Just love Emma and Alfonso together.  Looks like friends for life.

Last edited by eastcoast1 (2/16/2015 6:50 pm)

I don't know where this is, but it looks like our future.  UGH

Last edited by eastcoast1 (2/16/2015 7:07 pm)

Hey, everyone in cold places.....

So sorry to hear that many of you are having more snow and ice.  I'm sure it has lost any luster for everyone!!  Too much of a good thing makes it seem like endless winter.  I went to HS in Wisconsin and remember it being mostly snowy, gray, and cold.  While I completely love winter sports, often the conditions for pursuing them aren't perfect...too cold, too icy, too much snow, etc.  Now that I think about it, I don't think there were any indoor rinks at all---back in the day!!!!  LOL  We had to have water freeze outside to go skating!!!!

It has cooled off a little out here in CA....in the upper 60's about now.  Breeze is cool coming through the door now but it was bright and sunny all day.  Can't complain.

Completely agree with gas heat.  We have all gas everything in our house and the bill is soooooo much less than electric everything would be.  The only time it is over about $15.00/mo. is when we use the heat---maybe one month out of the year---and that's only to warm up in the morning usually.  Hate to think what the cost would be if we had an all electric house.  They changed to all electric a few years after our house was built, so feel very fortunate.  At the time we bought the house, we had no reason to even care!!!  Things you don't think about when you buy a house!!!  LOL

I met up with gunner this morning about half way between her house and mine where there are a couple wool shops (they sell wool for applique', quilts, wool felt crafts).  WOW!!!!  Wool HEAVEN!!!  Both shops were great on their own merits....very different but similar product lines.  We had fun!  Excited to begin moving a couple UFOs (UnFinished Objects) along.  All I need is another project!!!!   LOL  LOL  This is where I have swear i am A.D.D.---because I can't stick with one until it's finished!!  Have to keep myself interested by switching among about 3 at a time!!!!  I don't really have that many UFOs so I guess I do finish most of what I start!!

Hope you all stay warm, that there isn't a huge amount of snow, and that the lights stay on!!

eastcoast1 wrote:

I don't know where this is, but it looks like our future.  UGH

 Very funny!!

Here is an interesting (partial) article about Meryl and Charlie since the Olympics taken from tumblr.  I hadn't realized she is doing an independent study course at UofM this term.

Post-Sochi, US Athletes Find Contentment, Pain, Celebrity and Challenge

Nerves settled in for Olympic ice dancer Charlie White. He had been on big stages before, chased butterflies in his stomach before. But nothing like this—nothing so pressure-packed, so far outside of his comfort zone.

A full studio audience plus millions of people at home watched as he sat at the round table, next to his ice-dancing partner Meryl Davis. As the moment approached, he worried about blowing it.

What if he started laughing and couldn’t stop?

What if he started babbling, as he does when he’s nervous?

Then Stephen Colbert introduced the gold medal-winning pair, flitted over from his “news desk” and shook their hands, and the interview was on. White laughed often and sometimes seemed to teeter on the edge of losing it, but he held it together, even when Colbert accused White’s hair of doping.

Soon, the most nerve-wracking moment of White’s gold-medal victory lap was over, and he had survived.

“It was one of those things that felt like a pipe dream,” White says. “You have so much respect for the people he has on the show. They’re usually very influential and very important people. To be able to be on the show was really surreal. Even to this day, I can’t believe that I got a chance to meet him.”

In the year since the Sochi games, the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat only scratch the surface of post-Olympic life for American competitors. They have met the rich and the famous, signed endorsement deals, dealt with fame, retreated to anonymity, found contentment, struggled with self-doubt and questioned their futures in the sports they love.

Davis and White are still basking in the glory of their moment.

Julie Chu, a U.S. women’s hockey player whose team blew a two-goal lead in the third period of the gold-medal game, had to get over losing in hers.

