It's Olympics time. I've been watching some of it, at least when my television lets me. (Seriously, it's a matter of if the TV is cooperating or not. My reception of NBC is fairly crappy - if you cross your legs with the right leg on top, it might be crystal clear; left leg on top, nothing but static; uncrossed legs, picture but no sound. It's highly unpredictable.)

So far I've managed to catch some men's gymnastics, a bit of beach volleyball and women's gymnastics, and some swimming. I don't really care about volleyball, and the women's gymnastics always creeps me out a tiny bit, though I do think it's awesome that there's a 30-something year old woman on the German team. Men's gymnastics is insanely impressive, especially the rings, high bar, and parallel bars. I also love the pommel horse - I'm curious if any of these guys have tried break-dancing before; some of the routines would translate pretty well, I think.

Swimming I find less interesting, mostly because all you can really see is a bunch of splashing. Enter technology. They have the World Record line projected onto the screen during some races; it's this green line that moves along the pool showing the WR speed. Usually people are a bit behind it; sometimes their hand is a bit ahead of it and they narrowly beat it. Or in the case of the men's 4x100 freestyle relay last night, half of the pool is keeping up with the line and a couple of people are a full body length ahead of it. It was insane. The US's B team beat the record in the semi-final; the A team obliterated it in the finals. It seems a record is broken in every swimming event - I watched a heat of the women's 400m freestyle semi-finals; Katie Hoff from the US beat the Olympic record that had been in place for about 20 years. The very next heat an Italian woman beats this new record. Craziness.