Having missed posting for so long, I'm now in the awkward position of having too many things to say. What that means to you, the reader, is that I am going to say to much. You will read the first paragraph or two get bored and stop. Next time you see me, you will ask me about something that I wrote here, and I will look at you confused, since you should have already read it here. Or you will read the whole thing, so as not to antagonize me now that I have warned you. Which puts the pressure back on me (I said I had things to say... not that they are interesting). Also, I've been reading Haruki Murakami lately. If you read him too you'll probably have more idea what I'm talking about. Especially if you like metaphysical sheep.

I digress. The most important news is that J graduated:

She made it through with a 4.0 and got first in her class (Northeastern calls them Class Marshalls). Her parents and brother were out and a good time was had by all.

We took of the next day for a few days in NYC with her parents, who had never been there before.

Followed by a few days in Philly, just the two of us.

More on that later...

During the time away, i was still finishing up the semester. I just finished the last of my thesis on Monday. I'm so tired of thinking about Montreal... hence all of the novel reading that's been going on the last week. I'm really liking both Murakami and Jonathan Lethem. I'm reading The Fortress of Solitude right now. It's about growing up in Brooklyn, but it really reminds me of growing up on my block in South Minneapolis (yes, I realize that mpls is a poor excuse for a real city). The way the kids roam the streets and have a world that the grownups don't really see resonates my childhood. In his world it's all out on the street, in mine it was up and down the alley, but still. There was just a section where the main guy got his bike stolen. I felt some pain for my awesome red bike that disappeared. sigh. (As an aside, the day I finished my paper on Montreal, Tourism Montreal put up a giant billboard directly outside of my kitchen window.)

On Sunday, J flew off to Thailand to work with an NGO for a month (after which she'll be visiting "family" in Ho Chi Minh City for a couple of weeks). She promised to resurrect her blog, so look out for that. I've talked to her once since she got there. So far she's lived through a small earthquake (which she said was probably God's wrath upon the earth for allowing Jerry Falwell to die, which is impeccable logic that the would have done the old man proud).

So, back to Philadelphia. What a cool city. As one of my friends at work said, it's like something halfway between Boston and New York. It's got the oldness and the row houses of Boston but the big city feel and ghettoness of New York (or at least that I'm told NY used to have before Giuliani had all the poor people sent to Siberia or whatever the hell he did with them). I really like a city that has a little bit of edge. Both Boston and New York are a little too clean. I like having some great graffiti and street art around:

Yeah, I gots work ethic too, boy.
There was also a dude who did these incredible mural things all over the place. This is his "garden":

And here's a couple of his buildings:

No way you'd see that in Boston. Menino would have it re-facaded with red brick before you could say wicked.

We went to a Phillies - Cubs game, which was awesome. Great stadium. Ryan, don't worry about those wide concourses. If they do it right it'll be great. At Citizen's Bank Park, everything was just kind of open, so you could get your Hot Dog (or Cheesesteak) and still watch the game. And if you felt like it, you could stand there with your beer and watch from wherever you feel like. Also, the Fanatic could beat TC to a bloody pulp.

Also on the enjoyable list: The Institute of Contemporary Art at UPenn with J's friend Nicole and the crazy security guard lady. Oh, oh, and cell phone audio tours!!! What a great idea. And so democratic. And the theater where we saw Lookinglass Alice.

Horrible transit though. It's not good when your subway is creepier in the daytime then the streets are at night.

Anyways, I'm rambling, and no one really cares.

Last thing, I promise. I ran into James Howard Kunstler at work yesterday. He wroteGeography of Nowhere and The Long Emergency both of which I highly recommend. What an interesting guy. He said he's now writing a dystopian novel about the post-oil world.

Well, that's it. Congratulations for those who made it.

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One class down... unfortunatly, it was the one I liked the most.

Here are some perspectives from my final project. Last semester I did a master plan for a chunk of land overlooking the harbor in Boston for a final group project, so this semester I actually did a design for one of the buildings that we had called for.

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So, here's a question... is it possible to get yourself into Wikipedia?

Anyway. J and I got to go see Glenn Murcutt last night at MIT. He's an Australian architect that won the Pritzker Prize a couple years back. He does pretty amazing stuff with natural ventilation and renewable resourses and sustainable building practices and so on. It was a pretty interesting lecture, although the combo of the Australian accent and trying to get through 6 projects in an hour made it a little difficult to follow. I wish I could throw some photos up, but my flickr doesn't seem to be working.

J and I finally got all of our travel arrangments worked out following her upcoming graduation. We will for sure be in NY from 6-9 May and Philadelphia from 9-12 May (Phillies/Cubs, yeah!) if anyone wants to get together. J leaves for Thailand on the 13th. She'll be in Vietnam and Myanmar for sure too and might throw in a side trip to KL or Singapore. I think I may also be in Mpls for a weekend in June for my brothers graduation.

And speaking of Phillies/Cubs: One of J's professors, Alan Klein, does research on the anthropology of baseball. I just read his book Growing the Game, which is about Baseball and globalization. It was really interesting. I'd highly recomend it for all the baseballers out there. He's also got a book on Baseball in the Dominican Republic and one on a team that plays in both Loredo and Nuevo Loredo that I'm planning on picking up.

Just three more weeks/two papers/one building away from the end of the semester!

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One would think the semester should be winding down, but it seems like I've still got a ton of stuff due. I just spent all morning working on this project for my architecture class:

now I've got to build that out of wood. Not that I don't love doing that, but it's still going to be time consuming.

On top of all that, I'm starting to look seriously at which grad schools I'm going to apply to. Right now, I think it's going to be CCNY, Pratt Institute, Columbia, McGill, U of Toronto, University of British Columbia, MIT and Harvard Design. I'm still considering throwing UCLA in there (I'm not really excited about living in LA, but they've got a great program). I'm really looking for somewhere that is really strong in design. If anyone out there has any other suggestions I should look out for, please comment. J has pretty much decided that she's going to work for a few years instead of applying right away, so I'll really get to concentrate on school for my masters.

Anyway. J is graduating in a little over a month! I think she's only got three more weeks of actual classes. She's had one interview already for work after school, although she's going to be leading a student trip to the "golden triangle" (that's where Laos, Thailand and Myanmar meet) for a month and then for two weeks in Ho Chi Minh City to visit her "family" there before she starts working.

So yeah, that's about it for us. We're going to be in NYC for a couple days at the beginning of May and then either in New Mexico or Cascadia for a week after that if anybody wants to get together.

btw. I'm watching the Braves and Phillies right now. It makes me really happy that baseball is back... but at the same time, it's a little sad that I live in a city where it's too expensive to actually go the the games. What happened to baseball for the people man?

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So, the semester has had kind of a slow start so far, but I'm finally getting into the swing of things. I'm taking Principles of Design at Wentworth, which is great. I was just starting to get comfortable in 2D, so of course we are jumping right into building 3D stuff. I've been using SketchUp a lot for computer modelling, but I still have to put this together in real life. Should be pretty cool though. I really enjoy it.

I've been doing plenty of reading to begin working on the thesis. I'm thinking I'm going to start writing as soon as possible. I've heard from a few people that that is the way to go. I have done one other paper that was this length, so it's not the worst. I've been looking forward to it for quite awhile.

In other news, I finally switched to New Blogger. I kind of like the labelling thingy, but I'm not happy about having to have a Google ID. Whatever. This isn't really interesting. I just felt like writing. Yeah.

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