Okay, first things first. The car is safe and snug in the carport. Thanks to a bookkeeping error made, quite innocently, by a third party the hubster found himself in possession of a check he didn't know he had coming. Wachovia, I see, is becoming Wells Fargo next month. Well, good riddance. Normally, when something like this happens I subscribe to the "better the devil you know" platitude but, in this case, I'm in hell already so who cares? At least maybe Wells Fargo will allow us to make a car payment by some method other than Western Union, which adds $12.95 a month. Yep. Wachovia demands any cash payment be via Western Union. You can't even ask your bank to wire it. You can not walk into a Wachovia bank and make your car payment. I figure, Wells Fargo might be better. In any case, they sure can't be any worse.
Now, on to other things.
We're currently in our 16th day of captivity, held hostage by the Winter Games. In approximately 36 hours I'm told the closing ceremonies will "draw to a close" and we will be released, once again free to watch the six times a day showings of "Mamma Mia!" on cable.
Against my better judgement I found myself, on day 14, watching the Ladies' Figure Skating finals. Oddly enough, the ladies don't seem to fall down nearly as often as the men. Maybe it's that center of gravity thing, I'm not sure. There are some similarities though. The ladies don't seem to use "Firebird". However, if you see a red costume trimmed with black, brace yourself, it's "Carmen". Now, don't get me wrong, I like opera a LOT and Carmen is, far and away, my favorite. It's pretty much your standard opera as things go, some chick fails to walk the straight and narrow, sings about her loose morals and dies. Carmen, however, does this without as much pathos as, say, Madame Butterfly. Someone lit a fire under Carmen, I like her. She's one sexy little slut. Anyway as the third skater of the evening glided out in red and black, looked enticingly over her shoulder, batter her perfectly mascaraed eyes at the judges and took of to "The March Of The Toreadors" my son said "just ONCE I want to see someone come out and start skating to The Piña Colada Song."
I actually took a shine to two of the skaters though. One was an Australian girl who didn't know she was even GOING to the Olympics until about 30 minutes before her flight took off. Okay, it was three weeks. Apparently Australia didn't qualify to have a skater go. Israel did. But the Israeli skater came in, I dunno, something like 22nd in the World Championships. This was good enough for the IOC but not, apparently, for the Israel Olympic Committee. Their rules say if you don't do better than 14th they don't care what the IOC says, you stay home and watch it on TV. (I hope Israel's coverage is better than the U.S. coverage, which basically sucks.) So, at the last minute, the little Australian girl was bundled onto a plane which landed in Vancouver.
This was, from what I gather, the first time she had ever competed in Senior's Ladies or whatever it's called. She was a junior, she's just turned 16. If she were from China, I would assume she was actually 12. But, as she's from Australia, I, for some unknown reason, assume that she's really 16 as the Australian's strike me as a people who don't lie about their age since the faster you grow up the faster you can legally buy a gallon can of Foster's at 9am.
Well, she skated her short program and I found myself routing that she would make the top 24 and be able to do the finals. She came in 18th. And she skated her long program on Thursday night. Now I have learned that junior skaters do a three and a half minute long program, senior skaters long program's are four minutes long. This girl was skating her first four minute long program. She was good. Young, cute, not going to win a medal but she was good. Until she passed 3 minutes and 30 seconds and ran out of steam faster than a train engine that's run out of coal. But she kept going. She jumped - and fell. Flat. She looked utterly exhausted, lying there on the ice for a split second. She looked as if she wanted to say "you guys go on ahead, I'll catch up with you." But she dragged herself up off the ice and finished her program, including one more somethingorother jump (which she landed).
I like that girl.
I also like the American girl who came in an unexpected fourth. I loved the look on her face and the "oh my GOD!" shriek she let out when she saw she had finished just shy of the bronze medal. And I really loved the story on the news about her last night. Seems that, in her forth place position when all was said and done, she's now expected to perform in the Figure Skating exhibition that always takes place at the end of the Winter Games. But...as this is her first Olympics and she, too, is just 16, and was basically hoping to avoid embarrassing herself this time as she starts working her way to the next winter games, well...she doesn't HAVE an exhibition program. It never occurred to her she might need one yet. So there she was yesterday, frantically choreographing a program for tonight's show with her best friend at the ice rink back home via Skype.
If there's a God, she'll use "The Piña Colada Song."
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