I confess. I'm an Olympic junkie.

But did you see that opening ceremony? I mean, did you see that? Okay, I'm a pushover for a show with 15,000 performers (I really dug the drums. And the boxes. And the...) and a 500 foot wide LED screen and enough fireworks to power the space program for years.

Of course I'll watch all the thrilling and less than thrilling athletics competitions. What's the summer equivalent of Curling? Whatever it is I'll be glued to the set like I cared. There are more than 20 athletes there from Austin (not all USA team - some just train here) so there's a local interest.

And this time you can see any event you want live - if you are willing to get up at 2AM. Gotta go. Horseshoes begins in 30 minutes. I understand Turkmenistan has a formidable team.

What price for wisdom?

We read a lot at our house. And since it's never too late to improve oneself and broaden ones horizon vocabulary-wise, we make it a point to look up new and unknown words when we encounter them. Mind you, we know a lot of words already and frankly what we read for the most part doesn't stretch us much, but now and then a particularly erudite author will infuse his or her prose with a word that escapes our personal etymological or philological resources. So we look it up.

Well, we attempt to. We have a copy of Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary which isn't. It was published in 1977 and the spine is broken and it's heavy and hard to use. Granted a lot of words were already invented by 1977, but according to a guy here in Austin, author of "A Million Words and Counting" about 4,000 words a year are being added globally to the English language, so we could be 124,000 words behind.

So Mom bought a little copy of Webster's New World Dictionary at Wal-Mart; it was published in 2003 so that should get us more up-to-date. Up-to-date perhaps, but sadly lacking. On occasion we have failed to find as many as five definitions in a row. Maybe we should have spent more than $3.87 for enlightenment. Or maybe it's because it's only 753 pages long compared to the old 1,533 page New Collegiate. I figure that's about 100,000 fewer words.

So we have committed to investing more than $3.87 for enlightenment. How much more, I don't know. Mom just called from some store and asked if I could remember an unfound word. I gave her riparian as our litmus test.

Does your dictionary include the word riparian? I'll wait while you check.

She came home with a copy of The American Heritage Dictionary and I have to say it looks pretty impressive with 948 pages of teeny-tiny print and cost only $5.99. It includes the definition of riparian. However, it did not have the first word I needed to look up - marcelled.

I wonder what an OED costs?

All Right!! Football!!

Okay, it wasn't very good football - the Hall of Fame game where the real players sit down after mailing in a few minutes on the field, but it's football at last!

I mean we've watched the "Lord of the Rings" (extended versions - all three movies), "Star Wars" (the 3 good ones), "Indiana Jones", "Hunt for Red October", "Once Upon a Time in the West", "Field of Dreams", "Oh Brother Where Art Thou", "Bull Durham" (my, my!) and part of "True Lies" (on TV). We were getting desperate.

But at last, long last there was a football game and football and big-screen High Def are made for each other. Another game Thursday and Friday the Olympics start. We made it through the drought!

Is it true...

...that if you go to Office Depot and fill out the papers for a divorce and pay them $25 you can get married while waiting on the papers to go through?

I don't know the answer, but that's what a woman asked us after stopping us in WalMart this morning.

I think we are going to shop only at HEB from now on.

Wahoo! The IRS comes through!!