new years' thoughts, I guess

Though not really related to the new year.

This site, which I cannot remember how I found, is pretty cool. Furniture!

I got a Nook for Christmas. Fffffffffffffubbbtth. This is the sound of the Nook sucking out my brains. It is AWESOME.

I want this book! Sadly, it is not on the Nook. And I refuse to pay $65 for a doorstopper, though it might be a doorstopper of epic design coolness. (For another peep inside the fun, here.)

What is up with this book, exactly? It looks cool. . . sorta. . . not sure.

In other news! I have been reading Tiger Beatdown for a while. It is a good blog! It is thoughtful! Funny! I think that Sadie/Sara Doyle is probably a genuinely nice person, and probably someone who would be great to be friends with! I have been watching the #mooreandme debacle (debacle because of the trolls, mainly) unfold from a distance from the beginning about two weeks ago. . . and it makes me so sad. Not because it isn't a good protest, but just that it takes so much effort and misery on the part of a few people just for a basic concession that rape allegations, even when against an Important Person! deserve to be taken seriously. Ugh. I get freaked out by one mean comment on the internet, so I can't imagine what it would be like to be inundated with demands that you, personally, go die (among other horrible things.) So I feel really bad that she basically had to make a giant target/punching bag out of herself to make a point.

In final news, the MIT admissions department does not believe that my recommendation letters have been submitted, EVEN THOUGH THEY HAVE. Ugh. I am also trying to write some kind of coherent mess about how the Royal College of Art should really let me study Design Engineering there because, uh, I like international collaboration! Also I like technology and design TOGETHER. Yeah, I'm obviously still working.

In REALLY SERIOUSLY FINAL NEWS, there was a lot of crap under my keys that I dug out this morning.

MIT app submitted

Through poor planning, I am uncertain if my transcript and/or GRE scores are going to be received in time. (Though seriously, Student Services, if you felt like being helpful all you would have to do is walk two floors up with my transcript.)

Promise to self: I shall NOT repeat this pattern for the next four applications.

things I have more or less accomplished

1. Write a purpose statement for MIT explaining how I intend to research intersections between daylighting, historic restoration, health, and energy savings;
2. Fix the plan on my quarry project page (i.e. make the plan of what I added lighter and easier to see);
3. FINALLY finish the photomontage for the final 4.114 project that I have been working on for the last week (:P);
4. Finish updating the sections of the 4.114 hanging house project so they are legible.
5. Do what needs to be done to get a clean plan exported from my 4.112 Sketchup model (i.e. download Sketchup Pro for an 8-hour trial and use its superior exporting capabilities to bring plans/sections into Illustrator and AutoCAD -- urgh);
6. Re-scan my 4.113 final project plans, the files of which have mysteriously disappeared;
7. Edit the final 4.440 project poster text down to something that will fit on my page;
8. Write clever (ha!) blurbs for the projects that don't have them;
9. Contemplate upon some way that I can parse/showcase the boutique furniture project designs into something coherent;
10. Contemplate upon a way to make my research figures pretty.

#5 is done because I decided my portfolio is too long and unwieldy and has too many mediocre projects in it.

It still kind of makes me want to scream when I look at it.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

Featured on design-milk a few days ago: YKH House.

THIS IS DESIGNED BY ISSHO ARCHITECTS. I WORKED IN THIS OFFICE.

(Though not on this project, alas.)

continuing application struggles

I wish I had done a Christmas countdown calendar on my blog. . . it would be fun. I also wish I could do one of those "gift guides," but I'm crappy at that kind of stuff, and besides I'm not buying anyone anything, I'm just baking stuff.

Perhaps I shall count down the last. . . 12 days to Christmas.

In any case, things I really, really need to get done today (plus a bunch of things I need to get done, but maybe not EXACTLY TODAY):

portfolio fun while listening to bill engvall

I wonder about myself that I enjoy his humor so much.

Anyway, here are the few portfolio pages that are completely done (funnily enough, three of the four pages are not actual serious projects. and the one that is a serious project is not a big one. :P) I actually have 11 more pages in various stages of done-ness. Weird.

First: page of drawings/art.

Second: The quarry project (I see some issues right now to be fixed, sigh.)

Third: Pottery stuff. Does this belong in my portfolio? Maybe not. We'll see.

Fourth: page of adventures/travel.

grad apps

They continue apace. I may actually have a portfolio to post one of these days.

so I suck at blogging right now

as well as other things, like finishing my portfolio and getting to work at 1:30 instead of 1:45.

However, I have managed to spend loads of time on the internet (funny that), so here are my finds of late:

Awesome Scottish first names. (Fear me, O hypothetical children of mine.)

