The Crowd

Taken from the balcony inside the Chicago Theater after the This American Life show last week.

Wicked Validation

When Jay saw this sign, in the window of the parking garage where Christa had her car parked, he was baffled. Instead of reading it as saying that the garage accepted validation from the play Wicked, he thought it was possibly written by someone from Boston to indicate that the garage had a kind of superlative validation.

The Manlift

You can watch the manlift in operation here.

Love of Sphy

Outside the philosophy department library and lounge.

Update: Apparently the braille is correct.

Squash

I play squash once a week with Aidan and Will and whoever else is around and not sick or injured. The doors leading into the squash courts are very small, and open onto a private space that is only visible from the outside through a small, smudged plexiglass window. The courts, with their white walls and minimal markings, could be holding cells from THX-1138. The ceilings are probably 20' high. The acoustics inside are very strange--it is nearly impossible to understand what someone is saying, even standing just a few feet away, but you can hear the shouts and strikes in neighboring courts clearly. The flourescent lights produce a slightly different shade of illumination in each court.

Student's Point of View

GB 321, before class.

Jake One & Mr. Supreme

A slide from Zed's talk at the UNM pop culture conference last weekend.

UNM

University of New Mexico, in and around the student center. The mascot of UNM is the lobo. My overall impression of the campus is that it is very much like my parents' alma mater, Fresno State, but with an adobe theme. And the air is clear enough that you can see the nearby mountains.

O'Hare

The United Airlines terminal at O'Hare, designed by Helmut Jahn. It's supposed to look like a Victorian railroad terminal.

O'Hare is fancier but less charming than Midway. O'Hare, for example, doesn't play "Sweet Home Chicago" over and over in the baggage claim area.

Free Trade Coffee

Coffee canisters in the Divinity School coffee shop. As you can see, the coffee on the right is "Organic/Fair Trade Coffee". A cup of the Fair Trade coffee costs about 25¢ more than regular. I think the regular actually tastes better than the Fair Trade. All of my attempts to order the regular coffee by calling it "Free Trade" have failed, resulting in the clerks charging me as if I ordered the Fair Trade kind.

Valentine's Day

Melody is awesome. For Valentines day she got me a grenade candle, plus B-17, P-47 and tank cookie cutters.

From left to right: B-17 cookie cutter, grenade candle, and P-47 Thunderbolt cookie cutter.

B-17 Flying Fortress cookie. Fantastic. I'm afraid it will have a hard time landing after I eat its wings off.