In Case You Were Wondering

I am still alive

I am in Barcelona until Monday, at which point I fly to Brussels and probably take the train to Ghent.

I am having a pretty awesome time on my trip.  Recent highlights - visiting the Alhambra thoroughly; all of Seville (except perhaps the Metropol Parisol, aka the main reason I went); playing with the Grulitas in Lanzarote, both on and off the field; walking around Sagrada Famiglia and finding both Modernista and pre-modernista gems in random Barcelona streets.

The best food I have eaten is the Bon Bon tapas from that awesome restaurant we visited on Sunday night after a nice walk from our apartments on Lanzarote (wherein I explained linoleum and everyone listened with apparent interest).  The bocadillo here in Barcelona the first day I arrived.  The cake-first meal I had with A and J in Cologne, with possibly the best berry cake in the world, then cabbage roulade with delicious pumpkin mash.  Also, the meal they cooked me with orange-garlic salad, duck with orange sauce, and fruit cobbler.  Pastries in Paris, pretty much without exception.  Jamon Iberico.  Tinto de Verrano.

Seville is beautiful, walkable, full of interesting buildings, laid back, and sunny, and if I'm not married in 3 years I'll learn Spanish and move there because it's full of the most handsome men I've ever encountered in one place, and I've played in a lot of frisbee tournaments.

I have met so many wonderful people on this trip, which is something I was really worried about.  I never feel really good writing about them, though...suffice it to say, sometimes it's quite difficult to say goodbye to someone you've know for really only a few hours, or someone you're getting to be with again after many, many years apart.

Blogging while on a trip is hard to do - when I have a thought, I'm usually out walking around, and don't want to stop to record it; frequently I'm without good internet connection; often there's too much to say.  Occasionally there's not enough to say.  Some places are disappointing or require more processing or are overwhelmingly awesome.

You can see a through-line from the vernacular architecture of the area around Chur and Peter Zumthor's buildings.  I wish more buildings were like his best works.

It's an amazingly difficult thing to keep architectural pilgrimage sites maintained.  So many hands want to touch, feet walk through dirty from the trek there, gum and trash magically accumulate, birds poop, sun and rain and snow fall, stones and mortar fall, metal expands, times change.  Sometimes, these days, it's also difficult to see anyone enjoying them in real time.  Everyone has their cameras out, to the point that I wonder what is actually coming through, but nonetheless/and, I feel compelled to take my own pictures to fit in.  Sharing the space with so many camera faces can be very odd - it's not exactly what I imagine when I think of creating great buildings for people to enjoy.

I kept up with photo documentation of my trip until I arrived in Paris.  I have Milan, Cinque Terre, Sagogn, Lauterbrunnen, Basel, and Lyon (including all side trips) through rough edit, but Paris gave me a huge backlog.  Cologne, Barcelona, Lanzarote, and Seville will be up someday. Maybe.

East of Eden is a fantastic book.  99% Invisible is an amazing podcast.  I was a little annoyed by but also quite enjoyed the Alchemist, and enjoyed without reservation the Book Thief.  Wait Wait Don't Tell Me is almost too funny to listen to on public transportation.  I am so grateful for podcasts.  They are free, insightful, entertaining, easy to get and delete, short, and they give you a dose of English whenever you want one.

My French helped me survive, but is not conversational.

My portfolio is under construction.  This whole website is under construction.  Sometimes you start projects at really inopportune moments, but at least you have started them.

I'm very happy to find myself eager to start on my Portland adventure.  I'm not hurrying through this part of the trip, but it's been very reassuring to have conversations with people where I tell them where I'm from and I know that I'll have as much exploring to do when I get "home" as I am doing here.  I'm still keeping my ears open for places that call my name here, though.

I think I'm staying within my budget.  I have occasionally skipped something I wish I hadn't, but such is life.  I feel like I've had some really excellent luck on this trip.  I've stuck quite closely to the plan I made ahead of time.  Sometimes I wonder if I'm drifting around too much, not engaging enough, and sometimes I realise that I haven't been going out on the weekends much - only when I'm with friends, really.  Then, I try to listen hard to what I'm really feeling.  Mostly, I'm not sure what it is, but it's good practice and every now and then, I hear something.

Summer

A month has passed since my last post, and a lot has happened, to be sure.  The most notable of which must be the fact that I am gainfully employed, full time, as a designer at an architecture firm in Eugene!!!

Yes, that gets three exclamation points.  It’s been keeping me busy, which has resulted in the radio silence on this blog, and complete lack of effort on the portfolio website, but I can’t say that I’m too sorry about that.  As you may know, finding another job in Eugene wasn’t my intention, but all of the pieces kind of fell into place.  The women’s utimate team that seemed just out of reach for the past four years is finally coalecsing, and I felt very sad at the prospect of leaving town without having a season with them.  We came in second at Solstice, the tournament here in town, and we absolutely had a blast.  I also got a great new housemate, and hey, well, I got this job, and I really like it.

I’m working at Nir Pearlson Architect, and in the short time I’ve been there, we’ve submitted two projects for permitting.  Next week I’ll turn in the third, and I’ll do it by myself because Nir, my boss, is in Israel for the next two and a half weeks.  I’ll be manning the office alone, working on a few other projects and trying to keep everything going while Nir’s gone.  I think I’ll take the opportunity of the slight lull to make sure that my IDP hours for this job get counted, and to actually work on that online portfolio.

Summer in Eugene is pretty nice – I’m eating cherries as I type, and heading to a barbeque in an hour.  I’m enjoying working with Nir, and I know he’d like me to stick around a while longer and work on a few more jobs.  But although this job, this frisbee team, this housemate, and these cherries are fortuitous and fantastic, I still wonder how long it can last.

