I wear sandals, not flip flops

Today I want to review a story I talked about a while ago based on this article. ESPN ran an update on the story here.

Elena Della Donne left UConn's basketball program after approximately two days last summer. She cited burnout and headed back home to Delaware to play volleyball instead of basketball. She had a successful year as a volleyball player, but now is returning to basketball and will play her next four years at Delaware.

She now admits that she wasn't burnt out and was merely homesick. She still has WNBA and Olympic aspirations and will most likely reach those. She is already the best basketball player to ever play at Delaware.

Earlier I applauded her for making a major life decision even when it was very difficult. I still applaud her. If this was nearly any other athlete, no one would care and she could make these decisions willy nilly. Sure they would be hard decisions, but at least they don't have to deal with ESPN when they make them.

What I like about this story coming full circle is that it speaks to following your heart. She followed her heart away from UConn to Delaware. It brought her away from basketball, but then back to the sport she loves. The point is, it gave her some time to clear her head and figure out what she really wants in life.

Sometimes things only really make sense when you are able to step away. I hope nothing but the best for her and her future. I am still impressed by her maturity and her strength in making difficult decisions. Hopefully, there won't need to be any more big decisions but if there are, I am sure she will handle them well.

Doing that Thursday thing

QOW: Conversation I overheard...
"So what are you guys now? Friends with benefits?"
"Well, we have only seen each other once since we broke up, but it was pretty beneficial to me!"

LOW: Leroy Smith: The Man Who Motivated Michael Jordan. This website is genius and stars Charlie Murphy. This is what websites look like in Heaven.

GOW: Box Clever. Try to kill all the little green guys and get your blue guy to the goal. Trickier than it sounds.

POW: This picture is called "Mine" and is by Angela Davidson of the UK
VOW: I have a feeling this isn't real ... but it is sweet regardless

Watch Amazing Basketball Kicks on CollegeHumor

365...

Today is the 365th post of Everybody But Us. A lot has happened in the past year. I finished being a tennis pro. I played Poultry Days for the first time. Started medical school. Developed some sort of fatigue or sleeping disorder. Went to Las Vegas. All that good stuff.

Thanks for the support and the comments. I will try to become a better writer and not cop out with shitty links or whatever. Good times.

Great oldies.

Designing nothing

I love do it yourself design companies online. Absolutely way too much fun and a total time killer. Enjoy some of my favorites:

• Nike Id
• Puma
• Adidas
• Gaia
• Custom Ink
• Converse
• Zazzle

I usually just design and never buy anything. Usually you can save your best or send them to someone. Leave your best in the comments or e-mail at stepuptoflavor at gmail dot com. Maybe I will make a post about all my favs.

Oh Captain My Vomit

Captain's Quarters is a horrible, horrible place. Emphasis on the... nevermind. I thought 4th Street was bad, but CQ may be douchier. At least at 4th Street the girls pretend they are just going there to dance.

CQ makes me want to vomit and I will never go there at night again. I am disgusted.

Letter to the Editor

I wrote for my college paper for a short period of time. During that time we did a parody of our archrival's school newspaper. For that, I wrote a letter to the editor from Sean May. All you need to know about him, if you don't know who he is, is that he was a little hefty for a basketball player and it was fun to pretend he was an idiot. I don't know if he was an idiot and he was never really that fat.

I found that paper. I hope you enjoy it.

To the Editor:
Yo. Put a deep fryer in the cafeteria already. The recent addition of Hostess cupcakes and candy bars was a step in the right direction, but how am I to stay in prime shape if they aren't deep fried?

While we are updating our foods, why can't we get a deal with Hardee's to get Western Bacon Thinkburgers for lunch every day?

I also think we should use more pork in our menus here at UNC. If you dress it up with a different type of cheese every night, or just a stick of butter, pork can be used more than once a week.

Also, since when did sausage become a breakfast-only food? Let's have some of that every meal .. with gravy. Lots of chunky gravy.

Speaking of breakfast, since when do eggs only have white parts? Can we bring back the yellow/ My bacon-sausage-three cheese omelets do not taste the same with egg whites. Peace.

Shawn Mae
Junior (I think)
Early Ronald McDonald Studies

(Editor's note: This letter was found under our door written in blue crayon and refers to no particular article we have ever published)

Personally, I think it may try a little hard at times to be funny. But I really like the sausage as breakfast-only food part still.

Genuine Genius

I first read about Daniel Tammet on a website called "Real-life Superheroes: 10 People with Incredible Abilities". To put it bluntly, Tammet is amazing. From the link:

Daniel Paul Tammet is a British high-functioning autistic savant gifted with a facility for mathematical calculations, sequence memory, and natural language learning. He was born with congenital childhood epilepsy. Experiencing numbers as colors or sensations is a well-documented form of synesthesia, but the detail and specificity of Tammet's mental imagery of numbers is unique. In his mind, he says, each number up to 10,000 has its own unique shape and feel, that he can "see" results of calculations as landscapes, and that he can "sense" whether a number is prime or composite. He has described his visual image of 289 as particularly ugly, 333 as particularly attractive, and pi as beautiful. Tammet not only verbally describes these visions, but also creates artwork, particularly watercolor paintings, such as his painting of Pi.

Tammet holds the European record for memorising and recounting pi to 22,514 digits in just over five hours. He also speaks a variety of languages including English, French, Finnish, German, Spanish, Lithuanian, Romanian, Estonian, Icelandic, Welsh and Esperanto. He particularly likes Estonian, because it is rich in vowels. Tammet is creating a new language called Mänti. Tammet is capable of learning new languages very quickly. To prove this for the Channel Five documentary, Tammet was challenged to learn Icelandic in one week. Seven days later he appeared on Icelandic television conversing in Icelandic, with his Icelandic language instructor saying it was "not human."