Wonderful, funny, beautiful food blog.

Christmas present for Mom.

This article is okay, but the link inside of it (which I can't get to work right now) to toddler altruism research videos is AWESOME.

This dog is the bomb, in all the positive figurative meanings of that phrase. Seriously.

The Bible. In over 50 languages. Fun!

important revelation of the day

Baby leopards have small spots.

I wonder if they're like Dalmatians and are born without them.

today

I return to the U.S.

It's been fun, Spain. I'll come back.

in sum

During this trip (assuming my flight to Venice goes well), I have successfully visited Toledo, Salamanca, Paris, Granada, Segovia, Barcelona, (obviously) Madrid, and Venice. I think I can comfortably say that I have "been to Europe," or "been to Spain," at the very least. (Though I wish I could have visited Cordoba, Seville, Valencia, Pamplona, the Camino de Santiago. . . as in Japan, I take those things unfinished as insurance that I will have to come back.)

I feel . . . um. . . cultured? Ha. I feel delighted. It was a good summer. I'm happy to go home, but not in the way I was last summer, when I felt like I was popping out of a pressure cooker.

And I really love traveling. I suppose that seems silly to say, but often I wonder how much I really like certain things -- art museums, Shakespeare, long books of literature, fashion -- and how much I like the idea of liking what cultured people like. And while I won't deny there's an element of that striving-for-elegance quality fueling my interests, I also am becoming more and more sure of my own preferences. For instance -- gazpacho? I tried it. It's palatable but not my favorite. Spanish tortilla? Lead me to the feed trough (provided that I don't overcook it so the edges are rubbery. :P) Going out to eat late at night? I just feel exhausted the next day. Getting up early for sightseeing? Yes, I can commune with the pigeons and the elderly people buying bread.

Every so often when traveling a little nagging voice would pop up in my ear, muttering, "YOU'RE DOING THIS WRONG," when I bought lunch from a grocery store instead of sitting in a cafe or walked instead of taking the metro (which, given the price of the metro, invariably meant that I was buying a bottle of Diet Coke for every metro ride I didn't take) or went to the mainstream big-deal tourist attractions instead of the niche out-of-the-way museums. Or vice versa. Or asking why I chose to go to these cities and not these cities. Often the little voice would question my traveling, muttering about lazy Americans in jeans and Birkenstocks or jeans and tennis shoes. Couldn't I at least wear earrings? I could put my money belt under a skirt. This little voice kept insisting there was more to going to Europe than just transplanting American dorkiness on different soil -- I should try, on some level, to be European (or Spanish, rather), to live/eat/dress in the same way that people here have accustomed themselves to do.

And that, I really haven't done. Is that bad? Well, maybe. Maybe not.

---

On a totally unrelated note, after watching the Hellboy movies I found the Hellboy/B.P.R.D. comics online. I read them and I LOVE them. The character development is sadly a little lacking, but the plots are fantastical and totally engrossing.

---

Baby playing with newspaper!

How much do you want to bet

that this dog has food allergies?

new word!

Learned in Barcelona. Nuez is walnut. In case you need to get nut-filled ice cream.

a happy or two

Book art I can appreciate. Maybe I will do this someday with the thousands o' books I plan on having.

Help from grandad. Side note: I love this website in general.

HOLY CRAPOLA LAWS ALMIGHTY

There are TWO sequels to Into the Land of the Unicorns that I DID NOT KNOW ABOUT. HOLY CRAP.

Backstory, for those who do not understand how important this is: When I was 7 years old, I read Into the Land of the Unicorns by Bruce Coville and was totally enamored of it. I thought it was dead spectacular. I thought it was so dead spectacular, in fact, that I drew illustrations for it, wrote a letter to Bruce Coville, and mailed them off to him. (Side note: I remember those illustrations and they were. . . by a seven-year-old. Really obviously by a seven-year-old. Though I did carefully draw all the scales on the dragon with my markers. Even then I was obsessed with detail. [Maybe that was impressive?] I was also convinced that the unicorns had blue manes and tales, which I can't explain.)

Here's the thing: He wrote me back. The one and only author I have ever written to wrote me a personalized letter back thanking me for my illustrations and telling me more about his book. The letter was also not patronizing -- i.e. I recall finding it later and re-reading it and still being impressed. This response did not shake my utter love of the book (obviously) and I devoured every other book of his I could find with equal abandon. The second book, Song of the Wanderer, didn't come out until I was in high school, and I was delighted to find that it was quite as excellent as the first (and longer, which is a bonus in a good book.)

