I must be living right. I passed up watching the Winter Olympics opening ceremonies to go see the Wizards and Cavs at MCI, figuring that if something spectacular happened, I'd see a couple gazillion replays in the next 24 hours. I also passed on recording the broadcast in favor of the final four episodes of "Arrested Development,'' the funniest show that apparently nobody ever watched.

So I see Gilbert Arenas - who got the NBA All-Star berth in the morning that he should have gotten the day before - pass on one-upping Karl Malone's record snit (see the previous post) and instead miss a triple-double by two rebounds while outplaying LeBron and leading the Wizards to a win. And I walk in the door an hour ago, and the opening ceremonies are still on! I hadn't figured on that, although I should have; this is what NBC does best, fit Olympic events into its schedule like a glove.

I caught Sophia Loren helping carry in the Olympic flag (she's 71; I looked it up. She don't look it, know what I'm sayin'?). I caught the very cool torch lighting, which was right up there with the flaming arrow from Barcelona in 1992 on the all-time list. And I caught Pavarotti. When you're the host country and you pull Pavarotti out of your pocket to wrap things up, you've done your job well.

Meanwhile on ESPN, Carmelo Anthony not only appears to be handling his All-Star snub very un-Mailman-like - he had 14 points at the half and he's letting Kenyon Martin be the star - the Nuggets are beating Dallas and threatening to end the Mavs' 13-game winning streak.

So I got away with blowing off the opening ceremonies, and yet I'm pressing my luck again, because I'm not watching anything during the day because of the Maryland-Duke basketball game at Comcast Center. The entire campus, as usual, is geeked up. Gary Williams has been alternately pleading for the crowd to be the sixth man, and begging it to keep it clean and not get personal (without mentioning Duke's J.J. Redick by name). The students seem to be interested mainly in being their usual Duke-game selves. And school officials are taking a particular interest in this game as well, although not in a particularly timely fashion.

Looks like there will be a lot to watch out for tomorrow in College Park. Hopefully no snow, but lots anyway.