Restaurant review: The Blue Sky Cafe.

I have visited quite a few cafes, diners, coffee shops, delis and the like in the Lehigh Valley. Many, many times during my freshman year I passed by this little cafe on 4th st. but declined to see what's inside. While exploring the town on a Sunday morning in July, I decided to take a look inside.

I can still remember the first thing I got there: Banana Bourbon French Toast (sans chocolate chips), side of home fries. The bill comes just short of $10 for this meal, but be forewarned: this is a lot of food. Usually just one of the main menu items will do you over, unless you're really, really hungry. This is a good thing, as I have had a very hard time spending more than 7 or 8 dollars ever since. The style of food is all over the place: you have your basic eggs, toast and meat, omelets, sandwiches, pancake(s), French toast, and various lunch wraps, sandwiches and salads. The atmosphere reminds you of a true cafe: hardwood floors, ceiling fans, limited outdoor seating, excellent background music(Sirius/XM Blues!) and a wide selection of local artwork that can actually be purchased. They even have a large chalkboard with the daily specials (the best one so far: strawberry cream cheese stuffed french toast). Best of all, I hear the Blue Sky will be open as late as 10pm (starting in March). Overall, The Blue Sky Cafe is an amazing experience at a very affordable price.

Dining tips:

• Bring a friend(or date): during peak hours, the wait for food may get a little long if you have no one to talk to. No friends? Bring a copy of the NY Times, a laptop, or a sketchbook.
• Got a friend? Try splitting 2 items: one of you gets the french toast, the other orders the omelette. Then you get half of each.
• On that note, portions can be big, especially if it's your first time. Come hungry.
• Try every menu item at least once. They have even found a way to make oatmeal taste like heaven.
• If you can, visit on weekday mornings for great deals on the basic egg entrees.
• Try the drinks from the "cooler"- especially the FUZE and Calypso brand drinks.

Rating: ★★★★★
Photos taken from The Blue Sky Cafe's website

What Is SMC: A preview of an upcoming super-post:

Links of Interest: Bursting Bubble Edition

The housing boom- and bust- visualized, thanks to Yale Economist Robert J. Shiller.
Related: The loss of jobs over the past year, in a chart.

Why is it so hard to cut back on your luxuries? The NYT reports that financial execs that are having their salaries capped don't want to spend less, take the subway to work, or even -gasp- move to Hoboken?

Google uses 1000 (one thousand!) machines to provide you with a single search query.

The Simpsons- Now in HD!

A pill may have the ability to erase "bad memories" See also: heavy drinking, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

And finally, Christopher Niemann shows us New York- in LEGO form.

Great Photographs #17 : The Cover of Rolling Stone Issue # 335.

In this installment of GREAT PHOTOGRAPHS, we highlight the last professional ever taken of John Lennon.

"In 1980 Rolling Stone sent Leibovitz to photograph John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who had recently released their album “Double Fantasy.” For the portrait Leibovitz imagined that the two would pose together nude. Lennon disrobed, but Ono refused to take off her pants. Leibovitz “was kinda disappointed,” according to Rolling Stone, and so she told Ono to leave her clothes on. “We took one Polaroid,” said Leibovitz, “and the three of us knew it was profound right away.” The resulting portrait shows Lennon nude and curled around a fully clothed Ono. Several hours later, Lennon was shot dead in front of his apartment."

Audio Interview - RS Magazine
Annie Liebovitz - Life through a Lens

Search LIFE

Some of my favorite photographs (and millions that i have yet to see) are now available to the public, thanks to LIFE Magazine and Google. Now you can search millions of LIFE magazine's images for the photo you're looking for, and see it in a pretty high quality (makes great backgrounds for your computer desktop)
For example:Yay for Google!

Great things at Lehigh...Recession Edition

Not a day goes by without hearing the words "recession" or "financial crisis" around campus.
For example:
"Thanks to the current financial crisis, I lost my internship at [insert investment bank, company or summer job here] because they [failed, went bankrupt, got bought out, etc.]"

How does a major research university such as Lehigh help the economy? The recession's financial pressure are sometimes felt the most at the private colleges across America, as dollars need to be adjusted and re-appropriated to make ends meet. Colleges large and small have all taken hits to their endowment.

What's Lehigh doing on the education back-end? Providing great lecturers and financing good ideas.

Exhibit A: Joseph Perella, Lehigh Class of 1964 "Chairman and CEO of Perella Weinberg Partners (New
York and London), and former chairman of the institutional securities and investment banking group at Morgan Stanley". Mr. Perella gave his perspective of the financial crisis at the aptly named Perella Auditorium. Unfortunately, I had class the Wednesday that he gave the lecture. Thankfully, Lehigh was nice enough to videotape the whole lecture and put it online. (Bonus: Also available for download on iTunes and Windows Media!)

Exhibit B. Wright Martindale (Class of 1960) also gave a lecture last semester regarding our current financial situation. Video available here.

Exhibit C. Lehigh has had a great tradition of sponsoring and encouraging entrepreneurship among students. From the Rauch Business Center's Small Business Development Center to the City of Bethlehem itself, highlighted as one of America's top cities to start a small business in, encouragement is not in short supply during these tougher times. Results of my school's recent student entrepreneurship contest resulted in over $27,000 in grants awarded to students to help incubate their businesses.

Linderman Library

The view from my favorite seat in the Library.
Also, here's a nice link to the history of Linderman.

More Interesting than Dashle's Tax Records.

It snowed again. It's been almost a month since I've seen the grass.

The Google Maps car hit a deer.

Ira Glass uses the Flip camcorder for his second season of This American Life.

Thirteen year-olds are designing the city of the future.

Fairfax Co. Virginia's public schools are lowering grading standards, for better car insurance (among other things...)?


"IRT: A Tragedy in Three Stations" Is the newest off-off-off Broadway play.

New Jersey is the new home of culture. Or, has it always been?

Only on facebook could a meme that "seems" fun actually allows me to find out 25 things about you without even meeting you. So much for privacy, but thus is the tragedy of the commons.