Sadly, I'm not sure that letter survived the flood. But it is a nice memory, and I can always get another copy of the book.

some other things + cold enough

to wear a scarf, so I have broken out the gorgeous pashmina that Barb gave me last Christmas. Of my dozen scarves (and the five or so I brought with me -- ha, the joke's on me :P) it's tied with the orange-gold-cream-pink scarf I bought at Maya on Newbury Street for the position of my favorite, though its weight makes it a slightly more functional garment. (Somewhere in the folds of this scarf is my Fenway House button, but I can't find it, which should tell you how voluminous it is.) (Though not quite this voluminous.)

The other things?

1. I have decided that I am a competent traveler.

For some of you, to read this may seem silly, but it feels very odd to me to declare myself competent in almost anything. Except, I don't know, baking cookies or something else equally non-threatening. Who's going to argue with me about that? Especially if they might get some cookies.

But really -- I think I'm competent. It involves some advance preparation; I'm not a spur-of-the-moment person. But I don't feel particularly bad about that. I do what I need to in order to feel comfortable. I am a "calculated risk" person. I feel like that's no bad thing.

I decided this after contemplating upon this summer, but also last summer. I think I have finally "gotten over" the stress that is flying. (Admittedly, I say this with some caution, since a 16-hour+ lots-o-checked-luggage intercontinental flight marathon is in my near future.) It doesn't freak me out to pack a bag one night, take the taxi/subway to the airport the next morning, spend the following day navigating a new (sometimes large) city, sleep in an unknown bed (usually in a room with other people, also sleeping in their own unknown beds), spend another day navigating, take a different subway back to the airport, and fly back. I am good with directions (somehow this is odd to type; I think that the general knowledge is so inundated with the idea that women must be spatially helpless and directionally challenged than it seems bizarre for me, a woman, to claim competence in this area), in that I can read and remember a map, and once I have walked a route, I generally remember it forever after. Sure, I spent 20 minutes being lost here and there, but never so much that I can't right myself (or at the very least backtrack.) I can also usually get a sense of relative directions fairly quickly (maybe in a weekend, maybe longer than that) -- a general sort of, "Well, if I walk in this direction I will run into this landmark; if I walk in this direction I will run into this landmark; the thing I want is sort of in this direction." I don't think the fact that I can't reliably say anything like, "We need to go NORTH" rather than "We need to go THIS WAY" makes me less competent.

2. Just so I don't forget -- an industrial design blog and design boom competitions.

3. This is interesting. Sort of. Primarily I like it for giving me this quote, ‘Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real.’

4. At some point in the near future I want to put my favorite moments from Coraline, as it was a very pretty movie, and possibly from the Hellboy movies as well.

a good photo

From the Muslim Pride Parade in New York.

Source: Jezebel.

sketches

Posting these here too. . . they looked pretty awful on Facebook. Admittedly, my photography last night at 1:30 AM probably left something to be desired.

Attic of La Pedrera.

La Sagrada Familia observed from a bench. . .

Plaça Rei, watching them set up for Sunday's festival whilst waiting for the city history museum to open. Done while listening to a sound check done on bagpipes.

Part of the city history museum. Smaller shrine within the Palace Chapel built in the early 1300s.

Chapel at large.

Fun Dali drawing at the CaixForum.

can we please declare a moratorium

on the use of the metaphor "cute = edible" for babies? Please, for the love of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, STOP SAYING crap like, "I could just EAT HIM UP" when referring to a chubby baby, "All the better to nibble on," when referring to babies' legs, or any of that gross business. It's worse than dead baby jokes, because those are supposed to be creepy.

Ugh.

wrote this last night, but the internet was angry

Got back from Barcelona about an hour ago. It was good.

Random thoughts:

1. At the beginning of the summer, when I started reading feminist blogs, I came across a lot of articles about being catcalled, hit on, or otherwise treated aggressively by men in public spaces. I remember reading those articles and feeling -- I don't know -- puzzled -- even wistful -- because I had no experience with that sort of event. I guess that I hit an optimum crux in the U.S. at the ideal point of "lives in the right sort of town" and "average-looking enough." Now, thanks to Granada, (a little bit) Madrid and Paris, and especially Barcelona, I can relate. And I can now understand why this type of behavior pisses most women the hell off. Maybe there exist men who yell at you on the street who are actually trying to pay you a compliment. Maybe. These mythical beings have not yet been located. The majority, regardless of what words they actually use, are saying, "I see that you are woman, I see that you are smaller than me, and I want you to know that and be scared." It has fuck-all to do with how you look -- Spain is filled with gorgeous women, and I'm sure not one of them. It has everything to do with who men think they can get away with intimidating.

