Poor Car...

This is what we woke up to Friday morning:




Poor car...really, what did it do to deserve such treatment?

Anyhow, we were rather distressed and perturbed. There was no note from whoever hit us. Bad hit-and-run person. It was incredibly annoying to think that whoever did it would just get away Scott free! Our theory--someone, most likely drunk, had gone down our road, not realizing it was a dead end. Came to the end, and attempted to back up into our driveway to turn around, missing completely. As you can see in the pic, we aren't even that close to our driveway!

Anyhow, after taking lost of pictures, and making a Police report (Chris did this-he commented when he got back that the report was destined straight for the cold case files-not much they could or would do).

About noon when we got back from my post opp Dr Apt (traumatic on its own)our neighbors were out. They asked if we heard about what had happened the night before. The story is as follows:

Our neighbor Otmar was working in his garage about 2:30 am. He heard a rather loud crash. Rushing out into the street to see what had happened he encountered a rather inebriated Hispanic looking lady in a very nice yellow LandRover. She had stepped out to try and see/register what had happened. Otmar said "do we have a problem here?" She responded "we sure do" but a bit more graphically, I gather. Otmar then said that he would go inside and get his camera and a phone so that they could take care of it (I think that he was trying to steer her in the right direction. When he returned it was just in time to see her speeding off. What she did not know, however, is that Otmar walked behind the vehicle and memorized the license before he went inside and wrote it down. Hence, seeing that she had decided to flee, he called the police swichboard (not 911 as he has VoIP). When he said he was calling to report a hit and run they asked when it had happened. When he told they 3 minutes ago, they got really excited and asked which way she had gone. The caught her within 5 min...:) She denied that it happened (and failed her sobriety test) so Otmar agreed to sign a citizens arrest and testify in court if need be.
Otmar gets the award for civic duty/good neighbor...I should try and find a place to report his good deed to and get him an actual award--if not perhaps cookies or something.
Please make any suggestions you feel would be appropriate to honor such a good citizen.

Anyone can marry you in California!

Yes, that is right. I just attended a lovely wedding in Chico California (which turn out to be directly north of Sacrament, although not close...I always thought that it was somewhere near Fresno, although I have no idea why). Anyhow, Chico is actually a very nice little community, seemingly built on two diffrent industrys, students at Cal State Chico, and amands. For you uninitiated with local Chico dialects that is how the local farmers pronounce almond. I really didn't believe it when they first told me, but apparently they really do. Not, I should point out, because they do not know how almond is really pronounced...you have to be around them and accepted for quite awhile before they will throw the local pronunciation of almond your way. This being said, I have no idea why they pronounce almond wrong, tradition perhaps?
Back to the wedding however. This is the second wedding in California in the last two years that I have been to, and the second one where the couple had a friend (not a friend minister or a friend judge, just a friend) perform the service. As this last friend was the best man and lives in atlanta, it peaked my curiosity. What authority exactly do you have to have to marry a couple in CA? It turns out that, for a fee, the local county will deputize anyone to perform a one time ceremony, providing that the couple has a valid marrage licence, etc.

I just thought you should know...

Gymnastics judging...Start value 8.9

Have you been watching the men's gymnastics competition in the Olympics? The athletes are amazing, the skills both complex and simply beautiful, and the judging...Beyond comprehension. The first sign of this was on the first day of competition, when several Americans were informed that their some of their skills had been devalued by the head judge on the high bar competition. These were skills that they had used in the world championship just last year. It is not as if the community was seeing a new skill and hence had no notice as to what it should be scored at! But instead of establishing the value a year beforehand, as apparently is standard, the head high bar judge declared the skills to be less valuable...The day before competition. I guess that was our first sign.
Next was the ensuing scandal associated with the men's all around competition. Apparently the parallel bar routine of the bronze metal winning Korean athlete was scored out of the wrong start value. The Korean Olympic committee contends that he should have won the gold in place of Paul Hamm.
However, the final, and perhaps most telling piece was the High bar judging in the event final last night. For the first few routines the commentators were disagreeing with the scoring as usual. But then the Russian Nemav, four time olympic gold medalist went. He did beautifully, didn't quite stick the landing, but overall it was great. But the judges put him in last. Not just in last, way in last! Two judges in particular, the Canadian and some Asian judge, gave him about 9.6. This was so obviously too low that the crowd reacted in protest. They were yelling and booing, and probably being the loudest crowd ever at a gymnastics meet. It must have gone on for five minutes at least. Then the person over judging came over to the high bar judges, called the two lowest scores aside and had a talk with them. After another few minutes new scores were posted, Nemav still would not win a metal, but at least the crowd showed him that they new more than the judges. This didn't stop the uproar (which lasted a full 10 minutes) and Paul Hamm, they gymnast to go next, had to go and ask Nemav, who seems like a really honorable guy, and speaks English quite well, to quiet the crowd down. He got up, waved to the crowd, and tried to quiet them, lowering his hands. It really didn't work though. The crowd only quieted to cheer Paul's release moves once he started his routine. Paul ended in second, his twin brother Morgan in forth, and Nemav in fifth.

