ATV and Sunset Magazine living

Here I am busting around the Sierra Foothills in a sweet all terrain vehicle! Note that I am NOT wearing a safety restraint. Also note that the ATV is actually stationary.




We were on a 47 acre plot of land in the Sierras this Sunday. We took a hike through the manzanita groves.


We ate dinner under this loggia thingy. It was all illuminated by candles in a very Martha Stewart-esque fashion.

Beer and broccoli

I just had an interesting dinner of goji berries, steamed broccoli and carrots, and one Anchor Steam Beer. I feel a little bloated by all these dinner ingredients. Hopefully this will pass soon enough because I have to FTP my GIS (Geographic Information Systems) assigment before the clock strikes 12.

Beer is delicious at school. Second only to bourbon.

My cast is beginning to turn to graveyard dust and is falling apart. I might turn this mother out in a day or two or if I get drunk enough, which ever comes first. My appointment for official removal is Thursday, but that is just hella long off.

Headed to Portland this Friday to surprise my mother at her 60th birthday party. I am supposed to show up at a bowling alley unannounced. I got an Evite from my step dad...apparently the crew is going to Red Robin before bowling to consume vast quantities of calories. At least it won't break the bank. I will hopefully be eating something very delicious and not prepared in a fry daddy.

Another milestone this week: I successfully lectured for 8-10 minutes in front of my LA 130 class. I talked about the landscapes of Mexican Architect Luis Barragan. It went pretty well, partly because I actually prepared and practiced my talk, making sure there was consistency between the verbal presentation and the slides. Today I helped with the midterm exam review session where I spouted off some facts and observations with great ease, surprisingly.

Who have you lectured lately?

Smell

Today I noticed that my cast now officially smells like feet. I thought that since it is a waterproof cast that I would never be bothered with this problem. However, technology is just that, it is not perfect. The cast has been retaining water more and more. It is usually semi-damp in there.

Typing on my computer today, I noticed that it smelled fainly like feet. Immediately, I assumed it was the guy across the studio divider from me. He is Australian and tends to walk around with his feet exposed, so I just blamed the smell on him. I mean, after all, he is Australian. These people come from a lineage of pirates and thieves tossed away by the Crown - it's likely they have poor hygiene, too.

Happy to have found the culprit, I rested my chin on my casted palm and noticed the smell suddenly grew in intensity. I put my nose down in there and really gagged. I can't wait to get this petrie dish off of me. Yuckos.

The Bomb, Survival and YOU.

Today I was in our environmental design library looking for a book with pictures and diagrams on tree houses and yurt-like structures. In the same shelf, an old book caught my eye. Turns out it's a genuine real-deal artifact from the Cold War. I love this stuff! Remember the turtle and "Duck and Cover"?

Published in 1954, the book speaks of quite a different world than we find ourselves in today:

Model student

I am considering copyrighting this...

Limb update

My left wrist is still rightly broken. It's been approximately three weeks since my fall. Cast: adequate condition, takes longer to dry lately than it did last week.

Many x-rays have been taken...two in the last two weeks and another one when I first broke it. Doctor assures me healing process is going fine. When I asked him whether it was ok that the cast is getting loose, he replied something like, "Well, casts don't really secure the limb that well, anyway, so don't worry. They really just are there to remind you to be careful with it." Hmm.

I should be doing push ups in no time, right?

I need to get back to my diagramming...

Yes, that would be mine. Thank you.

I arrived home tonight around 1:42 a.m., arms full of groceries from Safeway, and happened upon a little discovery. Clumsilly ascending the steps to my personal deck entrance, I noticed something very familiar draped over the railing.

Yes, that would be my black bra right there. It's outside. In the parking area. Hung over the stair railing. For me to happen upon it.



Hmm.

Well, I guess I am impressed that someone in this apartment community figured out it was mine. That was nice of them, I think.

This week's plants

This is called Michelia doltsopa - Michelia


Chaenomeles cvs. - Flowering Quince


Phormium tenax - New Zealand Flax


Corylus avellana 'Contorta'- Harry Lauder's Walking Stick

Proper search

You can install greasemonkey to add script that makes your Google search page look a bit different...ala Ray and Roast Beef!

Snap shot

Last night, I managed to get tickets to a sold out Camera Obscura show at Bimbo's in SF. The band performed very well and mentioned they liked the 70 degree temperatures in the city that day.


Tracy Anne Campbell, courtesey of Woody's blackberry-phone-computer-camera-all-in-one-office-apparatus.

Hamburger

This evening, while crossing the street in the pouring rain, I was stopped by a woman in a large late model Cadillac who wanted to know where she could buy a quality hamburger.

I had no umbrella, had a cast on my arm, and was literally getting soaked by the second, but this lady had no qualms about stopping me in the middle of the street to ask where she could get her grill on. I told her the places she could go in matter of a few seconds, but then she wanted directions. Oddly, I was patient with her and told her the location of the Smokehouse, at Telegraph and Woolsey. Then I gave her a backup alternative - Jack in the Box - just south of Alcatraz.

People that are so demanding for hamburger information astound me.


I really don't think the burger I sent this lady after looked anything like this...

Casted

This is my current inconvenience, possibly lasting for the next 5 weeks.

Bought, enjoyed

Breakage

Fact 1:

The wrist is a complex joint that you use to accomplish an infinite amount of activities each day.

