Jimbo and Maggaroo

A little While back, Kristie's parents cam out to visit. It was fun seeing them. We took a trip downtown and over to the Denver Art Museum. Somehow we had never been there, so this was our first trip, too.

Kristie and her parents in front of the Denver Art Museum.

Jim and Scott at the bubbles exhibit.

Kristie and her dad in front of the State Capitol

Everybody in the big broom and dust bin sculpture in front of the museum.

This is the inside of the museum. Supposedly it makes some people dizzy.

Kristie and Jim outside on the what was called the "Sculpture Deck". There weren't any sculptures out here.

Here is Kristie under a giant chair with a horse on it.

My letter to Mandy Moore

Dear Mandy,

How can I improve my fantasy football team? I got beat by 45.5 points this week, and am now in 7th place. Its a td=6/ppr setup, and I need to find a W/R that will do better than Toomer(NYG) has so far. Any ideas? BTW, Crayton (dal) is taken. Also, do you think Lewis will miss more time with that ankle injury?

Scott (hoss)

Do you think she'll respond? I hope so, because I'm really tired of losing.

http://www.myspace.com/mandymoore - scroll down to comments

K-9's for the Cure

Lacey, in her pink sweater that we got her for the days when she is too cold and refuses to go outside. I know... she's covered in fur. Still, with this thing on she will go all the way out to the grass instead of peeing on the porch and running back inside. Anyway, I thought the pink was a good choice for her race pic.

This weekend is the Komen Race for the Cure in Denver.

Kristie, Lacey, and I are going to do the K-9's for the Cure race tomorrow. I'll post pics when we get them. Hopefully Lacey won't mistake "race" for "get tangled up trying to play with all the other dogs."

If you can't race this weekend, you may be in luck, since the races are held at different times in different cities. Go to http://cms.komen.org/Komen/NewsEvents/FindARace/index.htm to see what's coming up close to you. If you want to make a donation, you can do it at http://www.komendenver.org/site/PageServer?pagename=rfcd_race_k9forcure

Scroll down and click the "Donate Now" button on the right side of the page.

Wish us luck.

Florida Continued

We continue vacation photos from Florida.

This is Mr. Potatohead. He's all hands. I pressed charges.

We drove through a new urbanist community, (that's a fancy architecture term for a new development where everything is built to look extra quaint and perfect. Think Truman Show.) to see what all the hubbub was, and Kristie noticed that we drove by Wisteria Lane. (Just like in Desperate Housewives). The street had perfect little houses with perfect little lawns, and picket fences. I got Kristie to pose as the hot neighbor that moves in and obsesses over her yard, while secretly killing off people, and stealing all the other ladies' husbands.

Considering that both this place and ABC are owned by Disney, it's pretty likely that the set designers were driving through here and decided they liked the name.

Later in our vacation, we went to Kennedy Space Center. You know that one kid from your elementary school that sold the most candy/wrapping paper/ other assorted crap during the annual fundraiser. This is where he got to go. It's also where they launch the space shuttles and all the satellites. Over all, it was nerdy, but super awesome. We definitely think it is worth a day away from all the themeparks. Scott got to ride a Shuttle launch simulator on the first day it opened, and when we got back to Denver, it was on the news here. It was a VERY shaky, loud ride. It made his hearing go all wierd, and his eyes went out of focus.

Why spend 20 bucks on a green screen pic of yourselves in space when photoshop is free?

This is like the second biggest building in the world. Its so big inside that clouds form and it rains in there when its dry outside.

The rocket that they sent to the moon. When the rocket launches, you have to be like 4 miles away or the sound will make you deaf instantly. If you are within like 1.5 miles, it will kill you. Its huge. About 30 ft across and as tall as a 30 story building.

I'm sitting on a (very worn out) sign that says "please to not sit here"

Us, on top of the very windy observation deck. That is the space shuttle and all its assorted buildings and stuff between us. You can only see the tip because they're getting it ready to launch. It's only out there for a month before a launch, so were lucky to see it at all.

A closer view. The red tip is the huge fuel tank, and the shuttle itself is hidden by a massive moving clean room, where they work on the shuttle and keep all kinds of experiments that go on the trip.

