The Things I'll Watch

[ithildin]

No, not curling, though that's all my mum seems to have watched for two weeks. The Winter games are her favourite for the curling, which she used to do competitively back in her youth. And then there's hockey. Both my parents and my brother are huge fans - I appear to missed that particular Canadian gene. That being said, I will watch the hockey final and root on the USA, just so there's some balance in my house LOL.

In other news, I'll be posting part eleven of West today. And I think I may be lazy and not post it to All the comms I normally do. Since I don't usually do my comm posting till a day later lately due to time constraints, I notice I get zero comments added after the initial posting on my LJ. So honestly, I'm not sure anyone actually reads the story via any of the comms - you're all here already. And it's a lot of time to waste if it serves no purpose. Maybe I'll do comm posts every other part?

Tuesday, I'm going to Ogden for a work meeting [sigh] I'll be gone most of the week, but am taking the netbook so hope to get some LJ time in the evenings.

Comments

[mischief5.livejournal.com]

For the fourth time in a row (I think), I've completely missed the Olympics, although all this talk about curling has piqued my interest. I'll have to check it out on YouTube.

Have a safe trip to Ogden!

[ithildyn.livejournal.com]

Thanks :)

re: rooting for the USA in hockey

[annasbeta.livejournal.com]

I was sorry to read of your unhappiness at work, but there's no need to blaspheme. lol.

In all good fun, cheer for who you want, but Canada is taking that particular gold. There's been an enormous amount of chatter over here at well the women's hockey has been and how comparatively little funding they get to the men's, to say nothing of the fact that most of the men's players are all professionals and make millions of dollars to boot, while most of the women find part-time work to fund their "hobby". There was a pan of the men's team watching the women's team during the final for women and the men looked shell-shocked.

Basically, the feeling up here from women in general, is that the men had better put out or be prepared to sleep in the doghouse, on the sofa, for at least the next four years. We might just gather enough political momentum as to insist on greater funding for women's amateur sports.

Re: rooting for the USA in hockey

[ithildyn.livejournal.com]

But isn't that true for all the women hockey players? There isn't a female version of the NFL is there? In other words, all the men players are mostly pro athletes and the women players are amateurs (using the term as it was back in the old days of the Olympics when only 'amateurs' were allowed to compete). So wasn't the playing field - or ice - an even one?

Re: rooting for the USA in hockey

[annasbeta.livejournal.com]

This is true. There isn't a pro female hockey league and there is the NHL. I think what most women here were looking at was the goals. Canadian women definitely out-scored then the men; at one time in the Olympic tournament, the Canadian women had scored 18 goals to 1 goal scored against them. And this was the cummulative score of a couple of games.

When you consider that most NHL games are lucky to have, say 3 to 2, this is an enormous difference. Now I suppose you are arguing that the Men are all competing on the same level, since most of them are all in the NHL. Ok, I agree with you. But so are all the women. It's only been since 2002 that we've started to see some REAL funding going into Women's Canadian Hockey. Like I said, most of the women's players, on any team, can only play it as a "hobby"; there just hasn't been any training anywhere for women players.

Since the Canadian Women won Gold in 2002, there's been a fraction of funding going into Canadian women's hockey and it's really shown this Olympics. At the beginning of the tournament, there was a lot of comment by spectators and commentators that the Canadian women were really decimating their opponents. I think the score of their first game was something realy obscene, like 7 to 0. What i would like people to focus on is this is what women can do with a little funding and some play time. Hopefully, in the next set of Olympics, the US and maybe Russia will decide to seriously challenge Canadian Women and we will get more air time and more commerical funding.

And I don't even like hockey.

Re: rooting for the USA in hockey

[ithildyn.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's all I was wondering. I thought maybe you had meant that the Canadian women were playing pro players on other teams, so I was confused :) AFAIK, American Olympians get no government support, so it would depend on more corporate support for them. I think it may take a decade or two to grow the sport, since it takes getting a wide reaching network of womens hockey teams starting at school age, then on to college level. But the sport has exploded on to the scene pretty quickly all things considered.

[grachonok.livejournal.com]

Hope you'll enjoy the hockey final:).
Missed much of Olympics because of time zones, but maybe it was for the best - our team failed nearly everything:(. But I watched exhibition figure-skating perfomance today, wow, that was a sight!

[ithildyn.livejournal.com]

They only showed 4 performances from the gala here and I was bummed!!

[grachonok.livejournal.com]

Damn, that's just not fair! Here they showed it on the 1st federal channel in prime time, but Ice Skating is close to the national idea here nowdays...

[winks7985.livejournal.com]

woo hoo hockey!! go usa!!

and about the posting thing... i sometimes think about not posting the link to my story everywhere i do, but as it ends up, a lot of people read it and don't leave comments. so i say post away! especially with the tracker thing you can use to see who has visited your page... then you know how many people do come by and read.

i am so addicted to olympics, i don't know what i am gonna do tomorrow when they're not on. :(

[ithildyn.livejournal.com]

It should be a good game no matter the outcome.

I don't have the tracker thing activated, so I'm clueless [g]

I know! It's been all Olympics for so long!

[otterevil.livejournal.com]

Olympics? Oh, this is one of those "television" things you speak of...

Safe trip. Call if bored :) Especially if during meeting [eg]