Episode VI: The Little Things

Here are some of the small, day-to-day kinds of things that have caught my attention recently.

Sports

Around here, college sports are indeed a day-to-day kind of thing. Friday the 13^th was KU basketball’s opening night kind of celebration, featuring skits, mascots, Harlem Globetrotter imitators, and somewhere in there some basketball as well. The funniest part was both men’s and women’s teams doing exquisite choreographed dance routines. So sports fans, if you will, please imagine former KU players, such as Paul Pierce or Raef LaFrentz, dancing the waltz (or the Macarena) on the basketball court. I think you will agree, it is a pretty funny thought.

(These pictures were not taken by me. I forgot my camera.)

Pithy Sayings

A few words of wisdom that I have picked up while out here:

First and foremost:

“Knowledge is the understanding that tomatoes are fruits,

Wisdom is not using them in a fruit salad.”

And a couple on location:

Note that the city of Lawrence, but not the state of Kansas, has rules against smoking in indoor public places.

Around Town

A couple of structural curiosities that I have found here in Lawrence:

First, in some of the older parts of town, the sidewalks are made out of bricks which are fairly uneven and not particularly well-taken-care-of. The interesting thing is that many of the bricks have “Lawrence, Kansas” engraved into them. I have two hypotheses on why this would be: first, the city may want to discourage other cities from stealing the bricks from Lawrence’s sidewalks to use in their construction. After all, it would be embarrassing to have a public building in Kansas City built out of bricks that said “Lawrence, Kansas” on them. My second hypothesis is that it serves as a sort of station identification so that, if you were abducted, blindfolded and taken to Lawrence, then left on the sidewalk to fend for yourself, you would immediately be able to get your bearings and recognize that you were in fact in Lawrence, KS.

Another useful public sign is this, typical of the stairwells on campus, letting you know that you are on the fourth floor, and if you go up one level, you will be on the fifth floor, and if you go down one level, you will be on the third floor.

And Finally…

Even though I have not been driving much (since nearly everything is within easy walking distance), it is nice to know that gas has been hovering just below $2 here.