I know, 2 days into my fake Wikipedia blogging habit, and I'm already falling behind. This is worse than trying to start flossing.

Anyway, yesterday's article was about the IG Farben Building in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. It's a fairly interesting building, being as it was the largest office building in Europe from its completion in 1930 all the way until the 1950s - it's pretty big. It's also notable as being the building in which the Nazis developed Zyklon B gas, used to kill a lot of Jews in concentration camps (When the building was returned to Germany after ownership by the U.S. Army and restored in 2001, they put a plaque on the building in memoriam of those who died.) That's all well and good, but the part that really caught me about the building was that, to this day, it uses Paternoster elevators. In case you don't know what these are, they're basically a bunch of phone booths on a bicycle chain which move vertically up and down elevator shafts. There are no doors, so as you're standing on a floor, a series of elevator cars just keep passing you by, never stopping. This sounded pretty neat to me, and way more efficient than standard elevators - until I thought about it.

You know how sometimes you'll step onto an escalator, and one of your feet will be on one step and the other on the one below? You know how disorienting that is? Well your feet can never be more than about six inches apart in that scenario. If you don't fully commit to your elevator car on a paternoster when you get on, you could potentially perform some very uncomfortable acrobatics, before possibly being squished in the mechanism. So, there's clearly drawbacks. The redemption comes in finding out that it is indeed possible to stay in a car while it goes on a complete circuit, up and around the top and back down again, past the top floor of the building. While apparently not a good idea, just the possibility makes it all worthwhile.

It's a shame that it's basically illegal to install them anymore.

Today on Wikipedia:

Sesame Street! Finally, after one entire day of waiting, a topic which I can give some important opinions on.

Actually, I take that back. While I seem to remember watching a lot of Sesame Street as a kid, I don't really have a complete vision of it anymore. All I remember are key bits, like Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch, and Snuffleupagus, whose first name I've just learned is Aloysius.

Combine the fact that I remember very little about Sesame Street with the fact that the only thing I hear about it any more is that they're adding some other minority character or disabled muppet to teach children about equality and sensitivity, and I think Sesame Street is really going down the tubes. Maybe sometime soon I'll actually watch an episode of Sesame Street and confirm my suspicions.

Now news abut my life:

Not too much to report today, except that for the first time in my recollection, I'm going to admit that Oprah was right about something: Ezell's Fried Chicken. I visited this corner chicken shack (recently expanded to five corners around Seattle) from which Oprah reportedly had her chicken airlifted on at least one occasion. If I was Oprah, I would've never slimmed down after having Ezell's chicken - but my weight would have fluctuated cyclically as I chose between greaseless, tender original and the tangy, crispy spicy recipe. Along with a tiny styrofoam container of *actual* mashed potatoes and a few sweet, yeasty biscuits, pretty soon I'd have to be brought to work with a forklift by the fire department.

Actually, I'd probably just work from home. Ezell's delivers.

I'm not very good at this whole "regular updates" thing. The problem is, I don't feel that I have anything to contribute to the internet. What I'm missing, of course, is that the bar for internet content is set extremely low, and just the fact that I spell about half of my words correctly puts me firmly in the upper echelons of internet content.

I think maybe eventually I'll just start writing a blog about Wikipedia's article of the day, just to form the habit.

Today, I learned about Cynna Kydd. As you can tell by her name, she is not normal. She is, in fact, an Australian Netball player. I do not know what Australian netball is, nor how it differs from other forms of netball, but it seems like goal scorer, which is what Cynna is, would be a pretty sweet position in any game. It looks like most of her career revolves around the time she *left* a team, the Melbourne Kestrals, and I guess things have never been the same. Apparently she's good, and has a shot to make the national team in 2007. I have no idea what nation they play against. Maybe New Zealand.

I can tell this isn't going to work out.

