Chutes and ladders

I realized I've been posting infrequently, and when I do it's usually some dumb link to this or that website that I've discovered. I'm not sure why. Maybe I'm in a mid-grad school lull, and things are kind of stable and settled for now. I'm actually almost exactly halfway done with grad school. A little over two and a half years down, a little under two and a half to go. Hard to believe. Very hard to believe. I noticed that for a while before grad school, many of my thoughts were occupied by "How can I get in?" or "Am I going to get in?" or "What can I do to help me get in?" And then for a while after I arrived, I was satiated. I didn't really care about the next stage. I was here, I had arrived, and I was just glad to have made it. It was like being on a very long road trip. You drive for so long, and then when you pull up to your destination, or walk through that door, all you think about is what a great feeling it is that you're there. That the image in your mind, the thing you've been driving toward for so long, the reason that you've made the journey, is now real. And you're there. That's how I felt when I first got here. I allowed myself to be completely immersed in my destination, and what was promised to those who "made it" and were accepted here.

Recently, though, I've noticed a shift in my thinking. That future-oriented thinking that makes one a little uneasy, as opposed to the present-minded thinking that is so calming and soothing and uninterrupted. I've started thinking about my next step, which is internship, and the next city Kia and I will live in, and how that will be, and what I'll do after that, and whether my career path will become clearer or even more blurry at this next checkpoint along my journey. You could say I've rounded the bend, and rather than looking back at where I came from, I am now more concerned about where I'm going. That's what I've noticed recently. It tells me I'm settled here. It tells me I've been here a while. It's funny that I'm closer to leaving than to arriving.

I think I'll miss it here when I leave, but right now I'm not sure how much. I was thinking today that certain songs are inextricably (is that a word?) tied to person, place, and time. You hear a certain song, and you inevitably think of someone, or something, or someplace, or all three. 90s crap by the Goo Goo Dolls or Matchbox 20 - Lexington. Neutral Milk Hotel - Oberlin. Any song from "The Rising" by Bruce Springsteen or "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" - Walking to the Metro in Maryland. I am curious to know what I'll associate with my time here.

But this post was intended to be about something else, so I'll tell you about that.

Friday night was a trip to The City Museum. This place has many great features, the most salient and fun of which is this huge, metal, outdoor structure that has seemingly been cobbled together from various industrial throw-aways and other such things you could find at a junkyard. There is a plane you can sit in, many bridges and things you can walk over and slither through, and an endless supply of slides to...well, slide down. There's also a new feature, which is a big ball pit, sort of like at Chuck E. Cheese, except the balls in this ball pit are kickball-sized, and the kids in this ball pit just want to pelt each other with the balls. Although the whole structure is completely stable, the thought that keeps running through my head as I navigate this thing is, "How have they not been sued yet?" Kia and I both slammed our heads while trying to duck under an overpass, and there are so many ways (SO many ways) that one could accidentally fall off the whole thing at least 50 feet and be pretty badly hurt. I marvel at the fact that they've stayed open this long.

But I'm quite glad they have. Tim, Kia, and I had a pretty good time trying to see how many different places we could explore in this metal labrynth. To help you visualize, and to celebrate the fact that we just learned how to put pictures on our computer (thanks, Tal), I'll illustrate who I'm talking about.

This is Tim. He plays guitar.
















And this is Kia, apparently nibbling on Moose's ear for some reason.















And that's me, apparently smelling something bad at Ben & Jerry's.














So yes, it was indeed a good time. The whole outdoor structure is great, and has other features I haven't mentioned (like a wall you have to climb with a rope and tunnels and ladders made out of wire that you can climb through and be suspended way up in the air). Needless to say, it's not for the faint of heart, or the claustrophobic (many opportunities to become stuck in tight places). By the end, Kia's knees were all bruised up and my lower back was feeling the ache. I think Tim somehow came out of it unscathed.

The inside is good too. In addition to another set of caves which appears to be inside a huge whale, there's a big fish tank where you can see fish and pick up turtles (although I don't think you're supposed to). There are many large rooms that look like they're about 100 years old and don't seem to serve much of a purpose in the museum. But they're there. And some of the walls outside the restrooms are made entirely of industrial metal sinks.

Cool place, that City Museum. Right off Washington Ave., if you're ever in the neighborhood.