Congratulations, Rio

Rio de Janeiro will host the 2016 Summer Olympics, and will become the first South American city to ever host an Olympic Games. Chicago, on the other hand, was elimated in the first round of voting, in what as been called "one of the most shocking defeats ever handed down by the International Olympic Committee". Almost sounds like a promo for a reality show. Anyway, congratulations to Rio and to the people of Brazil. (Postcard courtesy of leonardolavra.)

I had a feeling that if Chicago didn't get the games that Rio would. But darn it! I was really hoping for Chicago. Oh well, people from Chicago, especially Cubs fans like me, are used to sports-related disappointments. :)

Decision Time

In about 24 hours, the International Olympic Committee will award the 2016 Summer Olympic Games to one of four candidate cities. The cities are:

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (Thank you to Trisk for the postcard)

Madrid, Spain (Thank you to aqualarre)

Tokyo, Japan (Thank you to Little-Flower)

Chicago, Illinois, USA

I live about 40 miles from Chicago, so naturally I am hoping that the IOC picks Chicago. You can check out all of the info about Chicago's 2016 bid here. The announcement of the winning city will happen at around 11:30 AM Chicago time tomorrow in Copenhagen, Denmark. I'm keeping my fingers crossed! :)

The Amazing Race 15

It's the end of September, and that means that the fall television season has started. And with a new television season comes a new Amazing Race. And a 2-hour episode to boot. YAY!!!!

This race started out in Los Angeles, and for the first time, there was a team eliminated at the starting line. Yikes! I felt bad for that team, but at least they were not one of the three teams that I picked for the pool I'm in. Yup, I joined an Amazing Race pool. There is no money involved, so it is perfectly legal. :) It was a bit difficult to pick teams just based on their pictures and bios on the website, but I picked Sam & Dan, Brian & Ericka and Herbert & Nathaniel. I won't spoil who was eliminated, but it came down to the wire for one of my teams. Eeeeeek!

Anyway, as I mentioned, the race started out in Los Angeles, California. I got this great shot of LA, with Dodger Stadium in the foreground, from swan as an official Postcrossing card.

After the first challenge in LA that eliminated a team, the rest of the teams flew to Tokyo, Japan. I do have a wonderful shot of Tokyo that shows the Tokyo Tower (the team's first stop), but I have specific plans for it for a post later this week (most likely Thursday). So I will take inspiration from the first task in Tokyo. Japan is known for its outrageous game shows, and on the race, the contestants got to play Sushi Roulette. I would not have been good at this challenge, which involved eating a Wasabi Bomb (basically just a whole lot of wasabi) in under 2 minutes. I don't like spicy food, so that would have been a very hard challenge for me. I don't like sushi, either. Not to eat, anyway, but on a postcard I like it just fine. :) Thank you to shijia0619 for sending me this sushi card.

As a bonus, here is a card that I have had for over a year, but have not posted yet. It shows carved wooden dolls that are supposed to be towing a treasure boat. It was sent to my second account (the cards are sent to my office instead of my apartment) from nozomaro.

Because tonight's episode was 2 hours, there were actually two legs to the race. The second leg of the race took the racers from Tokyo, Japan to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Uh oh! I don't have any cards from Vietnam! And not only were they in Vietnam for this leg, it also appears they will be staying there for the next leg. And I don't have any postcards from the country after they leave Vietnam either! (Yes, I looked ahead). Fortunately, once they leave that next country, I have the rest of countries covered. But what to do, what to do. I guess I'll just have to see the tasks they perform and the locations they visit and see if I have something similar from another country.

In this case, their first task was to spread mud around a fruit tree (they got the racers messy early in the race this time). Fruit tree - that I can handle. Here is a card from chagb3 in Taiwan (I seem to be getting LOTS of cards from Taiwan lately) showing a banana tree. I almost had trouble figuring out which way was up on this card because of the funny way that bananas grown, but they I saw the man reading the newspaper in the background. Unless he is defying gravity (crap, now I have a song from Wicked going through my head), I have the picture the right way. :D

Ok, so that's all for tonight. I'm looking forward to another fun season on The Amazing Race, and to seeing the 3 teams that I picked as the final 3 teams! *crossing fingers* ;) Oops, I guess I just gave away that none of my teams were eliminated tonight. But that's not much of a spoiler, right? :D

A Great Start to the Season!

