#532 Blue, orange, white

The price is heiß and I have to say that I do like the colors in this setup at Home Depot in Ithaca. 

#531 Milstein Hall

Contrary to the museum extension building, the long debated Milstein Hall is getting along quite nicely.

#530 Penguin Bay Wine

My taste buds are pretty indifferent to wine, I can rarely tell you if something is a good wine or not (it's good enough to realize that the wines from my home region in Germany are awful). So I go by label design and I have to say that I do like the Penguin Bay winery labels a lot. This particular one reminds me of this BBC documentary.

#529 New Carshare Car

Look, Ithaca Carshare has a new car. They realized that the Pickup is getting used quite a lot. So they figured people like to transport big stuff and this Ford is as if it's made to carry big stuff. It has a very good gas milage and is therefore perfect for transporting your garden waste to the waste facility in an eco-friendly manner. Of course you can also take it out when you are hitting the stores for stocking up your basic supplies. 

#528 Road Close (Stewart Avenue)

This is the bridge on Stewart Avenue near Chapter House. It's been closed this week and no one really knows why. There is a digger, two people and a hole on the southern end of the bridge and that's about it. Does anyone know what they are doing? And have you noticed the miserable whether on the photos this week?

#527 Big Red Welcome

Unless you are not US-American or have been dug in a hole, you might have heard that Cornell did pretty well in this year's NCAA basketball tournament. I did not know much about this before this year, but basically a bunch of college kids from all over the nation play basketball against each other. The level of play is surprisingly high for college kids and surprisingly low for national television.

Anyways, Cornell made it to the Sweet 16 which is kind of a big deal and there was lots of excitement. On Friday the team came back home to Ithaca. The Big Red Welcome Party was set for 12noon in front of day hall. 12.05 someone shouted out the info that the bus is still in Cortland and it would take another 25 minutes. In the end the team did arrive (escorted by police, fire brigade and everyone else who has flashing lights on their roofs) 45 minutes late for their own welcome party. In the picture above you can identify the team by their light grey jackets (and them being generally pretty tall).

If you subscribe to the Cornell Chronicle's RSS feed you might have read the headline "500 welcome home Big Red men's basketball team after NCAA run". The 500 was later corrected to "hundreds" which is more appropriate for the small gathering of university staff who took the chance to extend their lunch break.

#526 The Fence

If you follow the news you might have gathered that there have been a few more suicides than statistically expected over the past weeks here at Cornell. While there are plenty of ways to get yourself killed, suicidees around town seem to prefer jumping of high bridges and having gravity and impact loads do the job. As a result, all our beautiful bridges now get funky barbed wire fence installed. Why is that so? Basically, the idea is that with this new fence in place it is for the first time realistically possible to jump with spectators. If you see someone on the side of the bridge, instead of trying to grab them you are now doomed to watch them do what they are doing. Great job, thanks for that improvement.

#525 Portaloo

They've been digging next to the Johnson Museum to build a new annexe and all they managed to put up so far is a portaloo (slightly off right from the center of the image).

#524 Where is it?

Where is it? Reply by comment or twitter (@jonemo).

#523 Ignite Ithaca!

IGNITE ITHACA is a high-energy evening of 5-minute talks by people who have an idea–and the guts to get onstage and share it with their hometown crowd. Run by local volunteers who are connected through the global IGNITE network, IGNITE is a force for raising the collective IQ and building connections.

WHEN: Thursday, April 15, 2010 7:00pm - 9:00pm WHERE: Pixel Lounge - Ithaca, NY

#522 Derby

Yes it is starting again, and this time it will be double exciting. The Derby Season! Roller Derby is back mid-April and since Cass Park in undergoing renovations (or so) they start out in Cortland.

So let's go to Cortland.

Go SufferJets!

Go BlueStockings!

#521 The Dragon

Told you! The dragon didn't burn at all and is currently hiding behind Rand Hall. I guess the AAP students who put it together will now have to take it apart again.

#520 BURN! It's Dragon Day

So today is Dragon Day. Don't know what Dragon Day is? We explained last year so we won't do that again this year. The burning is meant metaphorically only: Thanks to some over-regulation the Dragon may not burn as it did for more than one hundred years. Read more about it in the Cornell Chronicle.

