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There's no question Michael Phelps is one of the greatest Olympians of all time. He absolutely dominates his competition and I love watching every second of his swims. I've been glued to the TV for each of his races.

In my previous post, I actually wasn't trying to argue for or against Michael Phelps as greatest Olympian ever as much as I was trying to point out that medal count is very subjective and dependent on your sport.

Take Misty May and Kerri Walsh, the US beach volleyball duo. They similarly dominate their competition (they haven't lost a single match all year!) but no matter what, they can only win 1 medal.

I think there are arguments on both sides. And June said something on her blog about how it makes her crazy to "see/hear people who it seems wants to make something controversial when really it's just something to celebrate and be proud of..." I hadn't really thought about it that way before, but she has a point. Why argue semantics when what really matters is that an athlete is putting on a phenomenal performance and doing things no one else has ever done and may never do again?

But I brought up the medal count because I find it interesting, and because it's something I've thought about during previous Olympic games as well. I guess what I was really trying to say is that Phelps's status as the "greatest Olympian ever" should really be based more on his complete dominance over his peers and by his margin of victory (which has been on the order of full seconds, with the exception of the 4x100 free relay), and less on the number of medals he's won.

Anyway, I've had fun thinking about it and hearing your opinions!

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Michael Phelps is amazing. He's now won 11 career gold medals, more than any other Olympian in history. He's won 5 in Beijing alone, and will probably win 3 more to beat Mark Spitz's record of 7 golds in one Olympics. It's incredible. I read a story on ESPN this morning that said: "He's not just the greatest athlete in Beijing, and he's not just the greatest swimmer ever. He's the greatest Olympian ever." And he truly is awesome. But is he really the best? Ever? I mean, how can you judge that? Can you really say that a single person in a single sport is the best out of everyone, ever? There are tons of Olympic sports. Why swimming?

Here's my point: All of the "greatest ever" taglines are being made based on medal count. And with 11 gold medals, Phelps is on his way to his own personal Fort Knox. But I can only think of a couple other Olympic sports where an athlete even has the potential to even compete in 8 events, much less win.

Gymnastics? Team competition, all-around... I guess if a male gymnast could compete in all six individual events, plus wins the all-around, plus his team wins a medal, he could end up with 8 medals in one Olympics. Highly unlikely, but possible, though I think the equivalent of a gymnast pulling that off would be Phelps winning with every stroke...not just the 200 freestyle and butterfly, for instance, but the 200 backstroke and 200 breaststroke as well. And for a female gymnast, it'd be impossible because they only compete in 4 events.

And team sports? Basketball, soccer, baseball, volleyball? The greatest team players in the world can only win one, count it, one single medal per Olympics. Accumulating eight medals would take 28 years!

I'm not entirely sure because I haven't found any count of medals available in all sports, but I would venture a guess that swimming awards more total medals, by far, than any other Olympic sport except perhaps track and field.

Track and field? Eight medals would also be possible there I guess, but it would be insane. You'd have to be both the best sprinter in the world (winning the 100m, 200m, and 400m) and the best short distance runner in the world (winning the 800m, 1500m, and 5000m), and then also pick up medals in the relays as well.

That may sound doable, but my running readers know how impossible that would be. To be good enough to be in medal contention for everything from 100m to a full 5K? I'm not sure it's ever been done, at least not in the modern era. Maybe if they added multiple track and field events at the same distance, since in swimming there are 4 events for each distance corresponding to the 4 different strokes. 100m skip, anyone? 200m backwards run? 400m bunny hop?

None of this is intending to imply that Michael Phelps is not an absolutely incredible athlete. It's awe-inspiring to see him make winning look so easy. I mean, he doesn't just win -- he crushes his competition.

There are some track and field athletes and gymnasts who have won 7, 8, and 9 career medals over the course of multiple Olympics. Carl Lewis had 9, spread over 4 different Olympic Games from 1984 to 1996. But in order to win the most medals ever in a single Olympics, your only real choice is to be a swimmer.

Work has adopted a pseudo-9/80 schedule where you can work 9 hours per day and then take every other Friday off. I'm trying to get myself into that schedule, but it's surprising how one measly hour makes the day feel so much longer. I don't want to stay later since I already stay until 5:30-6:00 on most days, so I'm going to have to come in earlier to make it work. This shouldn't be a huge problem since "earlier" really just means 8:00. But I've gotten pretty used to rolling in around 9:00...or even 9:30...

