it's sunday evening..

...and it's time to start wrapping up a great weekend.

friday night, i joined a group of friends in my old huntington stomping grounds to watch the olympic opening ceremonies.  it's no secret that i love the olympics (favoring winter just a bit over summer), and it was especially enjoyable to experience them with so many other olympic obsessives.

the crowd included my friend kristina who worked at the olympic village during the salt lake games and my ukrainian/russian friend larysa, who provided a lot of helpful and insightful cultural background information.

it also provided an opportunity for me to try a new recipe, and in honor of the olympics, i chose the buffalo chicken crescent ring (representative of the olympic rings), i'd come across on pinterest.  wow! did it turn out yummy! the receipe can be found here and the only change i made was including the cilantro IN the mixture.

saturday morning came way too early as jami and i made an attempt to secure our tickets to this year's comic-con.

as previous attendees we had the opportunity to try our luck during a pre-registration sale.  only a certain number of tickets are made available and all 2013 attendees could participate.

in previous years, our experience has been EXACTLY like this:

(thanks to melissa for tipping me off to this scene, since i don't watch the show)

this year though, they 'randomized' the process and refreshing was a big no-no.  we had to log in early with a special registration code, then hope we would be randomly sorted in a registration 'session' that was high enough to still get tickets for each of our desired event days.

we waited, staring at our computer screens, hoping every two minutes (when they auto-refreshed) that we would be allowed to buy tickets, and that the tickets we wanted would still be available.  after an hour and a half of nervous anticipation, jami finally got in and was able to purchase all of our tickets. YAY!  so relieved that i can rest easy until july when i'll have to play the "big bang game" for nerd hq tickets (still a first come first served scenario).

late nights and early mornings make for an exhausted tara, but after an hour power nap, i headed to the cousins, to meet up with jenny before heading to a nearby karate studio in support of rachel and drew in their belt testing.  rachel, going for her brown belt, and drew going for his black.  it was interesting to watch the testing and i was honored to have been included in what was a great achievement for both of them!

walking dead is back tonight (yay!) and i can't get enough of the olympics, so february is off to a good start!