So the wife agreed with me yet again, tonight.

She too is getting just a little tired of watching the Olympics. Which seems a terrible thing to say, but truth be told, so much of the coverage lately has been "analysis" and opinion, and not athletes competing. I guess NBC feels they gotta fill airtime with something, and since most (male) Americans seem to love listening to other people talk about athletes and competition (look at the two to three hours of pregame show for the Superbowl), that is what they gave us.

And we both know, once the Olympics are gone (which is, like, minutes from now probably), there will be crap to watch on regular programming.

But yeah, we enjoyed the Closing Ceremonies. A lot. Loved the maple leaf costumes, and the giant beavers. And we really enjoyed the mime performance to get the 4th crystal up, and that they allowed Catriona LeMay Doan to come back and light it... a truly human, caring touch that one is not surprised to see with Canadians. But it was the wife who noticed that there wasn't much ethnic diversity in the giant puppets paraded on stage. At least it wasn't Cirque de Soleil puppets.

We suspect the games at Sochi will have a totally different flavor, so we hope all the athletes appreciate what they had in Vancouver.

I don't know why I tear up when I hear Государственный гимн Российской Федерации (State Anthem of the Russian Federation), but I do. Got no Russian genes in me, grew up hating that song in the Cold war, and yet, it moves me.

Maybe because it represents what it has become, and not what it was.

Oh, and I missed 99.99% of the hockey game, yet I still managed to see the greatest Olympic Moment of the day.

No, it happened hours earlier, in the Men's 50k Crosscountry. When the finish line crowd shouted, cheered and rang their bells for the New Zealand skier.

Mind you, most of these folks were sporting Norwegian flags and colors.

And mind you, it was twelve minutes after the race was won. But they stayed to cheer in (and speed up) the last competitor.

That, my friends, is the Olympic spirit.