Up at Potlatch last week, I was reminded again of life in the city, and the different opportunities to take advantage of there.  Yesterday I spent the afternoon and evening with friends and we talked about San Francisco and Portland, and about living in the city.  I’m trying my best to be here, but, if you’ve been reading this blog, you know I’ve been having a tough time with that for some time.  I just want to peek ahead, find out where the plot’s going, but unfortunately that’s not an option.  So, I guess I just keep doing what I’m doing until it stops working.  And, I guess that after a few more weeks of just enjoying employed life,  I’ll start thinking again about the long-term plan again.

In the mean time, Potlatch was tons of fun, seeing all the little babies together a few weeks ago was fantastic,  I’m looking forward to Seaside and some sore beach legs, I can’t believe I get to play in Labor Day with my ladies, and I’m still hoping to head to Colorado to visit the brother.  I’m also hoping to get a few more hours of sewing in in the next few weeks because I keep buying patterns and fabric, so I keep needing to make beautiful things.  I’m catching up on Mad Men and thoroughly enjoying Friday Night Lights, and I’m trying to catch up with people I haven’t seen in a while, too, whether it be through email, phone calls, or unexpected visits.  So, in sum, life is full, and I’m going to do my best to get the most out of it.  I hope you’re doing the same – summer is so short, so love every minute of it!

Returning, Moving On

I’m going to write something because I’d really like to return to blogging, but I’m out of practice. At a point, life just got too complicated to tell about. It’s not that the plot was so convoluted, more that the characters all got a little out of hand. But, we’re beyond that now, and in fact, the plot has also straightened itself out quite a bit.

I am a Master now. Finishing grad school has been a bit anticlimactic. It was wonderful to have the celebration in June, and I do feel done, for real. However, I now feel the weight of the Internship Development Program (IDP) and licensure bearing down on me. I have a job, which I am very happy about both because the economy is bad enough that it’s rare for a recent grad to be offered a job, and because said job is actually interesting and closely related to what I want to do in the long run. However, I’m acutely aware that it’s not a job that can get me closer to actually being an architect, and it’s not a job of the type for which I have been preparing myself for the last three and a half years. So, despite enjoying it, I very much am continuing to wonder, and occasionally actually work towards figuring out, what I will do next.

So, it’s portfolio making time.  It’s time to organize a game plan for applications, to get recommendations in line, and to feel a little untethered from the future, which, as you know, I like to have some grasp on.  All of that is fine: the portfolio is taking shape and I like where it’s going.  The rest I can deal with, and may even enjoy.  But, there’s one thing I’m really struggling with – where to be.  Theoretically, I’m likely to move when I get a job in an architecture firm.  My current plan is to first apply to the set of firms at which I would most like to work, which are primarily in cities on the west coast and in the UK.  Here’s the issue, though.  Rent runs out on the 15th of next month, and I’m not sure what to do at that point.  I will almost certainly not have another job – fine, because my current job will still exist through January.  But, do I move somewhere else in Eugene?  I can, but I’m starting to feel like I want to move on sooner, rather than later, and not move all of my stuff just to move it again.  I can’t really afford to move to one of the big west coast cities on my current salary, though, and that might also end up meaning that I move just to move again.  I could see going home, but what about all of my stuff?  Do I lighten my load of worldly possessions – can I afford to sell everything just to buy more things wherever I do settle next?  And the same goes for moving back to Vermont, which I would love to do, but where I am unlikely to find a job, probably would have to pay some rent (unlike Florida), and where I would be split between friends in Burlington, Brattleboro, and Great Barrington, Mass.  The reality there, too, is that I don’t know if any of those friends have the same spaces in their lives for me as I would like to imagine they do.  Could any of them live with me on their couch/in their kitchen for any significant amount of time?

The likely answer – stay in Eugene.  I’ll move soon enough to a new place, and in the mean time, didn’t I promise myself that I’d spend my time Being Here?

It’s one of those decisions that I keep coming back to, though.  One of those unresolved questions that niggles me throughout the day, in part because it is unresolvable. Since it will be resolved in the next month, because someone else is taking over my house, I guess I just have to live through the uncertainty.  Would that the plot were still twisting, not just aiming straight into the murk.

***

On an entirely different note, played at Spawnfest this weekend, which was very good – both fun frisbee and fun time partying/hanging out with the teammates/laughing at Vern Fonk and Bawls and playing 20 questions.  Excited to get into better shape, although somehow I keep missing my running dates and workout times.  We went 6-1, but unfortunately the point differentials on Saturday put us into the B-bracket, so we only took 9th (out of 34? teams).  Read a lot of the Huddle last night in an exited frenzy to get back to being really useful on the field.

letting it go too long

what do you get? way too much to actually write about.

Seeing Barak in Eugene, and being so inspired that you campaign for him for hours in the rain, snow, hail, and occasional sun. I hope I’ll write about him more once I get wireless in my…

New apartment that I moved into on Thursday and have gotten 90% organized in. Thanks to the fearless four – Renee, Jake, Truc, and Stacey – who made the move from old to new take just about four hours! Photos coming soon…

Which I didn’t take on either of my two trips to Portland this break. Trip number one, I visited Herman and Ruth, enjoyed the excellent okra stew and Herman’s amazing flatbread as well as his amazing dutch oven bread and the divine sheep/cow cheese that they shared with me. We went to Ikea and did several hours of shopping…

Which also happened somehow on trip number two, after I picked up Emily from the train station and we had an excellent lunch at Besaws, but before we drove back to Eugene along the coast, which made me wish I had gone to the coast a long time ago, and made me promise myself I’d go again soon…

but which has the fault of not always having a strong cell signal, so that a call with Stefan was cut short. We’ve made a date to re-call, though, so I’ll surely get to hear his news, as I did…

when Joe Little called out of the blue. He’s moving to D.C., so I’ll have one less reason to visit Chicago, but one more reason to visit D.C. Which I don’t have a great desire to do right now considering…

The current state of our government, and if you didn’t, like me, obsessively listen to NPR this last week, you should at least hear ;this week’s This American Life.

