Random thoughts from Mt. Olympus...

1. First off, Zeus says hi... (Rick is hoping he'll send some thunder and lightning our way tonight... although we seem to get more storms when no storms are in the forecast. The weather people in Chicago are even more clueless than the weather people were in Austin. And those Austin weather people were pretty clueless...)

2. I keep deliberately visiting Google just so I can play the little games they've been putting up every day. I'm not very good at them... apparently I can't even PRETEND to win a gold medal...

3. So does anyone else feel extremely lazy and out of shape after the last couple weeks of Olympics-observation? I mean, I work out, I watch what I eat (most of the time... sometimes... okay, at LEAST now and then...) -- I'm not a couch potato by any means. But then I see athletes like this:

And suddenly I feel as if my entire being is composed of something akin to one part insecurity, one part inability, and one part marshmallow fluff... maybe two parts marshmallow fluff...

4. My favorite summer Olympics events are the gymnastics, swimming, and track and field. I'm less interested in things like cycling or long-distance running, or team games like basketball and volleyball -- those don't really get exciting until the last few seconds, anyway. There are a few events I've noticed this year that I hadn't even realized were part of the Olympics -- like ping pong and badminton. I actually started laughing the other night when I happened to catch a few minutes of a ping pong game and noticed one of the players taking a swig of Gatorade -- really? Is it really THAT taxing to loft a nearly weightless ball over a tiny net with a hand-sized paddle?? I know, I know -- I can't really criticize, seeing as I'm mostly made up of marshmallow fluff...

5. For some reason, I've had the uncanny ability of switching on Olympic coverage right in the middle of water polo like five times in a row. This is another thing I wasn't aware of in relation to the Olympics -- the proliferation of water polo games. How much water polo can there possibly be??? How many countries actually play this game? And why is it called water polo when it really seems to be more like water soccer? Although I guess soccer, hockey, water polo, handball, and even basketball all have similarities... and quidditch... also quidditch. Which WOULD be an Olympic sport by now, if only we could figure out how to make brooms fly...

6. Off to make lunch and try to ignore my obvious athletic shortcomings. (But I could totally get a gold medal in "popping open a can of soup and heating it on the stove"...)