Life, on the other hand, has no shortage of things to write about, they're all just painfully boring. Work proceeded much as usual, except I actually went full-time this week, since Dawn wasn't in town, and airports were functional, and I felt like it. Plus, work to do. My deadline (which CANNOT be moved, even a little bit) is August 31, and I still have a little bit of work and a lot of testing to do. Wish me luck.

As a little bonus, the Amazon front lawn picnic was Friday, during which I got to eat the very same food I eat in the cafeteria most days on the front lawn, cooked over coals, rather than gas, by the very same people who usually cook it inside, and then I had to plunge my hand into ice water to get a Coke rather than drawing it from the soda fountain. I felt rugged and outdoorsy.

I'm pretty sheltered.

But no, the food was not the high point, the high point was a free concert on the lawn by Carbon Leaf, a band with whom I'm passingly familiar, and whose concert I could have watched out my office window if I didn't want a hamburger so badly (and hadn't already paid for it earlier in the week). So, the perks at Amazon are pretty sweet.

As I was anticipating the concert/lunch, my friend Stephanie from high school called, and told me she was having a housewarming party that night, and I should drop by. So I did, around nineish, after a leisurely stroll down the 15 or so blocks to get there, punctuated by a quick stop at the liquor store, because after all, it's no housewarming if you don't warm the house (and its inhabitants) with liquor. I went, I met her friends (good people, to the last man/woman), and generally had a good time. We tried to walk down to Hot Mama's pizza at about 2 to grab a slice, but it was just after last call, so they were open, but had RUN OUT OF PIZZA. Shameful.

So I walked home, accompanied by one of Stephanie's friends who happens to live like 3 blocks from me. Crazy.

Today, I finished decorating my apartment (except that last set of curtains behind the TV, who knows if I'll ever get back there), and cleaned like a madman, and had a burrito, and bought some shampoo, and watched my new Ben Folds DVD and had a leisurely evening. If you have the means, I highly recommend it.

That's about it for me. In the future, if the wikipedia article is as uninteresting as today's, I'll take suggestions from the audience. Dawn, I'm looking at you.

edit: By the end of this post, I'd discovered that Australian netball is no different from any other kind of netball, but I still have no idea what it is.

So, updates. I should really start trying to form a habit around this. Wake up, shower, shove down a bowl of Cheerios, blog. Until I do that though, everyone just has to hold on.

On our last episode, I left preparing to kayak on Lake Washington. What I didn't mention was that we were going to go to Mikey's that night, meet a lot of people, drink far too much, make an ass out of myself, and generally have one of the worst nights ever. So naturally, the next morning I was like living death. Dawn was mad at me (I don't blame her.) I knew we had to go kayaking, and there was no way I would back out, despite the fact that I was almost certain I'd die if we did. I choked down a hot dog bun, and we were out the door - I actually started feeling a lot better, and we spent 2 hours out kayaking, it was a great time. I'll have to do a lot more of that before summer's over - 'specially since we found a place where you can get a kayak all day for $25.

The rest of the day was spent grocery shopping, and staying at home - an enjoyable day, all things considered. Sunday, we rose late-ish, and set out for the EMP (Experience Music Project). It's a huge monument to music, designed by Frank Gehry and filled with memorabilia by Paul Allen. Aside from the high cost of entry, it's really a cool place - the whole history of modern music in one building, with a lot of interactive-type stuff. Plus, they had an art exhibit comparing 19th-century works to seemingly unrelated 20th-century works, and you were invited (and assisted, via audio-guide) to find parallels. It was neat. After that, we wandered around the Seattle Center for a while (who knew they had a whole amusement park in there? Not me.) After that, back home briefly, then out with Mikey to get his ear pierced and get some dinner at Broadway Grill. The piercing was just OK, but the dinner was good. Then, back to my place to play XBOX 360 in glorious high-definition on the big screen. Frogger is *way* better when it's 4 feet wide.

