I heard a very interesting rumor the other day — that I was supposed to be rested and shaved at Long Beach, I guess to re-break my American records. Ha ha. I’m flattered that I was the subject of the swim gossip grapevine. But seriously, I’m not going to be distracted by golden apples along the way. Besides, when I set my records the last time, I went 57 and 2:05 without being rested and shaved anyway.

However, on the subject of fast swimming, the Stanford girls swam awesome this weekend against the Arizona schools. I didn’t make it out to their meet vs. ASU on Friday because of my back, but I was really impressed by their toughness on Saturday against a good team like U of A.

Stanford got behind at the beginning, and it was clear that U of A was there to race, breaking two pool records early in the meet. But the Stanford girls rallied well, and just before the first diving break it looked as if they had reset and weren’t going to let Arizona just walk away with it. They proceeded to win almost all of the close races and break a few pool records of their own. Now that’s the way you win a duel meet!

In other more prosaic news, I recently invested in an electric blanket … and it has rocked my world. Previously, my sheets were always freezing cold when I got in bed. I get easily chilled and so even with socks and sweats, the iciness led to an unpleasant half-hour while I waited for my body heat to make the bed habitable. But now, I just turn it on before I brush my teeth and viola, everything is toasty-warm when I climb into bed.

It is so great that I am going to promote it as a great energy-saving tool. Obviously, you have to factor in the energy it takes to make it, ship it, use it and dispose of it after you are done. But, if you use it for 5 years (the extent of the warranty on mine) and turn your thermostat down or off every night for that entire time (you can do even more by using it under an insulating quilt or bed spread or by employing a timer to turn it off after it has warmed your bed), I think that you will come out ahead.

Besides, what is the point of heating your entire house when you are just going to be sleeping in your bed the entire time?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 29th, 2008 at 2:58 pm and is filed under tarakirk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.