By Jess Nobert | Senior Staff Writer

The Olympic Games were in full swing over the last week, and so was the rest of the world. I watched the U.S. win, and caught a few other interesting stories, too.

The day was Sunday. It was Feb. 21; the day the U.S. Olympic hockey team beat Canada. Facebook and Twitter were flooded with comments of the victory, and everyone cared about hockey.

Then it was Wednesday, and no one cared again. Ridiculous. As a fan of the game, even if the watching part isn’t always by my own free will, I was shocked to see how many closet, er, bandwagon fans were out there.

This was one of the great events of the games, and it’s great everyone wanted to watch and share in their two weeks of American pride, but I think it’s ridiculous how everyone went crazy when most probably don’t know three guys who were on the ice during that contest, on either team.

I watched the game with one of my Canadian friends, it was on in the middle of the night in Sweden, and we were both excited because we know how great the players are who were competing. But the difference is we both watch and care about it outside of the Olympics.

But while everyone has been up in the air about the international sport contests, NASA has been working out ways for regular people to go to space. Well, after they let the scientists go, and it’s not going to be cheap.

According to the article on Discovery.com, “Even at $200,000 a ticket, the lines for a suborbital ride into space may soon be growing longer.

The U.S. government is proposing to spend $75 million over the next five years to send science experiments — and presumably scientists — into space.” Granted this has been going on for a few days longer than the Olympics, it’s a pretty big deal if you ask me.

But how ridiculous is this? Remember back when Lance Bass was going to go to space with the Russians? Yeah, it didn’t happen. Oh, Bass is the cute one from *NSYNC who isn’t Justin Timberlake.

My guess is, the first, or maybe second, person in line for these tickets is Tiger Woods. His press conference last week sure was out of this world. He started off in a dramatic Obama-like fashion, speaking slow for emphasis, and he failed at that.

Tiger, I don’t see a career in public speaking in your future. Stick to golf. He went on about how he cheated and how it’s all between his wife Elin, who is Swedish, and himself. Don’t follow his kids to school, and leave his family alone.

But why is his 2-year-old in school? I didn’t think kids had to start that until at least 4 years old. But don’t worry, I’m leaving the kids out of it.

Now that I’ve got you thinking Sweden, I’ve been kind of torn during these games when it comes down to whom I’m cheering for.

Usually, if it’s the U.S. competing, that’s a given. Then I usually pick Canada and Japan because those countries are a “part of my heritage,” but now I have this Nordic country to think about.

So when there’s no skiing or hockey, I usually end up with curling on TV. It’s not a very common sport in the States, but l figured since the U.S. has a team, maybe I can learn a little about it.

So I Googled it, and read up, and started watching. It’s hard, to use a term from the sport, to understand here because all the commentary is in Swedish, but when they yell, it still comes out in English pretty much regardless of their home country.

What I don’t get, however, is how is this a sport? It’s a guy, or woman, throwing a rock down a sheet of ice and two others scrubbing with brooms to make it go faster, slower or take a turn.

Then a fourth team member tries to keep it in the Target logo, and at the same time, try to knock out the other team’s rocks.
I don’t get how curling is a sport, much less in the Olympics, especially when women’s softball has been eliminated from the summer contest. It just seems ridiculous to me .