Weekend GRound-Up

Finland lost to Sweden, 3-2. The US Ski Team is promising to crack down on the behavior of their members. Apollo Anton Ohno won more medals than he won in SLC, with less hype. Bode managed to do worse. The US won 25 medals; four less than Germany, and with Canada, Austria, and Russia nipping at their heels.

The Olympics are over. I'll miss it. I'll also enjoy having my evenings free. What is it about the Olympics? I don't follow any of these sports at any other time. I don't even watch Champions on Ice.

While watching the Figure Skating Gala with my wife I commented that it was nice to be able to watch them skate without the commentators criticizing every move. And I meant it. On the other hand, the air of competition is a tangible element. Take that away and you have a bunch of athletes skating beautifully--and well below their abilities. Only Yvgeny Plushenko seemed to skate like something depended on it.

The drama of competition is compelling, at least for me. A large part of the Olympics is the personal element--something largely missing in American sports. The coverage usually assumes you already follow the sport and know all the personal details. The Olympics coverage thrives on making it personal, on giving you a reason to care. There's pageantry and drama, fame and fortune, and winning and losing measured in hundredths of seconds or points. We love the villains as much as the heroes. And, at least for me, we love watching people doing their best, regardless of nationality.

There's also the fact that the Olympics only come around every other year. I can spare a few weeks every few years, especially when it's compressed and packaged so nicely. It also wears me out. I need a few years to decompress.

---

I directed the church choir on Sunday as a pinch-hitter until they find a permanent replacement. We had big-wigs coming, and so they needed someone to put together a choir number. It came off well, and I had fun.

I've often heard of the phenomenon of people who had never been to practices suddenly appearing for the performance. I'd never seen it, really, until yesterday. We met before the meeting to run through it again, and suddenly I had a bunch of teenagers filling out the soprano and bass sections. At least they had a chance to run it once before performance, I guess.

Another young man joined the bass section, but he at least had the decency to ask me later if I minded if he jumped in. All in all, a rather odd situation, but it came out okay. And now the choir is someone else's problem.

I was also asked to sing a solo for a later meeting with just the men. It's been awhile since I was that nervous singing in public. It came off okay, too, though I got a phlegm-clot in my throat that made my voice rougher than I would have preferred. I guess I spent too long among college voice professors who would tell it to me straight. But, like Tiffany, I've had to learn to grin and be gracious in the face of compliments.

The two performances almost back-to-back left me drained the rest of the day. The whole weekend left me drained, really.

Saturday morning I took the kids with me while Terhi cleaned the house. Emma had a make-up lesson for gymnastics, so I took her there and then took the boys for a walk in the unusually warm weather. We couldn't have picked a better neighborhood, as far as Walter was concerned.

The gymnastics school is in an industrial district that is still party under construction. Go up the street one direction and you pass a auto transport business, complete with car carrier trucks all loaded up and sitting close to the street. Farther up the street they are extending the road. Lined up and parked for the weekend were no less than four tractors: a scraper, a front loader, a grader, and a bulldozer. We were able to get a very close look (To my son's credit, he had NO interest in actually touching them, and got rather mad at me if I got within five feet. We've done something right.)

We observed the heavy equipment for close to half an hour, probably. Walter did most of the talking, going on and on about which vehicles they were (he is THE expert when it comes to identifying heavy machinery), and which ones he wanted for his birthday (essentially, all of them).

He finally tired of the tractors, so we headed up the street the other direction. There we saw a couple of forklifts and a mini-excavator. He discoursed at length about what the forklifts did, but again did not want to get close. As we returned to the gymnastics school he pointed out which parts of the street, most of which is still in post-construction/pre-landscaping condition, were dug by skid-steers and which required back-hoes.

By the time we finished I felt the construction area needed one more yellow sign: Caution - Active, sponge-like mind at work!

We returned to the school in time to watch the last few minutes of Emma's practice. I'd watched their warmups for a few moments before we'd left and had been impressed how smooth a runner she is. The other girls were all arms and legs in all directions, but with Emma there was not a wasted motion. She could probably run laps the entire class without tiring.

When we returned she was practicing her balance beam routine. She's five, so we're not talking anything complicated. She essentially climbs onto the beam (no small feat, considering it's about a foot taller than she is), does some forward steps, some sideways steps, and some backward steps, then jumps off for her dismount (again, no small feat in my eyes). She's got the routine memorized, and she practiced over and over again while the instructor worked with other kids.

It's easy to take Emma for granted around home, but put her with a bunch of other kids her own age and the difference is obvious. She is extremely disciplined and focused by comparison. She pays attention. She works hard. I'm very proud of her.

She'll be "competing" in her first in-house meet next weekend. Terhi and I will probably have to tag-team, as the boys aren't likely to want to stay put that long. I'm not sure even Emma will want to stay put that long. But I'm looking forward to seeing how my little girl handles herself. I'll probably experience a Lileksian "My little girl is growing up and outgrowing daddy" moment.

Parenting: Ecstatic Evisceration.

---

Friday night we attended a "friendship dinner" organized by our church. Terhi and I are not social people. We prefer small groups. By small groups I mean two or three other people and maybe an extra kid or two. This was five couples and between 15 and 25 kids, complicated by dinner. I barely got to know anyone better (the supposed intention of the event), and I barely got to eat. I won't be disappointed if we don't get invited to another one anytime soon.

On Saturday afternoon we had my brother and his family over for dinner. Their youngest and our two oldest spent the time after dinner chasing each other all over the house. Compared with the previous night, it seemed rather peaceful.

In hindsight, though, no wonder Terhi and I were completely dead by last night. With weekends like that, who needs weekdays?