I really need to just shut up sometimes

I should probably mention that a few days after I wrote the preceding post, when my hurricane-evacuee significant other and I were sitting in the living room, a 4.0 earthquake hit the East Bay. His first, my second. Just enough to rattle the wine glasses.

Thank you, Irony.

Due to aforementioned significant other's permanent relocation out here and the concurrent onset of the college football season, I finally gave in and took my landlords up on their offer to hook me up with satellite (with all HBO and other movie channels), DVR and the like for the low low price of about $15 a month. I've been rocking the bunny ears for over a year now, which begets me all the basic networks with varying degrees of fuzziness and at least 3 channels in Chinese.

I seriously have no idea what to do with myself now. I already tried to DVR three shows that were on at the same time in a button pushing frenzy.

The Gathering Storm

Holy crap. [via NYTimes]

You know, sometimes I get real tired of California and all their self-righteous hippie shit.

But today, I am glad I moved out of New Orleans.

Assorted

So almost exactly three years ago, when I was a Hurricane Katrina refugee, Maclean let me bunk with him up in New York City for a couple weeks. Today, I live in California and he lives in New Orleans, but thankfully, is sitting on the couch with me here in Berkeley, watching news reports online from WWL. There's a symmetry to this, but it's really not a charming situation, so let's stop there. We're thinking of all the NOLA homies, but selfishly, I just can't stop being grateful that he's here. He's also reached the Zen level of "it's totally fine if I lose all my stuff" a lot faster than I did. I would bet at bare minimum his car will be gone when he gets back, either commandeered or flooded away. But that's what insurance is for.

For outsiders interested in what's going on down there, I would point you towards Nola.com, the National Hurricane Center, or wwltv.com, and not to listen to anything Nagin says. Hurricanes are scary, but they are not "900 miles wide"

I got a whole lot of my hair chopped off yesterday. I was okay with it at the salon, even though it was much shorter and a totally different style than I asked for, but today I'm kind of pissed about it, especially since I pay so much for the haircut. Mac says it makes me look "cute and tough," which I told him sounds like code for "butch," but since he's potentially homeless as of Tuesday, I'll let him get away with it for now.

The chair of my department suggested to me earlier this week that I would be a good candidate for the Ph.D. program at Berkeley. I'm pretty conflicted about it, to tell you the truth. I'm worried it means I'm taking myself out of actual practice for good, but on the other hand, I think it may be necessary if I ever want to teach. Most design professors teach with post-secondary Masters - but it's a more competitive market now, so a Ph.D. may be necessary.

Marigold wrote that I sent her "an e-mail that contained a number of profanities and references to the female anatomy" in reference to McCain/Palin. Guilty as charged. I would probably use even more profanity were I more creative, but I'm still distracted by Gustav. Please keep the people of the Gulf Coast in your thoughts and hopes this week.

Architecture School!

You know, with so many of them on the teevee these days, I figured it would only be a matter of time before someone I knew or tangentially knew would end up on a reality show. I figured that time I had come now that my boyfriend's friend's girlfriend is on Project Runway (see? Tangentially.) and then I was up for a job at school against some guy who apparently used to be on Road Rules. Out of all the people I knew, I did NOT think it would be a few of my old professors from Tulane.

Welcome to Architecture School!

I spent a LOT of time in that classroom you see up above. It's the only decent seminar classroom. Fun Fact! If you do see the show, you should know that Tulane's Architecture School is the old medical school, and the studios are the rooms where they used to cut up the cadavers. That would be my old professor Byron standing up, probably eviscerating someone's model.

I remember when Project Runway came on, a few of my classmates thought a show about architecture school would be a good show. I disagreed. Who wants to see a bunch of unshowered people cut chipboard at 3am? Then again, there is a good amount of yelling, drunkeness (FYI, cutting chipboard at 3am is not best done with a beer - I speak from experience), hooking up, and withering critiques, so who knows. But all snarkiness aside, UrbanBUILD is a great program, and it's good to see it get some publicity.

It's on the Sundance Channel, which nobody gets, but you can see clips here.

