Last week we headed out to Utah for Laralee’s somewhat-annual family reunion. As long as we were out there, we decided to stop in at BYU to take a look at the campus. Along with Colorado School of Mines, Alex accepted their offer to attend and then immediately deferred his start date for two years. Despite reading about BYU’s engineering program, Alex had never seen the campus.
He was pretty excited about it.
Unlike Mines, it’s a big school with over 30,000 students enrolled. We had a student tour guide who was bubbling with energy as she took us around campus and told us how awesome BYU is. We had some great views of the campus from the top of the highest building:
After our tour we dropped in on the mechanical engineering and computer science departments. I enjoyed this sign on one of the computer labs:
I don’t know if the university budget is a little tight this year or something, but I was surprised to see the, uhh, outdoor bathroom facilities at the library:
Alex found an interesting sculpture of modern art with a head-sized hole in it.
After BYU and some lunch at Smashburger, we stopped by Mr. Mac, which is a well-known men’s clothier. It was time to buy Alex a suit for his mission. They had quite a few options in rows and rows:
Fortunately he’s occasionally like me– quick and decisive– and was able to pick out a suit he liked after modeling a couple of them. He was measured so everything could be tailored just right. Pretty cool.
I found a pretty sweet tweed jacket. Wearing it made me feel like a weird professor in the 1950’s or something.
After a little over an hour, we walked out with a suit, two pairs of matching pants, five more pairs of “bucket washable” (!) slacks, eight white shirts, eight ties, two pairs of durable dress shoes, a dozen pairs of socks, two belts, and a nice layered fleece coat. Whew! Alex is ready for the bustling metropolis of Lima or the rugged mountain villages of Peru.
On our way out of the store I couldn’t help but notice this sign for a restaurant in the food court:
That’s right: there’s an entire restaurant devoted to grilled cheese. Wow.
All in all, it was a great few days with family.