get low

The length of the day here in Helsinki takes some getting used to. It only really feels like its starting to get dark around 11 at night, and the only time it's really dark is around midnight. By three AM, the sky is already getting light again. So in a way, its very nice- the extended dusk and sunset means that it stretches out time that can be spent outdoors. Saori and I took a walk a few nights ago after 10, and it was still very light out, just wandering around the peninsula that she lives on. It's past 10:30 here, and there's still direct light on most of the building across the plaza.

On the flip side, I'm very sensitive to light when I'm sleeping, so Saori lent me her sleeping mask and I pretty much have to use it if I want to sleep.

Saori's roommates have both left, so Saori and I have the place to ourselves. Well, and the ancient, half-blind cat.

There is something very understated about Helsinki, which I understand is a characteristic of Finnish culture and national character. It wasn't until yesterday afternoon, when we went to the cafe on top of the 12 story tall Toroni tower that I realized how low-rise the city of Helsinki really is. When you think about it, 12 stories in a capital city is nothing. My apartment in Buenos Aires was taller than this tower. However, the convention of the city keeps almost every building at or below six stories. There is something really nice about this as you get a lot of light and sky- it makes for a much more open feeling street level. At the same time, there is also a pretty high density since the buildings take up everything they can up to that six story height limit.  It contributes to this feeling of quaintness to Helsinki, like a pre-elevator city.

From my limited stays in Oslo and Stockholm over five years ago, Helsinki strikes me as the most laid back and least cosmopolitan of those scandinavian cities. Its character is hard to define-  There's the beaux arts and neoclassical architecture in the faded pastel hues of Tsarist Russia as well as a tendency towards the rustic and rough hewn granite. But the atmosphere is more bucolic and nearly provincial- its much cleaner, much more friendly, and much less tense than St.Petersburg. The lowness of the city and the way the people here interact with the city and the outdoors kind of reminds me of downtown Salt Lake City, although at much higher density. Pretty much the entire city is between four and six stories.

 Lots of public space. Plazas abound for a city that is covered with snow and ice most of the year. On a sunny day like today, Finlanders flocked to the sidewalk cafes and lounged at the outdoor tables in a Parisian style. Actually, they're pretty much everywhere outside- in the parks, on benches, on monuments, on the steps of the churches... When I last passed through Scandinavia, hurting from the high VAT, especially as a backpacker, I saw people everywhere lounging out of doors on those summery days. I immediatly jumped to the conclusion that the Scamdinavians, as I called them back then, were living the good life in welfare states, lounging off the of tax dollars of visitors. Actually, they are hard workers who genuinely care for workmanship, and who can blame them for wanting to enjoy the limited sunshine and summer that they get?

Helsinki

I've made it safely to Helsinki. Although the individual legs of travel were pretty short, it was actually a bit of a trek to get over here.

Thursday morning, mom dropped me at the airport in Phoenix at 5 AM for my flight out. It was about a three and a half hour flight to Chicago in the middle seat. Got in to Chicago around noon and ended up having a six hour layover. O'hare is a really ugly airport. It's almost like it was supposed to be High-Tech but ended up looking like a sad parody of victorian train station. Had a pizza and a beer for lunch while I waited for my flight. Flew to London also in a middle seat. For someone who has been on 12 hour flights before, a six and a half hour long flight is almost nothing. Got a few hours of sleep, which was great. Didn't even finish reading all of my books.

Dad picked me up at the airport in London and drove me back to his house, where I had a shower and a great breakfast and a nap for an hour or two. Dad pretty much had to drag me out of bed when it was time for lunch. We actually ate at a pub in Guildford, right on one of the meandering streams. England is so green and lush right now. Really pretty. Dad put me on the train in Guildford and it was a short ride to Gatwick airport for my cheap flight to Helsinki. I crammed my messenger bag into my backpack to comply with the "one bag" rule. Hello, EasyJet. The flight to Helsinki was pretty short, about two and a half hours long. When the messages over the intercom started being in Finnish, it made me crack up a little bit- Finnish sounds a bit like English spoken backwards with too many Os and As.

