on in curling, I'm all in. And right now, the Brewers are killing it in the post season so of course, I'm all in.

I doubt this will make me a baseball fan though. If I was a fan, that would mean that I would have to spend 6 months waiting for this kind of excitement. I just don't have that sort of patience.

They spend 6 months playing games that don't really count. Ok, they kind of count but really, only a few of them count. I get that they need to win their division so of course the season matters but when you get 3 tries to hit a ball (not including the ball calls), 3 outs to an inning, 9 innings to a game and 4-5 games to a series, and what, 6 months of games before the post season even starts?? well, that's a LOT of moments that don't count.

In other sports, like football, skating and gymnastics, games that don't count are called PRACTICE.

You get your one shot a week, a month, maybe a year and if you blow, you're done. Now THAT'S a sporting moment.

But I'm not a total buttmunch when it comes to baseball. I always support local teams so because of that, I'm "technically" a huge brewers fan. I will proudly wear my brewers shirt, jacket and hat out and about. I will patiently listen when my friends freak out over the chance to meet Bernie Brewer and/or Ryan Braun and I will genuinely look forward to the chance to run through miller stadium during a 5k. It's just that I basically have no idea about anything brewer related. Oh, I do know that Ryan Braun is pretty hot and that he bites his nails in left field.

I also know that Prince Fielder is WAY overestimating his ability and asking for too much money and should just shut up already and stay in milwaukee.

So I know some stuff.

What I do know, more than anything, is that no one supports their teams like Wisconsin. A perfect example happened on Friday when I scored tickets to the game with some good friends (and by "scored" I mean, paid out the nose for). The gentleman behind us introduced himself the moment we sat down in front of him and his wife and quite seriously let us know that he would prefer it if we not boo the opposing team. "It's bush league", he said.

Wait - what?!! Really dude?? I thought booing the other team was half the fun! But I, and all of our neighbors, respected his wish (even though it was reaaalllly hard at times!) After the game, it actually felt good that we didn't boo at all - and I noticed how little milwaukee boos in comparison to what you hear from most other teams. Sure, things get heated and there is definitely some booing. But, for the most part, Milwaukee is a pretty decent place for a visiting team. We're just REALLY LOUD for our own team.

I went to the game on Friday because I knew, no matter win or lose, that it had the potential to be an EPIC sporting moment. So, of course, I had to be there. They played the Diamondbacks, fifth game in the series, do or die. Ahhhh!!! Drama!!! YES! FINALLY! And wow - it did not disappoint.

When the Brewers won, it was like a firecracker of noise was shot off. I found myself screaming so loud that I couldn't even hear myself anymore. The place exploded like nothing I've ever experienced. We were all jumping up and down, screaming, crying, hugging and high-fiving everyone around us. It was magical.

A true sporting moment.

It took 7 months to get there but I guess that's what made it all the sweeter. I wish I had the patience to endure that sort of wait but I'm afraid I never will. However, next season I think I may have to give baseball a bit more of a chance.

But first, I'm starting a petition to allow tackling in MLB.

I don't like Eric Roberts

2011-04-10T09:32:00.004-04:00

This morning I was watching one of those Biography features on Nancy McKeon. (sometimes this sort of thing happens on sunday morning. there is no explaining.) I learned a lot of 'facts of life' that come in handy when playing 80's Trivial Pursuit. Such as, Nancy McKeon dated Michael J. Fox!!!! Oh wait... I knew that. Oh, well, I also discovered that Nancy McKeon did a buttload of Lifetime original movies!!! Oh wait, I knew that too.

Ok, so I wasn't exactly discovering anything new and I was just about to abort mission when that crazy Eric Roberts popped up on the screen.

What the heck does he have to do with Nancy McKeon? (a quick glance to wikipedia shows that this dude did a LOT of movies and tv work and yet I can't, for the life of me, think of a single role I remember him in. ha! suck it eric roberts). I was all in a tizzy because how dare the esteemed producers of a Biography special overlook Tootie in favor of Eric Roberts! But just as I was about to put pen to paper and whip off a complaint letter, Eric Roberts said this....

"These kinds of interviews, you have to be careful with what you say because everyone always overstates it 'oh she's the best actress...' you can get lost in that crap.

Nancy McKewon is a remarkable actress. Now, what do I say to make you know what I mean? (dramatic pause)

I think I'm a remarkable actor.... I think she's just as good as I am on my best day."

here's a sample of Eric Roberts on his best day

Flying with the Addams Family

2011-04-05T21:14:00.004-04:00

Hi blog. Long time no type.

I was in San Francisco for the weekend and it was the most wonderful, relaxing get away ever. I got to run my favorite trail ever (the Dipsea in Muir Woods), shop, wander around the city, hang out in the woods, climb on old bath-house ruins, take pictures of mossy trees and piss off an old Chinese guy. Now THAT's a great trip!

On the flight home, I ended up sitting next to this couple in their early 20's - they were... err.... special. They were clearly heavy into the goth thing, the girl had jet black dreadlocks with some streaks of red, wearing all black, some random chains and a strange fanny pack (that I assume held a dead bat). The guy was similarly dressed and had piercings all over his face, ears and I'm sure other places - ew. (and was rather doughy - I always think of goth/emo kids as being too misunderstood to eat. Apparently that wasn't a problem for him)

So when I fly, I'm kind of an A-hole. I don't want to talk to ANYone. Don't look at me, don't make eye contact, don't strike up a chatty conversation about the weather, just. don't. Sorry middle aged aunty from Oklahoma. When I fly, it's me and the clouds.

So because of my very strict no-being-friendly rules, I didn't bother to say hello to the Addams family couple. But then I overheard the girl lean into her boyfriend and say "they're all staring at us" and I felt kind of bad.

But I got over it five seconds later.

What the heck dark and scary couple?!?! Isn't that WHY you dress like that? For attention? So that you can telegraph to the world how dark and deep your feeeeelings are - so dark in fact that you can only wear black clothing? Using that logic, the entire island of Manhattan must also have very dark and deep feeeeeeeeelings.

If you're going to make the choice to pierce the skin around your eye with 20 small metal studs, then you kind of have to expect someone to look at you sideways. Because it's not something that you see very often. (Because it's dumb) But clearly when you went to the Claire's counter in the mall and asked the teenager working the desk to turn your face into a sprinkler system for your tear ducts, you knew that wasn't a normal thing to do. And wasn't that the point? To be less 'normal'? To distance yourself from the idiots who shop at the gap and hold down jobs and have enough money to buy houses and cars....

Yes - I'm sure the idiots buying house in their gap chinos feel awfully bad about themselves when they see your stylin' choices.

So here's the thing. If you do something to intentionally make yourself stand out from the crowd, embrace it. Own it girl. Just don't be surprised when someone looks at you twice trying to figure out if that's a pincushion on your forehead.

But more importantly, realize that you are the one that made the choice to stand out and when you stand out, people stare. That's the point of standing out. So don't go making it their fault for staring.

And also - shower before you get on a long flight. You smelled like day old urine.

Philly Marathon

2010-11-27T08:14:00.004-05:00

The Philly marathon - the big day finally came! And went. And took with it my ability to navigate stairs. I think that makes me a totally-for-real runner now.

Philly was actually the third marathon I signed up for - but the only one I made to the starting line. I had signed up for a marathon last year but IT band problems stopped me a few months into training. Then I signed up for the Green Bay marathon this spring. The plan was to run that with some friends (and, ohh hahahah, I, bwhaha, had thoughts, hahaha, that I would, hahah, LOL, qualify for, hahah, Boston! oh my god, so funny.....). But then that whole Olympic thing happened, bringing with it stress and major IT band trouble and the GB marathon plans went out the door. Much like Russia's medal hopes in Vancouver. (yea, suck it plushenko... anyway).

After I finished that half mary, I was in quite a bit of pain; legs were buckling, cramping, etc, just not very much fun. As I watched my friends come in for the full marathon - looking to be in even more pain - I thought to myself 'NEVER. EVER'

The next morning at 6am, I signed up for Philly.

I even convinced a friend (amy) to come out and do it with me so I wouldn't have to suffer alone! Which, in hindsight, was a fantastic idea. I know I could have gotten through the training alone, but it was so much nicer having a friend to do those long runs on Sunday with.

So we fly to Philly on Friday, hit up the expo on Saturday, buy a bunch of crap and then treat ourselves to pretty much the most delicious Italian dinner ever on Saturday night. The garlic cloves in oil and bread were out of this world - if it was a tad bit more socially acceptable, I would have filled up a giant vat and sat in it. right there on the table.(Pretty sure that delicious oil was the cause of some issues the next day though.... )

The other really cool thing about this race is that I was able to share the experience with my mom. Philly is only an hour away from her home so we stayed out there and my family came to cheer us on.

Race morning! My mom drops us off, we hit the porta-pottys and then tried to find people to hug. In the city of love, it shouldn't have been that hard, right? We knew it would warm up but at 6am, it was COLD. bbrrrrr... Tried to just stay near people for awhile. But then... as the sun started to come up a bit... I saw it.... the Rocky stairs! Amy and I ran over to the art museum and ran up the stairs as our warm-up. Woot! Woot! I think I yelled something like "what you got philly!" (turned out a lot!)

The race started off with a bang - we got a high five from Bart Yasso! Amy saw him and bee-lined us over to him so we could get high fives from the mayor of running. It. Was. Awesome. I ended up emailing him at his site afterwards to just say thanks and he responded! So that was a great way to start things off.

The first mile I had told Amy I was going to stick with her. I didn't want to get caught up in the energy and go out too fast and I knew she would keep me grounded. The first mile was a lot of fun - saw my mom, got a high five from her. Tons of people cheering, even with a 7am start! We came through the first mile marker at about 10:30 and Amy looked at me and said "you want to go, don't you?" I squeaked "YES!" and took off.

My plan was to hang somewhere between 9:30s and 9:45s for the first half. I had a couple of miles where I was a bit too fast but only one sub 9 - most were right around 9:45. It felt ridiculously easy. I kept thinking I should pick it up but I also had no idea how my feet were going to hold up so I decided to just stick with what was feeling good.

I couldn't believe the amount of crowd support out there. Everyone I had talked to about Philly talked about how great the course was and how much they loved the marathon and wow - I get why! There were only a few stretches of this course that wasn't lined with people. In fact, some of it was even reminiscent of the State Street portion of Ironman Madison - so fun! (not that I had any silly thoughts about doing THAT bit of insanity) This race also had your front name on the race bib and that made it even better. Hearing your name called out is such a boost. I've done it to other people countless times but I had no idea how much fun it was when it was YOUR name being hollered out. It's like kid eating glue fun.

So things were going just dandy until about mile 10/11ish when I started to feel the foot stuff creeping in. I have this issue where the balls of my feet start feeling like they're on fire. When that happens, I end up having to start landing on my heels which in turn makes my quads go 'yo, yo crazy woman, whatchu doing down there?' So it's a fun little cycle of hell. It hurts during half marathons so I was pretty sure it would hurt like mad during this. By mile 15, I was already toast. I couldn't run normally and my quads were starting to whine. Adding to this, my stomach started feeling left out so it started to get in on the action. (a pit stop at mile 19ish took care of that - damn you massively delicious olive oil! It caused a literal oil slick in my stomach. whoa!!!)

I started walking a bit of every mile just to try and ease the pain a bit. I knew it wasn't actually helping but I just couldn't push past more than a mile with how bad it was hurting. It was like having an out of body experience though. I would feel myself walking and say "wait, I'm sorry, what is going on down there?" and my legs would respond like a petulant teenager, "just leave me alone! you don't understand anything!" and my head would say "come on now dear, it's not all that bad, think of the starving ethiopians." and my emo legs would say "you don't know anything! you've never felt this way, ever! and screw the ethiopians. They'd be done by now!"

So I just chugged away as best as I could. I had my ipod with me but I found it much more distracting to just listen to the crowd and think about other things, ANYthing other than running. By mile 24 I must have looked pretty wrecked because I started to hear my name a ton. It really lifted my spirits everytime. (thank you philly!) At one point, I made contact with a guy who hollered out for me, encouraging me. Something about the way he gave me a high five and pushed me on made me feel like I was back at Tuesday Night Track and hearing my track buddies push me on. That was the ONLY bad thing about that race. No donkeys! I missed seeing my friends faces.

At a few points along the course I started to get a bit choked up over the fact that "oh em gee, I am running a MARATHON!!! This is insane!" But every time I would get emotional, I would start to hyperventilate. So, yes - hyperventilating and running are not BFFs. I would shake my head out like a bull and just charge through. But I saw my mom about a quarter mile away from the finish line and I had a really hard time holding it in. By that point I was just sick of this stupid running thing and as I stuffed down my feelings, I said 'that's IT! I'm finishing this NOW.' I pushed with everything I had left and kicked my way all the way to the finish. I literally just put my head down and ran as hard as I could.

I was SO relieved when I finished but I could barely walk, my stomach was revolting, I was frustrated with my performance but overall, I felt amazing. Absolutely amazing.

The only dig against this race is they ran out of water and gatorade at the end. I was really surprised. And very bummed. I desperately needed something to drink. I did grab some chicken broth though and WOW. Never has chicken broth tasted like the sweetest nectar of sweet nectar land. The awesome thing about having your family there is that at the end, when you look like you've just been to hell and back, your mom feels really, really sorry for you and sends her husband off to get whatever you want. Oh, and she gives you her down jacket to keep warm too. (I was shivering like mad). Thanks mom!!

Overall, this was a great first marathon experience. It wasn't a perfect day but that was fine. I learned what it meant to push through feeling crappy. I learned that 26 miles is far, but 26.2 is ridiculously far. And I learned that I really, really adore chicken broth.

Dell-icious

2010-10-27T12:17:00.002-04:00

The Wi Dells half marathon has been on my schedule for awhile but for some reason, in the week leading up to the race, I completely forgot that I was doing it. I normally try and do smart things in the week before a race, things like drink lots of water, get lots of sleep, eat good foods, do a lot of calculus and brain surgery. However, in the week before THIS race I did none of those things. (Which is strange, because I usually perform at least one brain surgery a week. Except I call it watching Glee.)

I didn’t think it would really affect my performance but it’s just weird that I literally forgot that I had a half marathon coming up in a few days. I mean, come on – it’s still a half marathon! I think because I’ve been so focused on these long, long runs on the weekend, the number 13 is – well, it’s not small – but it certainly feels far more manageable than I’ve ever viewed it before. I think I got a little complacent.

So I haul my complacent self along with my buddy Amy (freezerpop) up to the Dells on Saturday night. We pick up our race packets and stroll the expo. (all 3 exhibits) Then we decide to dine like Kenyans – pizza and beer. That’s how they do it, right?

Sunday morning arrives and oh fun – it’s raining. Oh well, more incentive to run a good race – be quick and spend less time in the rain dodging raindrops. My plan was to try and keep it at 8:30s – just stay consistent and strong for the whole race. And I came up with that plan approximately 15 minutes before the gun went off. Had I known what I was getting myself into, I might have reconsidered that plan.

You see, the Wisconsin Dells contains hills. Many of them. Many, many of them. Having not visited the dells since high school, I was not familiar with this geological information. And man, did it end up biting me in what the british refer to as the arse. I knew the entire first mile was downhill – which then meant that the entire last mile was uphill since it was an out and back course. So I knew I’d have to save some in the tank for that last final push. What I didn’t realize is that the entire course was like that.

I took it out pretty conservatively since it was a) crowded b) downhill c) raining so it was a very wet downhill. Didn’t feel like wiping out in the first half mile and running the entire thing with skinned knees. Skinned knees only look cute on 6 year old boys who have yet to develop sweat glands.

So the amazing thing is that I did actually stick to my plan of staying consistent and considering how tough it was, I’m super happy with my pace. (I managed to stay between 8:25's and 8:50 for the most part)

As we were approaching the turnaround, I started counting the women to see what place I was in. I have no idea why. I’ve never done that before but I needed a distraction and counting seemed like a good one since it’s such a difficult task for me. Just recently someone I work with sent out an email reminding us creatives to attend a workshop that was titled something like “Financial Strength and Consistency for the Non-Numbers Crowd.” I replied “Why do people always assume creative types aren’t numbers people? I can totally do math! Watch. 2+773=kitten”

So there I am, counting with no idea why. I get to the turnaround and realize that I’m in something like 58th place. I needed a goal to get me through the second half so I decided that I would try and be in the top 50. That seemed like a fun place to be.

Also occurring at the turnaround – me saying quite loudly “Seriously??!?!”

The course went down this huge long hill and then the turnaround was at the bottom of it so you had climb back UP the huge long hill. It was a bit demoralizing. And also just knowing that OH EM GEE – we are now going back through all that hill crap again. I definitely had a couple of moments of not knowing if I could make it – well, I knew I could make it but I had no idea if I’d be able to keep a consistent pace.

At mile 7 there were two girls directly in front of me, one wearing a bright blue shirt and one wearing a bright yellow shirt. They kind of looked like MnMs and since that sounded like an amazing thing to be eating while perched on my sofa watching Jersey Shore, I decided I needed to pass them asap. So we come to a downhill and I fly past them. And then the course immediately turns back up and I slowed a bit. Well, those two had the MOST consistent pace and sure enough, they passed me within about a minute. Argh. This happened a good 6-7 times. I would fly past them on the down, they’d evenly chug right past me on the up. We didn’t say a word but I know they were totally annoyed with me. I’d be too! But I wasn’t able to really work the up and I kept losing time so the only place I could make it up was to work the down and really let it go.

From about mile 11.5 to mile 12, there was this awesome long downhill that I took full advantage of. Flew down it, passed a ton of people. By this point I had kind of lost count of the women I was supposed to be picking off in order to make the top 50 – I knew I was close but I also knew I’d have to hold some off at the end. It had helped me a TON just getting to this place though. Having a reason to pick it up – even if it was a completely made up random reason – made a big difference. But by mile 12 I was having no fun. And I knew that I had a giant hill still to conquer.

I start up the hill and I’m feeling strong, just trying to keep it even and glancing at my watch counting down the minutes until I’m done. I’m also trying to hold off those dam MnMs who I know are right behind me and likely to catch me if I slow down too much. So I make it up the hill and I’m all Woo-hoo!!!! Almost there!!! I’m almost ready to cry I’m so happy it’s almost over. And then the road winds around and wait – WHAT?!?!

There’s still another hill! I had totally forgotten that the course flattened out and then went up again. ACK! RUDE!

I stopped and took a few walking steps to just gather myself and wouldn’t you know it, blue and yellow MnM chug right on by. Son of a …. I tried to stay right behind but I kept falling off the pace slightly. And then, like a donut waiting for a kid at the end of fat camp – there was the finish! Aw sweet spooning cows. Thank you! I kicked it in with everything I had left and passed the MnMs and a bunch of other people who had been plodding up the hill in front of me. And yay! I finished as the 43rd overall female! It’s so fun to hit random, mean nothing, made up on the spot goals.

Overall it was a good lesson in perseverance. And also – KNOW THE COURSE! Had I been expecting it, it might have been different. Or maybe it would have been worse since I might have psyched myself out? Who knows. All I really know is that I’m glad it’s over.

After race, I walked around, took some time to gather myself and assess the damage. In the past two half marathons I’ve done, I’ve had some pretty annoying leg cramping and pain. After Lake Country in Sept, I literally couldn’t walk down the stairs. So I’d made a pretty solid effort to increase my leg strength. It was a nice surprise to have my legs be relatively fine at the end. Made it feel like all those dam squats I’ve been doing were actually worth something.

After leaving the race, FreezerPop and I drove through the downtown area of the dells and we somehow magically wound up in a candy shop. We have NO idea how that happened. So they have one of those MnM dispensers where you can pick your own colors and guess what I got? Yep – a lovely little bag of yellow and blue MnMs. Delicious.

Ironman? Yea... No.

2010-10-04T19:26:00.007-04:00

I'm saying this now in hopes that I never look back and think about how 'cute' it was that I used to think this way. I'm also saying this now in hopes that it will forever be true. And I'm mainly saying it now because in order for it to happen, I need to say (blog) it out loud.

I will never ever do an Ironman.

Ever.

Never.

Hear that universe? Never.

That should be a pretty simple thing to avoid, right? Becoming an Ironman? Because it's not like you just one day decide, oh hey, today I think I'll swim 2.4 miles, bike 112 miles and then just cap all that off with a marathon.

That doesn't happen. It CAN't happen. Not without a lot of thinking and planning and training and thinking and training and training. Oh, and LOTS of training.

So why do I have this fear that I might someday find myself in a sea of latex wetsuits, treading water while I wait for a canon to go off and travel 140.6 miles just to hear some dude I don't know call me an Ironman?

Because I've witnessed it first-hand.

That Ironman crap is more contagious than a yawn.

I've seen perfectly sane friends of mine get glazed over eyes when even just the word Ironman is mentioned (even if someone across the room is talking about the movie). I've seen how their eyes scan to find that little 140.6 bumper sticker at races. And forget it if they see that little M-dot tattoo on someone else's leg. You can't even talk to them if one of those things pops out!

And if you're not familiar with that little M-dot thingy, here's what it looks like inked onto a limb.

Full disclosure here - I HATE tattoos. If you want to doodle on yourself, use a cheap pen. And then when it washes away, you get to do it all over again! It's like ENDLESS fun!

I really should be more forgiving of the M-dot because I have friends who have them and I have to say - some of the ones I've seen are very cool. And I guess on people that I like, I don't mind tattoos. I forgive them because they have other redeeming qualities that make up for their complete lack of sense on the tattoo issue.

I will now step off my tattoo soap box before I find myself with 5 less friends. (I love you guys! and you're all very pretty! with excellent hygiene! and clean fingernails!)

... oh man, am I in a hole.....

Anyway - my original point is that Ironman is intoxicating. It has a lure, a siren song that is impossible to resist. Once you hear it, you can't look away, you can't resist the call, you have to follow the light.

Luckily, it appears that I'm partially deaf because I've never heard it call to me. Maybe it got the wrong number? I'm probably just unlisted.

I don't get it. And I sincerely doubt I ever will.

Next year I will know about 20 people, good friends, that are signed up for Ironman Wisconsin. (IMOO11) I will follow them around like a sherpa on race day and I will cheer my brains out for them throughout their Ironman journey. I will be at the swim start, holding my breath as the canon goes off. I will be running alongside them, screaming encouragement as they plod up the killer hills. I will be waiting for them at the start of the marathon to yell completely obnoxious things like "almost done! just a little marathon to finish!" and I will be at the finish line, probably crying my eyes out as the cross the line, hear their name called out and collapse into a catcher's arms. Because I will know how much they put into that day and how important it was for them to finish and have the ability to say "I Am An Ironman" ....

But at no point during the day will I wish I was them.

Because don't get me wrong, I don't hate Ironman. Quite the opposite. I LOVE it. I love everything about it. I love the inspirational stories, I love the fluff pieces NBC produces when it airs the world championships, I love watching, I love reading training logs, I love watching "What it takes", I love the stories of triumph over the impossible. It's just all so..... ummm... inspiring! I mean, truly - it's inspiring.

But I love Ironman for other people. For myself - I don't understand what would motivate a person to sign up .... I'm certainly glad there's some sort of answer to that question because god knows, Ironman stuff keeps me quite entertained! So thank you ironman completers of the world for suffering endless hours in order to provide me several moments of amusement. A tip of the hat. Or perhaps, a tip of the swim cap.

When I did my first triathlon and had such a terrible experience, everyone kidded me that I'd be back for more and that I was probably hooked. And they were right! It was an amazing challenge and I did come back for more!

And they all said the same thing about going to an Ironman. That I would catch the bug and find myself thinking more and more about it. And that I'd eventually be signing up.

Well, I've now survived two viewings of IMoo and I'm happy to say that not a single bug bit me. I harvest no morsel of a thought nugget that I would want to do it someday. And if I can survive two mass swim starts without a trace of the goosebumps... well, I think I'm good. Everyone around me got chills and a little teary when the canons went off and the swimmers started to head off on their journey. I'll admit - it IS a very dramatic scene .... but really .... I just got a little nauseous at the idea of swimming in everyone's pee.

Because ya KNOW that's what they're doing in their wetsuits to stay warm.

an 18 mile jaunt

2010-10-03T17:51:00.009-04:00

I ran 18 miles today. But I'm not sure what I'm more excited about - my 18 mile journey OR the fact that Michelle Kwan has finally returned to the ice!

Eek! Be still my heart.

As far I know, she's been away for 3 years now! An eternity in skating land. Even though I'm not crazy about the routine she performed, man, it's great to have her back. And basically the only thing that brought her out of retirement is Kim Yu-Na, the Olympic champ and South Korean mega-star who swears up down that Kwan is her hero. (demonstrated here in this super sweet little duet -awwww!)

Ok, no - I'm more excited about my little 18 mile jaunt. Let's be real here.

OR - ok, maybe I have to amend that. What I might actually be MOST excited about is the fact that I might actually have been mistaken for a marathoner today.

The Lakefront Marathon was going on today and I had several friends racing it. So Amy and I went to the start line to cheer our buddies on as they started on their 26.2 mile journey. And then we planned on getting our 'little' 18 mile run in while they suffered.

So we're walking around at the starting line looking for our friends all dressed to go for our run and it occurs to me that, omg, someone looking at me might actually think I'm running this marathon! Someone might think I'm a MARATHONER!

Holy crap!

I look the part!

That means I'm over halfway there, right?

Ha - well, I was until I started my pitifully slow 18 mile run and realized I still gots me a LOT of work to do.

But hey - the fact that I might even look the part is a heck of a lot closer than I was last year where I still thought a 15k was a reeeeaaaaalllllllllly long way to run. Now a half marathon is just something to do on a sunday (ok, or a bit more than that, let's be really real here)

I was heading out for a long run last weekend and I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Sometimes I get really reflective before my long runs as I know I'm about to bury myself in the pain cave for a few hours. And so I looked at myself in the mirror as I was about to launch myself on this epic 15 mile journey and I said to myself, "girl, you look awfully stupid!"

Because I have completely fallen victim to a disease I like to call "Runner's condiments disease".

I have all the symptoms.

Compression socks

Geeky Visor (which I always swore that I hated)

Giant bulky black sports watch (but only because I lost my giant bulky PINK sports watch)

Completely annoying fuel belt (another thing I swore up and down I would never get)

All sorts of gus and chews and electrolytes, etc, etc, etc

Super nerdy running books

The most amazing recovery drink ever

A gazillion pairs of 100 dollar running shoes all in order to find the RIGHT pair of 100 dollar running shoes. A pair that doesn't aggravate my IT band, a pair that has enough forefront cushioning, but not too much heel, enough arch support, but not too much because that makes it too soft and over-corrects and causes knee pain.... AHHHHH!!!!!

Yep. I'm a full on victim of runner's condiments disease. "They" say that all you need for this sport is a pair of shoes. Oooohhhh, what lies. What rancid awful lies "they" tell.

