End of Things

I have one week left of school. Life is crazy. Finals may kill me. Blogging is going way on the back burner until it's all over. See you in a week or so!

Thanks

Seattle Day Two

Sunday in Seattle started out a little slow. I slept in and when I woke, we had a leisurely breakfast provided by the hotel. Sometime Saturday it occurred to me that the Archie McPhee store was in Seattle and I convinced Dad that we needed to go there. So that's where we headed after breakfast.

I'm not sure most of my readers will understand how freeking awesome this store is. Dave will, but I already geeked out about it to him (read: I gloated that I there). Spend some time on their website though. Now, imagine the store... it has all that stuff plus a bunch of bins of random.

Also, there is bacon:

After Archie McPhee we went to The Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum. It's actually two different museums... sort of. They're in the same building, and you just get one ticket for both of them, but they're very separate. The music doesn't really have anything to do with the science fiction. Anyway, that was kind of interesting. the music part had a lot of stuff about the music scene in Seattle, which was interesting. It also had a hall of guitars which showed the evolution of the guitar. The sci-fi museum just had tons of stuff - from books to props in movies to models and Ninja Turtles.

Finally after the museum we headed to Quest Field for the Major League Soccer Cup Game - the whole reason we went to Seattle in the first place. Our little local soccer team - Real Salt Lake - somehow managed rally and make it to this game. RSL was playing LA Galaxy (David Beckham's team). It was such a good game!

If you don't follow soccer, you wont really care if I tell you all about it. If you do follow soccer, you probably watched the game and you know how kick ass it was. All I will say is Real won in sudden death PKs. It was totally intense.

After the game we headed out. We drove all night and arrived back home around noon. It was a really fantastic trip, but I was completely exhausted yesterday and today. And I'm having a hard time keeping straight what day of the week it is.

Here are a couple more pictures for you:

Me at the stadium before the game

proof that we were there

Seattle Day One

Trip to Seattle = Super freeking awesome! Here's what happened:

We left Friday around 2:00 and, with one hour long delay to check out a weird warning light, drove for the next 12 hours. Dad and I alternated who was driving and who slept. We finally pulled into Seattle around 3 in the morning, pulled into a random parking lot, and we both slept for about 4 hours. The car was not the most comfortable place for sleeping, but we managed.

Around 7 we went to breakfast, and visited out hotel. We couldn't check in until 3, but we got a parking permit so we left the car in their lot and walked down to the water front.

We started at Pike's market- you know, the famous one where they throw the fish around. I kind of failed at taking a picture of the fish flying through the air... but here it's about to happen:

really, anticipation is half the fun, right? Anyway, we walked around the market for a while - there were all sorts o

f little shops and fun things to look at. Then we walked along the water front a little more. We spent a lot of time in odd little touristy shops. At one point we past a little food vendor and decidedthat we really should get some fried clams while we were there. I mean, come on, it's not going to get any fresher than that.

they were delicious!

After chowing down our clams, we wandered up to Pioneer Square to take The Underground Tour. Seattle's streets were originally 8-35 feet lower than they are now. The underground tour takes you down to the original side walks to take a look at historic Seattle streets while the tour guides tell funny stories - mostly about shit and prostitution.

See, when Seattle started out people didn't really understand how tides worked. And they, just like we do now, occasionally had to go to the bathroom. These two factors meant that every day at high tide, downtown Seattle was flooded with salt water and raw sewage. The invention of the Crapper (flush toilet) made things even more fun. When everyone got their crappers, they needed a sewer system to hook them up to. So they built one, out of wood, that worked with gravity. That was fine, except at high tide water would flow back up the sewage pipe, pressure would build up and you can guess what would happen when you tried to flush you crapper.

One day Seattle burned down. All of it. It was a great time to start over and solve problems. City guys said "let's raise everything so it wont get flooded every day." Business guys said "I'm not going to pay for it." So the businesses re-built their shops pretty much the way the were before. The City guys raised all the land they owned... city land... so basically the streets. The streets were now 8-35 feet above the sidewalks. Having customers fall down onto the sidewalk, and having to climb up and down ladders to patronize your shop is kind of bad for business. So business owners raised their sidewalks and all the first floors became basements.

