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Sunday
January 10, 2010

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Had that somewhat dazed and shattered feeling as I made my way across town from way down south where we'd stayed up late celebrating Bruce's 40th birthday, unusually warm so I spun 45s on the back deck until 2 am. Connie drove me to lightrail in Columbia City and lent me $3 for farebox, then I transferred and waited at the wrong bus stop for a long time (where the 5 only comes by during rush hour). Not quite hungover but hollowed out, the gentle morning-after you get from having stuck mainly to middle shelf or better booze; neither altogether unpleasant nor debilitating even though the Manhattans had gone down like water. I don't mind waiting in the wrong place.
 
Call me a hick but I'm still impressed
by skyscrapers. If it'd been raining hard
I would have drowned as I gawked
slack-jawed with head thrown back. My
appreciation has grown since I learned
that by some definitions a skyscraper is
any building where wind load is greater
than gravity's pull. Now I just imagine
the pressure exerted by the wind on the
surfaces and the complex engineering
solutions used to compensate
. A new
tower in Chicago
is both beautiful and
functional in its response by using
irregularly shaped contours like fins to
confuse and dissipate the force of wind.