The $5 Hon. Brewmaster

A quick recap of the past week or so:

Spring break in Phoenix was far to short to spend the time I wanted to spend with friends and family, and far to short to get the amount of work done that I should have gotten done for school. Still, I had a great time, fattened up a bit more to get me thro ugh the long months of studio, ate some good Mexican food and had a mai tai at the Trader Vic's in Scottsdale. I forgot what it was like to be hot so I had to buy a pair of shorts and flip flops while I was there, while it snowed in St.Louis.

The weather has been a mess- absolutely all over the place. In Phoenix, the spring is already consistantly cool then hot, but in the wintertime, you have four seasons compressed into a day in a predictable way- its winter when you wake up, spring by the time you get out the door, summer at lunchtime, and fall when you get back home. St.Louis weather is also seasonal, but apparently in several day chunks at a time. We go from a few days in the 70s to a few days of a blanket of snow with everything in between. On any given day I don't know whether to wear my canvas sneakers, shoes for rain, or snow boots.

Studio is feeling more progressive. After no studio desk crits for 2 weeks, I was really sweating the monday after the week after classes resumed. But the professor liked what I was doing an encouraged me to continue and to really push the boundaries of the project, and work between the scale of a planner and architect and civil engineer. So that was good.

Despite being introduced to a wealth of great source material of which contemporary architecture is built on, I wrote an abysmal paper and turned it in as a rough draft for my history and theory of the AA class. But its embarrassingly bad.  I'm beginning to worry about my GPA. (but not too much as I've pretty much got to get below a B- in every class to really threaten my scholarship)

At the forefront is structures, which has a test this friday for which I have not yet begun the homework. I would have had the test tomorrow night, but things as they are, there is another option to take it friday instead.

The graduate architecture council (GAC) is like the student council in high school, except in this one we can organize events with booze. I humbly submit that I was nominated to be a VP of Professional in the GAC, ran, and won in a schoolwide election. Actually, I asked to be nominated, and I ran uncontested. As did all the other nominees. But its really not a popularity contest, it really means that people who want to do something, get to do something.

As VP of Professional, one of my duties is be the guy architects who attend lectures go to after the lecture to make sure they get AIA continuing education credits. I'm also given the mantle of organizing a firm crawl, which I think I wrote about in this blog previously, which is no small task in itself.

Speaking of the GAC, we are acting as student representatives when the school has its open house this weekend, really starting thursday, so I volunteered to drive students from the airport to the hotel in Clayton. I can't believe its been a year already since I came as a wide-eyed and bushy-tailed youngster of only 25.

And so on. Oh well, structures awaits.