On Our Own

8/14/08

(Yawn) Dang those Olympics. "Prime Time", my eye! All the good stuff comes on after 11:00pm! Oh, well. I'll sacrifice a few hours of sleep to get my fix of Michael Phelps, diving and gymnastics.

I have to give you this link to Alexander (Sasha) Artemev from last night's men's gymnastics all-around competition. He's on the American team and was an alternate who didn't even know he would be competing until three days before, when some other teammates got injured. His pommel horse routine during the men's team competition was what got them the bronze medal (they weren't expected to get anything), and he's worth watching. He does six events in this link to the all-around competition, and there's a commercial stuck in there before you get to his amazing pommel horse routine last. He'll be competing in the individual medal rounds this week. Just try to block out the annoying commentators during the clip. They drive me crazy.
http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/share.html?videoid=0814_HD_GAM_HL_L1429

Sasha Artemev of Team USA

Mark has made it down to Silver City. His car was finished at 3pm Monday (It was the wheel bearing after all. Just wish we didn't have to spend $1,700 to figure that out.) so we packed up, drove down to the mechanic's, transferred everything into his car and he left from there. Kind of a hectic start to his rotation, and a day late, but he has a really good preceptor who has his own OB-GYN practice and is also the head of surgery at the hospital there. So Mark has already assisted during a hysterectomy, a C-section, and this morning they did cancer surgery, plus clinic work. So he is very happy to be getting some hands-on experience, especially in surgery, which he loves. Madelyn and I have been video conferencing with him on our webcams, and we are actually going to drive down to visit him this weekend, because it's his birthday on Monday.

The day after he left, Madelyn came down with a stomach bug that had her spewing nasty, smelly things out of both ends. She was having a rough time so I took her to the doctor and she threw up all over me in the lobby. The diarrhea started that afternoon and her diapers have been leaking left and right. OF COURSE she had to get sick as soon as Mark left. It was inevitable!! Sigh. But she is doing better now, and so hopefully I won't come down with it.

Here's something: last night, for the first time in her young life, I pointed my camera at Madelyn, and she held still, looked directly into the camera and smiled! I'm really not exaggerating to say that's the first time she's ever done that for me. I usually have to follow her around and try to maneuver to get a view of her face, and then go through 15 shots before I get anything halfway decent. (Having an extremely sluggish digital camera doesn't help either, since she normally holds still for exactly 0 seconds.) So here is my own Olympic medal-worthy moment: Madelyn smiling for the camera.


She just figured out that we're out of juice boxes, and is sobbing hysterically because of it, so I'd better go...