Of course, in exchange for all these condiments, I have another collection that I'm actually quite proud of. My awesome, yet totally ill-fitting stack of race t-shirts! (I swear, I have maybe 2-3 tees in that stack that actually fit well and I wear all the time - the rest of them are relegated to night time tees or under-stuff tees. Most are either way too big or juuuuust too small. They really should have a fitting room at registration)

Just when I thought I had this running world figured out, it's like I delved into a new layer of sub-culture with this marathon training thing. Because ya know what - it SUCKS.

News flash - marathons are NOT easy.

Know how I know? Because 18 miles is NOT easy. And considering you have another 8.2 miles to run - and you hope to run it all faster than your adorable little training pace..... yea, I'm going to go out on a limb and say it again - marathons are NOT easy.

Of course, since I have yet to actually DO a marathon, that's just an educated guess at this point. Maybe I'm wrong?

(Unfortunately, I'm quite smart and I'm pretty much 95 percent sure I'm right on this one. Bummer)

Man.... I miss figure skating.....

my pet chipmunk

2010-09-06T08:02:00.004-04:00

I have a regular visitor to my patio - I call him Crackhead. Crackhead the Chipmunk. He comes to my patio every morning and chirps his little heart out.

Chirps? Is that the right word? Not sure I know what to call the sound that chipmunks made. I didn't learn it as a kid. Darn you Old McDonald's Farm! Robbing me of precious knowledge by always focusing on the cows and ducks.

Anyway - I was talking to a friend and telling him about my chipmunk and the racket he makes every morning. He went home and told his wife and she came back with a reason that she swears is true. Apparently the chipmunk that chirps in the morning is the female chipmunk yelling at the male chipmunk to come home. (apparently there's a chipmunk strip joint nearby and the males get up to all sorts of shenanigans)

I like to feed my little chipmunk pistachios sometimes - mostly because it's funny to watch the little guy stuff his cheeks with ten nuts, looking like he's come down with a case of the mumps. But also, I do it because after the chipmunk gets his nuts, he returns to say thank you! It's true. He comes back and hops right up to my door and looks at me for a few seconds, perhaps imperceptibly nods his head as a universal sign of "yo, thanks woman".

Well, this weekend, he took it a step further. He started climbing my screen door!

When I first looked over and saw this chipmunk suspended upside down in my door, I jumped out of my chair. And he ran away. It almost looked like he was inside - seriously creepy. Because as much as I like that little guy, I am not about to invite him in for a beer and fish fry. Ew. He probably has syphilis from all his time at the chipmunk strip club.

All weekend he kept getting braver and braver with climbing my screen door. At first, he would just hop up and then back down. Then he started hopping up and actually climbing it a few steps. And then yesterday afternoon, the little dude actually climbed all the way up to the top! I couldn't figure out what the heck he was doing.

But then I realized what he was after - the bag of pistachios is right by the door and he was looking for a way in! He kept coming right up to the screen where the bag was and then he would sniff around for a way to get in. What a smart little guy! I never give animals any credit for having brains because I normally think they're so dumb. I mean, really - they don't even have opposable thumbs, how far could they possibly get.

But of course, now I need to figure out if I will use this knowledge for good or evil. I could continue to throw out nuts for the little guy - OR, I could start taunting him with really, really good food placed just outside his reach. Maybe a steak or banana cream pie placed right inside the screen door..... close enough to smell but juuuuuuuust out of reach. hmmmmmm...... oh the possibilities....

(note: the author of this blog does not technically support animal cruelty. Except when it comes to ferrets. Those things are just stupid.)

Lake Country Half Marathon

2010-09-05T09:32:00.004-04:00

I signed up for the Lake Country half-marathon as another stepping stone to the Philly marathon this november. Several of my friends were also signed up so it looked to be yet another awesome race day. The more the merrier when it comes to pre and post race antics! Amy (freezerpop), dave and I all planned on heading up together.

I typically have this thing against car pooling. I'm coming around and I'm not such a hater anymore but it definitely takes some convincing to get me to share a car with anyone pre-race. I just really enjoy my (bad) music rock out sessions in my car - and I'm cognizant enough of my utter lack of skill to know not to inflict that sort of pain on anyone. I once let my guard down during a work trip in Tampa (powered by cuban coffee AND an espresso) and treated my two camera guys to a back seat concert of Celine Dion. I have never - and will never - live that down. (how is it possible to hear celine dion and NOT belt out along with that canadian song bird? Granted - I probably get closer to a canadian song raptorsaurus but hey, we can't all be multi-talented with our own cirque styled show in vegas.)

What was I talking about?

Oh right - so Freezerpop asks to carpool. Immediately I think Heck No! I have some new Justin Beiber songs downloaded just for the ride! But then she mentioned that she had these super delicious cookies from the OutPost for after the race and I immediately agreed. Man I'm easy. Rode up with FreezerPop and we listened to that classic country station on sirius - I ended up belting out "The Race is On" (yea, you know you love this song too)

I put her in charge of navigating us to the race and I asked her to plug in the address to my GPS. She goes - oh wait, watch this! she grabs her phone and tells it the name of the church we're heading to fully expecting it to take us there. What's amazing about this is that she was serious. She truly believes her phone will obey her every command. (what's weird is it totally didn't work -who knew?!?!) Dave and I had a heyday with this later - "Dear phone, will you do math for me? Dear phone, will you please make me breakfast? Dear phone, will you go the bathroom for me?" I don't know that we'll ever be able to stop asking our phones for favors now.

I've been dealing with weird calf thing for the past two weeks so I really haven't been running much at all. In fact, I haven't run for over a week. I've done some pool running but absolutely no impact on the leg. I probably had some minor tearing on the side of my calf a few weeks back but I developed a hematoma over it and it HURT. No fun. But I've been rocking the compression socks and that's been helping out a ton.

In fact, I have an ode to compression socks in the form of a haiku that I'd like to now share.

Oh compression socks

Squeeze my leg and hug it tight

make calf feel all right

I am thinking about forming a fan club for compression socks. I LOVE THEM. Wow. They have made a huge difference for me this week. I'd also like to issue a formal apology to all those I may have mocked for wearing them in the past. (I mean, come on, they still look awfully stupid) I am a convert! Sign me up for the services at the church of compression. I'll put my dollar in the collection basket as long as they keep cranking these bad boys out. (Do they make full body compression sleeves? Interested)

Before the race, there were the ritual potty stops. The first time we stopped, it was still early, still sort of dark out and there wasn't really anyone around. I was waiting impatiently for FreezerPop and I hollered to the porta-a-potty "You done yet?" and she responds "'I'm just wiping!" A guy happens to walk by right at that moment and yells to her "That's good, hygiene is important!"

Basically my warm up consisted of gingerly heading out for a run, crossing my fingers that it wouldn't bother me. And PHEW - all clear. little tiny twinges but nothing compared to how it had felt. And it ended up not bothering me in the race at all. I was very, very relieved. I had been to the doctor on wednesday and she said it was fine to run as long as it wasn't too painful - I was just worried that if it WAS painful, would I be strong enough to fight through it. quite glad I didn't have to cross that bridge.

The other part of my warm-up consisted of realizing i FORGOT MY WATCH!!! Ahhhhhh!!!! Ok, normally, this wouldn't be a big deal to me but I had signed up for this race specifically to test my ability to take it out nice and easy to practice what the philly marathon pace should feel like in november. Gahhhhh.... not as in lady gaga. More like Gaaahhhhhh, idiot! I decided to place myself by the people in the 9:00 group and just see if I could sort of pace myself off others.

As I was waiting for the start, all I could think about was 'could this day have been any more beautiful?' Wow. After a pretty brutal summer of heat and humidity (and skeeters the size of wooly mammoths) this day was such a relief. Definitely chilly but it kind of felt fantastic. The only thing was that after a summer of such intense heat, I had completely forgotten how to dress for cooler temps. I kind of dinked around in the morning with what to wear and couldn't quite figure it out. Complicating the issue was my desire to lessen the nerd look of my one compression sleeve.

So I'm digging around my closet for a tech tee, deciding I don't want long sleeves because I would get too hot. So I pull out this shirt I got at the beijing olympics and have for some reason never worn and think hmmmm... today at the Lake Country Half Marathon, I shall represent Team China! And if anyone asks why I'm wearing it, my answer will be "well, because CLEARLY I'm chinese!"

I start out nice and easy but I'm just going by feel so I really have no idea if my pace is nice and easy or if I'm just feeling nice and easy. I did this same thing at Green Bay where I was feeling fantastic doing 8:11-8:20s until I hit mile 8 and everything sucked donkeyballs. I'm not very good about going by feel yet but I felt like I was probably maintaining a sub9 pace and that was just where I wanted to be.

They were calling out splits at each mile and I finally listened at mile 3. I pretty much am terrible at math so I think it took me until Mile 5 to do the calculation in my head and realize that I was right around an 8:45-8:55 pace for those first 3 miles. I was trying to figure out if I was under 9 minutes so I had to first multiply 3 by 9. I was literally doing that hand trick you do to multiply 9's - where you put up your hands and put down the finger that you're multiplying 9 by and then you have your answer (27) So there I am running along, looking at my hands and trying to figure out which finger goes down. I must have looked awesome. (I mean, really, if I'm representing Team China, you think I would be better at math)

My calf was feeling just fine but at around mile 3, the bottoms of my feet were screaming at me. I think my shoe just doesn't have enough forefront cushioning (so I went and bought new shoes right after the race) This same thing happened to me in Green Bay and my quads ended up hurting like crazy after the race. I don't really know what happens there, the bottoms of my feet really don't bother me in long runs or when I train so not sure why they bothered me today and at GB - oh and at Cudahy Classic too.... hmmm, maybe there's a pattern? I should probably figure it out. Hopefully the new shoes help.

But besides the feet thing, I felt great. Lots of energy, I felt really strong and like I could keep up this pace for awhile. So that was reassuring. At around mile 10, I started trying to increase the pace just a bit. I felt great up until around 11.5 and then I started feeling not so great. Legs were starting to seize up a bit - but it was the quads which annoyed me because that's not normally a place that I have problems with. But my quads apparently REALLY like racing because every time I do it, they just have to jump right in to get a piece of the action. Gah, they're so needy.

So now I'm tantalizingly close to the finish and I look up - ok. whoever decided that a mile long hill at the end of the run would be fun - I spit in the general direction of your face. So MEAN. Ouch! That didn't help the quads out at all.

Came to the finishing chute and was pretty relieved it was over. Had a little left in me to sprint a tiny bit at the end.

Found the donkeys who had all had great races - awesome job guys!!! I walked around a bit and wow, my legs were jiggly-wiggly and threatening to give out on me in a fell swoop should I look at them sideways. Hopefully the added support of the shoes in the front will make the balls of my feet less like a fiery orb of pain which will then make my quads back the f off! sheesh.

I finished in 1:55:08 which is five minutes off my best time of 1:50:14 - but I don't know that I necessarily needed to go faster today. I'll likely go a bit slower in philly and this was a really good test for me to just take it easy. I've totally failed at that lately. And while I'm not thrilled with how beat up my quads felt after the race, I think I'm A-ok with how I ran this race. I just need to get this forefoot/shoe thing figured out before november. I'll have another chance to test things out in october at the Wisconsin dells half marathon. Knowing that I CAN pace myself makes me think that maybe I'll actually 'race' that one.... eh, we'll see. Main goal is still just to get myself to the start line of philly without being (too) injured.

Oh and I probably need to put some Celine Dion on my ipod. But that's a given, right?

Impossible is Nothing

2010-08-03T09:03:00.002-04:00

It's this kind of story that reminds me that a moment that might seem "hard" is actually a gift.

VIDEO

Cudahy Classic - 10 miles of suffersandwich, with pickles

2010-08-02T11:43:00.003-04:00

I signed up for the Cudahy Classic 10 mile race back in early June – back when I still harbored the silly thought that I could continue training while on travelling to 6 different cities and producing 4 different videos for the wild extravaganza my company calls Annual Meeting. Better phrased by the photo department as Annual Beating.

That decision caught up to me right around mile 5. OUCH.

Overall the race was good but wow, fatigue is kind of a bitch.

I arrived to the race around 7:15 where I met up with my good buddy, Freezer Pop, aka, Amy. She handed me by number, which she had been kind enough to pick up for me and as thanks I said, “no pins?”

So that showed me right away what sort of mood I was in. That mood being defined as a crankypants.

I tired to shake it off because really, I lovelovelove racing, races, being at races, watching races, different races of people even. Except the Asians.

Kidding. I like them too. Especially since their DNA creates narrow hips and crazy stage parents – the two essential ingredients to creating a fantastic skater.

So it’s about 15 minutes before the race and FreezerPop and I are making the rounds, finding friends, warming up, being silly in general. We stood under the shade for awhile which turned out to be a terrible idea as apparently the mosquitoes of Cudahy love the shade too.

So we’re standing there and getting bit up all to heck by these monster mosquitoes. They were especially fond of biting my butt – which, hello, first buy me dinner at least.

We make it to the start line, the gun goes off and I get kind of buried into the back of the pack and I see Amy take off way ahead of me. My plan was to keep it nice and easy for the first 5 miles in order to simulate what the philly marathon pace would feel like in a few months.

Well, here’s the problem. I’m kind of competitive. And by ‘kind of’ I mean, ‘super-duper-really competitive to the point of it being a super-duper nuisance which eats my brain and makes me itchy’.

So I see Amy up ahead of me and of course, my first and only instinct is to catch up to her. So I do. Well Amy happens to be a competitive little monster as well (probably why we get along so well) and we end up leap frogging for the next mile and a half. She’d pass me, I’d slow down to try and settle into a comfortable pace, I’d see her ahead of me and get annoyed, and then I’d have to catch up and pass her. She walked one of the water stops and I passed her. Then she caught back up to me. We ran side by side for about 3 minutes when I said to myself “this ends now”. I kicked in a little sprint for about a minute, long enough to lose her and set off on my own. ::snicker hehe:: I know she’d be back there trying to keep up so I just kept pushing until I couldn’t see her behind me anymore.

Since I’ve never done anything like that in a race before I felt like it was kind of a mean tactic but to be honest, it was kind of fun to have ANY sort of tactic in a race. It was strange because I knew that dropping her was best for both of us – she slowed down quite a bit after I sprinted ahead so she likely settled into a more comfortable pace (and she’s training for the philly marathon too). And I just knew that if I kept leap frogging with her, it would mess with my head.

It’s weird how running is SUCH a mental game. I always heard it but I never really “got” it until I started running track sessions at the Pettit Center over the winter with davey and Nicole. Nic and I are around equal when it comes to speed but she has WAY more drive and strength than I do which helps her to run a lot faster over longer distances. And when I try and keep up with her on the long stuff, it just messes with my brain – I freak out thinking “I can’t maintain this!!” and I would end up psyching myself out. Every single time.

The interesting thing is that she says she felt the same way about running with me. Which to me is just crazy because I KNOW she’s faster and stronger than I am so for her to have mentalness when running with me just shows how much your finicky brain plays into it.

So we eventually we decided that we should always start about 15 seconds apart - that way we wouldn’t become complete head cases that they’d have to cart away to “Running Posers-R-Us Mental Institute”.

So back to the Cudahy Classic…. Getting distracted here…..

So I’ve sayonara-d Amy and I’m on my merry little way. At this point, I started feeling pretty good and although I was trying to keep the pace easy, I just settled into what felt good and unfortunately that was closer to an 8:00/mile pace than the 9:00/mile pace I wanted. The course was two laps so as we approached the second lap I started day dreaming about how wonderful it would be to just be done.

Wait – I want to be done? Ohhhh crap. Suffer-fest straight ahead.

Mile 6 I started to pay for that stupid feeling good crap. I started walking the water stations, which I never, ever do. And oh, ya know, taking fairly generous walking breaks – 20… 30…. 40 seconds. Whatever. I just needed to get some water and calm down. I even started taking a full cup of water and dumping it over my head to cool because oh yea, it was HOT out there. Cooler than it’s been but still hot enough to be fairly miserable.

It was VERY hard to not just stop and throw in the towel on this one. I think all of the months of travel and stress kind of came back to bite me in the butt. Much like the mosquitoes. Apparently they were predicting my day. Damn soothsayer mosquitoes.

My time slowed down to 9:00’s for the last 4 miles so I guess I did execute my race strategy – I just did it in reverse! Argh. Finally on the last mile I got some energy and was able to kick it back in for the last half mile. I even had a decent kick at the very end! Although this one girl came FLYING by me at the very last second – and crap, she was in my age group! I finished 9th in my group so not too bad but I definitely should have been a bit smarter about how I ran this.

But hey – this is why I run. For the amazing life lessons ;)

And the life lesson for today – when a mosquito bites your ass, listen.

a moment to relax (?)

2010-07-20T07:27:00.004-04:00

I'm convinced that the person who came up with the notion that a massage is relaxing is the same person who said a colonoscopy is refreshing.

A massage is ANYthing but relaxing if its being effective.

Last night I able to snag a last minute appointment with one of my favorite massage people. Also snagged at the last minute - some ibuprofen and relaxation pills. I knew I'd need them and O. M. G. did I.

Because work has been so crazy lately, I've developed these pretty awesome knots not only in my back but also in the front of my shoulders. I even play with the little knots while I write sometimes. I don't know why - it's not like they're adorable or anything. They're just there. And much like potato chips or midgets, if they're there, I will likely notice.

So meat tenderizer, aka, massage therapist, goes to town on the shoulder knots. Thanks to my lil relaxation pills, I'm able to breathe through it and be calm. Well, my lower body apparently didn't get the memo that we were being tough and proceeded to break out into pouring sweat. Awesome.

I need to up the dose of ibuprofen the next time I go in for a nice "relaxing" massage. Or perhaps just go straight to the laughing gas.

Maaarrrrrathon

2010-07-18T20:36:00.004-04:00

I guess technically it hasn't been that long since Vancouver but wow - it feels like years. Maybe that's because I tried very, very hard to block most of it out of memory. I didn't really realize I'd done that until just recently. That bummed me out a bit. The day after I got back from China, I was at CVS printing copies of my favorite digital photos ( I had, literally, over a thousand pictures from Beijing), I was buying a photo album, I was re-decorating my place with all of China crap, I mean souvenirs.

But the day after I returned from Vancouver - actually, not even a day later, literally 5 hours later, I was on a flight to Minneapolis on my way to a shoot with my 'real' job. I was even supposed to head to Atlanta that night but LUCKILY my flight was delayed and we ended up just flying back to Milwaukee rather than get stuck in Minneapolis. That's the first time I've ever been grateful that air travel can suck.

So it was a little hard to soak in the Olympic experience. Because you don't get a chance to do it while you're there. You tuck your experiences into a little corner in your brain and think "wow, this will be so much fun to look back on". Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find the corner I stashed all the good memories in yet. I know I will eventually but ge'ez, I really should have drawn myself a road map to the memories. "Turn left after the time you tap danced at the family reunion and bear right when you see the somersault off the church alter."

In reality though, I've barely thought about Vancouver since being home because I've been totally consumed by two things. Work. And Running.

I had committed to the Green Bay Marathon back in May and so I was running quite a bit in Vancouver trying to get my long runs and speed work in. Do you know what's an absolutely terrible idea? Trying to get long runs in when you're working insane hours with insane levels of stress. Yep. Pretty stupid idea. I ended up coming back pretty beat up - which I realized when I attempted a 14 miler the saturday after getting back. About an hour after I finished my run my IT band pretty much seized up and I was unable to run for almost a month. It stunk.

Now that I've learned to love running, NOT being able to run is just torture.

The whole thing had started with me getting this crazy idea in my head that I wanted to qualify for the Boston Marathon. To do that I would need a time of 3:40 - a pace of 8:20 per mile. Pretty speedy - but I really do think I have it in me to do.... but probably not for another year and by that time I will have moved up an age group and hooray! Then I'll have an extra 5 minutes to qualify! One good thing about that whole 'getting older' thing I guess. Well.... it's still a dream, a bit far off but ....

So the GB marathon was out of the picture - but I still planned to run the half-marathon.

So I race the half in Green Bay and I finish feeling absolutely miserable. I developed this enormous blister on the side of my foot (2 months later and the scar FINALLY went away), I had gone out too fast and I faded BAD by the end. I finished in 1:50:14, 40 seconds faster than I did the year before but I was pretty bummed out by it - I really wanted to finish in 1:48. So even though I still beat my time, I wasn't too thrilled.

This is what I wrote after the race...

Well, the absolute best thing I can say about this run is that I definitely had NOTHING in the tank left at the end. My legs were completely shot as I finished. I was done, done, donezo. Like Gonzo but with the word done because that creates the word donezo, made popular by those pesky trustfunders on Laguna Beach. But popular catch phrase notwithstanding, I'm still pretty disappointed. And I'm mostly disappointed with just how crappy I felt after the run - my legs were cramping and buckling, I felt like any wrong step would cause them to completely seize up. It was really weird. I've never felt like that before and it's really bothering me because it doesn't feel like it's a day/condition/fluke thing - it feels like it's a strength thing. So argh.... I have some work to do. I've been doing my long runs around a 8:45/8:35 pace and that's been feeling relatively easy so there's really no reason I couldn't go 8:15s here.

Mile 1-7 were easy peasy cheesy wheezy. I felt fantastic. And since I normally negative split all of my long runs, I felt like I was gearing up to have a great finish time. I get to mile 7 and the song that always makes me think of my dad pops into my earbuds. It juiced me up and I started picking up the pace gearing up to start gradually kicking it in to the finish - 8:05. Fantastic! But then I just couldn't keep it up through mile 8 and my pace fell back a bit. I get to mile 9, walk in order to pop another gel and just couldn't get going again (because yes, I totally walk the aid stations if I'm drinking or taking something. Seriously - how in the world does anyone drink water while running? I try and it goes like this "::suck air::... ah, crap, no water... ::suck air again:: ... crap, no water... tip cup, SPLASH! coughcoughsputtersputter... aw crap....") So get going again and sigh.... just couldn't pick it up.

When I got to mile 12, I was pretty sure I was going to have to walk the final mile. I looked at Lambeau field as a giant evil demon in the shape of an Australian toilet bowl. And that was perfectly appropriate as I was feeling like - well, play madlibs here and fill in the blank.(don't ask me why it's australian in shape, I just assume since the water flushes backwards that their toilet bowls are on the quirky side too - quirky like they have yard lines and goal posts..... sure)

I crossed the finish line and must have looked out of it because some guy grabbed my arm and asked me if I was ok. Yes, fine, but can I please borrow someone else's legs?

So super grumpy me is sitting there, feeling bad for myself and watching the marathon finishers coming in thinking "there is no way, NO WAY, I will ever run a marathon - I think I'M miserable right now? Dang, look at THEM!"

Cut to less than 24 hours later, I'm sitting on my couch at 6am looking at the Philadelphia Marathon site and what do I do? Yep. I register. I think it's because I know it's a challenge I want to take on and really, what better time is there to do it than right now? I have a job that (usually) gives me the time to train. I am in the best shape of my life - with room for a LOT of improvement. And if I want to keep that little "qualify for Boston" dream alive, well, then I should probably do a marathon and see if I even like running them!

Luckily I conned one of my friends, Amy, into doing it with me so at least I won't be suffering alone! Because I know it's going to suck. But I also know I'm going to be a stronger person for doing it. The training, the dedication, the race itself - maybe I just really like the idea of "stacey the marathoner" but hey - if I really like the idea, then why not make it a reality?

The race is the weekend before Thanksgiving which I'll be spending in Jersey with my mom and Steven. I've already dubbed that week "Gobble, Gobble, Hobble, Hobble".

So since marathon training will likely be a lot like Vancouver in that it's sometimes just not all that fun, I think I'll need to blog the good stuff. This way I'll have that road map to my memory corner.... I think I'm going to need them when I'm in the pain cave!

(pain cave is totally one of my new runner-person phrases that I throw around unabashedly in my head - but never out loud.... maybe AFTER the marathon I'll use all of my cool runner-person phrases out loud.)

Oh, Canada....

2010-03-01T00:01:00.002-05:00

The flame is out. The Games are over.

And Canada is really, really loud right now.

There have been horns honking non-stop since the end of the USA-Canada hockey game. I can hear whistling, bullhorns, cheering, whooping and hollering - and about every 15 minutes, there’s a chorus of “Oh Canada”.

Man, Vancouver is gonna be a mess tomorrow morning. And by mess, I mean, there will be a few beer cans left on the street by careless Americans and sloppy Russians, because even in their drunken revelry, I’m sure these very polite Canadians are still picking up after themselves.

It was a phenomenal games. But wow. What a roller coaster. I spent as many moments with happy tears in my eyes as I did with tears of sadness and grief. I still can’t watch a video of Joannie Rochette without a heavy heart and a lump in my throat.

I’m completely spent.

Was it easy? No. Was it fun? No.

Was it worth it? Yes, absolutely.

The USA-Canada game today was a nail biter – but it ended the way it should. I’m an Olympic fanatic and before today, I couldn’t name a single player on the USA men’s hockey team. I guarantee that every Canadian knows their teams starting line-up by heart – and they might even know what size boxers they wear. They’re that intimately familiar with their team.

On the broadcast they mentioned that something like 4 million people tuned in just to hear the announcement of the team. Keep in mind Canada only has a population of 4 million and two. The two that missed it were ice fishing and forgot what time it was.

This was Canada’s game. It’s right that they won.

America would have celebrated for about ten minutes and then moved onto something else. Canada will cherish that game forever. After the game ended, people were hugging each other all over the IBC, the hollering and cheering went on forever and when “Oh, Canada” was played, you could hear people singing all throughout the cavernous IBC.

Everyone in the research and dot com room was standing and applauding Canada’s win. And, what has become completely standard for me in this Olympic games, I got a little teary eyed.

Of course I did. Because I would cry at an exceptional Canadian bagel right now.

I think I’ve enjoyed the Canadian moments as much as the American ones in Vancouver. There’s such an ecstatic, joyful vibe when Canada does anything that you can’t help but get swept along with it.

I love the way they celebrate their wins, their country and each other.

One of my favorite Olympic commercials has been a commercial for a nutritional sponsor of Canadian skiers. The narrator talks about their food products and how they’re powering its athletes to gold - at the end he says, “We’ll take some credit – but not too much. After all, we are Canadian.”

I love it.

I just love it.

At the start of the games, Canada’s “Own the Podium” program looked like a huge mistake - every time I heard journalists talk about it or saw anything with that saying on it, I kind of cringed. It seemed like a program destined to fail. When you say you want your athletes to "own the podium", you basically set up that anything less than gold is a failure.

How incredibly unfair to the athletes.

