Okay, before I forget (which I will if I wait another five-or-six minut ... wait, what was I doing?), here is the link to the Texas Monthly article I promised. I'm not sure if you can access it without a subscription to Texas Monthly, but if you can, enjoy. The photo of Dirk was taken by none other than Artie Limmer, a photographer in our office. Michael Castellon, who just jumped ship for Austin, was lucky enough to get a signed and framed photo of his choice from Artie as a parting gift. I'm green.

Crash Test Dummy

Spent Memorial Day lugging furniture in Fort Worth. Actually, spent Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday moving. On Memorial Day we rested. If I learned anything over the weekend, it's never to attempt moving the contents of a two bedroom house with only one guy and two petite girls. I feel like my body was used for crash testing and we were racing to get the U-Haul emptied in time to meet the 1:30 p.m. deadline. Plus it rained. Plus the U-Haul we rented had a trailer attached, which added its own set of fun circumstances - you know, hitches popping off, tight corners, detours, near collisions, etc.



Wish I were here: My brother and his wife spent a few days in Playa Del Carmen to celebrate a combined anniversary, birthday, medical school graduation and architectural certification. I'm trying not to be too jealous. Especially since it's been cold and rainy for Lubbock in May.


I do, however, forget how pretty Fort Worth is until I see it again. It has such a great feel as far as being a combination between a big city and small town. The streets are wide and green and it just has a nice relaxed vibe to it.

While I was there, I found myself almost unwillingly doing homework (confirming how conditioned I am by my job). While we were in Fort Worth, I did a completely unscientific survey as we were driving and, in the heart of TCU country (the house we were moving the furniture into is only about three blocks from campus), counted three Double T vehicle stickers and one address marker on a curb. That's more stickers than I saw for UT and A&M combined. Good to see that Texas Tech seems to have a solid presence there.

Oh, and I spent some time poking around the TCU campus. When I was graduating high school, I was a hardcore TCU fan and couldn't wait to go there. I spent a great weekend in the then-football dorms and came home burdened with T-shirts, caps and ambitions of being a Horned Frog. Through my own fault, however, that wound up falling through (didn't fill out some of my paperwork correctly so I couldn't get registered, etc.) and wound up in Lubbock. I hadn't been back on the TCU campus since. It is the same beautiful campus I remembered, with some amazing buildings, but it is always striking to me how used to having a pedestrian campus I've become here at Texas Tech. It was disconcerting to see major streets cutting between buildings. Still didn't get a chance to eat at Fuzzy's Taco Shop. Oh well, maybe next time...

I know that face...

So I got home from work last night and noticed my latest issue of Texas Monthly lying atop the Everest of mail that tends to pile up on our dining room table.

Typically I let the new magazines stew for a few days while I finish picking through the pages of last month's deluge (if there's one thing we don't lack, it's magazine subscriptions); however, guided by indiscernable whim or the clever hands of fate (or whatever else), I picked it up. The pages fell open to the intriguing piece of artwork pictured here.

Why intriguing? The piece was too hip for most fine art and too artful for most concert posters. It had text, so I figured it must be advertising something, but the words were too vague to be part of a paid advertisement. Then I noticed a name I recognized. Dirk Fowler, one of my former Texas Tech professors, had designed the piece. It was one example in a feature section about Dirk's poster work. Texas Monthly doesn't have the issue up online yet, but I'll post a link when there is one.

For now, though, I've settled for including an example of his awesome work. Oh, and he's got some great ones on his website. But don't take my word for it. Go here to see more posters and commentary.

I had Dirk's class back in the days when I deluded myself with the thought that I could be a graphic designer. Design, I found the hard way, is not my forte. However, I do still dabble in illustration, drawing and such. I keep telling myself I'm going to start trying to make some money at it, but can't seem to get around to doing so. Here are a few examples.

The Good Times are Killing Me

So as a child of the eighties and a Tim Burton fan, I felt pretty secure in my nomination of Jack Nicholson as the best Joker ever. That certainty got jarred a bit yesterday when I saw this picture. I was having trouble picturing Heath Ledger as the Joker, but I'll be fascitated to see what they do with the part. More Dark Knight fun here.

Anyway, on to the real business at hand, which was my weekend. Imagine this scenario: Thirty-four people, most of them family, in an unfamiliar town. Three days of marathon events. Missed instructions. Frayed nerves. Kisses. Hugs. Arguments. Hugs. Hangovers. Hugs. "How are you?" "How are you?" "How are you?" "How are you?" And hugs -- did I mention hugs? We managed to survive the weekend without major bloodletting, but it was a close call at times. Amazing how celebrations can be so stressful.

But congratulations to my sister-in-law Rachel, who graduated from the Texas Tech Health Sciences Center this weekend and is about to begin her residency in dermatology in Lubbock. Also: good news for her husband, my brother (obviously), Andy, who just finished taking the nine gruelling tests required to be certified as an architect. He got the good news nearly four years to the day after graduating from the College of Architecture, which I hear is about as soon as you can get that done. He passed all nine tests on the first attempt. So good for them, even if they did raise the bar for me as far as accomplishments are concerned.

Oh, and then some bad news. We're losing the de facto intellect of the office this week to Austin. Michael Castellon got an offer to do something at some place having to do with computers or something... yada yada yada, you know how it goes. Anyway, we'll have a definite hole to fill. He's done much to push Texas Tech's communications into, well, at least the 20th century as far as being technologically integrated and internet savvy. He's missing a golden opportunity to further befriend himself with Apple Inc. as the head of our iTunes initiative, but I have no doubt he's off to bigger and better things.

So you squander the last of your youth spinning for The Man and finally you look up from the treadmill one day and you're getting fat and growing bald and you've got a few gray hairs and you are surrounded by students who look younger every passing day... but now you've got a blog. Which is how I console myself knowing that our entire student population has fled campus for at least a few weeks. I miss summer break. Losing those lazy, sunny, precious golden summer days (and sleeping in, and getting christmas break, and having free afternoons) is about the only thing I regret about having broken into this quagmire of muck and grime and looming deadlines that we call the real world.

In the news: Texas Tech made what seems like one of its best decisions in recent history by hiring chess dynamos Susan Polgar and Paul Truong to head a new institute devoted to chess outreach, education and research (see exciting story here). I don't think any other universities are doing anything of this caliber, and having two chess champions heading the team will be great for recruitment (along with being one of the only universities in the country to offer scholarships). Go Knight Raiders.

And along the lines of good decisions, we also recently announced a partnership with Apple Inc.'s iTunes. All those crazy kids on campus with white cords hanging from their ears will now have a new spot to hang out... on their own iTunes page. And somehow, technophobe that I am, I'm now going to have the monumental task of making sure people are putting content on the site. We've got some good ideas brewing and student radio station KTXT is ready to jump in with content within the next few weeks. I'll keep you posted.