These are the type of rockets that Kristie's dad, Jim, used to work on at UTC Pratt-Whitney just south of San Jose. Unfortunately, the one he used to follow here on the trains from San Jose (Titan II) was being refurbished, so we didn't get to see it.

While we were walking around, we saw this alligator, and a huge turtle (top middle).

Here is the Shuttle they let you walk inside of. The flag is backward because the shuttle is on its end when they launch it.

This is what gross pizza looks like in space.

Thanks for sticking it out.

Stuff you should know about stuff that is awesome.

We had a 187 at the 7-11, at the corner of 4th and Main." Ok. This is the first in a series of entries about stuff. Awesome stuff. Our initial subject:

COP ROCK!

What's to know about Cop Rock?
a. aired in 1990. Lives on in my soul.
b. filmed in the same town as Savannah Smiles
c. gritty crime drama
d. singing and dancing

Let's Pretend

.... that it is June, and Kristie and I got back from our vacation today. Actually, today would be one year since we got back from New England... so I'm not too far off. Sort of.

Wow what a whirlwind trip. We just got back and I feel like I need another trip already. This was the first time I've been to Florida, and Kristie hasn't been there since she was a super little kid (she was born there.) We came away totally impressed, but not so much that we'll ever move there. I generally say no to tropical storms, constant steaminess, and reptiles that eat family pets and small children if they are left unsupervised in the back yard.

We flew all the way out to Orlando, and where did we end up first? Tony Roma's. the Buffet is great if you haven't been. That night though, we had an odd Gilroy moment. We go to Chevy's for dinner, because we haven't been there since moving to Colorado (and we miss the pre-chewed mound of cornmeal stuff the give you with your meal.) and we see this outside the front door:

I'm sure other ex-gilroyans will tell you, that place follows you. When we moved into our first apartment here, there were pictures of Gilroy on the walls in the Clubhouse.

Ok, so we stayed at this really cool place that I have to give credit to Amy for because we got an incredible deal on it through thier vacation club thing, and it was awesome. I need to find the pictures we took of it, and I'll post em. Here is the only one I can find right now.

We totally tried to do nothing on our trip, but there was way too much stuff to try out. Still, we managed to spend the first two days hanging out around the pools, and getting to know Orlando. This place is basically the exact opposite of any other place we've been. We didn't eat in any little family owned restaraunts, and I didn't drag Kristie from famous building to famous building.

Even so, I think one of our favorite memories from the trip will be our regular trips to a coffee shop we found the first day we were there. It's called BAD ASS COFFEE, and by the end of the trip, Kristie was super addicted to it. I managed to find something there that tasted like candy every time we went. This place also had AWESOME cookies, and you know how that goes.

We went to Epcot first, because we read the books on when to go where, and they are totally right. We walked on to almost every ride... and then we spent the afternoon walking through the different countries.

This is the photo we will eventually use to "prove" to our "kids" that we really did "take them" to Disneyworld.

Our goal is to one day visit all the Eiffel Tower Replicas in the World.

Finding Nemo is Awesome. The Finding Nemo Ride is cool. Finding Nemo should have won Best Picture. I am one handsome fellow.

Shortly after this was taken, I was propositioned by several passing US Servicemen. Don't laugh. They ended up paying for most of our trip. Well, $4.72 of it at least.

The next day we went to Cocoa Beach, FL to relax and play in the water. This supposedly the surfing capitol of the world, and I believe it. The waves were big, and the rip tide was just crazy. The water was way warmer than anything I'm used to, being from CA.

If it looks like the beach just keeps going and going, that's because it does.... for like 70 miles.

In case you all wondered what I would look like with my mom's hair. Pretty, Huh?

The next day we took our sunburns to Magic Kingdom (aka Disneyland).

To get there, you take a ferry from the parking lot.

In front of Cinderella's Castle.

Guess who bought pirate swords for Amy's Boys?!! (I'm told it only took 5 minutes for Parker to come up from the basement crying in pain. Tyler followed behind him shouting apologies, and insistent pleas about it being an accident.)

Kristie loves Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.

When Scott was 10, he fell out of his bunk bed. Upon landing, he smashed his nose into a lego. Consequently, he spent 45 minutes moving this thing "to a place where it can't hurt anyone ever again."

