Three sentence movie reviews: Everything Everything

Even more delightful than watching this alone in the theater, was watching this with a friend who gasped in all the right places.  Both leads are still good.  Rendered into celluloid (or whatever the digital equivalent is,) the story seems much more far-fetched, but it is still a delightful ride.

Cost: there was possibly a cost?  We streamed
Where watched: At The Grey House, with Sara and Shawn

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2017/everything_everything.html

Capitol Wander

After our campus tour, and a trip home for lunch, we took the light rail to St. Paul to visit the newly renovated capitol building.

It looks great, as every newly renovated capitol should.

Here’s the informative plaque when the capitol was first built.  The renovation had a similarly-styled plaque across the hallway.  I neglected to take a picture of it.

Sara fills an empty niche.  Why is this niche empty?

There is a grand view under the rotunda.

The rotunda itself was very impressive.

Sara as governor in the governor’s reception room.

We loved all the guilding and that very ostentatious “M” on the curtains in the reception room. 

Why have two flags when you could have six?

There were quotes about government.

Some good manifest destiny imagery.

The worker, working away.

Looking down on the star that is a symbol of the motto “The North Star State.” 

A closer look at the rotunda.  All the detail!  Such a good color of blue!

These lights were very fun.

Sara and I rounded a corner and spotted this elevator.  We both gasped in delight.  It was so beautiful!

The mail slots were still there, but alas, no longer usable.

We looked at all four of the season murals.

Looking down to the main floor.

One of the most interesting thing about this capitol building was that it housed not only the governor, House and Senate, but also the Supreme Court.  I feel that this is an unusual setup.

Great staircase.

More quotes about government. 

Here’s what the murals looked like, before the restoration.

We took the fabulous elevator down to the basement, where we were delighted to find…

The Rathskeller Cafeteria.  It was designed in the style of a German Beer Hall and included fun mottoes written in German, along with small animals painted on the walls.

Here are some of the mottos and how they were changed during Prohibition.

We also found the media area, located right under the star below the rotunda. When we looped back around, there was a man vacuuming, so we got to see it lit up.

It’s not surprising that chilly Minnesota has an underground tunnel system built into its physical plant.   We could have walked the whole loop, but opted for a trip to the Senate Office Building and back. Aside from having a good capitol building, they also had an impressive amount of grounds.

Campus Wander

Sara had an interview today on the University of Minnesota Campus, and so I wandered around until she was done.  Here are some things I saw.

Man, the Richardson Romanesque of this campus?  Amazing.  So many good details. 

I heard this group coming long before I saw them.  I’ve never been in the kind of running shape to run with a group, but this looked fun.

There’s a big mall/quad area that has these red Adirondack chairs scattered around.  Quite lovely.

Outside Coffman Memorial Union was this formidable sign.

I wandered around Coffman Memorial Union. It’s the student union. They had this great photo of TV time in the (presumably) 1950s, or early 1960s.

And look, you can still have TV time today.  I would bet there is a lot less newspaper reading, though.

I hung out with John Sargent Pillsbury for a while.

I wasn’t the only one hanging out.

I enjoyed this person following the rules of the sign.

Sara & I walked across the Washington Avenue Pedestrian Bridge.  It crosses the Mississippi and joins the East Bank of Campus with the West Bank of campus.  And! The student clubs paint ads in it.  Here are some of my favorites:

Game of Thrones was a theme in many ads.

Being formerly Idaho girls, we easily spotted the Mormon club.

It’s always good to have a good artist in your club.  Then your panel looks better.

Quiddich and a Yule Ball? Amazing!

And, oh my gosh, if this club had existed in my college days, I would have signed right up.

You can see that the SOBER club was lacking a full-artist-type person.  But they did a pretty good job with what they had.

Here she is.  The Mississippi!

And our next stop, the Weisman Art Museum. 

The museum had some good stuff.  I even found a platter on display made by my friend Sue, who participated in the St. Croix Valley Pottery Tour. That was pretty exciting.

And the Pedicord Apartments?  It rocked my world.  I loved it.

“What is that?” I said to Sara, while pointing.  She gave a shudder.

Inside, the hallway was super claustrophobic. The artists had used forced perspective very effectively.  Plus, there was goopy stuff all over the doorways.  I loved it!

And then I went back out and read the informational sign and it got even better.

When you leaned in to listen at the doors, you could hear what was going on inside the rooms.  Really creepy and incredible.  Highly recommended.  I spent some time figuring out what made the sound start when you leaned into the doorway.

Here is more information about the piece.

From a balcony at the Weisman we could take a picture of the Washington Avenue Pedestrian Bridge.  The light rail runs below the part we walked on.

We went in search of postcards, which afforded me this picture of these overalls, worn by enthusiastic students to games.  Earlier in the day, at the campus bookstore, I watched a guy trying a pair on.