by the end of today

I will be finished (for better or worse) with my MIT career.

Damn.

thesis dump!

Here we have a collection of completely sporadic images from my thesis in no particular order, such that I can take a break from the actual thing and simultaneously assert that Yes I Have Been Doing Things Thank You Very Much.


Radiance rendering of the inside of the Logan Christian Church before renovations in the 1960s and 1970s. (9:00 AM. Probably in December.)

The stupid Pisgah church which I cannot find a construction date for -- or if I have found one, I've lost it in amongst all my sources.


Harrison County re-mapped in Gill Sans.


Energy comparison chart for Missouri Valley and Logan Christian Churches before renovation (blue) and after renovation (green).

yes right

A lament for the class of 2010. Someone posted this on Facebook, and I unwisely read it.

My response? Fuck you, you pessimistic condescending bastard.

re-blog: something great

This entry is really great.

It's short, honest, a little funny, a lot bittersweet. I think I can feel tremors of what this guy feels/felt even though it's pretty much outside the realm of my experience. And it doesn't make me hate him or want to find him and stab him repeatedly with a Bic pen, the feeling that writing about relationships or a more sexual-type love all too often inspires in me. (Maybe because he seems to remember to his girlfriend as more than a sexual exploration.)

plane ticket

If all goes well, it looks like I shall be flying Omaha Eppley --> Chicago O'Hare --> London Heathrow --> Madrid Barajas.

Whee fun.

and fun times were had by all

My thesis presentation was yesterday done and went reasonably well. Now I merely have to write the actual thesis. Ha! (Yes, I do have a good bit of it written, but I have a long ways to go before Tuesday.) After that I one final; the next week I go to New York for two days; the week after that I graduate.

Last night I went out with a friend to celebrate at Piattini's, an Italian restaurant on Newbury Street. I even had a glass of wine with dinner -- pinot grigio something something. It was a white wine, not terribly sweet but very pleasant. I fear I am dreadfully ignorant when it comes to alcohol in general.

Today I started making good on my self-promise to do a lot of walking.



This route is about 7.5 miles, according to Google Maps.

Good times. Now I'm trying to iron out my flight to Madrid this summer. Oh boy. . .

walking

I hereby resolve to walk 5 miles in Boston ever single day after my thesis presentation until I go home (which is Friday. technically tomorrow.)

another autocad command of great importance:

solprof. Creates a profile image of 3D object.

making myself feel better

thank you cuteoverload.com.

there I am

There I am. Right at the top. Next to the legitimate graduate students. I think I will feel weirdly flattered later, but right now I'm just feeling kind of sick, scared, and vastly underqualified.

movies

I have moved my base of operations from my room to the music room (room on the first floor that used to be the dining room; is now an all-purpose living room with couches and a piano) for now. I find it is more difficult (though still possible) to fall asleep down here, it's usually been less hot, and I find the noise and the company comforting.

An upside/downside to this is that the TV with cable is in the music room. I don't (no seriously, I don't) watch TV myself, but when others are down here, I am more than willing to be distracted (frequently) from my work by whichever movie is playing.

To that end, in the last five/six days whilst hanging out/working/chatting, I have seen all or a large part of the following movies:

Daria: Is It College Yet? (excellent. but then there is reason all of us liked this show in high school, even if we (by which I mean me) had to go to our (my) friend's house to watch it.)

Master and Commander* (EPIC. but I missed a lot because they all mumbled a lot.)

The Patriot (also pretty great. remember back before Mel Gibson kind of sucked? this movie is how the U.S. wants to remember its history.)

V for Vendetta (maybe a strategic 25% plus explanations of this one.) (this movie is actually identical to The Patriot in a lot of ways, but with more explosives and a female main character.)

Hellboy* (Guillermo del Toro is awesome! I've mentioned another film he directed -- El Espinazo del Diablo on this blog before. Also fun about the version we watch were the interludes before commercial breaks when they talked about how they achieved the special effects. Lots of CG, but also a lot of intricate mechanical bits and pieces and wonderful makeup, particularly for the costumes.)

Blade (TOO. MUCH. BLOOD.)

His Girl Friday (this was actually the one I checked out. This movie is all about Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell being snappy and justifying being horrible people by being newspapermen, and Cary Grant standing around doing the, "Look at me! I'm Cary Grant and I'm so tall and elegant!" bit.)

The Punisher (didn't mean to watch this one. I left for the apparently horrifically violent scene in the middle with "the Russian" and various piercings getting pulled out.)

* Movies I plan to find again and watch the parts I missed sometime.

I had seen precisely NONE of these movies before. I think I know now how it is that everyone in the world has seen more movies than me: They all have cable.

Also an episode of "World's Greatest Warriors" or somesuch on Spike TV, which consisted people shooting at targets with sixshooters, Winchester rifles, and Tommy guns, while grumbling in a manly fashion at each other. Oy.

so much!

There is so much I could blog about. Doubtless some of it will come about today as I get frustrated calculating the solar gains and conductive losses through the windows of the churches for my thesis.

usually fashion blogs are less profound

"This is not at all my style and I’ll maybe never wear it, but I like to give myself room to dream that sometimes, we can be someone else."

from Garance Dore's most recent entry.

senior ball

I don't generally like posting pictures of myself -- I'm not very photogenic, and I would posit that the phrase "the camera adds ten pounds" actually means "the camera makes you aware of those last ten pounds that you let your eyes skip over in the mirror."

But, with that said, I am posting a picture of myself today.

Senior ball is next week (yay for glorified prom!) and though I have two dresses I could wear, I decided to head over to Anthropologie yesterday and see if the dresses on the racks were as pretty as the dresses in the window. Generally Anthropologie is not my favorite -- they're a little too expensive, a little too fake, and a little too ugly-chic -- but they've got a lot of things I really like this spring. This, I liked on the rack, I like how it feels on, and I like how it looks, so. . . there you go.