I put in some time watching the Olympics today. I love the Olympics. I'm not a rabid, "USA! USA! USA!"-style jingoist, but every four years, I do enjoy cosplaying as one. It's fun, and it's usually captivating competition, and although I pretty much always root for the American, I appreciate greatness whatever its nation of origin. Like, in this race from the last Olympics (officially branded the 2020 Summer Olympics, even though they took place in 2021), I was pulling hard for Rai Benjamin, but it's pretty much impossible, as a sports fan, to not be ensorcelled by Karsten Warholm's excellence down the stretch. I can't wait to see the rematch this Olympics. And don't sleep on Brazil's Alison dos Santos crashing the party and denying both Warholm and Benjamin the gold.
Track and field isn't until next week, though, so I've been watching some beach volleyball (underrated fun watch and not just because the competitors are three-fourths naked), a bit of basketball (Greece with a near upset of Canada), and swimming. The US men won gold in the 400-meter freestyle relay, but Katie Ledecky -- the female GOAT of swimming, in my opinion -- barely secured bronze in the 400-meter butterfly. Although she's arguably the best ever, it seems like she might not be the best right now. An Australian named Ariane Titmus has apparently surpassed her. That's the way sports like swimming go: Out with the old, in with new. Ledecky might be over-the-hill at the lofty age of... 27. Swimmers, especially women swimmers, often break onto the stage in their mid-teens and peak in their early twenties. I mean, Ledecky won her first Olympic Gold in 2012 at 15, which is only four years older than Lil' S1. It's absurd to think of him earning a medal, even just a bronze, at the next Olympics. Although, that's primarily because his main forms of exercise are riding a scooter back and forth on our porch while listening to a podcast and walking to the store to buy Tic Tacs.
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Speaking of Lil' S1, he went to baking camp this past week. We were worried he would be the oldest kid there, because he was right at the age limit, but there were several kids there older than him. He was, however, the only boy. S signed him up largely so that he could learn to take the Metro, as it was in a bakery right by a Metro station, but they closed the only station within walking distance of our house for a few months to do construction. So, there went that idea. Instead we had to drop him off and pick him up, and it was 40 minutes round-trip, and it started at 10 am and ended at 1 pm, so it was pretty much more of an inconvenience for us than anything else. He said they didn't even learn much either. Instead of actually letting the kids follow the recipes on their own, they had everything measured out already and just made one giant batch of whatever they were making that day. The only thing the kids did was take turns pouring the ingredients into the bowl. It's sounds pretty lame. But he seemed to like it well enough, and we got some tasty sweets out of the deal (most of which we gave away to friends and neighbors, as we're trying to eat a bit healthier as a family these days), so no harm, no foul, I suppose.
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My old friend, roommate, and graduate school classmate came to town yesterday, and I saw him in person for the first time in about 15 years. He wanted to meet S and me and another couple we know for dinner, so I suggested a place just up the street from us, because we didn't have a sitter and were planning on leaving the kids alone for a few hours. But then a friend of ours who has twins our boys pal around with sometimes invited them over for a sleepover, so we didn't have to worry about kids at all. We could have actually gone out -- like, left the neighborhood and gone to restaurant we haven't already been to a dozen times. But I had already confirmed the location with my friends and made reservations, and I hate making plans, so I especially hate doing it twice, so I just kept things as is, but I kinda regret it now, especially because my friends recently moved to Miami (I didn't know that), and we went to a Cuban restaurant. When our friends from Maine come visit, I guess we'll take them out for lobster. Well, everybody seemed to have a good time, nevertheless.
Plus, "local cuisine" is one of the most overrated aspects of culture, in general. In any major city in the US -- maybe even the world -- you can get really good, authentic food of any style or ethnicity. It's indistinguishable from anywhere else. I feel quite confident in that. If you took somebody and obscured their location, so that they couldn't tell where they were, they would not consistently rate food from one place over that of another. Indian food from restaurants in India tastes the same as Indian food from restaurants in the US. Salmon in DC tastes the same as salmon in Seattle tastes the same as salmon in Chicago.
Unless it's a psychological thing, which is possible -- like street tacos taste better in Southern California than in New York, not because they are actually different, but because you are in Southern California. Then the whole thing flips if it's pizza. I bet if you took New York pizza, froze it and then gave it to people in LA, and then did the same things with LA pizza in New York, people would say the New York pizza was better, even though it's actually the LA pizza they're eating. It's the overall eating experience that they are into, and that's actually valid, so maybe I need to recant some of the paragraph above.
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I've been kinda obsessed with the Stevie Wonder song "Part-Time Lover" of late. It's got a great tempo and catchy beat, and of course Stevie Wonder can sing the heck of out anything. It's been in steady rotation in my "Gym Mix" of late. The lyrics are kinda funny too. It's all about how the singer is cheating on his girl with his "part-time lover":
If she's with me I'll blink the lights
To let you know tonight's the night
For me and you my part-time lover
But then at the end there's a catch:
I've got something that I must tellLast night someone rang our doorbellAnd it was not you my part-time loverAnd then a man called our exchangeBut didn't want to leave his name
I guess that two can play the gameOf part-time loversYou and me, part-time loversBut, she and he, part-time lovers
See, his lady was cheating too. Reminds of that kinda terrible "Pina Colada" song. It also got my thinking: What is the best cheating song? It's gotta be "Part-Time Lover," although I do have soft spots for the Shaggy classic "It Wasn't Me" (featuring the dulcet vocals of RikRok) and Naughty By Nature's "OPP".
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The ice makers broke in both of our refrigerators. Neither of them even lasted a year. The upstairs one stopped working a few months ago, and the downstairs one went kaput earlier this month. I'm not getting them fixed again. What's the saying for this situation? Don't throw good money at bad? I think that's it. I'll just make ice in trays. It's actually quite easy -- turns out all you have to do is freeze water. It's more than a little annoying to have to do this after paying $800 just last year so that I wouldn't have to do this, but so it goes. You can still use the ice dispenser in our upstairs fridge, it just can't make ice on its own. So, every few days I empty out the trays into the ice box and refill them. It's really only a mild inconvenience. I just wish I had done it in the first place.
Until next time...
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