The first couple of days were pretty dismal for Canada, there were one or two high points but mostly, disappointments. (and on top of that, the massive gaffes)

The worst disappointment being the loss of the hockey team to the US. I think that was the one and only night that I went to sleep without hearing the rowdy crowds on the streets below.

That loss just sucked the air out of the Games for Canada.

But the tide changed when Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir won the ice dance gold. They became the first North American team to win the ice dancing gold medal and I believe the youngest team ever to win. And they’re just so dang Canadian! You look at them and you love them. So wholesome! So adorable! So funny! So sweet!

Seriously – very Canadian.

When Scott Moir was belting out “Oh, Canada” on the podium, the entire country sang along. And that moment was a turning point for this Olympics for Canada. I don’t know if it’s because the Canadian fans suddenly saw, ‘hey, our athletes CAN do this’ or if it was more logical and maybe Canada’s best events were yet to come – but ahh… there was Olympic magic in the air after that night.

Sidebar – it must be noted that Sweden has the best knit hats ever.

This morning, CTV (Canada’s version of NBC but with a way faker fake fireplace) had Donald Sutherland on as a guest and it was bizarre to hear that legendary voice chat causally about curling. He compared it to chess.

That’s so odd – I compare it to beer pong. Ways Donald Sutherland and I are different, I guess.

Anyway, they were trying to get Donald, or Donny as I call him, to make a prediction on the USA-Canada hockey team and Donny kept demurring, finally saying only “may the best team win and if the other team is best, I hope they lose”.

Ahhhh, Canadians.

You’re just too adorable for words.

Things I've learned about Canada

2010-02-28T11:39:00.002-05:00

I'm really quite fond of Canada. I like the people, I like the scenery, I like the polite buses. I could live here easily - it reminds me of Seattle but with more Canadians...

Things I've learned about Canada

- The people are always very sorry. They will apologize for just about anything. Even if you step on their foot, they will immediately tell you they're sorry about that. Even their buses apologize - when a bus is out of service, a sign flashes "Out of Service. Sorry"

- Canadians are very obedient. They will never ever cross against the light. Ever. Even at 7am in the morning when there are no cars on the street. If they have the do not walk sign, you bet your Sorels they won't.

- Only Canadians can make red and black plaid look really, really awesome.

- Canadians are better at displaying their pride then we are. Every single person on the streets of Vancouver has at least SOMEthing that says "Canada" on it. If the Olympics were held in Chicago, I don't think you would see that. Americans are weird about displaying their pride - it's either an obnoxious full out pride (coughredneckcough) or it's a discrete, almost embarrassed pride. I was proud of my family that they seemed to find a perfect level of national pride when they were here - proudly wearing flags, but also embracing Canada and every other country they encountered... especially Ireland... or the Irish pubs anyway....

- The Canadian sense of humor is pretty awesome. Even Donald Sutherland is hilarious.

- It's really, really gorgeous here - and so much scenic variety. The ocean, the bay, the mountains, the green, it's beautiful.

- They've completely lived up to their billing of being the friendliest country. And it's not a fake, forced friendly - it's a genuine, want-to-help-you friendly. The volunteers all wear these bright blue jackets - and kind of look like overgrown Smurfs - but you know when you see a blue jacket, that you're probably going to see a smile.

One of the best things about walking home at night is listening to the crowds yelling "Go Canada!" and the random outbursts of "Oh Canada". And it doesn't JUST happen after games - it happens all the time, every night. I've been getting home at anytime from 10pm-2am and at every hour of the night, you hear the people whooping and hollering. It's constant.

I've taken to opening my window at night as I unwind just so I can listen to the people own below. It's fun. It's easy to get swept up into the Canadian pride.

One of the other things that's been happening is random street hockey games breaking out with the kids. You'll be walking down the street and all of a sudden there's all these kids with sticks and a ball playing in the middle of the street or on the sidewalk and everyone just stops to watch, cheering the kids on. It's awesome. Even the news is constantly reporting on it - the traffic helicopters will zoom in on games instead of traffic.

This place has definitely embraced the games whole-heartedly.

punch-in-the-gut

2010-02-25T11:02:00.004-05:00

When people ask me what I'm going to remember most about the Vancouver Olympics, I think my answer is going to be the daily punch-in-the-gut feeling. There have been so many odd/strange/sad things happening throughout these games.

Two days ago, Netherlands speed skater Sven Kramer won the 10,000m event by 4 seconds, setting a new Olympic record in the process. But he was DQ'd immediately following the finish. Why? Because his coach made a mistake and told him to change lanes one lap too early.

Sven Kramer is widely regarded as the best distance speed skater the world has right now - and speed skating is Netherlands equvilant to the NFL in the states. It's that big over there. This incident is a national disaster.

There was an isolated camera on Kramer's coach throughout the event and they put the footage up at nbcolympics.com - it's 6 minutes of devastation. You have to watch it to believe it. You can see him calling out to Sven to change lanes and then moments later, he realizes his mistake. He continues to encourage Sven to skate hard and finish (Sven had no idea what had happened) but while Sven is on the other side of the rink, the coach is wiping away tears... just unreal

Sven Kramer's coach video

Yesterday, the South Korean short track speed skating relay team was DQ'd for an illegal push which meant China won the gold. During the chinese team celebration, one of the skaters jumped up on the padded boards and kicked her teammate in the face! Her teammate had a giant gash in her cheek and there was blood everywhere.

Unreal.

Russia has just gotten trounced at this Olympics - in everything! They used to absolutely dominate skating. This is the first olympics since - 1960 I think? - that they haven't won a gold medal in skating. For a nation with as much old school pride as those people have, Vancouver is going to be a terrible memory. People are already calling for the minister of sports head.

Wonder if they're re-enact that old "ship 'em to Siberia" thing they used to do...

Watching them lose so spectacularly to Canada in hockey yesterday was just stunning. We were all thrilled for Canada but there was this uneasy vibe in the air. It definitely didn't have that miracle on ice feeling to it - it was dark and kind of sad to see this former powerhouse just play so bad. A NBC commentator actually said - on the air - that they brought their "euro-trash game"

Ouch.

(he, mysteriously, was missing when they came back from commercial... hmmm, wonder why? We speculated that he was in the commentator penalty box)

We were watching bobsleigh yesterday and, as has been the case with every sliding event at this games, there were a lot of crashes. At one point I asked how in the world they stay in the sled when they crash and sure enough, two runs later, a German girl came out of the sled and went flying down the course spread eagled. Scary.

When you come to the games, you just want everyone to do their best - they work so hard for this moment. But Vancouver has been filled with so many odd mistakes and gaffes and - well, a lot of bonking.

It's a bummer..... to put it lightly.

The ladies final gets underway tonight. I'll be holding my breath that the crazy errors and mistakes that have affected the entire Olympics don't creep into that event. The short program was some good stuff - crossing my fingers that trend continues for the free skate.

My prediction?
Gold - Kim Yu-Na (this girl needs to win. She's the most amazing thing to happen to skating since Michelle Kwan)
Silver - Joannie Rochette (oh god please let Joannie skate her best....)
Bronze - Mao Asada (I predict two falls but still a podium finish)

with glowing hearts

2010-02-24T02:54:00.001-05:00

With glowing hearts.

Everywhere you look in Vancouver, there is that sign. “With glowing hearts. Des plus brilliant exploits”. It's the Olympic motto for 2010.

When Joannie Rochette took the ice tonight, the motto Vancouver built their Olympics on was on full display.

I will forever be amazed at the strength Joannie showed. To skate at the Olympics, in your home country with all of the pressure of expectations and just two days after unexpectedly losing your mom – can anyone come to terms with how difficult that is?

She skated a clean, absolutely beautiful short program – and something the press is skirting out of respect for Joannie is the fact that she’s not known as a consistent skater. And she’s had a really rocky season. For her to come out and lay down a clean skate at the Olympics is incredible in and of itself. To do it under these circumstances? Miraculous.

I don’t normally say stuff like this but it was pretty clear she was getting some help from another place.

She was so focused and so in the moment during her skate – so controlled, so steady. But then at the end, with that massive about of emotion being released, it was evident what a heavy heart she was skating with. It was so devastating to watch.

Immediately following the event I built up a narrative slideshow to walk viewers through her program – I had a hard enough time watching the performance, writing the text and relieving the performance was very difficult.

The strength of character she showed will always inspire me. Just to take the ice in the first place had to feel like laying her soul out on the line.

I don’t know how she did it.

But I’m sure her mom would have an answer for that …

With glowing hearts.

Canada gets their golden moment

2010-02-23T11:12:00.003-05:00

Ice dance is pretty again!!!

It’s been a very long time since ice dance was pretty. In fact – it’s been since Torvill and Dean in 1984 that ice dance was pretty.

If you haven’t watched Virtue and Moir’s free dance yet, stop whatever it is that you are doing and watch this video. I don’t care if you’re doing your taxes, filing your nails or filleting an ahi steak. Your life is not complete until you watch this performance.

And Davis and White were beautiful and incredible as well – but the night belonged to Virtue and Moir… and Canada. This is the gold medal moment this entire country has been waiting for. Watching Tessa and Scott up on the podium proudly (and loudly) singing their national anthem along with the entire coliseum – and country – got me all soppy and sappy.

It was amazing.

In fact – this whole Olympics (skating anyway) has been amazing. For the first time EVER, judges are doing the right thing. They’re judging on performance, not on national bias. This is a huge step forward for the sport of skating. I’m guessing some of it is attributed to the fact that the stodgy, always-judge-national judges are old and have started to kick the bucket, but I’d also like to think that maybe we’re all just becoming better people.

Ok, fine, the crooked ones are probably just dying off.

When I was at the olympic superstore the other night, I had an interesting conversation with the sales lady. She asked where I was from and when I told her, she said, “ohh, America, you guys are really sweeping up the medals.” And I started to talk about how what’s pressure for the Candian team has turned into a bonus for the American athletes – lots of fans, friendliness of crowds, etc. But she cut me off and said “well, yes, but in Canada, we don’t have the kind of support for our athletes that you do.” It took me a second to realize she was talking about money.

I had to laugh at the idea that all the American athletes have these corporate sponsorships and were able to just focus on training all the time. She was really convinced that’s why the American team was doing so well. So we had an interesting conversation about misconceptions.

I mean, sure, we have Shawn White who’s a multi-millionaire - but ONLY because he has a brilliant agent. (And also because he’s wildly popular in skateboarding as well – and kind of crazy talented so that helps.) But that’s not the norm at ALL. I would guess that the amount of debt that most of these athletes are in right now is astronomical.

Figure skaters get money from the USFSA, the national skating federation, but in comparison to what they have to spend on training, traveling, coaching, costumes, etc – that chunk of change is a drop in the bucket. If you look at Meryl Davis and Charlie White, my guess is that they spend upwards of 50k a year on their skating. Easy. And they don’t have any corporate sponsors – mom and dad are paying for that.

You have people like Jeremy Barrett (American pairs skater) who drives the zamboni and works in the snack shop at his rink for extra money. These kids are not rich from sport.

I think there should be some sort of debt relief program for the athletes – with all the money corporate sponsors make off these games, part of that profit should go back to the athletes who make it all happen.

Tonight the ladies short program gets underway. Joannie Rochette, the 6-time Canadian national champion is still planning on competing even though her mom passed away unexpectedly early Sunday morning. I have no idea how she's going to do it. I don't think there will be a dry eye in the house when she finishes skating. She's expected to be a contender for the podium but wow... if I ever lost my mom, grocery shopping would be impossible - much less skating in an Olympics a few days after (I don't think they've even had the funeral yet) ... I'm just hoping she can get to a good place in her head where she does it to honor her mom and has the skate of her life. I think this entire country will be holding their breath for her.

"oh crap"

2010-02-22T10:56:00.003-05:00

Man, I love being wrong.

Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir are in first after an amazingly beautiful, difficult, all kinds of gorgeous Original Dance and Meryl Davis and Charlie White are in second are an equally all kinds of gorgeous OD.

Russians are in third.

They should be in fourth, but whatever, I’ll take it.

Seriously – really, really happy to be wrong!

I am just going to be holding my breath until the free dance that the judges continue to do the right thing. If they do, I just might start skating again! Sochi 2014? Totally.

Last night was a crazy night in Olympic land. I was trying to pay attention to the skating but it’s really difficult when the entire room, building and country is watching the Canada-USA hockey game. At first we had two different feeds going on – the host feed and the NBC feed which was about 20 seconds behind the host. When USA scored their first goal, half of the room erupted as the other half looked bewildered. You could see everyone’s heads going back and forth between the two tvs trying to figure out what had happened. Someone quickly flipped the NBC feed to the host feed after that. No one wants to be late to the party – even if it does mean ignoring your own coverage.

Canada is handling the loss to the US much more maturely than I had expected. When the hockey producer came back, we were all hounding her about the game. I asked what the crowd was like and she said they were pretty tame because Canada never really had control of the game – so there was no time the fans could really get behind the team and go crazy.

They played the end of the game during the ice-resurface at ice dancing and the figure skating crowd saw Canadians lose. Apparently there was this weird hush over the crowd – people were just shocked.

Quote of the night went to Canada’s Scott Moir – when asked how he felt about the Canadians losing in hockey, he answered, “the same way I felt after hearing Charlie White’s OD score, ‘oh crap.’”

I left work around 10:30 last night and was planning to pretend to not be American for the walk home. But I step out and wait – where is everyone? The streets have been packed lately - like, Times Square on New Years packed - and it was almost a ghost town last night.

I'm assuming that everyone ran home to nurse a Molson – Canada shut down the liquor stores early last night to try and cut down on the public drunkenness.

It definitely worked! Everyone went home! Doesn't mean there wasn't still public drunken-ness though. I'm a bit disappointed at Canada's ability to hold their liquor.

I took the opportunity to do some shopping at the Olympic Superstore. Because shopping at 11pm is completely reasonable.

The lines at the Superstore have been crazy long. People have been lining up around the block to get into that place – and practically everything is already sold out! I didn’t see anything I even wanted to so I jumped out of the Superstore and went into the regular store part where I picked up a really nice USA jacket.

I also made the decision to return the Team Russia stuff. I just can’t get over what I saw at the Opening Ceremony. It still makes my skin crawl. There’s this huge part of me that will always still love the country because of how influenced I was by it as a kid… but I just can't do the jacket.

So since I can’t get comfortable with the official Team Russia jacket that I've coveted for so long, I decided to go with a Sochi jacket! The winter Olympics head to Sochi, Russia in 2014 and they’re selling some really nice stuff promoting it.

Sochi I can get onboard with.

Plus, the blue color is super duper cute.

More cow bell!

2010-02-21T11:53:00.003-05:00

Canada plays the US in hockey today.

I'm already planning on stopping off and picking up ear plugs so I can sleep tonight. The entire population of Canada has managed to squeeze itself into downtown Vancouver and ya know what? Canadians are really, really loud!

I fall asleep listening to the sounds of cow bell and "GO CANADA!!!"

And I'm on the 15th floor of this hotel.

I know that no matter what happens today in that game - there's going to be a lot of drinking and madness going on tonight. If Canada wins, the place will be off the hook. If they lose, I'm immediately adapting a canadian accent and maybe even dressing up as a mountie so no one will know I'm from the states. It would be a dangerous walk home tonight.

Kidding aside, it's been pretty cool to see all the excitement for the games here. The entire town is decked out in Canada gear, people are wearing Canada flag snuggies (not even kidding on that one) and random street hockey games keep breaking out.

They haven't been "owning the podium" like they had planned - but it's nice to see they're still having a darn good time.

Ice Dancing OR karate?

2010-02-21T11:15:00.004-05:00

And oh look who's in first after the compulsory dance... the Russians.

What. A. Shock.

NBC did a really cool simulcam comparison of the Russians to Davis/White and Virtue/Moir. Check out how much more ice the other teams cover during the dance (how they swing out wider and almost travel into the boards in the corners). That's called having a "deeper" pattern. Which is what should be rewarded. And they're also much smoother than the Russians.

BUT - playing devil's advocate here - the Russians also present a more mature, refined style and that's where you could argue they picked more points. Of course, not from me - you'll only hear that from Russians.

SIMULCAM VID

And for good measure - I asked the photographer to snap pics of each top team in the exact same spot and we were able to put together this side-by-side comparison of the "roundhouse kick" ... as a former ice skater, I should know better than to call it that, but it's just too hard not to!

Ice dancing - channeling the karate kid since 1976.

I am just so fond of Virtue/Moir and Davis/White - they make dance pretty again. We haven't seen pretty dance since Torvill and Dean. The Russians took ice dance in this aggressive, garish direction and in order to keep up, everyone kind of followed suit.

But ironically - it was a russian coach who ended that trend! Igor Shpilband has been coaching in Detroit for the past ten plus years now and he now coaches Virtue/Moir AND Davis/White. His choreography is always sophisticated and clever, but also fan friendly. It's just hard not to enjoy watching his teams.

It's sometimes hard to actually enjoy watching the russian teams. They're all drama and angst and oh, woe and the feathers and wings and sequins - and that's just the men!

Davis/White skate to a Bollywood medley and it's probably one of the best, most authentic OD's I've ever seen. It's just fun - and incredibly difficult! Virtue and Moir skate a beautiful, subdued program for their free skate - it's just gorgeous in its elegance but it will be interesting to see how it plays in comparison to all of the other completely over the top, fast-paced programs they'll be competing against. The other programs aren't more difficult - they just have more frenetic energy which can sometimes 'look' more difficult.

Tanith and Ben even admitted to adding more movements to their free skate after Nationals in order to make it look "more frenetic" for the Olympics. I don't get it.. I don't understand why it's rewarded. I want to watch dance and feel happy - not itchy.

Because, yes. Frenetic dances make me feel itchy.

Chances are the podium is already set with the Russians on top, Virtue/Moir second and Davis/White third... if the podium is NOT that, I'll be shocked. However, if either team is able to move up and grab gold, I'll be ecstatic.

The new cold war

2010-02-20T01:35:00.004-05:00

The mens event is over which makes me really sad – it means I don’t get to say Daisuke Takahashi on a regular basis. (DICE-kay TAHK-ah-hashi). Sigh.

It was a phenomenal night of skating. I’m not the biggest Evan Lysacek fan on the block – I like him and all, but I sometimes don’t get his hype. When people talk about him being so marketable, I genuinely don’t see it. I used to like him a lot more – like back in 2006. He gave that lights out performance in Tornio during the free skate after being hooked up to IVs all day and I was cheering like mad for him. But as he began to win more medals, something started to change. He didn’t have that same unbridled passion and enthusiasm in his performances anymore. It became so much more rehearsed. The man trains like Rocky so it might be understandable but I miss it.

He’s also keenly aware of his image and saying the ‘right thing’ – I want him to just say stupid stuff sometimes. He used to date Tanith and he actually still wears a ring that she gave him. Now Johnny Weir, his arch-nemesis, is rooming with her in the Olympic Village. Surely that’s chapping his hide a bit? Can’t he at least say something borderline raunchy about the whole situation?? I don’t have anything PG I can write down but surely Evan could come with something.

I really didn’t think Evan was going to take this gold medal. Skating is very political and there’s been a lot of talk about how Plushenko was going to get the men’s gold in exchange for a north American team getting the dance gold. (remember the salt lake pairs scandal – they had basically said gold for pairs and in exchange, gold for france in dance – it was the French judge who came forward and admitted to cheating) Yea – it still happens. Or at least, people still whisper about it.

Plus, Plushy’s jumps are typically outstanding. And because his jumps are so strong, and because he’s Russian and the judges favor him, he usually has such a commanding lead after the short that it’s almost impossible to catch him in the free skate. But this time, Lysacek and Takahashi were less than a point behind him so Plushenko was in the strange position of actually having to skate clean. He normally has such a huge margin that if he makes a few mistakes, he can still win. That’s a lot less pressure to handle.

So he comes back to Olympic competition to get the gold medal after 3 years of not competing at all, he heads into the free skate with only a three competitions under his belt this season and all of a sudden HAS to lay down a perfect skate to win. I can’t remember him ever skating under that kind of pressure. I think it unnerved him a bit.

And GOOD! Bout time. Dude is cockier than a hen house. Nice, funny guy - but the complete lack of humility drives me nuts sometimes.

And ironically - he basically lost the gold on his jumps. His strength.

You get points for the difficulty of the jump but then you also get this mark called “grade of execution” and that’s how well you do the jump. So if he does a quad-triple and that’s worth 9 points or something, he’s also getting points added on or subtracted for his execution of that jump. Normally he gets positive grades of execution, meaning he racks up even more points (up to 3 more points) but this time, he didn't manage to grab many additional points. Evan did receive extra points for perfectly executing his jumps – so even though Plush technically did harder stuff, what Even did, he did it better.

I spent most of the day dealing with the fallout of the whole Plushenko vs Lysacek debacle because it somehow turned into the new cold war with even Steven Colbert commenting on it to Bob Costas.

(btw - NBC was looking for their Olympic star? Well, they found it in Colbert! His appearances with Bob Costas have been killing everyone here. The dude is brilliant. Did you catch the video where he climbs into the NBC "fireplace"? Colbert met Johnny Weir in the green room before going and we have some hilarious photos of Johnny and Steven together - hopefully they make a gallery of that stuff soon so I can share it)

Uh - back to skating..... So even Putin chimed in saying that Plushenko had the gold medal winning performance. And because of that, we were scrambling trying to find info from Russian papers all day, scanning the wires frantically for news, having all the russian speaking people in the room checking out russian websites, etc. It was nuts. (It's also crazy to me that my life was directly affected today by something that PUTIN said)

This is the article I spent about 5 hours working on today It explains the breakdown of what happened between Lysacek and Plushenko's marks and why Lysacek had the edge (in what I think is fairly simple to understand logic)

I'm actually really proud of this little piece. I normally just write fun, fluffy stuff for them but this one took actual brain power and gasp - thinking! (how dare they) I can't tell you how many times I had to rewrite portions of this because we just couldn't work out exactly how Lysacek beat Plushenko. I mean - besides the obvious point that Plushenko kind of stank it up. We had research room notes and about 10 pages of compete judges marks - and it still took forever. The judging system is so complicated these days that it takes an actuary to make any sense of it. Even Dick Button was confused. (but that's normal)

It's frustrating to me that here I am, this die hard skating nutjob and it's taking me forever to figure out the exact logic behind the marks. If I'm this confused, how in the world does a causal fan ever make sense of this sport? It makes me sad for our sport - we're totally alienating fans by turning triple salchows into rocket science.

Basically - it was a battle of tricks versus mastery. Plush did tricks but they weren’t perfect. Evan demonstrated perfect technique and mastery and the judges rewarded him for it.

Of course – this IS skating and plush somehow managed to receive almost the same amount of points for all the other stuff he did - spins, footwork, transitions, etc – as Evan. Which, bogus. But whatever. At the end of the day, the judges got it right.

Of course, this is really bad news for ice dance. The Russians lost the pairs gold medal for the first time in 12 Olympics. They have won every men’s gold medal since Brian Boitano. They’re going to be seriously, seriously ticked off right now. And I’m sure very hung-over as they probably were drowning their sorrow with straight vodka last night.

Their Russian ice dance team just plain sucks this year -Domnina and Shabalin. He’s coming off a really bad injury and is only at about half strength right now. Their original dance is set to this aboriginal music and they skate in pseudo-black face along with terrible, terrible, borderline offensive aboriginal costumes. They claim to have spent “hours” researching the theme, music, costume etc so that it would be authentic… yea right – looks more like they googled “Australian aboriginal”, checked out one image and said done and done. The aboriginal people of Australia are outraged and have raised a massive stink about how terrible and offensive the dance is.

And now the Russians are in first place after the compulsory round of ice dance... sniff, sniff, does someone smell a scandal???

On a totally unrelated note - after the men's free last night, I was leaving the IBC and I happened to be walking right behind Plushenko and his posse. They were all gesturing madly and Plushy was speaking in pretty heated tones. I wasn't 'trying' to stalk him but he kept going in the direction I needed to be headed so I ended up walking behind them for a few blocks. The whole way, Plush is still talking like he's all fired up and saying lots of fast russian things.

They stop at a garage to get into what looked like a tinted window Escalade ( but of course, when you're the russian mob, you travel in style) And as I pass I hear some parting philosophical words from Plushenko...

"Cheeseburger?"

Guess he was just hungry.

sunny day!

2010-02-19T11:17:00.002-05:00

I snuck out for a few minutes yesterday to snap some pics right outside the IBC. It's sunny and gorgeous here this week - 50's, sunny, perfect!

Members of Chezch tv doing some tv type stuff.
We have a fantastic view of the torch at the IBC because we have this giant patio thingy attached that overlooks the area the cauldron. The 'regular' folk either have to snap a pic through a chain wire fence or stand in line forever to view it from that walkway you can see in the background.

It's a gorgeous thing... it's also juuust the right size to climb all which, I'm guessing, is why they won't let anyone get anywhere near it. If you were quite monkey-like (or canadian and drunk), you could definitely figure out a way to shimmy up and into the fire. You know, a couple of shards of glass at the base of each leg would have take care of that and then the people could get close! I'm just saying... think outside the box!

The guy who writes "the ringer" blog on the site has been borrowing my camera every once in awhile to snap some pics of the stuff he's going to and as I was dumping pics onto my laptop this morning, I saw these two gems .... I realize that Canada is warmer than usual and all but these dudes are still on a mountain! Standing on snow! Watching snowboarding! God bless Molson.

And my favorite, favorite view at the Olympics

gaffe games

2010-02-17T13:59:00.001-05:00

Apparently there’s an AP article calling this Olympics the “gaffe games” – a description that’s way too fitting. Every day there’s something new to embarrass the Olympic organizing committee. First it was the torch not going up. Which, ok, right there is bad enough. The symbol of the games? You mess up the symbol of the games? Ten bucks says someone forgot to plug in the power cable on that particular leg of the torch. “Eh there Bob, you got all those cords plugged in der?” “Eh, Molson, maple leaf, you bet!.... Oh wait…. Did I plug in the cords or did I play curling? Hmmmm, oh well.”

(that’s the best Canadian imitation I got)

Did you notice Wayne Gretzky’s lip sweating when he was waiting for the torch? Check the replay ;)

Yesterday we have a curler literally crack the ice. He was trying to keep a stone from going out of bounds, but he accidentally flipped the stone and CRASH! Cracks the ice and ruins the curling course/ice/track – whatever the heck they call that thing. Curling has a lot of terms to learn – so far I know “stone”. Seeing as there are about 443 curling matches a day, I’m sure I’ll learn more. Yay for higher education.

Some other gaffes:
- the mountains are somehow missing snow (Not technically anyone’s fault but hilarious nonetheless)
- the viewing area in Cypress got flooded and they had to shut down their 20,000 standing-room viewing area for the snow sports up there. (returned about 1.5 million in tix revenue – ouch!)
- The zambonis in the speed skating ovals break down (now this one is WAY embarrassing. This country’s first and most popular car is a zamboni! How can they possibly have the countries only 2 broken ones at that Olympic oval??!)
- They have the Olympic torch behind this ridiculous chain wire fence. It looks like they plopped it down in the middle of a construction site. It’s ridiculous.

