If you look across the street, you see a parking lot and the back side of the Mississippi Baptist Hospital here in Jackson. They’re building an addition to the huge AC building, making a mess. Next door is a house that’s been carved up into a triplex, with only one third occupied.
The other side has an empty lot, where an ancient house once stood prior to becoming empty, a crack house, and destroyed in short order.
Behind me is the back yard of another house, they have a small dog, who barks occasionally. I think the lady who lives there is close to 90.
I’m on the 30th floor. I have to go right up to the window and look straight down to see the street. Wells, a N-S street in downtown Chicago. Just north of Adams. There is an el track running down Wells. From up here it is just an occasional muffled rumble. Walking in, this a.m., there was a medium sized truck parked across the street. The box had clear sides, and 2 workmen were inside setting it up like a sitting room with carpeting, chairs, tables, potted plants, etc. Struck me as something you don’t see every day.
Today it is raining, washing away some of the grey piles that once were snow. One block immediately east of me is a pretty neat postmodern building with a steeply pitched copper roof. A little more to the south is the black Miesian block of part of the federal complex. a few clicks to the southeast is the CBOT - I look right into the featureless face of Ceres (when they perched her atop the 40-so bldg they did not believe any other bldgs would be so tall as to necessitate detailing her face!) Just to the left of the CBOT is the triangular city jail. Due to the rain, I can’t see the inmates in orange jumpsuits playing hoops on the roof. (I often entertain an amusing image of them tossing the ball over the side, and then trying to convince the guard to let them go get it!)
Between the CBOT and the fed bldg should be Lake Michigan, but today both the sky and water are so grey that I cannot tell where one ends and the other begins.
Oh yeah - and there’s the pile of red bricks and limestone that is the Congress Hotel. The whole world may not be watching, but today I am.
The coolest thing about my office is the peregrine falcons who nest in the bldg behind mine, and swoop around right in front of my window several times a day.
I’m on a small, out-of-the way narrow street. It’s fun watching cars playing ‘chicken’, since there are cars parked on one side of the street and it’s a very narrow two lanes. Watching on-coming traffic is fun: if they’ve never been on the street, they creep along as if they’re unsure if they’re going the wrong way on a one-way street, whereas the ones who have been on the street drive hell-bent for leather in the middle of the street, daring the traffic on the same side as the parked cars to even remotely think of driving towards them without hitting them head-on.
There are several old oak trees in the middle of the paved parking lot. As far as wildlife, (damn, gotta refill the bird feeder again!), there are cardinals, titmice, pigeons, mourning doves and a very large and noisy blue jay. Oh, and some “tree rats” (squirrels) copulating on one of the lower branches. A few minutes ago, one of the females kicked one of the males off the branch to the ground (he seems to be okay, but from his track record in attempts, it doesn’t look like he’ll be making any significant contributions to the gene pool any time soon).
Oh, and it’s 80F, sunny, clear skies with mostly wispy clouds.
And a very loud mockingbird is now singing outside my window.
When I look out the window, I see a courtyard surrounded by six buildings designed by the renowned Mexican architect, Ricardo Legoretta. The buildings have stucco facades and are painted a deep terra cotta color with white trim. The courtyard contains a series of long rectangular ornamental ponds filled with koi. Rows of bald cypress trees run the length of the courtyard.
My office complex is in a rural suburb of Fort Worth and is surrounded by rolling pastures which are covered in wild flowers in the spring. Because it sits out in the country, there aren’t a whole lot of services close by. There is a small retail area in another part of the complex that contains a couple of restaurants, a hotel, a bank, and a few shops. A quick 15 minute drive will take you to a larger retail area that has numerous shops and restaurants.
To see the view outside my window, click here. (My building is the middle one on the right.) To see the fields of springtime wildflowers that surround us, click here.
Well here’s where I’m posting from. About 5 miles south of slackergirl in San Leandro, CA near the marina. I’m looking out of that window that faces the fountain, and it’s still raining. There a big rig waiting to pull in and a fed-ex truck pulling out. And hey there’s some kids out there obviously skipping school.
I look out the window, and see a crystal clear Colorado sky. From my view, there’s not a cloud visible. The earth is blanketed in a winter coat of white powder, almost dry to the touch.
There are fields on either side of the building. This morning, I’ve already seen deer, a fox, and a pair of hawks. The river that flows through Dove Valley in the summer is crusted over with a layer of ice.
Nocturne I asked because I’m allegedly spending a little time there later in the year. Long story. I’m told it has a pub and other assorted international delights……I’m not entirely convinced ! Cheers.
I’m seeing the same clear blue Colorado sky as Mr. Cynical. No fields from my home office window, though! Just snow covered blue spruce trees, two little aspens, and the naked snow~covered branches of an oak tree. The finches and juncoes are fluttering & chirping around the bird feeder.
And East Fourteenth Avenue a white ribbon towards Kansas, few cars out.
Using the Terraserver, I found a 7-year-old aerial photo of my building here. My building is the bottom of the 2 buildings to the left of the highway.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t show the other 3 buldings on our campus, the other office buildings on the street, or the mall across the highway. The mall’s site is off the bottom right of the screen, caddy-corner across the highway from my office.
However, it does show our pretty pond where hundreds of geese now are sitting in and around…
down Calle Ocho (SW 8th St for those who speak English) in Coral Gables, FL, I see airlines on final approach to MIA, I see the control towers at the airport, and the highest point of land for perhaps hundread of miles, the solid waste landfill out by Hialeah. The sky is blue, the clouds are puffy and white, and the trees are green. The Everglades are just beyond my range of vision (I’m on the 12th floor), but I know they are out there.