Anyway, this term I’m taking it easy. Just doing a practicum with Gary Moye Architect;, taking Roman Architecture and Architectural Precidents 2.0, teaching Architectural Contexts, organizing and attending the HOPES conference, and taking a short class on Graphic Statics. It will give me enough time to play some frisbee, I hope, and celebrate Ruth’s retirement, I hope, and maybe even visit Oberlin for a reunion…

And maybe, if I’m lucky, I can read some novels this semester. I hope.

I am posting

because it’s been a long time.  School is really packed, but less so now that I dropped my Pritzker Prizewinners class.  I think I’ll catch up with work this weekend, though, and I’m getting to work on studio again already, so I’m very happy with the decision.

Part of the reason I’m behind is because last weekend I played with the Fighting Merkins at Winter Thing, a little tournament here in Eugene.  We came in second to a bunch of high schoolers heading to junior worlds in a few months.  More than that result, however, the weekend was a fantastic amount of fun.  Good to play again, with those folks especially.

It’s late at night and I just spent a couple of hours doing structures calculations/organizing my gmail account/uploading photos to flickr/researching jobs opportunities and classes for the ecological design certificate/mostly doing structures calculations.  Point being, I’m not very eloquent.  I did have to break the no blogging spell, though.

More and more and more.  Soon.

Memories

Thought I’d do something to help myself with children’s furniture: I’m going to try to post a memory of my childhood every day.

Number 1
I remember that my brother and I used to make radio shows. I think we probably only did it once or twice, but one day in particular, we spent hours with the tape recorder. We did funny voices, made jokes to one another, and pretended to be pirates. We sat in the front room of 649, on the sea green carpet, next to the black L-shaped bookcases that we had. 

I’m a bit frustrated with school lately, but have other good bits that I’m saving up – a great but tiring weekend of frisbee at Gandy Goose (3-3, finished 4th place out of 16); the first goslings of the season yesterday at the Millrace; Michael making me a very tasty stir fry for dinner Tuesday night.

HOPES is happening this weekend, so tonight I’m heading to the first keynote lecture. I need a quiet weekend soon!

Excuses, Excuses

Pitiful. It’s the 18th and I haven’t posted yet this month.

Reasons? Despite having “lots of free time” because I dropped my ECS class, I actually have very little free time. Ok, I might have, right off the bat, but things have ramped up. I don’t know how I would be handling it if I were in ECS, actually. But also, I’ve been taking some time to do nothing, which means nothing, including typing on the computer. Oh, and I’ve also been taking a little time out with someone special. Happy valentines day. I have my first boyfriend ever.

Good things are happening – the murmur on the street is that summer travel to Finland looks positive. I’m about to put in my application for a Graduate Teaching Fellowship (GTF), which, if I get it, would give me more teaching experience and would pay tuition for the terms during which I would teach.

On V-day, I helped put together a review for the undergrad studio, and I was very proud, because it went so well. The day before, I rounded up a bunch of friends from around the department and convinced them to be reviewers at 8:30 the next morning. They did, and they were excellent – all the undergrads felt that they got solid reviews, which is more than I can say for myself in many of the reviews I’ve been to.

And yesterday was just gorgeous. I spent much of it in the sunshine, in my tanktop no less. Despite some rearranging, I ended up making the hike up Spencer’s Butte. I went with a bunch of the second year boys, and enjoyed the change of company. It felt like my efforts to get to know more than just the folks in my year were really paying off. The three time a week workouts (with a little gang that goes straight after studio) also seemed to pay off.

So, I’ll post a pic from around midterms, which happened a week ago, because I meant to do it a while ago. This past week I floundered around, trying to make a facade for my building, and had great difficulty. Didn’t get to work much on it this weekend, but I’m sure I’ll get there before the final review. Just have to restrategize…

[The building from Ankeny Street (one block South of the Burnside bridge in Portland). The right is the "wall of action" where all the meeting and training rooms are arrayed. Behind it is the "alley" where bridges connect the wall to the rest of the building. There, a double height volume (blue) houses the shared office space, and a one and a half height volume (yellow) houses the library. All the way to the left, behind the stair tower, is a little pocket garden.]

Oh, and I’ll also say that I’ve been feeling almost constant reminders of various friends from Oberlin and Vermont, wishing I knew what everyone was up to. I think this coming week I’ll try to make a few calls, write a few notes. If you don’t get one, it’s probably not because I don’t love you, but because those best laid plans just never happen.

Something totally random, thanks to Lyrica:
create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.

Anywhoo, I’m back on track with the blogging. Ready to go again. Missed it. Happy now.

Little birds...

In my dream last night, which seemed very allegorical even while I was dreaming it, someone lassoed a raven with a fishing rod that had a lasso tied in the fishing line rather than a hook at the end. It was amazing.

