Change

Got sick of the old look

The Song Remains the Same

Well, every time I say that I am going to write more frequently on here, and every time I wait a month again until posting. Why is this?

-I am busy. 12 hours of my day is dedicated to work, and when I get home I relax for a few hours, watch some tv and go to bed.
-I have a girlfriend. I spend several evenings each week and most of the weekends with her, which doesn't really leave me much of a chance to "blog."
-I live in NYC. When I am not w/my gf or working I am usually out and about in the greatest city in the world.
-What is the point of "blogging" anyways? Do I add any useful information this bloated and cumbersome internet? I'm not particularly eloquent in my statements, and never feel as though I have the time to edit them, because if I saved them as drafts, it would be two weeks before I actually read them again.

Anyways, the holiday season is upon us!!! This is an exciting time of year for many reasons, one being that on Thursday evening I head back to Kansas City for a week of relaxation and non-work. It will be much needed, as the job is super stressful right now, with clients and bosses and contractors all pressuring me to get things done. Plus, many of my CAPD friends will be in town for a few days, and I'm sure that we will have some good times. I was told by my father that there is a good art collection in the JoCo, so I might have to stop by that over my break as well as hit up the Bloch/Nelson and/or/maybe the Kemper. My visits to KC are always so hectic! Anyways, that is life.

And just a warning, I will NOT be posting my "best of 2007" albums. With one exception...

You Are Not Really Here

Vacay

After a very stressful fall, it's now time for 8 days of rest and relaxation in good ol' Kansas City over the Thanksgiving weekend. As I'm sure all of my very few readers can understand and relate to, this working thing is stressful! Ten hours a day of dealing with contractors, clients and bosses can really start to take its toll after a while and every now and then you just need a break!

The great thing about going "home"[as many of us still refer to it as...and indication of things to come?] for a vacation is that it usually can save you money! If you're staying at your parents house, that means a week of free meals ["Oh, we haven't seen you in forever, lets go out to eat!"], lounging on the couch reading and watching TV and drinking coffee, playing with pets that you'd like to have yourself but have no time/space/money for and raiding the pantry for snacks that you're too cheap to buy for yourself.

I am, however, fortunate enough that my dad bought my whole family tickets a while ago to go to the MU/KU football game at Arrowhead this Saturday. With the teams being ranked #3 and #2 repectevely, it is going to make for quite a game, that's for sure...let's just hope that MU can pull it off, because I'd rather have Iran win than KU. Yes, these are bold statements, but KU is the root of all that is evil, the spawn of Satan...you get the idea.

New York City is starting to get into the spirit of the season, as only New York can. Walking around the city you are start to notice the lavish decorations, from the giant Christmas tree being adorned in Rockefeller Plaza, to the delicate and luxurious window dioramas in the department stores of Bergdorf's to the lighted garnishes that hang over all of the streets in Astoria. Tis the season and nobody does it better.

Oh yeah, it's also the time of year for some pretty amazing sunsets:

Forget about your house of cards*

A very stressful week of dealing with bosses, contractors and clients and listening feverishly to the latest Radiohead album have caused me to do a lot of thinking. And one question has kept reoccurring in my mind, today especially:

What truly warrants being a good architect?

No one is perfect, but what causes a person to design Fallingwater and what causes a person to design the local 7-Eleven? It is a vision of perfection and design genius, a "Howard Roark" among men? Is it a good client? Is it luck? Or is it the fortitude and persistence to tough out the hard times, and fight for what you believe in? Even though you may mess up the location of a steel beam, or caused the fireplace to be off-center by a mere 3 inches, is it enough to be considered good? Am I good enough? What will my "videotape"** be? When I am gone, how will people remember my work, and me as an architect?

Or is my work irrelevant? Perhaps my stature as a "good" architect has more to do with the relationships that I make with clients and contractors and that bringing a quality of happiness and satisfaction to a life that was previously not there before. Perhaps it is not about whether or not I detail a baseboard flush or recessed, but it is more about the way I can make a client feel when she sees the tarp pulled back, the full height of her two-story glass wall seen for the first time, it's massive span striking us both speechless.

Being an architect is much more complex that I had ever imagined. Even those who at one point seem all knowing and infallible show their weaknesses sometime, and you are left alone, searching for an answer that is nowhere to be found. Never would I have thought that I would be figuring out how to build a complex chimney and dealing with needy clients and contractors in the same day.



*I apologize in advance for the scattered nature and briefness of my post, as I am still reeling from the days events. A more coherent post will hopefully follow.

**reference to "Videotape" off of the In Rainbows album by Radiohead.

An Open Letter

Dear Chicago Cubs,

You just got swept by one of the worst teams in the National League. You had a three game lead with 6 games left to play. Your lead is now 1, and is dwindling by the minute. I love you, but the way you are playing, you don't deserve to go to the playoffs. Why oh why do you let a mystical curse control your destiny? Take your future into your own hands. I wish you the best, but because of the results I have seen, I prepare for the worst.

Your loving fan,
Sam

An Ending

Last night I finished one of the longest, greatest novels that I have ever read, Leo Tolstoy's unforgettable War and Peace. Everything that can possibly be said about the book has already been done, so I'll spare the novice critique. All I will say is that I laughed, I cried and I really got to know the Rostovs, the Bolknoskys and the Bezukhovs. And right now I am experiencing a feeling of melancholy and regret, wishing that I did not have to say goodbye to my beloved friends and damning myself for reading the book as fast as I did, somehow hoping that my slower reading would have somehow postponed the inevitable.

One of the great threads in the novel is the conflict of life and to somehow defeat death so as to live on in eternal happiness. Towards the end of the book I was wishing that Prince Andrey would somehow discover this magic token so that we both could live together another day and continue to share our intimate secrets. When once our moments together were temporarily postponed by the clatter of an arriving subway car, now our time together is done, his life doomed by the shrapnel of an errant grenade, mine to be inadequately replaced by the next character who fails to reveal himself so completely to me.

Pierre, Natasha, Andrey and Nikolay:

I will never forget you.