grown men crying...

So were any of you touched last night by Michael Phelps's quivering lips as he heard the National Anthem?

Yeah. The Olympics make me so darn emotional! I've always been so moved by the National Anthem being played for gold medalists... and the emotion on the athlete's faces. Like when the American women swept yesterday's fencing event and the gold medalist was crying so much that former President Bush had to give her his hankerchief? Classic Olympic moment... =)

On an unrelated note, I thought I'd share with you a craft project that I've undertaken. Our new house has a fairly standard design on the main level with a kitchen, formal dining room, formal living room and informal family room. Well, we said "heck with having both a living room and a family room." Who really uses two sets of rooms with couches and coffee tables? If we're having people over, we will invite them back to the fireplaced, comfortable space we enjoy. So we said to ourselves "what can we do with the front room that's so formal with this beautiful hardwood floor?" We've turned it into our "study," and it's lined with our big wooden desk and seven wooden bookcases. Our collection of diplomas are hanging on the wall, and there's a comfortable old wooden rocker over by the bookcases to curl up in if you find a book to read. But that's a lot of wood, and a lot of empty space in the middle of the room.

So I am making a rag rug for the middle!! I'm estimating I'll need about a 6'x9' rug, which is actually immense when you're crocheting it... and to add to the project, I'm doing it with strips that I am cutting from old tshirts. So I have to find tshirts in my color palette, cut them into strips, sew them together, wind them into balls, and THEN I get to start crocheting! I've already finished about 8 rounds on my oval rug and LOVE the way it looks so far... but I am running out of tshirts and I have a ton more to go. Let's just say I'm going to be hitting up some garage sales this summer!