Finnish airport looks a lot more designed than Heathrow- there is wood everywhere, clean Scandinavian lines, sleek design in wood, steel, and glass. The bus into town was easy to figure out- I walked outside the terminal and the bus sign said "Helsinki train station". About $5 for the city bus. The ride in was about 30 minutes- even well past 9 o clock at night, the sky was a dark blue dusk, but still light enough to see by. Tall, skinny trees grow densely wherever there is a patch of forest.

Saori met me outside the train station. It wasn't too cold or dark yet outside on this friday night, and there were tons of Finns just hanging out outside. Poeple here seem to really take advantage of the public space. Lots of public plazas here.

For some reason, my variation on jet lag meant I was pretty wide awake around 10pm, so we walked over to an outdoor bar and had a beer. It was wierd to think of myself in Helsinki since a little over 24 hours before, I was in Phoenix, then Chicago, then London. Took a streetcar back to Saori's flat where she lives with two other guys in the program. One of them, Phillip, had already taken off for St.Louis.

I've been having a hard time falling alseep, partly from my jet lag, but also from how early the sun rises and shines directly into Saori's room. So it was little surprise that we ended up getting up around noon. Saori led me on a walking tour around the city- we stopped at Cafe Ursula on the coast for a very nice snack and coffee. Smoked salmon and dill on rye toast, trying to keep the aggressive sparrows at bay. Really a beautiful day. We made dinner at Saori's apartment- Salmon soup, before heading out to catch the final football match in the European cup at a sports bar. There, we met up with a bunch of Saori's classmates, many of whom will be continuing on to Buenos Aires in the fall.

Today, we woke up late again, so we decided to make a day of research and packing. Saori needed to buy a new suitcase since her old one broke, and I needed some long sleeve t shirts, so we went shopping for most of the day. They have the cheap fashion stores H&M here like they have circle-Ks in Phoenix.

Afterwards, we had a cup of coffee at the Cafe Aalto, in a bookstore that he designed before heading back home. Everything closes in Helsinki on Sunday nights anyway, and Saori wanted to get started packing things up.

So right now, we're trying to figure out what to do with our time here in Finland. The problem is that its so expensive to go anywhere.  We shall see.

Did tuesday really exist?

I think this has been one of my least productive days in about six months, but if I write it out, maybe it makes it sound like I'm actually getting something accomplished.

Today I went for a jog, washed some dishes and loaded the dishwasher, took a walk to the open desert to take some photos, and made a spagetti dinner out of leftovers. Oh, and I watched about a dozen episodes of Fullmetal Alchemist, an action anime series, on Netflix. At least I'm taking a break to do something else every third episode.

Proof that I left the house. Could have been photoshopped,
but the lighting and edge of the hair are pretty good.

Party at Mom's

Got up around 5 am yesterday morning and dropped mom off at the airport. She's flying to Florida to check out apartments. I dropped her off at the bus pick up for the terminal off of Washington- with my limited experience driving, it seemed like a much more palatable idea than driving into the airport. There is some irony to the fact that the airport, which was initially designed to reduce the distance between the car and the airplane, has simply created a very complicated and confusing traffic situation.

I drove back home, the first time to drive stick solo, and crashed. In bed.

It feels really weird to have mom's place to myself. I almost feel like I'm sixteen with my parents gone for the night, like I'm going to watch R-rated movies and eat ice cream, or do some kind of mischief.

Got up around ten and ran a few errands before meeting Tay and Britt at George and Dragon for a pint and some pub grub. Later, I met up with my coworker and her husband at their new guest house/condo for dinner. It was great to see them and she made  a really really good okonomiyaki, which is a Japanese dish, kind of like a cabbage, noodle, and egg pancake with various meats.

Afterwards, Tay and Britt came over to mom's house and we drank some wine and played a lot of cards. They stayed over, and in the morning after Tay woke up at 11, he made us a wonderful breakfast/brunch of french toast. Surprisingly good, actually. The rest of the day was predictably lazy. We did get out to run a few errands, and then I cooked everyone sausage jambalaya (from a box, but still good) for dinner before they took off.