We were cracking jokes about Canada to try and get a laugh out of our curling producer (who’s Canadian) and nothing, no reaction. She finally turns around and tells us that she’s so used to it, Canadian teasing doesn’t even faze her anymore. She said, “You guys have no idea what it’s like to be Canadian and totally fail at everything!”

We all about died laughing.

Poor Canada.

The one thing about this Olympics is that it has this really laid back, fun vibe to it – which I’m hoping Canada remembers. Most of this country has spent the past week drunkety drunk drunk. I’ve been walking home every night around 1 or 2am and the six block walk to my hotel is spent stepping over passed out Canucks with the Canadian flag drawn on their faces. (and sniffing lots of herb which apparently is totally legal to smoke on the streets here)

Random trivia for the day - did you know that Norway has won the most Olympic medals? Yea, who knew?

No skating event today – hoping to get a good nights sleep tonight. I could really use it! I was washing my running clothes in the sink this morning and about ten minutes later I heard what I thought was the coffee maker bubbling over. Hmm, that’s weird, I thought to myself… such a small machine, such loud gurgling. Walk into the bathroom and omg – I left the water running in the sink! With the drain closed! Thank god the sink had one of those idiot-proofing extra large drain hole thingys. I would have flooded my bathroom – or at least ruined my make-up case.

Gaffe games indeed!

the universe has righted

2010-02-16T03:54:00.003-05:00

The universe has righted itself. The stars have aligned, Jupiter is in Mars, the pigs have come home to roast and I wish I was an oscar meyer weiner.

Ok, somewhere along the line I lost my train of thought there...

Shen and Zhao WON!!! They are finally Olympic champions!

THANK GOD.

I can now relax because that was the number one thing I wanted to happen in Vancouver. I was so superstitious about jinxing them in any way (and I don't normally get like that) I couldn't even bring myself to pre-write the blurb proclaiming them winners for the website. I normally write a few different blurbs for the different potential scenarios so that I have something to put up the second the event ends but with this one, I just couldn't do it.

I probably typed it out 5 or 6 times and only got as far as "Shen and Zhao captured..." and then I'd frantically delete the whole sentence.

They stumbled on a lift of all things - a lift! Something that they can probably do in their sleep... and since they're married, maybe they do. It's just not what anyone would expect them to struggle with. But thankfully, their short program marks (and the fact that they had almost a 6 point lead over Pang/Tong) helped them still win the gold medal. They actually finished second in the free skate - but their overall score made them the winners.

PHEW.

I would have been wrecked otherwise. I will never ever forget their performance at the 2003 World Championships where they brought the house down in DC. I was backstage with ABC at the time and I was watching with tears streaming down my face. It was one of the most beautiful moments in skating. And it turned out that she basically did it on a broken foot. She was on crutches the next day.

And then they should have been the champs in '06 but he had a torn Achilles a few months before the games made that impossible - the fact that they were able to skate, period, was astonishing. Just a testament to the toughness and mental strength of these two. They have given everything to the sport - they deserve that gold medal more than anyone ever has.

Up next - the men's event! Promises to be a real nail biter - no seriously. There's basically ten men who are fairly equal and should be able to challenge for the gold medal. They all just have to get past Poopy Plushenko. Ok, ok, not really poopy, he's actually kind of exciting to watch - but he has ZERO artistry, he just flails around, throwing his head and arms and legs where ever the hell he feels like and he calls it "choreography."

No - that's not choreography. That's what you do when you're drunk.

Watch for Patrick Chan and Jeremy Abbott - what they do is choreography and artistry. Watch for what happens in between the jumps. That's where the skating is. Plushenko can jump - but he can't skate ... he's a phenomenal poser though (you'll see it)

In Beijing, I got annoyed by the overly helpful Chinese who frequently tried to stir my coffee for me (I would reach for the sugar, they would grab it, pour it into my coffee and stir for me). It really crossed the line - the line being the fact that I am an only child and want to do it all my myself, thank you very much.

Well, in Vancouver, I could actually use the help. I managed to dump the lid of the milk pot into my coffee, spilling all of the milk onto the table and dropping the lid into my coffee.

which I then still drank.

hmm... ew? I probably should have asked for a new coffee... I'm sure all I was thinking was "escape scene quickly!"

I've been catching up on my pop culture thanks to Access Hollywood being shown whenever it's airing (seeing Billy Bush in his abnormally puffy blue vest in the hallways all the time is always 'fun') Ok, now really, serious question here - what is up with Heidi Montag's face? Does she really think she looks BETTER?

g'ah... and that's it for pop culture for me for the week. Back to Olympics where things make sense.

winning gold medals

2010-02-15T19:08:00.001-05:00

Lester Holt sighting of the day consisted of this conversation: A tired producer walks alongside Lester and says “To even figure out what day it is, you have to read it on the big white board” to which an equally tired Lester nodded and replied “yea, right.”

Ok, that wasn’t the most captivating conversation ever, but inside I’m sure Lester was composing haikus on the meaning of time.

Canada won it’s first gold medal yesterday and while the nbc staff working here is primarily American, we have a pretty big contingent of locals among us. Bilodeau won the slushy moguls with Begg-Smith in second. Begg-Smith was actually born in Vancouver but now skis for Austrailia – he’s not exactly Canada’s favorite guy. I know this because one of our Canadian producers called him a slime-sucking dicknob. I’d never heard that phrase before, but rest assured it will magically work its way into my daily conversations.

When a medal is about to be decided, somehow everyone knows to pay attention to the monitors. I don’t know how it happens, but it’s like everyone’s head somehow all shift together to the right tv in a bizarre magical trance. And that’s no small feat seeing as how there’s a gazillion tvs with 40 different feeds, some of the same sport but being broadcast maybe 30 seconds out of sync.
And THAT leads to some funny stuff because you have a host feed and then the NBC feed. Well, the NBC feed is generally about 30 seconds behind the host feed so you have to decide which one you’re going to focus on. If you pick the host feed, you get the live action. But if you pick the NBC feed, then you get the color commentary. Most people prefer to hear the commentary (since a lot of people in this room are the people who either wrote or compiled all that stuff the announcers say). So you have half the room reacting to the live feed, the other half reacting to the nbc feed – but when something happens on the live feed, everyone turns their head to see what happened. And then sometimes, you’ll hear a huge reaction on something from somewhere and you have absolutely no idea who’s cheering, what they’re watching or where it’s even coming from.

Lots of stimulation around here.

When Canada won their first gold medal, everyone started to applaud. It was a really nice moment. I love that while a medal round is happening, suddenly that sport is everyone’s most favorite sport. I mean, I don’t know squat about moguls, but last night, I was on the edge of my seat watching. Same thing when snowboarding happens – like this afternoon, we all held our breath as Seth Wescott won his second gold medal. (HUGE round of applause after that) So thank you Americans for winning medals and such – you provide nice breaks from nonstop, relentless work. Even if it’s only for 2 minutes.

Because that’s what really makes working the Olympics fun – and special. Being surrounded by a bunch of nuts that love the Olympics as much as you and light up like at a kid on Christmas over gold medals. I worked until 2am last night and was ready to pull out my hair, arms and eyeballs with frustration. But then you come in and amazing moments like that happen and the 2am crankies kind of start to fade away.

(but only kind of – if the same issues we had happen again tonight, the crankies will come back with a vengeance)
Pair’s free skate tonight! I want Shen and Zhao to win so badly that it almost hurts my soul. I was holding my breath during their short program and I’ll probably do the same during the free skate – although 4 minutes is an awfully long time to not breath. Hopefully I’ll find a few places to do that inhale/exhale thing.

Adventures in hand washing

2010-02-14T00:32:00.001-05:00

The bathrooms at the IBC have automated soap dispensers and the first time you stick your hands under the dispensers, the soap comes foaming out obediently. But in sticking with the “green” games theme, you just get a tiny little dollop. And with signs everywhere reminding you to wash your hands and not spread disease, you automatically go in for another dollop of foam. And that’s where things get tricky.

Because no matter where you place your hands, that soap dispenser just won’t budge. No foam, no nothing. So you end up doing the soap dance shuffle – shake it to the left, shake it to the right, sit down, stand up, fight, fight, fight.

You eventually get your second measly dollop and then you go about your business of washing with the water and swoosh… as your hands are finally getting cleaned and rinsed off, you get doused with another 5 foam blasts.

It’s very difficult to wash your hands in Vancouver.

Opening Ceremony 2-12-10

2010-02-13T11:02:00.002-05:00

After what was just a terrible and sad day, I got an amazing gift. Our coordinating producer walked over to me and quietly asked, “do you want to go to the Opening Ceremony?” And so I quietly replied back, “yes, very much, please.” He only had a few tickets and I was one of the (insanely) lucky people that got to go.

Walking into the arena was kind of like walking into a football game – very rowdy crowd with faces painted, Canada stuff everywhere, people drinking beer and stoked to see a great show. I actually bought a Canada hat on my way out of the IBC thinking I would want it for the show since it might be cold (and also, on a night like this, everyone’s Canadian).

Well, duh – the arena was indoors! So really, no need for the hat. But that’s ok. I like the hat (it’s the same one that Team Canada wore when marching in tonight)

So we walk in and they’re going through the audience participation stuff. We had a smock that we wore the whole time, there was a flashlight, a light-up candle and a drum stick to use on the case all the goodies came in. The case doubled as a drum! Those drums came in REALLY handy. My hands would have hurt like heck had I been clapping the entire time. But instead, we were just all banging this make-shift drum over and over.

When the show opened with that dude snowboarding down that ramp, I kind of cringed, thinking, “wow, really Vancouver? You’re following Beijing with that?” And then I immediately scolded myself for thinking that and reminded myself to not compare this show to that show. Because there’s just nothing that will compare.

I had guessed that Canada would go with smart simplicity and woo-hoo! I was right. The show that followed that rather uninspired opening was gorgeous. Simple, elegant, clever and beautiful. And a lot of moments of just plain fun!

During the song with Nelly Furtado and Brian Adams, the entire audience was playing along on the drums. There were people in the aisles showing everyone what to do and when to do it so the entire audience would follow along. It was very cheesy… and VERY fun. The whole place was going nuts banging on these drums and playing along with the song. My neighbor said “I’m totally putting on my resume that I played back-up percussion for Brian Adams.”

That snowstorm was just gorgeous. It looked so real – you almost started to feel cold! I tried catching some flakes on my tongue (luckily I missed, those wouldn’t have been too much to swallow)

During the winter (? Not sure of the real name for the section) there were two constellations that dropped down – oh wow, so gorgeous. Again, totally had no idea how it was happening. When the bear appeared, I fervently hoped it wasn’t there to eat the natives. You could tell something ominous was about to happen and all I could think was holy crap, that bear is going to swoop down and swallow the kids. Luckily the ominous thing that happened was the Northern Lights appearing – not bear homicide.

Without a doubt, the coolest part of the show was the whales that swam across the stage and then had those blowholes puff out air or water. The entire audience gasped – it was SO cool. Everyone’s inner 5 year-old started gleefully applauding. When I watched it back, it had nowhere near the same impact as it did live. Bummer, because it was really, REALLY cool.

The best thing about the stage was that you couldn’t tell where the light was coming from. Was it lit from above or under? Was it projected? I had no idea how it was happening when I was there. (I heard Matt Lauer say on the broadcast that it was projected but I never would have guessed)

There were just so many simple but surprising moments in the show. Like when that tree appeared. It came out of nowhere – all of a sudden it was growing and the lights were morphing and you couldn’t quite tell what it was going to become and then, oh wow! It’s a tree! I loved that as an audience member, you were trusted to be smart and figure it out. It made it very interactive – and more memorable. Because I wasn’t following someone else on their journey – I was taking my own.

In the fall piece, as the fiddle player was battling his shadow, the entire stage was filling up with maple leafs. It was so visually stunning. It was this strange combination of real leafs falling from the ceiling, giant real leafs being brought onto the stage by people and then projected leafs moving all over. And then add in electric dancing and energetic violin playing…. Wow. I was on the edge of my chair. Along with everyone else.

OH! And then, what the heck, they lit their feet on fire!?!? YES!!!!! SO AWESOME!!!

The only thing that was a little sad about the fall piece to me was that the spring/tree/dancing piece had been so beautiful, so elegant and pretty. When the fall piece ended, all I could think was, “well, no one’s going to remember that piece now!”

The prairies piece where the boy flew to the Joni Mitchell song was so simple – and so captivating. When he started to run and the field was moving below him… everyone kind of figured out what was happening at the same time and you could feel the audience do a collective “oooh!” Watching it back on tv it looked a little silly, but live it was gorgeous. There was something very hypnotic about that piece.

You could tell they probably could have used a few more rehearsals on this one though – there were some points where he wasn’t touching down quite where the field was, or the field would be late. Just a few places where the timing was a bit sloppy.

Actually, throughout the entire show there were visible mistakes (besides that tiny little cauldron mishap). But after the crazy stories that came out after Beijing’s Opening Ceremony, it was refreshing to know that Canada probably didn’t lock any people in any boxes for 50 hours wearing adult diapers. I’ll take a few mistakes over that, thanks.

During the KD lang song, we were supposed to light our candles row by row making it look like the light was spreading. Well, the second KD started to sing, everyone grabbed their candle like it was a lighter and put it up in the air. There was a guy in front of me who was REALLY excited about kd lang singing. When she appeared and started to sing, he let out this kind of primal “Yeessssss” – ooohhkay. Big kd lang fan. Noted.

So yea, as an audience, we kind of blew the participation piece during that song. But come on, you played Hallelujah and you gave us candles. What did you think was going to happen?

It was a beautiful performance. Like the prairie piece – captivating.

Ohhh, the cauldron. Are there even words for how embarrassing that was? My Canadian neighbor sort of sighed and said “ugh, that’s just so Canadian of us! We get the attention of the world on us and we blow it. We can never perform under pressure!” Thought that was a rather fascinating character study!

She also told me that Canadians believe that the role of flag bearer is jinxed and that athletes will actually turn it down. She said she thought Clara Hughes, the flag bearer in Vancouver, would be fine because “she’s already been in so many Olympics.”

But of course, the entire ceremony had a dark cloud over it. At the very beginning of the show, after the warm-up acts and right before the countdown, they flashed a sign that said the ceremony was dedicated to the Georgian luger. The entire crowd was worked up – but that really subdued brought everyone and brought them back to earth. And then when Georgia entered, the entire audience jumped to their feet.

Well, almost everyone. There was a group of Russians sitting in front of us and as everyone rose to their feet for Georgia, they remained seated. Didn’t clap, didn’t do anything.

I was really disappointed to see that. I started thinking that I need to return that Tam Russia jacket I just got – I can’t feel good supporting a country whose people do that. They at least redeemed themselves a little bit later on in the night when there was that moment of silence for Nodar when they stood and removed their hats.

There was definitely an underlying sadness to the entire night.

As I was trying to find my way home, there were people just streaming out all over the place – I figured I’d be able to just follow the crowds and find my way back downtown but people were headed in every direction. Scattered around were NBC people shouting directions and apparently guiding us to our buses if we wanted them – or so I thought. I wanted to be smart and figure out my own way home since I knew it was within walking distance. I see a girl with an NBC sign and I stop to ask her which direction downtown is. She says very quickly, “I’m sorry, I can’t help you now.” Wait, what? But you have a sign! You’re supposed to be Canadian and friendly? What the?? I look behind her and ooohhh… that’s why. She’s herding Meredith Viera and other NBC execs. Sorry Meredith! (who, by the way, was looking positively adorable in one of the Team USA white polo sweaters. Super cute!)

Great night, beautiful show. SO happy I got the change to go!!

Tragic day

2010-02-12T18:38:00.004-05:00

This should be Opening Ceremony day. But instead, it will be remembered for something very different.

When I walked into work, every other person was sporting something with “Canada” on it. I passed a coffee shop with a business-man-type meeting going on and half the fancy men were wearing suits, the other half, Team Canada apparel. The entire city is buzzing with the Olympic spirit right now.

They were doing a live stream of the men’s luge training runs this morning online. In our room, we have about 30 different tv monitors with tons of different live feeds going on, everything from news broadcasts to live feeds from the broadcast room to different feeds from venues (so everyone can track and watch their own sport). The luge feed was on one of the big monitors that line one side of the room and then also on one of the smaller tvs over on a research table.

Their were about 6 researchers gathered around that one smaller tv and they all gasped while watching the fall of the Georgian luger. Word got around pretty quickly and everyone started checking the live feed we have in our computer systems (you can rewind, grab clips, etc in there) Within about 5 minutes, the entire room had seen the horrific crash of Nodar Kumaritashvi.

And this is a fairly jaded crowd; it's a group that has seen a lot of Olympics and in that time, a lot of crashes. But, right away, there was something about this one that was different. It wasn’t one that you watched over and over again, cringing. A lot of people watched it once and then backed away saying, “I can’t see that again.” Myself included.

The image of Nodar flying over the wall and slamming into the steel pole isn't an image that will go away for a long time.

I overheard some people say that they're going to show a clip on the news tonight and then we’ll have the whole crash online. ….sometimes it’s hard NOT to watch that kind of thing, but this is something that’s very hard to watch. I’m not looking forward to the endless replays I know it will have on the news.

I also learned that I’m totally not cut out for a breaking news type position. I have a hard time staying neutral and just focused on the task.

One of the other producers here was watching the main page for the updated headline to appear – changing what currently read “luger injured” to stating that he had, in fact, died. She turned and said, “this is really bad” and I nodded my head in agreement thinking she was talking about the accident. I quickly realized she was referring to the headline not updating.

That hit me really hard.

Because in one regard, she was right. It was really bad that the site wasn’t updating quickly enough. It’s a news site. It was a news item. It was important that the correct headline was there.

But oh my god – someone just died! An Olympian just died in a training run. I couldn’t move my head past that sad fact in order to think anything else was as important.

I was trying to write a "Five Fun Facts about Johnny Weir" and it just felt too surreal to be trying to work on anything frivolous.

I definitely am not cut out for breaking news. All I can think about is how this young man was gearing up for the experience of his lifetime – and this is how it ends.

The entire room (we share space with the research room and a bunch of others – it’s basically the hub of info in here) was subdued following the accident. (And very quiet during the press conference where Jacques Roggue appeared to almost start crying.) The hallways are filled with talk about the accident and everyone has a look of shock and sadness on their faces.

There’s an aspect of the Winter Olympics that is all about the crashes and the danger – and that’s part of the draw. But you certainly don’t expect a moment like this to occur. But when you live that close to the edge… There are several quotes flying around that were said by lugers before the games started. One person flat out said that someone was going to die on the course. It’s just … well, it’s chilling.

It’s a hard day.

News - Canadian style

2010-02-11T11:15:00.004-05:00

Things I learned from the paper this morning:

There is a new drink called Slow Cow -it's like if Red Bull suddenly went all zen and started to do yoga and buy organic berries. (it's a relaxation drink and the logo is a lumpy cow - which, awesome)
Canadians are into perfecting the art of napping on a toilet
A beach bum will be directing the Opening Ceremony
Mandy Patinkin weighs 175 pounds.

That's it - I'm taking out a subscription to Globe and Mail when I get back to Milwaukee. This is the best paper ever!

Ahh, Lester.....

2010-02-11T01:04:00.006-05:00

Ahh, life is complete. My first Lester Holt sighting. He was sporting his fancy nerd glasses, a navy blue puffy vest and an aura of charm, wit and cleverness. And, just like in Beijing, he was just hanging out in a research room at one of the computers doing his own research. No fancy office, no assistants, just Lester.

I think my new mission in Vancouver should be to just stop being a ninny-pants and go say hi.

This is the entrance to the IBC (International Broadcast Center)

I got home "early" from work tonight (if leaving work at 9:30pm is your definition of early. It sure ain't mine typically) and I was able to catch part of American Idol. At first I thought, oh great, I get to watch Idol! But then I thought, what the heck Canada, get your own idol! But then I realized I was actually watching a Seattle station.

I went to two different press conferences today - one for the Canadian men and pairs teams and one for the Japanese men. And today I discovered that my Canadian is much more fluent than my Japanese. Jess and I arrived late to the Japanese presser - at least 2 of the Japanese men speak English so I think we were both thinking part of the conference would be in a language we spoke. Nope! All Japanese. But lots of cute Japanese skater body language, THAT we speak.

I had to run back out to the entrance and grab translation headphones so we could understand what was happening. It's pretty cool, you put on these headphones and then translators, who are sitting in these phone booth type rooms off to the side, translate what they're saying for you. Very U.N.

Each time a reporter would ask a question in English, all three would valiantly try to understand and then sheepishly (adorably) grab the headphones for a translation.

Seriously, there is nothing cuter than the Japanese men's skating team. They are all about 4 feet tall, phenomenal jumpers and incredibly artistic. I would like my very own pocket-sized Nobunari Oda please. He skates to Charlie Chaplin in the free skate and it's one of my very favorite men's programs ever. He's just bubbling over with personality - even when he was sitting there in the presser, he just had this sparkle in his eye. I'd love to hear his brain for a day.

Canada's press conf was - ok, well, not exactly thrilling. Patrick Chan gave us a cute moment when asked about training in Colorado Springs by the Denver Press - he said he loves it "because it's blue skies and sunny. Toronto is grey and depressing." The entire room laughed and then the Canadian moderator/team leader quiped "That gasp you just heard was the Toronto Tourism Board."

One more day to the Opening Ceremony!

(a water fountain inside the Media Center)

The Mao dog

2010-02-10T11:52:00.002-05:00

Mao Asada, the former world champion from Japan, has not one food item named after her in Vancouver, but TWO! First, a sushi place named a roll after her (they make it in the shape of a heart, aww) But now – the holy grail of food items now bears her name.

THE MAO ASADA HOT DOG.

Japadog, a popular hot dog vendor here in Vancouver, named a dog after Mao and I headed out to the cart yesterday to sample it and snap some pics for the website. Well – the darn dog is so popular, it was already sold out! The secret to the Mao dog is that it’s a kobe beef dog - topped with whatever you want apparently. Ok, well either that or maybe he said topped with jalepenos… my Japanese is rough and his English wasn’t much better. Someone is headed out today to sample both the sushi and the dog and write a review. We're going to try to get him to judge it skating style - marks for technical components, artistic impression. I said that if it ended up on the ground, that was an automatic 1 point deduction for falling.

Ok, but first of all, let’s come to terms with the fact that japan has their own styles of hot dogs. I saw some topped with seaweed! I tried to be cool about it but inside, my grossed out 5-year-old voice was saying “eeewwww!”

I guess it makes sense that hot dogs are big in japan since they have that Kobayashi guy who can eat like 4300 in 2 minutes or something and he has his own cartoon and probably a clothing line. I just never connected hot dogs and Japan.

Did you know that Red Bull built Shawn White his very own half pipe to train on? And they have to helicopter him in and out each day. I’m assuming because it’s inaccessible to car and he probably wouldn’t want to cross-country ski there – wouldn’t want to ruin his cool snowboarder cred. Can you imagine seeing a bunch of snowboarders cross country skiing in their baggy pants… hold on – that’s really not all that funny… has Olympic-induced insanity started to set in already?

I was updating bios yesterday night and as it got later and later, the first draft of the bio updates got meaner and meaner. I was just trying to add in some info about Vancouver and what’s expected from them here at the games. At first they were all happy and positive, “with a sold skate, he could definitely be a podium party crasher!” but as they progressed, they started to read more like “listen kid, don’t even bother showing up because you ain’t got no shot in hell, seriously. Are you really still here? Ok, and why are you wearing THAT?” Might need to look back over a few of those today…

Vancouver - Day 1

2010-02-09T11:32:00.004-05:00

Ahh, finally. Off to Vancouver day! I arrived at the airport nice and early after getting a ride form a friend. I walk up to the Delta counter and there’s no line – fantastic! Enter my confirmation number and wait a, what?? My confirmation number doesn’t work! Crap! Look at my ticket again and then try and creep away from Delta as quietly as possible…. Because I’m actually flying on United. D’oh!

Well, that’s a nice way to start a trip! I decided to take it as a learning lesson. Lesson of the day: Try and be less dumb.

I made it to Vancouver with no further incident (well, unless you count sprinting through the Denver airport as an “incident” – I just barely made my connecting flight but that’s ok. I’m totally counting it as a speedwork day in my training log - and yes, Dave, that DOES totally count!)

Patrick Chan was sitting a couple of rows in front of me on the plane. I just adore that guy – he’s a skater from Canada, fairly young still and talented beyond belief. He’s had some turbulence in his coaching life in the past month and he takes a really different approach to his training. Most skaters hunker down with their one coach and train with them for years, but Patrick kind of floats from coach to coach. I like to think he does it because he likes to take wisdom from different people and patch it together like a quilt for himself… but I kind of think right now he’s just restless. I’m crossing my fingers, toes and eyes for him in Vancouver. I just want him to have a beautiful skate.

Article on Patrick arriving

The Vancouver airport is gorgeous! After the extravagance of everything in Beijing, I really had no expectations for anything in Vancouver. It’s hard to top China and what they did for ’08. But wow – the airport kind of surprised me! Right off the plane, you walk through this aborigine display complete with water, music and dinosaur sounds (?) They also had this really cool waterfall thing right as you come off the escalators into customs.

So I landed in the Vancouver airport at 1:30. At 3, I was in the Olympic Super Store trying on Team Russia jackets. I chucked my bags in the hotel and ran down the street to the holy land of team Russia jackets. I ended up picking out this white and red tracksuit that all of the athletes will be wearing. I feel very fancy. And Russian. And suddenly I have a strange penchant for wearing fur coats?

But here’s the thing. The second I saw that giant display of Team Russia stuff, it totally lost its magic. I finally have to admit to myself that part of the fun of the Russia stuff was simply the HUNT. The fact that it was so dang hard to get a hold of that stuff is what made it so magical. And then to walk into a giant store and have someone just hand it to me… sigh. It just wasn’t right.

I ended up heading back there later that night after working and got a different jacket instead. One that I’ll actually wear – the white tracksuit is so fancy and gorgeous (and expensive!!) that it would probably just sit in my closet forever.

(I have this thing about buying white tops and then never wearing them because I think I’m going to get them dirty – you’d think I’d either a) stop buying the white tops or b) invest in one of those Tide stain sticks)

As I left the Olympic Super Store, I see Jamie Sale and David Pelletier clowning around in the store windows (the Canadian pair team involved in the ’02 pair scandal in Salt Lake.) Awww, they’re so adorable. Jamie was plastering herself against the window and David was standing still mixing himself in with the model dummies. The people watching were clapping and awww’ing – you can tell Jamie and David are two very treasured people in Canada.

