Pancake Day! Pancake Day! Let's all go to the cafeteri-ay!

Short takes on the fun stuff of life:

* Did I go to the short track meet here on campus? You betcha! And it was fanTAStic. The first race we saw was a handful of very little girls running their way around the track. The youngest we saw were four or five years old; the oldest, in their later fifties. I went with Kim, and we saw a handful of races and then...a lot of Zamboni action. Bad timing. After I took her home I returned for more short track mayhem. People splatting on their faces! People crashing into walls! Girls racing against boys...and winning! Very fit young men without their shirts! It was a very good day. Amelier, though you would like the racing itself I think, I can't see you taking up speed skating spectatorship. Something about sitting in an ice-filled room in February seems un-you, but I can't pin down what it could be.

* And while we're on the track, did you see the Olympic short track finals Saturday night? I watched it at, like, 3:00 in the morning after seeing the Fiery Furnaces. A very close 500m, Ohno wins the gold, and then straight on into the relay. Yeah! Now that's a Saturday night!

* One last Olympics and speed-skating obsessive note. The closing ceremony? Crazy! WHY would the Italians have some sort of army of snowtroopers doing the YMCA? But all is forgiven, because the US team elected my man Joey Cheek to be the flagbearer, ensuring he got camera time. As a gift for all my devoted viewing, maybe.

* Today is Fat Tuesday, or Shrove Tuesday, or Pancake Day, if you're of the mind. When I was a kid I had a book of holiday poetry, and one of the poems was Pancake Day. I knew that wasn't a holiday we celebrated, so I assumed it must be Jewish. (There were poems in there about Hanukkah, which we also didn't celebrate. Made sense at the time.) So you go on out and get yourself a girl! Or maybe a wagon! Full of paaaaancaaaaaaaaaaakes!