there is the possibility of not being able to leave the building if a bear is circling it

lol,wut?

an actual excerpt from my prof's email, re: Churchill

peace

Culture Days

It's Culture Days in Canada and I'm back at school. The person who thought of this even should get an award. There are so many great things happening in Winnipeg this weekend and when I checked the map there were even 26 events listed in Flin Flon!!!

Last night I went to a hotdog party which wasn't an organized CD event, but it should've been. There were guests from all over the country, united by our common love of architectural design, and a hotdog eating competition.

Tonight I went to an outdoor film showing/live improv music and singing, then to the Winnipeg Art Gallery where there are events happening all night, then to Portage and Main (Canada's most famous intersection) for a screening of Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg. It's great seeing everyone get out and enjoy some fun activities in the city.

At school this year I'll be traveling to Churchill Manitoba for a studio trip... stay tuned kids!

peace.

dinner at prof's

Both studio crits, all students, several partners.

much much food.

I made my usual fruit salad and the usual thing happened: to start everyone spooned out their bits and pieces and then by the end of the night everyone was just taking pieces out with their fingers. I think that's a huge compliment that people keep picking away at the fruit, but it also says something really lovely about the comfort levels between people - high.

Also afterwards unrelated party at an amazing apartment - E: like yours at Anamoe, but super huger.

priority list: super secret project, then tech portfolio and hopefully something for world pinhole photography day.

peace.

review equals done!

My final review was yesterday and it was great!

We really set the mood by playing some music from the museum, serving tea and cookies, and fresh flowers.

I'm caught up on sleep, and wine!

Tomorrow I'm going to watch some reviews and then work on my portfolio and finish my schoolwork.

peace

another day without sunshine

10:30 pm coffee break:

guy in elevator: how's your project going?

Lori: awesomely?

gie: ha ha - (mixed horror and shocked laugh)

L: I just realized that I went another full day without seeing the sun. I think I'm getting scurvy or whatever lack of sun causes.

gie: what does cause scurvy? (obviously delirious)

later, in my brain: no I'm thinking of vampirism. I'm definitely getting that.

peace

CANcon

I was thinking last night about something I started a few years ago and haven't really continued. Several years I decided to eliminate all popular culture from my life. I decided to start with radio/music, then move to tv, then who knows... I don't think it ever occurred to me to eliminate films. I'm such a huge film junkie. I love seeing films!!!

I decided last night that I should continue what I started - keeping in mind I've only 99% scaled back on tv, but I still consider that a success. I'm giving up films. No, that's way too intense. I'll give up Hollywood films.

Canadian films only.

Should I include docs? Should I allow myself a periodic Hollywood film? Foreign language and zero budget films?

Canadian films and docs. I can do that. Paul Gross' Gunless is coming out in the next few weeks and so is the new April Mullen/Tim Doiron adventure called 'Gravytrain.' Bruce MacDonald is working on something. I saw the new Adam Egoyan and it was great. I've been watching a lot of RPS lately too.

I'll keep you posted on how this goes and in the meantime go see some can/con. There are lots of great homegrown films out there!

peace.

nothing to report

The other night someone systematically went through the 3rd floor of my building at school and stole cameras, compys, etc... everything that can be stolen for cash including one woman's compy, back up drive and her other backup drive that backs up the first drive. I totally get why she needs two backup drives, but why was she keeping them in the same place at the same time? Locks were cut off and drawers pried open. Moral: don't leave stuff at school, not even locked.

I'm on the 4th floor and none of stuff was taken or is missing. Good for me, but boo-urns for the others. It's a shitty thing to do and a shitty time to do it since we're at the end of the school year and now is when we all need our data hordes the most. The weird thing is that I was at school until 2am and the first person at school to notice the problem was there at 6am, so when did this happen? I'm surprised that there was enough time with literally no one on that floor to even pull this off.

Yes, school is a 24hr job in my building.

peace.

my date with RK

I'm working on a group project for my tech class and we were assigned a building at the Shilo military base. It's a building that is of a typical design for the architect that designed it and we were impressed by the structure and the tour we were given by the military personnel.

We've been making a scale model of the building at a 1:10 scale which is huge, but we were only required to do a section of the building, detailing construction and connections and whatever was relevant to the model. We also made a point of arranging a phone interview with the architect who is retired and lives in California.

We weren't as impressed after the conversation and I won't say the name of the architect because he probably googles himself regularly and I don't want him to think I'm even more of a hack after writing this, but I will say that he gave us one piece of advice: he could tell we lacked creative instincts and should therefore drop out and switch to dentistry or risk being stuck as uncreative managers all our working lives.