Tonight I worked on my urban books application- there's a very popular elective in the fall which is made of art and architecture students which is kind of a sketching studio that makes a book with the subject of St.Louis. This year, apparently there were so many applicants, that they instituted an application system, where you have to submit a page of work and a paragraph saying why you want to take the class and what your expectations are. I figure I've got a good chance since I've already overheard people saying "applying for an elective? forget about it!" (at least, I'm hoping that the application will keep a lot of people from applying).

I also started watching Fullmetal Alchemist which is required otaku no anime. It's waaay to easy to watch entire seasons of things with Netflix, and this thing has about fifty episodes. I watched eight of them tonight, they are actually only about 20 minutes long, but they're kind of disturbing, not a great thing to watch right before you go to bed. Which is part of the reason why I'm writing this after 2 am.

Cityscraped

I caught a ride into Tempe with mom today and worked my way downtown by walking and lightrail. My objective was the replacement of Patiots square park, Phoenix's downtown public plaza. Patriots square was underutilized partially because downtown was so depopulated. Its really difficult to have a living city where nobody actually lives. However, as an advocate for public space, I don't think ripping the entire thing out and replacing it with a shopping center was a great idea. I understand that it is a means of attracting people to the downtown, but this thing is an island, focusing inward around two small plazas. It's very cut off from the city around it, save for the street which cuts through the center of it. Surround it with parking, and it could be anywhere in the metro sprawl. It's also extremely targeted- this was a public space that was for everyone which has been transformed and redeveloped into a space for upper-middle-class 20-40 year olds. There's a Lucky Strike bowling alley/lounge, very hipster, along with stand up comedy club instead of a movie theater, and an urban outfitters. It's Mill avenue wrapped around itself. The boutique hotel opens later this year, as does the gourmet grocery store which will sell $5 jars of imported mustard.

I'm probably more acutely aware of the social implications of public space than most people, so it bothers me when I see public space being replaced with private space. Even on this saturday morning, I was watched by the security guard patrolling the perimeter, while a posted list of regulations detailed what was permissible in this space. A not so subtle reminder that you are here by the grace of your wallet and are liable to deportation if you appear otherwise. I guess I'm just an advocate for the city being for everyone, because really everyone is contributing to the city, and to throw up something like Cityscape tells the other 80% of the population they don't really matter.

Anyway, went back to Tempe and got an Arizona Peach beer at Four Peaks. If you asked me what my favorite beer was, I'd have to ask you "when?" Today was a really hot, dry, sunny day in the mid-90s, and sitting in the cool shade of the bar, and drinking the cold pint of the golden, slightly hoppy, fresh, and hint of peach beer was incredible. It's the only place to get it in the world, and I'm not upset because its also the best conditions to be drinking it in.

Post-graduation

The week continued.
After the party, not a whole lot happened.
Mom started going to bar prep classes on tuesday. I caught a ride with her into town.

What the hell else was I going to do?

This week, mom would go to bar prep courses, and I'd wander over the architecture library and stake out a table. A week after graduation, it was pretty quiet. Free wi-fi, comfortable, light, and possibly the largest architecture library in the US, it made a nice base to figure out what I was going to do this summer.

It sounds like there is just not much work here. A friend of mine who recently graduated from the architecture grad school at ASU confided that few, if any, have been able to find jobs. Taylor and Brit, encountered an army of applicants while chasing down Craigslist postings. Everywhere I go, it seems I overhear someone looking for a job. So Phoenix is not a great place to be jobwise.

So, part of the time at the library I spent job hunting. Applied to a few places around town, and also a few places in the UK. Not much luck. It's tough to be really enthusiastic about since really at this point, I'm only really available to work for a month.

Got a slew of rejection emails from the firms that bothered to send them. Actually, one of the senior designers from Rick Joy's office sent me an incredibly warm rejection letter which actually made me feel good reading it.  No word yet from Sir Norman Foster. Something tells me that I will not get a personalized rejection letter from atop the Gherkin.

