The Canadian figure skating judging system is in major need of less Paulas and more Simons. For realz.

First, the U.S. mens' final today was very edge of your seat, nail biting worthy and exciting! Though he did not make the Olympic team like I had hoped, Ryan Bradley did a wonderful job on his LP today. I was so proud of him! He really took the mistakes he made in his short and used them to fuel a spectacular performance. Unfortunately, his SP did cost him, but it sure was close between him and Johnny Weir. Only 7 points. Is it terrible that I was sitting there hoping and praying that Ryan would manage to edge Johnny out of third? Had it only been based on the LP, he would've gotten silver. Ryan truly was the second best skater of the day.

The 'best' label, however, goes to Jeremy Abbott hands down. Wow....and...wow. He basically blew everyone out of the water today. A near flawless program. In fact, I didn't notice a single mistake. Of course, I'm not a figure skater, so maybe I'm not knowledgeable enough to have spotted them. If there were any, they were very minimal. Jeremy ended up finishing 25 points ahead of silver medalist, Evan Lysacek. Again, wow. While Ryan is my all-time favorite male skater, I wound up spending most of my time watching Jeremy's routine with my mouth hanging open. Ryan still owns on the entertainment and audience interaction factors though. I would love to see him skate live some day! And Jeremy too!

And our Olympic team is gonna be, as expected, Abbott, Lysacek and Weir. No shake ups :-(

So, I always wind up with some sort of drama or frustration issues after these kind of things. This time around I found myself fairly content, but slightly disappointed about Ryan, knowing that we do have three strong skaters who made it on the podium and will in turn be going on to compete in February. Johnny and Evan have a little work to do on their LPs before Vancouver. Though today may have just been a result of the pre-Olympic jitters and a fluke. It happens.

Anyway, the drama didn't come until after watching the mens' final at the Canadian Nationals. They have a couple of pretty good guys up there. Not quite at the level of our American men, except for Patrick Chan that is. He's "above" the level of our guys. After his LP, he received a higher score than Jeremy's skate. The commentators at the U.S. mens' final today were talking about how Jeremy had edged into the amazing category with his cumulative score of 263. So then, Patrick's score of 268 should indicate that he managed to out-skate Jeremy, right?

Wrong. Okay, let me state that I really do like Patrick Chan and I think that he's a great skater. I enjoy watching him and hope for the best for him at the Olympics. But there is NO way that he skated better than Jeremy today. I'm aware that it was different countries and different judges, so you're gonna end up with different opinions. I am starting to wonder if we need a universal figure skating judging boot camp before the games in February. I can't seem to remember either Jeremy or Patrick's exact scores on their LPs. After a little calculating of what I recall their SP scores being (Patrick - 90, Jeremy - 87), Patrick must've gotten roughly 2 points higher than Jeremy received on his LP. Patrick had no quads in his program, Jeremy had one and landed it nicely. Patrick made a few noticeable mistakes (even I spotted them) and as previously mentioned, I didn't see any in Jeremy's skate. How does that work out?

Yes, I know they weren't judged by the same people. It sure would be curious to see how each of them would have fared had they swapped countries for the day. Man, Jeremy's scores might've been off the charts if he had skated in Canada tonight, while Patrick would've received a rude awakening here in the states. Personally, after watching him skate, I would put him right below Ryan. Not just because I'm biased and madly in love with Ryan, but to be honest I don't think he's on the level (yet!) of the top four we saw today. They showed a clip of Patrick's SP before his LP and even there he made a couple of mistakes. Which tells me that his SP score was considerably inflated along with his LP.

Someone on twitter the other night tweeted about how they were shocked that Patrick scored higher than Jeremy did on Friday without a triple/triple combination in his program. I tried to mentally give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he must have been so amazing that he didn't need the points from that combo. After today, I'm starting to think that the Canadians are just plain over-scoring their athletes. What they don't realize is that this is actually hurting them by giving them false expectations. I really hope that Patrick tries to track down and watch the performances of his Olympic competitors at their National competitions. Because if he just goes off of the comparison of his score to others in order to determine who his biggest competition will be, he's gonna be in big trouble.

I had every intention of just coming on here and making this a quick rant, but as usual when I get going, I have a hard time reeling it back in. On another note, the Australian Open is going on right now. Unfortunately, they're not giving us free live feed of the matches :-( I loved that the US Open did that in September! Now, I have to resign to listening to the Australian Open radio and watching the scores as they change. It's so much more fun watching it live though. Oh well. I'm actually listening to the Nadal/Luczak match this very moment. So far, it is tied 6-6 in the first set. But I'm gonna have to go to bed and won't get to finish listening to it. Hopefully, Rafa comes out on top. On the ladies' end of things, Maria Sharapova has already been knocked out of the running. She lost to Maria Kirilenko. Bummer. Justine Henin and Roger Federer are the ones I'm hoping win this year. So, we shall see.

I really need to go to bed. I'm heading up to Seattle later today to go see the 100 Monkeys concert in Seattle with Stephanie tonight. Yay! And the ladies and ice dancing competitions are happening later this week at nationals! So, good night! Oh, and remember that Pigs Can Fly! (showing some Jeremy love :-)

It's Christmastime!

I truly love this time of year. The decorations, the music, the movies, how everyone just seems so much more happy and smilier than normal. I don't even mind the commercials since they're Christmasy.

So, I've been trying for Michael Buble tickets all week long for his Seattle concert in April. Warm 106.9 was giving away tickets in the front 5 rows and today was front row tickets. Did I win? Of course not :-( If I had, I would probably be jumping off the walls and hyperventilating right about now. I love him! Oh well, it obviously wasn't meant to be.