#519 Dragon Day coming up tomorrow!

I am not sure what these constructions parked in front of Rand Hall are, but they are a reminder that Dragon Day is coming up tomorrow. Unfortunately, I am not getting excited about this all too much because I anticipate spending tomorrow in front of my keyboard hacking down Matlab code trying to get this crazy homework done by the deadline. Why am I still taking classes? Oh, I remember: Because they are interesting.

#518 Stairs

I cycled past this parking lot (top left in the image) many times last year and this winter on my way up the hill. I never ntoiced that there are stairs going down into the gorge. What is the building at the bottom?

#517 Look, it's a Verdi!

How is this company name (?) supposed to be read? Like in "Look, it's a Verdi!"? (I don't think this combination of question, quotation and exclamation mark is strictly valid but you get what I mean, don't you dear Reader?)

#516 Lake Seneca

There's a Seneca Lake in Ohio and one in New York. Of course, this is the one in New York. The one in Ohio is not a tenth as nice. Just look at the people sunbathing in the Ohio Seneca Lake! So this is Seneca Lake in New York. This one has been a testing ground for submarines - I kid you not, it's on Wikipedia so it has to be true. Because it's so long and deep and everything it contains half the water of all the Finger Lakes. Lake Cayuga: Shame on you for being so small. It should be noted however, that Seneca Lake is stealing water from Keuka Lake (the outlet of K.L. flows into the inlet of S.L.).

#515 Blue Stockings

Great advertising! Ithaca Roller Derby Girls were posing in a downtown Ithaca store. Now that we have two teams, the SufferJets and the Blue Stockings, we can Rock'n'Roll twice as much!

#514 snowy path

I am not happy. We had a few days of really nice weather and now it's raining and grey and brrrr (just in time for the weekend and our guest to arrive). So to illustrate that I dug out a snow photo from one or two weeks ago. 

#513 Hundreds of bottles

After yesterday and the day before, here are some glass bottles for a change.

#512 Cooking Oil Research 2: Wegmans

Here's the number two store in Ithaca for cooking oil variety (number one is here). Why did I do that? Turns out that roboticists occasionally work with cooking oil...

#511 Cooking Oil Research 1: Tops

So recently I ended up doing some research on cooking oils. Turns out Wegmans has by no means the largest selection in Ithaca. Wegmans has about 60 different oils, the Tops nearby has almost twice as much. Here's the photo to proof it.

#510 Taughannock Falls

Every time we go on a wine tour we stop by Taughannock Falls. See some earlier photos of Taughannock falls on this blog: #133, #138, #298.

#509 Blue Sky means No Snow

After a week of snow and snow (and some more snow) it is delightful to see the blue sky and have some spring-y temperatures out there. Emphasis being on "out there" because I am in here.

#508 Neubert Wine

Imagine my surprise when - on our recent wine tour - I found that there is a wine named after my family!

#507 Snow Plow

Today shall be the last snow picture because it seems like it's getting spring out there. Yay!

#506 Starship Enterprise stuck in snow

That's the Spaceship Enterprise Cocktail Bar library windows (camouflaged into the Libe slope) photographed during the winter storm last week. Few hours later you could only see a white wall through these windows.

#505 Where is my car?

Not only bikes got buried in snow, VW beetles did so, too.

#504 No Cycling Today

With these amounts of snow on the ground even the bravest cyclist (that's me) left his bike indoors.

#503 Iced Bridge

This bridge is the usual end spot for my (almost) daily walk through the woods by Ithaca High School. It was taken last week during the Big Storm. I love how I managed to frame the bridge with all the snowy branches and I love the muted green against the frosty background. In the spring, summer and fall, you can stand on the bridge and watch the beavers swim around.

#502 Digging

 

 This blogger's family got a new addition this weekend. Here he is, digging around in the snow. 

#501 Road Signs

 

We went snowshoeing this weekend, with the dogs, to celebrate the large amounts of snow we had at the end of last week. The snowshoes really help when the snow is this deep!