She had told me earlier about game night; apparently a group of her friends get together and play board games. I thought, hey that sounds like fun, Saori and I are totally up for that. Monopoly, Sorry, Scrabble, yeah. Turns out not those kind of board games. Cassie led us up to an apartment block that looked like it had come from the 1960's-1970's, with high plaster ceilings and great block walls. The apartment belonged to a French graduate student, and there were about a dozen people there, apparently a mix of "Ramblers" (the UofA hiking club) and bioscience/optical science graduate students, with heavy overlap between the groups.
Saori introduced us to everyone and we got started playing a new game, Settlers of Catan. This is a German-style board game, a trading and strategy game. You start with one piece on the board, and you have access to the resources your piece straddles. The object is get 10 points, generally the more pieces you have on the board, the more points you get. Anyway, you can learn the rules pretty quickly, and I was actually surprised how quickly I got into it. In fact, I won the game, although it was pretty close. Afterwards, the group dispersed and Saori and I crashed at Cassie's house.
In the morning, we packed up our stuff and headed out to Bobo's, my favorite breakfast place in Arizona. Yes, more than Matt's Big Breakfast or OverEasy, or even Harlow's Cafe, although they're all really good. Bobo's is well-worn and dingy, the epitome of a cheap-eats place. However, on this weekday morning at 9 am, they were packed solid. The three of us had to wait to get bar seats. The food they serve is delicious and cheap. I got buttermilk pancake, delicious, fluffy, and larger than the plate. One pancake and you're pretty much set, although then you'd miss the best link sausage. It's a loud place, with people constantly moving around, two cooks working the stoves and the wait staff running around carrying food and coffees. If I owned a restaurant, I'd sell sophisticated food at night, Bobo's food in the morning.
After breakfast, Cassie walked us over to where she works/studies as a graduate student. She took us up into their relatively new biological sciences building and showed us around. I was curious to see it as it has a similar program (function, elements) to the project I helped design in Illinois. Here are some comparisons:
A Few Facts about the Thomas W. Keating Bioresearch Building
- Size: 177,000 square feet
- Occupants: 350+ researchers (faculty, research staff, and students) from many UA departments within multiple colleges
- Architects: Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership
- Contractor: Gilbane Inc.
- Total construction cost: $61,500,000 / $289 per square foot.
- Sixty-five percent of the cost of the building is mechanical, electrical and plumbing
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