I was very happy that the ladies free skate started at a very humane time, as opposed to all of the hateful early start times of the preceding days. So, we had a leisurely wake up call. Hooray! I thought I'd better start repacking some of the luggage as we'd be leaving in 2 days time and I couldn't imagine I'd be staying in to pack on either of the nights we had left LOL
Why had I packed 3 different coats? I was pretty much going for the full time salute to Tarasova look. I gave some thought to shipping everything back home so it wouldn't get lost in an Air Hateada void, but decided to cram my absolute favorite things in my conveniently expandable carry ons instead LOL
With loads of time to kill, Dave decided to get our film developed at a one hour place. Seemed like a good idea to me, I knew there was a pic of Dave with Morry & Vladimir on there, Dave & Todd, Dave and hard-haired Marina, and a likely very goony one of me with PPT LOL Used up the film on a couple of shots of the really ugly roof that was just outside or window. Yay!
Tiffed myself up while Dave dealt with the photo developing and wondered if Sharon & Tara had succeeded in finding a trophy shop for a special something for John Zimmerman LOL
Dave brought back the pics and OMG I was PML!! There was a total of 3 pics with me in them : a random shot at Hatefest, me in smoker's prison at the arena, and the goony pic with PPT. Then, YAY for Dave, the rest of the pics were of Dave with random skaters! LOLOL In addition to the pics I knew about we had Dave with: Sergei S, Vincent Restencourt, Gregor Urbas(!!!), the Wirtzes, a random Czech ice dancer and her friend, then.....
Q- " Dave? Who took the pic of you with the bartender?" A- "Brian Orser"
PML!!
Sure enough, the next pic was of Dave and Brian Orser.
Then, because Brian had done a "thumb's up" gesture in his photo, there was an assortment of shots of random skaters that I think Dave may have forced to do a thumbs up as well, including Markus Leminen.
LOL I think I knew what Dave had been up to at the Hyatt Thursday night while I was upstairs being fabulous.
Yep, there was a pic of Dave with a very cleavagey Roz after the party had ended and people had drifted down stairs.
Apparently pleased with my reaction of extreme disbelief and hysterical laughter, he packed up the photos to take to the arena so he could put them in the album while we were there.
It was time to leave for the first ladies event we'd see the entire week, the ladies freeskate, YAY!
We went downstairs to wait for the luggage and started chatting to 2 very pleasant women. All of a sudden, I recognized them as the 2 women who'd been sitting next to me since Tuesday! I'd wondered why the woman at the arena had asked me if I knew when the shuttle would be there. PML! I'd likely been riding the shuttle with them all week and they were staying at the same hotel. Yikes! I finally decided I hadn't recognized them since I'd been seeing only the side of their faces all week umm, yeah! They were pretty fun seat neighbors, too. They'd brought along binocs to the arena so they could scan the crowds and commentator booths to collect gossip about random skating types. (Ooooh! looks like Katarina is wearing a diamond ring!) YAY them!
That straightened out, we were off to the arena! The time waiting for the first group was used to put the new bad skating snapshots into the official bad skating snapshot album. PPT's pic went in, then, all of a sudden, I hear a woman's voice behind me "OH! Those eyes! I could make a poster just of those eyes!" Whee! It was one of the photographers behind me.
Others had made good use of the leisurely Saturday as well. For instance, the woman in front of me had bags and bags of fabulous shoes she'd just bought and was showing them to everyone around her. A woman behind me had bought some new leather pants, some furs, and some leather coats. Yay her! Though, I was thinking that the exchange rate wasn't really that good LOL Felt sad that I hadn't done much shopping :(
Oh yeah, the skating! For no apparent reason, Dave and I had developed the habit of saying to each other "That's a shame" whenever a skater we liked didn't do too well. That day we also added "She's totally out of her program!" "She should just quit" Yikes! some of the ladies had some rather unfortunate skates.
