I'll be getting up at 5:30 every morning this week for Kuvia-Kangeiko. It's another one of the many odd U of C traditions, and it's supposed to help us be less suicidal or something (or was that suicide day?). I'm actually enjoying the cold weather (hell, that's why I came here from out West -I would've stayed there if I liked warm weather), but it was nice to get up early for a change. And yes, it was cold (like 3 degrees or something).

Kuvia is short for Kuviasungnerk , although I doubt anyone really knows how to spell it out (or how to prounounce it). I just googled to see what it was, and most of the results are from U of C, but anyway, according to the Inuit-English dictionary, it means "happiness". And "kangeiko" is from the Japanese 寒稽古, "寒" = cold, and "稽古"=training/practice/excercise, and usually refers to a harsh training regimen that utilizes the cold -and something that's not associated with "happiness". So I guess that's a pretty good balance. Anyway, our Kuvia starts off with some calisthenics and some other thing that's got something to do with making the sun rise. After about 20 minutes of that, they have different activities that you can join; today it was aikido or basketball, tomorrow it's karate, fencing or cheerleading, and so on and so forth. On Friday, we're all walking to The Point to make the sun rise (or whatever it is), and if you go all 5 days, you get a T-shirt (oh yes, the things we do for free clean clothing). Also on Friday is the polar bear run, where people run around the quads in various stages of undress (i.e. semi-naked to butt nekkid)... I've heard mixed reviews about that one, so we'll see...

Let's see... I know there were a few things I've been meaning to write about. Hm. Last Thursday, we had our first ducky project, and surprisingly enough, everybody (plus 1 person) showed up. I did a little presentation on our methodologies and DuckyMagic, and then showed them all the footage I have so far. We also looked at a couple of Pixar shorts, just to give people a sense of what my "tastes" are. I told everybody to start storyboarding their own ideas (by going to the Reg and taking pictures), and then this Thursday, I'm going to get everybody to show their pictures and talk about their ideas. The basic plan is to take these images and compile them into one final storyboard.