relay for life

Allison, Jodi and I are pleased to announce that we've been invited to participate in Toronto's Second Annual Relay For Life. The relay is an overnight non-competitive relay race where teams raise money via sponsorships for the Canadian Cancer society. Last year, they apparently had near 1500 attendees, and they raised over $270,000 for cancer research. We won't be running :-), but will be helping out with the family-oriented entertainment on June 7th at the Birchmount stadium. I'll post more details when they're available.

Went to my sister's for dinner last night, gave them Heather's Lord of the Rings poster. As you can tell from the photo above, they were pretty happy. :-) Thank you, Heather!

Are any of you watching the Olympics? I missed the opening ceremonies because of Ad Astra, and missed most of the pairs long program last night because I went to bed pretty early. I tend not to be as much of an Olympicsaholic as some others, but do admit a fondness for some of the figure skating competitions in the Winter Games...mainly dancing, and solo men's and women's skating. The pairs competition doesn't appeal to me as much because the routines don't tend to be as individualistic.

After reading the reports on CNN.com, I wish I had forced myself to stay up later and watch Jamie Sale and David Pelletier skate in the pairs competition. Sounds like NBC's broadcasters were pretty convinced the Canadians had won the gold, and were surprised (outraged, is more like it) when the Russians won. Did anyone out there see the two pairs skate? Did the Russians deserve to win? I must know! Please post your comments in Blatherchat, thanks.

I'm not exactly sure why I like the figure skating competitions so much. Jeff has zero interest. I'd be interested in finding out the correlation between an interest in figure skating and a general interest in musicals (something Jeff also has zero interest in :-)). For me, figure skating has the appeal of dance elements, music, and gorgeous costumes...plus the tension of competition and the knowledge that even a slight error can ruin a skater's chance at gold.

I confess that I haven't been keeping up with the figure skating world this year as much as I usually do before an Olympics. The only skater I'm really rooting for is Michelle Kwan (U.S), who will be skating in the women's short program next Tuesday, free skate next Thursday.