It’s raining here. I’m in my office looking out the window that faces the garden that was just installed two years ago. It’s a traditional Victorian mourning garden, and the colors of the foliage (and flowers, just not now) are mild, like minty green. The textures are soft and fuzzy; think lamb’s ear. There is a huge magnolia grandiflora just feet away from the garden, and beneath it there is a statue of a lady and her arm is broken off. She’s actually a mourning angel, and her wings are drawn back but not extended.
Further on…bare-limbed trees, a line of American flags, monuments and skinny carriage paths. Lots more American Holly and Magnolia trees. Lots of wind. The sky goes dark and light and dark again. Spring is coming…
Well, I have an interior office with no windows, so I’m glad you didn’t ask what I can see, but just about where I am at.
Having just returned from a short walk I can tell you . . . The streets my work building are on (it’s on a corner) are, primarily, clogged with parked cars. This is because I work in the Capitol Complex (government buildings) surrounding the Montana State Capitol, and the legislature is in session. If you look west from my building, you see a large bronze bucking-bronco-with-cowboy statue (a Charlie Russell design, I believe) outside the Montana Historical Society and Museum across the street. Over the roof of the Museum you can see the Capitol, which is the next building over. There’s lots of snow and it is very cold – around 10 F – but it’s sunny blue skies and not a bad day for January.
I am on the campus of the nation’s first land grant college, Michigan State University. Looking out the front window of Natural Science, I see vine-covered buildings (laden with leaves in the warmer seasons), huge old trees and students rushing, trying to keep from getting rained on. The campus itself has an incredible beauty that can be appreciated even more during the summer. Everything is in bloom.
Right outside the backdoor of my building, I can walk over to the courtyard garden, sit by the fountain, and smell the flowering crab and plum trees, watch the petals of the Magnolia stellata fall to the ground in the breeze and enjoy just…being. If it was warm out that is! We had a thunderstorm last night (in February?!), but its supposed to get down to the 20’s again tomorrow.
We have Beal Botanical Garden, the common off West Circle drive with huge old beech, oaks and pines; the Baker Woodlot, the Horticulture Demonstration Gardens; the 4-H Children’s Garden; the Old Horticulture Gardens; and the lovely walk along the Red Cedar River that winds its way through campus. All this within one campus and I haven’t even touched on the off campus farms! You know its spring when you can smell the barns on campus and the nearest barn is 3 miles away - cleanin’ them out for spring manuring!
I love the fact that I’m going to be able to ride my bike to work in the warm season and never have to get on a surface road - I can take the RiverTrail right onto campus!
Good day, everyone. This is Plnnr coming to you live from the 17th Floor of the James Monroe State Office Building in historic and folkloric Richmodn, VA. I’m on the north side of the building and have a very fine view of the following sites:
The Medical College of VA campus. A variety of tall buildings, a few old (1910s) a few new (1980s), one done in the Egyptian Revival style and dating from 1840s. Lots of people in white coats.
Old City Hall, done in Gothic exterior with Moorish interior. On the National Register of Historic Places.
A little sliver of Capital Square, home of the longest continuously meeting legislature in the New World. The building was designed by Thomas Jefferson and you can see his model for the building in the Rotunda, along with the only surviving statue of George Washington for which he actually posed. See the Capital Hostesses and get a LimeAid at Chicken’s Snack Bar when you’re finished.
The new City Jail. Never have visited, don’t intend to start now.
A big portion of the Church Hill community. Most homes dates from the early 20th Century and are in a variety of conditions. Some refurbished, some falling down around the inhabitants.
Mosely Court. A public housing project from the time when urban renewal meant let’s put all of the black folks in one place where we can keep an eye on them.
The interchange of I-64 and I-95. I’d guess that 20,000 cars go by my window each day.
To the north I can see the wilds of Henrico and Hanover counties. On a clear day I can see the Eiffel Tower at Paramount King’s Dominion, which is about 35 miles away.
If I crane my neck I can see a little bit of Chimbarazo Hill, which contains the remains of a locomotive and about a dozen men who were killed during a tunnel collapse in the 1910s. They sealed the entrance and everything is still right inside.
The smokestack from a medical waste incinerator. Its a standing joke here that when the smoke is really black either they’re burning the bodies parts covered in oil, or we still haven’t elected a Pope.
Windy and warm here today. Spring fever is setting in.
From the 4th floor window that’s just behind me, looking right to left, I can see:
The Metro station & parking lot;
The Masonic Temple;
Some distant 10+ floor office buildings, sticking up out of the surrounding residential areas like dinosaurs;
A trendy apartment complex with ‘exciting and chunky’ (read: expensive) blocks of units, all done up in red brick and green metal roofing, with a deli, a salon, and some other unidentifiable small businesses on the ground floor;
Some small 1.5 story bungalow houses with a few housing projects behind them;
And around and between them a surprising number of trees, skeletal in the unusually warm (even for Virginia) February day.
Not much of a view, but…if I go around to the other side of my floor, I can see the Washington Monument, the very top of the Capitol, the National Cathedral waaaaay off in the distance, planes taking off and landing at the airport, and (if I look very closely between the buildings) the Potomac.
It was so much better when my department was in the building next door - we were on the 7th floor, and the views were even better. But, there my cube was in the middle of a hallway, with no windows in sight. At least now I’ve got the afternoon sun coming in on my back.