IAAF World Championships

So I've come across something that will make the next 10 days of my life incredibly useless. Well, there are several things, actually. Firstly, and this has contributed to making the past two weeks of my life somewhat useless, is Scrabulous. It's a way to play Scrabble online. And on Facebook you can have multiple games going at once. Currently I'm 20-3. Not bad for somebody whose family still thinks he has a 4th grade reading level (except his sister, who he beat thrice already :-P). Or maybe she still thinks this, but hey...I'm over it.

So the bad news is www.wcsn.com. It's a website that broadcasts sporting events that don't get mainstream coverage on network channels. It shows gymnastics, international basketball, swimming, etc....AND track and field. The IAAF World Championships (track and field = 'athletics' in the rest of the world - kinda like the metric system, I guess) started yesterday. I paid 4.95 to get the web broadcast for the whole month...what a deal! They broadcast live and then put their whole live feed online so you can watch it later too. Unfortunately, broadcasting live means live from Osaka, Japan. Osaka is 14 hours ahead of me currently. This morning I woke up at 5:45am to watch the hammer throw qualifying rounds. Then fell back asleep for too long. It's awesome....on weekends. What happens when something I really want to watch is on at 8am when I am working? I won't be able to keep myself from looking at the results, plus the USATF sends me really useful daily updates (OK I got 4 today, perhaps more than daily) but they have the results in the subject line of the e-mail!! So if I don't watch it live it'll get spoiled. Grr...Oh well. They actually show more of the throws than I expected, but they did deviate from the final 4 throws in a really good shot put competition to show the 5th heat of the heptathlon 200. Even the announcers kept saying, "I don't know why our directors are showing this. This heat is inconsequential, and Adam Nelson is stepping into the circle for his final attempt!" Argh. Throws get no justice. What else is new.

I also got in on the FANTASY TRACK AND FIELD for the Worlds. It's like fantasy baseball, but with far less appeal and excitement (for most, I'm pretty pumped). You get 20 athletes on your team, 10 per gender, and they all have to be from a different country. That's the part that makes it interesting. I'm currently tied for last with a bunch of other people right now, but none of my people are out and I think I've got some really good picks. Anyways...that's that for now.