I also spent awhile figuring out my school finances and travel plans. Thursday, I booked my tickets to London and Helsinki; made further arrangements possibly to see Salt Lake. Whatever this summer is, it is definitely NOT going to be dull.

Being in Tempe also allowed me the opportunity to meet up with old friends. Had lunch with Sal and his girlfriend one afternoon, and then Tay and Brit the next day, and actually had lunch with my dear friend Dr. Morton, who was my history of architecture professor at ASU. It was good to catch up and see what adventures he's been up to and to update him on what we've been up to in St.Louis.

The other thing I've been doing is learning to drive stick.
Mom has this car. It's about the size of a box of matches, yet has the turning radius of an aircraft carrier. When you get in, the seats are so low they're actually below the level of the street. It has the visibility of a deep sea submersible. If you've got rope to tie it down, the trunk is large enough to hold a golf-ball. If you want to see what cars are around you, the best bet is to stick a camera out the window and snap a quick shot. Best of all, it's got an manual transmission.

Last summer, mom attempted to teach me how to drive stick, partly in my anticipation of having to drive a manual transmission truck to move out to St.Louis. We spent a few hours driving around the nearby church parking lot, endlessly shifting from first, to second, stopping. Shifting to first again, to second, ad nauseum. Actually it was good practice. Thursday, we did a few laps around the church parking lot. And then I drove back to mom's house which was new. The next day, I drove to Tempe. I'm still sweating bullets the entire time, occasionally killing the car, and occasionally swearing. But I'm getting better. I'm told its just a matter of practice.

Realistically, I need to know how to drive stick. When I was in Argentina, a group of us took a bus trip across the country to Mendoza, aiming to reach Las Lenas, an ski resort high in the Andes. The bus took us as far as Mendoza where I found a car rental place a mile from the bus station. Guess how many automatic transmission vehicles they had on loan? Thankfully, there were two people in the group who not only knew how to drive stick, but were old enough to go on the rental agreement.

the Revolutionaries

It's hard to get my head outside of architecture school, and far to easy to lose contact with reality and the world going by outside, so it was not without a great feeling of "what? how can they be graduating?" upon the realization that I needed to buy tickets to go to my brother's and mother's graduation.

My brother, whom my parents were deeply concerned with whether or not he would even be admitted to ASU, has graduated summa cum laude, a distinction, I might add, that I did not attain. I have seen him mature so much in four years both intellectually and socially- becoming the man I knew he would become. Now, Taylor is preparing for another quantum leap- come fall, he will be attending the 23rd best law school in the country. If he was crawling before he went to ASU, he graduated striding purposefully, but now he will have to full out run. But he can do it. He has the combination it takes to succeed- the razor sharp intellect, the warmth and charisma, and the determined drive; if he engages with law school, the engine that is Taylor will blow us all away.

These three years have been a different kind of challenge for my mother. I already knew she had the determination and the rationality and the intellect that would make her a great lawyer, but she had to re-learn that she possessed these qualities, and she had to overcome her fear of alienation as a later-in-life student where the average age would be half of her own age. And she did fantastic. Not only did she make many friends across the age spectrum, she also had stellar academic achievements- most notably her willingness to be lucky combined with great writing skills which brought her a position on the Law Journal and later as a note-and-comment editor. She has worked incredibly hard and she has done it. Now, like Taylor, she faces a new challenge which I am confident she will overcome. A new program, in a strange new place, filled mostly with accountants as she begins work on her tax LLM.

Two revolutionaries. Leaving their victories in Phoenix behind, they take their fights onward....

Summer break: After review to Ahwatukee

Hmm what have I been up to in my lazy start to summer?

Last tuesday: final review, then out to $1 burgers and drinks at Bar Louis with the rest of the studio. (of course, after you add blue cheese, bacon, lettuce, tomato, sauces, etc it's more like an $6 burger, but the idea is the thing). Just one drink since I'm so stoned on sleep, so I catch a ride back home with some other people. Severe sleep deprivation is like an alcohol multiplier. I crash on the couch with a beer and watch part of Brazil before calling it a night and getting some much deserved sleep.