I ended up heading into work yesterday around 4 and my very first order of business. Write down the directions to the starbucks.

The IBC (international broadcast center) is HUGE. It almost feels bigger than the one in Beijing and that one felt like 14 football fields. I must have walked around the IBC for a good 25 minutes before finally finding the NBC area. Which – takes up about a third of one of the floors so the fact that I couldn’t find it shows how big it is (or my terrible sense of direction, but let’s go with the “IBC is big!” theory.)

As I was driving in, I was commenting to our driver that in Beijing, you could tell that they had basically bulldozed half the city in order to re-build it for the games. But driving into Vancouver, you can tell right away that they built around what they already had in order to make room for the games. I like that. I feel like we’re seeing the real Vancouver which is a huge relief after Beijing which was just one giant show.

And the real Vancouver is gorgeous! Can’t wait to explore the city more. I went for a run before the sunrise this morning and I found a path that runs along the water. Tons of runners and bikers out – I have a feeling I’ll be hitting that path quite frequently in the next three weeks. As I was running back, the sun was starting to come up over the mountains and oh wow…. I love the mountains, I love the water, I love the Olympics. All three in one place? I had to stop for a minute and just take it in.

Operation 'Get Russian Jacket'

2010-02-07T19:05:00.003-05:00

If you grew up in the 80's and loved skating and gymnastics then you might know what I'm talking about. If you rooted for Ecaterina Szabo instead of Mary Lou in '84, then you definitely know what I'm talking about. And if you're intensely familiar with the town of Olomouc, then this may make you drool a bit. Grab a washcloth, you've been warned.

It appears that by this time tomorrow night, I may be the proud owner of an authentic, true, swear to god, honest Team Russia jacket. My partner in crime, Jess, arrived today and I just got an email from her saying that SHE GOT THE TEAM RUSSIA JACKET!

OMG!!!!!!!!!!

Apparently, it's right down the street from the hotel. So tomorrow afternoon, I arrive to Vancouver around 2pm. By 3pm, I fully expect to be standing in front of a mirror, deciding which jacket I will be making my very, very special, most-treasured souvenir from the 2010 Olympics.

When I was young, I was completely obsessed with all things Soviet Union. I still have vivid memories of sitting on my mom's bed during the 1988 Olympics, watching Katia and Sergei win the Olympic gold medal in their baby blue costumes. I would sit for hours at the library reading the book on the Bolshoi Ballet school. And I would watch my gymnastics tapes over and over again, totally transfixed by all the athletes from the soviet union.

There was something mysterious and magical about all those girls. They were so calm, so confident, so... it wasn't arrogance, but there was a royal quality about them that made them appear so self-assured. I was fascinated.

I wanted to be them.

And I would guess that just about every girl who watched gymnastics and skating in the 80's felt the same way.

The absolute worst thing to happen to skating and gymnastics was the fall of communism. The level of excellence disappeared. The facilities disappeared and the talent pool just wasn't there anymore. But worse, the intrigue and mystery was gone. Sigh.... dam peace makers.

Ok, well, it wasn't all that bad. The former greats from the soviet union started defecting to America and Europe (right after their vodka haze cleared up and allowed them focus on packing.) And then the whole world benefited from the training. Tons of skaters including America's 2 top ice dance teams are trained by Russians. And America's last 2 olympic champions in gymnastics were both the product of russian coaching (and russian blood in Nastia Liukin's case)

So I guess there's just more Russia to go around now.

And darnit, I want a piece of it!

I WANT A TEAM RUSSIA JACKET!!!!!

stay tuned.... tomorrow could be epic.

(btw - Olomouc is the town where the 1984 Friendship Games were held - the Soviet Bloc alternative to the Olympic games. True gymnastic fans know that the REAL olympic champion that summer was Olga Mostepanova.... ok, all right, enough gymnastics nerdiness... it's the winter olympics after all!)

T-Minus how many days?

2010-02-06T17:24:00.004-05:00

I head to Vancouver in two days. Well, one and a half days to be nerdy and precise. Although, when have I ever worried about being precise? Ok, we'll just go with two days. It is now Saturday afternoon and I'm leaving Monday. Or - is that technically mean I'm leaving in one day?

Math sucks. forget it.

I've been kind of (very) busy for the past month so I haven't had a chance to mentally prepare myself for Vancouver yet. But this morning, I was thinking about the ways that this Olympics is probably going to be different than the Beijing Olympics ... in no particular order. Except the one I put them in.

1. There will likely be less Chinese people.

2. Instead of unwinding with a TsingTao, it'll be a Labatt Blue. Or Molson. Whichever bottle has the funny little sayings on it. (oh Canada, one of the many, many ways you're just too adorable for words)

3. Instead of working on a sport that features glitter, scandal and slippery surfaces, I'll be working on a sport that .... oh wait....

4. My mom will be there! (staying with her sister Julie in a hotel downtown for a week. Also joining the fun, cousin Lynda and mom's friend Laura - oh lordy... that is a group of VERY loud laughers. Hope they don't offend any demure Brits or cranky Russians)

5. I WILL get a Team Russia jacket this time. No more of this "nyet nyet" crap when I flash my visa and say "I want to buy you!" (referring to their overcoat, of course. Best not to joke about buying russians, since, well, people do that)

6. It'll be way colder. Which is good since they do that whole skiing thing.

7. Less communism.

8. (which, unfortunately, will lead to a less spectacular opening ceremony. There's just no way anyone will be able to compete with China and what they did for years. I'm hoping for some humor, ingenuity and elements of surprise)

9. I'll be trying to get runs in while I'm there. I was a lazy sack of potatoes in China and that
suited me just fine. But now I have a marathon looming in May and I'll need to keep training if I want to make it across the finish line. I'm guessing that most of my Vancouver exploring will be done via running shoes and that's just fine with me. It's a beautiful way to see the world. Or Vancouver. .. or at least the ten square miles around our hotel.

10. ???? Who knows?!?! And I love that I have no idea. I had zero idea around what to expect in Beijing and it was fantastic because every day was something new and random. Now I know the drill and what to expect (loooooong hours) but I'm keeping my expectations at bay. I'm just going to enjoy the ride, enjoy the skating and enjoy the Olympic spirit. .... and buying all the Olympic crap.

Game(s) On!

sliver of hope??

2010-01-09T07:26:00.003-05:00

There's been a lot of turmoil in the USOC since, well, forever. But it seems that the basket of dirty laundry really got tossed right after Chicago lost the Olympic bid. The CEO was canned and basically everyone that had anything to do with the USOC came out and dumped a pile of steaming dog poop to whoever in the media would listen.

It was really sad. Basically, it turned out that the USOC is why Chicago lost the bid. Because they're a bunch of bickering, power-hungry idiots and the IOC didn't want to play with them. (remember that first round loss in the bidding? sigh..... )

Alan Abrahamson wrote a great blog on the incoming CEO

Being the Olympics nut job that I am, it really bothers me that the USOC doesn't always, 100 percent, without question, without doubt, act in the best interest of the athlete. Yes - I'm naive. But hey - I also believe in Olympic miracles! It's my high holy weeks!

So when the governing organization shows itself to be corrupt and greedy and only driven by power and dollars, well, that really chaps my hide.

However, on Wednesday, I saw a sliver of hope, a glimpse of sparkle, one last cookie in the jar......

"I am a big fan of John Wooden. He talks about success being defined by making sure you gave it your best shot and making sure you acted with integrity and honesty in your dealings with others, and that's going to be the foundation of this organization going forward."

That was new USOC CEO Scott Blackmun during his introduction on Wednesday.

Ok, wait.... the USOC head is quoting John Wooden? Like, UCLA basketball coach John Wooden? Like, John Wooden whose book I have practically destroyed because I keep writing notes in it and underlining phrases and flipping pages and - ok, yes, I hug it too. THAT John Wooden? (Doesn't hurt that John Wooden is also a huge fan of the UCLA gymnastics team, which, if you're not familiar, is pretty much the most amazing team in the history of NCAA..... well, in some people's opinion)

So the incoming head of the USOC quoted John Wooden in his introductory press conference. Have to say I like where this is headed. Fingers crossed.

Of course, if he turns out to go AGAINST everything John Wooden set out and believe in, I will once again be crushed. Please do the right thing USOC. Playing with athlete's dreams is just not cool.

Vancouver - 34 DAYS!

500 miles and counting

2009-12-28T14:24:00.003-05:00

I always log my workouts to see what I did that week and I've been quite steadfast aka, obsessed, with logging my running this year - tracking mileage, pace, etc. Today I did a 6 mile run that put me over 500 miles of running for the year. So in honor of that, I thought I'd share a little on my run today.

I'm in Princeton for the holidays and typically I run on the DNR canal when I'm here. But with the crazy weather the east coast has gotten in the last week, I'm pretty sure that trail is under about a foot of water right now. So rather than ruin my lovely (stinky) shoes by pretending I'm some weird ultra trail runner, I decided to take a run through downtown Princeton. I can deal with running in the rain, but running in watery, muddy trails when I know my shoes and socks are going to get all dirty is just not cool. Not cool mother nature! No one messes with my running shoes.

So I started off my run by deciding that I would run out and past Einstein's house. So I'm running, I'm running, I'm running... I'm confused... where the heck is it? With a sort of poetic-ness that I seem to manage (a lot), I was searching for genius on the wrong street. Crap! I cut through the park, ran up to Mercer and ahhh... there it is. 112 Mercer Street.

Except it didn't really go down like that. It went "ahhhh, there it is. 152 Mercer street!" It wasn't until I got home and employed the power of google that I realized I was gawking at the wrong house.

Sigh. Well, at least now I know why I wasn't suddenly able to do long division when standing in front of 152 Mercer. No magic there - I bet Einstein, the local shoemaker, not local genius, lived in 152. How awful would that be? To share a name with a genius like Einstein and everyone gets all excited to meet you and ask what you're working on and you have to reply "well, a chap just brought in a rather wrecked pair of brown loafers that I'm trying to stitch back together..."

Hopefully there wasn't another Einstein living in Princeton during his time.

I continued my run up towards the university and passed the Center for Theological Inquiry. I wonder how often drunk college students wander in their front doors and yell out "Is there a god?!?!?!"

I also ran past the Laboratory for Integrative Genomics. I have no idea what they do there but I hope it's something to do with gnomes who are poor spellers.

(apparently not - another google search tells me that "Integrated Genomics provides a full range of products and services to support research in microbial genomics, biochemistry and gene expression. These products and services are based on ERGO™, our web-based genome analysis platform.")

Well, la di da!

I ran a total of 6 miles in about 53 minutes which works out to just under a 9 minute mile. I remember when I first starting really running last year, a 9 minute mile seemed herculean to me. Now it's my slow, comfortable, easy pace. It's amazing how much you can improve when you just work on it! Who knew??

Next year I hope to log 1000 miles!

Of course, first up on my list of things to do is to figure out which one really is Einstein's house.

Oda fun

2009-12-12T06:58:00.003-05:00

Nobunari Oda. The name means FUN! or FUNSIES!! in japanese. Maybe. My japanese isn't all that great, but if I go by instinct, then my translation is correct.

Anyone who can skate to a video game soundtrack is pretty awesome in my book. Here he is at the 2005 World Junior Championsip, which he won, skating his short program. Check out the move at 2:07 where he is playing around with choreography and then effortlessly launches into a double axel. WAY harder than it looks.

SHORT PROGRAM

This year he's skating to an equally entertaining Charlie Chaplin inspired long program that I'm guessing is going to tear the roof off the joint in Vancouver.

VIDEO

But along with him being a great performer, he's also a frisky little sucker. In 2007, he was arrested for drunk driving and had to sit out the season. (not that I condone drunk driving, but you just know this guy knows how to party. Ok, but also - look at how small he is! He probably just sniffed some vodka and got hammered)

In 08, he decided that he wanted to train with Nikolai Morozov, who is one of the IT coaches for skaters right now. Only problem - his main rival, Daisuke Takahashi, was already training with Morozov. No problem. Oda showed up anyway. Takahasi took off-ahashi. He probably showed up to practice one morning, saw Oda and said OhNoda. (oh man, japanese names are way too much fun). Takahashi hit the road, leaving Oda to train with Morozov. Good thing too because Oda has flourished under Morozov.

Can't wait to see these two duke it out in Vancouver! I don't know if there's many hard feelings - apparently they're friends. But in my imaginary head land, I like to pretend they're bitter rivals with an Ice Castles type score that plays in the background of all their conversations.

some thoughts from Skate Canda

2009-11-22T06:34:00.006-05:00

The Grand Prix of Figure Skating is winding up this weekend with Skate Canada. And what a semi-almost-fantastic event it was! Ok, that's not fair - I only watched the ladies and men's events. I'm sure the pairs was fantastic.

The pairs winner

Oh right - the winners of the pairs event, Savchenko and Szolkowy from Germany, skated in clown costumes complete with painted faces.

Sigh.... I'm not sure I can handle some of the costumes we're seeing this season. There's another couple from China (ice dancers this time) who are skating to music from Cats and seriously have TAILS on their costumes. Along with painted faces.

I only approve of tails if they are somehow used in lifts. .... Or spins. (I get dizzy with excitement just thinking about the possibilities)

Actually - the men's short programs got me all skate-happy so that's what I'm sharing and edu-mah-cating on today

First up, Daisuke Takahashi. He is from Japan and has, without a doubt, the funnest name in men's figure skating. Maybe the universe.

Daisuke's short program at Skate Canada

Say it with me... Die-sue-key Tah-kah-Haash-she. Sometimes I just say his name out loud for fun. Sometimes I tell the people at Starbucks that my name is Daisuke Takahashi just to see them struggle with trying to spell that out onto my latte cup.

And oh yea, he's a pretty awesome skater too. Not sure what's up with the super offensive, scratchy music (my ears don't want) but with jumps and footwork like that, he could skate to Barney's theme song and I'd probably still root for him. Oh forget it - he could totally suck and I'd still root for him because I just like his name so much!

Jeremy Abbott could be the surprise of the season. Last year, he burst onto the scene and won the Grand Prix Final - which, huge. And then he stormed nationals and won that title too. So the expectations were pretty high for him entering Worlds. (The competition order for the season is the Grand Prix events, the Grand Prix Final, Nationals, and then Worlds) He didn't necessarily bomb at worlds, but he had a really rough time considering how amazing he'd been all year. He probably just peaked a bit too early in his season.

He changed coaches over the summer (his old coach has about 67,322 elite level skaters and he felt like he wasn't getting enough attention - don't blame him) He won Skate Canada this weekend and seems to be getting it together after a rough first Grand Prix event. Soooo.... he seems to have some momentum. Just making the US men's Olympic team is going to be tough, but I would put a lot of money on him being in Vancouver - and having the skate of his life.

Jeremy's short program from Skate Canada

This might be one of my favorite short programs ever. And mom, you're going to LOVE this program ;)

Let's be clear - French men skaters are hilarious. Hiiii-larious. With the exception of Brian Joubert - he's a constantly malfunctioning robot. Very, very attractive, but a mechanical, one-trick pony, robot who, when he can't land his quad, is pretty much the worlds most boring skater.

But onto the hilarious and wonderfully entertaining French men - Alban Preaubert (yes, he's riding a horse) There's just something about this guy that I like so very, very much. He's not going to vying for the Olympic or World title anytime soon, but he's going to have a ton of fun trying to get there.

The Frenchies are performers. They understand that there's people in the stands watching them and they actually (gasp!) skate for them. It's such a contrast between insomnia-inducing Joubert, (who is a huge star in France for some strange reason - "France, making no sense since ... EVER"), and these other guys who just smoke him in every way. I can't wait for Joubert to retire so these other guys can get the much-deserved spotlight in France. Joubert - you're gorgeous, but it's time for you to become a businessman. Go sell ties. Or air conditioners.

Patrick Chan had a really terrible time at Skate Canada which makes my heart cry a bit. This guy is the most elegant skater out there right now. I could watch him skate forever. Chan is the skater that will cause me sleepless nights in Vancouver because I just want so badly for him to do well. I'm chalking up his Skate Canada performance as a total fluke - just shaking the nerves out before the big show.

Daisuke Takahashi!!! (just because)

Bringing home the cows - Italian style

2009-11-22T06:24:00.003-05:00

This is Samuel Contesti from Italy. I'm not sure if he's a farmer, or an auto mechanic with a penchant for plaid.

Short Program at Skate Canada

Random thoughts from Skate Amercia

2009-11-15T16:44:00.013-05:00

Some random thoughts from Skate America....

This year, Skate America was held in Lake Placid, NY. I've been to several skating competitions up there and it's honestly one of the most stunning places I've ever seen. Unfortunately, "stunning" was a word that didn't get a chance to enter the 1980 Herb Brooks arena too often - only when Yu-Na Kim was skating.

The event took place in the same arena that the 1980 Dream Team hockey game took place - 'DO YOU BELIEVE IN MIRACLES?!??!?"

Why, yes. Yes I do. And her name is Yu-Na Kim. She hails from South Korea where she is basically Elvis on skates - but a chick. With squintier eyes.

The great thing about Yu-Na is that she is SO far ahead of the other ladies, it's basically a given that she'll win every event she enters and yet at the end of every program that she skates, she looks so genuinely happy and relieved to have put out a good performance. She seems to be keeping a level head in the midst of the Olympic crazyness and media hype. Very cool.

She basically has no competition - not a single person can touch her in terms of points. And yet she skates as if she's backed into a corner, coming out with fists raised and ready to take on the world. I don't know how she does it - but it's what competition in skating should really be about. You're competing against yourself - it's a cliche but you're out there simply to do your best. And the judges will do whatever the hell they want to do. But if you put out your best performance, you can't ever feel bad about it. And that's seems to be how she's approaching her skating this season. Again, very cool.

She had an uncharacteristically rough skate during the long program but I'm thinking it's almost better - she was probably due for a malfunction and better here than later.

I'm just crossing every available body part that she stays healthy throughout the season. If she doesn't win in Vancouver, it will only be because she got hurt and wasn't able to jump for two months. It will be an absolute travesty if she doesn't win. She is incredible and a very special gift to the world of skating.

Fumie Sugari, Japan, loves to skate wearing gloves. It drives me nuts. Seriously - you can't deal with cold hands for 4 minutes? You learn to deal with that when you're a juvenile level skater. She's been on the olympic level scene since the invention of milk. And yet she still looks 12. She's a little boring but every once in awhile she'll make you cry so for that, I like her. Who doesn't like to cry? She likely won't make the Japanese Olympic team but who knows - fellow Japan-ite, former sensation, Mao Asada is having a ROUGH season and if she doesn't pull it together soon, Fumie may find herself on the Oly team.

Elena Glebova from Estonia had a fairly strong performance. She's the four-time national champion in Estonia. That sounds pretty impressive, but of course, it's Estonia. National championships don't take place in an ice rink, they take place in a parking lot. And everyone just pushes giant rocks around. But hey, I give her a lot of credit. Not many people can pull off a dress that incorporates tassels, tie-dye, brocaded sequins and a high collar.

I'm a big fan of Rachel Flatt. She's not always the flashiest performer, but she's consistent - and she's honest. By that I mean, when she skates, there's not a lot of applied drama or pretense. She's just Rachel. It's refreshing. She's the closest thing to a lock for the US olympic team - but who knows. Nationals will be interesting for the ladies. The top 6(ish) are pretty even.

Rachel is the most even competitor out of all of them which is why most think she'll make the team... and she's probably the skater capable of placing the highest in Vancouver.... which is a little depressing - the US ladies skating scene is a little bleak right now. They really are desperate for a STAR and no one's stepping up to the plate.... Mirai Nagasu is the one who could really shake things up, just not sure she has it in her right now.

Ryan Bradley is about as adorable as they come - and a fantastic performer. Few in men's skating can touch him in terms of crowd appeal. He has a lot of scoring potential - when he hits, which .... I doubt he'll find himself on the Olympic team (he doesn't always skate well under pressure and nationals, the olympic qualifier, will be a pressure cooker), but if he does make it, the world will be in for a treat with his long program.

Evan has feathers on his costume. And mesh netting. A lot of it. Neither sit well with me. In fact, that fruitcake I ate last christmas digested easier than Evan's feathers. Not cool, Evan. Not cool.

And those are my thoughts.

What's in a name?

2009-09-01T19:49:00.003-04:00

Wisconsin isn't all cheese and beer. There's also a lot of "very serious work" that goes on here as well. Many national and even global companies call Wisco home.

I couldn't help but notice that three of those companies - Kohl's, Colders and Kohler - all start the same way that "cold" starts. Which makes sense seeing as how Wisconsin is a rather cold place to live.

Three other companies that call Wisconsin home also start similarly. Johnson Controls, Johnson Wax and Johnson & Johnson. Which also makes sense because what do people do when it's cold? Play with their.... well, you get the idea.

Carolina Kostner - Italian and messy as spaghetti

2009-08-30T20:54:00.008-04:00

Sports are always more fun to watch when you're good and smart about em. And I'm pretty much 100 percent, without a doubt, totally certain that EVERYone who's ANYone will be glued to their tv's come February, positively captivated by a phenomenal, glittery, chiffony (slightly gay) spectacle. So I have decided to edu-mah-cate my friends and family on the oh-so-fabulous sport that is figure skating. That way ya'll be real good n smart n stuff when you're watching the BEST SPORT EVER come February.

First up in the lesson plan - Carolina Kostner, Italy

I saw Carolina for the first time at the 2003 World Championships in Washington D.C. It was my first worlds and I was a runner for ABC Sports. (it was an incredible experience) I was watching one of the early practices and there was this skinny little gazelle just flying up and down the ice. Her speed was incredible and her jumps (when she landed them) were HUGE. I remember thinking 'who in the world IS this girl?' At that time, I was pretty tapped into the world of figure skating and thought I knew all the top contenders.

In ladies figure skating (and men's and pairs) you do two programs, a short and a long. Where you place in the short determines when you skate in the long with the bottom ranked skaters going first and the top six going last. That way it's easier for the judges to rank you accordingly - saving their big scores for what should be the best skaters at the end of the competition. (In the short program, it's just a random draw for skate order.) Carolina did great in the short program, finishing in the top 6 - which meant that she would skate in the final flight of ladies.

Carolina's Short Program

Worlds was live that year and ABC was only planning on showing the top six ladies. Well, Sarah Hughes was also competing but had completely bombed her short program and ended up skating earlier in the night. This was the year following her surprising win in Salt Lake and she was sort of uncomfortably playing the role of 'media darling'. ABC was stuck with a tough choice - show this unknown Carolina (who was first up) OR go back and show Sarah Hughes program (who had rallied and put together an excellent showing in her long)

The choice was made to show Hughes during the warm-up and then still show Carolina's program so that the final six ladies were all seen. Because as Curt Gowdy Jr, the executive producer of the event, put in during the production meeting that day "what if this is the grand coming out party for this unknown skater from Italy and we miss it?" After watching her in practice all week, I was quietly nodding my head along in agreement - I really thought this was going to be a HUGE preview of great things for this girl.

Well - unfortunately, her long WAS exact preview of what we could expect from Carolina. Some beautiful moments, filled with a bunch of missed jumps. And cracking under pressure. And missed opportunity.

But Carolina will always be a sentimental favorite of mine because I will always feel like I "found" her. That's totally not anywhere near the truth, but in my fancy little imagination, I will always remember that I was impressed with her before anyone started chattering about her incredible potential at worlds in '03. She'll always be like that cool band you find at a dive bar in college and they go on to be Dave Matthews or something. (except Dave Matthews manages to make hits whereas Carolina.... well, she manages to hit the ice often enough I guess)

So the best part about being a fan of Carolina Kostner and why it'll always be exciting to watch her compete ..... Carolina is one fierce mess.

FIERCE

MESS

Her costumes are designed by Robert Cavalli and I'm sure a designer gown has never seen this much tragic action.

She also skates with perma-wedgie. Not sure why they've never addressed that little, err, issue ... you'd think it would be uncomfortable!

Carolina's skating is so incredible that people had a tendency to forget that she was a terrible competitor during most of her career (people have finally figured it out now) She managed to pull off an impressive third place at the 2005 World Championships.

So going into the 2006 Torino Olympics, she had a world of pressure on her shoulders to do well and repeat that effort. She was skating in her home country; she was even chosen as the flag bearer in the opening ceremony. The head of skating is Ottavio Cinquatto and it was generally believed that if she just stayed on her feet, she would for sure medal - that's how powerful his influence is on judging. (what, politics and scheming in figure skating?!?!? Never...... except for days that end in Y)

Her short program wasn't stellar, but also not terrible, but her long.... well, it had it's moments!!
Carolina's Olympic long program

You can just SEE the pressure on her face. You couldn't help but really feel for the girl (and you can hear the audience trying to carry her through this program.) I just adore this program though - I lovelovelove that open section where she hops on one foot across the ice. She's such a unique skater - if she could just harness her power... and nerves.... man, she'd be unstoppable.

Last year at Worlds, she had a so-so short program (again, love this program!) but just a disastrous long program. Possibly her worst ever. It'll be interesting to see how this performance and outcome effect her Olympic season. In 2006, she had all sorts of pressure on her because of her amazing world championships performance the year before.... in 2010, she'll have probably NO pressure because of her crappy worlds performance.

Maybe this will be a better situation for her mentally - going in with no expectations....

But whatever happens with Kostner, know that it'll be a wacky, crazy ride!

Canadian eh?

2009-08-28T20:29:00.003-04:00

Here's the thing that's awesome about my life - I have pretty much the greatest family ever. Not just my mom - I mean, that's a given, have you met her? Yea - she's pretty much awesome defined. But the rest of my family rocks. Just saying.

So my big news and why I totally need to pick up with blogging again (btw blog - I totally owe you an apology for all the gross neglect I've inflicted on you)

...... I'm working the 2010 Vancouver Olympics producing figure skating for nbcolymics.com! Same stuff that I did in Beijing except this time for my most favoritest sport EVER. Skating!!

Seriously?

Yes blog - seriously.

I know - I'm still blown away too.

I wrote a short little note sharing my news that I sent on to my mom to forward on to the family and sure enough - tons of extremely sweet emails came flooding back congratulating me and saying how excited they were. Very genuine, very sweet, very typical of all of them, to be honest.

Awesome family.

It's so important.

I am so lucky to have this opportunity to go to Vancouver (my SECOND once in a lifetime opportunity) but really - it kind of pales when compared with the luck of having such a wonderful family.

So family of mine - I thank you.

I am so blessed and lucky to have you.

8-08-09

2009-08-08T07:26:00.003-04:00

I can't believe it's been exactly one year since the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics. Watching this video gives me chills.

