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2014 Winter Olympics (February 7-23)
Olympic.org; Wikipedia

Held in Sochi, Russia. I have no recollection of being aware that the games would be held in Sochi, until shortly before they actually started. So I wasn't particularly looking forward to it. However, it's this year that I decided to start my Olympics page. (In 2016, I broke the one Olympics page up into several pages.) I mainly started it so I could reminisce about Lillehammer. But maybe now that the pages exist, I can actually start paying more attention and write things about the games as they happen. Which would make it easier to remember them years later, I would think.

First I want to mention that in January (a couple weeks or so before the Olympics started), there was an episode of The Michael J. Fox Show that was about the Sochi Olympics. (It was the last episode that aired in the U.S., though several more episodes apparently aired in Australia.) I also thought it was interesting that a plot thread about the Equestria Games happened in season four of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, this year.

Anyway, the games actually started on Thursday, Feb. 6, but I feel like anything that happens before the opening ceremony can't possibly count. There is no reason I would find acceptable for Olympic events to happen before the opening ceremony. So I refuse to watch. (This has probably happened in past years, but I've blocked it out of my memory.) I watched the opening ceremony on Friday night, and it was pretty decent. It reminded me in some ways of the London opening ceremony, but the commentators were talking about the brand new projection technology that was being used, and I must admit that was pretty cool. Also there was good music, good choreography and designs in general. And at one point the commentators mentioned some athlete who'd been injured the day before, but she was still an Olympian, in spite of the fact that she now can't compete in any events after the opening ceremony. Which I agree with... and it couldn't help but make me rethink my stance on things being unofficial before this ceremony. I still don't see any reason for events to happen before it, but even so... I accept that they're official. Also I want to mention that during the parade of nations, at the very end when the Russian athletes came out, "Not Gonna Get Us" by t.A.T.u. was playing. I found this ironic, considering that when the duo became internationally popular in 2002, there was some controversy about the girls kissing each other in one of their videos, and now a little over a decade later, there's been great controversy over the Olympics being held in Russia, because of that country's anti-gay policies. Seriously, Russia? That's the song you choose? Well, at least it wasn't "All the Things She Said," I guess....

Anyway... on Saturday I wrote this page, so I didn't watch any of the games on TV. But hopefully over the next two weeks I'll watch at least some of the events. Although I also have this plan to force myself to do some writing, pretending it's an Olympic event, and maybe actually finish my damn book (which I started in 1997).

...Two weeks later: I didn't really watch any Olympics, I'm very disappointed in myself. Partly it's because I prefer to watch things like that during the day, not in prime time, and as far as I know, NBC only aired Olympics in prime time. They had cable networks on which they aired Olympics during the day, but I don't currently get those channels. Plus there's the fact that I have lots of DVDs I want to watch at night, and usually I can't, because there are shows on I need to watch, then. So I wanted to avail myself of a lack of such programming in order to watch some DVDs. Also there's the fact that I'm living with my parents, and the only TV I could watch is in the living room, and Mom's just always in there on the couch, and I have this psychological shit in my head that makes it really hard for me to be in the same room as any other human being, even my own family. So I'd need to have a stronger interest in watching something than I have in the Olympics, to overcome that discomfort. I did actually see a couple minutes of some sport called skeleton, which I don't recall having ever heard of before, but I didn't find it interesting. I also want to mention that I heard of a new event, team figure skating, but I think that was over before I'd even heard of it. I would have been interested in seeing that, and I probably could watch it online, but I really don't feel like watching Olympics on my computer. And I didn't even watch the closing ceremony. Nor did I do much of any writing over these two weeks. So... again, I'm very disappointed. But in two years there'll be more Olympics, and I can't imagine I'll still be living here, then. Either I'll be a published author living by myself somewhere, or I'll be dead. That's the plan. So maybe I'll watch the next Olympics. We'll see.