I cried and went to bed early last night.

I wanted so badly to see the Bilodeau medal ceremony as it was taking place. We wanted to watch the snowboarding cross competition with the four guys on the course… not just the preliminary qualifying rounds that NBC aired in the afternoon. We wanted to cheer real time.

After a fruitless search online for live streaming coverage (the CTV “real time” video wouldn’t load, even after 500 tries), we gave up. Reaching for our inner adults, we resigned ourselves to the 8:00 p.m. start of the NBC “Olympic Show.”

And then we waited through commercial after vignette after commentator babble, until it became evident that NBC was holding the good stuff hostage until midnight. They didn’t want us to leave before we had seen all their commercials and heard all the condescending ethnocentric blathering. We found this terribly vexing.

Hello, NBC? You are not fooling anyone. Your “Olympic Show” does not equal “live coverage of the Olympic games.”

I finally couldn’t stand it any more, gave up on the whole day, and went to bed. Poor Rick gave up too, but stayed up to tidy the kitchen.

This morning I watched the ceremony online and cried. And I’m guessing I wasn’t alone.