I may have pushed myself a little too hard on my run last night. I did 3.6 miles in 40 minutes, so the average pace wasn't that fast. However, I was running hard for 3 minutes at a time and then recovering very slowly for 1 minute afterward. I felt bad for the rest of the night. Actually, it's probably not that I pushed too hard. It's much more likely that I was feeling the effects of eating basically nothing the whole day because I was watching a sim at work. I had coffee and a doughnut for breakfast, and of course I forgot my lunch because I always forget my stupid lunch. So the only other thing I had to eat all day before running were some animal crackers and a muffin out of the vending machine. I was hungry and dehydrated. Not my smartest move.

Congratulations to the US men's gymnastics team for beating the odds and winning a bronze medal. Watching gymnastics is so nerve-wracking. You know that one little slip can totally their chances, and the commentators make it even worse. They love to say things like "oh, that mistake will be devastating to their score," and their choice of adjectives always just makes me even more nervous. And when the gymnasts fall, it always looks so sudden and painful. I hold my breath anytime someone lets go of the bar, or when a girl jumps into the air above the balance beam. Ugh! Watching gymnastics is totally stressful, and yet when everything goes right it always looks so cool.

Jose and I each did our first day of the 100 pushup challenge last night. I did the prescribed sets of 7, 7, 5, 4, and 7 without too much trouble (with 1 minute rest between sets). It was hard, and I felt the burn, but I managed. Jose did 10, 10, 8, 6, and 8 and was similarly pooped at the end. I had my doubts about the challenge being some kind of gimmick, but it is no joke! Perhaps it will motivate me to start doing more of the strength training I have always avoided in the past.

One.

Did you watch the men's 4x100 freestyle relay last night? Did you see that? That was incredible. I was sitting on the couch watching quietly, and as American Jason Lezak made the turn to begin the final 50 meters of the race, I turned to Jose and said "dang, there's no way he's going to catch him. The French are going to win." I mean, the French swimmer -- the world-record holder in the 100 free -- had at least half a body length on Lezak. With 25 meters to go, I still thought there was no way. And then Lezak seemed a little less behind. And he got closer and closer, and then they were even, and when they hit the wall and I saw that the US had won the relay, I jumped off the couch and started whooping. That was AMAZING. What a race.

Two.

So I am moving next month. Not far, only about 5 miles down the road, though my address will officially change from Houston to League City. Though I can currently pretend otherwise, I will now officially live in the suburbs. I am going to move all of my stuff that can be packed in boxes on my own, but in no way, shape, or form do I want to deal with moving my own furniture. I don't want to bug my friends to help me, I don't want to rent a truck, and I don't want to deal with a bunch of heavy, awkward stuff in the still stifling heat of early September. So I am looking for a good local moving company. I've got about 5 pieces of large furniture (bed, dresser, couch, etc) and another 8-10 pieces of smaller furniture (end tables, bookcases, etc). I already have one quote from Allstate Movers for a fairly reasonable $245. But here is the question to my Houston friends: have any of you used a local moving company before, Allstate in particular? Any recommendations?

Three.

After reading about it on many other blogs, I told Jose about the One Hundred Pushups challenge. We did the initial test while watching the Olympics opening ceremonies on Friday night. I could do exactly ZERO pushups of the traditional variety. (Oh, I could do a couple if I only went down a small amount, but if I did a real pushup with my face almost touching the floor, I couldn't get myself back up.). So I downmoded to the girly pushups using my knees instead of feet and mustered 11 pushups. Then my arms hurt the whole weekend.

Jose did 21 pushups of the manly variety (that is, a real pushup). Tonight we'll start week 1 (or level 1, as JD is calling them, smartly I think). Since I did 11 pushups, technically I'm supposed to use column 3, but that seems insane. A total of 41 pushups when I could only do 11 on Friday? I don't think so! I'll do column 2.

After the Olympics Opening Ceremony (which, by the way, WOW on the massive amounts of incredible pyrotechnics), Jose and I found ourselves watching an episode of Modern Marvels about...chocolate! This of course made us hungry, and led to a very important discussion about our favorite candies.

I'm in favor of pretty much any combination of 1) dark chocolate and 2) berries (raspberry, cherry, blueberry, mmm). I worked at Godiva for two years in high school and my favorite items were the dark chocolate truffle, raspberry truffle, and raspberry starfish. If any of those got damaged, it wasn't hard for me to find a place for them: my stomach! But it's hard for me to pick a specific favorite because there are so many varieties, and I can't name any of the big brands that have an item I really love -- and the mainstream stuff doesn't tend to be fruity. Of the brand name chocolate bars, I'd say Twix is my favorite. Something about the caramel and crunchiness is yummy. I like mint chocolate a lot as well, but I'm pickier about it than I am with berries -- I like it when the mint is integrated into the chocolate, as opposed to injected inside it like a peppermint patty or similar. Jose's favorites involve nuts -- peanut M&Ms, Snickers, and Baby Ruth. His favorite Godiva piece is the open oyster, full of hazelnut praline.

