the move: part 1

In the past 72 hours or so, I've gone from living out of two large suitcases to being almost settled in a new city 3,000 miles away from "home." In the process of reaching this settling point, I've been making some observations about the twists and turns of what can at times be an incredibly tiresome and expensive endeavor.

Today's discussion: the shit box.

Most of you are probably familiar with the shit box. We all have them, whether it's from a move, from a hectic lifestyle, or just from having lazy organizational skills. It's that box (sometimes drawer) that holds all the miscellaneous stuff you always say you will need but end up not really missing if you don't know it's there.

My shit box contained all the stuff I couldn't fit in my suitcases that I'd accumulated over my summer in Philadelphia. Some of it my mom sent, some I got the week between Induction and Institute, some just appeared I think from the shit fairy. The shit box even had to be brought to Baltimore by a friend with a station wagon, because the combined shit boxes of me and my roommate were too much for one vehicle (I mean that in the most endearing way possible).

So I got the box back today, and eagerly opened it to start sifting through what I knew to be invaluable items in my Harry Potter-sized apartment; I should've known better. Though I appreciate having my printer and some books back in my possession, I'm not sure if the reflective ruler, empty manila envelopes, or single piece of striped ribbon belonged on the must-keep list. It's been less than two months and already the very large box is overflowing.

Guess this means I need to pick which drawer of the kitchen is going to become the shit drawer so I can put the ribbon in it.

the first week

- Baltimore is home to the first monument built to George Washington in the United States. It's located in the Mount Vernon neighborhood (not the mount washington neighborhood, ironically).

- The Book Thing is quite possibly one of the coolest things I've ever seen. It's a free bookstore. Free. As in you walk in and take whatever you want, and they never run out because people are donating so much stuff all the time. This week's trip resulted in copies of Ian McEwan's "Saturday", Mary Doria Russell's "A Thread of Grace", The best American Short Stories of 1993, and a copy of "The Miracle Worker".

- I saw my first firefly. He lit up green for a while, then yellow, then pink. Then Phin (a dog) ate him.

- You are friend or foe depending on whether you consider Maryland a northern or southern state. I haven't made my decision yet.

- The School of the Arts, the school featured in Step Up 2, is tucked in a corner behind the financial district.

- I have to learn to stop saying the word "pop" instead of soda, so people will stop looking at me funny.

- I ate dinner at a Mexican restaurant in the part of town where Hairspray is set. Yes, parts of the movie were filmed here. And the town still has a yearly festival called Honfest to celebrate the hairstyles, among other things.

- In church this morning, they gave all the kids shakers and instruments to play during the last song. It was quite possibly the most beautiful chaos I've ever heard.

If I learned anything from communication ethics...

This is more of a logistics post. I know a lot of you have been asking me to keep you updated about Teach for America and my adventures in Baltimore. However, as I have always tried to keep my work/professional life off this site, I'm torn as to how to approach this one. I've decided that although I will definitely include stuff about my experiences here (as it will be pretty much consuming my life from this point on), I want to be able to give those that want it a more in-depth update, but without the potential repercussions we've all seen with Internet information about work-related info.

So if you would like to get the email updates, either leave a comment with your email address, or you can email me directly at jbacon09@whitworth.edu and I'll get you on board!

boobs and waffle patterns: the college years

So I've pretty much sorted through all my stuff at this point. I think my main conclusion is that I just have way too much crap, and an unhealthy affection for shoes. But the last of the bins and boxes contained mostly stuff from college, so here's some of my favorites from the college years:

• My pen from the PBS headquarters, which I visited in January of 2007. Each time you click the pen a new phrase scrolls through, and when I picked it up today it was on one that said "be more tolerant." Thank you, public television.
• My SAD (Singles Awareness Day) shirt from freshman year. My hall made the shirts to wear on Valentine's Day, and I still think of Katrina's shirt whenever I hear Destiny's Child "Independent Women," because she put phrases from the song all over hers.
• An affirmation sheet from Lutherhaven. Camp (summer 2007) was a crazy time, and I don't think I've ever had to spend so much time affirming people I couldn't stand. No matter how much you love Jesus, some people just shouldn't work with children.
  