This was just before "the incident." I'm sure she didn't mean to hit that kid, but she has to admit that repeated ramming into him after he fell, then getting out and yelling "Quit Crying, You $*%# baby!" probably had something to do with our being asked to leave the park.

More to come...

I've never seen anything with him in it.

While taking a quiz from Dave's blog, I found this and couldn't resist. Here are my predictable? results.





You looove him. You really loooove him. You might've missed a question or two, but you never would have scored this well without the help of that special spot in your heart where you store Zac facts. You probably get angry whenever someone spells his name wrong (you definitely got it right when you spelled it out in glow in the dark stars on your ceiling), and you're tired of explaining to people that he can actually sing. You are so passionate about this guy that you're probably about to take the quiz again to see if you can get a higher score. Go for it!

So, Where were we?

It has become apparent that most people have no idea what an Architect does. I know this because people ask me a lot why I act like it's hard to do floor plans. The truth is that plans are just about the easiest thing I do, but even with plans, you don't just draw them. Architecture involves a long and rigorous process that begins well before a single line is drawn. Before the solution can be articulated, the problem has to be solved. Even before that, though, you have to figure out what the problem is. I thought I would take everyone through an atypical, yet revealing project to both show what I mean, as well as what I was up to from January to May, this year.

I took a really different (different = good + hard) studio in Spring, and ended up with a pretty cool project.

Our first assignment was to design a transparent opaque wall. If this sounds like an inescapable parodox, it is, unless you look at it a VERY specific way.

Not Quite...

This one worked. Of course, right?

So, why did we do this? The "simple" answer is that we were trying to create a human experience of "wall" as the result of an oscillation between opaqueness and transparency. Why? Because we were designing a cinema, and the experience of going to the movies involves a similar experience of space. I won't get into the details. I'll just suffice it to say we spent quite a few weeks identifying and understanding what were going to do, and this was an exploration in how to do that.

Our second assignment was to take the lessons of the wall, and create an infinite room. Similar paradox, similar solution.... Oh, wait, maybe not. I worked on the room for almost 6 weeks, for about 60hrs a week. Here are just a few of the revisions.

Now, if this progression isn't odd enough.... imagine that in the end this space became a movie theater auditorium for 200 people. The seats are broken into 3 sections, and face a screen on the right wall.

To give you a sense of the scale, the model is about an 18" cube. A person would be about 1/2" tall.

Ok, so we got a room, but where do we put it. That begins with the site.

When you take everything about a site(the existing buildings, traffic patterns, histories) and distill it down to its primary elements, you can understand how to respond to it. But you don't just make a building then. You have to block out your primary moves, or parti. Here is the parti for the cinema.

With elaboration and experimentation with the three dimensional aspects of the site, your parti transforms into a massing diagram on a site.

From here, you begin to look at the details, and form a building.

So, why are you at school so much? Because, before you solve a problem correctly, you often have to solve it incorrectly many, many times. Here's the analogy I like: Imagine you're taking a trip from Copenhagen to Beijing. You may speak the language occasionally,but there's no way you'll speak every language for the whole trip. You have a guide, but they can only give you a hint or two every so often. You can ask others for directions along the way, but they might not know what they're talking about, and might even lie to you for thier own purposes. Now, imagine you drive all night, only to have your guide tell you in the morning that you missed a turn somewhere along the way, and have to go back.

That's architecture School. Even with great planning in advance, you often finish a frustrating night of very little progress by having to turn around and go back. See the model I'm holding in the image above. I rebuilt that section 30+ times over a 2 week period, before it finally looked right. That's why I'm at school so much.

So, why stick with it? Surely there are other ways to make a better living that don't involve a lot paper cuts, or regularly stabbing yourself with a quilter's pin. Well, after building and rebuilding, changing and rechanging, ruining and trying to recover, you get to something like a final design. It's hard to explain the sense of accoplishment that comes with a finished design. Somehow, though, it's worth it.

Before Materials were added.

With materials/ finishes.

And then we make floor plans.

Why am I always catching up?

It seems like I am always about 3 months behind on this blog... sorry. I have a lot of pictures I want to post, but they never seem to be where I am when I have time to do this. Meanwhile, Elena, Mego and Hollee are super on top of it.