Sound advice form one generation to another. For those of you keeping score that's twice in two weeks that someone has told me to leave the profession.

peace.

re:re

I came across this passage on another blog as a result of a google search that I don't remember, but it was shocking that someone was able to link two different character types to different writers:

'Contemporary fiction,' I said to Jimmy, 'is either pod or ped. Left-hand rack, you'll observe, begins with J.G. Ballard, Super Cannes. Pod-meister. Suburban solipsism: world in a windscreen. Right-hand rack is ped. The walkers. W.G. Sebald, Austerlitz, Rings of Saturn. Sit at your PC as you sit in the car: pod person, Lose yourself in the rhythms of the walk: pedestrian. Stately prose, Sebald.'

I'll leave it to your imagination to figure out who wrote that - it isn't really central to the argument and I just feel like being that asshole who doesn't source things.

I'm a pod.

peace

I went to LA

my poor, neglected blog-ity boo.

So I went to LA for a class field trip - I know... field trips in grown up school? Architecture!!!

8 students, 2 profs, 2 other stragglers.

The primary goal was to visit our studio site - www.mjt.org . The Museum of Jurassic Technology which is neither related to the Jurassic or technology. Our project is to design an Aviary on the roof for a future possible addition to the museum. As usual mine involves a lot of ramps.

Also, and possibly more importantly, or as equally important, we visited many places in LA. Architectural places - LA modern living at its finest. Eames' house, Schindler house, Hollyhock house by Frank Lloyd Wright, a sneak visit to La Miniatura, Neautra VDL house, Salk Institute - wowsers.... It was a very life changing experience.

Possibly the most meaningful moment was a visit out to the skate park at Venice Beach - I've never seen full-on skate boarders just doing their thing before. The anthropologist in me was on fire what with the intermingling of yuppie beach culture and poor beach culture and skate culture and surfer culture all together. There was a huge drum circle on the beach when I was walking home on my last night there.

It was a hard sell to get me back on the plane to come home, but I had a sliver of time to share with my family in the Edmonton airport on the way to Winnipeg.

It's such a precious thing: I was given a copy of Fordlandia for xmas from a good friend and I cherish reading it so much - when I have the chance to for-fun read. Yes it's partly the decadence of fondling a hardcover edition, but more it's the lifelong memories that tend to develop from being given a surprise gift that really speaks to my core as a human being. I'm learning a lot from this book and I feel like it's the starting point of further research.

Mid point in semester. My interim review was last week and I feel very positive from it. I got some great feedback and I really feel like I'm on my way toward something presentable for end of term.

Pottery today - I started working on what I hope becomes a light chimney for my project at school - what's a light chimney? Stay tuned kids, same bat channel, same bat time.

peace.

Love is a Place

I woke up this morning in my own proper bed for the first in many days after going home for the holidays and I listened to Metric on my ipod.

I drove into Alberta under the darkness of a new moon and left under a waning blue moon.

I visited with so many friends, but fewer than I preferred. Two of my friends are engaged, both getting married this year: one soon, one later.

We didn't spend as much time having coffee as I wanted.

There was family time and private time. Time with my cats and time on my own.

I said goodbye to my house. again.

I had a fantastic evening with strong ladies discussing all of life's most important topics.

Hugs.

I saw your home for the first time. and yours.

I learned that some of my pottery got broken on the way back from Winnipeg after I moved, but it made room for new pottery I'll make this year.

I made a tough choice, but purged you from the list anyway.

I saw the broad prairies from a new angle, my home, my heart. I took a new road.

I heard The Pogues 3 times on the CBC.

my eyes are open

I met people I forgot I knew.

on to 2010 and a new semester at school.

Maybe I'll see you in LA or Vancouver or Winnipeg or in my dreams.

What did I build?

So you are probably wondering what I built for YPH (Yitzhak Patusca-Humphreys)!!! I built an amphitheatre/RAMPhitheatre... wtf is that you say? I started with an open air theatre and then went sort of below ground and sort of still outdoors by adding a series of ramps to get between the stages. I'm quite fond of the ramps actually.

In this photo you can see the crazy ramps that lead up to the original theatre and then the black things are the ramps to the inside theatre.

peace

Yitzhak Patusca-Humphreys

We had an exercise in class today where we wiki'ed 4 people using the random article generator. We copied one paragraph from each bio, then translated the text from English into 5 different languages then back into English. The result was hilarious and nonsensical, but we had to edit what we had into something coherent...

Meet my client, Yitzhak Patusca-Humphreys:

Yitzhak Patusca-Humphries was born to a wealthy family in Quinsborough, Co. Clare, Ireland in 1909. His mother, Ellen O'Rahilly, was left to raise him alone when his father died of tuberculosis when he was four years old. They moved along with her brother, Michael Joseph, to Israel after 'the O'Rahilly killings’ on Easter, 1925. His two brothers, Ants and Pearse, were born in Israel after his mother remarried.

In Israel he joined a Chinese Martial Arts grouped and began training competitively through middle school particularly in the full contact and small holding attack styles. His love of defence arts won him many awards and allowed him to travel around Europe, Asia and North America.

He claimed to have been heavily inspired by Arak, a Sao Pauloan of the Brazilian football club, who took consecutive championships in 1927, 1928, and 1929.