So that's my random topic for the night. (I promise I'm still working on Alaska reports and photos.) What's your favorite kind of chocolate or candy?

Jose and I are back from Alaska safe and sound. We got back to my apartment about an hour ago and had already planned to take today off work to nap, unpack, and check out all our photos. But now we get an unexpected extra day -- JSC has already decided to close tomorrow due to the impending Tropical Storm Edouard. In fact, they're closing at noon today.

Hooray for extra days of vacation, but it stinks to fly back to Houston only to be met with severe weather.

Alaska was, as expected, completely awesome. Many photos and stories to come, but here's a teaser for you -- a video Jose took during our flightseeing tour yesterday. We flew up the Capps Glacier and down the Triumvirate Glacier in a little Cessna 206. There were five of us in the plane including our pilot. These glaciers and peaks are about 60 miles west of Anchorage, but from our highest point, we could see Mt. McKinley and Mt. Foraker 100 miles to the north. It was absolutely incredible.

Oh my good googly moogly, it was SO FREAKING HOT outside when I went running at 5:00 yesterday. I made it 4 miles, but I really don't know how. If I hadn't had to cover the final 2 miles to get back to my car, I would have been sorely tempted to stop earlier. It was still 87 degrees at 8:00 p.m. according to my thermometer, so I'd guess that it was about 95 when I was out there, with a heat index of who knows what. One of the hottest days of the year so far. Gotta love Houston. I'll try to look forward to another hot run tonight, but it may be a treadmill day.

In other news, I doubt my blogging this week will be very exciting, since it's hard for me to think about anything beyond our impending trip to ALASKA. We made the final bit of reservations today (nothing like waiting until the last minute). Over our nine days there, here are some of the things we'll be doing:

• Attending the wedding for one of Jose's best college friends
• Sea kayaking in Seward
• Evening cruise around Resurrection Bay
• Riding bikes along the coastal trail in Anchorage
• Going flightseeing over a glacier in a float plane
• Taking the day-long bus tour all the way down the 90-mile park road in Denali National Park
• Whitewater rafting on the Nenana River at Denali
• Hiking to the top of Flattop Mountain, Alaska's most-climbed peak, outside Anchorage

I am spending a small fortune on this trip, but I don't even care because I think everything is going to be so awesome. I'm crossing my fingers something fierce for a few days of good weather. Alaska is notorious for gray, overcast days, and a check of one of the Denali National Park webcams showed that the mountain was visible on 4 of the past 13 days. (Or at least it was at 9:00 a.m. when the archived image was captured. It is probably a sign of...something...that most of the webcam sites include a view "on a clear day" for comparison to what you normally see on the webcam!) That seems to fit with the conventional wisdom I've read that it's visible about 1/3 of the time. So if I get to see Mt. McKinley at least once, I'll be a happy girl. Alaska! Yay!

I forgot to mention the funny part of the Lunar Rendezvous Run -- packet pickup. I waltzed into On The Run on Friday afternoon after work to pick up my packet and my name was nowhere to be found. Apparently I didn't register! Silly me. Good thing I discovered this on Friday, as I would not have had any money with me on Saturday. I paid my $20 and off I went. I know I'm doing too many events when I can't even remember what I've paid for and what I haven't. Sheesh.

With that in mind, I registered for the Clear Lake International Tri today. It's a week after Ironbabe, and it's closer to a middle distance tri. The swim and bike are both shorter than true Olympic distance (1000m instead of 1500m for the swim, and 30k instead of 40k for the bike) but the run is a full 10k. The run will be a challenge, and may very well spell doom for any chances of winning an Athena award, but I just can't turn down a new triathlon, run by people I trust, that's in my own part of town! Even if it does mean swimming in nasty ol' Clear Lake...

I had a very relaxing weekend after the race on Saturday. Jose and I braved the movie theater crowds that afternoon to see The Dark Knight. I'd heard so much hype about this movie that I was prepared to be disappointed, but I wasn't. It was exactly as dark, creepy and sinister as I'd heard. And very entertaining. I won't bother recommending it, since I'm sure you're all going to see it anyway. It felt like half of Houston was inside the Cinemark.

I ended up skipping the Webster Du entirely -- didn't register in time, then didn't even go out to volunteer. Instead, I slept until 9:00. That made 10 hours of sleep which was just awesome. I spent the rest of the day lounging, watching TV, and working on some web stuff. The only bad thing is that I completely forgot about the BAM pool party last night! I remembered around 9:00 last night and smacked myself on the head. I must have had Alaska on the brain...