We went to Portland – up on Thursday night, back on Saturday morning – to scope out our site and get a bit of an idea of what the city was like. Highlight of the trip in my opinion was the Weiden Kenedy building. (You can find it under the “projects” link at the Allied Works website.) The criticism of some of my peers that the building was all about selling the image of young, hip workers in the same way that their ads do. Sure, but the space there was actually inspiring to me. It seems like a while since I’ve been outright excited about a space in the way that I was as I walked through that building. 

I didn’t get enough time to explore the site, and I hope I get another chance to head back to Portland soon. I like the city more each time I visit. I did get a few flashes of insight as I walked around and listened to the woman who presented the site to us. I really need to read the program and get thinking about the possibilities. I was on a bit of a hiatus this weekend, though since I came back to Eugene on Saturday to play in Winter Thing. Throws are still questionable, and I do wonder about my future in the disc world, but I had a great time pretending to be a long and pulling down my fair share of points. I’ll need to do some serious work to catch up for spending so much time on disc this weekend, but it feels like it was worth it, even though I came home freezing both days. In case you were wondering, we went 4-1, and only lost to the eventual winners of the tourney. We took the B pool.

And speaking of catching up, it’s back to work for me. Oh, check out the T-shirt I think I’m going to buy. It’s super sweet. (If you buy something, use this link to get to Threadless.)

Cloudy Gray Times, you are now a thing of the past

I had a really fun weekend, and I just finished up a new assignment for my digital media class, so I thought I’d pop up a note.

We got our program for studio, and we’ll be designing “Agate Strings Workshop.” It’s “a place for the making of violins and fiddles, teaching and learning how to play these instruments, and live performances. A group of violin and fiddle makers have joined with several teachers to build a facility where they can share workspace and have a shared interior and exterior place for live performances. They imagine holding recitals for students here, performing here themselves, and inviting other musicians to join them.” The program came with a pretty inspiring speech about the process of design, and articulating the spirit of the place.

Lots of work on the table, but I’ve also been making plenty of time for play. I’ve got two leagues going, and even though the Sunday level of play is a bit more chaotic, it’s still lots of fun. I went to the class potluck on Friday night, and to our Denial team party on Saturday night, both of which were relaxing and entertaining.

I’ve got to get to class, which is a shame, because I wanted to write a bit more of substance, but I’m going to post a poem that popped into my head yesterday when we got the program.

Daily

These shriveled seeds we plant,
corn kernel, dried bean,
poke into loosened soil,
cover over with measured fingertips

These T-shirts we fold into
perfect white squares

These tortillas we slice and fry to crisp strips
This rich egg scrambled in a gray clay bowl

This bed whose covers I straighten
smoothing edges till blue quilt fits brown blanket
and nothing hangs out

This envelope I address
so the name balances like a cloud
in the center of sky

This page I type and retype
This table I dust till the scarred wood shines
This bundle of clothes I wash and hang and wash again
like flags we share, a country so close
no one needs to name it

The days are nouns: touch them
The hands are churches that worship the world

-Naomi Shihab Nye

Dear Diary

Dear Diary,

Today my friend Rima died.

I hadn’t talked to her in about a year and a half – last time I saw her we were playing together at Gender Blender, the tournament in Canada that was my stop off between graduation in Oberlin and adult life in Vermont. She got married this summer to her longtime boyfriend, also a good friend of mine. She had cancer, though, and today she died. I didn’t know that she got married or had cancer until one of our mutual friends called me today to tell me the news. The weird thing is, though, that today as I was biking home, I thought I saw Rima, which was strange, because I haven’t thought about her all that much since closing her last email with pictures of that tournament in Canada. I was thinking about a number of friends, folks I wanted to call and get in touch with, as I was biking, but I wasn’t thinking about Rima, and then I thought I saw her. So I just wanted to record that bit of uncanniness, and say that I will miss her.

Dear Diary,

Yesterday I felt so sad and alone as I sat in studio. My design groove is definitely not back yet, and as I sat there being discouraged by that fact, I started to enumerate all my flaws, and feel entirely inadequate and very unhappy. I felt unfashionable, frumpy, clumsy, and smelly. I felt like the one person I had started to really become friends with was angry with for some undecipherable reason. Thank goodness I had frisbee league – as I ate an apple in the studio and tried not to cry I thought about skipping it, but as soon as I set foot on the fields my spirit was lifted and I felt whole again. I was most certainly frumpy and smelly, but it was of no consequence.

I dressed up today, wore my black heels and a fancy sweater and some mascara. I looked at myself in the mirror, and for the effort, I didn’t think I looked appreciably better, but I thought at least I gave it the effort. I made it through the day with significantly fewer negative thoughts, I talked to my formerly close friend, and decided that I will gently work my way back to being friends with him, and I figured out that I do really have some free time on my hands.

I want tomorrow to go well in the studio, because I need some encouragement from actions, and not just from the kind words of friends.

I’m so glad you’re here, dear diary.

Long, dark tea-time of the soul

Welcome back to graduate school!

Actually, today was great, and I’m very excited for the term. I just looked at Sketchup (the very easy to use 3-D computer modeling tool), which I bought earlier today, and it’s fun and easy. My studio is full of people I like a lot, and I think my professor is great. We went out to Prince Puckler’s for ice cream and celebrated not having any work yet.

Denial, my frisbee team, didn’t do so well at sectionals – we went 0-4 on Saturday. So our season’s over, but I had a great time, and actually was very impressed with my personal resilience when it came to being able to sprint for 4 games in a row.

My room’s pretty close to being under control, and I’ve got lots of loose ends to tie up, but I think I’ll be able to handle them. I’m getting excited for my birthday (it’s on Friday, I turn 24), and thinking about a lot of parties, since I’m helping to plan our school potluck, and there are halloween parties and harvest parties galore in the next two months.

