WashingTina

It's the Olympics again, and as it does every go 'round, it brings with it delusions of grandeur (see here ).  The Summer Olympics are even worse for me, considering that I played many of the sports, including gymnastics, swimming, field hockey, and soccer.  But I think where I really could've been a contender is in diving.  Ever since I first jumped off the board at age four, I really had something special in me. When I was maybe 13, I joined the diving team at my summer pool.  Two of my friends were on the team, plus diving meets had a way better snack bar than at the swimming meets.  It was a natural fit.  Except that you needed four or five dives in order to really be a contender, and mostly I could just do a front and back dive.  That didn't stop me from trying, though.  I'd get up, do the one-two-three step approach (I mean, hey, even if I wasn't every good, at least I could go through the very professional motions) and give it my all.  I was terrible.

I was sitting at dinner tonight with friends of a certain age (and by "a certain age," I mean my age), discussing great concerts.  Somehow the topic of procuring concert tickets came up.  In today's age of getting online and clicking a button, the machinations that the rest of us went through to get tickets back in "the olden days" (aka the 90s) seem slightly ridiculous.  Or nostalgic.  Whichever, depending on your certain age. Sure, you might've taken the easy route by pressing speed dial with the Ticketmaster 800 number, but the die-hard amongst us took a more drastic step.  Take for instance a certain concert in 1998.  The Tibetan Freedom Concert , right here in D.C. Any self-respecting 22 year old needed to see this show.  Spanning two days and with a lineup including the Beastie Boys, Radiohead, Sean Lennon, Mutabaruka, Money Mark, A Tribe Called Quest, Dave Matthews Band, Sonic Youth, Nawang Khechog, Wyclef Jean, Herbie Hancock and the Headhunters,

For years, WH has said I remind him of Elaine Benes from Seinfeld.  Played by the incomparable Julia Luis-Dreyfuss, I always took it as a compliment.  Of course, he also always teases me about my abnormally large head.  Devotees of Seinfeld will know where I'm going with this, but for the rest of you, just read on.  Ever since we moved last month, I've had largely uneventful walks to and from work each day.  Aside from one day when I saw a hipster bend over and his pants fall down revealing a little bit of buttcrack, there hasn't been anything really out of the ordinary.  Until today, of course.  I was walking the four blocks to my office, in a state somewhere between lost in thought and caffeine-deprived, when it happened.  A bird.Flew.Into.My.Head. It was one of those this-would-only-happen-to-me moments.  I'm pretty sure I jumped up in the air, flapped my arms and muttered something along the lines of, "Jesus Christ!" I can tell you this, it scared the