I win...kind of

Hi blog,

Sorry for neglecting you, my dear readers, for so long. I've said this about a hundred times this year, but it's true once again: I just finished the biggest project of my life. Seriously. It was ridiculous. I worked pretty much nonstop for five days, averaging about 3 hours of sleep a night. It's done. It looks alright. It could be more perfect. I don't have time for perfect these days.

The project was to create three housing typologies (single family detached, single family rowhouse, mixeduse retail and residential) for a proposed new town, based on principals of critical regionalism and sustainability. My town was to be located in the Shenandoah Valley, so in keeping with critical regionalism, the housing styles, colors, and materials used all had to fit in with the architecture and landscaping and materials that are native to Virginia. We had to do site plans showing how each housing type would relate to the street as well as street sections showing sidewalk widths, bike lanes, streetscaping spacing. We had to do two drawings of each building, an axonometric (which is a 3-D side view) and an elevation. You have to use an architectural ruler so everything is to-scale. So if someone saw my drawing and it said 1"=20' they could get out their architectural ruler and measure a window and know that it was supposed to be 6' wide. Pretty neat.

And then we had to write it all up in a fancy report with a vision and ten principles of design like "the town shall be walkable from end to end" and each principle had to have three guidelines like "Pedestrian pathways will connect each residential street to the Town Center," or "pathways will be 4'-6' and be ADA compliant regarding grade and surface texture." And then we had to draw a diagram for each principle.
It was worth doing. It was excessively long. My professor gave the same assignment last year only they didn't have to write principles or draw diagrams. He was giving us shit for being behind - "last year's class was way ahead of you." But the assignment was twice as long. So eff him.

It was a huge ass project. It was a shit show. I did it all by hand. Some people cheated and used Sketch-Up which we weren't supposed to do b/c it distorts axonometric drawings, but whatev. Hopefully it'll be a good portfolio piece.

Anyway, I've finally gotten some sleep. That was lovely. It's spring here in Philly. I spent the last three months anticipating an impending winter that never came. Thank God. After living in Michigan no winter will ever feel terrible again.

I'm so unfamiliar with having nothing due tomorrow that I don't know what to do with myself.

Gotta get jazzed for six hours of class. Wish me luck.

<3
-K


PS I still have lots and lots and lots to say about New Orleans. I'll get to it tomorrow, I promise.

New Orleans - Day Two: Low-key local interaction

The next day the Rockafeller Fellows (whose organizations we were interning with for the week) had a barbeque to which we were invited. Getting there was kind of a mess since the directions sucked, but it was a lovely drive. Plannerspeak was flying all over the place in our Honda minivan - "This right-of-way is amazing", "check out those set backs," "What a mature treeline - what kind of trees are those?", "This scale is so pedestrian-friendly," "Is that Whole Foods an adaptive reuse?" "Eww what is with that building, it doesn't fit with the rest of the urban fabric at all," etc. etc. etc. It was hilarious. It was so nerdy. We were loving it.

We found Audubon Park finally and not that many people were there. A few blankets were set out. One guy introduced himself and the others kinda hung back. It was a bit awkward cuz we didn't know who was who - who we'd be working with or who was just a friend of someone else. We played football and soccer and mingled a little. It was all less structured than we'd expected. We'd arrived at 1 and most people didn't arrive til 3, the grilling didn't start til 4. By the end of the trip we would understand that New Orleanians lead a laid-back life. They don't start on time and they only end early if it's work. They chill. It's cool. By the end of the picnic we'd talked to a lot of people and it was a lot of fun. Someone brought three pounds of cooked crawfish which they taught us how to peel and eat right out of the shell.

Genevieve, Shayla, and Rachel enjoying themselves at the picnic

When we left the party was still going on, but we wanted to go out and explore more for the day. It was so sunny and pretty but still cool that I really wanted to go for a run. I left around 630pm from the hotel hoping to get back before dark - as everyone warned me. It was a really nice run. New Orleans has a few trolley lines which run down the boulevards in the middle of the street. Local people run or walk along the tracks. I did the same for a bit but the sun was in my eyes so I went back to the sidewalk. I had no idea how far I'd gone but I decided to head back b/c the sun was setting at an alarming rate. I got home around 7:20 and saw I'd gotten a few text messages - "Are you back safely yet?" I was. It was a long run. It felt amazing. (I just checked Gmaps Pedometer - http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=1706018 - 6.5 miles - not bad.)

