the twits came to the post office with me yesterday, and saw a huge star wars display… so i asked the lady at the cash register if there were any of the new r2d2 mailboxes in this town, and she said there was one on the quad, in front of the math building. the twits immediately colored some postcards, taped on some cut-out pictures of star wars stuff, and addressed them to various grandparents and friends so we could go put them in the “star wars mail” (before some dumbass students decide to steal the damn thing, despite the fact that it would be a federal offense. i give it a month, tops.) they were very impressed with the intergalactic mail. a discussion of which spaceships the jedi postmaster might use ensued.
then some bells went off, and they asked where the music was coming from. i pointed at the bell tower of the building right behind the r2d2 mailbox – altgeld hall, the math building. dramaqueen goes wide-eyed and screams, “OH MY GODSH IT’S THE HARRY POTTER HOUSE!”
and i realize that the building where i slept through math 130 looks an AWFUL lot like hogwarts… inside and out. it was built in 1898, has 33 levels, marble stairs, ornate iron railings, intricate mosaic floors, towers and cupolas, alcoves covered in gilt…
now, a word about the university of illinois campus. it is nationally known for being handicapped friendly. no hills here, perfect sidewalks, and handicapped-access door-opener buttons all over the place. so i took them inside “hogwarts,” occasionally hitting a few door-opener buttons when they weren’t looking, so these huge, ornate wooden doors slooooowly creaked open on their own. they found a door with a poster of trogdor on it (“dummeldore has a trogdor-dragon!”):
(the caption on this sign read “ALL PAPER-GRADING COURTESY OF THE BURNINATOR!”)
… as well as magic staircases, magic doors, magic computers, and they decided some shaggy-haired bespectacled korean dude was harry potter. when spazmonkey announced that he had to pee, i hit the button to swoosh open the bathroom door… and they clutched each other, peeking around the corner, whispering. finally, spazmonkey asked, “there’s no ghosts in there?” i assured them that this bathroom was not the haunted one, so they marched in, proudly jabbering about how they were peeing in the harry potter potties (which flushed on their own… magic, i tell you!)