Standing ovation for Mikkeline Kierkgaard though! She really tiffed it! Apparently, she'd had some sort of battle with Hubert during the warmups, too. Silvia Fontana was really a happy camper, too! Don't really remember much of anything until the last group LOL
Sarah Hughes was fabulous, yay her! She totally tiffed it! The most I'd ever seen her present that program all year. Hurray! Standing Ovation! Nikodinov seemed a bit less expressive than at some other events, but skated very well until the 3 minute mark. Yikes! That was a shame. Still she did well enough. Kwan was fab! The arena roared! It was like being in the states! She seemed pretty happy too :) Slutskaya seemed to be going for everything, though not quite perfectly. Seated where I was, I really noticed how much of her program involved setting up jumps. Here I'd thought people bitching about how much she telegraphed her jumps were exaggerating. Nope. She really could have used more connecting moves. I like her generally though and was all "awwwwww!!" seeing her reaction to her marks and her face during the medal ceremonyl. Volchkova has great jumps but I went into a shallow void thinking how marvelous she'd look with better costumes and non-scrunchied hair. I like Maria, but I have absolutely no independent recollection of her skate.
As if by magic, the arena was much fuller for the medal ceremony than it had been the previous night ;) Michelle had a bit of an olympic speedskater moment as she took a victory lap around the arena draped in an American flag.
It was back to the hotel to tiff up and off to the Hyatt.
( Disclaimer: I think this all happened on Saturday, if not ummm Oh well! LOL)
Sharon, Tara, Cruella, shellybean , Sue and Mandy were there. Met Becky. Tricia and her husband were there as well and Fab & Rik would come in later. I've probably missed someone LOL
I left Dave to his usual perch at the bar and flitted between the various groups, wheee! Heard more from Emma on Gwendal dropping his trousers at the exhibition practices and also heard that there'd likely be a photo! Yay! PML
Chatted with Tricia and Rick for awhile. Perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned Markus Leminens name? ;) Was LOL hearing how Rick acted like a regular sports fan at the skating events!
Then over to retrieve my drink at the table with Sharon, Tara, shellybean, Cruella et al. I was sad to hear that there'd been no easily accesible trophy shops, so poor John Z would have to go home empty handed :(
I was still sitting at the table, when all of a sudden a hush fell over the bar! All eyes turned to the entrance. It was Tatiana Tarasova!! HOORAY!!!! A spontaneous cheer erupted from our table! "We need a picture!!!!" YAY!!!!!!!!!! I threw on my imitation Tarasova coat and we ran over to her en masse PML!!!
She seemed a bit shocked but happy LOLOL Tara and I were drafted to be in a picture with her, as well as some man TT pulled into the pic at the last minute LOL (Family member?)
I could see Dave watching from the bar....
Mission accomplished, we happily returned to our table. :)
Moments later, I looked over, and there was Dave rushing toward Tarasova!! PML!
Still PML, I wandered off outside with Tara for a smoke. On our way, Fran told us that Todd would use his free program in the exhibition. But! There'd be a special addition! There'd be writhing on the ice!! LOL
Still headed outside with Tara, getting ever closer to our destination. Mishy was by the doors talking to Ari Zakarian. Introductions were made and we chatted with them for awhile, me gushing about Sasha Abt, one of the skaters Ari's represents LOL I think they came out with us and Mishy bummed a smoke off of Tara ;) I was doing well with that, no one bumming smokes off of me, until shellybean discovered she liked menthols LOL
Did the usual in and outside with various smokers and we noticed people straggling back from the skaters party in various states ;)
I think this was the night that Tara and I were sharing a joke in the lobby, turned around to leave and realized we'd also shared it with Shae PML She seemed to enjoy it though. LOL
Back to the bar! Time to grab an extra drink before last call, as the haters seemed to close the bar fairly early. Full drink in hand, I went up to the bar to get an extra one. HA! I wasn't going to be caught empty handed this time! Then Dave tells me there is at least an hour until last call. LOL
Well last call did come and plans were made to go the Crime Lab YAY! A big group was going that night so we all headed outside. The typical big group void started happening. You know, where one person wanders off, then another one does, in the meantime the first person comes back? So, there was a lot of waiting around. Played try not to laugh at the funny face through the lobby windows with some skate blade representative or some such. Then, went back outside to try to convince other people to go to the Crime lab with us. Of course Sharon & Tara were coming, Sue was coming, Mandie was coming, shellybean was going to, then got lost in a void or something. Madam Cruella was coming. Hey it's Ari! "Crime Lab, YAY!!" I get a confused yet amused look. "CRIME LAB! YAYY!!!"" I think he started laughing. LOL I walked around the corner and there was Dave telling Leminen & Restencourt about it LOL
Sometime during all of this we gave a delerious cheer as Sarah Hughes and Robin Wagner returned to the hotel. YAY! We gushed, etc. LOL
We finally got the group together and headed off. Sauntered in like regulars. The group had settled into a prime both and I headed alone to the bar. "Hi Tara! You're back!" I was in a Sister SkateGuv void. It was Eric, the off duty bartender who'd been chatting to us all week, in particular the night before. He'd done a good job of keeping our names straight then. No, I'm Meghan. I'm the one with the husband Dave. "Oh yeah, he's a great guy!" LOL Still standing by the bar, another guy comes up to me all friendly like, saying "Tara! Hi!" Too voidy for me. So I said that yes, Tara's here. She's over in the booth. Much confusion "Oh, Tara is here?" PML!!
