i prefer silver. goes better with my skin tone.

...first, let me excuse my lack of capital letters and anything else that requires a shift key on a keyboard. along with my screen, which is completely black - we had to resort to lugging our big old dusty desktop monitor out of the back room in order to see anything we were actually doing on the computer, which, you know, can help - and my battery, which refuses to hold any charge whatsoever - and is unfortunately not under the recent 'my laptop just burst into flames' category of free replaceable batteries- my shift key has been working on and off, and well, right now it's off. so no capital letters for you. or parentheses, you may have noticed.

so, my husband and i are usually flipping through the channels at night, going back and forth with many 'what do you want to watch's and 'i don't care, whatever you want is fine's. but since the olympics started, we have pretty steadily been watching various sports at night, rooting or booing or wowing or asking each other if that would really qualify as a sport. two names have obviously stuck out - michael phelps from the good old usa, and usain bolt of jamaica. although i am sure that most of you either don't care about the olympics and therefore aren't interested in what i have to say about these men - which isn't much- or have been watching the olympics as steadily as we have been and therefore have heard way too much about both men, i am going to dish my opinions anyway. so read on if you feel like hearing more about both.

phelps- amazing. both in the pool and out. not only did he win 8 gold medals, but he broke multiple world/olympic records in doing so. i don't care if he is getting most of the news. he deserves it. i suppose he would be the babe ruth of swimming, calling his victories before actually achieving them. and once he did win, he was such a great sport about it. yes there was alot of hooting an hollering and what not - which is to be expected- , but during the race itself as well as in the interviews after, he was all about passing the credit on to other people and being very humble about it. i respect that.

bolt- amazing. i don't think any of the three records that he broke - one with the help of 3 of his teammates- will be broken anytime soon. he is, by far, one of, if not the, fastest men in the world. unlike phelps, however, in his first run for gold, which i am sure that most of you saw, when he was about half way through and well ahead of the rest of the pack, he started slowing down, beating his chest and enjoying his victory well before he actually crossed the line. i understand the excitement. you've got the whole crowd behind you, roaring their approval of your outstanding performance. but i consider it a disrespect to the rest of the men running as well as those watching to give up, for any reason, before you are done. the olympics are supposed to be the picture of sportsmanship, where men and women go and do their very best until the end - i'm thinking of the 4-women relay from the usa, who dropped the baton but picked it up and ran her heart out to the line even though they were already d-qed-. yes, his time was amazing, but what would it have been if he had run until the he crossed that line... to be fair, he ran his heart out for his other two races, and that redeemed him a bit in my eyes...

i myself have never been a child to dream about being the olympics. i am not competitive enough for that. i am on a softball team that did not win one game this season, and i am perfectly content about that. sometimes i wish i had a more of a drive when it came to sports... i feel like i would have done better in highschool if i had. but the time is past for that. i am interested, however, on how i will react when my children start playing sports... perhaps i will go all soccer-mom on them... we shall see...