overheard in providence

If you’re part of overheardinprovidence’s legion of fans, you probably noticed that I haven’t posted anything in over a month. My apologizes. I think I was out looking at stuff or something. Regardless, there’s no need to dwell.

If you’re also part of the relatively small group of people that watch Summer Olympics, you probably noticed that they started yesterday. I noticed that too, and consequently I have little intention of leaving my house for the next 2 weeks (15 days actually).

As I noted one year ago, NBC anticipates generating 3600 hours of footage, which if recorded (and I think it’s safe to assume NBC is recording it) should last until 2010 olympics, provided you limit your daily olympic intake to 6 hours a day. As for me, I plan to watch it all in the next two weeks (step 1: rent 8 more TVs), then give y’all a heads regarding what to look out for.

With so many world class competitions taking place in parallel, there’s already plenty to blog about. I could, for instance, recount the Chinese weightlifter, and now gold medalist, Chen Xiexia’s (olympic) record-breaking clean-and-jerk, which I just witnessed. I could muse over Przemyslaw Wacha of Poland’s victory over Estonia’s Raul Must in olympic badminton (which I also just witnessed). I could hype up the US women’s sweep in saber fencing (don’t worry, you haven’t missed that one, it’ll be broadcast later today). Or I could just provide a helpful primer on team handball, which is getting a surprising amount of coverage here on day 1 (It’s like soccer, only miniaturized, indoors, and you can use your hands… AWESOME!).

Needless to say, they’ll be time for all that later though (especially that last one). For now, I’m just going to start things off with a clean slate and give a quick rundown of recent events which a more diligent person would have blogged about.

• As I already mention, I went to Canada. Since then I returned home. Toronto was lovely, but people there are absurdly inclined to obey don’t walk signs even when no traffic is coming. Jessica tells me she noticed a lot of that in Munich as well, but that’s neither here nor there.

  Also, in Canada, they spell center “centre”. I’m more of an “er” man myself (get it, because of my name! and my initials!), but I’d be willing to meet them half way and do away with the second “e” all together. Finally, while in Toronto, I had a hell of a meal at Colborne Lane. Our favorite dish was definitely the miso glazed cod, but the ice cream prepared table side via liquid nitrogen was also a highlight.

• I finally got an iPhone. It’s a fine piece of electronics, but buying it was a saga. For some silly reason Jessica and I decided to buy one the saturday after new version came out. The line at Apple’s 14th store didn’t actually seem that long, but since phones had to be activated in store, each Apple employee was basically only selling like 2 or 3 phones an hour.

  We had fun talking to the people standing next to us in line, and Apple did provide water and umbrellas (for the sun), but in the end it took us 4 hours to discover that, SURPRISE, Jessica could only update her pre-Cingular phone plan at an AT&T store. We would have had no problem waiting a week to get the phone, but trust me, if you wait online for something for 4 hours, and then fail to acquire said item, you’ll be emotionally distraught. As much as I love Apple, they did not handle this situation well. Certainly they could have at least given us a free t-shirt or something.
  

• I went to Florida! Jessica’s family is always a blast, but since I gave a comprehensive rundown of last year’s Flordia vacation, and this year’s trip followed a similar trajectory, there’s no need to go into that level of detail. I note, however, that my attempt to follow up last year’s Wii purchase with the acquisition of Wii Fit along was tragically thwarted by it’s lack of availability. Apparently buying it at the Nintendo World Store requires lining up before the store opens, and I’ve had quite enough of that sort of thing.
• On Columbia University’s campus, I saw a dude coax a pigeon onto his foot with some bread crumbs. It was a striking followup to June’s cat-on-hat spotting. I’ll admit, it wasn’t as remarkable as seeing someone walking down the street with a cat on their head, but it was certainly odd. You rarely see folks handling pigeons in NYC, since most folks, it seems, see them as somewhere between diseased squirrel and flying rat on the animal likability scale.