USA Women's Hockey!!! Whooo hooo!!!! They go on to the medal round (with Canada, Sweden, & Finland) after a 12-1 whipping of China! "Veteran" Cammi Granato (from Maywood, IL) had a hat trick. China had only 10 shots on goal (USA had 71!)

I feel like I dropped into "commentator mode" for Olympic results...

Nothing for USA Ladies Speed Skating 500m. Chris Witty finished 14th.

Men's Curling - Well, it was a win over Switzerland 6-2, but we're 2-3 in 7th place. Doesn't look good for the men. The women lost to Denmark 9-4, and had a 2-2 record tied for 5th going into tonight's match with Switzerland, and it's not looking good there either. Looking at the "athletes" that participate in this game make me think that this is the "bowling" of the Winter Games - the people just look like bowlers.

USA best was 15th (Kris Freeman) in Men's Cross-Country Skiing 10 km Free Pursuit.

USA best in Ladies' Combined Downhill was 6th (Lindsey Kildow)

Hmmm. one USA (Chris Klug - 11th) made it out of the qualifying round in Men's Snowboarding PGS (that's parallel giant slalom to us uninitiated).

Well, it's evening so that must mean figure skating...Men's Figure Skating Free Skate is tonight... there was a few times I thought I was watching a Saturday Night Live sketch with the way the guys were falling. Russian Evgeni Plushenko almost landed the first quad-triple-triple in history. While watching him do a combination, Scott Hamilton called him "sick and twisted" in jest! He wound up in 1st. Well, I thought Timothy Goebel (from Evanston, IL) looked great to my untrained eye - there was a problem with a triple-axel, but he hit a quad late in his program. I thought he was a little better than the marks he got. Put him into 2nd with two skaters to go - Alexander Abt from Russia - who actually fell, and stepped out of a few things and whose marks were all over the place putting him in 4th, and finally another Russian Alexei Yagudin finishes up the program. And finishes without any "fire", but the program was good. The wait for Goebel has got to be a killer. I mean, he eventually knows he's going to get a medal - that's got a be a relief of sorts, but not knowing what kind of medal has to be a bit hairy. Must be my imagination, but there seemed to be a delay getting the marks up. He get's 4 6.0's for Presentation, the most for a man in the Olympics. So he get's the Gold, Plushenko gets Silver, and our Timothy Goebel gets a bronze!

ESPN2 had the AHL All Star Game from the Mile One Stadium in St. John's, Newfoundland. We (the Chicago Wolves) had only one player elected to participate - J.P. Vigier. I hated the commentators, who seemed to mispronounce any of the players from the old IHL teams. Vigier is supposed to be pronounced "vee ZHAY" instead of "vee GAYR" as the commentators said. And I thought that Bubba Berenzweig from the Milwaukee Admirals (and native of Arlington Heights) last name was pronounced "BAIR ens weyg" (long "i") instead of "BAIR ens wig" (short "i").

Anyway, it was Canada against Planet USA - the delineation is that the Canadian team has members who where born in Canada, while Planet USA has players born anywhere else. It was a shootout, with Canada winning 13-10. Canada had 5 unanswered goals in the second half of the third, until USA scored their final goal with .2 seconds left. Canadian Mike Craig of the Cleveland Barons was MVP with a hat trick.

Went to lunch with Barry today at a Panda Express by the Allstate Arena. Had my favorite - Black Pepper Chicken. Had a nice discussion on the Olympics - in retrospect, we really didn't talk about much else. I think Barry is pro-snowboarding compared to my curmudgeoness stand against.

Looks like that water main break at Golf and Higgins got fixed - it's just a bunch of mud now, and they were putting up the telephone pole - a day later. There was a lot of salt on the road to make sure people didn't go sliding through the intersection.

The Today Show just did a piece on a Luge Fantasy Camp! Now that looks great! They started the teaching process slowly, understanding the start, then the actually went out to the track and started half-way down, and eventually working their way up the hill. One of the students wiped-out and had a mild concussion! This looks like a great time!