School ended, started, ended, and has started agian. We went to Florida and California, and I finally finished up the job I had. I'm trying to get the Hollister House finished, and hopefully, I'll be starting a new job soon. Almost all these things will be elaborated on in the next few days. Sorry, again. Hang in there. Oh, and I've made the bed every day for the last two weeks. Without being asked. Who continues to astound his readers with ever increasing levels of adequacity? I think we all know who.

Me.

You get pitted...

Ok, so Amy and Josh are moving to California. I thought they might want a glimpse into what this might mean for them and thier future. To this end, I obtained the seminal news report on the California School system.

I give you, Parker, after after 10 years in Hollister.



It's not too late to come back.

Scott

Join the Cause!

As many of you are already aware, I am a champion for the repressed and downtrodden. This may cause a wave of comments in confirmation and adulation for me, but I ask you to refrain, and instead lend your voices to a cause that is closer to my heart than most. Yes, even closer than the millions of other causes lodged in my arteries so deeply that I regularly black out due to my own goodness.

I recently heard about a young child living in such horrible conditions that her sister was forced to sit still in one area, lest she fall upon razor blades, nails and other such items. As if seeing her sister suffer weren't enough, she was regularly subjected to dictatorial regime of her own mother. I can not describe the horror better than the word of the mother herself, so I invite you to click on the link below.

http://aaronandmeg.blogspot.com/2007/07/potty-prizes.html

If the visual imagery of the piece above was too strong for you, I apologize. That said, I'm sure you'll agree that the treatment of Reese Williardson goes beyond the normal boundaries of parental discretion.

I say Megan Willardson must be stopped. I say Megan Willardson must provide the rewards that were promised, or compensation in like kind. I say Four Potties, Four Prizes!

Four Potties, Four Prizes!
Four Potties, Four Prizes!

I ask you to join me in the call for justice. Let your voice lend reason to this madness.

Tell Megan, "No Longer!" No Longer should children be forced to toil without just compensation. No Longer must tears be shed over excretions made in vain. No Longer should Mermaid sisters be plucked from the arms of our children without due process.

NO LONGER, We say!

We'll must take this message to the streets. We must tell our friends and neighbors. Brothers and Sisters must unite as one voice to say, "Megan Willardson, you horrid beast, THIS WILL NOT STAND!!! FREE THOSE PRIZES!!!"

FOUR POTTIES, FOUR PRIZES!
FOUR POTTIES, FOUR PRIZES!
FOUR POTTIES, FOUR PRIZES!
FOUR POTTIES, FOUR PRIZES!
FOUR POTTIES, FOUR PRIZES!

Our Basement

Here are the pictures I took of Kristie's project. Sorry We don't have before pics, but you can probably just imagine the standard unfinished basement stair.

Yesterday I installed a new light fixture for the landing, and kristie painted and hung the handrails back up. I know its tough to tell without the before pics, but the end result is a huge improvement.

Scott

Looking Forward

While taking summer studio has put a damper on a things a bit, we're still trying to fit some fun into summer. I got us tix to see Cirque to Soleil (spelling?) in a few weeks, and Kristie's parents will be here in mid July. Then, in August (15th - 18th), we're heading out California to take a little mini-vacation. It will be fun to see friends and family and play tourist for a few days. So, if you're still in california, and want to see us, let us know.

On the catching up front.... School has been no fun at all these last few months. I am going to get some images up from studio so ya'll can see what I do, and where I kick it 24/7 during the semester. Kristie is still working in accounting, and hopefully I'll be making some money soon, and she can take time to explore what she really wants to do. I feel pretty guilty about going back to school, because it means she has had to stay in the field way beyond when she should have had to. Oh well. Hopefully, the future will bring brighter things.

Speaking of brighter things, we are beginning to get the baseement started. While she patiently waits for me to begin framing walls, Kristie has been pianting the stairway down to the basement, and decorating it some. Every night I come home, take out the dog, and then go check out the things she's done. It looks pretty good... especially since she's never done stuff like faux painting before. My favorite part was coming home, and seeing the rails removed from the stairs. I've got one handy little woman. I'm going to take some pics tonight and put them up, cause I'm so proud.

I get to do a few things on the honey-do list this week. For the last two weeks, a new porch light has been sitting on the front step as a reminder that I need to install it. I think there are about a dozen similar jobs just waiting for my attention.

Thats it for now. More to come.

- Scott