I don't care that it got 4.6 stars out of 10 on IMDB or that there are loads of bad reviews written about it, but I thoroughly enjoyed New Moon. It wasn't phenomenal and the acting definitely wasn't Oscar-worthy. It was what it was, the sequel to what started out as an Indy like film and bloomed into a mega franchise. As far as the books go, New Moon is my least favorite in the series. So, though I was still really excited to see it, I went into the movie with somewhat low expectations. It did help that I was going to see it with several good friends. In fact, everyone that went on our little Twilight stalking trip back in April to Vancouver while they were filming New Moon was there. It was a mini reunion :-) Plus, prior to the movie I had gotten to chill with Vicki at Starbucks and then we had a dinner of happy hour menu items at this awesome restaurant and lounge in the Belltown area of Seattle, called Amber. Great place, totally recommend it!

Anyway, back to New Moon. I really thought that Chris Weitz did a great job with it! When I read the book, I spent most of the time frustrated about Edward leaving and how stupid Bella was being. While this also occurred in the movie, there were so many humorous moments to keep me from dwelling on those facts. I think I spent most of the time laughing and drooling over Taylor Lautner sans shirt. I still can't believe he's only 17. All in all, it was a great movie and I'm looking forward to seeing it again. Afterward we went to this chocolate bar restaurant place. I totally forget the name of the place, but their chocolate mousse was to die for and this restaurant did remind me of Papa Haydn's in Portland. Our hostess was the sweetest girl. It turned out that she was a Twilight fan too and was excited when we told her that we just got out of the movie. S and Mel were gonna buy some of the individual chocolates they had behind the counter, but instead the hostess gave a plate of them to our table for free! According to V, this is not a common occurrance. I really think that there is some unspoken bond amongst us Twihards. I first noticed it in Vancouver. Eclipse comes out in June! From the sounds of it, they're also bringing it to the Imax theaters, yay! Edward, Jacob and Emmett on a huge Imax screen? I could deal.

The ISU Grand Prix events are officially over, leaving Evan Lysacek and Kim Yu-Na as the champions. Evan is just amazing. I think that he's gonna give Plushenko a run for his money at the Olympics. And while I'm really not a big fan of Johnny Weir, he can skate very well. As can Jeremy Abbott.

Despite my allegations that he can't pull it off in my previous entry, I really really really want to see Ryan Bradley compete in Vancouver. He really proved himself in his long program at Skate America. Except for the Adagio movement in his clarinet concerto, I don't think I have ever enjoyed music by Mozart more than when Ryan did his Amadeus routine. What a character! If he can just work in some more confidence and consistency, I think that he could be a strong competitor. He is such a class act, not to mention an all-around nice guy. I've actually had the chance to chat with him a bit via Facebook. It's so sweet that he's taken time to respond to his fans on there. I haven't quite worked up the courage to ask for his hand in marriage yet, but there's still time. Can you imagine how adorable our kids would be? I love the look of dark hair with blue or green eyes, so in my high school biology class I remember doing a lab where we got to figure out the probability of the eye colors of our future kids. Ryan has dark brown hair and beautiful blue eyes. I have brown eyes with a recessive blue via my dad. I remember doing the calculations and if I marry someone with blue or green eyes, there will be a 50/50 chance that our kids will have blue or green eyes!

Kim Yu-Na is, little by little, getting knocked off of her throne. In the Grand Prix event she did prior to the final it was proven that she is in fact human, not just some skating machine that pumps out near flawless performances. Her human side came out again in the SP of the final and for the first time in who knows how long, she was second place going into the LP behind Japan's Miki Ando. While she totally worked it in the LP and ended up winning, it does seem that we might have a more interesting competition on the ladies' side in the Olympics than originally speculated. We shall see. Yay for Ashley Wagner showing her stuff in her LP after a disappointing SP. That girl's got the goods, I really like her!

Unfortunately, our American ladies have a lot of work to do if there's gonna be any chance of medaling in Vancouver. I still have no idea who our two ladies are gonna be. If Sasha Cohen does compete at Nationals and skates at the top of her game, she will be a shoo in and may actually have a shot at the podium in the Olympics. Her biggest set back will be not having done any competitive skating in the last few years. But if anyone can pull it off, it's Sasha! The second slot is really just up for grabs by Alissa, Rachael, Mirai or Ashley. It all comes down to Nationals in January. I can't believe that it's gonna be in Spokane again. That's only 5 hours away from here! But it won't work out financially. I'd have to take the Greyhound to get there, the tickets are nearly $100 per skating event and then there would be the hotel stay. Grr... Someday I WILL get to see some figure skating live in person. I am determined to make it happen.

I just watched the sneak peak trailer for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and I am so excited! Do we really have to wait a whole year until part 1 comes out? That's gonna feel like an excrutiating eternity. Well, I think I'm gonna go work on some of the presents I'm knitting and watch a Christmas movie. Did I mention that I LOVE this time of year?

And jealousy ensues...

Okay, it's really not that bad. But my friends are up in Vancouver right now because they had gotten tickets for the Sam Bradley show last night. I had been invited, but declined because I teach Sunday School and didn't want to be gone another week. So, I really shouldn't feel too bad about not being there. Sundays are awesome! :-) Anyway, I got a text message yesterday afternoon about them meeting Michael Welch who plays Mike Newton in the Twilight movie. They actually saw him twice. The second time, I guess he was talking to some paralyzed guy on the street who sang for money. Michael sounds like an awesome guy! Then, I got another text message at 2 am this morning that they saw Kristen Stewart and Rob Pattinson as they were leaving the show. I had been sure that at least Rob would be there, since he and Sam Bradley have been good friends since they were like 12. Grr... I am still sad I missed out on all of it, though :-( This just means that I have to take a trip up there sometime with in the next two weeks before the filming of New Moon moves to Italy!