Opening Video

I still can't believe I was in China. That I was working the Olympics. It's just unreal.
(and I still totally tear up thinking about Nastia winning the gold medal.)

observation #42a

2009-06-30T09:06:00.000-04:00

Random thought for the day - I think that men tend to be more successful than women because men can be driven and dumb at the same time. It's hard to find a woman with that combination. And I don't mean dumb as in 'not smart' but dumb as in the ability to let stuff just roll off of you. Women think more than men. Life is difficult when you think.....

Robin Pettersen - yay!

2009-06-18T19:55:00.001-04:00

Check out this video featuring the amazing Robin Pettersen of UW-Whitewater. She was my mentor through college and played a huge role in giving me the confidence to get to where I am today. She really shaped my perspective on what it means to work hard and was a daily source of inspiration to me. Still is!
VIDEO

Where My Pitches At????

2009-06-16T21:37:00.003-04:00

Well, it was not a spectacular debut for 'Where My Pitches At' - in our opening game we lost 0-16. (and hey - if this was football, that'd be a respectable score!)

Sigh... at least we looked good.

I signed up for a co-ed softballl league a couple of months ago because it sounded like a fun way to spend Tuesday nights over the summer - hanging out with some people, enjoying a good natured American past-time, post game beers, matching t-shirts, etc etc etc. Good stuff! (ok, I signed up mostly for the t-shirt) Of course, before I signed up, I checked, double checked and triple checked that this league was NOT COMPETITIVE IN ANY WAY.

No, seriously.

NOT COMPETITIVE IN ANY WAY!!!!

I once had a fairly traumatizing experience with a touch football league in ny - a friend convinced me to sub for a game one saturday morning and I thought sure, why not - sounds like fun! Well, first of all the game was in Staten Island.... that should have been clue enough. It wasn't. I'm not very smart.

I get into the van (yea - a van picked me up, clue #2) and am immediately handed a playbook. Not just any old playbook - this thing is LAMINATED.

A laminated playbook.

Ohhhh yeeaaa, this game isn't going to be competitive at all!

I had to play because there have to be so many girls on the field and I proceeded to spend the whole game looking like a complete dork. The ten-hut would go, everyone would scatter to their assigned place, I would run to where I thought I was supposed to go and then just stand there and wave my arms to signal 'I'm open! I'm open!' while the person who was blocking me would stand right in front of me and just sort of look at me dumbfounded.

At the end of the game, someone from the other came up to me and said "good game." I was so totally relieved that it was over and thinking 'oh yea, maybe I didn't make a total fool out of myself!' ... I answered the person "oh, thank you!"

I completely missed the obvious fact that this person was simply stating the time honored tradition of chanting "good game, good game, good game, good game" to everyone on the other team.

D'oh!!!!

So, when the chance to play on this NOT COMPETITIVE co-ed softball league came up - I was understandably hesitant. I was convinced (promised) that it was just fun times.

Well - apparently the team we played tonight didn't get that memo as they packed mad skillz.

We got spanked.

BUT, we had an awesome cheering section - and by cheering, I mean drunk hecklers. We have pretty sweet baby blue t-shirts with our logo on it. (a dude swinging a bat that says "Where my Pitches At" on it - yes, sweet) So these drunkys in the bleachers (I think they were there for the other team but they might have just wandered in off the streets) I think they took pity on how terrible we were and they started cheering - good natured heckling - us. They had a lot of fun with the name (duh) and they also called us the "baby blues."

It's always fun to have fans - who cares if they're drunk and technically making fun of you.

Oh well, it's only uphill for the "Where my Pitches At" - I foresee a dramatic scrappy comeback story that will eventually be the inspiration for a Disney movie staring Bill Pullman.

my first tri - TRY HARDER!

2009-06-07T18:32:00.002-04:00

So this morning I did my very first triathlon. I signed up for it kind of on an impulse - I track all my workouts at this tri board and I absolutely love the people on this board. Just a seriously great group of people - and so I think I was kind of swayed by that sense of community. Also - if I'm being honest, I think my confidence got the better of me and I thought, ohhh, a sprint tri??? I can TOTALLY do that..... (.25 mile swim, 15 mile bike, 3.1 mile run)

Man - I AM DUMB

The following is basically taken from my race report on that board.....

Met up with buddy DJDavey at the Speedway in the mean streets of 'stally (west allis for those not fluent in djdavey speak).... traded bards, insults and general mockery and then we were off to Lake Mills.

So I got there, registered, walked around, got my bike set up, basically taking my sweet little time and then DOH!! Realized it was 28 minutes before my wave started and thought to myself - huh... I should probably put my wetsuit on and maybe get into the water to see what a lake feels like.
This was my first time swimming in open water, my first time wearing a wetsuit, my first time wearing a SWIM CAP.

Have I mentioned yet it was my first tri???

Oh
My
God.

I guess the best way to describe this is "wow" - I was very humbled by this whole experience. I did not expect it to feel this difficult at ALL. I signed up for this tri on an impulse 3 weeks ago and was traveling and crazy busy at work for the past two weeks. Apparently that combo makes it difficult to prepare for this sort of thing. I was thinking, oh, I just ran a half marathon a few weeks ago, I work out all the time - I'm fine.... no worries.... um, holy train FAIL!

Here's how my race went.

Took a dip before about 15 minutes before the race started, felt really good, very happy that the water didn't feel like an ice cube - generally felt fairly confident. I was totally wrecked the night before with nerves but standing in the water before the race started - I felt great.

All that changed rather quickly.

Wave started and I waded out, went freestyle stroke 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 - thought to myself, "man, it's funny that people hyperventilate on the swim" and GASP!!!! hyperventilated.

Totally, completely freaked out. I could not catch my breath, I could not settle myself down, I could not put my head in the water - heck, I couldn't even bring myself to put my ARMS in the water! Flipped over on my back and proceeded to backstroke the entire thing. Just kicking though. It was exhausting - I could not breathe at all. And could NOT turn back on my stomach - seeing the water freaked me out.

Had to grab on to the life boats 2 separate times, I was so freaked. Seriously contemplated having them haul my sorry a$$ in twice. Decided to tough it out and I guess I'm glad I did but wow.... That was honestly one of the scariest things I've ever done. And I normally consider myself fairly brave - but today I was a giant - well, insert your own choice word here. If you were on the course anywhere near me, you probably heard me audibly whimpering the entire time.

Yea..... humbling.

I was so mad coming out of the water and into transition, I don't even remember what I did. All I know is that I was THRILLED to be on land. As I ran out of the water, I must have been rockin some serious mad-face because as I see amyjo and craig - craig's yelling something on the bullhorn and as I approach, amyjo says something like 'are you ok?' and craig slowly lowers his bullhorn like 'don't disturb the beast' . I was MAD. sooooo MAD. stupid water.

I cheered up when I saw the other donkeys yelling and hollering - but I was mostly just running as fast as I could away from the water though - i didn't want it to catch me and make me swim in it again.

I actually felt kind of good on the bike - but I must have been pretty gassed because this was slower than I was on the duathlon a couple of weeks ago and i felt like I was pushing WAY harder today. I was still coughing up lake water and trying to catch my breath for the fist half of this. djdavey caught me at 27 minutes which frankly - shouldn't he have caught me earlier? I mean, really.....

Also - someone said 'hi stacey' to me about 3 or 4 miles in and I have no idea who it was (you were going to fast! which..argh! jealous) so hi back and who were you mystery man!?!?!?!

Oh - and my chain kept slipping but whatever. It was like my bike was saying 'yea, we're gonna go in THIS gear and YOU'RE just going to deal with it'.. yea, the bike made me it's b!tch today.

My feet were totally numb but I didn't feel too bad coming into the second transition. I kept thinking I was forgetting something to take on the run but hello - shoes, race number, clothes - what else do I need? Not sure what I thought I was missing (turns out it was my mo-jo).

What would I differently? Yea.... I would pack my mo-jo!

UGH. This run totally sucked. I felt like if I could just get through the bike and the swim, I would rock the run. NOPE. I was 100% gassed by this point. I think I held it together ok on the bike but I was spent by the time I got to the run. It was, how you say, being no fun. My legs felt awful - just no push at all. I stopped and walked a few times - the only thing that kept me from walking the entire first mile is knowing that djdavey was about to pass me as he came in on his last mile and I didn't feel like dealing with the death glare. (turned out he was so focused he wouldn't have even noticed - I'll remember that next time when I feel like walking!!) Of course, immediately after he passed, I think I walked for about 2 minutes.

Felt WAY better after the turn around though - FINALLY started getting some feeling back in my legs and was able to feel like I was actually running. Oy.

I think my crappy run had everything to do with the fact that I hyperventilated for about 14 minutes straight on the swim - I just had nothing left on the run. Soo.... yea, I should probably learn how to swim. because I'm kind of an ok runner.

After the race, I found the donkeys and hollered and yelled for the rest of the donks coming in - then I got really cold, realized I should probably put some dry stuff on.

Lesson learned - I am either never going to do a tri again OR I am going to spend all summer in a lake learning how to swim. Verdicts still out. Unfortunately, the people who do tris are WAY more addicting than the tri itself so I can see myself suffering through this again just for the fun afterwards.

And if you're into times (like I am!) my final time was 1:39

Peruse this!

2009-06-06T15:46:00.007-04:00

I was at Barnes and Noble this morning, enjoying a lovely time perusing the periodicals and java. Well, I more drank than perused the java. I'm not sure how you would peruse java. Since to peruse is "to examine or consider with attention and in detail" (I swear to god it is, look it up if you don't believe me! Go on, I dare ya! Yea, I'm talking to you Scott Kelly.)

Anyway... I was speaking of java. More specifically, I was perusing said java. Man - peruse is such a twinky word. I'm going to stop using it now. Peruse has been retired. Done, dead to me. Over. finit. Finished. I shall pursue a word to replace peruse.

(editor's note - this is where the ADD kicked in and a completely new train of thought was jumped on)
I spent a lot of time in edit this week banging my head on a keyboard watching aggravating, frustrating, non-working videos. (which, after much coaxing, did finally come around to the 'moderately awesome' stage) When I wasn't banging my head, I was watching the pinwheel of death while footage rendered. Rendering is the most aggravating part of working in video. In order for playback on a video to be clean, the footage has to be "rendered" - this can take anywhere from a minute to an hour. Sometimes it's an overnight thing. There's a little progress bar that charts the progress but that bar is a big fatty McFatHead liar - it will say 7 minutes, but really it means 45. It will say 1 minute, but really it means an hour. It builds hope and then crushes you like a beer can on a strongman's forehead.

I don't exactly know what I was doing when I made up this song but at some point during my stint in Cambodia, I mean, at my last job, this song got stuck in my head. Now every time I see the render progress bar, it pops in my head.

::ahem:: ::clears throat::

(Sung to the tune of the dreidel song )
Render, render, render
Oh render I will play
And when the render's ready
Oh video I will play

WITHOUT FAIL .... literally kids - EVERY SINGLE TIME I render, I sing this song in my head. Do you have any idea how many times a day I see that freaking render status bar? Do you realize how often I must sing that little ditty? They should make this goy an honorary Jew for the amount of times I shlep that schmaltzy song around in my head. I can kvetch with the best of em so I say bat mitzvah me up. (clearly my yiddish ain't too shabby either! thanks princeton!)

Speaking of kvetching... I was searching for music this morning and I love checking out people's imixes to get ideas for new stuff to listen to but holy cow! Some of the names those kids on come up with for their iMix titles! "White egg with nothing inside"... "Dead Flowers in Memphis" ... "Instruh Mental" (ooohh.. I get it!)
In my day we just labeled em Mix Tape #1, Mix Tape #2, Mix Tape #3.....

kids.... such smendriks

So today at Barnes and Noble, a book caught my eye and I burst out laughing in the middle of the store. It's always awesome to draw attention to the fact that you're a little nuts by belly laughing right by the self-help books.

This was the book - now settle in for story hour.

One night after work, back when I was at VH1, my friend Jill and I convinced our buddy Steve to come to Bennigans and have a drink with us. We loved hitting up the tourist crap bars in times square because they had the best happy hours. And they were usually relatively empty. I mean, seriously - who goes to TGIFriday's in Times Square? (answer - a shockingly huge amount of people..... why would you go to nyc and go to TGIFridays?? It makes no sense) But Jill and I had scoped out Bennigans which was on 8th and 48th-ish - just far enough off the times square madness but still a crappy chain with an awesome happy hour. Perfect for a quick "decompress" beer before heading home.

Our friend Steve hardly ever came out with us so this particular night jill and I were all happy that we finally dragged this dude out for a beer. We take him to Bennigans and figure we'd start there and see what ensued.

Almost right when we get to the bar, an older guy walks up to our table and tells us he's a producer from 20/20. He has a crew with him and hands us his card so we know he's legit. Plus, he has that tired old dinosaur look of an old timer news producer so we pretty much believed him without the cameras and business card. He asks Steve if he would play pool with this guy for a segment they were producing for 20/20 - Jill and I say it's cool if they take our friend as long as they buy us a round. They did and so we happily sent Steve off upstairs to play pool.

So Steve is playing pool with this guy, casually chatting with him, cameras are rolling, nothing much in terms of excitement though. Jill and I are chatting with the producer and he's telling us that his daughter did an internship with VH1 and it was the worst experience of her life. Apparently she had to transcribe a bunch of tapes and didn't get to go on a lot of shoots.... uh, yea dude - that's what being an intern is. He actually gave us his card with this almost sympathetic "if you ever want to get out of there" tone.

After a few beers, we look over and Steve is doing an interview with the producer and the guy he was playing pool with. We can tell they're breaking some sort of news to him but Steve is pretty much the coolest cucumber ever and barely even blinks.... the producer comes over and tells us that oh, btw, the dude your friend is playing pool is actually a chick. We're like, "yea and?"

Steve was completely not phased, Jill and I are like, whatever and the producer and camera crew are a little flustered because there's absolutely zero shock value at the "reveal" - by going to Bennigans they told us thought they would find bible thumping tourists from Kansas who would be simply shocked to find out that this he is a she and throw a fit on camera. Instead, they found 3 jaded new yorkers who couldn't have cared less if it was a turtle in disguise.

Turns out the he-she was a girl who had spent a year living her life as a man as research for this book she wrote called "Self-Made Man." 20/20 was doing a special on her - they were looking to gather "shocked" reactions. She must have had a pretty good press agent because we saw a lot of her in the following months. It was like - oh, there's that super boring chick from the bar!

I never read the book so I'm not sure what she discovered in her research but ummm... yea, isn't that sort of a dead horse? Women and men are treated differently. Also, a table has four legs and a dog barks. And Scott Kelly will hunt birds.

Of course, we never got Steve to come to Bennigans with us again. And sadly - they closed the place down shortly after.
Sigh.....
there goes one of nyc's greatest establishments (in the crappy cheap beer category!)

uuhhh....

2009-06-01T22:46:00.002-04:00

Tonight I mistakenly washed my face with moisturizer instead of cleanser.

That is all. I just had to share. Is it possible I'm tired? Nah... just blonde.

is that a real problem?

2009-05-29T22:01:00.002-04:00

Tomorrow, I run for vomit.

No, seriously - tomorrow I am running the 3rd Annual 5k Run/Walk to Stop the Cycle of Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome.

This is gonna be the best race shirt EVER.

my better is kreepy?

2009-05-29T07:44:00.004-04:00

I thought my obsession with Stacy Wall would end after my trip to LA but it lives on and on in the form of a song. I realize that written out, that admission is HIGHLY creepy. Actually - it's even creepy with a K. Kreepy. But there it is. I can not stop watching his Nike "My Better is Better" commercials and I can NOT get that song out of my head!

The song is "List of Demands" in case you too become obsessed and need to immediately download it into your music playing device.

"My Better is Better" commercial

After watching the commercial shoot for NM and the unbelievable minute detail that goes into every shot, I watch this Nike commercial with total awe now. I can not imagine how long it took to shoot this thing because for our commercial, we only had 2 sports, 1 "action" and that was a 3 day shoot. So with this - many different sports, a lot of different actions, talking.... oy. I hope someone brought my little mr wall a LOT of coffee because I would guess he didn't sleep for about a week during this shoot.

A commercial shoot is just a completely different beast - best worked on by extremely Type A personalities with a penchant for self inflicted misery.

And for more fun - memorize these lines and taunt your co-workers with them
My quick and my fast had a baby named McSpeedy

HOTlanta!!

2009-05-27T20:45:00.008-04:00

Ugh - HOTlanta indeed! I'm in Atlanta for a 3 day shoot this week and oh my... humidity much? It's not even all that hot, it's just humid. How do people live here but more importantly, how do the fancy ladies keep their hair from looking like koosh balls?

I totally forgot that southern ladies follow rules. Dress pretty, do your hair, do your make-up, don't swear, don't be crass, wear heels (even when walking the dog) etc etc etc. Sigh - being a fancy lady must be simply exhausting! Thank god I'm not a fancy lady.

sidenote: the "f" on my keyboard is taking a union break so if you see a word spelled 'uck' from me - go ahead and assume the worst.

Our interviews wrapped up at around 7 tonight and since the people here talk reeeaaaaalllllllyyy slowly, I decided that I needed to get a run in. So I headed out down a road named "Peachtree Road" per the suggestion of the long-winded concierge. I envisioned myself jogging happily along a shaded country road, perhaps snagging the occasional peach for hydration along the way. I mean, with a name like Peachtree Road, would you expect anything different?

My little country road was a 6 lane highway. No peaches in site. There were a lot of traffic cones and closed sidewalks. I guess the traffic cones were peach colored? Whatever - Peachtree Road FAIL!

And my legs just do not agree with the humidity. I was miserable for the first two miles and seriously contemplated turning around and crawling home like a defeated puppy (what do puppies get defeated at anyway? Croquet?) But then I saw something that changed my mind. I kept seeing signs for "Brookhaven" this and that. I was like hmm..... Brookhaven? Where do I know that name from? Sounds like a lovely name for a mental hospital. Maybe I could check myself in because I'm clearly nuts for continuing to run when I feel this crappy. And then it hit me - omg!!! Brookhaven!! As in the Brookhaven Obesity Clinic!?!?!?! As in that awesome show on TLC where the super obese people wearing moomoos check themselves into the super expensive fat clinic and then get their friends to sneak them KFC and then complain that they aren't losing any weight?? THAT Brookhaven? Dude! Reality show holy ground!

oh wait......

Ok. THIS is why I’m running. Because I don’t want to end up in the Brookhaven Obesity Clinic and with my very own TLC or Discovery channel special. I don’t want them to name a crane after me – as in, “tonight on TLC, a very special episode where we learn about a new crane that was developed to lift a woman who is now the size of three hippos. The crane will be named Nash and the dedication ceremony will be led by Roseanne Barr”

I got my mojo flowing after envisioning my TLC promo and started picking up the pace.

I couldn’t find my turn around but I did find a castle wall. I was like – DUDE! What is a castle wall doing here? Turned out I was passing the campus of Oglethorpe college. I have no idea what is at Oglethorpe college but the castle wall intrigued me so I took a little detour through the campus. Which – wow!!! Gorgeous! And the castle wall backed up to a baseball field. Ok, random, but super cool. The Georgia Shakespeare Festival was apparently going on so I decided to honor the muse and recite a few lines from the Bard. Macbeth, Hamlet, Midsummer’s Night Dream, Twelfth Night… of course, I don’t actually know any lines from Twelfth Night so I just hollered “12th Night! 12th Night!” a bunch of times and then was escorted off the campus by two men dressed in Barney the dinosaur outfits.

Ok, that last bit was a lie, but really, how cool would that have been to write about?

Oglethrope is also a really fun name to say. I would like to go to there. I would enjoy wearing a sweatshirt with the school name and just saying the name over and over.
Oglethorpe!
Oglethrope!
Oglethrope!

Is it like Beetlejuice where you say it three times and he appears? I wonder what an Oglethorpe is? I would guess a combination of accounting professor and squid.

Humidity has made me a bit loopy. I did have a flash of realization on my way back through Brookhaven that I probably wouldn't end up there - but only because I don't like KFC. I don't care how many coupons Oprah gives away for it.

So eventually (after an eternity) my run ended. I ran into my two camera guys as I was walking into the hotel driveway and they started heckling me from across the street hollering “Hey! That’s not running!” Just at that moment another girl ran right past me and they yell out “THAT’S running! And she’s beating you!” Ha – funny guys.

so far in LA....

2009-05-05T13:05:00.002-04:00

The universe has been very kind to me lately. I had asked it to send me deodorant and it did. I asked it for a trip to LA and it sent me a plane ticket.

The deodorant thing was pretty awesome - I was almost out and I showed up to bootcamp in the morning worried that I wouldn't have enough for work later on and poof - a woman arrives handing out samples from a giant box of exactly the brand that I would have bought! (dove cucumber clear if you're wondering what keeps me so fresh) So weird!

Similarly, I had asked the universe if it might, pretty please, send me to LA. I have been jonesing for a trip out to cali lately and my wish was granted in the form of a behind-the-scenes shoot this week.

But now the universe is playing terrible tricks on me because here I am in gorgeous LA (santa monica to be precise) and I have a cold/allergies like I haven't had in forever. My ears are on the verge of popping right off of my head - I think they want to go on a trip as well. I will not allow such trips. My ears need to stay on my head, thank you very much.

I have a half-marathon in 2 weeks and all I want to do is go for runs along the beach but noooo... the universe prefers me holed up in my hotel room, falling asleep at 4:30pm. So I am thinking that me and the universe need to exchange some words. I mean, that's awesome that the universe granted my two wishes, but really - why the mean taunting?

'Ok nash, you can go to LA but you're going to have to enjoy it from the vantage of your hotel window.' (I have an awesome view of the mountains so that's nice. Oh and there's a little baseball field below me so that's fun too. I watched a little last night and cheered on the team in the cuter uniforms)

Ok universe, you've had your little joke, now let me out! I'll bake you cookies or something! (crossing fingers the universe isn't familiar with my lack of culinary skills)

good obsessed

2009-05-02T08:17:00.003-04:00

Next week, I am heading out to LA for a shoot at the Trump national golf course and also at some giant stadium. The last time I was at a trump golf course, I got to interview the Donald. But this time, I get to interview Stacy Wall!!!! 'Stacy Wall? Who the heck is that?' Ahh..... he is my new obsession - and I mean that in a totally non-creepy way. Well, as non-creepy as an obsession with a person can be.

It's totally ok to be obsessed with inanimate objects, but the second that obsession moves onto something with opposable thumbs, well, then we're in creepy-stalker-ville.

Ok, so I rescind. I'm not obsessed. I am INTRIGUED. Highly...

So Stacy Wall is only the genius behind the most awesome commercial ever made EVER. One that spoke to my heart and soul. One that became part of my blood stream. One that I quoted for about a year.

The T-mobile cheeleader commercial!!

Those lines are now stuck back in my head and I would like to apologize to all the people that have to see me in the next few weeks as all conversation will be peppered with "can I like get a new battery?"

dear heart, you ain't worth that much

2009-04-05T15:21:00.004-04:00

I've been looking into getting a heart rate monitor lately. I like doing stuff with my heart and I would like to know how my heart feels about that. So a heart rate monitor seems like a good way to find out.

I came across this little doozy during my search...

Ok, so at $350, it actually does the workout FOR you, right? I know that there are GPS units out there that are like 7 thousand dollars or something but sheesh.... how much information do you really need in order to work out? (and let me say upfront that I fully expect to spend 350 in the near future on a fancy hr monitor/speed/gps thingy because I will succumb to the IWANTITNOWITISSOPRETTY monster.)

Another digression: that "I want it now it is so pretty" was submitted to my vocabulary by one cousin lynda via an email discussing purses. She improves my language skillz.

But getting back to Mr Fancy Watch. I wonder if it would do interval workouts or push-ups for me.... surely there's a button or setting for that, right? My "write clever stuff" button on my laptop is F7 so I'm assuming Fancy has something similar.

Conan and Bloomberg r like 2 peas in a pod

2009-04-03T19:43:00.004-04:00

I'm a huge Conan O'Brien fan even though I hardly ever watch his show anymore. A) past my bedtime and B) john stewart is currently bogarting my DVR storage.

The thing is that with Conan, you don't need to be a consistent watcher to know what's up or what's going on. It's kind of always the same. And I don't mean that in a negative way at all - it's just that his style of comedy is consistent. Consistently comfortable. Consistently silly. Consistently easily digestible.

I had recorded Inside the Actors Studio from forever ago when he was on and I finally got around to watching it. He had a line that made me pause the recording, contemplate it for a second and then race to grab a pen and paper to jot it down because it was so simple but so true. And my refrigerator likes quotes. (and that adorable picture of Demitri Martin currently gracing the freezer)

He said: "Nobody really knows what they're doing. And there's two ways to go with that information. One is to be afraid. And the other is to be liberated. And I choose to be liberated."

Ok, not exactly earth shattering new logic but it struck a chord with me.

My other favorite quote is one from Mayor Bloomberg that hung next to my bed forever. When he said this, he was at a fashion awards show of all places - the CDFA addressing Proenza Schouler if you're interested - and he said: "Don't listen to anyone. Because if you truly are innovative, no one is going to think you're doing it right."

Those two go together like a glorious, well crafted, PB&J sandwich.

Because it's so true. If you really are doing something new, different and innovative, it's going to feel completely wrong at first. And that's a really hard emotion to work through. We're such cows in that way. And by cows, I mean, sheep. Except it seemed funnier to write 'cows.'

Anyway - our herd mentality is why there aren't more geniuses in the world and tis a damn shame.

the secret ingredient

2009-03-29T21:30:00.002-04:00

I have a relative who's name I will not name for the safety and sanity of all family members related to him. However, this mystery man's initials rhyme with SAG or BAG or HAG or CRAG for those of you that like guessing games.

The relative has a strange culinary shall we say, fondness, for making casseroles. His casseroles are legendary. Not because they're good ... er.... ok, well that's kind of rude but really - they're not always that good. Let's just throw the cards on the table bearing the weight of the casserole and be honest. They are always filling. And satisfying. And fill space in the stomach. But really, the best part about the casserole creation is the time you spend trying to figure out just what the heck is on your fork.

If your family ever struggles for compelling dinner time conversation, I highly recommend a casserole.

Over the Christmas holidays he treated us to one of his special casseroles and there was much lively discussion concerning what had made it into this particular one. It was.... um, well - it was mostly edible.

Today - mystery revealed! The secret ingredients were... may I have a cyber drum roll please....

Bison

Goose

Potato chips

and......

Baklava

the 3 letter word

2009-03-29T10:14:00.005-04:00

I'm kind of obsessed with the word "fat" right now. It's one of those words that has an immediate, jaw dropped reaction. If you jokingly call someone "fat" - the person you said it to might get the joke but the people standing around will inevitably get that "omg, did she just say that? Is this cool? Should we be laughing too? ok, hehehe, yea, fat, haha, funny, omg, I'm so uncomfortable I think I just peed my pants a little..." well, you know what I mean.