I was about to hop into the shower when James called to say that some people were heading to Mother's in five minutes.
"Could you wait ten minutes do you think?" I asked.
"No, I think they wanted to leave soon," James replied.
"Well, I'll meet you down there in five, and if I'm not there you can leave without me."
Fastest shower of my life. In and out, dried and dressed, hair washing included, down to the lobby in five minutes. I win.

We walked a few blocks to Mother's - a quite unique, cafeteria-style soul food joint, recommended to us by Kate Daniel (the city planning administrative assistant who organized this trip, and our lives in general and who also lived in Nola for a while.) Despite how greasy and gross it looked, it was pretty delish. I got red beans and rice which I doused in hot sauce - as is the custom in this city.

James and James at the Mother's counter
"Who the hell keeps snapping that flash off?" yelled an employee, at which point, I stopped taking pictures.

When we got back, the rest of the group wanted to go see a band play, which I was into, but they wanted to get food first, which I was not into, since it was already like 10 and we had to work early the next day.

So my friend James and I wandered around the Warehouse district and checked out the architecture and urban design there. I know, I know, it sounds super nerdy. And it was. But it was really enjoyable. I wish I'd taken more pictures. Double porches and spanish railings are definitely my favorite details of New Orleans architecture. In Urban Design class, my professor is always talking about "Critical Regionalism" which is new architecture that draws from local materials and arch styles to create something modern and progressive yet contextually appropriate. When he talks about it it sounds all well and good, but he rarely gives us any examples. Walking around an unfamiliar city definitely helped us to talk through what we thought were good and bad designs. This building was one of James' favs:
After walking around a decent bit, we called it an early night and headed back to the hotel. I slept well despite anticipation of our first day of work at Neighborhood Housing Services at 9 am.

New Orleans - Day One: typical tourists

Dearest friends,

I've just returned from a week in New Orleans that was probably the most important of my education thus far. I don't know where or how to begin recounting the events of the week and I know nothing I can say will do justice to the unique magic that makes New Orleans unique to any other place I've ever experienced.

I'll start at the very beginning because Julie Andrews once told me it was a very good place to start. We arrived last Saturday in the early afternoon. Most of us hadn't slept much the night before but our fatigue didn't stop us from hitting the French Quarter as soon as we'd had a minute to change clothes. Only Sarah Marks had ever been to New Orleans before, so all that most of us knew about it were a few streets and food items we'd heard tossed around: beignet, muffuletta, Bourbon Street, French Quarter, gumbo. So accordingly, we indulged in all of these things in the first twelve hours of our visit.

First stop was Cafe du Monde for an afternoon snack. Cafe du Monde is the most famous place to eat beignets in New Orleans, maybe the world. Beignets are sweet, fried squarish pastries topped with piles of powdered sugar. They come in plates of three and are served with hot chocolate or coffee and chickory (coffee and thick cream - quite delicious.)

After the cafe we took back to the street where everyone bought muffelatta's - a New Orleanian sandwich. It's a couple different kinds of cold cuts with provolone and swiss and lots of olives on top. I didn't partake but I hear they were good. We wandered over to the river where everyone ate and we watched giant ships roll by. Then we went back across Decatur street and headed west toward Bourbon Street.

Bourbon Street is probably the typical image that comes to mind when one thinks of New Orleans. Nearly every stall is a bar covered with neon signs. People are wandering all over the street with drinks in hand and beads strewn carelessly about their necks. It is only four o'clock in the afternoon mind you. And yes, drinking is allowed in public in this town. Which is amazing. People got their first round of drinks in cups that said "big ass beer." I wanted to hold out so my first drink in Nola would be a hurricane - another famous Nola beverage. We passed a store that had them, (actually every store probably had them) and everyone was like "Get one now!" I was like, "I don't want to be drunk at 4!" They were like "This is New Orleans!" So I gave in. It tasted like red cool aid. It hit a lot harder, but not too hard. I think we wandered back to the hotel nicely buzzed and everyone took pre-dinner naps.

