Stress? Psh, Not Gonna Let It Get Me Down

It’s gonna be a good day. In fact, this week has been good so far. It’s had its stressful moments, to be sure, but I’ve decided I’m just not going to let it get me down. I’ve managed to be super-productive this week, getting almost all my big projects done already and getting caught up on a lot of things I’ve been behind on. Hell, I even cleaned last night (which my room was in desperate need of).

And I’ve also been able to enjoy myself a little this week, which is always nice. The weather the past two days has been beautiful (finally–after all the rain we’ve had). Cold, but I’ll take cold and sunny over hot and rainy any day. This has made biking to and from downtown much more of a pleasure than a pain.

The end of this week looks to be extremely eventful. In fact, the next three days should be pretty huge for me, as well as for the United States and Denmark. As most of you have no doubt heard, President Obama will travel to Denmark for the International Olympic Committee’s selection of a host city for the 2016 Olympic Games this Friday. Madrid, Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro and of course Chicago are competing for the privilege, with Chicago and Rio considered the frontrunners.

I’m all for Chicago as far as the selection is concerned. While admittedly the Olympics have never been held in South America before, Chicago has a far cheaper and economically feasible proposal, is clearly a safer venue and seems to have made the athletes the center of their plan–making transportation between events quick and relatively painless. I must say, I’m confident Chicago will win. Not only does it have the largest support–the majority of the United States versus the majority of Brazil–but it’s more practical and, as the article above mentioned, we’ve got the “Obama factor”. His influence here in Copenhagen on Friday will make a huge difference, and any closeness there might’ve been in the competition may very well be erased thanks to his appearance (not to mention Michelle Obama, Oprah, the Transportation and Education Secretaries, and numerous Olympic athletes here pushing for a Chicago win). Chicago has even reserved the entire city hall square for festivities on Friday to celebrate the announcement and rally for Chicago’s selection. I’ve even signed up to “volunteer” for the event–although mainly that means I’ll be on hand all afternoon to celebrate wearing a Chicago t-shirt (no complaints here).

Also: Jessica reminded me that Rio is also hosting the 2014 World Cup–two huge global events in as many years? A bit of a stretch for any city, much less one that is still very much developing infrastructure.

On top of the IOC selection the Danish Climate Movement is organizing a quick event Friday morning at the Bella Centre, where Obama will be, to encourage his attendance and action at COP15 in December. We’ll be there around 8 a.m.–should be an interesting morning.

Beyond climate and Olympic activities, unfortunately I do still have school this week, with a political rhetoric message analysis due Thursday, and an architectural analysis presentation and advertising midterm on Friday. Thankfully I’m well on my way to completing most of them (and studying) and I’m not too concerned about the midterm. I love marketing, communications and advertising–so studying isn’t much of a chore in this case.

Anyway, I hope everyone out there in the blogosphere/twitterverse/facebookworld is having a great week and has great plans for the weekend. I’ll be updating more soon, particularly as I prepare for my trip to London on Sunday!