Photo post - the Northwestern University Campus (and it's beautiful brutalist library)

I'm going to give up a little bit of control. This is something that is hard for me. But I've also realized that I'm never, ever going to get through any reasonable amount of photo backlog without letting myself post large groups of images without individualized editing.

Someday I'm going to put together a web page to present myself as a photographer. It will get what I feel like are the best of the best of my work. Pictures that I love, that I give personalized attention to in Photoshop to make them (and me) look their best. Flickr will be my place to share large amounts of photos that don't make that cut, but that I still want to share. Photographs that are either more documentary in nature (like my theatre collection), or that I just feel are neat and pretty enough to want to show them to the world.

I'm starting with some photos from a walk around Evanston, Illinois' Northwestern University campus that I took this past weekend. danaeris is a grad student there. I met she and a couple other folks for lunch on Monday, then she took me on a little tour before she went back to work. She knew I'd fall in love with the brutalist library building designed by Walter Netsch, and she was right. There are a lot of other pretty things on the campus too. Another Netsch building or two, an 1889-built observatory (with functional refracting telescope!), a peaceful garden dedicated to the bard, and even some wildlife.

I'm going to open with a shot of the library, because I just think it's awesome.




But there's a lot more ( behind the cut )

(no subject)

In other news, I had a doctor appointment this morning in Racine. It was both a general physical and a follow up on my last appointment. The antibiotics he gave me a few months ago did not change anything, so he's referring me to a urologist. I asked whether he thought being on a bike so much might be causing issues in that area. He didn't think so at first, but asked me how much I ride. I told him, and he left for a few minutes. Maybe to look into the issue? When he came back he said that there might be a possibility, and I should talk to the urologist about it. Regardless, I'm really thinking about buying a noseless saddle. There's one called the Easyseat that often seems to be for sale at reasonable prices. But there are a lot of different designs, and they are quite different from each other. I'm not sure which would really work best for me or how to tell. Another question for the urologist, potentially.

Anyway, since the appointment was in the morning, I got up a bit early and took my bike there. It was a really nice ride, and the Kenosha/Racine county bike path takes me just a couple blocks away from the clinic. It was 13 miles there, about 9 back to the Parkside campus afterward, and 8 more home making for a 30 mile day. This is a good check to see what I can expect on the day I go to Whiting for Pierogifest, which will be a 60 mile day by the end of the evening. Unless I get tired and take transit home, which is an option! The 30 mile is a good test for 60, and the 60 mile is starting to be a test for a 100 mile ride, which I want to do sooner or later once I know I'm up to it. And I get to do it again tomorrow. The doctor wants me to get some labwork done. The lab is kind of a walk-in deal, so I'm going to try to get there by bike around eight tomorrow morning, then bike to work from there again. Whee!

I learned today that an archive co-worker's sister died over the weekend. She flew out to California and was able to see her before the end, and I'm glad. She'll be back to work tomorrow. I get a little self-conscious in situations like that; I worry I'll do or say something wrong. In lieu of flowers, people at the library are collecting cash to help defray the cost of the flight to California. I can't contribute a lot, but I'm going to put in a little something. That's a horrible thing to deal with, even without the cost of transcontinental airfare.

Before picture editing, I spent some time tonight working on a spreadsheet of grad programs to apply to. I'm feeling rather less stressy after talking through some of my thoughts and ideas on the subject with Danae, but now I need to start making progress forward based on those talks and my thoughts. I'm sure I'll write more about that another time.