Back To The Same Old. . .

The Olympics are over, so now the world seems a little less exciting. My girls will go back to school next week, and we will most likely fall back into the some old school year routine. The new season of television shows will be starting, and so it goes. Life will be back to the same old hum-drum. Oh, wait a minute! I forgot that this is a presidential election year. Now we can look forward to neverending political ads that don't give you any information, and tons of telephone calls during the dinner hour from various polls wanting to know how I am going to vote. I think I will prefer the same old, same old.

Olympics Worth Staying Up For

My eyes are a little puffy, with dark circles more noticeable this morning because I stayed up to watch the Olympics last night. After hearing the reports of the French men's swimming team talking trash about "smashing" the Americans, there was no way I was going to miss the relay race! The race was nothing short of spectacular and definitely worth staying up past midnight for. And, the other cool thing about the race is the show of great sportsmanship by Jason Lezak, who anchored the American team. It is his extra effort that is going to help his teammate, Michael Phelps move on toward his gold medal goal. It just makes the spectacle of the competitions that much more intriguing and makes me even more proud to be an American. Go U.S.A.!

Opening Ceremony Tonight on NBC! Go USA!

Tonight is the night we have been waiting for for the last four years! The opening ceremony for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, China begins at 7:30 tonight. At our house, this is a big occasion and I have planned our dinner (pizza) around the event. Everything we are having is food we can eat while watching television. Normally, in our family, the rule is that we sit at the kitchen table with the tv off, and eat dinner together. For the next two weeks, that rule will be a little more relaxed so that we can see all the sporting events. Pretty weird, I know, but I just love the Olympics and want my children to have good memories of them just like I have. Go team USA!

8-8-08 Lucky Olympics? Let's Hope So!

The Olympic games always seems to bring out a certain excitement in me. When I was a little girl, my family watched the Olympics and talked about them and just all around enjoyed the every four year event. This year is no different for me, only this time, I am a little worried. China has always seemed a rather mysterious and exotic place to me, and I have to shamefully admit that I know very little about China and the Chinese culture. I was reading a little article about how the Chinese believe that the start date for the Olympics: eight minutes after the eighth hour of the eighth day of the eighth month, is lucky--except of course if you were born under the astrological sign of the Rat, in which case, astrologists suggest that you wear a pendant of an Ox to ward off clashes with those who were born under the sign of the Horse. These sorts of ideas serve to make China seem more unusual and strange to me. At any rate, I am looking forward to the couple of weeks of sporting competition. Regardless of what year it is and how lucky the Chinese seem to think it is, I sure hope their claims of safety and security for the athletes and observers are true and that these 29th Olympic Games are remembered only for the records that were set, and the great competitions that took place instead of one of political disaster and mayhem.

Olympic Boycott on the Horizon?

Since I was just a little girl, I have loved watching the Olympics. There is just something exciting about many countries of the world coming together peacefully to compete against each other. I am just old enough to have a very dim, but frightening memory of the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany. I remember watching the grainy images of people crawling on the ground, and I remember my parents were concerned about the Jewish American athletes; especially Mark Spitz. I am definitely old enough to remember the 1980 Olympics that the United States decided to boycott. I was fourteen, and looking forward to the spectacle and pomp of the event that was to take place in Moscow, but because of the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan, our country did not participate. It was a bitter disappointment. So here we are, in 2008, awaiting the Games again, and I am wondering if that same sort of disappointment is in store for us again. Already with the trouble the flame is having getting through London, and now the extinguishing of the torch several times in Paris, it seems like there might be a foreshadowing of what we are in store for this summer. China was perhaps a poor choice of countries to host the big event, but we can't go back and have a do-over. With the behavior in Tibet, I'm not at all certain that the United States should participate. With all the unrest, could a 2008 boycott of the Olympics be on the horizon?