It's been one of the coldest winters on record in the Louisville area of Kentucky. Being a man of strong prejudice against the cold, I was very unhappy when outside at almost all times between about November and March. This also meant no travel, since my M.O. when hopping over to a nearby town is to wander around outside and occasionally poke my head inside somewhere that looks interesting. When it's zero degrees fahrenheit, wandering around outside is a death wish.
So, it's been a pretty good first year of grad school. All told I'm still on board with my decision to leave my job. Of course, I haven't re-entered the "real world", so it's sort of irrelevant how I feel now. I'm carefree! Of course I like it!
Being busy with school lasted until May, then after a quick visit home and watching 24 straight hours of a television show (three guesses which. Hint: it has something to do with watching 24 hours of it in a row), I landed a lucrative and prestigious position scanning things into a computer for the music library. Since I get paid hourly, and the summer hours are 9-5 Monday through Friday, I'm back in the 40 hour box of gainful employment. Thus, travel has been limited if not totally impossible for the summer.
I wanted to start going places again, but I wanted somewhere monumental to re-ignite this blog. Instead, I went to Lexington. I was going to start off by exploring the UK campus, but parking was all but impossible. Do they not expect people will want to park there who don't have a yearlong pass? Prospectives maybe? Perhaps there's an unwritten rule that you can park anywhere on Sunday for free, but all of the "24/7 Tow Zone" signs begged to differ.
So I headed downtown. It mostly looked like this:
A mixture of taller buildings and shorter, older-style ones typical of small town southern US. In a variety of pastel colors.
Wandered by the courthouse:
Then to the public library just past it:
The library was pretty neat. It was cylindrical, like five or six stories high, and had an open area through all of them in the middle, where a giant pendulum hung and pointed at a large compass or sundial or something at the bottom. Didn't take a picture of it, but I did take one of downtown Lexington from the second story window:
It certainly looks like a bustling metropolis, until you realize that those are essentially all of the buildings in the downtown area.
Wandered around. Saw these buildings:
And this place:
Which was some sort of combination mall and expo center. A lot of the shops in the mall seemed closed down, but maybe that's just what they do on a Sunday afternoon?
Had lunch at this place, called Third Street Stuff:
It's one of those quirky indie coffee and sandwich shops - both of which I tried, and both of which were delicious.
That was pretty much it. A short day, but hopefully the first of many to come. I don't have anything in the works, but there are still a couple of places within the reasonable driving radius. I'll see where my whims take me.
It's good to be back.
