Friday, March 19, 2010

I'm Younger Today


Well, maybe I'm not younger in actual days, but I do FEEL younger. Aside from the fact that the dog decided to wake me at 3 am by throwing up in my bed, I'm convinced today and this year will make me feel younger. And since it is my birthday I can be younger if I want, right? :)

Today is my day for resolutions. Others make them at New Years but I prefer my birthday since that's a new year for me.

- I'm going to ramp up my excerise program (taking my dog for a 5 minute walk will no longer count as a real workout).

- And I'm going to eat healthier (eliminating chocolate as an entire food group).

- Improve my daily writing time.

That's all I got for now but then I'm only a few hours into my actual birthday so I've got the rest of the day to think about it.

How about you? Did you make any new years resolutions and, if you did, how are you doing?

Tuesday, March 02, 2010

Closings

I went to the closing ceremonies of the olympics and, yes, it was a pretty amazing experience. Even if you put aside for a second that I probably could've gone to Hawaii with a couple friends for the cost, it was still pretty cool.

One of the best parts was the audience participation kits.
<--- Every person was given a suitcase style box attached to their seats. Nobody was supposed to exchange or trade the kits because they were designed to be used in your seat only. The kit itself was a cardboard box made to look like a well-travelled suitcase. The underside of the box was solid blue. Get 60,000 people holding up the blue side and you have a great video blue-screen to bounce images off. Clever, huh?

Inside the box were loads of goodies -->
First you have your poncho that is a blueish white color and made, again, for filming images on the crowd. Then you have a cardboard cut out. Mine was purple and my kids had pink. The cut-outs were folded in the box and once unfolded were about 2 x 4 feet so big enough to cover us with a small slot to look through. This gave the affect of shimmering party confetti in the audience during the party theme section of the ceremonies.
During the part of the ceremonies that talked about the next winter olympics in Sochi Russia, everyone got out their Sochi snowglobes. These snowglobes actually light up red or white and we were told to hold them under our chins at a certain time.
Finally, there were the moose ears with a blinking beacon to attach. You ain't seen nothing until you've seen 60,000 people from babies to 99 years of age wearing blinking moose ears.

All of the contents of the box were orchestrated by the volunteers in the stadium that worked with each section to make sure everyone did things just right.

If you watched the ceremony, did it come off as well as I thought?