For my first day of staycation, I watched the Women’s Ice Hockey Olympic semi-final games. It played out how I figured it would. Sweden lost to the USA though many wondered if they would upset things because they had 20 years ago. Canada took Switzerland in a closer match up. A big part of this was due to Captain Clutch, Marie-Philip Poulin, who got two goals and overtook the record for goals scored at an Olympic games. She did this despite having some sore moments with her knee. The rest of the team really needed to step up more during this whole tournament and Chloe Primerano absolutely should have been rostered. She is one of the most promising Canadian defenders.

A scathing article came out against the IIHF this week. It delved into the differences in how they talk about female athletes and teams. If it doesn’t bother you, it should. Female athletes should be treated with the same level of respect as male athletes.

Tuesday began with watching the copy of Wicked I got for Christmas. It’s my first 4K film. Sometimes a rewatch of a film is better than the first one. When you know the story, you can pay more attention to the smaller details. The dancers, colours, outfits, acting, and set design all come together to make Wicked the modern masterpiece that it is. Funny thing, the cardboard cover for the film case fell at the moment Elpheba launched the coin.

I also played some Hytale. I hope the game improves. I’ve spent weeks trying to find sallow logs to level up my farming bench. It’s as if there isn’t any more available anywhere. They need to respawn those trees. Imagine a server with hundreds of players and only a handful can level up their farming work bench. It’s not going to work. It makes me just want to play any other videogame. Palm trees also don’t grow into a useful wood. And there are other tree related bugs with other tree species not growing properly. They are pretty good about fixing things, so I really hope they’ll get these tree issues sorted out.

Later, I made Shepherd’s Pie. That was a lot and part of me wanted to nap after that, but eating it was preferable. I watched some episodes of The Studio. It’s pretty fun, but I think I like Loot better in some ways. I think The Studio needed a bit less Seth in favour of Catharine.

On Wednesday, I watched Wicked: For Good. I didn’t see a lot of difference from the first one. It ended how I expected it to. In the evening I watched Real Steel with Hugh Jackman. It’s about a robot boxing circuit and he develops a relationship with his estranged son after the boy’s mother passes away.

The Thursday hockey games began with frustration for me. I couldn’t get it to function reliably on either TV via HDMI, so I could only watch them on my laptop screen. Great fun. CBC needs to develop a Gem app for TVs, Playstations, etc for the future because other people in my condo building were also watching via a tiny laptop screen. Everything is better on a bigger screen. Or hell, play the games live on your YouTube channel and make it easy to find the stream there because there are YouTube apps on these devices.

I was cheering for Sweden in the Bronze medal game. It went really well. They fought so hard and ultimately it came down to one goal by Alina Müller, who is a top scorer on the Boston Fleet. Honestly, I think Sweden should be proud of how far they’ve come. I wanted them to win, but it just didn’t happen. The thing is that the teams were so closely matched. I can’t wait to see what Sweden does at the next Olympics because they were amazing in every game they played.

The gold medal game also came down to one goal in over-time. Canada was so strong at the start. Both teams played fast and gave their all. We had more injuries and penalties and this let the USA get into our d-zone too much. Hopefully, we see a different ending at the next Olympics in four years. It was a heartbreaking loss and something has to drastically change in our game to catch up to the Americans.

Our Canadian Women’s Curling Team, took home Bronze.

Unfortunately for me, I spent much of Saturday in the washroom either due to food poisoning or a case of Norovirus. This messed up my non-Olympic plans for the weekend. I watched a replay of the Women’s Biathlon and wondered why we had no Canadians in the bunch. It’s a ski race with periods of shooting and I think it’s odd that we don’t participate in it.

Our Canadian Men’s Hockey Team had a very similar game to the women and also took home silver. It’s not the result Canadians wanted, but most of us are taking it gracefully. Hopefully, it goes differently in 4 years time. A lot can change in far less time.

And I’m happy I live in Canada rather than the place who won gold.

Catch you on the flip side,

Rae