Sunday, June 28, 2009

No windows

I like windows. I like big windows that let in lots of light. When I looked at houses I did not consider any houses with those small, eye-level windows so many houses from the 60's and 70's seem to have. Whoever thought it was a good idea to put in a 2-foot window 5 feet off the floor? I don't like living in a dungeon, but maybe that was the cool thing to have 30/40 years ago.

Lately I've noticed that there is one place I am glad does not have big, or for that matter, hardly any windows: the lab. The space is large, if I had to guess, the entire lab with office space is probably about 1500 sq. feet. But I'm a bad guess-timator, so let's just say the space is about the size of a small/medium 2-3-bedroom one-level house, just partitioned differently.

The lab doesn't have any real windows that you can open. It has this panel of glass about 18 inches high 6 and a half feet from the ground in this one area, maybe a total of 18 inches x 12 feet of glass. The only thing you can see is sky. Most days it's just clouds, every once in a while a ray of sunshine sneaks in, but this is pretty rare.

Without windows it's hard to tell the time of day without looking at a watch. So when I'm in the lab when most other people are getting ready for bed I can hardly tell that it's pitch-black outside, because I'm basking in the glow of fluorescent lighting.

No comments: