Tylenol works better with Vodka...
Silly girl, you'd have to have a liver transplant the next day! Acetominophen and alcohol... very, very, very, very bad.
So . . . was anyone else up and cheering with us during the men's 4X100 relay when we won the Gold!
Best USA moment of the Olympics so far.
Marilyn and Monica . . . do you guys watch the Olympics much across the Atlantic?
We watch every night - I haven't watched this much TV in months - probably since the end of Football season.
Tonight Phelps goes for another Gold . . .
OK . . . gotta go . . . my favorite coming up . . .
Beach Volleyball!!!!
UUUUMMMM, we have 3 TV's recording 4 different channels 24 hours per day right now. OH yea, we're watching. There are so many things I love about it I can't separate them. 175 of the 647 American athletes are from California with the majority coming from Orange County. It is in our blood here.
Here's a long article about it:
Why are we home to so many Olympians?
Wealth, work and history have helped produce local winners for decades.
BY SCOTT M. REID
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
It's a few minutes after 6 a.m. on a recent Friday morning and despite the early hour, Mission Viejo Nadadores coach Bill Rose, two stop watches hanging around his neck, is already in rare form, cracking jokes as his troops chase the pool bottom black line they hope will lead them to Beijing. "Keep up a good pace," Rose yells, briefly interrupting his pool deck stand-up routine. "Keep up a good pace."
Every four years for the past four decades, Orange County has set an Olympic pace for the rest of the nation to follow. A golden combination of weather, facilities, coaching, history, affluence and sheer numbers has made the OC a major world power on the Olympic stage.
At the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, county athletes won as many gold medals as Great Britain - nine. Or one more than Brazil and Spain combined. "Orange County has become synonymous with Olympic success," said San Clemente's Gabe Gardner, a member of the U.S. volleyball team.
That success should continue at the Beijing Games. From world record-setting swimmer Aaron Peirsol to water polo player-turned-triathlete Julie Swail-Ertel, seeking an Olympic medal in a second sport, to beach volleyball's golden girl Misty May-Treanor to an OC-dominated softball team seeking a fourth straight gold medal, Orange County athletes will contend for medals in at least 13 sports in China. In fact, the county's Olympic influence now extends beyond the pool and soccer pitch and has never been greater. As the U.S. Olympic Committee's chairman of the board, Orange County businessman Peter Ueberroth has launched both a major overhaul of the organization and an ambitious campaign to repair the U.S. image internationally.
That global fence mending is directed out of the USOC's international relations office in Newport Beach, run by Olympic volleyball gold medalist Bob Ctvrtlik, USOC vice president-international and an International Olympic Committee board member. The Newport Beach operation has - and will - play a major role in Chicago's bid to land the 2016 Olympics. Whether the 2016 Games are in Chicago or Madrid or Tokyo, their champions are likely already training in Orange County pools and pitches, dreaming of being the next Janet Evans. "In Orange County," said swimmer Kaitlin Sandeno, a 2004 gold medalist, "you don't have to look very far for Olympic role models." While OC athletes won Olympic medals in the 1960s, the county's emergence as an international Olympic force can be traced to 1972 when the Mission Viejo Company hired an unknown Midwest swim coach named Mark Schubert to coach the Nadadores.
"The company," Rose said, "basically gave him a blank check." "Mark Schubert is very, very competitive," said Dave Salo who replaced Schubert as USC swim coach. "And that, combined with some outstanding facilities, led to some early success that drew people to Mission Viejo." Four years later the Nadadores' Brian Goodell won the 400 and 1,500-meter freestyles in Montreal. Tustin's Bruce Furniss added a gold medal in the 200 freestyle. "Orange County became the new frontier," said Salo, whose Irvine Novaquatics would launch the careers of future Olympic champions Peirsol and Amanda Beard in 1990s and 2000s. "Mission Viejo got it started."
The Nadadores won 13 medals at the 1984 Los Angeles Games, 10 of them gold. Only the U.S., Romania, Germany, China and Italy won more gold medals in Los Angeles. Schubert's global powerhouse in Mission Viejo provided a model not only for other Orange County swim clubs but also for programs with Olympic aspirations from soccer to gymnastics to water polo to volleyball. "Mission Viejo's success definitely rubbed off and inspired other sports," Gardner said. "They're a big reason why Orange County has had so much Olympic success. They set the standard for all the sports. They were huge when I was growing up. They were the legacy for anybody growing up with Olympic dreams even if you weren't going to be a swimmer."
Four years ago in Athens there were 31 athletes with Orange County connections competing in 12 sports on the U.S. team. Fourteen of them came home with medals. "Swimming from the '70s on was really the catalyst for all these other sports," said Rose, coach of this year's U.S. Olympic open water swim team. "But the possibilities were there. The opportunities to take it to the next level were afforded through OC."