The judges very likely took last in the event. I only gave them a start value of 8.9 out of 10, but I am pretty sure that they earned a few deductions along the way. I hope the ten minute crowd uproar will do more than change two of Nemav's high bar score, and go on to help do something about the quality of gymnastic judging. The athletes deserve something more after years of dedicated practice than to have their outcome hinge on the perhaps randomly wrong, or perhaps prejudiced scoring of a bunch of obviously fallible old men...

The Olympics

I like to support the Olympics. They are an opportunity to foster world unity, patriotism, interest in sport, peace, love, and harmony, etc. But the Olympics aren't causing any sort of positive feelings to grow in me. In contrast, I find myself, again, growing both upset and bitter. Why you ask? The NBC coverage. When I began to see the commercials promoting the Olympics before they started this year I thought that NBC had learned from the fiasco that was their broadcast of Sydney. I thought they had because they had begun to advertise that they would be covering events on 5 different NBC affiliated networks. I think that they have learned...A little. They, however, have not figured out that one of the most basic problems that they did have last time around was that they never showed events live. With the internet and availability of all kinds of information at our fingertips, I wonder how they can think that we will be patient enough to wait until "prime time". Why, when I turned my TV on during breakfast this morning were they not showing some sport? Why does their coverage (which starts at some unknown time during the day) stop for two hours between 6 and 8 each night? They really think that we need to see (and will watch) their news casts? Instead of competing with the other news stations by airing...News, why don't they compete by showing more sports? I'm sure that every one would be able to survive for 2 weeks without their nightly broadcasts.

Also, why don't they finish the coverage of one event before going on to another. Its not as though they are breaking from one exciting event to cover another for a bit that is going on live! Its not like the US open in Tennis. These are events that finished hours ago! We aren't going to miss one bit of Swimming if we finish the Bike road race first instead of coming and going 4 different times!

Finally, I would really like them to post a schedule of exactly what events will be shown and when. They have many hours to figure this out, after all, what with the delay from live! I really think that this is not too much to ask!

Given that this is unlikely to happen, I have a suggestion. Instead of allowing television stations to compete to have the rights to show the entire Olympics, we should instead have them compete for event coverage. You know, NBC could get the gymnastics, ABC swimming, and OLN the Bike events and Archery. That way we could have control of the flipping between events ourselves, and since all the cable stations would get in on the action too, every event would be covered! Meanwhile, instead of getting the airbrushed version of things, we would get the chance to watch our favorite events in detail, and perhaps see some teams besides the USA and perhaps even some of the obscure events that we do not compete in, becoming a bit more internationally savvy!

Well, it is an idea... :)

Hanging Art

So, since yesterday I have been trying to come up with something to review, or even just something to share. Having been completely bereft of ideas, I have decided to go with hanging art. It perhaps doesn't sound all that exciting, really like nothing more than pounding in a nail and then putting the picture up and standing back to make sure that it is straight. But after purchasing some art, and making Chris hang it due to my complete indecision ( it really was too small for the space) I have been tortured by it for months... Finally, after watching a few designing shows on TV (not changing spaces by the way) I figured out what was wrong, it was hung much too high! Apparently hanging art to high is an epidemic. Yes, according to the TV experts, most art is hung much too high! Their advice? Figure out where you would naturally hang the art, and then lower it by six inches. (A different expert said something about chest high for a 5 foot 10 inch man). Anyhow, after contemplating for days, I decided to do something about it and lowered my art. suprisingly I am feeling much better about it. (although I might have gone with more like eight inches...)

Now I am just waiting for the episode about exactly how to do a mismatched photo wall with different pictures and frames in different heights etc and make it look stunning...