31,025 days

Yesterday was Dad's 85th birthday. He spent the day running errands to do with junking his old car and buying another. We spent the day playing cards, reading, watching The Princess Bride, playing in the yard (good trees to climb), and walking to the village for some wee gifts. 

The girls very much wanted to make a cake for Pop, and they specifically wanted it to be a multi-colored cake they'd seen in The Friend magazine, explained as a birthday cake for Thomas S. Monson (he and Dad were born the same week). Their enthusiasm, naturally, turned into their complete disinterest in any actual culinary involvement and their complete interest in LBH doing all the work. He didn't mind... but the recipe didn't work. It didn't rise at all, so we had the densest and flattest multi-colored cake imaginable, about the height of a sandwich! It was cute, especially when eaten with Neopolitan ice cream, and neither the best nor the worst cake I've ever eaten.

We gave Dad an updated Gregory Guide (book of maps), as well as a large package of Werther's for the glovebox, and Elinor gave him a floppy, purple, rubber calculator that happened to be at eye level. He's not obligated to cherish it forever or anything...

In the evening we watched Olympic diving. It's a totally different experience watching the Olympics with the perspective and commentary of another country. My entire life's experience with the Olympics has been that the United States is the undisputed best in everything, if not in reality then certainly in theory, and if any other country happens to win, it's luck and kind of an affront to America. Isn't this sort of what the commentary tells us? So it's interesting, then, to hear what another country tells its Olympic viewers -- you know, the "company line." And what I'm hearing seems very typically "no worries, mate" Australian. The message seems to be We've worked really hard and we'd love to win, but if we don't, well, that's okay, somebody else will and they'll probably even deserve it. Interestingly, however, the United States seems to be just another participant, rather than a formidable foe, possibly not dissimilar to how our teams might view France or something. There don't seem to be any feelings of inferiority or, really, cutthroat competition. I think this would be surprising to most sports-loving Americans, to know that we think much more of ourselves than anyone else thinks of us. They view us as an "also ran" just as we view them as an "also ran."