As the county's population exploded so did the number of facilities and clubs. When Garden Grove world record-setting swimmer Gary Hall, Sr., was training for the 1968 Olympics he would sneak into the
Disneyland Hotel pool for an extra workout. Today top flight aquatic, softball and soccer facilities are throughout the county. "It's not just about talent," Gardner said. "For these sports to be successful a system has to be in place to support these sports. And in Orange County it's there. Where else in the country can you say that?"
There are 20 water polo clubs in Orange County. USA Water Polo is based in Los Alamitos and both the men's and women's teams train in the county. The U.S. men's volleyball team has set up its training base in Anaheim while the 77,000 square-foot Orange County Badminton Center in Orange is home to all five members of that sport's Olympic squad. The county's influence on softball from Olympic team members to registered age group players is so widespread, U.S. women's national team director Ronnie Isham said, the sport's national governing body "considers Orange County softball's hometown."
Building and maintaining those facilities and paying the coaches who work in them doesn't come cheap. Between dues, coaching fees, equipment, gas and out-of-town travel, the tab for even grade school and junior high age athletes in sports like soccer or gymnastics can run into five figures. It's no coincidence communities like Irvine with a median family income of $103,604, according to a 2006 American Community Survey, or Mission Viejo ($99,857) are Olympic hotbeds.
"Orange County is a very wealthy county and we got that way because a lot of us came from backgrounds that are very hard working, people who moved out west for new opportunities," said Mission Viejo swimmer Chad LaTourette, a double gold medalist at last year's World University Games. "This is a really family-centered area and a lot of these kids have parents who support them and push them to strive to be the best."
When Laguna Hills' 7-year-old Ivana Hong expressed an interest in gymnastics her parents took her to the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney. They wanted to see if I was really serious about it," Hong said. She was. Eight years later Hong, already a World champion, is a contender to make the U.S. team for Beijing. The early success of athletes like Hong has created unrealistic expectations for some parents.
"Some people just think that by osmosis that's my kid and I bring him to the Nadadores and you're supposed to make him an Olympian," Rose said. "And that's obviously not the case." The environment, however, plays a major role in Orange County's continued Olympic success. That kid sitting next to you in U.S. History or the daily carpool to practice could turn out to be an Olympic champion.
"Amanda and I basically grew up together," Peirsol said. A decade after coming up together through Salo's age group program, Peirsol and Beard won gold medals on the same night in Athens. Hong and Haley Ishimatsu trained at the same gym until the latter switched to diving, emerging as a Beijing medal contender at 15.
These days Orange County is so full of Olympians you can't get down the aisle at Trader Joe's without bumping into a former medalist. In Huntington Beach, 1976 gold medal swimmer Shirley Babashoff evens delivers your mail. "I think a lot of people here know somebody who at least has been to the Olympics,' Gardner said. "And when you have that you get a lot of kids thinking 'If they can do that, I can do that.'"
"That's huge," Schubert, now the U.S. national team coach, said of the role of the county's history in its Olympic success. "You always have champions inspiring potential champions. It opens their horizons." LaTourette has only to look out his back window to find Olympic inspiration. Goodell lives on a hillside behind the LaTourettes. One of Goodell's sons is a friend of LaTourette. "I'm extremely aware of the history here," LaTourette said. "It's such an integral part of Orange County. And I want to be part of that. You want to be the next hometown hero." In today's U.S. Olympic Trials 1,500-meter final LaTourette hopes to join that line of Orange County Olympic heroes. A few days before the Trials, LaTourette trained in Mission Viejo's Lane One, the legendary Animal Lane, once home to Olympic champions like Goodell and Mike Bruner, and current American record-holder Larsen Jensen. LaTourette was pushing himself just as they did, to the limit and then beyond, convinced that the black line would also lead him to Olympic gold. Above LaTourette, Rose continued to pace the pool deck, beating a path to Beijing. "Keep up a good pace," he shouted above the churning waves. "Keep up a good pace."
Goodnight all!
He's fascinated since it looks like a snake. So I called him, "The amazing, incredible, one of a kind, SNAKE BOY!" which of course he loved and had to tell grandpa about that on the phone. 
I'll be nice and not share that picture. Yucky!
He managed to injure the other cats eye but she is ok now but her medicine made her foam at the mouth. I have pics of them together. He managed to injure the other cats eye but she is ok now but her medicine made her foam at the mouth. SHe is just now starting to forgive him for her embarressment. I will download and post/
Have a great time in NC! Pop in whenever you can. Looking forward to seeing more pics of your crazy cats! My mom's favorite cat is the Maine Coon. She's always wanted one.
it just sounded better than the Advil and Vodka he was thinking of... 
Yup, Mother knows best 
fibromyalgia? 
