A Day of Sports, Photography and Cooking - It Should Be a Fun "Day Off"

Although today's schedule is relatively open, that just means I don't have specific appointments. I've done my jog for the day, I don't have to make swimming reservations until tomorrow, and I have plenty of "Ogre Juice" available to take me through until next Wednesday. But I have a huge group of Swarovski crystal cubes in front of me that I need to start photographing, I have more trade beads to upload onto Etsy, and I want to make a batch of 13-bean chili today, so I'll spend some time in the kitchen. 

I don't make 13-bean chili in the summer months (although 
I'm quite sure it would be tasty), but it's the perfect food 
for the winter months. I usually get three batches out of 
the dry bean mix, and I'm already into my second bag of 
the season. Even though it's not horrible temperatures 
today, chili just sounds good to me for today. I'll 
add some Harissa seasoning to it also to give it a little 
punch. 

I love the chili I make in the winter months. I decided to switch things out a bit this time, so I picked up some ground pork, as well as a jalapeno and some fresh mushrooms to add to the base. I'm already looking forward to my dinner tonight and tomorrow night - LOL. I need to take a quick run to the grocery store, but it's going to be a very minimal trip (I forgot to pick up tomato sauce when I was there on Wednesday). 

Nathan Chen set the arena on fire, free skating to a 
montage of music by Elton John, and bringing a bit 
of sass to the ice as well. It wasn't a flawless performance, 
but it was darned good. If you didn't get an opportunity 
to watch it, I'm including a link here that will bring you 
to a You Tube recording of the skate. Enjoy. 
https://youtu.be/8zVL9WY3dUw

I'm watching the Olympics of course. I finally had an opportunity to see the finals of the Men's Singles Long Program yesterday afternoon while working on the computer at work. There was some stiff competition, but congratulations to all three medalists as well as all who competed. It was a highly competitive skate, and even though they were missing an in-house audience, I'm quite sure the broadcast numbers were huge. 

Shaun White was unable to get a higher placement than 
fourth place, but that's damned impressive for a man 
35 years old. This is his 5th Olympics and he still 
qualified for the final runs of the event he loves. He 
has the respect of most snowboarders who work the 
Half Pipe, and that respect was demonstrated after 
his final run of the night. 

We watched the finals of the Men's Half Pipe last night, flipping to and from BattleBots to catch each run. It was a disappointment for Shaun White, of course, when he didn't medal this Olympics, but when I think of the influence he's had in the sport over the past 20 years, he got a medal, even though he didn't get the hardware. Several competitors hung around the back area to hug and thank him for all he's done for them. If Shaun wasn't in tears before, he certainly was after that outpouring of love and support. 

I'm going to wrap this up here. I'm going to start moving through these bags of Swarovski crystals and start alphabetizing them. I'll have to figure out how to make the photos work - I want to make a photo montage of 4 photos across and five rows deep for each twenty crystals. I've never done that in Photoshop before, so there will be a bit of a learning curve. Yippee - I get to exercise my brain a bit today (minus the frustrations when things I try don't work ... but I'm sure I can eventually figure it out). Have a glorious Friday and I'll wrap the week up tomorrow. Also, if you have an opportunity to go onto "The Real LJ Idol" on Live Journal, I'd certainly appreciate your vote for my story. I'm new to the group, and don't have a large following yet.