It has a punch in the stomach kind of reaction. It's truly one of the worst insults you can fling at someone because it's so base and raw. Ugly, whatever. Jerk, who cares. Butt nugget, right back at ya. Fucktard, well that's just silly.

But FAT. ouch. That one stings.

Because how many people look in the mirror every morning and say that to themselves? I'm sure there's some people out there who can brush their teeth without looking at their stomach and sighing. (And whoever they are, I totally am forming a club against them. Scott Kelly, I'm looking at you.) But the majority use "fat" as that horrible self-hating word you throw at yourself. And I don't know - maybe I'm just speaking for myself here. But the reaction that I see when that awful 3 letter word drops has me thinking that I'm probably not the only one.

There's such shame associated with it. When you're a smoker and you get called a smoker, yea, it's not like it's a compliment, but it's an identity. When you're a fatty and you get called a fatty - why is it such a jolt? It's almost like the 'n' word - its only ok if I call myself that word.

It's too bad there's such a deep, intense emotional connection to that word. Diets might actually work if we didn't all freak out at the sound of the word "fat".

And the Oscar goes to....

2009-02-22T07:48:00.002-05:00

I haven't seen a movie in almost a year. Not sure how that streak happened but now I'm kind of proud of it. What I'm NOT proud of is the fact that my last movie was "27 Dresses." I wish it had been a really, really awful flick - then when people would ask why I've been a movie starvation diet, I would respond with something snobby like "well, my palette has simply been ruined, I'm afraid." As it is, 27 Dresses is neither terrible nor awesome so I'm left with no excuse other than I just don't care to go to movies anymore. How common.

Anyway - in honor of my non-movie-going streak... Oh wait, no, actually this is in honor of the ceremony that will mean absolutely nothing to me tonight. Actually, that is untrue as well for surely I will have several snarky, rude and unnecessary remarks regarding the fashion. If only I was a good person totally above commenting on someone else's choices. Ha - that will happen the fifth of never.

ANYWAY....

I am really getting off track today. The whole point of this was to make everyone watch the BEST Oscar acceptance speech ever.
Watch it!!!! (and then try it!)

Men in tights

2009-02-15T10:50:00.005-05:00

I continued my weird running streak yesterday with an 8k in the snow. Ok, well, technically it had stopped snowing, but it was still blowing off the trees making it at least appear to be snowing. It was actually quite gorgeous. Very Norman Rockwell-esque. I kept waiting for santa to hand a coke to a small boy in suspenders.

That, surprisingly, did not happen. Instead of small boys in suspenders, there were tall skinny men wearing tights.

It's weird that the one place men can get away with wearing tights is running outside along the road. Well, that and a pride-fest parade.

Yesterday was Valentine's Day. And also what would have been my dad's 60th birthday. I probably would have said something along the lines of "dude, you're OLD!" and I'm sure there would have been an equally smart reply. But wow - 60. He was 37 when he passed away and as sick as he was when he died, it's hard to imagine him as anything other than the vital, energized and exuberant man he was. I'm sure he'd still be kicking it on the tennis court, playing basketball and organizing everything for everyone.

Whenever events or reminders of my dad happen, it never fails that I hear Phil Collins "Take Me Home" at some point during the day. This was one of my dad's favorite songs and I remember asking my mom what the story was behind the song a few years after he died. She told me that there was one day where she was walking with him in the hospital and as they passed the nurses station this song was playing. He stopped and asked my mom to wait so he could listen to the song finish. I would guess that was his theme song - maybe even his fight song - during those long stays.

Sure enough - I heard that song yesterday enjoying some beers with friends at Mo's Irish Pub. I'm guessing my dad was pretty proud of my 8k time ... Or more likely - he was thinking I should have ran faster ;)

but hey - 43:10, ya know, not bad ... but I probably will be faster next time.

phew

2009-02-08T20:40:00.000-05:00

Last night I lost a sock.

But then I found it this morning.

Numbering my confusion

2009-02-01T21:16:00.002-05:00

Ok, so truth time.

I don't actually keep a running list of things that confuse in numbered order. I just pick random numbers.

I know. Appalling that I would blatantly lie.

But imagine my surprise just now when I realized that I had picked the number 23 twice! What gives 23? Why did you pop into my head again? You're not my favorite number. Your neighbor 24 is one of my favs - but 23? I have no special feelings for you. I'm sorry to be so blunt and harsh but it's true. You're just a number. A number that I have to pass over in order to get to 24.

If I was the kind of person who examined dreams or read tea leafs I would be totally fascinated by my whole picking the number 23 thing twice. But the reality is I'm not - I just find it amusing and I like to write about amusing stuff.

However, I'm still intrigued and I may have to rethink this number 23 thing... I think I'll give it a trial run as my favorite number and see how it goes.

So number 23, you and me is officially courtin!

#23 on the list of things that confuse me

2009-01-31T13:24:00.003-05:00

Celine Dion

On so many levels.

First of all - Celine Dion is without question the worst dancer in the universe. So how does it work that the best choreographer in the universe, Mia Michaels ends up working with her? In her Vegas show A new brand new day something new day I don't know what the title is it doesn't matter she confuses me anyway whatever... ack, stop. ok.

So Mia Michaels is brilliant. Celine Dion is not. (although I grudgingly will admit that's debatable) Mia surrounds Celine with some of the best dancers in the world and manages to make Celine look good. Thought about logically, it should be the other way around. However, since we have already established that Mia Michaels is brilliant, it TOTALLY works. She manages to make Celine's horribly awkward movements appear quirky and deliberate. Genius.

Side bar - I ALWAYS spell genius wrong. Always. Crap.

Back to Celine. How does she get her voice to warble like that? Why is it that her hair always seems to have movement to it? Is she is followed around by a giant portable fan? Why does she always close her eyes when she is singing? Why does her arm always raise up in the air like that? What is she pointing at? Does she have any idea how crazy she looks?

Ok - but all that said - why is it that whenever her Vegas show is on, I always seem to accidentally find it and accidentally leave it on? I really, really want to hate on Celine Dion but I can't! It's like trying to scold an orphan who spits on your shoe. You know you should tell that orphan off and teach him a lesson but you go to do it and 'awwww, but he's an orphan!' and D'Oh! foiled! That's me and Celine.

God help me but when I hear "To love you more" I don't even fight the urge to grab my chest and sing passionately along - and then when the music stops for that one hot second and then comes in all big again. Sigh. Magic.

Damn you Celine!

there is such a thing as too direct....

2009-01-15T13:41:00.002-05:00

One of the things that I love about Wisconsin is the straight talk approach that many people take. No fuss, no filler – maybe a little too nice sometimes, but for the most part, honest and straight forward.

However.

When it comes to marketing strategies, I am usually a fan of having a little bit of – er, mystery. A bit of élan. A touch of class, perhaps.

Every day I drive past this company in its little strip mall. And every day I cringe when I see the sign by the side of the road.

Baby Preview.

Do you know what Baby Preview does? Can you take a wild guess? Yes. They are an ultrasound company.

You literally get a preview of your baby.

Or maybe even someone else’s baby. Hey, why not convince a preggers to come in and take some glamour shots inside her lady business? Really, whatever flips your pancakes. Because from this delicate name, we’ve clearly established that this joint is nothing if not elegant and sophisticated.

Now come on Baby Preview – isn’t there any other way to establish your core competency without punching me in the face?

The Ukraine disapoints me.

2009-01-03T22:37:00.004-05:00

It's never easy to be a gymnastics fan - your favorites are always either growing and quitting or becoming head cases or blowing it at crucial moments or just plain sucking when they're supposed to be rocking. However, being a fan of Ukrainian gymnastics is particularly painful. Like, stab self in stomach painful. This team used to be known for quality and innovation but now the most innovating thing about the Ukraine is the way it constantly manages to find new and exciting ways to disappoint it's fans.

The country that gave us these talents....
Lilia Podkopayeva
Tatiana Lysenko
Alina Kozich
Tatiana Gutsu
....to name only a few (the few that I felt like looking up and could remember how to spell their darn names)

Has now given us THIS....

Mega sigh

Perhaps she was a bit rattled because she did just come off the uneven bars where she did THIS...

But in case you were wondering what kind of progress she's made lately.... WELL... (make sure you catch the end, it's er - spectacular?)

It's just so sad to watch a country with that much history and some truly talented gymnasts flop around with falls, head cases and just plain stupid mistakes. This is a team that has the ability to place in the medals every time but it's like they hold a team meeting before every big competition and say "ok guys, how should we totally blow it THIS time???"
Can you guys PLEASE stop having that meeting?

I think I have a new name for the Ukraine - "Ughkraine"
(clever huh?)

The return of Lord Prissy Pants

2009-01-03T09:21:00.005-05:00

The good news is that Lord Prissy Pants has returned to his family. The bad news is that he's currently frozen to the ground.

Am working towards undertanding how my little gnome could have ended up in said position.

Clean family fun

2008-12-23T19:15:00.004-05:00

My mom is one funny lady... but sometimes I have to admit I'm simply shocked by her potty humor.

Case in point: My mom is staying with me through the holidays and Monday morning was the first time she's been at my place in a very long time. Knowing that the smallest little misfire can send her headfirst into a wild uncontrollable satanic-like fury, I decided to leave her a VERY sweet, VERY helpful little note reminding her that my coffee pot has a tendency to spill so pour over the sink. How awful would it be to be trying for a simple cup of coffee and wind up spilling half a pot all over the counter and floor? It would not be a fun way to start the trip! So clearly - I was looking out for her best interests.

Me = good daughter. Possibly best ever.

Here is the note with the response my mother left me....

The note says "Remember to pour coffee over the sink - it drips"

The kindly motherly response was "Remember to NOT poop your pants!"

And people wonder where I get it from...

Aw, mom - she's one of kind, that lady.

Goose?

2008-12-20T17:39:00.005-05:00

I would just like to let everyone know, in case there were any questions or queries floating around in your brains right now.... that in fact, I am NOT roasting a hand-plucked goose for Christmas.

Just wanted to clarify that in case there was any concern, fear or wondering.

You're welcome kitchen.

Snow day! Has anyone seen my garden gnome....

2008-12-19T10:49:00.004-05:00

YAY!! SNOW DAY!!!! I don't think I've experienced a full blown snow day in ... oh man.... FOREVER. I never had a true snow day in nyc - the one day it did dump a few years back, it was a saturday and then it just doesn't matter. It's like being given a pair of baby blue cashmere mittens and you live in Bermuda. Nice gesture but completely useless.

I have these little bobble head garden gnomes that live on my porch. I have three of them, but right now only two are living here. I believe the third one has taken a trip.... or perhaps - and it pains me to admit this - but perhaps he was gnome-napped. I prefer to believe he's just on holiday. It's easier than thinking of my little gnome being tortured by gnome-haters somewhere out there in the big scary world.

If you see my little gnome, please tell him I miss him. He carries an ax and goes by the name Lord Prissy Pants.

little promo thingy

2008-12-18T20:39:00.003-05:00

I threw together a little promo for the boot camp I've been attending to help them promote their January sessions... (hit the "watch in high quality" button - it's better that way)
Link

the instructor in the blue shirt that's talking is the sandi that I refer to every once in awhile in this blog... notice how she seems super sweet and nice?? Yea - she APPEARS totally harmless. Be not deceived my friends.

be not deceived....

Like my cameo? I interviewed myself. That was way too easy... Like I don't spend half my days talking to myself anyway... I catch myself gesturing madly in my car sometimes as I argue with myself or explain to myself the events of a previous day. I wonder what that means?

I plead "only child syndrome"

my car tells me secrets

2008-12-15T18:06:00.002-05:00

When I moved to Milwaukee, one of the things I was most excited about was the prospect of having a brand new car. Driving to work sounded like the most lavish luxury in the world after years of holding my nose on the subway. Now granted - me loves the subway at night when I'm drunk and it takes me home and I don't have to drive anything, but in the morning.... on my way to work... seeing feces is SO not fun. Which - weird, right? You'd totally think that would be party central time.

One of my favorite things about my car is it talks to me and tells me secrets. Like when the temperature drops below 39 degrees, a little ding warns me to bundle up and drive slower. When I have a flat tire, a lovely icon (that took me a few weeks to figure out what it meant) tells me I'm low on air. (I - on the other hand - am NEVER short on hot air. Ways me and my car are different) But the absolute best part is that it tells me when I'm down to a drop of gas. Which, unfortunately, is VERY helpful. I have not yet noticed when I'm low on gas until that helpful little light comes on.

How did I get so neglectful in the gas department? (snicker....) I am a fairly smart girl but my total disregard - unintentional disregard, but disregard still - for filling up my tank confuses me. I am so reliant on my car just telling me what it needs that I never bother to stop and ask it how it's feeling.

Dear car - how is everything today? Happy? Blue? Anything I can do for you?

But no - I just take, take, take from my car.

Car - I am sorry. I love you and your four wheels and your heated seats and your windshield wipers and your ipod dock. You make me very happy and I promise, from now on, to try and return the favor by filling up your gas tank without having to be reminded.

In an unrelated note - I am totally addicted to this boot camp thing I've been doing on and off since September. I got pretty much annihilated by Sandi, the "drill sergeant" this morning. We did sprints and all of a sudden Sandi is right behind me, chasing me, yelling "don't let me catch you!!!"

Let me tell ya - she did not catch me. She blames her shoes. I'm subscribing to the theroy that I was just wicked fast this morning. Hear that Sandi!! I was wicked fast this morning! HA!

(I'm sooooo gonna pay for that comment in the near future - but bring it on!)

The fun part about bootcamp is that I have noticed that my energy levels are out of control high lately - and I normally maintain a fairly high eneregy level so for me to say they're "high".... um, you've been warned. I also just signed up for a half marathon in May and I'm crazy excited about training for it.

What in the world has happened to me?????

Not all games and fun

2008-12-11T21:57:00.004-05:00

I mainly enjoy my job but filming long days is not all fun and games. I enter as evidence this incredibly heated conversation that recently occurred during a shoot in Richmond, VA. Proof that my job is nothing by stress-ville metropolis.

(actually - it may build a solid case for job-induced insanity....)

What's that on your foot?

2008-11-29T06:57:00.004-05:00

Thanksgiving at 54 Maidenhead.....

Mom: (looks over at Steven and sees a huge red gash) Oh my god, Steven! Did you cut your foot?

Steven: (looks down at foot confused, tests the gash by tasting it) No, that's just cranberry sauce.

Cafe Borgia! It's where we always go!

2008-11-24T20:24:00.007-05:00

Today I spent time with 3 of my favorite human beings on the planet (behind my mom of course - and some other awesome people). Todd, Sonja and Jake. We worked together at a place that was 'more like Cambodia than you'd think' and formed a bond that I will forever be grateful for. These three people make me very, very happy - but mostly I'm thankful that I'm not nearly as ugly as Todd because that boy has one hideous mug.

Today we were walking along and we noticed a store across the street that was called "Big Bags". Todd said I should I go in and ask for the smallest bag they have. Sonja then nudges us all and goes "look, it's Chris Noth!" We turn and look and holy crap - there's Mr Big! Except he's looking surprisingly haggard... and hungry. If I'd had a sandwich, I would have handed it to him.

The four of us walk past him nonchalantly trying not to stare and also trying to find adjectives to describe his appearance when Todd says "Mr Big went to Mr Big Bags"

ahhhh....... awesome.

Later we were walking through soho trying to find a place to sit down for coffee - we're walking forever and finally I'm like, Todd, where are we going? And he says in his best bronx/Guido accent - "cafe Borgia! it's where we always go!"

I can't explain it except to say that we never go to cafe borgia.

A French guy sat down next to Sonja and asked her where to find the statue of the lady with ten pairs of boobs. He was French. He mentioned that he was French. I think we would have figured it out anyway.

Oh - and Jake knew where to find the multi-boob statue.

Sonja ordered tea but service in soho isn't always what you call A+.... she got the tea, but no water. (I suggested she simply suck on the bag)

Earlier in the day I was having a very special moment of realization when all that is wonderful in new york hit me like a train and I thought to myself, why in the world did I ever leave this place?

Five seconds later I hit a patch of ice and fell flat on my ass in the middle of fifth avenue.

I now have a giant swollen very ouchy bruise on my elbow.... oh lady manhattan, you wretched evil whore.

made em cry

2008-11-18T17:38:00.003-05:00

I keep a tally at work of the people that I make cry.

Not in the mean way like I punched them in the face or I called them slutty trannies.

It's on a blue post-it and it refers to someone crying either during an on-camera interview or if they cry during showings of videos I've produced. I'm very proud of that tally. It means I moved someone or I helped someone reach an intense place. If someone cries on me, it's my own personal gold star.

....Today I made someone blush though and let me tell ya - that was just as fun! Normally it's pretty easy to shock and surprise people at work ... ok, well, basically I open my mouth here and I shock and surprise. But blush? That's not a normal reaction for me. Since, ya know - I'm so innocent and sweet and shy and all.

Things I feel ok about.

2008-11-11T15:49:00.004-05:00

I stole a banana from the cafeteria today and I feel ok about that.

Running towards beer

2008-11-09T15:40:00.003-05:00

Anything that ends with beer is pretty much guaranteed to be a good time. Especially coupled with the words "micro-brew" and "lasagna". (doesn't lasagna end with an 'e'?? Why is spell checker hating on me and telling me to end it with an 'a'? Screw you spell checker, except not really because I prefer to spell good)

Yesterday I went to boot camp in the morning; it was a 90 minute-er so I was prepped to get my butt kicked well and good and then spend the rest of the day recovering. As I'm dragging my very heavy backback from my car (did you know that putting weights in a backpack make it REALLY REALLY heavy? yea - weird) Sandi's husband Travis begins to taunt me by telling me about the race they're doing today and how if I did it, I would probably 'accidentally' do the half marathon (reference) HA. HA. HA. soooooo funny.

But then he said the magic words. BEER and LASAGNA. (ok, seriously - lasagna is a very difficult word to spell. Haven't gotten it right yet.)

I was in.

Ok, but on the reals - I was totally convinced after the mild taunting.

Damn me! So easily influenced!

The run pre and post activities were very fun - the run itself was completely miserable. 4.3 miles (a 1/6th barrel, marathon, ahh, so many meanings my head hurts - just tell me when the damn thing is over!!!!) Seeing as how I normally run 5 miles (when I actually run which lately hasn't been too often) and how 2 weeks ago I managed to complete a 15k, I should have been able to at least gracefully finish. Maybe not SMOKE the course, but at least look pretty at the end. Um, no. There is no looking pretty. There was discussion after the race that if only your running pants could at least TELL you that you look pretty - how awesome would that be? Can you imagine, you're huffing and puffing as you reach the 3/4 point in a run and from below your knees comes a sing song voice saying "oooh stacey, your hair has such a delicate golden glow today." Wouldn't that just feel amazing?

Anyway....

It was freezing, it was raining, it was windy, it was in Lake Mills.

Oh - and I had also done boot camp in the morning. I guess that made me tired? DUH. I swear to god - I've gotten a little dumb since moving to wisconsin. I guess not having to daily fend for my life by dodging taxis, homeless people, messengers, crappy bosses and rats has made me a bit slower.

But then the race was finally over and yay!!!! Warm tent! Beer! Lasagna dinner! Super awesome people! The running community is a new one to me and I have to say I totally get why people get addicted - the run is a high, but omg - the people freaking rock! It's like getting a gift and then another gift! Or - if you're AIG, it's like getting bailed out and then bailed out again!

(that Alanis Morrisette song just popped in my head for some reason - it's like Raaaii-ee-ain on your wedd-eeeee-ing day. It's a freee-eeeeee riii-ide and you've already paid.) Except that my point was not like that at all. totally different.

My point - I sort of love running now.

Thanks for the taunting!!

things that confuse me

2008-11-03T21:19:00.002-05:00

#23 on the list of things that confuse me are adults that carry rolling backpacks to work.

You know - I see these people get out of their cars parked all of a block away from the front door at work, they pull their little wheeled bags out of their cars and then roll them into work and up the escalator and then into the elevator and then down the hall, all 15 steps. What in the world could you possibly be carrying in that bag? 14 twenty pound weights? A set of Brittanica Encyclopedias? A fat midget? My favorite is seeing the bags get twisted and don't roll properly and they tussle with the bag because it's so dang light it can't even roll properly.

Lazy sacks.

The Rock that was Castle

2008-10-30T10:28:00.011-04:00

Yesterday we were scheduled to finish up our shoot around 3ish and had decided that we would try and get some hiking in afterwards. But it was 3 and we had driven away from the mountains for the location so we were trying to figure out where to go and how to fit in maximum fun-mountain-y time with only 3 hours of daylight left over.

The people we were interviewing recommended this place called Castle Rock and without really asking a lot of questions (that one’s on me) we headed off to find it. They had said there was some climbing and a bluff and a castle that was shaped like a rock. I mean, that’s all I need to spell out a good time.

I didn’t really know how to get there so I just started driving down a highway (with vinnie and rich following) and then when we got to the tollbooth, I asked directions. Oops – needed to be going south, not north. Gotcha. Turn around, pay the toll again.

So we drive for awhile, we’re not really seeing anything, getting a little discouraged but feeling mavericky and discovery. Annmarie was playing cracked out dj, flipping the station every 5 seconds in order to fully engage our rocking out abilities over a wide spectrum of musical choices.

We finally reach the town of Castle Rock and smack in the middle there’s just this random giant rock. We circled the thing twice to figure out if this was the actual Castle Rock and then circled two more times to figure out how the heck to even walk up it. It was basically a bluff with a rock – we had just driven almost an hour to find this darn thing and this is it??

Whatever, we’re here, let’s do this thing.

We were wearing far more appropriate footwear this time.

We park and start walking up and it’s a nice walk, nothing fancy - and then we start feeling a little frisky. First of all, Vinnie decided that he wanted to grab the camera so he runs back down to the car but tells us not to wait because we’re girls and we’re slow and he’ll catch up before we reach the top.

So that prompted Annmarie and me to start running. We came to this little cut off that was pretty steep but was also kind of sandy and slippery. Annmarie climbed up it first and we took some pics and then I ended up scrambling all the way to the top of it for some unknown reason and of course felt all proud of myself. Like – REALLY proud of myself.

Little did I know that little climb was just the tip of the iceberg for the day...

So we all make it to end of the path eventually; there’s not really anyone around so we’re not quite sure what people do up here. We can see the top of the rock way above us, but there’s no clear way on how to get up there.

Maybe it was the mountain air that was making us high, maybe it was just that we were all feeling great because this shoot has been so easy or maybe we all just went a little crazy because we’re all a little crazy. Whatever it was, Vinnie started scaling the rock to get to the top and one by one, we all followed suit.
It was incredible.

And holy crap!!! We scaled a giant freaking rock!

At first Vinnie went up and I followed him up but then kind of chickened out because I couldn’t figure out for the life of me how I would get back down. (my first attempt)

So I come down and Rich goes up after Vinnie. Annmarie and I kind of stand there trying to figure out how we’re gonna join in the fun too when Vinnie starts heckling us to climb up by saying “there’s like a THOUSAND people up here!”

Sure enough, this pack of high school kids appear at the top of the rock to climb down. Two of the girls are wearing flip-flops – which, talk about inappropriate footwear! I made a crack about the flip-flops being very silly to wear while scaling a mountain and the girls just kind of smirked at me.

That is until she broke her toe on the way down!

We were climbing up when we heard some commotion right below us and sure enough, she had caught her toe, bent her nail back and broke her big toe because of the flip flops getting caught on the rock. Vinnie and Rich, being all chivalrous and stuff, immediately climbed down to help her. It was such a typical high school scene. Her girlfriends were all concerned and the bonehead boys she was with just stood there looking dumb and being very unhelpful.

Annmaire and I decided to follow the bonehead boys suit and leave the ER scene behind us. We climbed right up to the top .. ALL BY OURSELVES!

Omg – totally worth it. It was just stunning. We decided to celebrate with a few yoga poses.

And then being total video geeks, we proceeded to take a slew of pictures to document our journey…. And create more awesome album covers.

Ok - so going down was way scarier than climbing up....

Who knew Castle Rock would actually rock?!?!

On a separate note, earlier in the day, we took a lunch break during our video shoot and Vinnie tried to convince us that there such a thing as a blueberry shake. Annmaire wasn’t buying it.

Me Heart Denver

2008-10-27T20:42:00.009-04:00

I'm in Denver for the week shooting a series of interviews for work. I've actually never been to Colorado so I was extremely stoked. I haven't been out west since I left Sun Valley, Idaho over 6 years ago.

6 years... man, it's amazing what changes in 6 years!

I love the mountains. I love the mountains so much I want to marry them. Me and the mountains are heading off to Vegas and we're a gonna get hitched at the Elvis chapel of the bells. I get to be Elvis though, I'd look way fly in a cape.

After our shoot on Monday, which, btw was easy like Sunday morning, me, my client Annmaire and my crew decided to head up into the mountains to check out Red Rock amphitheater. We were planning on just walking around a bit and maybe buying some crap at the store since my legs were still a bit sore (ok, lots sore) and Annmarie was wearing heels. Totally inappropriate footwear for the mountains but my adorable gold flats weren't much better.

But the camera dudes being macho dudes decided to run down to the bottom of the ampitheater - probably wanted to 'feel' the acoustics' or something similarly male.

Annmarie and I sat at the top of the theater all princess-y and superior and watched for a bit and then finally got super jealous and ran down to the bottom to join in the fun too.

One in heels and one with a bum leg. Very rock star of us.

There was some blatant rule breaking going on at Red Rocks.... damn hippies.

Mile High stadium is a very distracting stadium. I have a GPS and the british lady who talks to me from it rarely leads me astray. But apparently Denver confuses her and she keeps giving me the wrong directions. For some reason though, those wrong directions always happen to occur when we're admiring the stadium. I have now made about 4 wrong turns (in all of 2 dys) right by that stadium.

Damn you and your distracting wavy forms!

2008-10-26T07:27:00.002-04:00

In the shocking news category ... after yesterday's awesome error, my legs are sore!

I even took an ice bath yesterday to help the legs and in further shocking news, an ice bath is really, really cold.

the accidental awesome runner

2008-10-25T18:55:00.006-04:00

So this morning I accidentally ran a 15k.

Let's start at the beginning.

My super cool trainer, Sandi, had told me about a 5k coming up that sounded fun. It ended at the Milwaukee Ale House, so by 'sounded fun', I mean it sounded WAY fun. I tried to convince some other people to run with me but my convincing powers were on hiatus. I was going to try and meet up with Sandi before the run, but it was going to be kind of disorganized and crazy at the start so we knew that might be hard - no problem, we'd run into each other at the Ale House, and really, that's the most important part.

So the race begins and it's disorganized and crazy, just as expected. There's a dude hollering into a megaphone about the bag drop and the starting time and the turn-off for the 5k and I kind of vaguely hear it but I'm not really listening because sometimes I forget that directions are helpful for a reason.