I don’t know why my “About” page is all of a sudden titling itself differently in the button bar, but I’m going to try to fix it. Also, lots more coming on the wish list, which is fun to make, but somewhat time-consuming to find the analogous things online to what’s in my head.

Off to bed, tomorrow I have class in the morning.

Thoughts and Developments

Getting ready to go to sleep so that I can wake up early for Sectionals tomorrow. I’m feeling pretty guilty that I’ve let myself get totally out of shape, and a bit worried that things won’t go so well tomorrow, but all that I can do is give it my best.

I put together my dresser today! When we got back from exploring estate sales this morning, the replacement part was waiting on the front porch, so I spent the rest of the day assembling the thing. It looks good, and hopefully it won’t fall apart…

I put lots of pictures on my Flickr accountyesterday, and if you haven’t gone to look at them, you ought to. They’re not beautiful art shots, but there are some fun experimentation shots that I could doctor in Photoshop if I wanted to make them a bit more vibrant, and some pretty decent candid photos, that probably should also be run through Photoshop. Speaking of which, I uploaded my Adobe Creative Suite 2 yesterday, and I feel super powerful. Will feel even more powerful when I know how to use it.

Sarah and I climbed Spencer’s Butte on Wednesday, and I played in my first A league (frisbee) game Wednesday night. The A league here’s pretty good, so I’ll look forward to that. I’m also going to play in the C league on Sunday, so I’ll be back to disc twice a week, which means that if I fit in one more workout, I’ll be in position to maintain my health a little better this semester.

I added a wish list page (look in the top row of options) and took down the photo links page because the former seemed appropriate to start, thinking forward to Christmas, and the latter was no longer helpful because I’m now using Flickr.

So, off I go. Room’s almost under control, house is almost under control, still a bunch of loose ends to tie up before Monday, but am going to play frisbee and go to the Ozomatli concert instead.

The Close of Another Chapter

I’m officially done with my first semester of grad school, and in fact I’m already a few days into my vacation.  I’ll be bopping all over the east coast in the next few weeks, and I didn’t bring my laptop for security reasons, but I’ll probably still be writing more often than when I’m in school.  Especially since I have a lot to ponder after this first semester.

Since I last wrote, I finished the paper, went to the tournament, scrapped the design I was working on for an entire redesign of the cube house, completed the final design including model and three sheets of ink on mylar drawings, completed my sketchbook, had my exit interview, and started these intercession travels.  There’s a lovely picture of Herman and Ruth at the tournament that you should check out as a teaser to further stuff…for now I’m going to go enjoy pizza and conversation with the fam, who just walked in the door – Liz and Ricky and B.  Lovely!

Study Break

Taking a quick break from writing a paper to say hello to myself, remember that I am a real person, not just an automaton that goes from task to task, doing whatever she is told.

Actually, I’m quite enjoying writing the paper – the one about the Glasgow School of Art – as I did a sizable amount of research and got a feeling of actually being there. Strange, though, that I know how different it must be to visit than to look at photos and imagine. It’s a good exercise, though, because it’s fairly analogous to the design process. Yes, I make models, but a fair bit of what I do is sit and look at what I’ve drawn and imagine the reality it implies. Each drawing brings me a step closer to what that reality might be like.

Drawings become like notes on the imagined places in my head (in fact we have a book called Visual Notes which I recommend, and want to get more thoroughly familiar with, but which addresses more the notation of actual real places). Yesterday, I did just go outside and sit with my eyes closed, imagining that I was approaching the site of my Cube House (the third part of the compound we’ve been designing). I felt kind of dorky, but it worked. I’d become familiar enough with my rough plans and sections and my sketch model that I could start imagining the places that they enclosed, complete with patterns of light and material choices. Pretty cool!

The drawing class we had was very helpful, and perfectly timed to make that envisioning exercise totally worth the slight embarrassment I felt. They told us how to trace over pictures to get perspective shots of an imagined building. It’s sort of like a collage, you just take the lines you want and then add the rest from your brain or from another underlay of a different photo. I made some very convincing drawings of my buildng, and called it a day.

This whole thing was in part inspired by Mackintosh’s moves on the facade of the Glasgow School of Art, and by that building in general. I do hope that I always have a history class to feed me inspiration! I’m planning to really start a scrapbook sometime soon…

Speaking of inspiration, I bought plane tickets for a trip home to Florida, then up to visit Grandparents in Massachusetts and friends in Vermont. The South Main gang will be on the verge of moving out of their house by the time I head their way, so I should be in for another lovely, melancholy saying good-bye party. The trip as a whole has been inspiring me to keep plugging away – I’m so close to being done with my first semester! I’ll finally have time to change addresses and close my old bank account! 

Also, I’m heading to Kleinman, a tournament in Portland, this weekend, which is my main inspiration for trying to finish my paper tonight. We all know how much work one gets done at frisbee tournaments.

Also, I just added a link to Practical Action, the British group that works to get appropriate technologies out there, in use. Check out the gravity ropeway on their front page. All my designs should be so elegant.

So, I was thinking that I’m not feeling challenged enough by the school, but then, I was thinking harder, because that’s what Rachels do best, and I realized that I need to meet the challenges they are giving me head-on, and then I can see how I feel from there. Basically, that means no more whining about anything, ever, and the resoluteness to stand up for what I believe to be true and right, coupled with the intelligence to know when I haven’t got a clue and the flexibility to hear and enact valuable changes to my opinion.

Doesn’t that sound like a set of traits that everyone would be better off displaying?

