It’s My Imagination

Nastia Liukin Accepts Silver With Grace

August 19, 2008 on 12:06 pm | In Entertainment, travel | 3 Comments

(Photo credit: KAZUHIRO NOGI/AFP/Getty Images)Nastia Liukin performed beautifully in the individual event finals of the uneven bars at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. She had a few small errors, but stuck her landing in a very difficult routine. In fact, her routine had the highest difficulty rating of any routine being done at these Olympics. Her competition, the Chinese women, opted to increase their own routine difficulty ratings in order to be able to compete against her.

In the end, another screwy judging scoring system left Nastia tied with her competitor He Kexin which should not have happened. These two gymnasts had identical difficulty ratings, both had small errors in their routines, but He Kexin had several more small errors and took a sideways step on her landing. Remember, Nastia stuck her landing. All things being equal, Nastia should have scored higher. But, this is international gymnastics and all things are apparently not equal. The two gymnasts wound up in a tie.

The International Olympic Committee determined that there would be no ties in gymnastics and the computer is programmed to automatically break the tie by dropping the 4th lowest score, leaving only 3 judges scores remaining to be calculated together. This left Nastia with the Silver medal. There should have never been a tie in the first place.

Nastia Liukin has handled the situation with maturity and grace. Although she was no doubt disappointed, she accepted her medal with a smile, posed for photographs after the awards ceremony and never said an unkind word about the situation. She is certainly a gold medal individual.

Tags: Beijing, Beijing Olympics, gymnastics, Nastia, Nastia Liukin, olympics

Beijing Olympics - Women’s Marathon

August 16, 2008 on 10:45 pm | In Entertainment, Some of This Some of That, travel | 2 Comments

(Photo credit: Guo Dayue/Xinhua)Were you watching the Olympics this afternoon? The women’s marathon took place today and, while I’m not a runner, and certainly not a marathoner, even I could appreciate how big of a lead Tomescu Constantina of Romania had for the last several miles. She headed into the Birdnest Stadium over a full minute ahead of any other runner to win the gold medal.

(Photo credit: Clive Rose/Getty Images)What amazed me even more was that after she crossed the finish line, she continued to run laps around the stadium, carrying the Romanian flag in celebration. What a run!

Tags: Beijing Olympics, marathon, Romania, Tomescu Constantina

Crossing the Mississippi

August 15, 2008 on 1:00 am | In travel | No Comments

Continuing on our road trip, we crossed over the Mississippi River into the state of Tennessee and immediately discovered the beautiful city skyline of Memphis. The interstate wrapped itself around downtown and allowed us to snap a few photos on a beautifully clear Monday morning. It really was a great way to start the second day of our trip, especially because this was going to be a very long day driving.

Tags: Memphis, Mississippi River, road trip, travel

Elvis Has Left the Building

August 12, 2008 on 11:25 pm | In travel | No Comments

My daughter and I pulled in to Memphis early enough last month on our trip to Tennessee, that we had enough time to drive over to Elvis’ house. Unfortunately, it was a Sunday and the place had closed for the day by the time we got there. Although Elvis had left the building, my daughter was able to snap a few shots from the road that goes directly in front of the house. You can just almost see Graceland through the trees!  The grounds were really quite pretty.I’m not really sure what I was expecting, but the area surrounding the house seemed a bit run down. I didn’t really see any other homes, mostly little businesses like check cashing places and such. The road was 6 lanes wide, I’m sure to handle all of the tourist traffic, but it was surprising none the less.

Tags: Elvis, Graceland, Memphis, travel

Cabin in Pigeon Forge Tennessee

August 8, 2008 on 11:04 pm | In Family Health, travel | 2 Comments

Last month, we went to Tennessee and, along with my family, rented a 4 bedroom cabin in Pigeon Forge. There were also 2 living rooms, each with a queen size sleeper sofa. It was a great place for all 10 of us to stay. The only issue I had was the size of the shower 4 of us were using in the downstairs bathroom. I am not a large person, 5′7″ and my weight is average. I’m telling you, I felt like I had to perform ballet maneuvers to make any movements in the shower. Just reaching for the shampoo could cause me to bump the shower walls. If I were a larger person, that shower would have made me seriously consider looking for a lap-band doctor.

