Speed Skating

On February 9 Chieko and I went to the World Speedskating competition at the Olympic Oval in Kearns. It was at the same time as the World Leadership Training at our stake, so I attended Randy's stake's training in the morning (nobody from his family was there, so I didn't take up any extra seats).

We had a lot of fun. Kind of like mini-Olympics, with all the famous names, of which I only know Apolo Anton Ohno. The Chinese and Koreans are pretty strong in this sport. But so is the United States.

In between the races, the Utah Olympic mascots came around and encouraged people to yell and cheer, and in return they threw T-shirts into the stands. We were on the second row, and I said to Chieko, "It's silly to yell, because you yell your heart out and they throw the shirts way up into the stands behind us." Then one mascot stood next to me, and somehow I ended up in a yelling-toward-the-mascot contest with the kid in front of us. And the mascot sort of dropped a shirt between Chieko and me. It landed in Chieko's lap, but since it's a size XL, I ended up with it.

Here's a minute of the three hours of action.


Pause the music in the black Playlist box to the right.

Texas Kids in Utah

While John and Misa are having some minor remodeling work done on their house, Misa brought the kids to Utah. They spent most of Tuesday at our house while Misa did errands or something.






We made origami cups and ate bananas.





































And played in the snow.

Pictures from Christmas

A bit late, but here are some Christmas pictures.

New York City January 2008

I had business in New York January 28-31--I interviewed some folks from the Economist Intelligence Unit for a video we're producing to promote a study we sponsored with the EIU. Chieko decided to go with me, and although we were in New York just a short time, we did some fun things.

The videotaping on Tuesday took from first thing until a little after 6 p.m. Chieko just wandered around New York, I guess. On Tuesday evening, my cousin Jack Scovil, my dad's sister Dorene's son, took us to dinner at a very New York restaurant on 47th street and between 8th and 9th Avenues, I think. I forgot to get the name of it. The entrance was just below sidewalk level. It was very posh with an outdoor garden, which was closed for the winter. The waiter was a young Italian man. I had braised beef, Chieko had scallops, and Jack ate raviolis. Really good. I thoroughly enjoyed visiting with Jack. He's 15 years older than me and has lived in New York since I was conscious, so I haven't known him very well. He went to school in California and then drove his 1965 Mustang convertible to New York to look for work. The roof of his car got slashed his first night in New York. He landed at a literary agency, where he stayed until 1992, when he and two partners started their own agency, called Scovil Chichak Galen Literary Agency.

On Wednesday, I had a meeting with the EIU people to brainstorm some new research topics.

Then Chieko and I high tailed it to the taping of the Late Show with David Letterman. Chieko had requested tickets online, and although the website said most people get tickets a year in advance, she got two tickets by answering a trivia question (What does Rupert do?). The Letterman cheerleaders seat people randomly. ("Seating is random, but if you have a randomly crappy smile you might get a randomly crappy seat." Hardy laughing and clapping are required. )

We ended up on the fourth row in the center, one seat from the aisle. Twice we ended up prominently on screen. The first was a skit with a "member of the audience," who was sitting just in front of us, and the second was when Dave gave a lady just behind us a bag of Late Show stuff--sweat shirts, hat, t-shirts--because she gave Paul a gold hat, which he wore throughout the taping. The first clip just shows Chieko. I was in the 16:9 aspect-ratio version, but I don't have a copy of that, and I'm cut out of this 4:3 version. But both of us are in the second version.

WAIT: Turn off the background music by pressing the pause button in the "Playlist" box on the right before starting video.





Next we ate dinner at a diner and headed to the Gershwin Theater to see Wicked. The show was very fun. The Glinda witch was a perfect lead for Legally Blonde. In fact, the actress appeared in that production prior to Wicked. If you go to New York, see this show.







The Gershwin theater is much larger than any I've been in before.

We sat on the fourth row, on the far right. This provided a great view of the actors, but sometimes it was a bit too close. During intermission we moved back one row, since the two seats there were empty. A lone man from the front row stood up to stretch, and I offered to let him sit in the seats we had moved from. It turns out he's a bishop from Bridger, WY, who works in Salt Lake and was in New York for business. Funny to meet someone so close so far away.


On Thursday morning Chieko bought a very nice Dior purse at an official outlet that's only in New York. Then we ate pizza and headed home.