Argh - No Sweatshirt This Year *sigh* and Sochi

This Orangutan in Salt Lake City has accurately predicted the winner
of the Super Bowl since 2006. He chose the Seattle Seahawks helmet
without hesitation and he was correct, one more time! Where's my bookie? 

Well, two teams arrived at Met Stadium to play a game, but only one team actually played and it wasn't mine. I love a tightly contested game where every point is hard-fought. If my Broncos had lost under those conditions, I would have been just fine with it. But they didn't. They rolled over and played dead. Seattle is a great defensive team and they were hungry to win. They played a brilliant game and deserved the win. So congratulations to the Seattle Seahawks - well played. Thank goodness there were some really fun commercials to keep my interest levels up during the game.

I loved the Cheerios commercial. Dad is talking to his daughter and lines up
three Cheerios to demonstrate their little family. He then adds a fourth telling
her that she will soon have a little brother. She then adds a fifth "And a puppy".
Dad caves, of course. It has also made some ripples because it features a
biracial couple. I just loved it because of the loving relationship is portrayed.
Want to see for yourself? Just follow the link. 

I've been working on getting my fics updated on my various archives, having fallen seriously behind on that aspect of my writing. I use archives at Fairie and AO3 for all of my fic, and Many Paths To Tread and Silmarillion Writers Guild for my fics that meet their criteria. Over the past week I updated "A King is Born" and "Aspects of Nerdanel 1 - Fractured Stone" to the archives they meshed with. I'll continue trying to catch up as I begin getting immersed in the beginning of the Olympics at Sochi later this week.

The skating arena is one of the fantastic buildings gathered in Olympic
park for the Sochi Olympics. I look at this and think back on another
winter olympics - Sarajevo. Those buildings are destroyed by war
now. I only hope a similar fate won't be in Sochi's future. 

I love the Olympics, which shouldn't really come as a surprise since you know I love sports, but Sochi has me on edge. I'm not super worried about security. There may be problems, but any event pulling in lots of people these days has the same risk. No, I'm upset about Russia's LGBT laws. The inability of Russia to acknowledge the legitimacy of non-traditional relationships, and criminalize those who refuse to turn their backs on who they truly are disturbs me a great deal.

Many athletes and attendees at the Games will also be
pushing Russia to change its position on GLBT rights. 

I'll be using my Rainbow Sochi avatar for the Olympics - not exclusively, there are still other reasons to use avatars and I don't use any avatar exclusively. This is an opportunity for all of us who care about gender equality and freedom to love without fear can make our personal statement for gay rights.

This pic might be a little heavy for some people, but so are the anti-gay laws
in Russia right now. 

Stepping off my platform now :-) I hope you have a wonderful week ahead of you and wish you a happy Monday.