More Insanity

Listening to NPR on the way home, the newscaster asked a reporter to describe the polls in Kuwait, where women are being allowed to vote for the first time. Aloud, I said "It's really hot!" After a moment of silence, the reporter said "well, it's really, really hot." Made me laugh anyway. I'll be heading down there in about two weeks. Two weeks. Scary. Still so much to get done.

Today after work I went to Scottsdale to listen to Eddie Jones and three of his clients present thier views on the work his office did for them. There were maybe ten people in the audience, two of which were Aldo and Ivonik, friends of mine, and one of which was a studio professor from ASU. A shame, but a really cool lecture. Even though the auditorium was pretty empty, Mr. Jones still launched into his talk with zeal and enthusiasm. He is, by far, the most charismatic architect I've ever seen. He reminds me a bit of George Lucas, a little overweight, with a salt and pepper beard and hair. Dressed very casually. It's very easy to see why he is one of the most architects in Phoenix, landing projects even when his competition has had more experiance with the types of projects they're competing for. Unsurprisingly, his easy manner and charisma gets him a lot of private residences for extremely rich clients, and he delivers. His work is good, and this may sound elitist, but I think the high society clients pick him because he can deliver a really "architectural" house which looks very avant garde. He's very approachable and we three talked with him for about ten minutes after the presentation.

Aldo, Ivanik, and I all work at very different firms. Aldo works at custom home builder up in scottsdale, which really does more site adapted spanish mission stucco style work and floorplans, while also being the builder and developer. At the other end of the spectrum is Ivanik, who works at a very small firm doing very high design work. I'm at the medium corporate architecture office, which puts a heavier emphasis on design, but still does a ton of institutional projects for the airport, and several universities. Anyway, after the lecture, we went to Applebees for happy hour.

Yesterday, I decided to try a different route from work. I drove south, intending to reach university or broadway and take it over from the city center, but I saw the mountains and kept driving south until I reached the desert foothills of south mountain. I threw on a tee shirt I had in the back, rolled up my work pants, clipped on a liter of water and set off on a little trail leading up. I hiked for about half and hour, following little trails. One brought me up to a high clearing on top of a hill, and on a massive rock, I found a bunch of old indian petroglyphs. From the vantage point, I could see tons of trails back in the mountains. I'm still not fully comprehending the fact that I won't be back for at least six months.