Hollyer Than Thou

My multivariable calculus exam is tomorrow. I don’t expect to do well in the class, but I hope I can use the exam to improve, and not worsen, my grade.

I am reading House by Tracy Kidder, who wrote the awesome Soul of a New Machine (about the development of a new computer during the tech craze of the 1980s) and Mountains Beyond Mountains (about M.D., professor, and humanitarian extraordinaire Paul Farmer). House is a narrative nonfiction from the early 1990s about the building of a home in Amherst, Mass. 

Which is all well and good, if I didn’t have the undying need to know what the house looks like. Some things I learned scouring the internet: 

1. Kidder used the real names. The architect is real and has become a big deal. He is responsible for New Dorm at Brown (at a previous firm), and a few buildings I recognize. 
2. The owners of the house are in public records with a certain address, which I plugged in to Google (no useful Street View) and Bing (torturously far-out bird’s-eye view). 
3. The husband of the couple who had the house build died of leukemia last year. It’s strange to read about that… that a person who was fictional a few minutes ago first comes up on Google in his own obituary. 
4. I still don’t know what the house looks like, except for what might be it on Bing’s bird’s-eye view. I can’t know for sure. Looks like I will have to make a pilgrimage to Amherst sometime.

And with that, goodnight. I can’t do any more thinking today, lest I jeopardize my reserves of thought for tomorrow afternoon’s exam.