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Olympics

We (along with most of America, I think) have been enjoying watching the Olympics. I heard a report yesterday on All Things Considered about kids are staying up later to watch the games. Eleanor has been staying up a little bit later, but since school started for her last week, we mostly get her to bed on time.

Eleanor's favorite part was the torch lighting ceremony. We have mythtv (a bit like tivo, but open source) so that every time I suggest watching olympics, she asks to watch the torch lighting ceremony. She refuses absolutely to watch women's gymnastics---a sharp contrast to 4 years ago when she loved watching "the girls doing gymnastics".

Eleanor and Amanda both enjoyed watching rhythmic gymnastics. One of the "apparatuses' is a jump-rope type thing, and Amanda was leaping and dancing all around the room. My favorite was the ribbon---I think I will get the girls some ribbon.

My favorite sport was synchronized diving. I had no idea that this was a sport. In fact, my favorite team was the Germans, who would twist away from each other as they dived---I thought this was very pretty, but the judges thought not. I also enjoyed the canoes, another sport I hadn't thought about. Unfortunately, we didn't seem to record any whitewater canoeing or kayaking.

Which brings me to my favorite part about this olympics: the myth tv box. We set it to record all the olympics on nbc, and we watch just the parts we're interested in (no beach volleyball or basketball, for example) and skip all the commercials. I can't imagine watching all this in real time, especially with the commercials. That said, I do like the commercial for GE wind power ad: at an ancient Greek olympics (although there are plenty of women watching...) the discus throw gets blown off course and knocks down what I assume is the Parthenon. The expression on the discus thrower's face is so expressive.

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