Sometimes I think builders of rental properties and hotels need to look to places like JourneyLiteSM for design plans. All of these places need to be designed with comfort in mind, comfort for everyone, no matter what shape or size. Wider hallways and bathrooms would be a great start. I had to haul my luggage up and down a flight of very skinny, steep stares and it was a bit scary. Our bedroom was very soothing, although, it was a tight squeeze to walk around the bed.

We really did enjoy our visit, even with the tiny shower!

Tags: JourneyLite, lap band doctor, weight loss

Crossing the Mississippi River

August 8, 2008 on 10:18 am | In travel | No Comments

My daughter and I left home on July 13 to drive east through Tennessee and on to my sister’s house in eastern Kentucky. I mistakenly chose Memphis as the half way point. While this was half way as far as mileage was concerned, it was much less than half way as far as driving time. You see, once we got into the mountains in the east, going up through Virginia and Kentucky, the speed limit was greatly reduced and the roads were quiet windy which slowed us down.

We did spend the night in West Memphis, Arkansas though. We arrived early enough that, after checking in to our hotel, we took a little drive to see some of the area. We crossed over the Mississippi River into Tennessee before heading back and spending the night. This second photo is one I took, while driving, and I sort of like it, even thought it’s not the photo I intended.

Tags: Arkansas, Memphis, Mississippi River, Tennessee, travel

Photos From Our Road Trip - Shreveport

August 7, 2008 on 7:41 pm | In travel | No Comments

Tonight, I finally got around to downloading the remaining photos from our road trip last month. I’ve been wanting to share some with you and I can finally do that. Unfortunately, I sorted them in not necessarily the most organized folders, so I need to go back and do some re-organizing.

This particular photo is from our last day on the road as we were driving through Shreveport, Louisiana. This is a rather large Horseshoe Casino, my brother-in-law would be thrilled! It really did stand out against an otherwise boring backdrop.

Tags: casino, Horseshoe, Louisiana, Shreveport

River Rafting in Tennessee

July 29, 2008 on 10:07 am | In Entertainment, Family, travel | No Comments

As you know, I was away from home for the last 2 weeks. The purpose of the trip was to attend a show in Knoxville, TN where my sisters and I had a booth in order to sell our hand sewn items. However, the show was only 3 of the 14 days, the rest of the time we were simply out enjoying ourselves!

One of the first things we did was to go river rafting on the Pigeon River in Tennessee. We started the adventure just below the North Carolina state line and rafted for about 5 miles. The trip took about 4 hours, mainly due to the river being low. There were a lot of rocks that we had to navigate around and over. There were some small rapids that made it exciting, and a few spots in the river deep enough to take a swim. We really did have a good time!

That’s me and my niece’s daughter in the front of the raft. The handsome young man in the back was our guide.

Tags: Pigeon River, rafting, river rafting, Tennessee

Finally, I’m Home!

July 28, 2008 on 8:49 am | In Family, travel | No Comments

I have to say, I don’t think it’s ever felt so good to come home!  My 9 day trip turned into 14 days and was extremely tiring, logging just over 3,000 miles.  I’m tired and trying to catch up.

I spent most of yesterday catching up on regular mail and balancing the check book.  My goal for this week is to update all of our financial information, so I may not be online too much.

I appreciate any of you who have stopped in, thanks!  I am attempting to repay visitors this morning by returning comments and visiting your sites.  Sadly, I had over 3,000 spam that Akismet caught and so, if a legitimate comment somehow wound up in that folder, I’m sorry, it was deleted.

Once I get my house back in order, I will be back and hopefully posting pictures of our trip.  As tiring as it was, my daughter and I had a lot of fun and we loved visiting with my family.  So, check back, I do plan on posting very soon!

Tags: road trip, travel

Taking a Break

July 12, 2008 on 3:22 pm | In My Imagination, travel | No Comments

I’ve been cleaning house while packing and loading things into our van.  It makes it extremely uncomfortable to even step outside because it’s 96 and humid.  Just going outside makes me start to sweat.  Our swimming pool is looking extremely tempting.  If I get in the pool though, I won’t get out and I won’t be packed and ready to leave in the morning.

So, I decided to take a small break and read a few blogs before getting back to work.  My husband will be out of town a few of the same days my daughter and I are gone, so it’s important that I have the house taken care of and ready to be placed on auto pilot.

Well, back to work before I get too comfortable.

Tags: packing, travel