Schooling opportunities were better in Israel and after high school Patusca – Humphreys studied at the Briton-Israeli University for ex-pats and became recognized as an important Israeli writer, novelist and journalist after 1938. He wrote five volumes of poetry, 19 novels and several plays. Many poems focused on the Lebanon War of 1952 as a protest to the Israeli occupation of Palestine. At regular intervals he travelled to Palestine to add voice to the legions in Protest. On one of these journeys he became stranded in Palestine, but used his British political connections to return to Ireland where he was elected in 1958 as Liberal Member of Parliament in Greenock Co.

He married at the original family home in Quinsborough, Co. Clare, Ireland to local James Bond enthusiast Tinsley Weddle and their daughter was born early in 1965. Patusca-Humphries, now retired from politics, continues to write poetry and has been instrumental in founding local youth sporting programs focused on martial arts. This year he celebrates his 100^th birthday and is the oldest living Irish-Israel Palestine protestor of his era.

What will I build for him?

Scottie the cat.

I've been talking about Scottie the cat for so long and now I'm finally going to do a post about him. He's all white and is a very hyper/curious cat. So basically a normal cat, but he has lovely white fur and pink ears. His fur forms a ridge along his back that makes it look like he has a slight mowhawk all the time. Very badass.

Over the summer I noticed that he liked to be in the living room window a lot. Probably because one side is open and the other side has a great view. He has 2 different personalities in the windows though. On the left hand side (south) he's nice and likes to be petted, and on the right side he's crazy and likes to bite. You can see in the photo too that the right side is all clawed up because he'll just put his claws into the fabric whenever he wants. It's a little bit like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. I like the Dr cat better. Once I put him down on the Hyde side and he bit me really hard!

That's the cat.

peace

happy about the little things.

I'm clearly not updating this blog enough - or keeping caught up on other people's blogs!

I've been having a lot of long days (and nights) and school - mostly in the studio. Two weeks was the first department wide review for our studio projects. Mine went very well and I got a lot of positive feedback from the work I've done so far and some great ideas to explore for the rest of the term. There are only a few precious weeks left in the term!! I am surprised at how fast time is flying by.

I'm also surprised at how tired I am all the time. ALL THE FREAKIN TIME! It's probably because I spend 12 hours a day at school and then I come home and do more school work. I didn't mean for that to sound bitchy!!

On the other hand I felt pure and total elation at the end of the day today because I left Staples at 9pm - store close - with my tech assignment in hand that is due tomorrow at 9am! Some of my other classmates will be working on their projects through the night and then rushing to Staples for when they open at 8am tomorrow morning. I get to sleep tonight! Yay

It's 10pm now - just enough time to shower and have a good night's sleep.

peace.

cosmic alignment

There are only 4 people in my program and in a conversation on Monday we found out that we all celebrate our birthdays within 13 days of each other! Mine is first on Sept 12 and the last is Sept 25. We were all equally shocked to find this out. I'm curious if this is some sort of anomaly or if there is a lean in architecture towards late summer/early fall star signs.

It's very weird and also our studio prof's birthday is only a week later.

peace.

And the cupcakes were good too!

out at the Village

Yesterday for my birthday I drove out to the Mennonite Heritage Village:

http://www.mennoniteheritagevillage.com/

Picture a smaller, less funded, less attended version of Fort Edmonton Park. I did have a good time although I probably got bitten by more mosquitoes out there than I have in my whole life! In the full-swing of the summer they probably have a few people wandering around as interpreters, but yesterday there were none and there were only a handful of visitors as well. Most of the visitors were Mennonite. There are many very well kept buildings and a huge beautiful windmill that is equipped with a fully functioning flour grinding stone. The mechanisms for making the flour mill work are impressive and it looked like everything was handmade inside. You'll have to take my word or visit it yourself because the photos won't do the mill justice. I would say that the Windmill is worth the price of admission for sure.

Also I spent some of the day driving around the country south of Winnipeg. It's very lovely!

Tomorrow is secret field trip day at school. Later I will safety pin the $20 I have to bring to the inside of my pocket for safe keeping. I am currently charging my camera battery and emptying my photo card to make room for copious amounts of photos as per the prof's instructions. And so it begins.

peace.

just before beyond the pale

I had an orientation day at school today. I met my main prof and also the new student in our group. Mike had already taken a course that allowed him to skip the course I took last week. Now there are 5 of us in the group. It seems like a good group, but we all have very different backgrounds and possibly expectations of the courses ahead of us.

We found out approximately where our studio will be - 4th floor of the arch2 building. I will spend all my time between 4th floor arch2, room 214 in JAR and some basement room in arch2 for the drawing course.

Next Monday when my classes start for reals we are going on a class field trip. We will get there by car and are to bring $20 in cash and our digital cameras to an as yet undisclosed location.

I hope it's the Manitoba Legislature!

peace.