Alive and Kicking

I never would have thought a week and a half would feel so long, but it seems more like I've been in school for a month and a half. We started right in with a design project, and without explaination of how to draft or make a model. They changed our schedule so that we now have class from 8:00-6:00 with a one hour lunch break, and it's pretty brutal, because at the end of that time there's inevitably a pile of homework to do. So, long story short, I've either come home around 12 a.m. and read for another hour, or around 9 p.m. and crashed out. Then I generally get up at 6:30ish. It's quite an adjustment to make, and one made more difficult by the strange eating habits it fosters.

Part of the difficulty is that this past weekend I went to Potlatch, in Seattle (You should know not to take frisbee pictures seriously). I worked in the studio all day Friday, and got to the fields just before midnight. Caitlin Cordell and I shared a tent at the fields. I played with Entropy Punch, the Oberlin reunion team. We quickly dispatched our first opponent on Saturday, and then settled in for a deadly second round bye. Meanwhile, one of our six women went to the hospital and was told not to play for the rest of the day as the result of an inconclusive shoulder diagnosis. Down to five ladies, we played and beat Denial, the Eugene team I'm about to become part of, and Smells Like Tacoma. By our fourth game, we were pretty beat, and indeed we got beaten by a California team. At the end of the game, in an attempt to revitalize myself, I chugged about a quart of pickle juice - let me recommend that you never do such a thing. I felt miserable the rest of the evening, but that probably worked in my favor, since I avoided the hangover on Sunday morning.

Sunday we lost one, won one, and lost one. Our win was pretty exciting: we were behind 13-7, and pulled out the energy to win 16-14. At the end of our games, I went to find my ride, only to discover that they had already headed home and weren't answering their cell phones. So, I asked around until I found some other Eugene folks that were heading home, and ended up getting to see the finals, in which Bomb (Carleton reunion team) bested Vagabonds (Portland), but not getting any work done.

I guess my bad luck in getting left was karmic repayment for my good luck of winning the bookstore's Book Award, which gave me $400 worth of books and supplies! So, as soon as I get a spare moment, I shall take in my receipts and get money back that I've already spent, and in the mean time, I'll keep buying the supplies I need without worrying about where the money to pay for them comes from. Super sweet.

So far I am enjoying the program, particularly the history and theory lectures. I'm excited about my current design for our first design problem, although I'm anxious to work out all the details. The problem is to build the first of three structures on a lakeside site. The site slopes down to the lake, with a fir forest to the north, a fern gorge to the east, oak savana to the west, and the lake to the south. Our house, the "Wall House," is on the western edge of the "bench" (a preexisting foundation structure), and acts as a gatehouse, temporary house for the owners during the construction of the other house, and a guesthouse. The house is 300 square feet of less, with requisite attached outdoor space and strict structural requirements. I've been working a lot with sliding, and had the queen sized bed sliding underneath a wall to create a condition of two couches, but the professor strongly suggested that I get rid of the wall since it's such a small space. I think I'm going to heed his advice, but now I have to figure out how to create the two couch condition, since I'm determined not to have a murphy bed and I'm also not digging the futon option.

So, I'd better get to sleep so that I have brain power to tackle the task at hand and not cut myself with an X-acto. Oh, and I have big plans for posting more photos and drawings (did you see my photos from our field trip?). Once I get my computer set up to work in the studio, I bet I'll be posting more often. Until then, I'll just keep wondering around looking lost whenever I'm not bent intently over my cardboard and cutting mat.

Waiting, Anticipating

It's time to play the waiting game, and so that's what I'm doing. Everything for the past two days has seemed so geared towards Monday and beyond. I cleaned the kitchen at the house, got that P.O. Box and figured out tuition, and ordered a whole bunch of books.

In that shopping mindset, I got excited about replacing my broken cameras with a new digital. I did a ton of research (aka read a lot of customer reviews on Amazon) and I've got a front runner, the Canon PowerShot SD600 6MP Digital Elph Camera with 3x Optical Zoom. It seems to have all the capabilities I would likely need through a couple of years of grad school, including some manual abilities, plus it's lightweight and portable enough to just take along on fun trips, plus it's not too super expensive. This is a big decision for me, but also a fun way to while away a day...

Which didn't really need whiling. I did a sprint workout in the middle of the day, after making some split pea soup. The workout was great, mostly since I could see how after three weeks of working out I would be in very good shape. That's a big motivator for me. Also, I have found a workout partner who will definitely challenge me. She's a physical therapist, so she seems to know every possible variation on each exercise, which adds flair and adventure to something otherwise potentially dull and painfull. After the workout, I headed to the market on the bike that I've started to fix up.

So, all in all it was a productive day, but really, what it comes down to is sort of a holding pattern. I'm avoiding resume tweaking (the architecture students I hung out with tonight said that they couldn't remember anyone working during the first summer), trying to decide whether to play in the summer league, and opening a new bank account.

Here's the exciting thing though: soon I'll be writing about real thoughts and ideas, rather than giving a list of what I did in my day. I know you'll miss knowing about how much fun it was to darn my socks, but you'll be oh so intrigued to hear what I really think of Loos' voyeuristic designs. Perhaps this weekend I'll get a chance to listen to the Shiguru Ban keynote address from the HOPES conference and respond. That would be nice.

Also, one last tidbit. Tonight I got invited to a salad party. This is a party in which the host, who is probably a gardener, supplies the greens, and the guests each bring a favorite salad topping to share. What a lovely idea - everyone should have one!

Our house, in the middle of the block

Finally, a free moment. I arrived in Eugene on Thursday afternoon, and immediately hopped into action. Since then I've had nary a moment to myself, and especially one long enough and internet accessed enough to post. But here I go; are you ready for the saga?