Wednesday: spent most of the day clearing out studio, finishing other school projects, burning discs of work for school records. Drinks and a casual pot luck at our instructor's house near Soulard. Really pretty part of town. Really gentrified. All old brick buildings south of downtown St.Louis. Lots of trees, narrow streets, and bars. House was predictably nice modern. Eames and Corbu chairs. $2000 rare architect's monographs. Nice kitchen. I brought beans I'd made in the crock pot with some smoked ham hocks. People really liked it. Not quite as good as Jonathan's (Sam's boyfriend) jambalaya, which was terrific, even though it had mushrooms in it. I ate a ton. We were all thrown out around 11. Kind of bittersweet as I would not see many of them for the better part of a year as they will go abroad.

Thursday: finalized burning discs and cleaning out my desk, which involved lots of sorting, throwing things away, and hauling stuff to my car. I hope I got everything. Aired up Saori's tires and drove around her car for awhile since I'd be gone for awhile. Against my better judgement, I went to a rave-themed party at a friends house, knowing full well I had a 7am cab to the airport the following morning and still had not packed for Phoenix, and potentially, Scandinavia. Oh well. The party was fun. Lots of poppy trance music, black lights, masks. I got blisters on both my feet from dancing on the wooden floors. Around midnight, the party was broken up by police who told us they'd received noise complaints from neighbors. That's the second time in a month I've been to a broken up party. We cheerfully filed out and while most people moved on to another house to party, I went home. After all, I have to be responsible and there was that flight tomorrow, er, in a few hours.

Friday: got up at 6 and quickly packed. Slipped my passport into my jeans so I wouldn't forget it. Packed quickly, going down the list of essentials I'd written the day before. You really only need two things to travel: money and a passport. Everything else is replaceable. Threw together a haphazard set of clothes: hot clothes for Phoenix, long sleeves and a wool cardigan for the UK and Helsinki, a few dress shirts and pants in case I found a job, sandals, slip on sneakers, and workplace slip-ons. And suki. Oh yes, did I mention I was bringing my cat?

Cab was early, which turned out to be a good thing.
I stuffed Suki in the airline approved pet carrier, grabbed my backpack and my suitcase, and hopped in the taxi. We were halfway to the airport when the part of my brain that knew I had my passport in my jeans finally met with the part of my brain that knew I'd changed my jeans before leaving. Even without tickets booked for international travel, I needed to have that option open so I had us turn around and I made a mad dash back into my apartment. Luckily I'm one of those people who just budgets in extra time for stuff like this, so we were totally fine for time.

I really hate air travel, and Suki dislikes it much more than I. Getting her through security was interesting. I have to take her out of the carrier and carry her through the metal detector. While I waited for her carrier to get through the xray scanner, I set her down in the gray tray and people just stared at us. She still had her lion cut which made the whole thing more strange. She didn't really fuss at all until the plane pulled back from the gate. She didn't like the noise, she didn't like the motion, and when the plane roared and accelerated into a take-off, she completely became unglued. Howling and screaming like a baby, turning around and around in her carrier. My seat companion laughed and clucked at the poor creature, and the woman in the seat in front of me rang for the air steward.

We were asked to move to a seat in the back due to the woman's allergy to cats. Although two random strangers told me that if Suki hadn't started meowing, she probably would never have noticed. I didn't care. I went from a middle seat to a middle seat, and the two guys I sat between didn't complain. Suki quieted down after awhile though it could have been from shock. She was unhappy at landing too but it wasn't as bad as takeoff.

We actually had a stop in Denver but we were staying on the same plane. It's actually a great deal- when you stay on the same plane, at least on Southwest, you have first pick of any seat. Any seat. So me and my cat moved right up the first or second row and the window. Suki's take off from Denver was actually a lot more mild than from St.Louis, I was surprised. Suki was pretty quiet the entire time. Maybe she remembered that she didn't die the first time.