• The card James gave me with my rain boots Christmas of last year. They are blue with white polka dots, and you better believe I jump in every puddle I see when I wear them.
• A CD of photos from the 2006-2007 Whitworthian editorial staff. Thomas, you need a life.
• The photo of me on the Rockin Rollercoaster in Hollywood Studios in Disneyworld this spring. Tied with sarah and I's photo from Tremors, circa 6th grade, for most epic photo taken on a roller coaster.
  

boobs and waffle patterns: part 1

Yesterday I started the tedious process of moving. Well, let me back up a step. Three weeks ago I moved back to the Tri-Cities from Spokane, at which point my parents sold our house and had already moved some items to our new house 5 minutes away. So in addition to sorting through all my stuff to take to Baltimore, I have to empty my current bedroom and set up my new one.

This process began with my closet. Thanks to Sarah, when I graduated high school we spent two days sorting through all my stuff and labeling/sorting it into manageable spaces. I'm a terrible pack rat, and thus have trouble parting with 8th grade Algebra tests or the pin I bought on an elementary school field trip. And despite our careful organization 4 years ago, I still had a lot of stuff that had just been chucked into the top shelf, or stuff that I want to take to the East Coast and thus had to be unsorted and repacked. In this process, I came across some pretty interesting items. Here are a few of my favorites:

• my Teen Girl Squad shirt from high school. Four of us made shirts based on the online cartoon. I was the Ugly One.

• old dance pictures. I must say, I picked some pretty decent dresses (save for junior year prom. woof).

• A CD someone made for me to accept my invitation to our senior year Sadies Hawkins dance. It also came with a life-size mannequin that was put in my car in the school parking lot, but I gave that part back.

• My WWJD cloth watch that I bought at a church concert. Purple band with black plastic snap. Priceless.
  

• A love poem written to me in the eighth grade, rhyming couplets and all.

• A card from Sarah that she gave me after a particularly nasty break up. On the envelope she promised that "the next set of pedicures and brownies were on her." Pay up, sister.
  

• My favorite yellow sweater with an applique teddy bear outlined in puffy paint, circa 1st grade.
  

• A print off of an AOL Instant Message conversation I had with a friend sophomore year. Why I thought I would need to remind myself of all that angst is beyond me.

• A document titled "Reasons why being boobless is awesome!" given to my by Alyssa.

-I think my favorites are #2: You can run without worrying about breaking your nose
because of floppage. And #40: You don't sink to the bottom of the pool since you don't
have those heavy weights.

• A card from Alyssa with this message inside: "Waffle patterns on your butt from lawn chairs fade. Friendship lasts forever." So true.

After almost 2 hours of sorting, I had the closet done, and unfortunately also developed a rash across the front of my chest, probably from some creature lurking in the closet. That, or I'm allergic to the past.

You'll never get a second cupcake if you don't ask for it

My 2 year old nephew, Benjamin, visited for about a week with my older brother for all the graduation hoopla. Here are some of the many lessons he taught me:

-Tell people how it is, and don't apologize. If you don't like the salmon, just say so. If your diaper is poopy, simply ask someone to change it for you.

-Swinging higher than you think you can is always exhilarating.

-Some people are better baseball partners than others.

-Shoes are not necessary when riding in a car.

-You'll never get a second cupcake if you don't ask for it.

-Games with sounds are better than games without sounds.

-Sliding down a staircase face first? Bad idea. Sliding down backwards? Endless fun.

-There's no good reason why we shouldn't play racecars in an international airport.

It's not all make believe

Admitting I have a problem is the first step to healing, I'm told. That is, if I were willing to heal myself from the chaos that comes with being an avid "Grey's Anatomy" fan.

I know the show is full of ridiculous relationships, exaggerated emotions, and completely unrealistic medical monstrosities. But what can I say, addictions aren't rational.

With the season 5 finale taking over two hours of my life tomorrow night, I'm saddened and intrigued by the coordination of this show and the course of my college education. I started watching the show a little late in the game my sophomore year, but after catching up on seasons 1 and 2, I've never looked back.

The show has been one constant for me in a time when I never lived in one place for more than 9 months. Friday afternoons I knew that no matter what had gone on in the week, or how chaotic my life seemed, I could connect to abc.com and join people whose lives were inevitably more screwed up than mine. I could escape for 42 minutes into a world not entirely separate from my own, with characters who go big or go home. It's kept me connected to friends outside of college, as we've been able to rant and rave about Meredith's latest antics, or Callie's latest sexual orientation. This year I've been able to watch it in real time on Thursday nights, but the connection is still the same.

