A Super Sporting Hodgepodge

A hodgepodge is a jumble or assortment of things that might not appear to belong together. Joyce at From This Side of the Pond hosts a weekly link-up called Wednesday Hodgepodge that is a little collection of questions for bloggers to answer just for fun and to get to know each other. I always look forward to chatting with friends over coffee, so pour a cup of your favorite and let's visit for a few minutes!

mug from the Calgary Olympics

Here are this week's questions - and my answers - for this week's Wednesday Hodgepodge.

1.  The Winter Olympics kick off on Friday, February 6th . . . on a scale of 1-10 how excited are you? (1 = eh and 10 = watching every event all day every day) What's your favorite Winter Olympic sporting event?

 

I love the Winter Olympics and do plan to watch - I'm just not entirely sure how to watch, or how to find time to watch! I'll put myself at a 7.5 on the Excitement Scale. My favorite Winter Olympic sporting event is the figure skating. I used to always watch with my daughter and we would discuss our impressions and their costumes, and how we would score each competitor. This time around we obviously can't watch together so maybe we'll have to do a few video calls to dicuss. I bet y'all thought I was going to say hockey is my favorite, didn't you? It's a very, very close second, but I decided that figure skating would get the edge (🠈 "edge" - see what I did there?) today because I watch lots of hockey throughout every winter, but don't watch much figure skating except during the Olympics. I also enjoy watching curling (I'm a fan of the Norwegian Curling Team Pants - if you know you know), some downhill skiing events, moguls and freestyle skiing, bobsled, and speed skating. 

 

2. In other sporting news, the Superbowl (American football's championship game) will be played on Sunday, February 8th. So tell us . . . what's your superpower?

It's much harder to think of my superpower than it would be to list my toxic traits. Haha. It used to be teaching or homeschooling, but I'm not teaching any more . . . I'm mostly an optimist and find things to laugh about, and I rarely freak out so I guess that's sort of a superpower. My superpower is the ability to see the humor and hope in situations, and to mostly remain calm.

 

3. Are you a romantic?

 Yes and no. I love a good romantic story for sure. I like novels and movies with a good romantic storyline that tugs my heartstrings. I love good romantic stories that are real life too, and am always rooting for the people I love to be in strong loving relationships. But I'm not someone who is emotionally intense, or overly focused on feelings. I'm passionate about the things I enjoy and believe in and feel strongly about, but not in a super-emotional way. 

4. Blue cheese - yay or nay? How about feta? If you said yes to one or both, what's a dish you like that calls for one of these?

 Blue cheese - nay! Feta - yay! But in small doses. I do like feta, but because of its saltiness I like it in moderation. One of my favorite things at the Greek festival or Greek restaurants is spanakopita (spinach and feta in phyllo pastry)

5.  What's more important - doing what you love or loving what you do?

 As a life skill, I think it's more important to love what you do. If you can learn to love at least some aspect of your job or things that you must do regardless of how much you like it, you will always be able to be doing something you love. Doing the things we naturally love doesn't always pay the bills, frankly, so not everyone gets to "do what they love" as their lucrative career choice. My advice to young people used to be that they should find a job they are good at and learn to love it in some way, and use it to finance their ability to do things they love. I wouldn't say my job is necessarily doing what I love, but I like it and find it pretty satisfying, and it helps me bankroll doing things that I do love, like chorus and eating out and having a few nice things.

6. Insert your own random thought here.

Inspired by the Olympics question . . . forgive me if I've told this story before! We still lived in Calgary in 1988, the year Calgary hosted the Winter Olympics. We got tickets to a few hockey games, and we visited the Olympic Plaza downtown where they had some of the medal ceremonies. We had been married less than a year, and had to plan ahead and order those event tickets at least a year in advance.  We were able to snag tickets to several of the hockey games, and it turned out that we had tickets to see Canada play twice! Of course, this was before the NHL players participated so it was a little different.  

Also! I sang in a choir that was part of the mass choir that sang in the Opening Ceremonies and performed during the Olympic Arts Festival. Our choir also recorded the Olympic anthem and Canadian anthem in advance. For the Opening Ceremonies, the choir members were dressed in these druid-like robes in the colors of the five Olympic rings. It was just luck of the draw which color robe you received, and mine was black. I was quite disappointed. The other colors might have got more use for costumes, I thought, but I've gotten pretty good mileage out of my black robe over the years anyway. It's been a Jedi robe, and a wizard's robe, and I always thought it would work well for a Ghost of Christmas Future costume too. Also, it is very warm, and I used to wear it football games when we lived in Calgary! In the picture below, the choir is the mass of colors just below the Olympic rings. When we first entered the stadium, we had to stand in formation there to start with, but then we moved up onto the stands in the formation of the rings.

I stood somewhere about where the arrow is pointing

Fun fact: It was COLD the day of the Opening Ceremonies! And when I say "cold" I mean something like 30 below. Brutally cold. But we were toasty inside those floor length wool druid robes. Then later in the day, one of the more dramatic chinooks I remember blew into Calgary, and we could literally stand out on the balcony of our apartment and watch the snow melt. The very next day we had tickets to a hockey game and we went in t-shirts with only light jackets. My hubby and I always said that we could have made our fortune and retired early if we'd thought to make up t-shirts to sell that said "I wore shorts at the Winter Olympics in Calgary" 

 

What are your favorite sports at the Olympics? Do you have a fun superpower? Leave a comment and let me know!

I'm sharing in this week's Wednesday Hodgepodge at From This Side of the Pond.

I host the Wednesday Quotes link-up every other Wednesday. Stop by and share a few thoughts and quotes on the current topic of Eating Out/Restaurants here: WQ - Let's Eat Out! I host the Everyday Images photo link-up every other Thursday. And find the Scripture and a Snapshot link-up here every Sunday.

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