Got To Begin Again

The Olympics have started! (both the knitting and the Torino events) :)

We decided that our team should be called "Team It's All Her Fault". It's a long story, but mostly it's because Dani is the one who taught a lot of our other teammates to knit, and on top of that, we tend to blame her for *everything* whether it's her fault or not. So here's our team logo.

We gathered at P's house last night to watch the opening ceremonies from Torino (VERY COOL, although some odd moments -- and what's with the German team's coat colors? Yeccch!) We had chinese food and brownies and wine, and started our Olympic projects.

Of course, we all had to pick our Olympic "crushes" -- the athlete that we will follow through all of his events. But, during the parade we saw a female luger from the US Virgin Islands (the only athlete from USVI at the games) who is known as "Grandma Luge" -- she has been in every Winter Olympics since 1988! (that's '88, not '98) So we're going to keep an eye out for her, too. She's too cute. In any event, I chose Chad Hedrick, the speedskater. He already won one gold, and is up for 4 more events! Brings back memories from my childhood of watching Eric Heiden skate, he was the best! My other crush (of long standing) is Bob Costas. He's awesome.

They have totally changed the scoring for ice skating at the Olympics (after the fiasco in Salt Lake City -- it's about time!) so that the 12 judges aren't specifically tied to any one country. The computer randomly picks scores from 9 of them, so nobody knows whose scores got dropped. And the points system is now out of 100 (basically), instead of being out of 6.0. There's an explanation on the NBC Olympics page -- but it's seriously confusing... it's about as complicated as the BCS standings!

Of course, timing is everything - we're getting hit with a huge snowstorm this weekend, so I'm perfectly content to sit home and watch the Olympics and work on the scarf. I did go out for a few hours today, before the snow got too bad -- I walked over to my cousin's apartment to meet his baby daughter Hannah, and give her the little duckie. I was right, the duckie is bigger than she is! But she's very cute. I found a chart and figured out that Aron and I are second cousins, and so that makes Hannah my second cousin once removed. (Aron's grandmother and my grandfather were brother and sister, I think.)