The Olympics and the Wall

Oooooh, horses! Between watching swimming and gymnastics, I've also been happily watching the lesser-known/televised Olympic events. Yesterday I spent hours watching the Equestrian Cross-Country event on my phone app. I got to see almost all of the 64 riders tackle the course, and there were some falls, some unanticipated issues, and some balks, but also some amazing runs and times. It was a fantastic day of riders and their mounts and I enjoyed all of it. Today I get formal jumping - the more controlled jumping that occurs in the arena. Each type of jumping pulls to a different skill-set for horse and rider, so I'm hoping to watch this while I'm at work again. I must admit that I skipped Dressage - it's always been a bit boring to me although it's an amazing skill for the horse and rider.

There's nothing easy about jumping more than 30 jumps or groups
of jumps in as close to 10 minutes as possible without errors.
Even the greats came in slightly over time, but some of the
horses were absolutely amazing. 

The phone app I've been using (NBCLive) has been excellent. I can watch any event live, and I can catch replays without narration or watch clips of highlighted events from the previous day or just a few hours earlier. I've been using my portable battery pack toward the end of each day because I've had my phone on, live streaming, from about 9:00 am until I close the store at 6:00 pm.

The USA men's archery team pulled off a Silver Medal
in Monday's event, losing to Korea - a powerhouse.
It was a wonderful showing. The individual events on
Tuesday were assaulted by really nasty wind gusts,
making things much harder. The field has now been
narrowed to 16 each for men's and women's individual
archery. Those medals will be awarded on the 11th and 12th.  

Archery has been wonderful, I've caught selected parts of the various gymnastics qualifiers, and I've also watched some trap shooting, air rifle and air pistol shooting. Table tennis has been vicious - fast and furious as expected. DH has been staying up late to watch the beach volleyball, but it's not one of my favorites, so I've been skipping that one. The swimming has been outstanding, though. The swimmers are so FAST! Never in a million years was I or could I be that fast. Wow.

This is DH's wall as of Saturday night. He did quite a bit more
work on it on Sunday, extending the right'hand side back into
the cutout more. The lowest row of blocks will be below ground
level, and the patio where I'm standing will eventually be
lowered an inch and repaved. 

Here's a detail shot of the right-hand section. These photos
are after four days of labor. He'll be back working on it again
today on his "day off". 

Oh, and here are photos of DH's wall before Sunday's work. It's quite a bit larger now, and he'll be working on it all day today once again. I'm really quite impressed with his accomplishment. Have a great Tuesday, I'm off to the pool to use my new ankle/knee band and see if I can improve my breaststroke kick.