If you don't have anything nice to say...

My, look at all this dust! Have I really been away three months? How time flies.

Sorry I've been away for so long. I've actually made attempts at writing once or twice in the ensuing months, but either didn't have time to develop the ideas I wanted to put out, or just plain got overwhelmed by life.

I'm still kind of overwhelmed now, truth be told. In the past two weeks, I've been reunited with my wife and daughter after an 18-day separation, been caught up in the hustle and bustle that is my paper's coverage of the Henry County Fair (one of our busiest times of the year), and tried, without much success, to watch my beloved Olympic Games. Alas, a combination of a the aforementioned fair, an extremely unfortunate mishap with the programming settings on my DVR, and the generally poor quality of NBC's Olympic Coverage have left me with some definite regrets about my Olympic experience this year.

These were the DVR Olympics for me. I had long thought that having access to a DVR would enhance the Olympic experience. And while it gave me a chance to catch some events I would have otherwise missed, it actually got in the way — I had to speed through some events because of the sheer volume of coverage. Worse yet, a mistake in programming meant that I only kept five programs at any one time. By the time I noticed the error today, I'd lost all but the last two days' worth of coverage.

The coverage I did get to see was often not where I wanted to be. I've seen more water polo and volleyball (both beach and regular) than I ever wanted to, and sports that I did want to see — swimming, diving, running, for example — were often preliminaries. Meanwhile, I saw 2-minute condensations of major events, like shot put, or the Decathlon, of all things, and absolutely no archery, shooting, indoor cycling, fencing, or many of the track and field events that, for me, are the Olympic Games. To add insult to injury, the modern era of telecommunications (and the six hour time difference) meant that often, by the time I got to see coverage, I already knew many of the outcomes.

Ultimately, though, whether or not I was able to enjoy the Olympics this year as much as I did in years past is completely immaterial. What matters, at the end of the day, is them — the people who competed in the games. It's not about which nations have the most medals at the end of the games, or what corporations made the most money during the televising of the games, or who has the bragging rights down at the pub, or whether or not someone got to watch that amazing gold medal performance that everyone is talking about. What matters are the athletes, and what they have achieved through hard work, dedication and sacrifice. And believe me when I say that merely by the act of walking into that stadium on opening night, they have already achieved much more in one lifetime than most of us poor mortals can ever hope to.

So tonight, I will sit down to watch the closing ceremonies of the London Games with my family. And in the morning, I will start looking forward to the games of Sochi, and of Rio. Because while the London Games may have been a bit of a disappointment to me personally, for me, the Olympics are always about the renewal of hope — hope in what we can achieve, both individually and as a people, and hope that as time passes, our differences will lessen, and what brings us together will grow ever stronger.

And if I can hope for all that, then I can certainly hope that NBC will finally figure out how to broadcast a proper Olympic Games before their contract expires.