Pylon (it's a long post, get it?)

Feeling a little more upbeat last two days. I abandoned my research topic in Latin American design which was getting me nowhere and so now I'm researching a Colombian architect by the name of R. Salmona. A lot more material and a lot more interesting. So decided that monday. After fighting with the CAD program for hours over the weekend and struggling to get my plan and sections printed on the big sheets, my studio instructor pulled out my hand-inked wall section to show the class the level of detail we were supposed to be working at. Poster boy Alec once again. I feel like Vanna White. Anyway, he's really enthused about the direction I'm working in and I think I've got a pretty good handle on it. Should be able to fine tune it with the 3d computer model I'm building in sketchup and a bit more cleaning up the plan. Monday night was also Molly's 21st birthday, so after work Ben and I walked to the Irish pub Rula Bula at midnight. We met a few of our friends from studio there and then Molly showed up with her party entourage along with David, the constant DD. There were at least 20 people there, mostly friends from studio and from thier house, and the only one who didn't enjoy himself was the bartender who (although he sold quite a few Irish car bombs and many pints of Guiness) had been expecting a quiet evening. Ben and I took off about 1, the same time Molly called it quits for the evening, and I got to bed around 2 walking back.

At 7:40 my mentor woke me up because he explained that he had to talk to some laywers at the office when I'd emailed him planning on coming in. I got up and told him I'd be there at 9. Shower, Corn Pops, collared shirt, slacks, belt, Suki, keys. Also drawings I'd picked up passing studio on the way home from the pub the night before. Traffic was bad, so it took me 45 minutes to get to the office, so I arrived right on schedule. I showed my mentor my floorplan, and sketched out the concept. He gave me some advice on materials and acoustics, like the scheme I'd developed, and recommended some projects to take a look at for further reference and inspiration.

Drove back home, hopped on my bike and hit the library to see what I could find on Salmona. The answer is not much, but enough for a decent paper, especailly after I found an entire book on his projects and work. I sailed through the architectual periodical incidies and found the bound periodicals I needed with no trouble. There are some definate advantages to working at the library. Only problem was some of the best periodical articles were MIA so I may have to try to find them online. There's really not a whole lot of American writing on him as he's a Colombian architect, and assumably its difficult for Americans to tavel to Colombia and evaluate his projects, so I tend to rely on spanish, german, and italian articles with thier english translations.

Another gorgeous day today. Not sure if there's anyplace nicer to be in the early spring than the valley. Just a hint of the heat at a high of 83 today. It will probably be an unusually infernal summer with the radical weather changes lately. All the paloverde trees are in full bloom with thier brilliant gold explosions. For some reason, my camera keeps getting card read errors so I cant take pictures. I'll have to look into that. Hopefully it will go away as its happened to it before.

I have a five page paper due next tuesday for history of architecture I've read five pages for, and the latin american design paper is due a week after that. Finals begins the 4th, although the only final I have to worry about is structures, and we're doing nothing but review for the final from here on in. Then there's the architecture project. Our studio instructor wants us to be essentially done designing and ready to begin presentation materials and setting up our presentation boards next monday. I need to start blocking in hours I'm going to spend of each of these things on my calender. There are the two papers, and then all the visa stuff for Argentina. The good news on that is that a friend of mine called the consulate in LA and they said the requiremnts I'd listed were for a year stay: the semester stay is much abridged, not requiring the psychohealth check or the non-criminal record statement. May still require a trip to LA though. Time to get that going, too. What's happened to this semester? I have literally three weeks of school left. Just when you think time can't speed up any more...

We looked at buildings in Paris today in history of architecture, and it made me smile and think about all the good times I had with my family and walking everywhere with Chase. Ah, Paris. I'm so spoiled. I've been there three times, but my nation's capital? Never.

Speaking of family, definately check out my mom's blog- she's got some amazing pictures from Abu Dabhi. There's something so photogenic about the sand dune desert against the sky, something so minimal that it provides a poetic backdrop for the action of even something as mundane as sandboarding.