Monday, down to the Seattle Aquarium (which we'd spied from the market a few days earlier), and then up to the market for a little wandering and light shopping before dinner at Anthony's. Dinner was delicious, but it took our server three tries to make the connection between bringing people bread and butter and providing them a knife with which to spread the butter. Aside from that, delightful. Afterwards, back home, and Tuesday back to the grind.

Tuesday evening we swung by Noah's for his birthday party, but it was simmering down, so we left quick-ish (leaving Mikey to look after Noah, who apparently needed looking after). Wednesday, more of the same - we did finish hanging shelves in my apartment though, so I can finally store my DVDs as they were meant to be stored. Hooray!

This morning was a disaster. I stayed up until about 3 reading Angels and Demons, by everyone's favorite scientific-religious conspiracy theorist Dan Brown (like the Da Vinci code, but crazier) and then was woken at about 7 by Dawn telling me we should watch the news, apparently there was some kind of terrorist thing, and what a good day we'd picked to fly. If you didn't read about the terrorist thing, go read about it - apparently British authorities foiled an operation in the UK, so the TSA raised the American terror level to Orange, which is the level at which you must wait in line 3 hours and empty all your toothpaste in order to get on a plane. So, I went to work for about two hours, then came home and got Dawn, getting her to the airport three hours before her flight - she made it to the gate 5 minutes before takeoff, and was nearly denied a seat. At least she made it, I guess. The line at the airport was *ridiculous*. Out the door, into the garage, and all the way to the end of the garage level, easily a quarter-mile of security line - and not even a movie-themed ride at the end.

That's about it - I came back home, got some work done, had dinner, and now here I am. I'll try to keep you a little more regularly posted from now on, provided there's stuff to keep you posted about.

I almost forgot about that. Not too much to report...up until a few days ago. Work was fine, home was boring but fine, I recovered admirably from the bout of intense heat that Seattle dealt me - it was all just fine. Tuesday Dawn came into town, and we've had fun since then - didn't do much Tuesday - got Thai with Mikey on Broadway, came home and slept. Wednesday the fun started, we went to IKEA and essentially furnished the rest of the apartment, with a side trip to Target - I'm pretty much all set up now. Dinner was at IKEA out of necessity, and for $5, it wasn't bad. Nothing to write home about, so I won't. Thursday, more shopping - Target, Michael's crafts, and then to meet Mikey for dinner. We were going to go to Dixie's BBQ (apparently the best in the city), but it got too late, so we got Quizno's. It was...anticlimactic.

Today is when the actual fun started - up at 10:30 or so, lounge around until 12, and then downtown, Dawn's first time. We got lunch at Cafe Campagne (highly recommended, the prix fixe lunch includes a wonderful house-made sausage sandwich with a sort of chunky tzatziki - excellent.) We wandered around Pike Place for a while, saw people tossing fish, bought some flowers, checked out some excellent street musicians, and then off to the retail corridor. Not too much happening there, so we grabbed a refreshment at Il Fornaio, and then off to see the Seattle Public Library. (If this doesn't sound like a destination to you, then you haven't seen the Seattle Public Library.) It was pretty awesome, Dawn got a book to read while I'm at work, I saw the library, and took a short, unplanned nap.

From there we wandered back down towards the market in search of dinner, which we found at 94 Stewart. The restaurant itself is nice, and the appetizers were great - I had fresh clam chowder, and Dawn had the house specialty, a quartered, panko-encrusted fried avocado with crab and corn relish and some other assorted deliciousness. Try it, you'll like it. I had lamb chops with lemon-rosemary reduction and lemon red potatoes, and it was...average. The chops were cooked well, but could have been hotter, and the seasoning was a little overdone. The desserts made up for it though, house-made tortes - I had a turtle torte, and Dawn peanut butter - both excellent. Now we're back home, and shortly we're going out for the night. Fun fun.

Tomorrow, we'll be kayaking on Lake Washington while the Blue Angels show us exactly how close you can two planes together and still live to tell about it.