So tomorrow, I will make myself a heaping bowl of air-pop popcorn, pour a glass of milk, and settle in for a finale that I'm predicting will result in the death/absence of at least one major character. Hopefully the same will not be true in my own life.

And as a side note, here's an interesting article written by the show's neurological script consultant. It's fascinating.

a bucket list, of sorts

With my college career ending in less than two weeks, I've realized (as is inevitable in these nostalgic times) that I still have a lot I want to do at Whitworth University. Plus, I've always admired Alyssa's goal lists for defined periods of time. So, with 15 days left, here is my bucket list:

1. swim in the Aquatics Center. Katie and I already got this covered, we're going to a water aerobics class. brilliant.

2. Catch a pinecone. For non-Whitworth folk, this is a student tradition. Basically you're not cool unless you can say you've caught a pinecone falling out of a tree.

3-5. Go to the Screaming Yak, the Viking, and Double Dribble. (all bars, of course.)

6. Play miniature golf at Wonderland, the fun center literally a block away from campus that I've never been to.

7. Get a milkshake from the Jack in the Box drive-thru. The only way I will go to Jack in the Box is if it's on a list of this nature.

8. Sit and talk with someone at Rogue, the coffee shop across Division that also serves alcohol.

9. Get a cake from the library. This would require someone to send me a cake, though... what can I say, I'm an optimist.

10. Go on Whitworth's radio station, whitworth.fm. Kelsey and I are going to do a short show together: The Baconators.

11. Use the Dine with the Mind program, which essentially is a voucher to take a professor out to coffee. This one is more of a joke, but still might happen. Especially since my meal plan is quickly vanishing.

12. Make out in the library, preferrably in the poetry or classic literature sections. Like #8, this one takes outside participation. Again, optimism.

13. Tell a dirty joke right as a tour of prospective students walk by.

14. Go look at the art in the Koehler Gallery. Current exhibit: "Something better than free beer," the senior exhibit for art majors.

15. Rollerskate down the Hello Walk.

so delicious

Until tonight, I had forgotten the simple pleasure of eating raw chocolate chip cookie dough off a spoon, in the company of a friend.

The baked versions weren't too shabby, either.

a cause we all can care about

For the second time, I am participating in a Relay for Life event this year. Even though these events have been taking place at my high school or college every year that I can remember, I was always reluctant to participate for two reasons: one, I always had a conflict during the event. but second and more important, I feel really strongly that these kinds of fundraisers and awareness events shouldn't just be another "let's go hang out with friends all night" gig. I feel like we get inundated with good causes to support all the time, and I didn't want to just go and not have the heart behind it.

Then two years ago, one of my friend's moms died of cancer right before the school year started. He's one of the first people I met at Whitworth, and I couldn't imagine the loss he was experiencing. That year was my first experience with Relay, and our team was in honor of his mother. And then about a month ago, another of my friends lost his mother to cancer. Our team this year is in honor of both of these brave and loved women. Even though I never met either of them, I've seen the products of their lifetimes of work as women and mothers in the values and integrity of their sons.

Cancer has also knocked at the door of my family. My aunt died of breast cancer when I was in second grade, after fighting the disease for more than 10 years. My cousin (her daughter) has had a double mastectomy, and last fall had to again undergo treatment for a return case. My would-be uncle died at the age of 14 from leukemia.

I feel like for my generation, cancer is something that's just considered part of life. We here so and so is in chemo, or in surgery, or some form of treatment. I've had teachers go on leave for a school year, known friends who've lost parents or uncles or cousins or siblings. But it's a disease we can fight, a disease we can work to cure. So this year, I will walk around a gym for 8 hours, in hopes of contributing even a little to this fight. My fundraising goal is $50.

For more information about my team, or to donate, click here

anniversary, zip code

Tuesday was a really really good day. I kicked some serious journalism booty at my magazine internship, because I was trying to restrain myself from reading the email titled "your Teach for America application." But because I was kicking some serious journalism booty, I had to get a press release out of my inbox, and upon doing so read the newest message in my inbox titled "welcome to the 2009 Teach for America: Baltimore Corps."

At this point, I began bouncing up and down in my non-ergonomic chair. At which point I made two very giddy phone calls. At which point I had to calm down and get back to work. But after work, I made more giddy phone calls, which led to finding out my brother is officially not going back to war. Which led to my enjoyment of 2 strawberry margaritas in the company of friends.

