While working side-by-side with one of my new students…

New Student: Went and saw Death Race last night.

Laurel:  Oh, really?  How was it?

NS:  Horrible.  It was terrible.

L: Seriously?

NS:  Yeah, I’ve heard better dialogue in adult films.

How do you respond to that?

Does this look like a diaper bag? Could I carry it to work with my laptop without looking silly? Because I’m kinda in love with it. Help!!!

Here’s a lil bit of tech-geekery for your Sunday afternoon.  Ever wanted to create an online icon of you for the masses?  An identifiable jpg for the world to see.  Well, here’s your chance with FaceYourManga.  Choose your skin color (sadly, ghostly pale wasn’t an option), eye shape, and at least twenty other facial features to create your own mini-me.

Here’s mine.  I’d love to see yours.  Good luck finding the right blend of you with the handful of options there were.  I’m still missing my dimple in my chin… long lashes… rounder face… smaller mouth.  But it’ll work for now.

I should be in bed.  I should be sleeping.  I should have waited til morning or sometime next week to watch the U.S. Men’s Basketball team in the Olympic Gold final game versus Spain, but living in a world full of shoulds is boring.  I’m sure as I stumbled in the house tonight at 11:35pm after a long day of move-in support it wasn’t a wise decision to call my parents and hear my dad already lit up about the officiating of the game.  I know I shouldn’t have settled into that big comfy chair, thrown my weary feet on that ottoman, and turned on the tv.  But the ‘Redeem Team’ was down by five in the first, and the Gasol boys were making a louder statement than most of the world thought possible.  Somewhere in the back of my mind I know if they would have been winning, I might have crawled into bed and waited til morning to find out their margin of victory, yet this was going to be a game to be remembered.  I couldn’t miss it.  The boys needed my support.  So I stayed up.  Tried not to yell and wake the neighbors.  Watched LBJ and Kobe pickup those first few ticky-tack fouls.  Got chills as DWade stepped up and took his place as ‘the man’.  Watched us build a lead, and watched Spain inch back.  Sat on the edge of my seat until deep in the morning, and finally watched the boys celebrate with their much coveted gold.  As they stepped arm in arm back onto the platform we had owned for so many years, I knew that the sleep I’d get tonight (even if it was two hours less than I had originally planned) would be that much sweeter because for one night… everything was right in the world, again.  (I dare you to watch the medal ceremony and not get chills.  Maybe, just maybe, I don’t hate Kobe so much.)

A few weeks ago in preparation for the fall semester my students workers and I roamed the halls of more than a few of our dorms mapping out the signal strength of wireless on campus.  Somewhere on the third day, I found this sign on the door of a RA.  These words are the reason that I’m writing two weeks worth of blog posts on this Saturday afternoon to post date for the days that I won’t have a second to put words to page.  They are why I plan on spending more hours at work than at home, and why my loved ones and friends knows that I’ll be ‘unavailable’.  It takes something like 1200 hours of work by thirty student workers and four full-time staff to do what we plan to do in the next four days, and when it’s midnight and I’m just walking in the door for the first time in 16 hours… this is the purpose and passion I’ll cling to.  Pretty cool, huh?

Since the purchase of my first iPod the role of music manager and player on my desktop computer has slowly shifted from WinAmp to iTunes (gasp).  Today while I was doing some routine maintenance on my computer, I happened to open WinAmp and found a handful of old playlists.  I’m not sure when or why most of them were created, but this ten song lineup might be my favorite of them all.  Always a fan of smooth voices and strong harmonies, this list should make you wanna throw on those old school headphones and slow jam with the music, and because their videos happen to also be some of my favorite, I’ve linked each song title to their youtube page. Check them out. You won’t be disappointed.

Brian McKnight - Anytime : I still remember the first time I saw this video.  To this day I still find myself fast-forwarding to the second verse to hear “Still have your picture in a frame. Hear your footsteps down the hall. I swear I hear your voice, driving me insane. How I wish that you would call.” That’s how you know a song is good.  It gets stuck in you and never lets go.

D’Angelo - Untitled (How Does It Feel) : I’ve always loved that this song’s title was simply Untitled. I wonder if that’s because after the video nothing else matters. Thank goodness my mom can’t access youtube at her school because this video would shock her, and I have a small suspicion she would believe it was something her baby girl shouldn’t be watching. Too late.

Tony Rich Project - Nobody Knows : Remember back when you could buy tape singles at Wal-Mart for a dollar before Napster? I’m pretty sure I have this tape and if I still had a tape desk would throw it in there for memory’s sake. “I carry a smile when I’m broken in two, and I’m nobody without someone like you.”

Maxwell - This Woman’s Work : If you’ve seen Love & Basketball, you’ve already fallen in love with this song and that falsetto… WHOA.
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If you’ll be patient with me, I’ll soon explain the joys of what this week has in store for my life, and the controlled chaos that has become my close companion. Until that time, you’ll have to settle for a little geek humor in the form of a video I plan on using in my training workshop tomorrow morning if I can find a way to be up by 6am.