Made it back to the table and sat down with the group. Dave went upstairs in search of someone to talk politics with. Downstairs, we were visited by many of the regulars. I was severely leaned on by half of them LOL The fabulous bereted Jackson of the perfect eyebrows made a brief guest-starring appearance at the table, then sauntered off upstairs.
Madam Cruella, Sharon and I decided Jackson's visit had been much to brief, so we lobbied his friend Phoenix to get him back downstairs. Jackson was being coy and kept his audience waiting for a bit ;)
Then Phoenix, who was sitting downstairs with us, pulled out his cellphone and called Jackson, who was upstairs. ( If that's not enough, Phoenix was sitting at the end of the table one foot away from the stairs, there were only a few stairs and the upstairs was very small.) LOLOL
With that cellphone call, Jackson was ready for his closeup. He arrived at the table with something special for everyone, tossing off winks and saucy cocked eyebrow looks right and left. Hooray! Encore, Encore!
He sat down next to me, HA! ( Ok, it was the only empty seat, but still, HA!) I porned over his eyebrows PML
Cruella got to chatting with him and found out that he was a free lance makeup artist and image consultant. Hooray! Makeup tips! I shared a bondy moment with him over Nars eyeshadow, and we all bonded over various other brands of cosmetics. Then, he started sharing with me some super special secret tips on where to find groovy clothes in Vancouver. YAY!! ( Well actually I wasn't going to have time to shop, why didn't I have this conversation with him earlier in the week? Grrr!)
Joe was there, really trying to do a stellar job of fitting in by talking about his hair issues. He really went on about them, too PML!
Alas, Jackson left. Last call came earlier than usual because it was Saturday and it was mentioned that the liquor agents are more likely to go looking for after hour clubs on Saturday.
Collected everyone, including Dave and his 2 new buddies, and we all piled out onto the sidewalk. Looked all innnocent standing right by the bar doors for the liquor agents. Cruella was proposed to by Joe, who even got down on his knee and placed a ring on her finger PML It was a very brief engagement. She broke up with him about a minute later. (well who could blame her, he had hair issues!)
There'd been some talk about going to another voidy after hours bar that Phoenix and his friend knew about. Phoenix was being rather coy about it, talking about video cameras and secret handshakes or something LOL Was it that he was really concerned about taking such a big group there or was he hoping to out wait everyone until it was just Tara going with him? Hmmm ;-) Well he did call 2 taxis, but Dave & I commandeered one to go to Denny's instead YAY! Sue decided to come with us, we spent a few minutes waiting as people wavered between the Denny's cab and the voidy bar cab. We finally left to the scene of various configurations of people getting in and out of the other cab LOLOL ( I think Tara did end up being the only one to go with Phoenix and his friend, that Phoenix sure is smart ;)
So Dave, Sue and I had a nummy Denny's breakfast, leaving there at some ungodly hour of the morning. The gala was at 1pm on Sunday, and all I knew was that it was a very good thing I'd started repacking. LOL Taxied back to the hotel. Yay!
**** ( I may do a special online photo album with the rest of Dave's photos PML... there are tons that could go on this day LOL)***
This page hosted by Yahoo!Geocities, get your own free page here .