Okay, now I have Olympic fever again. The assistant director of The Greek Institute, where I teach, brought back some official Olympic merchandise from her recent trip to Athens, including a cute stuffed Athina - one of the two mascots for the 2004 Games that were designed after a pre-Classical doll, the other being Phevos - for my daughter and a nifty lapel pin for me. I really want to be there in Athens for the games next summer, although right now such a trip to Greece doesn't seem to be all that likely; and even if we were to go, I'd have a hard time convincing my wife that visiting her ancestral land for the first time in almost a decade during the Olympics (and the high tourist season to boot) is a good idea.

Maybe I can deliver a paper in Greece at a conference conveniently scheduled just before or after the games, so as to have a legimitate excuse to be there. For some reason I feel this overwhelming urge to watch the Greek national baseball team get its collective ass handed to it by the rest of the world, which I suspect will happen, despite the best efforts of Baltimore Orioles owner and Greek-American Peter Angelos to prevent it. I heard the Greeks were so desperate for people who even knew how to play baseball (for those of you who don't know, the host country automatically qualifies for every sport) that they were willing to allow first- and second-generation Greek Americans play for the national team! Too bad they didn't allow people who were related by marriage, or else my brother and I would have had no choice but to try out...