Not Tea, Just Burnt Toast

We were just getting ready to go to bed on Tuesday night (since we had the early morning shift on Wednesday) when the fire alarm went off. Realizing that my best buddy Jeff might not be able to hear this (since he was in the shower and listening to music at about 125 dB), I decided to knock on his bedroom door. He has complained to me before about my "courtesy rap" on the bedroom door to get him up in the morning and now I might know why. Through the sound of the fire alarm, the loud music and the shower, he was able to hear my life saving "courtesy rap!" Maybe I should use an open hand to execute the "courtesy rap" from here on in.

Now back to the fire alarm. We have a variety of guests at our "chalet" these days. We have several people wearing Russian uniforms that appeared coincidentally at about the same time the press announced eight athletes were caught on doping. I think they might just be reporters because we also have a large contingent of reporters, all from different countries. Of note for this story, is that once the fire truck arrived (basically to turn the alarms off), the reporters from Germany came rushing out to get to the bottom of this fire alarm story. If they put the camera any closer into the faces of the firemen, they would have come away with their DNA sequencing! Courtesy of their in-depth probing (one reporter asked, "What happened?"), we found out that a Russian from the sixth floor burnt some toast. I guess those Russians don't know toasters! Thank God they didn't try to turn the oven on!

Joe and I have been trying to spend alot of our spare time on "the stroll." We typically start from the IGA (or iga as Laura and I say when we're in Quebec) and walk over to the bus loop. Along the way we will try to "vogue" for the CTV, TSN cameras (and even the "beauty cams") that are planted along the way. Joe is getting pretty good at picking a spot over Kelly Vanderbeek's shoulder to have his moment on air. We have found that the "scalpers" stand around Celebration Square (just behind IGA) to buy and sell Olympic tickets but we aren't too interested in their wares. We happened to be near the Polish cross-country athlete Justyna Kowalczyk talking to reporters about her silver medal win. She was totally surrounded! (We also saw Alexander Panzhinskiy, Russia-silver and Nikita Krivkov, Russia-gold) Joe turns to me and says "Hey, there's Trevor Linden!" Trevor like us, was trying to figure out what the fuss was all about! It's funny that he is just another face in the crowd when it comes to the Winter Games.

Apart from Mike Lansberg, Kelly Vanderbeek and the CTV/TSN crews, we also found the "Access Hollywood" crew (as well as a huge assortment of European crews). It's funny watching the different filming styles as the 'AH' set was like filming a movie. We had Billy Bush doing a couple of lines and then Maria Menounos taking over the set and doing her lines. (FYI; I had to Google their names because although they look familiar, I wouldn't know them from Adam). There were cuts and retakes with Maria asking where her hot tea was in between takes! The CTV set went live, on air with just a "heads up" from Mike to Kelly to let her know what they were going to talk about.