The Olympics always provide some good television. There’s way more to see than we have time for, but I like the sports competition I am familiar with, like track and field, swimming, gymnastics. I liked basketball before the pros took it over.

Especially interesting to watch this year was Michael Phelps, with his eight gold medals, and the sprinters—both men and women—from Jamaica.

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I don’t know how many people noticed it, but a photo of men’s 100-meter-dash winner, 21-year-old Usain Bolt of Jamaica, showed that his left shoe was untied at the end of the race. I wonder if it was that way from the beginning? It didn’t matter. And that he slowed down before the finish and still won in world-record time was even more remarkable.

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After I found an Allen wrench in the alley the other day, I began wondering how this wrench got its name. After a few searches on the Internet I found an Allen Manufacturing Co. in Hartford, Conn., that trademarked the name for this hex-head wrench during World War II. It has been manufactured and marketed throughout the world under various other names that are too numerous to mention here.

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I can’t remember where I read it, but there’s a new action figure called “Invisible Jim.” He comes in a package with a clear cellophane window and you can’t see anything in the box.

They said a distributor received a big shipment of the new toy but couldn’t really tell if they got them or not.

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The Cosmosphere and Space Center in Hutchinson is a real treasure if you have any interest at all in space and science. We visited it with the grandsons while they were here and found it to be an awesome trip.

They enjoyed Dr. Goddard’s Laboratory immensely and I did, too. A real person dressed in a lab coat gives a 45-minute presentation on the history of rockets and wows the audience with liquid oxygen and cotton fireballs and much more.

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The traffic on our Web site spiked by hundreds of readers the day we announced the primary election results online. A great place to find breaking news is hillsborofreepress.com.

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Speaking of the Web, we’ve added a module to our home page that features local gas prices. You can become a spotter (and may post local gas prices as well as check them), track flights, watch exercise videos, follow stocks and much more.

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We’re looking forward to my niece’s wedding in St. Paul, Minn., this weekend. In March, she and her husband-to-be were on a trip to Ohio, where they were involved in a car accident. He proposed to her in a hospital emergency room. (She was hoping he would find an interesting way to propose—which he did very well). Now we’ll see if the ceremony can top it.

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We had a video conference with the grandsons over the weekend so we could see the new dog “Wolfie,” as he is now called, in action. Looks like they are having a great time with their new pet. They already having him doing tricks.

He sleeps on the floor in the boys’ bedroom and has become their alarm clock as he, so far, wakes them up precisely at 7 a.m. each day.

Judging by his teeth, Wolfie is about 11⁄2 years old.

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