dual personalities

So last night was the first night of televised Olympic coverage. Did you watch?

Traditionally I have always enjoyed the Winter Olympics–all that skiing and those other Nordic events remind me of my mother who was such an enthusiastic winter athlete in her youth.

I remember the Lillehammer, Norway Olympics in 1994 most fondly. The Norwegians were great hosts. My kids were old enough to be interested then and that was around the time when the boy got into speed skating.

He was pretty good and, had we decided to send him to live in Colorado so that he could skate year-round, who knows, maybe he would have gone to the Olympics with Apolo Ohno. But that was never our style. And I could never picture him with those huge thighs.

Anyway,  I can’t say I’m too excited about Sochi, a beach venue located on the Black Sea near the border between Georgia/Abkhazia and Russia.

As you recall, Sochi was established as a “fashionable resort” area under Joseph Stalin, who had his favorite “dacha” built in the city. (Fashionable resort in conjunction with communism seems like an oxymoron, don’t you think?) But, hey, Stalin’s study, complete with a wax statue of the leader, is now open to the public. Oh boy. I can just picture the NBC color coverage of this. No thanks. 

However, chances are I will find myself glued to the telly anyway for the next two weeks. I will probably get a lot of needlepoint done. And maybe I’ll sort through those giant piles of magazines.

Bottom line: I like to root for the home team. Go, U.S.A.!

Team U.S.A., opening ceremony, 2010 Olympics

* J.R.R. Tolkien