Thursday I drove into town and arrived at Shady Pines, a potential house, with the big drawback that it wouldn't be available 'til July 1. Still, I met Jacob, with whom I'd already had a couple of fun phone conversations and saw the house. Great house, six housemates, three chickens, space for concerts and bike fixing and art making and gardening, and a table with 45's under glass. Lots of fun details, lots to look at. Jacob and I chatted for a while, then he hooked me up with a bike from his friends' house, where there were also rentable spaces, but a two-person and a three-person spot, so I filed away the info and thought little of it (insert foreshadowing here). I got to ride a very small road bike around for the next several hours before the bike parade (!) that Jacob invited me to, so I hopped on and headed to the university to look around. Not much doing in Lawrence, the architecture building, so I decided to time a 10 minute ride south and mark it on my map, then a ten minute ride east, and mark that on my map. That gave me a very rough approximation of where I ought to look for housing, which turned out to be pretty much anywhere in the city of Eugene.

There weren't many For Rent signs up, except on the exceedingly ugly apartment buildings, so my plan wasn't working. I wound up at a bike shop and started my job search, but pretty much everywhere I asked required a resume, which means I have to find a printer, rather than having some sort of application. Good to know, and when I get housing figured out, I'll move on to tweaking my resume for non-office work. Before I went back to Jacob's house, I found a coffee shop with free wireless and hatched a plan to get up early in the morning to get back on Craigslist for a serious round of research and cold calls.

Off to the Bike Parade I went, along the way getting decked out in light pink spandex tights, a bright pink full length princess gown, and a matching visor, which I wore upright as a tiara. Little did I know, but I was underdressed for the occasion - the best costume, in my humble, was a full body yellow spandex unitard that actually went over the wearer's head, to which was attached a yellow balloon. Bikes were also decked out, and as we rode to the sounds of our boombox, we received hearty cheers from all directions. In several locations, we stopped to get off and dance. I felt a bit out of place, what with being entirely sober, but it certainly was a full-immersion introduction to the town.

I stayed the weekend, including Thursday night, with some of Eugene's solid frisbee supporters, who were very kind in opening up their house to me. It was great to have such flexibility, since I knew that my car would be safe parked there, and that I was welcome to go in and out of the house as I needed. Friday morning I did indeed get out early and get to work on my housing research. I found that many of the houses were recently occupied, which greatly shortened my list of possibilities. To put it in a positive light, I figured that it was making my choice easier. I checked out the first place; it was a mess, but livable.

Thus started my day of looking at uninspiring housing and sitting in my car between appointments wondering what I had gotten myself into. Why hadn't I applied to more than one school? Why hadn't I visited? Why was I doing this all anyway? Out of the corner of my eye I saw a for rent sign, pulled into the driveway of a large house, and wrote down the number. A guy about my age was coming across the adjoining parking lot and sat on the front stoop on his cell phone; he motioned for me to join him on the stoop. When he got off the phone, he told me that he had just talked to the landlord who was sending over the handyman to show him the house, and I could join in the tour if I'd like. How convenient! I said yes, but as we went through the house, I quickly realized it wasn't ideal. It was a 10-person boarding house, with a few nice features, but nothing that would make me actually want to live there, including the price of rent. I invited my fellow house-seeker, Erik, to go get coffee.

It turned out that Erik was also a new Option III M.Arch student, currently living in Portland and down for the day frantically trying to find a house amongst the uninspiring offerings. It also turned out that he had worked with Tina, my co-captain for the Manti, at the Green Roundtable in Boston. We chatted and agreed to go look at the two-person house I had written off on Thursday when I picked up the bike for the bike parade.

We searched through town using my vague recollection of its approximate location and found the spot as one of the people living in the next house (also for rent by the same landlord) got home. The two-person house is in the center of the block, surrounded by houses on three sides and a fence to give privacy from the alleyway/parking lot on the fourth side. We walked around, but all the blinds were closed and no one was home, so we knocked on the door of the adjacent house and asked the girl there what she knew about the house. During her positive report, the girl living in the house came home. After much convincing, she showed us the house, which, though small, was well kept and good-looking. We finally got in touch with the landlord, who was at the beach for the weekend, and scheduled to look at the house officially on Monday.

Erik and I talked a while longer and agreed that we were serious about the little house. We'd sleep on it and we had a lot of details to work out, but I left feeling pretty confident.

***

Saturday morning, I headed to the frisbee fields for Solstice, Eugene's home tournament. It was two days of a lot of sun and a lot of new people. I saw Q, a nice familiar face, and also it turns out that Sadie, a former Mantis that I also met last year at Potlatch, is a Eugene local, so I had an immediate connection on the team. I played horribly to start on Saturday - the long car ride had done my game no good - but I quickly warmed back up to the game and by the middle of the day I felt almost normal again. The women were all very nice and explained the various city leagues and teams to me as we played. We went 1-3 on Saturday and 1-2 on Sunday, but had a fun time as we did it. It seems like it's difficult to play mid-level on the West coast because good players go to the major population centers, leaving the smaller, far-apart towns with few great players.

The tourney party was at a bowling alley, which was awesome since it meant free beer for three hours, free snack food, and free games. Unfortunately the approach was a bit shorter than regulation, and since it was a party atmosphere, the lanes were covered in enough gunk and moisture that it was impossible to slide. Still, after the party died down, I bowled a 151, tying a new friend. Also, now I know that I'll try to find another alley for league play, if I can fit it into my schedule.

