There's no place like dome

One of the most famous family stories from my childhood involves the time when - aged 10 or 11 - I took a large stack of notebook paper and wrote on the first page, "To Walk with Jackals: Part One of an Epic Trilogy." I probably don't need to tell you that no more of the book ever got written. At age 12, I kept a scrapbook on our trip to the UK; at one point, I made a cover page for a mystery story of some sort, and even got onto the first real page - at which point the story literally terminates in the middle of the first sentence, never to continue.

This is something of a roundabout way of noting that the ideas I have to do things don't always match up with my capacity or desire to see them through. So maybe what follows is going to end up being completely irrelevant; certainly "My Year of Bonds" is dragging along like crazy, although I'm sure I'll manage to finish it eventually, if not within a single year. But I'm going to write about it anyway.

In addition to being something that may not ever get completed, The Capitol Dome Project is something that may well only be interesting to me. Alma, predictably, was not overly enthused, though she did humor me on the inaugural entry. Drew could only offer that it was not the dorkiest idea I've ever had. Alma's sister and brother-in-law suggested it could be interesting, although they were probably just being polite. My mom seemed to find it interesting, but then it's a lot of her dorkyribonucleic acid that I've got running around my body in the first place.

The Capitol Dome Project is, I guess, pretty self-explanatory. Basically, the goal is to visit all 50 US state capitals. And, in particular, the goal is to get a picture of myself standing in front of the capitol buildings, with the domes (or whatever, since there might be a handful that don't have domes per se) visible next to/behind me.

It's a project that could well take a very long time. Even if I averaged five a year - one every 2.5 months, which really sounds like a lot, especially once the few fairly close ones are finished - that's a decade. Ten years from now I'll be 37, and while I'll still be me and therefore surely not above completing a ridiculous project like this, who knows what might happen between now and then, really.

The "good news" is that by my calculation, 19 of the 49 remaining capitals are within six hours' drive - i.e. a weekend trip at worst - of a place I might have other reason to be for something more than just "vacation" (Chicago, DC, Boston). A further 18 are within four hours' drive of a major city that might be interesting enough on its own to justify a trip. The final 12 will probably require a special trip, and as such will probably include the last few to get done. (Naturally, only two of these are east of the Mississippi.)

I guess we'll see what we see, but since I already wanted to visit all the states in the union at some point, I certainly would like to be able to complete this project. The first entry - a tad repetitive if you've been keeping tabs on my Facebook photo albums - is here. Next update to come who knows when.

Seattle, walkin'-a-ton

A walk I took before work this morning:



Pictures from the walk will be up on Facebook tonight.

Morning star

I am pretty much a night owl by nature. When I was a baby, I would sleep from midnight to noon, then stay up from noon to midnight. At Northwestern, I was known for my late hours, often ridiculous even by collegiate standards, and my oft-quoted-by-Drew commentary on once needing to get up pretty early to catch a plane: "I should probably just stay up all night."

With that said, I really enjoy being up early in the mornings. I'm here in Seattle, as most of you are probably already aware. Since we came in on business, I figured that I wouldn't have a ton of time to do a lot of touristy stuff, since we'll likely be working 9-5 or 9-6 every day. (Granted, that still allows for 2-3 hours before sundown, and last night the sun didn't completely sink behind the Pacific until after I fell asleep, which was around 8:45 local time. But still.) However, I've been getting up earlier at home, and 5:30 Central, which is about when I've been waking, is 3:30 Pacific.

Well, I didn't get up at 3:30 today. But after a long day of travel and work, that would have been crazy. I woke up at 4:15 Central on Monday so I could get down to Midway for an 8:30 flight (which ended up having its boarding delayed by almost 90 minutes), and as usual didn't sleep on the flight. By mid-evening Seattle time, after a few hours of work, I was pretty wiped out. I was in bed by 8:15 or so, and though I didn't fall asleep right away, by around 8:45 I was gone.

A strange dream in which I was being chased down a dark hallway by a young Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Cheryl Ford (better known as Karl Malone's illegitimate daughter by non-WNBA fans, by which I mean everyone) woke me up this morning at three minutes to five, just before my first alarm was set to go off. I had plenty of time to take a shower and be out the door by six.

The upshot is I was able to walk to Pike Place Market, take some photos of the waterfront and a snow-capped Mt. Rainier (lurking in the background and not terribly prominent in the photos as it fades into the sky), get a cappuccino from the first Starbucks, buy Alma a present, and walk back to the hotel... and even after writing this entire blog post it's only ten minutes past seven, leaving nearly an hour and a half before I'm scheduled to meet the other two people on the trip to walk over to the office. Being up early and doing things in that time makes me feel productive in a way that really nothing else can. I don't know if I'm the kind of person who can really be "early to bed and early to rise" every day, but darn if it isn't fun right now.

Oh, and pictures on Facebook, if that might interest you.