the agony of the feet

What a weekend.

Friday: left work early (hello, summer hours), went to see a friend's condo I was thinking of renting (my bed won't fit in the bedroom so it's off my list), and on the bus ride back to my 'hood, got caught up in the most absurd email thread with girl friends who were coming over to celebrate Roomie's birthday and watch the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Games.

Giddily, we devised a drinking game but our mockery of the U.S. Orientalist coverage of the Games was too dead-on.

(Not only did we predict many mentions and camera shots of the Forbidden City, the use of the word 'ancient' and the imputation of Chinese 'inscrutability,' we also predicted the following exchange:
'Well, you know, Jim, the Chinese invented paper and the printing press.'
'As well as gunpowder, Bob.'
We howled.)

Within a half hour of the ceremonies, we were plowed. By the end of the ceremonies we were - well, I can't even remember what we were. (If you haven't seen the ceremonies, you should. It'll blow your mind. "And how do they do it? They do it with PEOPLE!!" Awesome.)

Saturday: a day of recovery.

Sunday: early morning tennis with Roomie and then more recovery while reading comic books.

Happy Olympics, folks.
...

2nd most favorite Olympic ceremony moment:

NBC Chinese 'expert': And this is the Chinese character for 'harmony,' which will be a repeating theme tonight of these Games. What's so ironic and interesting is how there are so many disharmonious things about Chinese culture and life - the environment, human rights. So it's really, you know, an ideal.

Ding: Yeah, sorta like our ideal of, you know, democracy.