For dinner we went to Oliver's - a nice restaurant on Decatur. I decided at the beginning that I'd eat seafood this week since I'd be wasting an amazing culinary experience if I didn't...and I don't feel that bad for seafood since it seems harder for them to suffer. I had crawfish etoufee. It might be my new fav food. So good. Next we wandered down Decatur all the way to Frenchman Street and found ourselves in an entirely new district - it was a whole block of jazz and blues bars off the tourist path. We went to d.b.a and saw an awesome blues guitarist. After a few hours and another couple drinks we went back to Bourbon Street.

The last stop (around 2 am) was Pat O'Brien's - home of the Hurricane (the drink). I was already pretty drunk. But everyone was having hurricanes and convinced me to have one - which I admit wasn't hard cuz i wasn't exactly at the top of my game as far as decision-making goes. I split it with Sally. I felt fine for the rest of the night - until we went back to the hotel. I got to my room and laid down. At which point I promptly got up, went to the bathroom and got beaten by the hurricane. Alas. Lesson learned.

Jumbled thoughts for the day

Thoughts for the day:

-Can you gossip to yourself? I try not to be the person who tells everyone everything about everyone else. But is it any better to think snarky comments to myself about others? Probably not.

- I'm overwhelmed by the connectedness of the world. You know how if you spend a day playing a video game or working with a certain graphics program or, (in my case for today) graphing transportation systems, everything you see becomes that set of lines or patterns? I was walking down the stairs at a diagonal angle and realized the pattern looked just like the graph for local versus express trains. Maybe that's nerdy. But I think my point is when you throw yourself into one subject that becomes the basis of how you interpret everything in the world. So back in undergrad I saw everything as sociology. And then everything was art. For the moment everything is headway and terminal time and operating velocity and cycle time.

None of these are empirically right. I don't think that everything ultimately comes down to economics or biology or politics or art or sociology or theology or philosophy. Instead it's all so interconnected that you can tap into one of those underlying frequencies and interpret everything through that lens, and it's just as correct as any other frequency. It's fascinating to discover which frequencies resonate with which people.

At the moment I'm hopping between a bunch of them all the time, which is keeping my brain in shape to say the very least. I'm about to finish a bunch of engineering/physics type calculations, after which I'll finish a sketch and layout a portfolio.

-My subconscious life has been affecting my conscious life lately. I keep having these telling dreams, all loaded with subtle and not-so-subtle symbolism. Not only do I remember the dreams in the morning (which I haven't done in quite a while) but they affect how I feel for the rest of the day. It's strange.

-In the same vein, I've been having a disconnect between how I feel and being cognizant of that feeling. For example, the other day I felt all depressed inside, but I didn't consciously understand why. Then I thought it might be because of a decision I made, but I lacked the connecting guilt or conviction to make me consciously comprehend and confirm that I indeed believed I was wrong. The higher-thinking required to connect the causative action to the resulting feeling wasn't there. I just felt weird inside, but didn't feel wrong or regretful in my head. Also odd.

- When I'm doing school work and it's going faster than I expected, rather than working quickly to get it done, I relax my pace and waste time, so I end up finishing at the same time I would've had it taken as long as I expected it to in the first place. How's that for a run-on sentence?

-I'm going to New Orleans on Saturday. Hurray.

Disclaimer

A clarification in response to some concerned comments from readers (all two of them):

I hereby reserve the right to wax melodramatic and employ hyperbole for rhetorical purposes. While the majority of what you read is true, I reserve the right to embellish that truth (to the point of falseness) as I see fit.

Because, let's be honest, dramatic writing is more interesting than dull and mundane, no? And I do what I want.

If I am truly, heart achingly sad or despaired I probably will let you know in a more direct way than writing about it in an obscure blog. For the most part you can assume that I'm alive and well, that I have ups and downs, and that I'll call you if I need you. And you can always call me if you need me. Word? Word.