I'm taking a break from the alphabet posts tonight (and yes, I realize it's been a while since I posted one) to talk about something else. I'll try to get back to the next letter sometime this week...whichever letter it is. It's been so long that I don't even remember where I was! :) But anyway....

This weekend was the official start to the 2009 NFL football season. I'm sure there are some of you that are tuning out now, because you don't give a hoot about football. That's ok, because I don't give a hoot about most other sports (except baseball). :D I'm sure some of you know who my favorite team is, and some of you don't. But don't worry, I have a postcard that will tell you (big surprise there, right?). The funny thing is that I just got an official Postcrossing card of my team's stadium on Thursday. How very fortuitous and timely, huh? What makes it even more interesting is that no where in my Postcrossing profile does it say who my favorite team is - just that I like stadium postcards. So AngeC did a great job in picking a card for me. And here it is:

The Green Bay Packers (YAY!) played the primetime game on NBC this evening against the Chicago Bears (BOOOOOOOO!). I am extremely happy to report that, after some tense moments towards the end of the game when the Bears (BOOOOOOOO!) were actually winning, the Packers (YAY!) managed to pull out a 21-15 win in Lambeau Field. I'm sure my neighbors now know who I was rooting for, based on all the hooting and hollering coming from my apartment!. :D And since I live about 40 miles from Chicago, I just love rubbing a Packers (YAY!) win in the faces of all the Bears (BOOOOOOOO!) fans. Yeah, so I'm a sore winner. But you can be sure that they do the exact same thing if the Bears (BOOOOOOOO! - is that getting annoying??) happen to get lucky and win. ;) My boss (who is a big Bears fan) always tells me that he wishes he had asked me which football team I rooted for before he gave me a job. I just smile and go add another Packers item to my office! Ha ha! I even have a picture of Brett Favre up on the wall - but believe me, I have considered hanging it upside down or something. I just cannot believe that in less than two seasons, that man went from being a huge hero in Green Bay to a villain (and a huge idiot!).

Anyway, Aaron Rodgers seems to be doing a pretty good job as the Packers quarterback, so hopefully the rest of the games this season will go the same way that tonight's game did. Is that asking too much?? :D

And before I go, here is another look at Lambeau Field, including the statues of Vince Lombardi and "Curly" Lambeau. This is a card that my mother gave to me. Thanks, Mom! :)

Go Packers!

Postcards from A to Z: J

I actually started writing this blog entry on Wednesday of last week, but failed to finish it until now. Instead, I've been spending my evenings chatting with people in my non-postcard hobby, and therefore have been too distracted to write a blog. I go into the chat room when there is no one in there, thinking I'll get some time to myself, but inevitably, someone else will come in and start talking to me. So obviously it's not my fault. :D

Anyway, as I was looking for a card to post for "J", I realized that I had two cards from the same country that showed cities with "J" names. As an added bonus, it is a country that has never before been seen in this blog! Neither of them are "official" Postcrossing cards - the country only has 148 Postcrossing members, so it would be a fairly rare occurrence to get an official card from there (by comparison, the USA has over 20,000 members). So, are you curious yet? Huh??

J is for Jaffa and Jerusalem.

I'm guessing you have probably heard of Jerusalem, which is, of course, in Israel. And I bet that if you haven't heard of Jaffa, you at least surmised from the previous paragraph that it is also in Israel. Jaffa is a port city on the Mediterranean Sea, and it believe to be one of the oldest cities in the world. This postcard of a minaret in Jaffa was one of three that I picked out for the 12 Viewcards in an Envelope Round Robin. Leeba, who is, not surprisingly, from Israel, was the person who sent out the envelope with the 12 cards in it. Then the 4 other people in the group each picked 3 cards and replaced them with 3 cards from our own areas.

The caption on the back of the card says "A Minaret in Jaffa". Wow, that's informative. :)

The card from Jerusalem is one of seven that I received as part of a trade from Terra in Germany. She sent me cards from a number of different countries. The Dome of the Rock is an Islamic shrine that houses the Foundation Stone, which is the holiest spot in Judaism. If you are wondering if that causes some issues, the answer is yes. But then again, the control of much of that area of the world is under dispute.

The caption on the back of this card isn't any more informative than the other, but at least this one says "Jerusalem, Dome of the Rock" in four languages. :)

Ok, so that's it. I figure if I start on my "K" entry now, I should have it finished by the end of August.