I’m officially giving up on the 30 Day Meme. The rest of the prompts require way too much thinking… also, L-A-Z-Y.
So what have I been doing? Mmm… watching WAY too much Olympics coverage. I’m an Olympics junkie. I’ll watch anything that NBC “packages” up in primetime — speed skating, alpine skiing, luge, etc. And of course, I’m following figure skating! I follow individual men’s and women’s skating more closely than I do the other disciplines but I’m really happy that Shen/Zhao won pairs despite the almost-spill on their lift in the free skate. They’re the total package — they have the tricks and the artistry. Which brings me to the men. I can’t believe Plushenko is the leader going into the free skate. He is ALL jumps and no artistry. There’s no real choreography or footwork between jumps — he’s just skating around doing as little as possible until the next jump. I much prefer Evan Lysacek (despite the questionable arm-flailing he does in his programs), Daisuke Takahashi, Stephane Lambiel (his spins!), and Jeffrey Abbott (too bad he imploded in the short program). I hope they all have amazing free skates on Thursday and overtake Plushenko. A girl can dream.
This past weekend was Valentine’s Day and Rob and I celebrated by…
1. Going to Starbucks. LOVE their Valentine’s Day cups. 😀
2. Taking Diesel to the park. He’s in desperate need of a haircut, LOL.
3. Watching the NBA All-Star festivities (the slam dunk contest, which I normally enjoy, was laaaame) and the Olympics (again, figure skating!).
4. Renewing our Disneyland annual passes. We decided that this would be our annual Valentine’s Day present to each other. YAY!
5. Looking at model homes and going back and forth (and back and forth) about the pros and cons of buying a townhouse versus single family, new versus resale, now versus later, etc. It’s kinda stressing me out. Seriously, the home buying process is not fun.
Off to watch more Olympics. Speed skating tonight! 🙂
i can’t believe that the chinese couple won! especially w/o the pamchenko! weak sauce.
See I’m on the other side of the fence. I agree with Plushenko that if you don’t do a quad on your program, go home! I’m harsh that way with men’s skating. Also, I’m in lust with Lambiel and his amazing spinning!
We’ll have to agree to disagree, Alie. 😉 I think of figure skating as so much more than just jumps — there’s the edge work, footwork sequences, transitions, spins, spirals, etc. If jumps were the only important part of a short or long program, then these other elements wouldn’t be required nor would they be awarded points. But they are required and they do count in a skater’s total score. Figure skating is a sport and each skater wants to have the most points at the end of the competition. Because Lysacek’s been competing since the last Olys, he had the advantage of knowing the COP better and how to play to his strengths. His quad is inconsistent so he left it out but he knew what jumps were his best and what elements he could do to get higher levels, higher GOEs and more points. If Plushenko had just rearranged his program a bit (it was waaay too front-loaded) to take advantage of the 10% bonus points for jumps in the second half, that probably would have made the difference between silver and gold. Honestly, I thought Plushenko was going to win until I saw his long program and how his elements weren’t laid out to get maximum points.
Oops, haha. I didn’t mean for this comment to be so long! I always have too much to say about figure skating.