Poor Sports!

Dear Evgeni Plushenko:

You deserve to be a poster boy. Your behavior during past and current Olympic games has demonstrated that you should be a poster boy. Yes, you would be the perfect poster boy. The poster boy for poor sportsmanship!

I saw this article where you felt that you were robbed of the gold medal in these Olympic games. So much so that you gave yourself the "Platinum of Vancouver" and then posted it on your website. I guess enough people complained that you had it removed. But still you were able to make your point. You think you are the Golden Boy of Men's Figure Skating. But in my humble opinion you are not!

I have followed your Olympic career for the past three Olympic games. Let's see you pouted in Salt Lake City because Yagudin "stole" your gold. Even though every single judge ranked him first.

In 2006 in Torino, when you actually won your gold medal, you had earned it. That night you were the best skater. I was happy to see you get your gold that you felt eluded you in Salt Lake. But I could have done with out your attitude of entitlement.

Now we are at the present Olympic games. You made it known to the world you came out of retirement to try at one more Gold medal. You wanted to tie Dick Button's record of consecutive Olympic Gold Medals.

However, times have changed in figure skating, especially the scoring system. I am assuming that your coaches would instruct you on how the new scoring system works. Other athletes have studied and adapted their programs to fit the new scoring system so that they can get the maximum points possible. You however did not. I don't know if it is because you are not that strong of an athlete or your attitude of entitlement stopped you.

You did not do a single jump in the last minute and half of your program even though the scoring system states that you get bonus points for every jump landed sometime after the 2 minute mark. Evan Lysacek used the scoring system to his advantage. He jumped through out his entire program. But not only that he is a beautiful skater to watch. His jumps and landings were solid, the transitions and choreography was beautiful. You landed a quad, which isn't even a required element.

One extra rotation in a jump does not a gold medalist make!

Out of Control

I have been struggling with something for the past week and I thought it might be interesting to get some feedback from the 8 of you out there who read this blog. Last month we called the satellite company and asked them to suspend our service. Yep that is right NO MORE TV! Why you ask? Simple, our 6 year old son and television don't mix. Well actually they do mix and quite well for that matter but when it comes to TV our son has a love/hate relationship. He LOVES the television and HATES anyone or anything that comes between him and the TV. I considered myself to be a pretty good mother when it came to monitoring the television. It was not on all day. Only certain times; when I was cooking a meal, or had a project for work that needed to get done was he allowed to watch. We also used it as a reward when he would do his chores. However after constantly fighting with him over the TV, I was done. My son is a TV addict. He wanted to watch it every moment of the day, he would hide the remotes from me and secretly go and watch if I was somewhere else in the house. He would even try and stick his head of of the bathroom while he was taking care of business so he could still see the TV. I can't tell you how many times I found him lying in the doorway of the bathroom looking at the TV with his bare bottom in the air! The worst was the tantrums he would throw when we made him turn it off. So we decided no more.

However this decision was made in haste. Not only did we prevent him from watching the TV we also cut ourselves off! I turned off the TV right before the Olympics (for me) and fall football (for Tata). I tried to watch the Olympics online for a couple of days. Isn't it frustrating to watch a sporting event when you already know what happened? Do you know how many races I missed of Phelps? I saw Gymnastics online but the video kept pausing. So frustrating. What do we do cave in and get the TV back on? Do we just have it on for the Olympics? Then what happens when fall football comes on? I am sure then we will need it on in the winter for something else. I know as adults we can live without the TV. In fact it has been very nice not to have it on. I've talked to my hubby a lot more and we have been creative in finding other things to do.

For anyone who knows me they know what a big fan I am of the Olympics. I have to watch every event I can. I love to hear the stories of triumph and the celebration of the Olympic spirit. I can recite the creed which is; "The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well." Do I follow this creed and deal with my struggle of missing the Olympics all for the sacrifice of the well being of my son?

*We couldn't take it anymore and got rabbit ears for our bedroom TV, we just get the local stations (which are showing the Olympics) but thankfully the kids don't know yet. To them the TV is still broken!