The Station

Turkey Day

Happy Thanksgiving!

Another Mini Adventure - Chitown Chinatown Style

Today I visited Dan at IIT in Chicago. He showed me their new campus center and I must say it was strangely impressive. This building has so many interesting architectural features. The most impressive aspect is a stairway into the dining area that incorporates a wheelchair ramp. The ramp runs down and across the stairs in such a way that it can't be easily described, but is such an elegant design that I'm surprised I haven't encountered one before. There is also no shortage of the use of polymer honeycomb sheets for windows, walls, and countertops. This material has the interesting property of only allowing a transparent line of sight when looking orthogonal to it. So you can look out the window and see clearly straight ahead, but the edges blur away like a Photoshop portrait softening effect. They also have probably the largest digital clock I've ever seen.

After a while, we went to Chinatown for lunch. Dan knew this all-you-can-eat Mongolian barbeque. It was very tasty. You select vegetables and meat, then give the plate to a chef who cooks it on the table. They had great tea, too.

Speaking of tea, I've always enjoyed the green tea that is served in Chinese restaurants. I’m also fond of the teapots and small handleless cups they use and have wanted a set of my own for a while. So, after lunch, we checked out some of the stores in the area. All the tea sets were either cheap looking or had a weird animal design or Chinese writing on them. I did find one set that was quite nice. It had that blue dye on white porcelain with a tree and flower pattern. Too bad it was also the most expensive set I saw, so I left it there. Foiled again!

We also went into an art store, which, for all I could tell, had nothing to do with Chinatown. It has this great painting but right now there’s no way I could afford it. The store had a lot of awesome artful oddities. I'll have to remember in a few years when I have a house.

We then also went north to Water Tower Place, but after failing to locate FAO Schwarz, we headed back to IIT and shortly afterward I drove home.
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A Mini Adventure

Thanksgiving break has commenced. I’m in the Village of Shorewood for a whole week.

Last night Andy, Christina, and myself were to go dancing at the Willowbrook Ballroom. We drove there in the rain and when we arrived we just decided not to go. We didn't want to pay for a DJ when we can see The Rhythm Rockets on Wednesday, plus we were hungry. So we kept driving.

Soon, we saw a nifty coffee house next to what could have only been the Willow Springs town fortress. We didn't visit the coffee house because we were hungry, not thirsty. Instead I drove further north but didn’t get far before we saw something in the median. Andy said it was a stuffed pig and insisted we circle back. Indeed, there was a portly plush porker on the pavement. So we waited for a break in traffic, stopped next to the pig, and Andy jumped out in the pouring rain and threw this thing in the trunk. We continued driving.

Next we come upon a small church of some kind with a sign out front which reads: "God knows what you did." Indeed He does. Christina took a picture.

We then drove to Bolingbrook where we stopped at a place called Noodle and Company. I expected this to be like a Fazoli's. They had several noodle dishes ranging from Asian, to Italian, to Wisconsin mac and cheese. Despite being fast food like a Fazoli's, it had a certain flair that was more sophisticated. They even had wine and beer. The food was excellent but a little pricey. The chicken is where they get you! Watch out for chickens.

I should mention that before we entered the restaurant, we gathered around the trunk to inspect porky. The pig was convered with all sorts of obscene sayings that indicated it might have been part of rather nasty break-up. Who knows what we're going to do with it.

We decided to see "Master and Commander" at a nearby theater, but we had a half hour to kill. We ended up walking around Meijer since apparently they close the rest of Bolingbrook (including the local Borders) at 9PM. We also proposed the idea of the theater not being a real theater but rather a fake-theater-trap comprised of a large white room where all the inhabitants of Bolingbrook are lured after 9PM.

Anyway, the movie was very good, except that I wish they had developed the crew of the French ship; they're not shown until a battle near the end.

On a somewhat related note, does anyone know if there will be a second Pirate's of the Caribbean movie? Someone said there would be a sequel to Legend of the Black Pearl.

That's all. Wait, I wan't crab legs! Jim, where's that place you went on Saturday? We want to try something new!

Also, my comments no longer demand an email address. So comment, now!

Now I'm finished.
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Same Brush and Paint, New Canvas

Today as I walked into my mechanical design class my professor returned to me the design project I completed a few weeks ago. There, at the top of the first page, was the letter "A." Of course, I didn't recognize it as an "A" since it's been about six months since I've seen one. I don't know why I'm telling everyone this; it's not interesting, but that "A" made me very very happy. Professor Tucker has even requested to use it as a model for future assignments. It's about time something unexpectedly good happened.

I am very hungry, but there hasn't been anything to eat in days.

Tonight I get to sleep as long as I want, then drive north in the morning.

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Retro

This takes me back to last September...
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Veteran's Day

Today is Veteran's Day! Everyone has the day off of school except U of I students. At least I get a whole week off for Thanksgiving. Tip your hat to a serviceman today!

"Tora! Tora! Tora!" was on last night. Old war movies are great!

I need to expand my posts. What to talk about...I've got it. Of all the different parameter names encountered in engineering speak, the Twiddle Factor has to be the goofiest. Maybe not so much that the name is silly, but rather that my professor kept chuckling about it for quite some time after introducing it.

I can now also quote my World Music professor as saying, "it's great hiding-from-tornadoes-music." Yeah...
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Welcome

It's been over two months since I started this thing and it still is kind of purposeless, trite, and unoriginal. Anyway, people know about it now, so I better start making improvements. Anyone got any ideas?
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Try this on for size

Maybe I should make this a poetry blog. Yeah, that's it!

Ok...poetry,eh? [Thinking, thinking] How about a Haiku on spackle?

Thin, sublime spackle
Gracefully obscures wall flaws
Not a tasty treat

This concludes my experiment with poetry.
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