I've got the fever!

I was so busy this week I barely had time to think about anything outside my work. Messages to pump. Faculty awards to celebrate. Emergency plans to discuss. Social media to facilitate ... By Wednesday, I was feeling like it should be Friday; I felt as though I'd already completed a week's worth of work. Then again, that's one of the things I'm enjoying about my new role -- I'm being challenged and feeling like I'm producing in ways I haven't in a long time ...

Suffice to say, the Olympics were the furthest thing from my mind.

But tonight, I arrived home in time to catch the Nightly News -- NBC, of course, touting all things Olympics ... And I caught the Olympic fever again. My friend Tom tweeted at me, "You might want to get some antibiotics or something ... don't let it spread."

Too late. As I caught up with my Facebook friends, it appeared a lot of them were getting the fever. And then I gave it to Kates when she met me for our nightly Skype chat. Phoebe, it appears, is still young enough to remain immune, but I suspect in a few years she'll be prone to catching the fever every two to four years also.

I kept seeing the commercial featuring amazing British Columbia landscapes and bright, shiny Canadian celebrities telling me "You gotta be here." And I kept shouting back at my TV, "I know! I wanna be there!"

I watched in horror as the news recapped this morning's tragic luge accident that killed Nodar Kumaritashvili and showed the clip of the crash one too many times. The obvious questions, as the report noted quickly, are why are there steel supports so close to the track and why weren't they padded!? ... It was a terrible, terrible accident.

Once the opening ceremony started, I couldn't look away from my TV ...

Certainly, the commentators couldn't resist wondering how Vancouver's opening ceremony would compare to the ceremony to open the Beijing summer games in 2008. But I'm thinking Vancouver held its own pretty well ...

The special effects illuminating and rising from the arena floor were magnificent! Icebergs sliding across the floor ... Water rippling ... Whales swimming and water sprouting from the floor with them ... Combine all of that with the aerial acrobatics ... All of it was jaw-dropping cool!


Even with the unfortunate malfunction, the lighting of the cauldron was pretty dang cool ...

Yep, I'm going to be dealing with this fever for a couple weeks ...

UPDATE 02.13: EW's best and worst of the Vancouver Olympics Opening Ceremony

* * *

As for the premiere earlier tonight of the remade "We Are the World" ...

Eh. There were some nice modern touches -- pretty much just the hip hop beat -- but Celine Dion's garbled singing is hardly understandable and I can do without Wyclef Jean's wailing toward the end. The new version may grow on me, but my first thoughts are that it doesn't touch the emotion and rawness -- or even the star power -- of the original, setting yet another example that the magic of such a project is rarely recaptured ...