selkie

Do a free trial of the Acorn streaming service to watch the full run of 'The Detectorists'. It's a really awesome sit-com without that kind of nastiness.

USA Figure Skating's longstanding tradition of its international teams gathering at the destination rather than flying over together is because of Sabena 548 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabena_Flight_548 http://www.espn.com/espn/eticket/story?page=110215/skatingcrash

It's a two man sled; the driver position is petty much fixed within a federation (During the World Cup season, sleds are identified by both driver and country) . The brakemen- and for four man the other two pushers- will rotate spots within their national federation behind each driver to see who can consistently get a couple extra hundredths of a second on runs. So one of the brakemen is effectively an alternate for the sled Seun Adigun- Nigeria 1.

I live in north Florida so we get a decent number of hurricane & tropical storm days off over the years. The schools also had a couple of days off in January this year because it was cold and wet enough to get icy during Polar Vortex 2018, and there is zero capacity down here to salt, sand, or otherwise de-ice roadways.

Think of it like different strokes in competitive swimming- each style requires different technique and, like freestyle in swimming, 'skate-style' freestyle skiing where they go kind of side to side on each stroke is faster than the classic style where it's constant forward movement and no lateral movement.

If it's like Rio, if you have cable or satellite service, you can log into the NBC Sports app/web site and get some nice uninterrupted feeds of each event.

IIRC, WADA rules say an elite athlete returning from a retirement period must be available for anti-doping testing 18 months before returning to competition under their jurisdiction. In swimming, it's common to see unretired athletes in the 18 month 'penalty box' show up at US Masters (think over age 25 and divided into 5 year age groups for competition purposes) meets to get some racing and progress checks in because they're not under the WADA umbrella while USA Swimming meets are. With gymnastics, it probably makes sense to just stay in the anti-doping pool as long as you think you might come back since it's typically a low doping risk sport with relatively infrequent testing compared to higher doping risk cycling, swimming, or track, where the big names will get out-of-competition tests more than once a month.

USADA lets you do a search on how many times a given athlete has been tested by them in a given period of time, and it can be helpful in figuring out who is officially retired and who isn't as retired as some people thought (Michael Phelps' comeback was pretty much discovered by people noticing he was getting drug tested again) https://www.usada.org/testing/results/athlete-test-history/ 2017 test counts- Alexandra Raisman- 1 Simone Biles- 6 Lauren Hernandez- 5 Gabrielle C Douglas- 1

The European cars we've rented have had the manuals in the glove box like you'd expect. (I usually end up digging through them looking for instructions on how the radio or sat nav system works)

And the American women have some legit contenders this time around: http://www.mtexpress.com/sports/diggins-caldwell-nab-u-s-nordic-wins-at-seefeld-test/article_9dd1cb68-045a-11e8-958a-9fe408179431.html

And a welcome to the Nigerian women's bobsled team: http://time.com/5104583/watch-the-nigerian-bobsled-teams-olympic-journey/

Olympic gold medalist Julia Mancuso's hip never healed right after Sochi despite two surgeries so she's headed to Korea in the broadcast booth instead. One of the great clutch performers of her era and one of the noteworthy free spirits in her sport, she was given a retirement run in Italy today even though she's not in competition shape (and still isn't quite walking right) and like always, she did things here way. For those with a USA IP address, video here: http://olympics.nbcsports.com/2018/01/19/julia-mancuso-retire-last-race-video/

Nastia might have been somewhat protected because of who her father was- Nassar might have avoided her out of caution that she was more likely to speak up and he was more likely to go ballistic if anything improper happened.

There was a time frame on the original run of Roseanne when the really ugly sweater would appear on a different member of the Conner family each episode. They're a show that was actually pretty realistic about working class family life.

The US women actually have some decent medal shots in cross country and Jessie Diggins is a sponsor's dream- pretty but exceptionally fierce blonde woman who is liked by both teammates and rivals for the energy she brings to the start line. So they might get higher scheduling priority than usual.

Welcome to the speed skating hotbed of Ocala, Florida. http://www.ocala.com/news/20180108/praise-pours-in-for-speedskater-erin-jackson

So, Sleepy Hollow has some of the same creative team as Fringe and I'm hearing some of the same complaints about it that bugged me with Fringe in terms of some great ideas for the first season, and then a constant morphing of premise until it lost what made it original and compelling to begin with. Though in Fringes case, it was a slower burn from Olivia and her special abilities as the focus to the show to her getting shoved over as Peter's love interest and not as important as the Peter-Walter father-son relationship. While the last season didn't send me into a rage, I just got rather bored with it and the Observers as omnipotent bad guys and never got around to watching the last few episodes.

At this point, he seems to have good notes on how to get the series to end and worst case, they could hire Brandon Sanderson to wrap up the last few books. I kind of liked the Sanderson books of The Wheel of Time better than the last few that Robert Jordan wrote because Jordan kind of let the series plotlines collapse under the weight of the cast of two thousand characters somewhere around book 8.

Saw this today and thought about this thread: https://gizmodo.com/why-didnt-you-watch-the-best-show-ever-made-about-silic-1821308899

There were apparently scratches on Adelina Sotnikova anti-doping sample bottle indicating possible tampering but the ISU/IOC didn't press the issue like they did in the nordic skiing and bobsledding realm, where pretty much all the Russians are facing retroactive DQs now. I do think that anyone who was in Sochi is very suspect but that the athletes who were juniors in 2014 and want to compete in Korea should be given a pathway to competing along with extra scrutiny from outside anti-doping agencies.

How easy is it to certify a Russian for Korea will probably largely come down to a sport by sport basis- sledding and nordic skiing will probably let zero athletes in because of the huge number of issues and doping violations there, curling is likely a straightforward yes if the Russians have qualified a squad, and figure skating is probably a no to anyone who competed in Sochi while allowing the athletes who were juniors in 2014 a pathway to compete.

There have been a few at the sport level- currently 9 countries are banned from international competition because of excessive doping violations (Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Moldova, Turkey, and Ukraine) and Russia is also on a multi-year ban in track and field with a waiver in place for Russian athletes who train abroad and have strong biological passports. Russia also got banned from the Rio Paralympics. But this is another level in play.

And no Russian athlete will compete under their own flag in Korea. Wonder how this works in terms of allocation places- seems like it's easiest and probably fairest to just move the Russian single and duo slots to 'highest world ranking athlete able to compete under the Olympic flag' and then reallocate any team spot to the next country in line.

The cops here often end up at Waffle House on their overnights because it's mutually beneficial- the cops get a table where they can spread out and do paperwork or use the restroom, and the restaurant likes it when people know that a cop just might be there at 3:00am when hilarity might otherwise ensue.

Between too many extracurriculars in college and a couple years working swing shift after graduation, I have large gaps in my 90s tv watching because it pretty much had to have enough to hook me that it was worth the fuss of programming the VCR. So easier to say what I watched than what I didn't watch- my 90s watch list was pretty much E.R, Highlander, Forever Knight, Buffy, and Babylon 5. So no Friends or anything like that. We did watch Seinfeld for the first time last year because it was on the streamers and it's nice to have a half hour comedy before bed, but IMO, it doesn't hold up well. I understand it was groundbreaking at the time, but so many other shows have come along and done what Seinfeld has done and done it better, including the first few seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm.