Engrams

The trip started in Paris, we took side trips to both Chartes, and Poissy, then went on to London before heading home.

 

We started every morning at a little cafe down the street from our hotel. They offered a breakfast deal of half a baguette, a croissant, butter and rose jam, an orange juice, and a hot drink for something like 5 euro. And it was so good... the bread and the cafe creme and the jam... the young man serving us our breakfast every morning was quite handsome as well, and a bit flirty. That always makes breakfast more fun...

This was one of her most memorable parts of the trip. She told everyone about going to the top of the Eiffel tower when we got back. She also wanted one of every souvenir being sold underneath the the tower. We got a few, for posterity.

And this was cute as hell... after a busy morning of walking around looking at this and seeing that, she desperately wanted a nap, but had trouble falling asleep. So she found the little sleeping mask in the bedside table and snuggled in. I thought it was pretty friggin cute, although I was a little worried about the suggestion it gave as far as her being spoiled goes... I was hoping it wasn't awful foreshadowing of later in life.

I was pretty proud of myself: I got everything we needed for the two weeks in Europe into a carryon for me and a child-size carryon for her. It meant that we spent some quality time in the various laundromats of Paris and London. It actually was good time though, where she and I could really concentrate on eachother instead of what was around us. Thankfully there were plenty of very nice Parisians willing to help us figure out how to use the system (because its completely different than how laundromats work in the states...)

We visited the Louvre, and the Jardin des Tuileries. Uh oh... I'm being interrupted... will finish this post after a while!

I suppose I am one of those people who love to be out of control. I mean, the whole fabric dancing thing would be a first clue: some of the best parts of it are when you let go, and free-fall for however long, caught at the last moment to become a big knot... the definition of free-fall is contingent on the loss of control. The moment before I let go:

And the knot at the end of the fall

Another bit of evidence of this fact is the recent airplane trip I took, as referenced in the previous post. I did it! The whole story? A good friend of mine took up flying as a pastime. I think I have mentioned him in another post as well: he let me hang my fabric in his airplane hangar. Anyhow, he offered to take me out to Omaha to pick up my baby great dane when it was time. At first blush, I refused. He has crashed a plane already. Luckily he survived (nevermind the fact that he is a minority because of that...), but he still CRASHED A PLANE.

Side note: I am a horrible flier, for one. I'm not scared of being up in the air, of shooting across the sky like a bullet... its the people whom I have to trust in order to feel like I have a good chance of returning safely to the ground that instigates this panic. Whose to say the guy building the wing wasn't having a bad day at work and did a shitty job as a little "fuck-you" to the Man? Whose to say the pilot hasn't been flying for more hours than lack of rest will permit? Whose to say the maintenance men weren't told to go home early because of the increase in the cost of fuel? And, whose to say there won't be a freak occurrence, where mother nature decides to throw that rogue draft at the plane which it cannot take? Mother nature is imminently stronger than man and anything he can come up with... one just has to look at something like Io, a moon of Jupiter, to see that. Anyhow...

My friend was persistent. I finally, reluctantly, agreed, with the contingency that his instructor come with, and have his own set of controls. My friend agreed, with his own stipulation: if the instructor was there already, then why not have me fly the plane? His intention was that if I had control of the plane, I'd loss my fear. And this is where the first subject of the post comes in: I agreed, despite the lack of control involved. I know I just wrote about having control of the plane, but remember that my fear is based in the chance that someone didn't do their job up to that point. If I have control of the plane, my control only goes so far as the builders, maintenance men, and mother nature. I can tell the plane to do whatever I want, but it isn't going to respond if it isn't fit to respond. But! Here I am, flyin' a plane:

And a shot of new perspectives...

I can tell you, flying over Nebraska and eastern Colorado is certainly a lot more interesting than driving across it... and all of it is made a hell of a lot better because this was one of the results of it:

And its funny... these moments where I am completely out of control. There is an undeniable serenity that is overwhelming in these moments... flying in the plane was incredible, when I was able to forget about man and his fallacies. And those moments when I am free-falling into a knot... its a feeling of letting a breath out that's been held in for a lifetime. Maybe its a feeling of being part of something greater... because when someone looks at mother nature in the grand scale of Outerspace, or even natural disasters (but honestly those scales aren't that far off), it can be such a feeling of insignificance. When you're flying through the air at speeds more in tune with the scale of the universe or using gravity to what amounts to a dance with mother nature, you begin to feel like things aren't so inaccessible, so inconsequential. At any rate, and it might just be me and my reaction to these things, it shows me a calm unparalleled in any other aspect of my life.

This may be the reason for my apparent addiction to being out of control. My addiction is less evident, but not void of evidence, in the rest of my life. I can't say no to adding things to my plate. My life is so full... there are so many things I have going on -- and its been this way forever, considering the fact that I went to and paid for college as a single mother, and not only did I go to college, but I chose a double major, one of which is notorious for its required time outside of the classroom, and I did this all while trying my hardest to go through as many experiences as I could in an attempt to grow up enough to be fit to raise a child -- that the momentum of my life is hurdling in many directions at a speed that doesn't allow me to see everything coming, or going, for that matter. And I don't stop. When the idea of graduating started to become a reality in the near future, all I could think about was the idea that I could go home after work and not have to give my time to anything, like homework. I didn't have to constantly feel guilty about resting, knowing that I could be doing something to get caught up. But I'm graduated now, and I have the day job, but now I have the night job (the dancing)... I teach at least once a week, have performances to prepare for more often than I thought I'd ever, and practices. And I also work for another architect on the side. This last week was insane... I worked 45 hours at the job, taught monday night at one place, tuesday night at another, was at work until almost 9pm wed night, went to practice thursday night, and finally enjoyed a nice dinner with the Beau and my daughter last night (I may have also stolen away for a couple hours to go to the gym). If I don't have all this stuff going on, however, I'm not happy. I feel restless... wasteful. Like a heroine addict can't imagine life without their sweet heaven in a needle, I can't imagine my life without the jarring bumps and tender bruises of a path taken too fast.

I am sad that I have so little time for writing, or drawing, or pottery. I have a wheel and all the supplies for pottery, and have not thrown a pot in years. I don't have a place to set it up, but that's beside the point... My journaling has fallen completely on the wayside... I mean I blog here occasionally and am generally pretty good about adding pictures to my flickr, but I so love the ritualistic act of putting pen to paper and the little motions of the hand that is writing. It seems to channel the emotion so much better than a keyboard or a camera... As I quoted before, "Boredom is the songbird that hatches experience." Ay dios mio...

Today though. Today is mine, not anyone else's. I skipped practice this morning, am here writing, thinking...

Tomorrow I get picked up at 8:15am, taken to a local, private airport. I get in a little plane, a four seater. I grab the throttle, do that take off thing, and guide the vessel to Omaha Nebraska, where an absolutely adorable little puppy will be awaiting me and my crew. We will meet the puppy, play with him, fall even more in love with him, put him in his carefully prepared travel crate that he'll only be able to fit into for about another week, and and fly back home. I have never flown a plane before. I do not have my pilots licence. I am terrified of flying. That is why I'm the one flying the plane. I take the sticker on the crate to be a good omen. Ay dios mio.

Good Lord I'm going crazy waiting for him to get here...

So my friend whom I work with is married to an industrial designer. She was looking through a catalogue one evening and saw a little bulletin board she wanted, so she turned to her husband and said, "hey, can you make me one of these?" Of course he said yes, and she brought in a small test piece that her husband had tried out, and told me the story. I totally loved the bulletin board, because it was a pretty clever design, and all of a sudden yesterday, I was surprised to come into the office to see one sitting on my desk! How fantastically sweet is that? So I immediately tried it out with a few things I had. The sponge bob card was a thank you from a friend whom I performed with/for... 

The Corteo card was an invitation to see the dress rehearsal the night before the show opened, and the other little card was my admission into the Snow Angel's Party that Adrienne and I performed for. Unfortunately, none of our photos made it into the gallery (well, one of Adrienne did, but I KNOW they got a ton of better photos than that...). I wonder if there is some sort of faux pas with him posting them, like free advertising for us or something... or maybe we just weren't hot enough to be associated with the "Snow Angels" or his company... Who knows.

So week or two ago I had been dining with the Beau, enjoying some gin and tonics, and for some ridiculous reason or so I was irritated with him, and declared, fresh gin and tonic in hand, that I was going up to the roof to sit in the hot tub. Alone. When I walked out onto the roof, there were a small group of guys at a table, but it was empty aside from that, which was what I'd been hoping for. I hopped into the tub, and sipped my beverage (which was in a fantastic glass I had just gotten). Pretty soon one of the guys walked over and very slowly looked over the railing, down at the city streets below... then another came over and more boldly tested the water with his hand, saying a short hello. I had to laugh: it was obvious that they were wanting to see what sort of prey had wandered into their den, but they were trying so hard to cover it up. Regardless, they were all in their suits and in the tub shortly. They were all born and raised in Russia, no less, and they brought with them a bottle of fine Russian vodka. I gladly accepted a refill in my now empty (fabulous) glass, and enjoyed laughing and chatting with the Russians. What came of this evening? My new favorite drink: strait, chilled, Russian vodka. Not the cheap stuff... the good stuff. Its incredible! Anyhow, that evening left me with a strong desire for more Russian vodka later that week, and a friend and I decided to see what the local Russian fine restaurant had as far as good russian vodka's went. The picture above is the absolutely delicious soup and vodka we enjoyed, both with our mouths and with our eyes! And the waiter - another Russian transplant - was tickled pink with us for wanting strait Russian vodka. He gave us a little tour of their best vodkas, including one not available in the states... it was incredible.

And last tuesday Devotchka released their new album, A Mad and Faithful Telling with a little gathering at Twist & Shout. Its an amazing album! If you want to be totally swept off your feet and wooed, then waste no more time and get to listening! A fun photo I snapped of Nick and Alex during the after party:

And last but not least on the list... last night was the first installment of what is called Pecha Kucha Night: 

There was dinner before hand with a small group of friends (to help calm the presenter's nerves a bit) then some drinks to celebrate a birthday after. I loved the centerpiece of one of the tables in the restaurant we went to after, and the color palette of the photo I snapped of myself in the mirror of the women's restroom. And of course my shoes... I love my sparkly silver shoes... :P

Had to share these little cuties I got a while ago from NestaHome at Etsy.com. I love them. They are very simple, but in such a wonderful, beautiful way. And while I was sharing simple, beautiful things... my baby and I decided to get the Beau a small and simple bouquet while we were farting around yesterday... I picked out all the flowers/grasses. I thought it was cute...

Oh! And we're getting a puppy!! He is only 2 1/2 weeks old, and we won't have him for at least a month... but I am so friggin excited! Here are his parents, along with his brothers and sisters (and him, perhaps! we don't know which one he is yet... its too soon to tell). Yes, he will be an enormous Great Dane! I can't wait...

I was thinking: I started out thinking about pleasure, actually, trying to understand why it can be so bad in excess, and kind of fell onto some thoughts about pendulums.

I think I know what’s confusing me about your ideas, and maybe I understand what you mean when you say we have no choice. I guess a good place to start is with the law of physics that states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. That takes me strait to the pendulum because what better way to illustrate that principle than with a pendulum? If you pull it back, say, ten inches, then it will go the exactly opposite direction and (assuming there are no external forces acting on the pendulum) will pause twenty inches away.

But that leads me to believe we have both no choice and a choice. Let me explain: we have no choice to get a reaction from the pendulum. If we pull it back ten inches, it isn’t going to stay there, or it is not a true pendulum. Like life: we don’t have the choice to pause it. It continues, which I think is best illustrated with the fact that when a loved one dies, your own life does not cease to move; it doesn’t even slow down. You can really feel your existence’s momentum at a point like that. And we don’t have a choice in controlling its outcome either. Just like the pendulum, when its pulled back it has only one path to take (opposite the direction it was pulled). But: the pendulum has to be pulled to have a reaction. And in that sense we -- learning from observation and trial and error at best -- can control its outcome with the pendulum’s predictability, right? We can predict that the pendulum will swing in the opposite direction of the way we pull it back. Now I can’t name what actions in ever day life that constitute a pulling back of the pendulum, but if we could -- if we paid attention and discovered what they were -- wouldn’t we have, indirectly, complete control of our lives?

That brings me to a thought about balance. You were also mentioning in your thoughts about the pendulum that everyone chooses black or white, and completely misses the spectrum in-between. And let me bring you back to William Blake for a moment: I have to say I agree one hundred percent with his opinion that a man who never alters his opinion is like standing water and breeds reptiles of the mind. So this pendulum is balanced in one of two ways: motionlessness, or by having that equal and opposite reaction. Isn’t that a metaphor for having a choice of how to live your life? You could be that person who never changes and who always chooses the middle ground or maybe a little left of it or a little right, and breeds reptiles in their monotonous comfort zone, or you could be that person who thrusts that pendulum with choosing a black or a white and consequently remains in motion and alive.

So maybe the problem is that in choosing black we anticipate the white and completely overlook the spectrum as we pass by it. Maybe it isn’t about choosing, its about laziness and fear: fear of knowing that we might be in that ideal spot on the swing of the pendulum now, but we will soon and very soon be in the equally undesirable spot that lie in opposition. Could that be ‘the Fall?’ As children we are born with this understanding of the pendulum and its actions, and as we grow older ‘stuff of life’ (elegantly put) makes us lose our sense of reference. Maybe, like when we’re on a swing, we focus too far into the distance and we stop realizing the motion and the speed of the swing. Such with cars: we are cutting ourselves off from down to earth reality by putting ourselves in this protective ‘bubble’ which keeps us from feeling the speed we go. Thirty-five on a motorcycle feels like sixty in a car, doesn’t it?

So back to balance: everything seems to have balance. Could it be that there is a balance of choices as well? Life chooses to react to our choices and we choose to make choices that get a reaction. Actually, its more of a balance between us having a choice and not having a choice. Maybe that’s ‘the Fall’: as we grow older and everything becomes more complex we lose sight of what actions cause what reactions. Therefore innocence is -- in children lack of complexity (you stand up you’re going to fall down, you breath in you’re going to breath out) and consequently very in tune to life’s pendulum, and -- in adults, finding that reference point amidst all of adulthood’s complexities (adequately symbolized by the car).

It’s a question of freedom: we have a certain amount of freedom and that doesn’t change (the freedom to make choices). But we don’t know what to do with that freedom to be productive. I.e. because we have separated ourselves from feeling the swing and knowing what actions have what reactions, we don’t know what choices to make, and we fail in succeeding by not paying attention to consequences. We aren’t connecting the two. Let me employ a favorite quote here: “People know what they do; they frequently know why they do what they do; but what they don’t know -- is what they do does.” (Michael Foucault) Maybe we’re all just concentrating too much on pleasure…

What do you think?

That's what my card to the Beau said on the inside. It was a card shaped like a pig. :D

Sorry for the blur, the camera has been acting up pretty bad, I need to get it serviced. Actually, I just need a new camera... anyhow... It was a fantastic show, and marked the 2 or 3 year anniversary of my introduction to aerial fabric dance. I got some photos of the girls dancing, but not good ones. Damnit.

And I totally ignored my camera after the show, backstage, except for one gem:

What was sooooo fantastic is they played a number of new songs that will be out shortly on their new album!! And they were amazing!!! I can't wait to get it (its out March 18). I wore the bra that I'd performed in at Devotchka's Halloween show, and a friend who also performed in that show with me dubbed it the "debrachka." Ha! She was also wearing the underwear from our performance, but her's was not visible like mine. I was wearing a corset-like shirt that let the bra peek out at the top. In other news...

The Beau and I have been looking for a house. Well... we've found a house. A house and a condo. We were very excited about the condo because it was in a new urbanist development, and was within easy walking distance to the town center, a dog park, a grocery store... and the best thing about it was that it was being sold for far less than what it was worth. But things kept coming up here and there, over and over, and the realtor was a bitch to our realtor (who is a good family friend). So we pulled out of the deal, and kept looking. We don't have a huge budget. In fact we have a pretty measly budget... some of the places we looked at were incredible in the sense that I didn't realize places this crappy actually existed. But! We found an adorable little house, with tons of character! I couldn't believe it when we walked in... I'd been expecting more horrid smelly carpeting, cracked foundations, crazy smells... But this place is clean, well maintained, and full of fantastic little elements that make it adorable. A few photos, from when we were there during the inspections:

It has a zen garden. And the two car garage has a workbench and tons of shelving. Which brings me to my next topic: I need to build a couch. I guess I don't need to... but I want to. The problem has arisen because the couch we have now is gynormous, and this house was built in the 40's or 50's, before Americans decided gluttony was a virtue and not a sin... I had nothing to do with the purchase of our current couch, by the way. It was the Beau's before the Beau was "the Beau." Anyhow, the cute little living room cannot hold the very comfortable, gynormous couch. And in looking all over the net for a couch - a small couch with good personality - I've come up with nothing. There are a few cute things that I've found, but they're too small, and not sturdy enough for everyday use. So... I want to make one. And I have a place to do it too! Can't wait to close and begin working on the place!

That's all for now. I leave you with a smiling kitty, because it's what I woke up to a few mornings ago.

1. I had a baby when I was seventeen, but went on to do the college thing anyway, by myself. That means I paid for it, did it, and raised my baby during it - by myself. And in a fantastically silly move, I chose a major that involves three times more work/homework than most other majors. Ha... actually, now that I think of it, I had two majors at first: Architecture and Astrophysics. I guess I just love space, in both the human and universal scales. :P I ended up dropping the astrophysics major after taking the physics for scientists and engineers course, and realizing how much quiet, uninterrupted solitude one needs in order to wrap one's head around physics. With a child and a 30 hr a week job as well as that first major, I didn't have the time to spare. Thankfully, Architecture is a passion, and I am content with the past tense of astrophysics. I miss it, for sure, and still enjoy books like Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe, as well as things like number 7 on this list here... Here is me presenting one of my projects to a jury. The assistant dean of the school pulled me aside after my presentation to tell me how wonderful he thought my project was, and I got something like a standing ovation. I'm not good with compliments. I turned red and tried to avoid talking to everyone by cleaning up my presentation.

2. Was an extra in the movie Beerfest because I looooove the movie Super Troopers and couldn't get enough of the Broken Lizard gang. I snuck back on set after being wrapped so I could meet the gang and shoot the shit... ended up getting a little flirty with Lemme, and exchange email occationally with him. Also, during lunch one day of shooting, Will Forte (SNL) came up to me and started chatting. I didn't quite understand why he came up to me until I asked him if us lowly extras had to sit elsewhere, to which he responded, "You're an extra???" Apparently he thought I was some interviewer there to interview him.

3. Went to New York and ended up representing the firm I worked for in the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum's Design Triennial in 2003. It was the first time I'd been to the Big Apple, and it was pretty darn exciting. We had to go to three events: the press release of the show, the designer's party where the exhibit was opened to only the designers exhibited, then the member's party, where the exhibit was opened to the designers and the members of the museum. We also ran into Isabella Rossellini as we were waiting in line to see Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle at the Guggenheim Museum. I didn't actually believe it was her, but said to her while we were standing in line, "You probably get this all the time, but you look exactly like Isabella Rossellini!" She very demurely replied, "I am" with a stunning smile, and I couldn't believe it.

4. I wrote some poems in high school that later were published in a few poetry anthologies. I'm all shy about my writing, so I'm not going to post those unless I get requests to do so. Which is probably obnoxious, I apologize.

