Stateside

So I have about 700 photos to upload from Europe, which I do not have the patience to do right now. I do have photos from the two and a half days I spent in Arizona. Not much happened there. I mostly healed from playing dodgeball, watched movies, ate Mexican food, hung out with my parents, and went to a spring training baseball game. As luck would have it, the game I went to was between Colorado and Chicago at Chicago's park. It was almost 80 degrees that afternoon while Seattle was shivering at around 40, but our seats, which were free from a friend of my dad's, were right behind home plate. The photo doesn't illustrate that because my dad and I got up to see if my grandfather was still there in his first baseline seats, but he just left without telling us, so we watched the end of the game from there. The Rockies lost by one run, but does it really matter? In the end the Cubs will blow it in August and the Rockies will do the same in September. Nonetheless, I love baseball. Today is opening day!

Hell Yeah

Friday night I'll be on this, flying out of Phoenix for my first North Atlantic run in almost 9 years. I haven't even thought about what I want to do in London. In fact, I haven't even thought much about going there lately. I've been so concerned with this quarter ending strong that I don't even feel like I'm going on a huge vacation like this. I know once I get to Sky Harbor Airport Friday afternoon it'll hit me, and that will be exciting.

Local Tourist

Today I went to West Seattle with Emie. West Seattle is strange. It's connected to the mainland but the Duwamish Ship Canal divides it from SoDo and effectively the rest of the city. Similar to Michigan's anatomical representation of the right hand, West Seattle resembles the thumb of your left hand, with Downtown Seattle just below your index finger. From points east, West Seattle is only connected to the city by the Spokane Street Bridge (or West Seattle Bridge) and is surrounded by the Puget Sound to the north and west. It's difficult to reach if you don't have a car, but I found out today the No. 11 bus that runs past my apartment connects to West Seattle. I've stressed the isolation of the neighborhood enough. I take great pleasure in exploring the unique neighborhoods of my adopted town.

Superlatives

Bands of the Week:

Cut Copy
Melbourne, Australia

Deerhunter
Atlanta, Georgia

Fleet Foxes
Seattle, Washington

Photo of the Week:

This photo was taken in Denver, Colorado. I was back visiting my uncle with my parents and sister before going to a family reunion at Rocky Mountain National Park. This day, my dad and I went to downtown Denver to watch the Colorado State-University of Colorado football game at a bar, The Falling Rock Tavern. We refused to stay in hideous suburban Denver, where we had a selection of the finest chain restaurants surrounding by 10 acres of parking lots. Instead of driving downtown, we took the light rail (something surprisingly Denver is ahead of Seattle in, wayyyyyy ahead).


On the way back we had to transfer to a different train at the 10th/Osage station. In Denver, one of the light rail's lines parallels the freight tracks. At this station, directly across from the light rail tracks were what must have been 100 Union Pacific Locomotives laid up, all coupled together. It's a site I'll never forget, and hope to see again someday.

Stand Clear

I'm taking a break from studying for my strength of materials final that is on Monday. I'm currently trying to utilize the cable television I pay so much for (and I'm watching network TV). What a waste. Why do I even have this? I think I'm on pace to be ready for my test Monday. Basically it's three topics: beam deflection equations using integration, singularity methods, and superposition. That I need to brush up on a little. Then there's column failure, something I feel very comfortable with. Lastly, failure theories, beam columns, and impact loading. I feel like I've learned a lot from this class last year. Dr. Kuder is definitely my favorite professor here. It's amazing how difficult these topics appear and she explains them in such a way that they're not so hard anymore (she's only 28). My strength of materials professor at my old school shouldn't even be mentioned in the same sentence as Dr. Kuder. It wasn't entirely his fault, but that class was awful. It was in this 300 person lecture room containing a class for about 50. He stood up at the front wearing a microphone and deriving God knows what on a dry erase board that I needed a telescope to read. Back then I didn't know the difference between stress and strain (a really really big deal, to say the least, in structural engineering) and just assumed all my boundary conditions would result in integration constants equaling zero (a huge huge no-no). I feel like if I graduated from Colorado State with a Civil Engineering degree I would be so inadequately prepared for the professional world. Everything about this school has given me so much confidence in myself and my future. I'm really glad to be here.

Bands of the week:

Dirty Projectors
Brooklyn, New York

The National
Brooklyn, New York

Yeasayer
Brooklyn, New York

The Helio Sequence
Portland, Oregon

Photo of the week:

It's strange to think that a little less than a year and a half ago I lived in Colorado. So what has happened since December 13 2006? I don't drive nearly as much as I used to. I live in a terrific neighborhood that has everything I need within walking distance. I think only once I drove to the grocery store and only because I was already out. I also bike much more often than in Colorado. Back then, I only biked to and from school, which was 6 miles a day. Now I do it for everything and the weather is becoming better each day. I'm also doing better in school; more confident in myself than I was back then.

Below is a photo of my side view mirror as I drove my car out of Denver for the last time in June of 2007. Things are good now. Really good.

In only two weeks...

That's not true; two weeks and one day from now I'll be flying over the Atlantic on my first 747 to London. What I'm most excited for is the age of the city. I can barely remember much about Germany when I went there over 8 years ago. To me, the photo below of Brooklyn represents age and antiquity. Won't I be in for a surprise?

This is New York City?

Is this what we've come to?

I don't think this New York Times writer could have put it any better. How can we blatantly disregard the past and history for a banal New York? When we build, let us think that we build forever.