TRYING TO PACE MYSELF...
...the saga of Baseball, Olympiads and Adipose Tissue...
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This is that really strange time when there's just Too Much To Watch if you like Sports. I'm not one of those junkie-type-fans who call sports shows and cuss everyone out, but right now, we're in the midst of baseball season and The Seattle Mariners are actually beginning to look like a baseball team. Ever since Ichiro left the building a week ago, the M's are Pitching! Hitting! And Scoring! And they've been wining against lousy teams, but also against Better teams. In this age of Low Expectations, I want the Mariners to achieve the .500 mark by season's end. To win as many as they lose. That's all I ask...
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Achieving that .500 record is going to take Lots Of Time, but there is hope, and for once, after game's end, The M's don't look like they're headed for the Death Chamber. Right now the M's are on pace for a win total in the upper '60s. So we'll see. They're 49-57 right now. There's 56 games left in this season. They would need to win 32 of those games to get to an 81-81 record, and the prospects are dim. But for the moment, the M's have been looking pretty good. Of course the logic is, "this is a rebuilding year", and in that light, the M's are succeeding, because they're better this year than last. They couldn't have gotten much worse.
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But, once again, my baseball-watching-time (and other-program-watching-time) is being seriously encroached on by The Olympics, the 2012 version, based in Merrie Olde London, England. I absolutely love every facet of The Olympics. I'm there for Water Polo, Gymnastics, Swimming and even WhiteWater Rapids (which was the last thing I expected to see at an Olympiad in Great Britain!). But it's there, courtesy of some construction wizards who engineered the course which actually does a fairly good job of mimicking a mountain stream, and yes, those who fashioned the Olympic Man-Made Artificial Water Rapids remembered to use plenty of Blue Paint.
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Looking back thru older posts, I've distorted the subject of the Olympics time and time again, and so, this post continues that tradition. I like what Google does, big corporation that it is, customizing their header for whatever's going on, and here they picture a field hockey player going for the gold.

For me, the Olympics are like a sort-of visual Salad Bar...so many different things to sample. So far I've seen those cute little girls all in tears over meltdowns in Gymnastics (as befell the Russian women's team), I've seen Michael Phelps win his record 19th swimming medal; he's the most decorated Olympian Ever, and he still has 3 races left in this Olympiad. I've been watching the Mens' Breaststroke, and that's gotta be one of the most difficult ways to move through water with any speed at all, let alone finesse. And in women's gymnastics I've seen little Jorden Weiber's amazing comeback tonight, after she lost in competition earlier this week. Tonight she has a gold medal.
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Watching the Olympics reminds me of things I used to do, for I used to swim The Mile, and I used to run The Marathon. At my own pace, of course. What, you think I had anywhere near Olympic Talent? No, but I have eleven Marathon Finisher Medals and I'm proud of them. And maybe I'll one day get back in the Pool, even if those swimming in the lane next to me would probably mistake me for a Whale. Thar She Blows!!! One thing in my favor (favour, if you're British): Fat (Adipose)Tissue Floats Very Well. In the meantime, I can live vicariously through these Olympians I'm watching, in that "I've done some of that". I can relate a little bit. I know what it's like to push and push until it hurts. Although these days, it takes less pushing to hurt than it used to.
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Another instance of an Artificial World created in these London Olympics is in the Beach Volleyball event. I'm fairly sure that Great Britain has beaches. That country has quite a few miles of shoreline; surely, there's gotta be a friendly beach in the (relative) neighborhood that one can stake a Volleyball net into, but, nooo, tons of Beach Sand have been brought inside and that's where the games are played. But I'm wondering what the difference is, really, between Beach and Regular Volleyball...couldn't a Beach Volleyballer also play on a court? Maybe those skills don't transfer, one to another. There are only two people on a beach volleyball team, after all. From what I can see, the main difference is, the Beach Volleyballers' uniforms are a LOT skimpier. In short, they wear less clothes during the game than I do when I drag myself to bed.
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It's now just past two a.m., and I've just seen Alison Schmidt tally an Olympic Record in the Womens' 200m Freestyle...I saw this one "Live", there being eight hours' difference between me and London. Let's hope I get to bed sometime soon...