codename D

Olympics closed today.  I did watch more than I expected.  Largely, I have very little interest in the Summer Games - I’m a Winter sports kinda girl.

However, I do like swimming so I did watched Michael Phelps win all of his 8 gold medals.  The man is freaking awesome.  With the training schedule that he has kept up to get here, truly an amazing achievement. 

I also watched the USA win gold in Team Volleyball (you thought I was going to say Basketball, didn’t you?). 

And I watched some track (mostly because nothing else was on).  Watched Usain Bolt show boat for the cameras before crossing and winning his first of 3 Gold medals.  I also watched Samia Yusuf Omar from Somalia come in last in the Women’s 200 meter.  The slowest runner of the pack by far.  And probably one of the most hard done by athlete at the Games.  Coming from a war torn and still unstable country where a high population frowns upon women in athletics; where her father, aunt and uncle were killed by artillery shells, she doesn’t have training facilities, a coach or proper nutrient… you had to be proud of her achievement, even though she lost.  And reading that over, you wonder how she even managed to get to the Olympics with such hardship.

The crowd at the stadium cheered her on when it realized there was someone still running the Heat, almost 8 seconds behind everyone else.  I know that it was meant to be encouraging for her but she looked embarrassed by it.  No one likes to finish last but I hope she continues to train and make it to London for the next Olympics.  She was the last runner but how many of us could even qualify for the games?  Good on her!

And Canada.  Well, it was a slow start but we did win more medals (18) than in Athens.  That’s progress - hopefully, we’ll do better in London in 2012.  Of course, we’re waiting on 2010 for the Winter Olympics in my backyard - Vancouver/Whistler!!  Go Canada Go!

The Mummy 3 - Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

Rating:  For all that is good and holy:  MISS IT. 

I see a lot of mainstream movies.  I love movies and although I’m probably more familiar with a character name than the actor portraying him/her, I spend quite a bit of coin and time seeing flicks.  I’m a big supporter of the movie theater.  Some movies should just be seen this way - I don’t care how big your tv screen is!

With that being said, I had the unhappy experience of seeing this trilogy recently.   Now, I’ve seen the first 2 movies too many times to say (Little Mouse is in love with Brendan Fraser).  I also own the DVD’s in the rip off Collectors Edition, just for the gag reels.  I’m particularily fond of the pygmies and Ardeth Bay (Oded Fehr).

But this movie is nothing like the first 2 and if you care to know more, here it is:

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I wrote this a few years ago and have copied it from my previous blog.  If fits this new beginning, even if it’s old.  Anyway -

It used to be very common for people to know me as simply “D” or the stranger spelling of “Dee”. It is not my name but for many years now, most people know me as or call me “D”. I still think that if I ran into certain people I haven’t seen in years, they’d greet me as “D!” – more so because many actually think that is my name.

Well as I mentioned, it’s not.

The common use of my nickname has become more limiting over the years, which I prefer. As stated above, there was a time that people seemed to think “D” was my name but as I’ve moved from job to job, the nickname hasn’t followed me. And I’ve found that I struggle to let people just randomly think they can call me “D” because they’ve heard others use it. I’m far more protective about who gets to call me by an initial than I ever was. There’s this sentimentality to the nickname for some reason and only those important to me get to use it.

I’ve had my share of other nicknames growing up and thankfully none of them stood the test of time. What I find the most strange is no one in my family has ever called me “D” and I’m not sure that any of them are even aware of it.

This isn’t really an entry to go into the story of “D”. It’s as simple as someone once called me “D” and it stuck. There’s nothing special to the story and no interesting reason as to why it happened.

Anyway, as protective as I am of the fourth letter of the alphabet, I thought I’d name this blog after it. It made sense and as I’m starting my blog over, it fits.

It doesn’t mean you get to call me “D” though.