5. When my daughter was about 5, I ran away with her to Paris and London for two weeks. As a single mother paying my way through college, one could imagine I didn't have a lot of money hanging around for luxuries such as travel. So when British Airways announced a sale on round trip tickets to London for $199, I figured there was no way I could refuse. My parents never took us on vacations aside from family reunions in the same place, with the same people (obviously). I'd always been upset by this (mostly because us kids were not well liked in the extended family, solely by association with my father, who was never quite welcomed into my mother's family) and the fact that they didn't like to let us kids go out and really have any life experiences... so this nagging me as a parent as well as the idea that I was young and still open to being influenced by life made me feel almost responsible for doing so. But... the very unsupportive family as well as the unsupportive roommate no less than demanded I not go. They sited the lack of money as evidence that it would be irresponsible to go, even if it were dirt cheap. And by lack of money, I mean that I  had the money, but needed to use it to pay off debts, or other such things. Despite this, the roommie went strait to the computer after reprimanding me for even thinking about it and purchased a ticket himself (he wasn't much better off than I was, financially). I was angry. I was hurt that these people who were supposed to care about me seemed to hold financial stability above my and my daughter's growth as persons. So I purchased the tickets in secret. I didn't tell anyone, even keeping it from my baby. Which was difficult... she needed a passport. She'd had surgery to have tubes put in her ears (which was one of those pesky debts I needed to pay off), and when we went to go get the photos for the passport, I told her it was paperwork for the hospital. Her little face was so worried in the photo :(

I told my boss about a month before we went because -- I had to -- and I told my coworker (which was my roommate) as well, so that I didn't put my boss in any unfair/uncomfortable situations between him and my coworker. Let me just say here that my boss was more like family to me than my actual family, and that's perhaps another entry. But I called my mother from the hotel room in Paris, then called my Father. We spent a week in Paris with side trips to Poissy (had to see Corbu's Villa Savoy) and Chartres (my dad wrote a book with this cathedral at its center, so I took many many pictures for him), then a week in London. My baby's favorite part was going to the top of the Eiffel Tower. Oh! And she loved the London Zoo, of course. Ha! And she still bugs me to this day to find a place that serves roast chicken in provencial herbs. We ate at a little restaurant in Paris a couple of times, and split this dish along with a side of steamed spinach, and neither of us have forgotten the divine taste.

6. Of course there was the Devotchka performance...

7. I dated the on of the "world's leading authorities" on photovoltaic cells for a while. Made me feel better about my decision to not dedicate my life towards astrophysics: he didn't even like the distraction of women when it came to his job. His mother constantly wondered if he were gay, and it became a joke between us that if he ever needed me to vouch for him I was willing to do so to his mother. This is a picture of myself, my current Beau, and the Physicist as we like to call him. He is still a good friend, and in fact in this photo, which is the first time he and the current Beau met, I was excluded from the conversation because they both know German and chattered away while I stared off into space.

 8. Ahhhh... and talking about the Physicist... I was in a very unusual situation a while back. I worked at the firm referred to above (exhibited in the Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial) while I was in my last few semesters of college. One of my studio instructors was also one of the coordinators for the second Solar Decathlon Home. The Solar D team came to my office to ask for a donation (all of the solar decathlon homes are built with only donations, as far as I understand). My boss at the time donated the land on which to put the home when it came back from Washington DC, as well as design assistance. So it worked out in a funny way for me: I would spend my mornings in studio where I had a teacher I was supposed to listen to, then in the afternoons I would be at the office in which my studio instructor would then show up to and listen to my boss' instruction. It made for very interesting perspectives in both places... oh, and all this was going on at the same time I was dating the Physicist, which made my instructor excited because the whole Solar D house is supposed to create its own power with which to run on. He wanted me to see if the Physicist couldn't get a bunch of solar panels donated to the project (photovoltaics are what make solar panels work).

9. Oh yes... speaking of number 1 on the list... I was qualified to graduate high school a full year early, at the end of my junior year. Did I? Oh no... Those parents I was speaking of in number 5? They wouldn't let me. You see, I started school a year early to begin with, and when I was able to graduate yet another year early, that would have made me a 16 year old freshman in college. Those parents of mine didn't want me to experience life, remember? Especially at 16. Nevermind all my friends in high school were older, and graduated, and gone. Nevermind the lack of challenge high school had presented. No, no... I took a whole nother year of high school -- that was completely unnecessary. I made the most of it: I took an independent study in pottery that made it a wonderful break from the life I was pretty unhappy to be living at that time. But I guess I'm still a little bitter about it. Does it show?