And, to top it all off, I found my long lost Chapstick-brand Chapstick. The moisturizing kind, in the blue tube.

a rose by any other name

Lately, I've been remembering a lot of smells.

I'll walk into a room or catch a whiff of a passerby and my mind snaps back to whatever association I may have. I was doing an interview last week in a woman’s condo on the west side of town, and the smell inside her home was almost identical to the woman’s home who I stayed with for a week when I was a page in the Washington state House of Representatives my freshman year of high school. I’m sure the similarity was just a shared taste in cleaning products, but then I couldn’t help but notice similarities in the sounds of the house, or the way each of the women carried themselves.

Another is the smell of peach black tea. I just made myself a steaming mug, and cannot help but remember the endless cups of it I drank at Camp Lutherhaven two summers ago. The smell of my house in the Tri-Cities, my old volleyball gear (not as pleasant, but still distinct from other sports or workout gear), James’ detergent, fresh ink on newspaper, old letters, the cars of past boyfriends, nail polish, the nuanced smells to each of my best friend’s tears.

Some are connected to specific conversations in time; others evoke a certain emotion or state of thought. I get frustrated when familiar smells change, or worse, fade altogether. I know it’s sometimes frivolously nostalgic -- my mom will be forever grateful that the volleyball gear is clean and tucked away in my bottom dresser drawer. But what can I say, sometimes we all need a frivolous stroll down memory lane.

Carmen San Diego style

Growing up in the Tri-Cities, most of my classmates and I swore we would graduate high school and move to a town with excitement, glamor, or at least more concert tour stops. But as a look ahead to a potential future with Teach for America, I'm finding myself slightly stumped in answering what seems like such an easy question: what do you look for in a place to live?

My original plan, and probably still top choice, is the D.C. area. I've visited there three times in my life, and with the exception of one bitingly cold winter day, I love the city. It has plenty to do and see, a large majority of which is free to the public. I also enjoy its public transportation system, as well as diverse culture.

But beyond that, I really have no concrete reason of wanting to move there, or for that matter, not wanting to move somewhere else. I could, I suppose, take the advice of several articles and sites that offer "top places to live"-type lists. Take, for example, findyourspot.com, which offers a simple online quiz to determine your list of top cities. Questions focus on weather, cultivating culture, teachers and doctors, outdoor recreation, and regional preference. I was surprised at how many different way this quiz asked how important college or professional sporting events are to my happiness. According to my results, my top spots include Memphis, Little Rock, Honolulu, Norfolk Virginia, and most of Texas. Not exactly my ideal locations. Other lists include Money Magazine, which rates Plymouth, MN as the top city for 2008, based on its "Topnotch schools, good jobs, affordable housing, low crime, an active outdoor culture."

Then I could move on to look at lists geared toward specific genres, such as "30 great cities to start out in" (ranges from Atlanta to Seattle to Cleaveland). Criteria for this list included "major breadwinning," "social and recreational scene," "crib sheet," and "navigating."

But in searching through the lists and reading all the statistics, I'm realizing that no one asks the questions that have more significance than whether I can go clubbing on a Tuesday for only a $5 cover. Questions like "will I be able to fly home for Christmas affordably?" or "how likely is it I'll get so lost in the first week I'll never find my apartment again?" I still haven't really come up with any sort of criteria, or even a definition of what I consider a "good place to live." I would love any suggestions.

I want a sticker

Like Alyssa, this was the first presidential election I was eligible to vote in. As such, I became eligible after Washington state switched all elections to mail-in voting only. So last week as I filled out my double-sided, unusually sized piece of paper they call a ballot, I kept saying "all I want is the sticker." The brightly colored sticker that I would've received after voting at a local elementary school or such designated precinct. I remember going with my mom to Tapteal Elementary and sitting for what seemed like hours in cold metal chairs as she disappeared behind a thick blue curtain. She and my dad would always give my sister and I their stickers, which we promptly stuck to our bed frames and competed to see who's would stick the longest (she usually won, because I could never decide where I wanted mine to go, so I kept taking it on and off.)

Last night, I didn't find out about the call for the Presidential race until about 20 minutes after it happened, because at the time I was focused on state supreme court races in Virginia or referendums in Nevada. And as I dubiously entered the votes in individual numeric order (you read 123 as "one, two three," not "one hundred twenty three",) I just kept thinking about all those people who were getting stickers for standing in long lines and, in more than one case, delaying childbirth, in order to vote.