Got into Phoenix around noon and both my grandmothers picked me up. I'm lucky to have such great women in my family. Drove to mom's house and Suki extracted herself from the carrier to find her unwelcome cousin, Zara. Zara's relationship to Suki is a lot like Nermal's relationship with Garfield.

Updated portfolio

Day 6 post-review: I assembled a new portfolio for job hunting.

And here it is.

Open publication - Free publishing - More architecture

Review

Today is Tuesday, May 17. By the time you read this, I will already be dead. Seven days ago, we had our final review for studio. Architecture studio review is the classic tradition stretching back at least half a century (but where did it start?) whereby at the end of the term, students present their work in a representational manner with models, animations, drawings, renderings, in addition to an oral presentation to a jury, typically made up of architectural professionals.


Hours of sleep friday: 6
Hours of sleep saturday: 4
Hours of sleep sunday: 0
Hours of sleep monday: 4

Size of my final boards: 11'4" x 7'
Cost of printing: $200
Cost of prints that printed wrong that I couldn't get a refund for: $60.

Critics on my review: 6



I guess I've never really thought about why we do it this way. In the "real world" professionals present their work to people who are not architects, and at any rate, the intent is to "sell" the product of architecture, so the review isn't that. The alternative, that the review is about the critique of the students technique and theory, strikes closer to the mark, but it still doesn't really make sense when you consider that the review is the last thing you do for studio. There might be a good exchange of ideas in a presentation, directions the student might take the project, aspects unconsidered, tweaks and variations to explore.... but that time is not built-in. It's not part of the architecture school culture.


One of the critics for our studio was a landscape architect who early on in the day started talking about her "fantasy two weeks," amending it to professional fantasy two weeks after a humorously awkward pause. She was talking about a two week period after a review where a student might actually keep working on the project based on the feedback. What struck me was, why don't we do it? Do we need the time to develop the project up to the final review? Was there once an underlying idea that students would actually go back and revise their work? As a student, I can safely say that the vast majority of architecture students mentally checked out the moment they sat back down in their chairs, and that what was actually discussed in the review gets dissolved in a hazy mist of exhaustion mingled with two week fantasies of drinking, relaxing, and sleep. Which is why I have people take notes for me when I get critiqued.


It gets tricky though- suppose your entire project is suspect, or the underlying assumptions you have built the architecture on are invalid. One of our classmates was told that his project would kill many people as well as cause the destruction of the the greater part of New Orleans. I think this might have been stretching it, but suppose it were true. What is he going to do for those two weeks? There's also the issue of fallibility. Who's to say the critics are right? So much of what we do is subjective and dependent on unspoken convention and theory.


I guess review is about clarifying your own thinking- it pushes you to confront, understand, simplify, and synthesize your own thoughts about design and architecture, which is really the point of studio. Any studio. The projects don't really mean anything. Peter Cook said it best- words like Urbanism are just words to get the ideas behind them to move.


It's always interesting to hear the way students describe their reviews, especially given the ambiguity about their purpose. What exactly is makes a "good" review then? Or a "bad" one? In the context I just described, a bad review would be one where the critics do nothing but rave about how good the project is, and a good review would be one where the project is ripped apart to its most basic level and all its ideas exposed and challenged.


As a student, it gets emotional. The relationship between your project and you is tense- at the end of the semester, you hate your own project. Its an idiot thing, terrible, ugly, stupid, boring, and trite. Why did you even think it would work? You must be a terrible designer. But its too late to start over and there's too little time to tweak it into something good or interesting. You work on it numbly, filled with a mute loathing and dream of just finishing so you can sleep. But its also your baby. It's your work, your blood on the model, and its your tired eyes staring back at you from the beautiful six hour rendering. So you hate it, but its your work and emotional and drained and exhausted, it is too easy to conflate your project with yourself and get defensive about it in a review. Every time, I have to remind myself that its not about getting the reviewers to like me or my project. I have to tell myself this all the time. 

