Morning: Tuesday NoNewsDay

Before I begin with my collection of jokes and opinions, a quick heads-up that I'll be out of town Thursday through Monday on "business." First, I'll be in Chapel Hill, and then I'm heading to New Orleans for the weekend. In both places, I'll be holding blog signings. How this works is I set up a table at a bookstore, you print out and bring me your favorite blog entry, and I write a witty note with your name misspelled, like this:

Yo Michel,

I'm glad you like my post from August about the Yankees. But I guess they don't like Yankees too much down here in North Carolina, do they, LOLOLOLOLOL. I think you're cool. Best wishes,

-Shane

If that appeals to you, stop by. Actually, though, I really will be in Chapel Hill on Thursday and Friday (anybody got a sweet hook-up for Duke-Tulsa tickets?), and New Orleans til Monday, so after tomorrow, no posts until Tuesday. I'm going to be missing so much shit. It's half tragic. But I'll try to cover my bases tomorow.

So. Nothing really happened last night. A couple northern Europeans won at ski jumping and cross country, Canadians won ice dancing, which is my least favorite of the figure skating events, and UConn surprised West Virginia at home. And that's about it.

It occurred to me that if not for the Olympics, last night would have happened on repeat all throughout February. It's one of those 'the darkest hour is just before dawn' situations. A few good college b-ball games is all we usually get between the end of football and March Madness/Opening Day, and it makes the shortest month feel like the longest. The Olympics came at the perfect time. Can we do this every year, please? Or every two, at least?

Today is better than yesterday. Syracuse plays, Bode goes for a fourth medal, and my hometown homie Bill Demong gets his second shot at gold in the Nordic Combined. If you're new to the blog, check out #s 3 and 9 in this post. In his first event, Bill had a rough ski jump, then skiied his ass off in the cross country portion, getting to within five seconds of the leaders before losing steam and finishing sixth. But he's won a slew of World Cup events lately, and has a real shot to medal if he can throw out a decent jump. I'll update this later today; he jumps at 1:30. The race doesn't go off until 5, but we'll have a good idea of his chances by 2pm or so.

Oh, here's something I missed: the US and Canadian women both won their semifinal hockey matches yesterday. No surprise there; unlike the men's game, nobody outside the top two really had a chance to even make the final. But it sets up an exciting gold medal match at 6:30 on Thursday.

Last, the first round of the men's hockey tournament starts today. The US doesn't play, but Canada and the Czech Republic each have what should be an easy test. And the quarterfinals happen tomorrow. The US has a sweet draw; we'll either play Belarus or Switzerland, which shouldn't be much trouble, and then either Finland or the Czech Republic in the semis. Russia, Canada, and Sweden, easily three of the top four teams, are all on the other side of the draw. You can see the bracket here.

Okay, more later on. I'm gonna link a damn video in this space when YouTube stops gettin' all Lindsey Jacobellis on me.

Edit: embedding disabled by request. Screw you, Dirty Vegas.