i miss the Olympics

So the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics are over. It was a fun ride. What will I miss the most? I always enjoy the short 10 second segments of aerial footage around the Olympic venues and around the city with Olympic music in the background. I think that's been my favorite part of the Olympics since I was a little kid. I especially enjoyed the clips of the Bird's Nest. It's a instant classic. A world-class landmark.

I will miss the ability to root for and against certain athletes or countries.

I will also miss having conversations about certain events which have no business being olympic events. (i.e. trampolining, table tennis, synchronized diving/swimming, etc.)

It will be nice to get to sleep at a decent hour though. I was staying up every night till at least midnight to watch that stuff. Now I can finally get some sleep.

Yes, I would stay up late, or skip going to the gym JUST to watch the OLYMPICS. It's kinda nice being back on track.

And table tennis SHOULD be in the OLYMPICS. And trampolining ROCKS and should be CEMENTED into the OLYMPICS.

If softball and baseball aren't considered Olympic sports, then table tennis surely shouldn't be an Olympic sport.

As for the trampoline... get real. It's a sport for gymnasts who weren't good enough to make the gymnastics team. What a joke. I bet all the other athletes make fun of the trampoliners when they are all hanging out at the Olympic village.

There was one trampoliner who was a former diver. Or wait. I think there was a diver who was a trampoliner.

And there also was a woman's heptathlete (heptathalon) who left the sport because she was bored and took up diving. I'd think it'd be the other way around. If you're an athlete, I don't see how you can get bored with the decathalon or the heptathalon. There's so many different track and field events you have to practice.

The truth is, they're dumping baseball because MLB rightfully refuses to stop its season when division races heat up and let their players go play in the Olympics. It's just a matter of terribly bad timing.

And they dumped softball, cuz what's the point of dumping baseball and keeping softball? They hide behind the excuse that not every nation plays baseball/softball so they have follow through with that theory and dump softball. But how many nations compete in table tennis? You got a couple Asian countries and Germany. That's it.

I have no problem with keeping all the oddball sports. That's one of the things that makes the Olympics great.

Even without MLB players, I still don't see a need to eliminate baseball from the Olympics. All those countries still managed to send teams. It's ok that they're amateurs.

And if they're going to use the "not every country plays softball excuse, they probably should have never made it an Olympic sport to begin with. I mena the US didn't even win the gold this year. Apparently, there is at least one other competitive team out there.

Table Tennis has been dominated by the Chinese for probably a decade. And if it's not China, it's a chinese player who simply moved to another country to avoid the logjam of players competing for spots on the Chinese team.

The Chicago Artchitecture Foundation has a scale model of "The Nest" at their location at 224 S Michigan Ave

www.architecture.org/