Bill Simmons stole my thunder a little, with his huge Grantland post about the summer Olympics as the signposts of his passing life. \u00a0He sticks only to the summer games, which leaves out a lot as far as I’m concerned – I’ve always liked the winter games better, and they are my own set of signposts – 1980 as the first Olympics of any kind that I actually remember. 1988 bound up with the Presidential primaries and a friend’s huge sweet-16 surprise birthday party and those first inklings that there would be something to this college business. 1994 tied in with the last semester of undergrad and watching ice skating every time it came around. 1998 in that strange liminal period after first moving north, 2002 seen from DC in the wake of the attacks, 2006 invariably tied to the wedding of Team Black Swan East and my transition at Cupertino Hexachrome Fruit. \u00a02010 should be brighter in my memory, what with curling-mania and the fact we had a friend working the Games, but apparently not yet.<\/p>\n
But this is summer, and I’m thinking of the last couple of games. \u00a02004, when we’d first moved here and were kind of housesitting-slash-sorta-babysitting at my sister-in-law’s house, with their much bigger TV. \u00a0And the ubiquitous AT&T ads that pushed me to want a faster and more capable phone (though it wasn’t much of a push). Again, that liminal period when I hadn’t really gotten a sense of where I was or what my life was going to be like, having just started a contract job with an uncertain future (albeit, in retrospect, one a lot brighter than it would become a couple of months on). \u00a0And 2008, which overlapped with my latter time on the NASA contract, when I was still pretty miserable about work and wondering what I was going to do. \u00a0Six months later, I had the job I have now – a job which is driving me up the wall at present. \u00a0Good job the wife and I are taking a week off.<\/p>\n
Four years seems to be a pretty good marker – long enough that you can see what’s happened in your life with a little bit of distance. \u00a0And yet not so long that it seems forever ago. \u00a0I’ve been here at this job longer now than I was at my first one, even including contract time – but it doesn’t seem like as long. \u00a0Maybe it’s because I’m older and time goes faster, or maybe because I haven’t had as many changes of job duties and my general role to act as markers. \u00a0I’ve avoided surgery at this job, at least, and that’s got to count for something.<\/p>\n
And now London, first three-time host. \u00a0The Olympics weren’t yet the Olympics<\/em> in 1908, not as we think of them now – the main point was washing away the bad taste left over from the horrific sideshow-trainwreck of St Louis. \u00a0And 1948 was the year of the famous “Austerity Games,” the UK staging an Olympics three years removed from war in Europe and rationing still in full effect. \u00a0This time, it’s the real, full-blown, modern Olympic machine in full roar. \u00a0We were there in London in April 2005, before the games were awarded, when everything was “BACK THE BID” and enthusiasm was high. \u00a0And then they got it, and then the July 7 bombings, and then seven years of “how exactly is this going to work?”<\/p>\n I haven’t seen the opening ceremonies yet, thanks to the worst network in America handling the coverage – NBC, the people who brought you “plausibly live” tape-delay coverage of an Olympics held in Eastern Daylight Time <\/em>– but the spoilers and bits and bobs leaking through Twitter make it sound like it’s going to be a right knees-up and no fooling. \u00a0I hope it is. \u00a0I hope they get to enjoy it. \u00a0I hope I enjoy it, which is largely to say I hope the iPad battery holds up and the streaming doesn’t suck.<\/p>\n Light ’em up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Bill Simmons stole my thunder a little, with his huge Grantland post about the summer Olympics as the signposts of his passing life. \u00a0He sticks only to the summer games, which leaves out a lot as far as I’m concerned – I’ve always liked the winter games better, and they are my own set of … <\/p>\n