Olympics

The Olympics always make me cry. I know, weird. The first time I remember crying over them was in 1996 when Kerri Strug twisted her ankle but won the gold anyway. But I cry over much more mundane stuff than that, too, like when Ireland got its first swimming medal. I cry sometimes when people mess up and cry themselves, and I cry when they win and look really happy. At least I've never cried over beach volleyball. In fact I try hard not to watch beach volleyball, but NBC doesn't make this easy.

I'm not sure why this happens, since I'm neither a very teary nor a particularly empathetic person normally, and I grow more cynical about the Olympics with each passing four years. I didn't actually watch much of it this year, apart from tae kwon do, partly because most of the time when I turned on NBC they were showing beach volleyball, basketball, or, at one point, the early miles of the women's marathon. If I were to award a gold medal for tearworthiness, it would be to Su Li-Wen of Taiwan, who fought a bronze medal match with a bad knee, and came awfully close to winning before her Croatian opponent kicked her in the bad leg, then later scored during sudden death. She was a real trooper, but she was sobbing when her coach gave her a piggy-back ride out of the gymnasium. It's here, at around 44:00.

Belted

Yesterday I finally got my black belt. It's hard to take myself too seriously as a result when the test group consisted of me and one other 20-something woman and about a dozen elementary schoolers. Perhaps the hardest part of the test was sparring, in which teenagers kicked my ass in front of an audience of proud, photo-happy parents. But as someone who's been pretty terrible at every sport I've ever tried (with the possible exception of cross-country, at which I was merely mediocre), it's nice to have affirmation that four years of physical training has yielded measurable results.

Afterward I celebrated by hosting a dinner-and-a-movie get-together at Agent V's. Despite my fromagophilia I've lately become a devotee of a cookbook called the Veganomicon, and used its advice to make chickpea cutlets with mustard sauce and roasted asparagus. Then we watched The Long Kiss Goodnight. In my evite I'd described this movie as "a delicious morsel of so-bad-it's-good-ness," but I'd forgotten just how bad--and how good--it really is. Here's a sample.

What I accomplished this week

1.) Doing the splits (front and back--I'm still working on middle) for the first time since I was about 17 and taking ballet.

2.) Keeping my downstairs neighbor's cats alive until his return today. This may not sound like a big deal, but I seem to be kryptonite for cats. One of the neighbor's cats got sick a few days into his three-week absence, I took him to the animal hospital in the middle of the night and then gave him his medicine and canned food as directed, and you know what? He seems to be doing ok. Although the episode has made me even less inclined to acquire a new feline anytime soon.

Unlucky 2

This past weekend I had strep throat. If you're thinking, "hmmm, I haven't had strep since I was 12," there's a reason for that: Adults rarely get strep. If, like me, you're an adult with no tonsils, your odds are even better. But there it is: I had strep.

Which wouldn't have been so terrible--ok, I could barely swallow, but I spent a couple of days sleeping a lot and watching DVDs--except that I was supposed to test for my black belt on Saturday afternoon, and I missed it. My next chance to test will be in June.

Not that being a black belt would make a large material difference in my life. It would make a small material difference, though, not only because I'd get to wear an actual black belt to class, embossed with my name, but also because I'd have the privilege of wearing a black uniform. Not that I'm a workout fashionista, but that would be a vast improvement on what I've had to wear for the past four years. These pants don't flatter anyone, but they're particularly unkind to those of us who are well-endowed in the gluteal region.

At least I have the satisfaction of knowing that there is literally a black belt with my name on it, waiting for me in the studio office.

Bus

Yesterday morning I woke up at 8:00 (as my body still seems to feel that six hours at a time is more than sufficient), and decided to go to the 10:00 tae kwon do class. My bus was early and I had to run to catch it at a light. Once on board I felt around in my bag for my wallet... and felt... and rumaged... and it wasn't there. I had no Smartrip card and no money. I briefly contemplated trying to talk the driver into giving me a free ride, but then how would I get back? The tkd studio is miles from my apartment. So, without giving any explanation, I got off at the next stop, walked back home, and headed down to the basement to workout on the elliptical machine.

Unlucky

Lest you think my life is all free art and decadent California breakfasts, here are some unfortunate things that have happened to me recently:

• I got a $35 parking ticket in Del Mar while M.M. and I were off hunting for quarters to put in their ridiculously overpriced meters.
• The bottle of vintage Nicaraguan rum I picked up in Tijuana broke in M.M.'s checked bag on the way back (curses to Homeland Security and its inane liquids ban!).
• I skipped tae kwon do and came straight home from work today intending to do some much-needed laundry, only to find that a water main had broken. I didn't have water until just minutes ago--that is, 11:20 p.m.

Speaking of tae kwon do, here's something good that happened last week that I haven't blogged about: I got my brown belt. I'd been a red belt since July, what with switching schools and being rather lazy about learning the new curriculum. My next test will be for black belt. Yikes.

Flickr

For all my readers who've been losing sleep about how I can't walk and will probably lose my job and end up on the street, have no fear. I limped for less than 24 hours and am walking (even running for the bus) quite normally now. But the bruise now covers nearly my whole foot. You can indulge your morbid curiosity here.

Speaking of which, my first disgusting foot picture has gotten 27 hits on Flickr in the few days since I uploaded it. Compare that to this picture, which I'm partial to, and which has gotten exactly 0 hits prior to blog highlighting. I mean, I snowshoed into the mountains during a blizzard for this picture and risked ruining my new camera with wet snow, and I think it came out rather well. But apparently all Flickr viewers want is prurient shock value.

Ow

Picture this: I'm sparring in tae kwon do. I jump up, spin 540 degrees and kick my six-foot-tall partner on the side of the head so hard that he flies across the room. I bruise my foot in the process.

What actually happened was that I was doing forms, which are these sort of formal routines--not upper-level forms, but forms that involve a lot of emphatically stepping into new positions and punching and such--and I stepped wrong. I fell pretty dramatically, which is more embarrassing when you're doing something like stepping emphatically into a new position than it is when you're doing something that's actually... hard. But I prefer that you continue visualizing the first scenario.

Being clumsy, I've rolled my ankle plenty of times, and I've always been fine. But now I'm a little worried that I might have broken a bone in my foot (ironically, just three days into my new workout-six-days-a-week regimen). I think it's just a bruise, though. I'll see how it feels in the morning.