Light The Cauldron

Well, take a look at this! I have no idea where I am! What is this place? After the Olympics wrapped up, I decided to refresh the website a little bit. I don't know if it feels any more professional than it did before, but it seems a bit less 1998 than it did before. I also changed the website's name to reflect a bit more about future posts. When I began the blog four years ago, I was going to spend time writing about Michigan sports. Unfortunately, it's a bit hard to write about Michigan sports when I don't get to watch as much as I did when I was in Wisconsin. Plus, many events in Michigan take place early around here, so I don't get as much chance to watch them as when it was just over the lake. The new name takes my Olympics outline and expands it a bit. You'd be surprised how many Blogspot blogs have the word "blurb" in them. "theblurb"? Taken. "blurbsandmore"? Yup. "blurbalicious"? Well, I didn't try th

Well, it’s done! The Russians dominated in the end and took their hometown push to 13 medals and 33 overall. The Americans started strong, but whimpered at the finish, winning just a bronze in the final two days of competition. It was a lot of fun to stay up late, wake up early, postpone viewing any other television shows (and all programming from ESPN) to devote all my time to the Olympics. I enjoyed explaining events to my students and seeing things click in their head. These two weeks are two weeks of nonstop action, and it’s difficult to fit everything in. But it’s also two weeks that usually guarantees excitement every day. There’s always a top story, or a controversy, or a surprise coming out of the Olympics. New faces are discovered every day, and old faces either live up to expectations or fade into the background. Now begins the Long Wait.  The time between the Winter Olympics and the Summer Olympics is about six months longer than between the Summer Olympics and

It’s time to go back to seventeen days ago and revisit my Bold Predictions Blurb. It’s interesting to see what interesting things I thought would happen that ended up being total duds. I was right on a bunch of things, though! (I am that good.) Russia will win hockey gold Nope! They didn’t even make it to the semifinals, losing to eventual bronze medalist Finland. The tandem from Canada will beat Charlie White and Meryl Davis in ice dancing. Happily, this was untrue. They did meet expectations! However , they will win gold. I said they’d win in the team event, but they did win gold in their own event. I kind of was right. SJ Shaun White won’t medal. Right on all counts! He finished fourth in halfpipe and didn’t compete in slopestyle. Ashley Wagner and Gracie Gold will falter. Well, this is true in the fact that they didn’t medal. Gold finished fourth and Wagner took seventh, even though Wagner skated clean (no falls) and Gold fell in the free skate. But t

It’s Friday, so that means one thing: Thank-You Notes, Olympic style! I’m not Jimmy Fallon or anything, so these aren’t going to be funny. Probably not. It’s just a good way to have an alternative format! *cue music * Thank you... 2009 HP Laptop...for not sucking it up like I thought you would. You did a relatively admirable job at showing live sporting events at school for the kiddos, without too much hassle. It shocked me, and now I want to throw you off the balcony less than I did before. Thank you... God...for putting Lent in March this year. I couldn’t imagine doing all of this while being overloaded with church stuff. Thank you... Internet...for showing me events live as they happened (even at 3:30am!), but no thank you for spoiling events I wanted to watch in Primetime by putting up the results on the sidebars of pages! Thank you... NBC...because you may not know how to tread the line between revealing live information in your news shows (Today Show, NBC

It’s always hard to not meet expectations. However, there are times when expectations can be quietly shut away, and other times when expectations are stopped in their tracks. This Olympics, it seems like when the male athletes don’t meet expectations (Shaun White, Shani Davis, Bode Miller), they do it quietly. They end up off the podium completely. It kind of feels okay when they lose. You’re disappointed, but it’s not going to ruin your day. When it comes to the women, however, they ruin your expectations like a sucker punch. Last week Hannah Kearney was riding high in women’s moguls, and everyone knew she’d do it again. Then she consistently couldn’t handle the first moguls after the first jump. Just like that, she was getting bronze. Sucker punch. Yesterday the bobsled ladies came so close to gold, and then had a cruddy final run to let the Canadians slip in. Sucker punch. Today, the US women’s hockey team was THIRTY SECONDS away from gold, and just lik