This is a picture of a skylight at a corner of the underground sidewalk. Up on the street it just

looks like decorative mosaic tile in the sidewalk. The original skylights were thick, solid pieces of transparent glass. This caused two major problems. 1 - fat people (or people carrying big loads) would walk over the skylight and fall through. 2 - they were transparent. Crowds would gather beneath them to... um... enjoy the views. Local "seamstresses" found them to be a great way to advertise their wares though. The gentlemen below got a sneak preview of what they were offering. They just wrote their prices on the bottom of their shoes.

After the tour, we wandered back to the hotel to check in. As soon as we got to the room, we both kind of crashed - although Dad only napped for about 15 minutes. He believes in the power napping thing. I slept for a good solid 2 hours. Between driving all night and walking around all day, I was pretty damn tired.

We went to dinner at a local pub, and then I went dancing. Seattle has some great dancers, so I thought I should check them out. Funny enough, I actually knew two of the guys there. One was a kid I met at Lindy on the Rocks this summer. The other guy I met last year at the Utah Lindy Exchange. He was just in town for the game too. I guess Disney is right, it is a small world after all.

I have stuff I have to take care of. I'll finish writing about the trip later today, or possibly tomorrow.

This is Just To Say

I'm going to Seattle this weekend for the MLS Cup game. (w00t)

I don't know what the WiFi situation is going to be, but I probably wont be blogging until I get back.

Now I have to go finish packing.

And Another Thing...

I was going to write about shoes today. I can see you rolling your eyes at me, but it was going to be pretty cool. But then I logged into blogger and it told me that Tim had blogged about the new Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy book.

My first thought was: What? Douglas Adams is dead. There's a new Hitchhiker's book? WTF? Why did I not know about this?

My second thought was: I'm going to read Tim's blog.

My third thought (after reading the blog): Dude, I'm putting it on hold right now!

My fourth thought (after going to the library website and putting it on hold): Awww man, 24. That's not nearly as cool. Tim was number 42 in line. I want to be 42. Everyone should automatically be 42 in line for the book, no matter how many people have holds on it already. *sigh* Oh well, at least I'll get it faster this way.

My fifth thought: Hmmm I wonder if I have anything due soon... nope. Good.

My sixth thought: I'm so not going to blog about shoes anymore. Even though it was going to be an awesome post about shoes.

And that pretty much catches you up.

Evolution and Books

Book people are really reticent to change. The books we read today are REALLY similar to the books that have been around hundreds of years. Ever since people switched from the papyrus scroll to the codex books have looked pretty much the same.

Sure, the shape change a little from square to more rectangular, and the material used to make pages has changed too. Printing technology influenced the look of the writing on the page (illuminated lettering is soooo 14th century). But since about the 4th century people have filled their libraries with these stacks of pages, bound on one side, with stuff written on them.

For a long time book pages were animal skins. The easiest shape to get out of an animal skin is a rectangle. That's why books are shaped the way they are. When paper became the popular material for the page it stayed rectangular because people still wanted their books to look like books. Book people are very reticent to change.

Now we have e-books and e-book readers like the Kindle. The high-tech, computerized, electronic way of doing pretty much everything is catching up to the book world. Book people are reacting pretty much the same way they always have: The Kindle is neat, but in my library, I want the real thing.

I have mixed feelings about this new evolution of the book. I haven't had a lot of experience with e-book readers (but I have tried a few). What I have seen has been pretty cool. I would love to be able to just download all my text books and not have to lug 3 tons of bookage to school every day. When I travel, I always pack at least 4 or 5 books. That can get heavy, and with airline baggage restrictions it can be a problem. With e-books, I could just pack one slim little reader and have my entire library at my fingertips. You never have to worry about setting your book down and loosing your page. You can take notes, and search for terms - navigation is much simpler than frantically flipping through pages.

On the other hand, you lose most of the tactile experience of reading when you use e-books. There's something special about actually turning the page (or being able to flip a head and see how much you have left in a chapter). The feel of paper under your fingers, the book smell, the smudges and wrinkles on the paper from various reading adventures are all part of the reading experience. Plus it's nice to have a bookshelf with a display of stuff you read. It's a great thing to peruse at someone's house. It's an insight into their personality.

I could go back and forth about the benefits of both formats, but I wont. I think change is probably inevitable. Like any change, it will take a while for e-books to be really wide-spread. As for me, I'll embrace the codex, but my library is still going to be full of scrolls.