re: my $160.6 cable bill

—23 days of european football. and somehow i became a germany fan? i was also, at different times, a russian fan, a turkish fan, ORANJE!, croatia, romania... france, even? french coach domenech wouldn't appoint any leos to the starting team (no kidding) and thurham and makelele were done like diner (au microonde, en plus!)

interesting fact: it's hard to get into games one has absolutely nothing invested in, besides interest.

—21 days of the tour de france—sans last year's winner and third place finisher, both ostracized by the tour's leaders—still keeps me up late. more than last year, i find myself getting up at almost 6 a.m. to watch the races instead of staying up until 4 a.m. watching the package. phil liget is awesome, i was to buy a book of his "accidental poetry" but the moment passed when ricco was kicked-out for doping.

(liget: "he's all alone now, dancing on his pedals in a most immodest way.")

i took the garmin-chipotle experience, mostly because they were the american team being profiled by oln/versus, but was wowed by kim kirchen and mark cavendish of the columbia team, and mr. george hincapie as always. ALL HAIL csc! the super team. schleck schleck cancellaro sastre eating the mountains like the cookie monster AAAAAARGGGAASGH MUNCH MUNCH MUNCH MUNCH!!!! mr. clean wins the race, but vande velde wins hearts!

—16 days of beijing olijmpijcs. quiet crowds the first few days, before they started commanding their volunteer army to go and "cheer equally" for both sides everywhere at everything. ron mclean's mother died and he left half-way through, just when we started medaling.

—four days of the dnc, prompting the department of obamarama to be opened. i first felt he could be elected when mrs. obamarama spoke on the first night. a few days later the palin thing sure took the wind out of camp change.