Today, as I attempted to create a DVD of work I've done over the semester as the final bit of this semester, I was overcome with rage at the computer lab's inability to successfully burn the files. I was audibly cursing the machine, slamming doors, striding angrilly back in forth in the halls to get my backup DVD after it screwed up the first one to the point of unusibilty. I think part of what was happening was the flood of pent up frustration was seeping through.

This has been my most frustrating studio ever- I can't think of a time when I was filled with more anger. There were moments in the semester where I had to leave the building. I think I ended up with a good project, but the frustrations I met along the way were not the kind that lead to increased productivity or radical, good design.

It's the end of the semester- everything is done, and there is the bittersweetness of the end. Many of my friends are leaving for semesters or even a year abroad. It's sad that so many of them will out of my life for so long, and graduate school is so short. But Saori gone, my closest friend and love, I feel a little more jaded, as though the cynic in me recognizes the shortness of time in school and still stays detached. But still, the semester fades out and people leave without you knowing about it, so you never know if the last time you'll see someone for the year is passing them in the hall.

Summer has arrived- bringing with it the vacant sort of complacency of my idyllic summers with relatives in Oklahoma. But its also hugely depressing and demotivating as my summer plans for a fantastic internship in Shanghai fell through, and now I have to contend with the ambiguous planning for a summer which I am already losing faith in.

I am so happy studio is over- there's really nothing like that feeling of accomplishment when you finish the jury critique and everyone heads back to studio, happily chattering about how much sleep they're going to get, what bar they're going to to celebrate, the celebratory meal. The heady combination of believing you've worked hard and accomplished something combined with the anticipation for the revelry, rest, and celebration to follow.

This weekend was for haircuts. I got mine done at Cutters & Co. at the Chase Park Plaza Hotel in CWE. I don't mind plugging them because I think its a great deal. For the student package you get a beer, a haircut, and a thorough shampoo with a hot face towel for $15. That's what you pay at CostCutters to be attacked with clippers.

So its a lot shorter now. And you know who else got their hair a lot shorter? Suki. Her mats were out of control, so I took her in for her annual shaving monday morning before studio. So now the little lion is back. The groomers commented on what a strong cat she was for her age after wrestling with her to shave her belly.  She looks almost like a monkey now with that tufted tail. Her body is so tiny in proportion to the fur, so it looks like her paws and head got enlarged.

And of course, the weather is not cooperating. I've given up on trying to enjoy spring. I'm just going to have to wait for summer to get here. Tonight there is a frost warning. We had a few days of 80 degree weather literally about two months ago. This cold weather is beyond ridiculous. So to keep Suki sans her fur coat from freezing, I've had to turn on the heater.

Classes are wrapping up. I'm almost done with all my structures homework, we'll see how the test went. And a few minor things I need to write for my mid-century modernism class. And of course, studio.

I feel so worn out- I'm being harassed daily for not having my images on my boards lining up. Well, they're in progress- its idiotic to line them up when the proportions are changing! It's just irritating. I wish I could just work on my project in peace in this last week.

I feel so tired already. It's only been two days with six hours of sleep- the rest of the time I've been fairly well rested. I think that this summer is getting to me. My dreams are already going haywire- I haven't had this level of dream intensity since I was a teenager. I just need to sit down and do something, and I think I'll feel a little better.

For now, I'm just beat. My final presentation is next tuesday, which gives me effectively six days to get this project wrapped up in both the model and the presentation boards. My boards themselves are going to be huge. At this point, they're 11'-4" and 5' high. This is just about 60 square feet. I'm probably looking at around $100-$200 just to print. And I'm going to have one of the smaller boards in the studio. I know one classmate is going to have close to 22 linear feet of boards.

It's 12:42 AM, and I've just finished dinner: a bowl of ramen. (However, a good Samaritan came around the studio handing out carrots, fruit bars, and sorbet cups, so this is supplementary). I'm going to brush my teeth, hit the hay, and probably be out before 1:00 AM. My alarm will go off at 7 AM and I'll get up shower, quick bowl of cereal, and off to studio again....