Live-ish from Greece

Here we go again with the Olympics. Every two years I try to get my kids interested in watching the Summer or Winter Olympics -- always pointing out the excellence the Russian team, of course, to instill a little pride in the land of their birth -- and every year they watch a little and go "Eh." My mom used to make a big deal of watching the Olympics, rooting desperately for Americans to win and falling into a funk if victory was snatched from them, and I can still get fairly obsessed by the whole spectacle, tuning in at odd times of day to catch vital events like, oh, synchronized diving. My daughter seems a little more interested this year than she has in the past, but that's a mixed blessing: watching the opening ceremonies with her, and trying to explain what was going on -- or just that these things never actually make any sense, and you simply have to let them wash over you -- was a challenge that Katie Couric and Bob Costas were spectacularly unhelpful in getting me through. Way easier are her questions about the actual events: "Is that hard?" and "Do they practice?" Pretty soon another question will probably come around: "Do I really have to watch this?" And that's okay, really; it's easiest to let all this sport wash over me while I'm viewing alone.