I got no such tangible stamp of democracy. I couldn't walk into Starbucks and take my free cup of coffee without getting a second glance (or my free scoop of ice cream, or slurpee, or any of the other numerous corporate celebrations of election day). I have to tell people that my vote contributed to our first black president, rather than them being able to see me pump my "yes we can" fist walking out of the voting booth. I guess I'll have to settle with a Facebook application.

trains, planes, and really cramped automobiles

This is a first for me: I'm blogging from the airport. It's appropriate considering I'm leaving Kansas City (Missouri) after a 4-day college media convention that screamed themes of convergence and the mysterious world of online journalism. (Note of interest: I was in a session with the University of Washington's newspaper advisor, and got to talk to her about their ethical decisions in running a photo of the man who lit himself on fire. Crazy stuff.) And as I sat through sessions about anything from Twitter to using Facebook for community journalism, I couldn't help but wonder if hyper-connectivity is really a good thing.

I realize this sounds like the grandparent argument that everyone is just on their cell phones all the time, and no one talks face to face anymore. And as mass media history will teach you, this "phenomena" and changing trends in media consumption are nothing new. People thought radio was the end of all civilized neighborhoods, for goodness sakes. I guess for me, the lines aren't necessarily drawn at who is allowed to be a journalist, but rather how we will continue to distinguish the personal from the professional. I maintain this blog mainly for personal reasons, and as a rule leave out specifics about my work on The Whitworthian or other publications. Does that mean it's fair game for a reader to point out a bias I hold in the off-chance I report about something I've blogged about?

Facebook is a whole other ballpark. Again, I have to this point kept a Facebook profile for personal reasons. But as co-workers and potential employers scan my pages and updates, do they now get the right to evaluate my professional abilities by my personal proclamations? Newspapers want to know that I can use social networking, but I don't want to have to water down my photo albums or censor wall posts from friends just because I'm worried about how they may be perceived.

This all goes along with the changing roles, and even definitions, of journalists. Anyone with a phone camera can make headlines on CNN these days if they're in the right place at the right time. I just worry that as we spread the roots of journalism into worlds previously considered off limits, the lines of professional and personal get a little too complicated.

shameless plug

Latest review I wrote for whitworthian.com, on the Secret Life of Bees.

back in the day

The Smith family is on campus today, because little Nat (who I guess isn't so little anymore) is considering Whitworth. Nancy came up to the media office and immediately was drawn to our opinion columnists' byline styles, which made me smile. Kelsey was up here too, and it was then that I realized that little Bacon was also the editor-in-chief of The Altitude, Hanford High School's newspaper. And of course, this took me down memory lane...here are some of the stops I made along the train of thought:

• explaining the difference between a gordita and chalupa as Alyssa and I made late-night Taco Bell runs. We keep things soft.

• constantly wondering, "where did Brandon go?"

• making glass after glass after glass of hot chocolate

• taking three hours to make a map in Photoshop, and then making Ben admire it for an hour

• sneaking into the press box at the state basketball tournament

• having people stare at my chest to read about the Hanford curling team

• playing hours of hearts instead of going to the journalism workshops at Central

• yelling at Ben to go take a photo of something, even though he had no idea what the story was about

• arguing over whether or not certain French phrases were common knowledge.

• the endless pranks

• getting ink all over my face when I always forgot to wash my hands after delivering the paper

• watching Nancy shop at gap.com instead of grading papers

• editing with Alyssa on my lap

...just to name a few

the john mayer soundtrack

I started out the day in the optimism zone. I only had one class, and I knew we weren't going to be there for the whole hour, so I pretty much had the day ahead of me to go forth and conquer. I had some evidence cards to finish for my debate class, and a little bookkeeping to catch up on for the paper, but other than that, it was supposed to be a smooth-sailing day.

Needless to say, by 3 p.m. there was no sailing happening, and it certainly wasn't on calm waters.

Long story short, I left campus feeling pretty discouraged and just overall, incompotent. Luckily, I had a date with little Bacon for some quality sister time, so I made myself leave school and just forget about all the stuff of the day. We got in Erin's car (my car is, surprise surprise, not running), and drove the .8 miles to Foxy Nails, the hot spot of beauty in North Spokane. Kelsey cranked Erin's Spanish dancing music and got really excited when I told her one of the lyrics was "I want to dance with you, without fear, until the floor breaks." With our unibrows now tamed and my stomach filled with 5-pump classic black iced tea, we headed home and spent the next hour mocking Oprah's epiphanies about the economy.

