Productive Weekend

I had a great week and weekend. My mom was in town all week and then my dad joined us for the weekend. It was great to have my mom around. I always had a workout partner and while we were at work she did stuff around the house. I think the kittens will miss her now that she’s back at home, especially Noodles. I am sure he enjoyed having a person around all day.

My dad arrived on Thursday night and so we spent most of Friday and Saturday doing stuff around the house. My mom and I tackled the boxes that we still had in the guest/computer room (and will soon also be a baby room) and the husband and my dad installed a new door and finished setting up the projector and screen. The new door replaced the old laundry room door. The project turned out to be a major pain since we got the cheapest door available at Home Depot and it didn’t have the hinge grooves marked off. Plus, the door frame wasn’t quite right so my dad and husband had to grind down part of the door. They also installed a kitty door in the laundry room door so that we can keep the door closed to keep the litter dust contained. We’ve been working on the kitty door with the cats, using food, treats, and catnip to coax them through the door.

It’s nice having the projector mounted on the ceiling and the screen on the wall. We finally have our coffee table back (which doubles as a dinner table). The projector looks really, really nice. Especially movies and pictures and computer stuff. TV doesn’t look that much better (something about HDTV not really being HD). We watched Casino Royale in blue-ray last night and it really looked amazing.

Has anyone been watching the Olympics? Particularly the swimming? We saw three amazing Olympic races over the weekend, and even the husband was impressed. The first was Michael Phelps’ incredible finish over the Serbian swimmer. When we first saw the finish, I seriously thought it was the Serb who had won the race. But the frame-by-frame footage actually showed Phelps touched ahead of the Serb. The other priceless image from that race was Phelps’ mom’s reaction. You have to check it out here. I get a kick out of her and his coach’s reactions. The other great swimming race we saw was the 400 m relay medley, that the US won to give Phelps his 8th gold medal.

So I am not totally biased towards Olympics swimming (I liked it even before Phelps made it cooler). I also like watching track and field events, especially the sprints. We watched the Jamaican Usain Bolt win the 100 m dash and break his own world record by 0.03 s. This may not seem like a lot, but it's significant in a 9 second race. The most incredible part about this was that Bolt actually started celebrating with 20 m to go in the race. While everyone else around him was going full speed, Bolt had stretched his arms out (creating some drag, I'm sure) and then pounding his chest in excitement. I can only wonder what the world record would have been had he gone full force for the entire 100 m. Bolt definitely left himself some room for improvement.