10. And the last thing I've done that most people probably haven't... I suppose would be that I gave birth to my daughter without and drugs. None. I had to be induced, too, because the placenta started breaking away before I was in labor. The only thing they did in order to induce me was to put some sort of gel manually on my cervix (which I guess would be the closest thing to drugs since it had some kind of chemical to soften my cervix) and then break my water ten minutes later. No pitocin drip, no pain killers, nothing but me and some monitors. Well, and the whole village of nurses and whoever that decided to come in and out of my room, giving me no chance of keeping any dignity. My mother was there, too. I have to give her that: she held my hand through the whole thing and helped me get accustomed to becoming a mother in the weeks that followed. That was help I am endlessly grateful for. I gave birth to my baby in just under 4 hours, at 7:16 on a Sunday evening, and left the hospital by noon the next day. You see, I had a bit of a character flaw when I was younger, and felt I needed to do everything on my own, without help, in order to prove how tough I was. I mean, I didn't have a lot of help available, so it was a bit of a defense mechanism, but that's a whole nother story... and a long one, for a later time.

Anyhow... thanks for letting me ramble about some of my past! It was fun!!!

I miss it there. A good number of the buildings I worked on have been actualized, and I haven't been able to see it all happen. Its kind of like having a sister or brother and not watching them grow up, and only seeing them in pictures. Because the spaces are all occupied now, and I can't go in and see them all finished and functional. That's the danger in being employed to do something you love: business is supposed to be impersonal. But when you love what you do, it can't be. Except you still have to treat it all as if it were just business. C'est ce la, I guess. Life is more beautiful if it is bittersweet, right?

Anyway, I thought I'd share some photos of my "kids," so to speak...

This is a very troubled child. And not really my child... I didn't do a whole lot on this building, but that's partly because there hasn't been a whole lot of stuff done yet. Its the gas station which Jack Kerouac visited then wrote about in his book "On The Road." The city decided it was in the way of a highway expansion (which meant it was in the way of the new retail that they wanted in next to the expanded highway they were planning). So my boss donated the land which was to become its new home. The guy they found to help move the building, which entailed reinforcing it out the wazoo with steel and putting it on wheels had originally agreed to do it for a small fee, since this was a project geared towards historical preservation and not profit. I mean, that's why my boss donated the land, instead of selling it. And let me tell you: the land was not cheap. One could purchase a decent house for just the price of the land it went on. Anyhow, the building was put on wheels, and early, early, early one Saturday morning it made its slow journey down the street to its new home. They had to dismantle and reconstruct a street light to get it there... It was quite an interesting morning. The problems began when the guy who helped move it -- the one with the steel and the wheels -- decided he needed a lot more money than what he'd originally agreed to. To make a long story a little shorter, the poor building sat about six inches above its foundation for around a year while people argued with lawyers. It has been put down on its foundation now, and the canopy reattached, as seen in the photo above. It is intended to be the community center and entrance into the community pool, which is another project I worked on:

Unfortunately I wasn't able to get inside it to see how it all panned out. I couldn't even look at the nifty little window latches I did a lot of design on. Sniff. Had good company, though, as evidenced by the photo above, in the middle. That's Buck, the best buddy (and old boss' dog) of our old pit bull Imogen. Speaking of... since we are on the subject of nostalgia, its only appropriate I post some recent photos her new owners sent along...

That first one is of her on the job site of the most recent Solar Decathlon Home by the University of Colorado

carrying around a 4x4. She was always a sucker for a big stick... The others are of her and Buck at the office. We miss her so much, and I despise people who are stupid enough to be prejudice against Pit Bulls for the way their bad owners have raised them more and more every damn day. The world just seems to be getting more stupid every moment I look at it. Anyway... enough of my bitter diatribes for now. The next "kid:"

This was based off a great historical building, which I cannot recall at the moment. The clients wanted an italian flair to the design. We'd originally put these great french windows in the design, the ones that open like french doors, as opposed to sliding up or rotating out like all contemporary windows. But they were, of course, beyond the budget. A lot of the detailing I'd seen last has changed, like the railings on the balconies and the rooftop deck. And I'd always seen it as a white building, which was silly of me, since that was largely due to the colors we used in the digital model. So it was a little shocking to see the rich terra cotta red it was stuccoed in, but in a very good way.