Thursday morning

Ok, some housekeeping things. The winner of the first trivia question (name the fifth largest city in Italy) is Mitch Fraas. The answer was Palermo. Jill Grisco, the director and den mother of our office here, says I will receive many impassioned responses arguing that Palermo doesn't really count. Excluding Sicily, the answer would have been Genova. Post your geopolitical musings below.

Mike Wise submitted the first response (Venice). Other popular guesses included Siena, Florence/Firenze, and the No. 8 George Washington Colonials. (Let it go, GW fans. I'll be back soon. I know, I miss you too.) I also got at least one response from Greece. I'm huge in Greece, apparently.

Grand Champion Mitch Fraas has been invited to tell us what his favorite winter Olympic sport is and why, in 10,000 words or less. I haven't heard back from him yet. Regardless, he gets the pin.

And now, More Free Stuff! In some strange, secretive back room here in the Main Media Center, there is a mountain of blue and black Asics backpacks containing all the treats that are supposed to bribe us into write nice things. Being responsible journalists, we of course can't keep any of the swag, but I think we can give it away, so I might have to significantly ramp up the number of trivia questions. Until someone tells me I'm violating international law, this blog will continue to act as a wealth redistribution system. Eat your heart out, George Will.

Postage could start to be an issue. Then again, having discovered how much money we're paying for our piddling dorm rooms with no hot water and dysfunctional phones, I guess we've got Euros to burn.

So today's special bonus prize is a genuine "Torino 2006" navy blue baseball hat. I tried to have Mike Wise model the hat, but he kept striking Beastie Boys poses, plus I'm having some issus posting photos here. Anyhow, today's special bonus trivia question: Germany won the most total medals in the 2002 Winter Olympics, followed by the U.S. For a chance to look as cool as Mike Wise, what country finished third in the medal standings? Hint: it wasn't New Zealand. E-mail your answers here; first correct answer wins. Help me out and put "Trivia2" in the subject line. I've also arbitrarily decided that people I know are not eligible for prizes.

Finally, I have several backlogged entries that were composed earlier this week while I waited for my blog to be created. You might think these posts would be stale by now, but we here at the Formaggio Bureau prefer to call them "well-aged." (That line was courtesy of Liz Clarke.) These well-aged entries are programmed to appear periodically throughout the day, which will allow me to attend all manner of dry press conferences in which I will fight for elbow room with Jeremy Schaap and Jimmy Roberts.

FYI, I will be blogging every day during the Olympics, from approximately 9 a.m. until 6 p.m. D.C. time, which is 3 p.m. until midnight Turin time. And I swear, the blog will be about sports at some point.

By Dan Steinberg |  February 9, 2006; 9:29 AM ET
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