PS. Note to Entertainment Weekly. Architecture School is not like Top Design. It's a little more involved than stapling some fabric in a fucking white box, thanks. I don't understand the phenomenon, but it has happened at least 10 times in my life that if I tell people I'm an architect, they ask me to help pick out their curtain/carpet/throw pillows. Blerg.

PDX-OLW-SEA

Just came back from a week in Portland, Olympia, WA, and Seattle. Mostly hanging out with the boyfriend and boyfriend's mom and soaking up the...rain.

Highlights:
The infamous maple bacon donut at Voodoo Donuts.

Dustily hiking Mt. St. Helen's.

Seeing the Seattle Public Library in person, heretofore only theoretically one of my favorite buildings, and now actually one of my favorite buildings.

Gardens, Thai food, and coffee with Jen.

I'm battling some serious post-vacation malaise now. The publication and final designs for my fellowship are due in a few weeks, and I've started prep work for my TA appointment (and now, and added research assistant position) in the fall....AAARGH NO DON'T WANT TO THINK ABOUT IT YET.

Need ice cream.

"My God was this Batman movie ever good"

First: Like everyone else, I saw The Dark Knight this weekend. It may or may not be of interest to you that I actually went to the movie with two people I went to high school with (in South Dakota, I will remind you) that live about an hour away from me. The things you find out at high school reunions! Actually, that's a lie, because I knew they both lived here, but seeing said people at a 10 year reunion in South Dakota WILL make you feel guiltier about not spending some time with them 1600 miles away in California, where you all live.

Anyway, I thought the movie was good but super 'effing intense. And anything I could say about the movie is better said in this review, so just read that one.

In my ears right now: I discover music I like about six months to a year after it comes out, and after Steve Haske gives it to me in the form of an mp3 CD. Although I'm not yet sold on these Vampire Weekend kids. But! This stuff I found on my own. I am really loving The Black Keys new-ish album. It is old-fashioned swampy blues rock. It reminds me of being in Mississippi, and I that is not BS because I have actually spent a lot of time in Mississippi. So there. More recently, I have been listening to Davendra Banhart, although I admit I came for the Natalie Portman video but stayed for...all the other stuff. It's hard to categorize.

Nectarines. I am also liking nectarines right now.

Testing Testing

So, unlike most places (Louisiana), the San Francisco Bay Area actually has a number of places you can elect to take computerized tests at. I chose mine, in San Francisco, for some very particular reasons.

1) It is about 3 blocks from a BART station, so my studying can continue on my way there, and I am not stressed out by freeway traffic by the time I find the testing center.

2) It is half a block from a Starbucks, so I can get a caffeine jolt and study some more before I go up to the testing center.

3) It is also three blocks from a Banana Republic, so I can buy myself something to feel better if the test doesn't go well. Or buy myself something as a reward if the test does go well. I figure by the time these tests are done I'll have a good work wardrobe with which to relaunch myself in the professional world.

So today I got to S.F. about an hour before my test and settled down in an outside, yet fairly inconspicuous corner of the coffee shop. It's by a floor to ceiling storefront window, and I noticed something out of the corner of my eye when I went over the material. Two scruffy looking dudes hunched toward the building (me), one exchanging some money for some very suspicious gray-colored substance in a plastic bag. OMG, I totally think it was heroin!! Being dealt about 1' away from me! I don't do drugs, but I do watch a lot of movies.

And then, the guy that sold the gray stuff came in and bought some Starbucks. And had trouble dispensing milk for his coffee. I'm just saying.

Nevertheless, potential drug corner doesn't really detract from the Banana Republic (this one has really good sales) so I will keep going to the testing center for now.

The test went well, by the way, thanks for asking (no one except Toni). Although, a note to People Who Write NCARB Study Guides...if you ask a multiple choice question and ask which is "the best method" for so-and-so, "all of the above" would not seem to be a choice purely for semantic reasons, and even though you say it is, I still think you are wrong. And annoying.

Missing Link

I've spent my entire life trying to reconcile the two branches of my Danish-Filipino heritage, and finally figured out their common ground: their predilection for cured salted fish.

It came to me as I topped my cucumber, tomato, and herb salad with sardines. It explains so much about my culinary tastes now.

I'm taking another licensing exam tomorrow. If it goes well, I shall only be 2/9ths of the way to becoming a real live architect!