Seattle Masonry

Took John and Kathryn to Seattle this weekend to take another look at the University of Washington. Kathryn has applied and been accepted, so we thought it might be good idea to take another look before she makes up her mind on where she wants to go. It was an easy trip. We drove up Sunday afternoon, spent the night at the Westin, toured the campus Monday morning and drove home that afternoon. Didn't try to cram as much as possible into our short stay, only had a couple of things scheduled. Walked around downtown for a bit Sunday afternoon, saw a seemingly high proportion of bums, or maybe that is just the suburbanites jaundiced view. Had dinner at PF Chang's, dessert at Coldstone. Basically the same thing we did on our last trip here in May.


The Westin gave us a room in the North tower facing Southwest so we could see Macy's (the old Bon Marche), the harbor, the docks and West Seattle. We were on the 39th floor this time which put us just about the same height as the top of the South tower.

Kathryn had homework and she wanted to watch the Oscars. I cannot abide talking heads so John and I went to see the movie "Jumper" at the Cinerama, which was only two blocks away. I thought it was the best movie I have ever seen. It better be, it was the most expensive movie I have ever seen ($10.25). John thought it was terrible.

I read a lot of Science Fiction (see postscript) and I have read a few teleportation stories, but this one took the premise and ran with it in a direction I hadn't seen before. Of course, the business of "Paladins" versus "Jumpers" makes it very similar to the standard vampire storyline. Still, if you can "accept" teleportation, why not throw in a few anti-teleportation fanatics? The best part was teleporting the double decker bus from London into the middle of the desert. I know it was in the previews, but it was better in context. It was really cool, and I enjoyed it.

The Cinerama theater is amazing. It is an old, huge movie theater, right on the edge of downtown. It is not old like in Victorian / Gothic ornateness, more like old from the dawn of the space age. It's got that 70's modern style to it. And it is huge, it even has a balcony.

Monday morning we had breakfast in the hotel "cafe". Not really a cafe, more of a buffet, and ridiculously expensive, but it was easy and they did have a fabulous selection, or maybe I was just hungry. I had a bowl of fresh fruit and a croissanwich and tea. I did not really need to eat so much.

Drove to the University and parked in their massive underground garage. The sign at the front says full, but we are already in the driveway so we drive on in. Turns out it is only the carpool area that is full (90 cents a day). There is plenty of space in the full price area ($11 a day).

Walked across 15th Ave to Schmitz Hall to join the tour. There were only about a dozen people in our group. Guide tells us that during spring break they get as many as 150 people per tour. Most of their visitors come from Oregon, Washington and Alaska.

The tour takes an hour and a half. It is cool outside, but fortunately it is not raining. We walk and then stop and the guide talks. Occasionally we will walk through a building. One building we went through is the old physics building, now renamed "Mary Gates" hall in honor of the Bill Gate's mother and the massive donation he made that paid for renovating and expanding this old building.

We stopped in Red Square, so called because it is paved with bricks that used to be red. The guide claims the name has no political overtones, but you would not expect the University to let him say anything else, would you? After several years exposure to the weather the bricks are more brown than red. There are three tall squarish brick columns here. We noticed them on our last visit and wondered why? I mean no doors, no windows, no apparent use. They appeared to be another piece of stupid modern art. Turns out one of the columns provides ventilation for the underground parking garage. Some one decided one column standing there all by itself would look dumb so they built the other two to give it moral support. Anyway, there is some excuse for these eye catchers.

There was another piece of modern art in this square. A metal pyramid with an upside down, broken obelisk impacting the point. It would have been much cooler if the points were just touching, but there really wouldn't be any way to do that, would there? Well, at least not without adding some sort of external support.

The University has some really ornate stone buildings. They look like they could be ancient European cathedrals or castles or something. They are really quite elaborate. Modern stuff is really hideous in comparison. I suppose it is the pressure of economics. Maybe if we weren't pouring so much money into the military-industrial rathole, we could afford to build something a little nicer. Actually, there is no maybe about it, we could afford a whole bunch of better stuff if we weren't flushing all our money down the drain.

Looking down on Macy's department store from our hotel window, I noticed that the stone facing on the upper three stories was a slightly darker color than the facing on the lower three stories. Evidently this building was expanded sometime in the past. I never noticed this difference in coloration before, or if I did, it did not register. Now I am thinking why didn't they use the same stone as they used originally? Surely they have records of where it came from. Then I realized that maybe they did, it is just that the lower stories have been exposed to the weather longer and so the surface color of the stone has changed.

The builders had a similar problem when they expanded the old physics building into Mary Gates Hall. Here the effect was a little more difficult to detect as the building was faced with bricks of several different colors. Some places the colored bricks formed a pattern, in other places they seemed to have been randomized. You had to look closely to detect the difference. The old part is on the right side of the picture, the new is on the left. Earlier I thought I could see the difference in the photo, now I can't.

Denny Hall, the oldest building on campus, has a newish cupola / bell tower on top. The building is around 100 years old. The bell in the cupola is the orignal, but the cupola itself was replaced about five years ago. It is made of copper and has turned a uniform shade of dark brown. It has lost the luster of new copper, but it has not yet aquired the green patina of long time exposure.


Gas prices are going up, so I was pleased to discover that our mid-sized Japanese SUV (Mitsubishi Endeavor) was getting 30 MPG at 80 MPH.

We saw this tank on a trailer on the way home.


Postscript (I would have called this a sidebar, but I am not going to spend the time right now to figure out how to format a sidebar on this blog.): How do you say "a lot" without using the phrase "a lot"? A great deal? Quite a bit? Vast quantities? More that the average bear? My English teachers all frowned on using the phrase "a lot". It is vague to the point of being meaningless, but so are all the alternatives, unless you want to nail it down to how many books you read in a specific time period. Sometimes I will go for months, or even years, without reading any Science Fiction, but that is usually because I haven't happened across any. I seldom if ever find any in the bargain department at Barnes & Noble and new paperbacks are eight dollars! The last new paperback I bought was by David Weber, one of my old favorites, but I had to put it down after two chapters. He has gone off into this byzantine political nightmare and that just doesn't interest me.

Since we have gone off on a tangent about Science Fiction, I will mention that we stopped at the Magus Bookstore after lunch. I picked up two old stories ($3 each) by Anne McCaffrey, one of favorite authors. These two were predecessors to "Sassinak". I think I now have the complete series, so I can read it in order.

Update August 2016 replaced missing pictures.

Update December 2019 changed Eclipse to Endeavor when I realized I had the car model name wrong. Yea gods, how did that happen?