Week in Review

MONDAY, continued. I hung out with Julie, Cassie, Sarah, and a few other friends, losing badly at thier video games, watching TV, and playing with Cassie's ferret. Ferrets are funky little creatures, and they seem more like little monkeys to me. Very excitable, aggitated, and agressive.

TUESDAY Cassie and Julie both worked at thier jobs, leaving Sarah and me behind. We had a very relaxing day, watching TV, making a grocery store run, and we went to see V for Vendetta at the discount theaters. Cool movie, but it felt a bit too long with too little action. Granted, its more cereberal, but they really belabored the point. The last half an hour is amazing. When Julie got of work we watched more TV at home and then picked up another friend for his birthday dinner. I drove everybody to dinner, which was at a small, but delicious Italian restaurant. The kind of place you half expect to see Vito Coreleone. We finished up there and I drove everyone home in time to catch Cassie coming back from her work around ten. I left tucson after saying goodbye to everyone, and drove back to Tempe, getting home around midnight.

WEDNESDAY was my first day of work. My tie was a bit dressy, but not by much. Most people were in business casual or better. I got a desk at a graphics station, and my mentor-cum-boss explained my first project to me. They have a client who wants some condos, but the design of the apartments is completely ridicoulous with one elevator serving two condos per floor. It's an optimization problem like a puzzle- how does one grant more automony and personality to each living unit while allowing the efficiant acess? Anyway, Mr. Jones let me just go at it alone to see what I can do. By the end of the work day, I'd drawn a property map in autocad, and did a basic site analysis with google earth maps and the city of scottsdale maps. Work hours are 7:30 to 5:30, with an hour for lunch. Wednedays, one of the hispanic employees gives a lesson in basic spanish to everyone over lunch. At this point, they're still learning things like Los Las El La, etc and Sala = room. The other cool thing is that they keep a fridge stocked with free sodas, and tea bags. Drove home that night.

THURSDAY I caught the bus (hour long to get there) into work and continued work, getting into Sketchup with the apartment units to start some 3d stacking work to see how the condos might go on the site. At lunch, Mr. Jones took me to the Design Review Board for Scottsdale, of which he is a chair member. He drove us to city hall and the kiva. We had catered lunch with the other board members in a meeting room. In this way I met Bob Littlefield, a city councilman, the city attourey, and other civic leaders. Then I sat down in the audience for the public sessions of the design review board hearings where various developers and archietcts presented thier projects for approval. It's basically a critique as the various members will cite problems with thier design from a aestetic, code, and design viewpoint. I have mixed feelings about the board, as on the one hand, it smacks of authoritiarian design controls and censorship, but on the other hand, it genereally improves the design of the buildings. I agreed with thier decisions at this meeting though. When I took the bus home, I had to wait 45 minutes for a bus which was supposed to run even 15 minutes. The ride home was terrible. Three people in wheelchairs came on and off during my ride, which means we had to wait five minutes for getting on and five minutes for getting off. Then this homeless man sat next me for about half an hour. I have nothing against the homeless, but this man stank. Like the worst smell I've smelled all year. Old cigarettes, stale body odor, fresh body oder, and absoultely covered in grime. I was nauseated. That night, I went to Nickee's and watched part of a movie with her and some of her friends. I gave her advice on how to pack and what to take for her trip to Europe. Went home around 10 so I could get some sleep.

FRIDAY I slept in a little extra and drove to work. Friday's are casual. "Not grubby," Mr. Jones, admonished me Thursday, so I wore clean jeans and a polo shirt. The other thing about friday's are that working hours are from 5:30 AM to 11:30 AM, so we get the afternoon off. I met with one of the other guys who worked through some of the condo configuration problems with me. He was actually one of the guys who reviewed my pool project at an early stage, and he asked about how my project turned out. I'll bring my boards in monday I think to show him. Friday afternoon, I ran last minute errands with Nickee. She's leaving today (saturday) and is terrified. Late friday afternoon, I picked up my letters from the schools for the argentine visa, so I can proceed with that now. After that, I was picked up by my future roomate Aldo and another friend Ivonek and we hit the mall to kill some time before we went to see DaVinci Code. I went in with very, very low expectations and a wry grin, and the movie satisfied my expections. It was long, and took itself way way to seriously, but it had a few fun moments. I'm glad I knew what to expect with the book. My friends felt let down by it, and there was a massive line for the ten pm showing. We headed over to Applebys for happy hour and had appetizers and beers for a bit chatting and enjoying ourselves. Afterwards, we came back to my apartment and we watched the Godfather.

Hey, its the summer, I'm taking it easy.