Fact 2:

Breaking your wrist will suddenly make you half as fast at doing everything. Washing your hair takes about 10 minutes, drying off about the same. Typing is labored and strenuous, if typing can ever be considered strenuous. In public places, you are conscientious about your enormous immobilized arm bumping into strangers. And your clothes do not fit.


I have a fracture on the radius where it meets the wrist bones.

Basswood model of Los Clubes, Cuadra San Cristobal, Mexico City by Luis Barragan. The site is a combination residence and horse paddock with accompanying horse-scaled swimming pool used to train thoroughbreds.

We have some big deadlines this week, this model included. The final will include pieces of cut up loofah sponge along the walls to mimic climbing vegetation. Believe it or not, this model cost about $150 to build.


Analytique to supplement the model.

Plants, funeral, woodshop, ethics

Thursday was a whirlwind of highly diverse occurances and events.

First, starting at 8:30am, I had three hours of class for plants identification. We learned about 8 shrubs and 3 trees. It is still very much winter based on the temperatures we experienced during our field walk. When is it going to finally rain so we can get closer to spring?


This is called Rhus ovata, or Sugar Bush.


This is called Schinus molle, or California Pepper Tree.

Next, at 12:30pm, I went to the funeral of a great woman who happened to suddenly pass away last week. She had been the graduate assistant and resident mom for all graduate students in city planning for the last 20 years. The funeral was held in a modest church in Richmond, CA. The church was jammed packed to the rafters, mostly students and people from Berkeley. It was amazing to see how many people's lives Kaye had impacted in her role as both administrator and confidant. As an example of how wide Kaye's reach was within the University, I recognized someone there who I would have never guessed knew Kaye - a man who drives the night door-to-door shuttle for students needing rides home between 9pm and 3am. This guy happens to drive me home 2-3 nights a week; never for one minute I expected we knew anyone in common. I saw him at Kaye's funeral today. Students who graduated 10 years ago came all the way from Los Angeles to pay their respects. It was astounding.

I returned to school and from 6-9pm I attended an architecture woodshop orientation. I learned to cut things with the band saw, radial saw, table saw, panel saw, drill press, and spindle saw. It was a very strange thing to do after having just returned from a funeral.

Now I am doing the GSI teaching ethics course online. I am taking a break between the sections on student disability accomodation and sexual harrassment.

All at once it has been a very odd and touching day.

Alter ego

Today I created a much-inferior web site in order to fulfill requirements for my LA 132 course, Computer Applications in Environmental Design.

Don't get too excited, this site is pretty much a snoozer. Hopefully, as the term progresses, I will have some interesting images of environmental analysis for your viewing pleasure.

In other news, my studio is very busy figuring out how to build some models. It is our first real non-cardboard scaled model, so we are a bit frightened. Tomorrow I will do the wood shop orientation and will soon be ready to saw, plane and sand things.

People line up for this shit

This morning, around 10:45 a.m. I found myself across town near the intersection of University and Shattuck. I had gone on a run and needed to buy something at the art supply store along the way. At this particular intersection is a McDonald's. It's kind of a grungy McDonald's....the outside facade of the structure is shabby and it's on a very busy corner where a lot of street people tend to congregate. However, it is always busy in there and serves a purpose to feed and provide bathrooms for customers in Berkeley.

This morning, the place was a madhouse. I noticed the mayhem from outside on the sidewalk no less. There must have been 30 people in line! I immediately wondered what the hell must be going on. It's not like McDonald's is new or anything. Did someone fall from a heart attack? Did someone start a fight? What could the draw be?

Then I saw a poster in the window which read:

"Filet-O-Fish $1.00 Saturdays, Sundays and Tuesdays"

Wow! All these people were there for a damn greasy fish sandwich. I really couldn't believe it. You'd think people in Berkeley wouldn't be such suckers for this kind of ridiculous advertising scheme. In my eyes, it's not even that great of a deal. First, you have to eat the Filet-O-Fish which is probably not too healthy or even filling. Second, to get in on the special you have to go inside the McDonald's and wait in line for 20 minutes while everyone else orders the same damn sandwich. Third, quality (if such a term applies) is likely to suffer: because the demand for the FOF is sky high these three days of the week it is likely that production standards fall along the wayside. Filets get forgotten in the fry daddy, some get dropped on the floor, lettuce is sparse, tartar sauce is forgotten, and sandwiches are hastilly crumpled up in their signature blue wax paper.

All that for $1.00.

Day one, spring semester 07

Day one back in the saddle and things are already off to a fast start.

Depending on how I play my cards this week, I might only have to take three courses this term on top of being a Graduate Student Instructor for an introductory landscape architecture course. Right now I am in four courses plus the teaching gig and things look extremely tight.

Let's hope the dealer gives me a good hand on Friday allowing me to finagle one or two course wavers and get something called "blank" credits. Sounds like a scheme to me - I'm in all the way. Blank credits are essentially a professor's ability to say you took an individually designed course to fulfill a requirement when in actuality you do squat. Blank credits sound downright suspicious, but they are needed in certain situations like one I currently find myself in. Here's to the nuances of higher education.

Tomorrow is the first day I assist in the teaching of a course at Berkeley. I have to operate a slide projector (two actually, side by side). I have never done this but I had a class last term in which this apparatus was used. I have a good sense for the rhythm of the operation. Hopefully this will be enough to get me through without really screwing up.