Week off of armchair sport

I've had this week off work, partly to spend time with badgersandjam, partly to hunt for our next place to live.

I didn't set out to take time off during the Olympics, that's just a surprise bonus, or something.
( non-expert rambling about hockey )

Watching the skating makes me feel nostalgic for home - watching skating on TV feels like a part of a Canadian winter (as does turning on the TV, finding it's curling, and trying to find something else to watch).

It's charming to see that Canadians are still contenders on ice, and and that Brian Orser is coaching two of the top men. I always thought he was robbed of gold, and I'm not certain that their new scoring system is any better than the old score out of 6.0. Any 'sport' that needs a judge to tell you how you did, to me, isn't sport - it's athletic art.

It doesn't take away from the athleticism or the accomplishment, and I still like watching it - it just doesn't fit the 'higher, faster, stronger' qualification.

I tried to look up the names of the coaches for Canadian athletes, but it's as if they don't exist - they're not listed on the official Sochi 2014 site (which has all the athletes for all countries), and they're not on Skate Canada site and the Canadian Olympic site is a joke of a blog site. Hope they didn't pay a lot of money for the design, because it's appalling.

The British seem a bit embarrassed by the winter Olympics - as if it's not very British to be good at throwing yourself down a snowy hill at top speed, though it's ok to be expert at horse dancing in the summer events. Many people refer to the 'tea tray' event (skeleton and luge); I don't know who coined this term, but it's widespread in England, where I'd never heard it in Canada.

Blessedly, the BBC are doing an awesome job of coverage - they now have the capacity to cover all the events at once online, so if you don't want to watch the stick-fighting on ice, you can watch the flinging-down-the-hill events instead.

The BBC's crew is using a shopping trolley to carry their kit on the main campus, carrying light stands and other bits and pieces...and the trolley now has a following on twitter. It's extremely silly.

Time well spent

I spent a few days with badgersandjam this week. Her flat is very conveniently located close to a train station, so it's easy to reach. While there's a bit of road noise, it's beautifully naturally lit, and there's no screaming-neighbours noise that we put up with regularly.

We watched the news of flooding carefully - some streets in the Oxford area were closed, and Oxfordshire was expecting snow this week, though I don't know if it actually appeared.

I'm still watching because I'm headed into Berkshire for a dance workshop, and staying in Wokingham, and hoping it doesn't flood.

Looking at the maps of the flooding, I think our former house in Caversham would need sandbags, if not actually be flooded this year.

Ari and I puttered on quills (with me *still* getting the cutting sequence wrong, but will sort for Scriptorium3 next month, I hope), books - her library even impressed Giano, the most dedicated bibliophile I've ever met - and making wire rings.

Her neighbourhood is home to the better sort of charity shop - in fact in Summertown (posh part of Oxford) there was the ordinary Blue Cross shop, and then the 'vintage' shop further down the street. I've never seen original art in a charity shop before, but you can buy it in the Oxfam in Summertown. I'd be very happy shopping on this strip, and fought off the temptation of buying yarn in one.

I enjoy visiting; I also enjoy getting home to my cat-fur-covered comforts, and getting kneaded and purred into cat furniture again. Haggis has stayed close while I've been home. At Ari's flat, I swear I kept seeing movement out of the corner of my eye, and expected it to be a cat.

On the new-place-to-live front, not a lot of progress. I'd hoped to spend the rest of this week viewing, but I'm not getting a lot of response from agents. I'm beginning to get a bit nervous.

Robert commented that some of the agents he phoned were surprised he was calling about places when we don't have to move til end of March - implication being it's way too early to look at what's available.

This helps a little, though I'd still much prefer the matter settled, and honestly can't remember how far in advance we booked in past househunting efforts. I don't really want to spend the coming month gambling on finding somewhere in the nick of time.