The elevator was packed with furniture this morning, so I took the stairs. I work on the top floor of my building, but my building is only three stories tall, so it's not really much of a climb. I should just take the stairs every day, but I'm lazy like that. Anyway, this morning my legs were burning by the time I reached the second floor and I was out of breath! Not sure what's going on there. I have been really tired all week, despite getting 7-8 hours of sleep per night. I ran yesterday, but only for half an hour because that's all the time I had -- and on the treadmill at that. We'll see how I do at the brick tonight.

Yesterday Becca invited us all over for Fish Night, which hasn't happened in a while and was obviously missed. It was perhaps the biggest Fish Night crowd ever, and the food was delicious. My contribution to the evening was bringing Rock Band. And if you didn't know already, it's now official: though I love Guitar Hero, Rock Band is far superior as a group game. Everyone loved switching between singing, drumming, and strumming -- they must have, because we played for 3 hours. Fun times. I totally got 100% on the drums playing Garbage's I Think I'm Paranoid. Aw yeah.

So NASA has done a great thing by having a small group of managers start blogs that are available to the general public. But they appear to be having issues with their RSS feeds. Today 50 "unread" blog posts showed up in my feed reader, all under the title of one particular person's blog. However, the posts are actually from all blogs on the website. This is not the first time this has happened. One step forward, one step back...

There is a large closet located just inside the entrance to my apartment that was pretty well-organized when I first moved in. Five years later, it has turned into a danger zone. I can open the door, but in order to reach anything, you have to lean precariously in and utilize every ounce of balance and care to not fall into the giant mess of boxes, coats, bags, and endless other junk accumulated over the course of my life.

I say "course of my life" because there is seriously stuff in that closet that I did when I was as young as 8 years old (a folder of work from all the art classes I took as a kid and teenager in particular). But there is also the roll of posters that adorned my various dorm rooms in college, now yellow from age and sticky on the corners from multiple layers of tape. One of those is a keeper. One is not. So after another practice run-bike-run yesterday, I figured there's no time like the present and finally decided to tackle the closet of doom. I'm a little late on the "spring" part of spring cleaning, but oh well.

Here's what it looked like after I pulled a bunch of stuff out. Keep in mind that this is only the stuff that was preventing me from actually walking into the closet. Which means there's still plenty of other stuff in there too.

Doing a major bout of cleaning like this is always both fun and difficult for me. It's fun to discover all the things I forgot about, and yet if I forgot about them, I probably don't really need them. I want so badly to be a minimalist, but at age 30 I'm forced to admit that it's not a natural part of my personality. Here are some things I rediscovered, and what I did with them:

• The x-ray and MRI films from when I dislocated my knee in June 2000. (Trash.)
• A laminated poster of the Braves World Series-winning 2005 team. (Considering mailing this to Carter, but he says he already has a couple of them in a box somewhere.)
• Way too many of those cheapo bag "backpacks" with the strings for straps, most of them received from various races. (Goodwill.)
• Five empty shoeboxes. I am really bad about keeping empty shoeboxes, because they always seem like such a good size for storing small stuff. I assumed something was in there. Wrong. (Trash.)
• Huge negatives from my section for an issue of The Technique. (Trash. I've got a book of all the issues I did already.)
• Six pairs of shoes in good condition that I don't wear. No, they were not in the shoeboxes. Funny. (Goodwill.)
• Original box and packaging for my first iPod, a 10 GB model that I traded in to Apple 2.5 years ago for a discount on a video iPod. (Trash.)
• Ancient camera tripod that belonged to my parents. I bought a newer, nicer one a few years ago. (Swap shop.)

Here is my biggest isse though: I know I don't need most of this stuff, and yet I don't want to just toss everything in the trash can. There are plenty of things in that closet and in other places in my apartment that I don't use or no longer want, but are in good condition and I think someone else could use. So how do I get rid of stuff without throwing it all in the trash? I'm not talking about the obvious stuff. Clothes and shoes in good condition will go to Goodwill. Books (as well as CDs and DVDs) will go to Half Price Books.

But where does the other stuff go? I'm talking about picture frames that I've never used, and home accessories that I don't want anymore (like candle sconces and storage baskets). What about a couple extra lamps, and my old college TV that I never use? Where do I take this stuff so that I don't have to just throw it away?

I don't want to deal with Craigslist or Ebay, because most of this stuff is not worth enough money to make that worthwhile. It's just garage sale stuff that I'd sell for pennies, or even give away for free. But how do I get someone to take it? I just want it to magically disappear...