The race begins and I crank the tunes on my ipod - jamming to the Killer's 'Human' and Chris Brown's 'Forever', a little britney spears, a little t-pain. I was aiming for a time of 27 minutes for the 5k - I love to run, but I'm not very consistent with it. I don't ever try and pace myself. I just run and see how fast I can go and then I get tired and I walk and then I say to myself, run, dummy! and so then I run and then I get tired and I walk. See a pattern? The first 5k I ran a few weeks ago, I got a time of 28:28 and me being a bit crazy, decided that I would try and beat that time by 1:30. 27 just sounded like a fun time.

About a half mile into the race, there's the great fork in the road. Pretty much everyone was going straight. When I went to pick up my race packet, everyone was in the 5k line so I assumed that the 5k was the popular route - the prom queen of the race. So there was some logic behind my mistake. I heard a girl in front of me ask the guy with the orange flag which way the 5k was and he pointed straight. Well, apparently, my headphones filter "15" into "5" - I went straight and holy crap - did you know that a 15k is way farther than a 5k?

Yea, who knew!?!

It wasn't until we got to the 3 mile mark that I realized my mistake. We just kept running farther away from downtown - I kept thinking, hmm... maybe there's a shuttle? Maybe there's another Milwaukee Ale House? Didn't occur to me that I was in the 15k route until I passed the 3k sign and heard no joyous yelps for the finish line.

HOLY CRAP!!! I'M RUNNING A 15K?!?!?!?! I've never run farther than 6 miles!

Ok, frick - what do I do? I could turn around, but I'm already 3 miles away so I'd have to run back 3 miles anyway - what's another 3? There's all these other people doing it - hey, there's a 90 year old woman running! Well, dang - surely I can do this too.

So I just decided that I was going to run this darn 15k and FINISH this darn 15k. There were about 3 places along the way that I could have jumped off the course and taken a shortcut to the end, but all I could think of was, oh man - Sandi will be so proud if I actually finish this! And I'LL be so proud if I finish this!

But mostly I'm crazy stubborn and I hate failing at anything so I just kept running.

Which was really awesome when my knees starting to hate me... and was also awesome when my Achilles starting screaming obscenities at me.

Dude, I'm such a moron. Apparently, you are supposed to TRAIN for a run like this.

I finished under 1:30 - ok, only by 5 seconds, but still!! I had made my goal of 27 minutes for the 5k - right before my life flashed before my eyes as I realized my mistake. I had been hauling and super smugly passing all these other runners somewhere around the 2 mile mark. Well, all those runners just as smugly passed me around the 6, 7, 8, and 9 mile mark. CRAP!

It all paid off in the end as I crossed the finish line, stuffed a bagel in my mouth and realized I had just finished and actually ran the whole thing! Yay me!

I finally made it to the Ale House and met up with Sandi and her husband who actually ran dressed as a scarecrow - very impressive - they were with a crew of people who run triathlons on purpose. Whoa! I was greeted with appropriate and rewarding reactions of horror mixed with hoots or laughter and disbelief.

And then I downed 3 beers to dull the pain.

catching up on sleep

2008-08-27T21:52:00.002-04:00

I left Beijing but my luggage decided that they loved China too much and wanted to stay. So my bags took an extra day of vacation much to my chagrin.

"Chagrin" - that's such a weird word. To me it means "lacking-grin." Maybe that's what it means to posh british people who use it all the time too. If that's the case, 'cha' can also be used in a sentence like this: "I got home cha-luggage."

I am pooped. So pooped that I fell asleep in the middle of composing an email last night. Sitting up in a chair. Fast asleep. Maybe the email was really boring - I took it as a hint and deleted it immediately.

Getting home was actually wonderful - we had a charter flight for NBC and got to watch my all time favorite show "30 Rock" on the flight. And then because I just can't get enough - me and my friend Jeff watched the BBC coverage of the men's finals that he'd downloaded before we left. Ahh - the thrill of watching gymnastics when it's not just the americans getting covered.

Yes - after watching nothing but the Olympics for two weeks, I watched the Olympics on the way home.

I feel like I need a few days to really process what I saw in China - all I know right now is that I saw and heard some pretty weird stuff but I have no idea what to make of half of it. Of course, I still don't know what day it is, so I need to first work on that - then genius observations of world politics. Good order.

Good news - sad-berry is about to become replaced-berry and then I can begin texting again. PHEW!!!!

RG thoughts expanded

2008-08-24T04:20:00.004-04:00

I had to borrow a few ideas from my blog for nbcolympics.com regarding my impressions of the freak show that is rhythmic (which I can totally spell now!)

Article

China loves Shawn; hates my knees

2008-08-23T22:45:00.000-04:00

CCTV is the government run tv network here - they have about 11-12 different channels (one is in English and the morning anchor is straight out of 'Anchorman'). So CCTV 3 has a nightly show where a guy interviews Olympic athletes on stage with an audience - sort of like China's version of Bob Costas, except taller.

I catch snippets of this show all the time and I've never seen an American - or really, anyone that's not chinese on it and last night I caught the highlight reel that they did for the conclusion of the games and AWWW!!! Shawn Johnson is the one and only American and non-Chinese athlete that was on the show! I'm sure it had a lot to do with her coach being from Beijing but China just loves Shawn Johnson.

The CCTV sports channels do nightly montages of the days greatest moments and it's usually the gold medal winning Chinese (lord knows they've had plenty to feature). When Nastia won I think I saw maybe one of two clips of her but when Shawn won her beam medal, she was prominently featured. I'm sure blonde hair and megawatt smile doesn't hurt.

For me the biggest gymnastics star of the games has been Nastia Liukin, but I think that Shawn Johnson has been just as big - it's hard to judge sitting in the middle of it. I'm really curious to see what the response has been and who's gotten more air time. ... I still can't look at the pics of Nastia on the podium without getting a little teary. By far my favorite Olympic moment.

I thought that America had a lot of repetitive commercials but it's nothing compared to the commercials on CCTV. I think I've seen a total of 5 different commercials since being here. Tsingtao beer, Haeir air conditioners and refrigerators, China Mobile (most annoying song ever), Adidas (creepy commercial where the chinese people first lift their sports stars on their sidewalk of hands and then bow down to him), an ad for Korea called "Sparkling Korea" ... I think there's one other one but I have no idea what the product is. I just know the theme music drives me nuts. Can't wait to get home and have the luxury of at least TEN different commercials in rotation! Whhhheeeee!!!

Jamaica is a very fast country.

Went to the rhythmic finals last night for the all-around and I ended up sitting with a former Chinese rhythmic gymnast who is the Chief Liason Officer for gymnastics here at the games (have no idea what that is but the title is impressive... might have to put that on my business cards). She was sitting right in front of me and turned around at some point, saw my name tag with my NBC card and asked me if I worked in tv. I told her that I was there writing a little thing on rhythmic and how I was trying to understand it (which, should be writing right now) and she immediately got up and said, 'Oh! I will teach you everything!' and she proceeded to give me an rg lesson!

She wasn't much help in my political/gossip questions like why does russia hate the ukraine so much and what's up with the crazy russian coach, but she did have really helpful info like how much is taken off in deductions for turns and ribbon drops, etc. So, ya know, helpful but I want the dirt!!!

A couple of Russians were sitting behind me and it took every ounce of my strength not to turn around and steal their jacket. I'm very proud of myself for holding back my urge to be a thief.

My knees totally hate China. The shuttle buses here are not tall people friendly. Everytime I ride them, I'm uncomfortable and my legs hurt when I walk out - I knwe it was crunched but never really gave it much thought. Well, last night I was wearing a skirt which made my life more difficult on the bus - I looked down at the seat and thought, hmmm, I wonder how much leg room there really is. I put my arm down thinking for sure my hand to elbow would fit ..... umm... I put the heel of my palm to the seat and my finger tips crunched up against the chair in front of me!! There's not even 6 inches of leg room.

Ouch!!

Best video ever

2008-08-23T11:35:00.002-04:00

Video link
Compliments of the overworked highlights factory back at 30 Rock. Hooray for no sleep!

Lost in a hutong

2008-08-23T00:21:00.011-04:00

I only have a couple more days left in Beijing and one of the things I've been dying to see is the Drum tower. I have no idea why. I don't know what is there, I don't know why it's famous, I don't know where it is, but I dig the name. A whole tower just for a drum? Must be some drum.

Ok - well, also the tour book said that it had amazing views of the hutong after you climb up the steep stairs. And since I haven't touched a treadmill since I got here, I thought it would be a nice way to get a little workout in before I go back to my merciless trainer Sandi who quite ruthlessly kicks my ass.

Well, the dumb thing was closed! A rickshaw driver was trying to convince me to jump on the back of his bike and after I politely declined, he told me that the drum tower was closed during the duration of the games for security.

Total bummer!

Oh wait..... the Drum Tower! That's where the incident happened during the Opening Ceremony where the American was murdered and the Chinese guy threw himself off the top and committed suicide!! I totally thought that happened in T Square. I didn't figure out that it was the Drum Tower until I got back and people were like, oh well, yea - it's probably closed because of the incident. Ummm.... hmmm..

Again, I'm not very smart in China. I wanted to visit a murder site.

I figured if I couldn't get a good aerial view of the hutongs, I might as well wander through. And so I went and got myself lost in a hutong. I figured I'd get out eventually so I just kept walking. And yay - I did find my way out eventually.
btw

Hutongs are basically narrow alleys and streets where people live - they resemble a corn maze without the corn.

Shiny stuff

2008-08-22T02:10:00.003-04:00

Last night I went to discover the joys of the sport of rhythmic gymnastics (RG). Well - mostly just to figure out what the heck it was and why it was so popular in Europe. Yes, apparently RG is huge in Europe. Much like David Hasselhoff

First off - I was completely blinded by the overwhelming glare from the sequins.

There is a very sad housewife in Oklahoma who can't bedazzle her jean jacket because rhythmic stole all of the worlds sparkles.

I was looking forward to a match-up between Russia and Ukraine as apparently they're death rivals. RG has a lot of drama. The Russians (with all their awesome jackets that they won't share - jerkbutts) were out in full force with the flags and the chants of "Rush-ee-AH! Rush-ee-AH!" ('russia' said like U-S-A - copycats.... give me your stuff!!) They were very loud for their people - but they were also extremely supportive for the girls that train in Russia, like the two girls from Azerbaijan. Who even knew that place had sequins? I believe the two girls who compete from Azerbaijan were actually born and live in Russia, but because it's so hard to qualify for the Russian national team, they compete for Azerbaijan instead. And they are still ranked top ten in the world!!

You can only send two girls per country to compete in the Olympics and the third ranked girl in Russia was actually a gold medal favorite in RG in Beijing.... and didn't even qualify. Russia is a great place to be a super flexible freak - and since the mafia is heavily involved in RG, when you retire, you can marry a mob boss! ... I'm only half kidding.

I was sitting next to a couple of media dudes from Azerbaijan (which is really hard to spell, btw) and they were these grizzly old, giant-mustached, Borat-wannabes totally into the RG performances. Literally on the edge of their chairs when the group was performing, practically about to pass out from the nerves.

Again - huge in Europe.

So the poor Ukraine girl who's one of the gold medal favorites, Anna Bessonova, had to go immediately following this stream of Russia-love-fest. It was back to back russians and then the Azer girls and then some other random country that they were cheering for and then Bessonova enters the arena and the Russians all jump to sit on their hands and stare stone faced at her willing her to either drop the hoop, drop the rope or better, just drop dead. So since the Russians hate her and also hate me - she's my favorite.
Gallery

I actually don't have access to the arena that the RG event is held in so I had to borrow one of intern's credentials who had access. You know how American's can't tell Asians apart? Well the same in reverse for Asians. Honkeys have been swapping credentials left and right to sneak into events because the volunteers can't tell us apart. hehe

so rhythmic - what an awesome freak show!!

Those girls are flexible beyond what is even human. I wonder if they miss their spines?

I actually really, really enjoyed the group routines. 5 girls, 5 ropes, one very complicated game of cats in the cradle. It was almost more fun to watch the teams that were less skilled because you could kind of get an idea of how they were getting their ropes in the various places. With the really good teams like Belarus and Russia, you couldn't see any sort of set up! Just, whoop - 5 ropes in the air! whoop - 5 ropes being flung off 5 leaping girls' feet! whoop - 5 ropes spelling out the complete word "orange".... wild stuff. I highly recommend going to nbcolympics.com and watching the rope group routines.
Group video

A gallery from last nights competition

One kind of wild thing about Chinese sporting events is that no one really eats in the arena. I wasn't sure if they even sold food in the place so I took a walk to see. Well - they do sell food but ummm... anyone up for a 'spicy beef stick'? Or perhaps a 'biscuit'? Maybe a piece of 'bread'? Well, now I guess I know why no one chows down in china.

Also - the arena smells like feet.

The age issue

2008-08-21T22:45:00.002-04:00

About time. The IOC is FINALLY launching an investigation into the underage gymnast thing.

I've had a hard time coming to terms with the Chinese underage issue. If China had any dignity, they would have pulled He with an "injury" the minute the evidence surfaced and saved face. No one would have cared about the age thing if He Kexin wasn't actually competing; the issue would have been dropped and lord knows they could have replaced her with the ten other girls back at the training center who are just as good.

But instead, they acted with arrogance. I don't normally agree with Bela Karolyi because he's ummm, well kind of crazy sometimes, but on this - I agree. To parade 4 girls in front of your country, one of whom recently lost a tooth, and blatantly lie about their ages in hopes of more gold is insane. It's just insane. I knew that He Kexin was too young for the Olympics a year ago. And I'm just a fan with no inside knowledge, inside spies, inside anything. Ok - I'm an uber-fan, but still. How is that I could know this and the IOC completely ignores it?

It's the IOC's own fault for waiting until AFTER the competition to investigate. But now it sucks for the sport. Because now it's in the spotlight. And gymnastics will get a bad rap - again. Ugh. It's terrible for the sport. I think that's why I was so willing to ignore it and just make jokes about it.

I think that China was a better team and they deserved to win - and I'm glad that they won - but the attitude is now driving me nuts. There was an article that I can't find now - but it was a Chinese coach saying that you couldn't go off of looks alone to determine the ages of the Chinese... that if you went off of looks alone, then you would say that the entire US women's gymnastics team was on steroids.

What?????

So now I'm just pissed about the arrogance. How can you parade around those young kids, lie about their age and then gloat about their victories? Gymnastics is a sport for small bodies and young girls because it's just so dang hard to do - but the rules are in place that you have to be 16 in order to compete and the rest of the world is coping with that. Broken - but they're coping. Two Americans went down with terrible ankle injuries in the practice sessions just days before the competition - it's a tough sport. And the age rules suck but they are what they are (and should change). America had two great girls who weren't 16 yet and so were left home.

I also find it hilarious that while evidence has come to light about He Kexin, Jiang Yuyuan and Ying Lilin - nothing has come up about Deng Linlin who is the size of a teapot (and is the one missing a tooth).

I just love watching these girls compete - the "artistic" part of artistic gymnastics is a thing of the past, but the Chinese girls bring back the beauty. Perfect positions, attention to line and toe point, it's just gorgeous. Too bad they're so young they haven't even learned long division yet.

Oh wait - I still can't do long division. Never mind.

Misty and Kerri

2008-08-21T03:03:00.001-04:00

Awwww... Misty May and Kerri won again! They haven't lost a match for over a year now. A YEAR! That's incredible in itself - but what makes them such an endearing team to me is how much each win means to them. And how much this Olympic gold meant to them. They were so emotional after the win and so excited to win - if you didn't know better, you'd think this was their first games and their first win. I love that they still appreciate the victories and don't take it for granted. Because if anyone has the right to take a win for granted - it's them.

As they were doing their victory laps, Misty caught a glimpse of the ridiculous cheerleaders on the side doing a dance and she started to do it along with them! It was hilarious. One of my favorite moments of the games so far. Next to Nastia winning of course, oh and Shawn. And being nyet'ed by russia.. and chalk!.... Ok, well, it's top ten for sure.

They were so excited to get on the podium during the medal ceremony. While the bronze medal team was getting their flowers, Misty kept putting her foot up on the podium like she was about to jump up - super cute. When they finally were announced, they bounded right up to the top step and forgot to congratulate the other teams. They realized their mistake while they were being handed their flowers and were like "D'oh!!' and turned to give the other teams giant bear hugs while the official Olympic flower dude is like, hey - take my flowers!! Very sweet.

As they turned to listen to the anthem, they both put down their flowers so they could hold hands while it was playing. Again, so sweet. Kerri was so choked up - and being the giant sap I am, I welled up with tears every time they replayed it here. They are such amazing people. So glad they got their Olympic moment.... again. Plus, I'm totally sick of hearing that damn china anthem.

So immediately following their win, as they're bouncing around the stadium and hugging everyone and everyone's soaking in the perfect moment - the track and field producer dead-pans "Well, now they can have their babies" and the room was in hysterics. There was something that had happened earlier where it was either a headline or something about what's next for May and Walsh and the main thing it talked about how they wanted to have babies. And the way the headline was worded was just ridiculous.

I hope that translates in blog language. It was pretty darn funny at the time.

USA House

2008-08-21T02:25:00.003-04:00

We made it to the USA House last night and, unlike the Russians, they were welcoming, friendly and extremely encouraging of us to lay down our Visa cards and buy their crap. So I obliged.

Polo Ralph Lauren is a major sponsor of the US team this year - they did the opening ceremony outfits and then a bunch of the t-shirts. Nike did most of the athletic gear that you see, like the wind breakers they wear on the medal stand. For some reason I always pronounce Ralph Lauren like I'm foreign. I don't say 'Lauren' like the name. I say 'Lo-wren' like a wanker.

And I don't think I can stop!

The USA House was gorgeous. It was at the back of a restaurant called Buffalo something so I was expecting "China-Goes-Wild-West" decor but instead it was this really beautiful sort of LA-chic, lounge style place. The place was surrounded by a faux-river and you had to cross a bridge to get over it - always a big fan of having to cross a bridge to get to dinner, makes it feel like I worked to get there - but then inside, the place looked like what you'd imagine Monte Carlo to look like! Fountains everywhere, music you'd find in a yoga class, cool lighting. Very serene.

Bart Connor and Nadia Comaneci were there with their son Dylan - Yay!! gymnastics royalty and their offspring!

On our way there we passed a dance party for old folks. There are two giant common areas in front of the Workers Stadium and on both sides there were a bunch of people gathered around boomboxes doing what looked like country square dancing. But without the square. Actually, one side was a little bit country, the other side was a little bit rock and roll. Just like the Osmonds.

There was an article that popped up on the AP wires this morning that was a jolt. It's so easy to forget where we even are since most of this month has been experienced in Olympic land - not beijing land.... two VERY different places.

There's always a battle of medal count between the countries and right now America is winning with most total medals. But China is SMOKING us in gold. And about to catch up in total medals. CCTV, the govt's national tv stations in China, shows this chart all the time, but they always have China at top. Which made sense to me since they have double the gold medals that we do. Ha - just saw NBC's medal count graphic and oh hey - it's the US on top! Hilarious.

There is a Chinese track and field athlete named Qi Haifeng who has a giant mole on his cheek and 8-9 black hairs growing out of it. Long hairs. Long bushy hairs that are visible when he runs. Hello - how are those aerodynamic? And um, how do you expect to get a contract with Li Ning when you have a troll doll's head growing out of your face?

One of the synchronized swimming teams got their suits banned because they had little light up lights embedded into their fabric or something. They decided that the lights were "accessories" and they couldn't use them. Hmm... I would think that if you're going to make a stink about a synchro swimming outfit, how about throw a fit about the fact that their entire butt is hanging out. Seriously - can they cut those things any higher??? They're practically wearing thongs. The prude in me says "Good gracious!" The slightly crasser version of that prude in me says "slutty whores."

smacked down

2008-08-20T06:59:00.001-04:00

the other day we embarked on "Get Russian Stuff" part deux.

It didn't go well.... Again.

I realize that in these politically charged times wearing anything from Russia is probably not the smartest idea. Just ask Becky Harmon. However, I have been a fan of russian gymnastics forever and scoring a piece of their national uniforms from the Olympics would be almost as good as getting Olympic chalk. ..... Almost.

We went the other day back to Ho-Hai where the Russian House is located. (snicker - bar district) We'd heard that they were for sure selling stuff and you could for sure buy it. Great. Credit cards armed and loaded.

We skip to the house with big dreams of walking away with Russian jackets, confident that this time they'll let us in and surely be ecstatic that we want to wear their stuff. ... ummmm, not exactly. We got so denied, it wasn't even funny. Nyet, Nyet! The dude who we talked to at the door of the Russia House almost laughed at us! He didn't speak the best english so I kept tugging at his team russia polo shirt and saying 'we - want - to - buy - you!' .. I don't know for sure, but he may have taken that the wrong way.

Smacked down by the Russians.

Again.

Today we go for a third try. But tonight we'll also hit up the USA House to get some patriotic stuff which I will totally proudly wear. If I actually score a Russian jacket tonight, it may have to just hang in my closet for awhile, number one because I don't want to get slapped by a Georgian and two, because I'm still pretty peeved that the ruskie laughed at my offer to buy him.

Perfect.

2008-08-20T06:37:00.002-04:00

The perfect souvenir. I totally just got the PERFECT Olympic souvenir. I am so excited I can not stand it.

Olympic CHALK!!!!

One of the interns came through the other day and she was all excited about getting sand out of the long jump pit and I thought, hmm, what a great idea. What can I take out of the gymnastics arena? and omg - like lightening it hit me - CHALK! I need chalk!

This must be how Einstein felt when he discovered that whole m=ec squared thing. Or no, that's wrong. E=MC? I don't know. I'm not very smart in China.

OLYMPIC CHALK!

I put Jess on the case a couple of days ago and she dispatched the camera men on the mission. We had no luck during event finals but today, inspiration as beautiful as poetry - or an Alan Abrahamason blog entry - struck.

We went to the Olympic Gala show today and when we got back, Jess realized that she'd left her bag all the way back at the arena. Holy ugh. So she runs back to the arena and I don't know how she did it but she pranced right onto the podium and snatched a block of chalk for me.

And as if my chalk adventures couldn't any better - it's the chalk that Shawn Johnson was using during the gala.

Unreal - Jess is my hero.

The gala itself was totally lame. It was a couple of medalists performing watered down routines to super random elevator music and then some members of the Chinese National Aerobic team. It started off with 6 men in red gold and white velour shorty unitards - and a LOT of gold sequins. Granted - they were good but it was like watching an all-male cheerleading squad.... except gayer with more gold sequins. And then also a terrible display of britney spears wannabes. Oy!

Nastia and Shawn saved the night with great beam routines. Sigh... one last performance of the games for them. They both wore pink - fun! That'll totally make it into my "Best of the Blue Carpet" gallery I've been keeping on the gymnastics page at nbcolympics.com. Way fun.

Track and field is breaking my heart lately. First the Chinese national hero goes down and then last night Sanya Richards leads the pack by a mile and then falters the last five seconds with a leg cramp. But the saddest one was Lolo Jones by far. When she missed that second to last hurdle and then missed medaling after leading the pack the whole way... ugh!!! NBC must have been working on a package because the feed kept replaying her reaction after the race and then her meltdown backstage over and over again. It was just unbelievably sad.

I thought gymnastics went by fast - you train your whole life and your entire Olympic competing time totals maybe 5 minutes.

But in track, they get about ten seconds! A teeny-tiny mistake in a fraction of a second during that time and your shot at a medal is gone. Had she raised her leg an inch higher, she'd be wearing a gold medal.

I do this every single Olympics - marvel at the inches and fractions that change your life forever. I just can never get over it.

know-how

2008-08-19T12:33:00.000-04:00

Tonight, without giving it a second thought, I identified a clip as being from the 1992 Olympics simply from getting a quick glimpse at the graphic. And it wasn't even a gymnastics clip, it was track and field.

My extensive Olympic knowledge has officially moved into the realm of scary. And I embrace that. And celebrate it. Yay my weird head!

The traaaammmpoline.

2008-08-19T02:17:00.001-04:00

If you have the mind of a 12 year old boy, the names of the people competing in trampoline are hilarious.
Karen Cockburn
Dong Dong
Chunlong

In the prelims, Dong chased Chunlong. Seriously.

Of course, I would never think these things are funny for I am SUPER classy.

I have a hard time doing anything with trampoline because all I hear is that SNL sketch where they made fun of Stone Phillips speech pattern and did this thing on "Trampoline: child's play toy or vicious backyard killer?" NBC took all the snl stuff off youtube and I can't find the clip right now and it's making me nuts!! I have to hear it to get it out of my head!!

Draaahhhhmmmmaaaaa

2008-08-19T00:20:00.001-04:00

Oh the draaahhh-ma... we liiiivvvve for it.

He Kexin, the fetus from China, beat Nastia Liukin, the princess from America.

So annoying.

The tie breaking procedure was so complicated that it took a good 30 minutes before people could even say that it was done correctly and yes, Nastia did in fact lose to the girl who is so young, she hasn't even deveolped eye lids yet. Or wait - no, she's just Chinese. Fetus....Chinese .... it's hard to tell the difference sometimes. (and I mean that in a totally endearing, not at all gross or offensive way.)

So annoying.

In fashion news, I think Italy asked "Members Only" to design their team jackets. Aren't the Italians known for style? Ick.

But the saddest thing that happened yesterday, maybe the saddest thing at the Games so far, was the withdrawal of Liu Xiang in track and field. This guy is the biggest star in China - even bigger than Yao Ming. He's a legend. Part of me wonders if he self-destructed because he couldn't deal with the burden of carrying literally a billion dreams on his shoulders. I don't understand how stars in China cope. There is so much pressure on their athletes here.

I was watching in my hotel room as I was getting ready for the day and since it was in Chinese, I was kind of only half paying attention. (Contrary to my previous reports, my Chinese doesn't actually "rock")But I saw him limping a bit and then I saw his practice run where he clearly hurt something. I still wasn't sure if what I was watching was even live, but I knew it was really bad news when the people in the stands, who had been clicking furiously away at him with their cameras, put the cameras down and just stared motionless at him as he sat down in pain on the track.

After he withdrew, I had to walk through the main press center on my way to the IBC and there was a huge group of local voluneteers gathered around the giant tv. They all looked like someone had just died - and we later got reports that people were crying in the Birds Nest and leaving.

It's really sad - for him, for the country, for the sport. He was China's only big hope in track and field. They have figured out ways to dominate most of the primetime sports, but he was their only big ticket in the birds nest. It's actually a good thing that he didn't run because had he raced and lost - he would have let down an entire country. Better to withdraw with your pride intact.

Scott Kelly

2008-08-17T21:56:00.001-04:00

Stop bitching that I'm not updating my blog. Go play with your ducks.