Joss Christensen, an unlikely gold medalist in slopestyle, is searching for that next big moment to validate the first.

And ski jumper Sarah Hendrickson, a former world champion battling to regain her best-in-the-world status, wonders if her moment of glory will ever come again.

The last chapter of Davis and White’s old lives began as they stepped onto the ice at Sochi. After dominating international ice-dancing competitions in 2012 and 2013, they were favorites for the gold. They knew if they nailed their performance that they would win the first gold in U.S. history.

It is not a peaceful memory. It makes The Colbert Report look like a walk in the park.       

“It was all of my nerves from my whole life put into a couple minutes. Reliving it, just thinking about it, it makes you nervous just remembering how nervous you were,” White says.

From the moment their world-record score went up on the board, their lives haven’t been the same. A year later, they are still delighting in their accomplishment, even as the aftereffects remain overwhelming.

Davis and White won silver four years prior, and that made them temporarily famous to the extent they thought about winning gold. They thought it would be like winning silver, only a little more gratifying.

But the difference between silver and gold turned out to be the difference between a model Porsche and the actual thing. Magazine covers, cereal boxes, Dancing with the Stars, The Colbert Report—they were everywhere in the weeks after the Games.

“We were so totally unprepared to deal with the idea of being Olympic champions,” White says. “To this day, we continue to try to figure out where it fits. As an athlete especially, your mental take on it was you just prepared the best you can. You don’t consider what it will be like if you win. You don’t consider how it will change your life. So when it finally happens, you’re totally unprepared.”

The first sign of their new lives came a few days after they left Sochi and arrived in New York City for interviews. They were accustomed to being recognized on the street by ice-dancing fans, but this was different. This was businessmen on the streets of Manhattan congratulating them.

“One of the things we’re most grateful for is the warmth of the reception we received,” Davis says. “People really opened their arms to us.”

That has died down. White jokes they are recognized now more for their appearances on Dancing with the Stars than for being Olympians. Davis won and swears she has uttered not a word about the fact White lost in the semis.

In June, White got engaged to Tanith Belbin, a 2006 silver medalist in ice dancing. Davis is taking an independent-study class this semester at the University of Michigan, where Davis and White both have studied over the years. They haven’t skated competitively this year and don’t know yet whether they will try to defend their title in 2018. They are touring with Stars on Ice.

Their lives haven’t returned to normal because they weren’t normal before.

“The biggest change is going from being hungry, working every minute of every day, where it was like, you’re going to sleep thinking about whether you’ve done enough during the day, if you’re going to get enough sleep, if you ate right, to a feeling of satisfaction, of completion, of earning something, working hard for it and being able to enjoy it,” White says.

“I think that’s something we’ve really been able to enjoy. As we move forward, we’ll find new things to attach ourselves to, to move toward. But for so long, we were so focused singularly on achieving this one goal. To achieve it and move forward from it is really transformative.”

Says Davis: “Post-Sochi, I think for the first time ever, we were excited to just be in that place and just enjoy it, without looking too far ahead. We’re really allowing ourselves that moment, still, to just embrace the now and embrace what’s coming our way, as opposed to sitting down and figuring out the years ahead.”

xxx

While Christensen has a gold medal and newfound celebrity status in common with Davis and White, their ascension was quite different from his. Davis and White were the favorites. Christensen only made the Olympic team as an alternate and won the gold by nailing a trick (the triple cork) he added just a few days prior.

While Davis and White view their gold as the consummation of their years of hard work, it wasn’t long after Christensen won that he started feeling pressure to prove his win wasn’t a fluke, that he’s not a one-event wonder.

He finished second in the X Games in January, a key step toward validating the gold he won in Sochi. And he’s not done. He wants another gold in Korea. That would get his face on another cereal box, too.

I just put parts about Meryl and Charlie. The link has full article which includes other athletes stories.

Last edited by JetmamaDiDi (2/16/2015 7:43 pm)