So, now I'm staying at the house of one of the lovely ladies from my team this weekend, where I crashed last night after the exhausting weekend (I also got home at 1:51 on Saturday night after winning the party). In a few minutes I'm headed out the door to my appointment for the house with Erik. I woke up to thoughts of furniture painting and thrift-store hunting. So hopefully my next post will be of how I have a new Eugene house and am no longer living out of my car in this petty-theft plagued city!

Hello, Goodbye; Hello, Goodbye

I'm hanging out on the back balcony of a friend's apartment in Chicago, a lovely spot with plants and sunshine and warmth. The friend is Jason, aka Tiger, who is Lyrica's boyfriend. We'll be here a couple of days exploring the city before we head out on what I consider our "real" road trip, which is to say that I haven't been to those places and we'll be camping out rather than staying on couches. We left Oberlin yesterday. I originally thought we might stay a bit longer, but it just seemed like time to go. Lyrica tells me it gets better the second year out - I loved seeing all those folks, but after being in small town Vermont, it was quite overwhelming to see so many people I knew in one small space. I couldn't bring myself to go to the very crowded bars and parties because they're so claustrophobic. And it's just like after any break there, you've got your two minute shpeil about what you've been doing and what you're about to do that you repeat, with slight variations, to everyone you come across. Despite all of this complaining, I had a great time and was so happy to be back there. A couple of lists:

Sporting Events I Attended/Participated in: 1. USA vs. Venezuala Soccer match 2. Oberlin Alumni Frisbee game (or rather 4 games, all of which were difficult to sub in on!) 3. College Nationals a) Florida vs Wisconsin b) Stanford vs UCLA 4. Which inspired a Run with Josie and Lyrica 5. Disc Golf, both Friday and Sunday nights, although Friday I played very well and Sunday I played like sh*t.

Favorite things to do in Oberlin that I did: 1. Go to the Feve when Karri is bartending 2. Dance at Sam and Gideon's dance party 3. Dance at the steel drum band's illumination performance 4. Play disc 5. Take showers/play freeze out with lots of lovely ladies

Tasty Food consumed: 1. At Millers, a large (3 scoop) ice cream in a waffle cone 2. At the Black River, a short stack of chocolate and raspberry pancakes and a side of hash browns 3. At the Feve, a portabello mushroom sandwich and the insides of someone else's buffalo shistawouk 4. At Agave, a huge burrito 5. On North fields, a barbeque plate with hamburger, hot dog, salad, potato salad, chips and chocolate chip cookies

Things I wanted to do but didn't: 1. Go to the OSCA picnic 2. Go to A-level 3. Visit Jim LaRue in Cleveland and say hi to some of my professors 4. Be awake at Illumination 5. Dance a whole lot more, especially to Naomi's reggae band, whose show I missed.

Places I slept: 1. In Erica's house on one of her three spare matresses 2. In the back seat of Melissa's car parked outside of the Feve while everyone else was inside of the Feve - and then I set off the alarm as I got out of the car... 3. On the way to and from Nationals 4. Amongst the chair set up for commencement in Tappan Square during Illumination 5. In the car ride from Oberlin to Chicago

The weather was hot, the people were hot, and it was good to be there visiting and seeing people walk across that stage.

Plus, a big shout out for Jake, who was awesome about the whole thing, entertaining himself a lot of the time, and making friends with my friends when he joined in the activities.

Ok, back to porch sitting - my new book, A Million Little Pieces, a glass of water, and a square of cookie dough. Yum.

Savoring the last few (rainy) days

I had a fantastic weekend at Get Ho, Get Lei'd, a frisbee tournament in Middlebury, VT. My team was a combination of University of Chicago alums, players from Six Trained Monkeys, and my fellow Oberlin alums. One of the excellent people I met wrote this brief and informative post about the tournament and our team. My one wish is that Joe could have been there. I got home very tired Sunday night and staggered through Monday. When I got home from work, I began the task of packing. It's amazing the stuff you find when you go through the accumulated detritus of your life. I finally said a requiem for my Airwalks, which I've had since sixth grade. Saying goodbye to those shoes really did give me a pause.

Today I took in my Altima to the shop to have her checked over for the trip. She came back with a clean bill of health, which made me very happy, since my trip to the repairman cost less than $40. I also finished up my blog research at work, with some great thoughts on how Web 2.0 and the sustainability revolution are related. I hope to work out those thoughts for a mini-essay soon.

Tuesday night here in Brattleboro means Frisbee and two dollar bowling. We had sixes at Frisbee, and after this weekend I was psyched to run around and play a pretty hardcore game. At the tournament I realized a) just how much my game has suffered from not having a team, b) how excited I am at the prospect of having a real, drill-running team in Eugene, and c) how capable I could be of getting back into the swing of things Frisbee-wise. So I kept my energy level up for pickup, and it was totally worth it, even though my compatriots weren't at the same energy level. It's pretty fulfilling to be running around and actually sprinting, a feeling you can sometimes forget when you're only going to pickup games.

Coming in to the bowling alley, covered in dirt, I was pleased to see a whole lot of fun folks there. I ended up bowling pretty poorly tonight (somewhere in the neighborhood of 115), and only got one game because there were so many people to meet and greet. Still had a good time, though, and managed to arrange a casual soiree tomorrow afternoon to help drink the growler of ESB that I brought back from the Otter Creek Brewing company this weekend.

One last thought - several people told me tonight how much they'd miss me. It's lovely and horrible to hear those words. It made me feel as great as the week that five people independently just picked me up off the ground to give me hugs, and as sad as I've ever been to leave a place. It's slowly sinking in that I'm really going.