Once Kelsey left, James and I ordered pizza, and stolled over to Best Buy while we waited for our carryout order. We ended up playing 20 minutes of "Guitar Hero" and probably annoying the hell out of the Best Buy employees, but the looks on their faces told me we were not the first to sit and play the game for free, instead of buying it and sucking at guitar in the comfort of our own homes. We then watched the full set of Will Farrell's best of SNL DVDs, which I haven't seen since freshman year of college.

I tell you this not to turn my blog into my play-by-play diary, but to illustrate a point. By the end of the night when James went home to sleep before this morning's LSAT, I had forgotten about my stressful day. When I could've been cranky, I chose to be carefree. I let anxiety be pushed out by amiability. And I realized that at the end of the day, I have more important things in my life than just getting a task done. For some reason, that lesson really smacked me in the face yesterday. It's what happens whenever I listen to John Mayer's "Room for Squares" album. I just sit and recognize that trying to fit the world inside a picture frame means that everything outside of a 4x6 image gets deems unimportant, or somehow less significant in my life.

The things that can happen

Since I've been on a bit of a hiatus from the blogosphere, I've been feeling quite detached from the Internet world. Instead of reading 20-30 articles a day from various news sites, I maybe skim the headlines of two American sources before I have to scamper off to the next thing. But in the time I have had to be an informed individual, here are the stories I found that you may have missed:

1. TRL (Total Request Live) is going off the air in November. In other words, the part of my life that was lived out with Carson Daly from 3:30 to 5 p.m. every day is now being canceled. This means MTV will have even less music-based television, showing yet again how the culture created through music tends to dominate over the music itself. Get ready for more "My Super Sweet Sixteen" marathons that we should be asked to tolerate.

2. New York Times' columnist Maureen Dowd finally showed how the West Wing wasn't just a bunch of theoretical, ratings-driven mumbo jumbo by creating a conversation between the show's presidents, Jed Bartlet, and Barak Obama. Good stuff.

3. The View is becoming somewhat of an authoritative voice when it comes to political analysis. Who knew that when I sat on my couch and was rooting for Elizabeth Hasselbeck (then Elizabeth Filarski) to survive the Australian Outback, I would be rooting for one of the up-and-coming daytime co-hosts of today. Although I do think she wears entirely too much pink.

4. I wrote a sports column for The Whitworthian as a last-minute space filler. I'll never escape.

Because curlers would have no other claim to fame

This year's Olympics have mustered months of pre-game coverage, anything from Michael Phelps dominating his sport to Paul Hamm dropping out of the men's gymnastics competition to China building walls to conceal its less "attractive" members of society. But despite human rights violations, air the color of dirt and one of the ugliest buildings I've ever seen constructed for an Olympic stadium, I can't help myself: I love the Olympics.

I love watching the Opening Ceremonies and seeing a country with three or four athletes waving their flag just as high as a country with hundreds of athletes. I love watching the face of a competitor who has worked his or her entire life to perfect one skill and that hard work has now come to fruition. Regardless of the event, each athlete or competitor there has more determination and focus that I can hope to have in a lifetime. And even if I don't think there needs to be a distinction between swimming in an indoor pool or an open body of water, I'll watch both events with equal amazement.

I also love the predicable formula of Olympic coverage. There's the classic underdog, who rules the Olympic media coverage. Inevitably there is always someone from a country I can't pronounce who comes out of nowhere and blows everyone's minds, and then is hounded for the next week on every national talk show and news program imaginable. There's the athlete whose head looks like it's about to fall off from the weight of all the medals around his or her neck. But as karma would predict, there is also the inevitable mistake, the slip off the uneven bars, the missed turn in the triathlon, the trip of the foot right off the blocks. It takes two seconds for someone to go from almost guaranteed gold to sitting on the sidelines, empty handed.

So despite my doubt about China actually implementing democratic changes for the better, or the doubt that some athletes anymore aren't using steroids even if they don't get caught, or just the fact that I only care about cycling once every four years, I will still be a fan. In any case, I have to fill up on watching real talent, before the next season of "So You Think You Can Dance" redefines how terrible you can be at something and still win a prize.

A few Olympics links:
Create your own schedule of events
New gymnastics scoring

One of many "athlete from a war-torn country" stories
IOC turns up the heat on drug tests
Time Magazine's 100 athletes to watch