i'm torn

Twice this week, on back to back nights, I was out sampling Wellington's nightlife until 5 a.m.
This certainly isn't the first time I've been out on a town until the early hours, but I'm trying to decide how to feel about the fact that it's easy for me to lose track of the time and just keep going until the night is gone and I'm into the next day.
I know how I feel about the next day though - my brain may think it can stay up as late as it likes, but my body always has different ideas afterward.

olympics

I love the Winter Olympics. I haven't had a chance to watch much here, but I've discovered the New Zealand coverage has advantages and disadvantages compared to the U.S. coverage.
For one, no sappy features about the athletes. It's just sporting action on the tube here. That's good.
Unfortunately, there's only about three to five hours of coverage a day - two hours starting at 7 a.m., then about three hours starting at 9:30 p.m. Obviously, this isn't a big deal to New Zealanders - although they do give it more coverage than the country's nine Olympic athletes may warrent.
The biggest problem comes from trying to pack all the coverage into these small windows (especially when they occassionally run the same coverage in the morning and at night). The events, especially the long ones such as cross-country races and hockey games, become edited down to a continuous highlight reel. This would be fine, except they pretend they're showing you a full event. They keep the commentary and edit it to flow as though there were no breaks in the action. This is amusing when the clock on screen suddenly jumps 10 minutes, or 30 minutes, ahead.
It's particularly egregious in hockey coverage. I saw a game where a shot went into the stands. They cut to a faceoff, with the commentary implying the faceoff was a result of the last shot. Only problem was, the on-screen clock showed the game was in the next period.

Also, why do the medals look like CDs?

he was having more fun than me

Today on my way to work I found myself walking next to a man with
three bright green balloons tied to his backpack who also happened to
be talking to himself.
It wasn't under-your-breath muttering. It was the conversation of
someone who was actually angry with the responses he was getting,
even though he was contributing both sides of the conversation. It
was a bit much to take at 8:30 in the morning, but it was still a
little surprising to see the going-to-work pedestrian crowd just flow
around him without an apparent thought.

timeshift me

I'm nearly over my TiVo withdrawal after five months on broadcast
television. Now I've found a new fascination - this new-fangled
Podcastin' thing.
I never bothered with audio downloads before. No. 1, I had TV. No. 2,
the early podcasts available seemed like computer geeks with a
microphone rambling about the things computer geeks talk about. I
could get that just hanging out with my friends.
Now that I'm TV deprived and listening to my iPod as I wander around the city, I decided to see what was on tap. I found the NPR podcasts (if only they threw everything up, it'd be easier). Then the Ricky Gervais podcast, and started to catch up to the whole audio time-shifting phenomenon.
It can't touch TiVo. But it's still a damn fine way to go about the
day, listening to things I never would listen to because: No. 1, I'm
in New Zealand, and those things aren't actually on the radio here;
and No. 2, because even if they were on, I'd never make the time to
actually sit and listen.