Now, the only sports I really pay much attention to are the Olympics… but sometimes it’s a little hard to ignore that there’s a Superbowl that people watch too. Especially as a writer, sometimes you can capitalize on things like that. Last year I wrote an article about Superbowl party foods that were easy to make. This year, my pastor has been singing a line of “When the Saints Go Marching In” in church; I’m not sure whether he is a New Orleans fan or not, but he likes to tease people about the Cardinals losing (I live in Arizona).

The only thing that I really am interested in regarding the Superbowl is the commercials. For the past couple of years, I have been Tivo’ing the game, and then I’ve been fast-forwarding through all the boring football to get to the commercials. When I lived in Italy in the Navy, we used to get a half day the Monday after the Superbowl, because the guys that wanted to watch it would have to watch it in the middle of the night. Sometimes we had the option of coming in at normal time and leaving early instead, if we didn’t watch the Superbowl (military television overseas doesn’t have the commercials, so the Superbowl was useless to me).

Sometimes the commercials haven’t been the… cleanest… I guess you could say. I was pretty happy when I heard that Focus on the Family was going to be putting on a pro-life ad in the Superbowl. But I was shocked when I heard that CBS’s “standards board” had rejected a commercial for “male dating”.

So good for them. I guess I’ll keep supporting the company by watching Survivor every Thursday, starting on the 11th (that and the Olympics on NBC… got a lot of TV coming up).

If you have found your way to my blog through Squidoo, you might have noticed that I’ve been writing a lot about the Olympics lately. I enjoy watching the Olympics, and I realized that there is a lot that can be written about the subject. So in a way, I’ve gone from being a spectator to one who writes and comments on the games as well. Most of the time, the topic doesn’t really fit in with the theme of this blog, so I don’t write about it much here.

However, tomorrow is the big Olympics announcement, on who will get the games in 2016. There are four cities competing for the nomination: Chicago, Madrid, Rio, and Tokyo. Although much ado has been brought up about Barack Obama headed to the games to lobby for the United States, the heads of state of the other three countries are in Copenhagen as well.

Glenn Beck has been vocal about how he doesn’t want the Olympics to come to Chicago, and he has a point. Valerie Jarrett, one of Barack Obama’s closest advisors, stands a chance of making a killing by selling her slum properties and having them developed into the Olympic village. Chicago is a city of corruption in general, and they’re bleeding red ink. The United States is not in a position to pony up billions of dollars for a sporting event either.

I am somewhat ambivalent about the Chicago 2016 bid. I’d love to go to an Olympic games someday, and it’d probably be easier to get to Chicago than Rio, Madrid, or Tokyo (although if my husband graduates from law school in 2013, either one might be possible). On the other hand, I’m not sure if Chicago is the best place to hold them. If Chicago doesn’t get the bid, Denver will probably try to apply for the 2018 winter Olympics. There are six United States cities that are looking into bidding for the Olympic games in 2020, and two United States cities are already considering a 2022 bid for the winter games.

So I guess you could say that I’d be happy with whoever gets the 2016 games. Chicago would be easier to get to, but I’m not so hot about the whole corruption thing. The announcement is less than 12 hours away, so I guess we’ll find out then.

If you are interested, Universal Sports is broadcasting the IOC decision live on the internet.

I’ve never gotten the chance to go, and I tried to win tickets to this year’s Olympics, but I didn’t win. Maybe in Vancouver in 2010. That’s close to where my parents live, so I can combine that with a trip to go visit them. And by then… dh’s business will have either taken off or he’ll be working somewhere else.

This year should be different for other reasons. It’s already been pretty controversial, having the Olympics in Beijing. I’m not sure why they chose China to begin with… not that I have a problem with the Chinese people, but the government is pretty controversial.

Hopefully we won’t end up with some disastrous international event happening at these games. I remember when they found that bomb in Atlanta. I wasn’t around for the Moscow games, but I’m hoping that nothing like that happens this time.

Only time will tell. In the meantime, I guess praying is the best thing to do.