Moral of this story: Not that many men-type people read this blog, but do not ever catcall a woman and expect her to be flattered. If you don't realize you just made a veiled threat, you're a moron. If you don't care, you're a monster. Either way, you are shit and I want nothing to do with you.

(Side note: I become really unreasonably angry when someone approaches me -- particularly a young man -- with a clear intent to take advantage of me in some way -- pickpocket, scam, whatever. I haven't quite gotten a reign on this yet.)

2. I don't draw like an architect. I sketched for a cumulative 3-4 hours on this trip mostly inside museums. It was fun and somewhat less stressful than trying to navigate the streets of Barcelona (or any city where pulling out a map or looking lost and confused makes you a big fat target.) I even broke out the measure-proportions-with-the-pen trick for increased accuracy. For me, these drawings were pretty good. But I've seen how "real architects" draw (and artists/artisans that "real architects" adore) and what I do isn't it. I draw in pen because I draw for myself, and I want the drawing to last. Architects seem overjoyed by the fuzziness a pencil brings to a page. I tend to get wrapped up in details; architects care about overall form. I use feathery, piece-y lines to make my way around an object; architects use stronger contours. (That was made worse this trip by the fact that my pens were running out of ink.) I can't draw a damn line straight because my hands shake. I also press really hard on the pen, whereas most architects have a light touch. (I generalize, of course.) My drawings are -- what would be a good word? -- coarse. Not bad, per se, but coarse. I feel to a certain extent that I hid behind some natural talent (not a lot -- I've encountered people who are drawing savants before) during college, such that I never really developed my skills past mediocre.

To some extent, this is irrelevant -- I'm going to keep practicing drawing in any case. It just makes me feel . . . grim. Sketchbooks chock full of spur-of-the-moment vignettes of my travels that capture the "spirit of a place" are not in my near future. Sketchbooks with a few pages of heavily labored-over drawings are a fact of the present. . .

3. I'm starting to hate parks, such as Montjuic (park on the hill in Barcelona.) They're like game reserves for predators who hunt people. (I didn't have a bad experience in Montjuic; the lack of visibility on the streets that cut through just freaked me out.)

4. The most famous buildings in Barcelona (at least, based on an MIT architecture education) were both kind of "meh" for me -- Sagrada Familia and the Pavilion by Mies van der Rohe. Sure, I liked them (would have liked the latter more if it had been open), but they didn't fill me with glee. I liked la Pedrera, an apartment building (hah! how spectacularly inelegant that sounds compared to the reality) designed by Gaudi, and the Museum of the City and its excavated Roman ruins the best. Oh! The roof of la Pedrera! In spite of all the chain link to keep us from falling to our deaths, it was wondrous.

5. Unexpectedly I felt less jumpy on the winding streets of the Ciutat Vella, the medieval portion of Barcelona, than on the straight and wide avenues of L'Eixample, the 19th century development, though my guidebook assured me it should be the other way around in terms of where bags are usually snatched. I haven't quite figured this out yet, but I think it has to do with the number of friendly-looking people around -- there were a lot of pairs of men in L'Eixample (who set off the "POTENTIAL MUGGERS" alarm in my sad little brain), but way more young women, families with small children, and elderly people in the Ciutat Vella.

6. PALM TREES IN A CLOISTER.

7. I hate frosted flakes. They mixed them in with my corn flakes this morning, though it was complimentary so I probably shouldn't complain.

8. I LOVE DONER KEBAB. I had two from the same place. They were 3.50 euros apiece. Each one was a delicious pocket of toasted sesame pita bread stuffed with diced tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, lettuce, cabbage, roast chicken, and yogurt sauce. Words do not describe how tasty this was.

9. Catalan pronunciation makes me indignant for some reason. This makes no sense, as English has possibly the worst spelling-to-pronunciation relationship ever. However, the straightforward pronunciation of Castilian (Spanish) doubtless set me up for a disappointment. Batllo = pronounced By-oh. Oy.

10. I bought what I think is a bracelet at the cathedral. It was next to the rosaries, which I know you're not supposed to wear as necklaces, but this, though it has a repeating pattern of crosses and perchance is supposed to be used as a modified rosary, has an elastic band, which makes me think it is a bracelet. Maybe.

11. They were singing the mass when I visited the cathedral. They didn't kick out the tourists (like in Sacre Coeur in Paris) but they did have the front of the cathedral roped off (not like Sacre Coeur) so we had less opportunity to be annoying. Also they had television screens broadcasting the priest behind the choir so the back of the cathedral could watch the mass too, which I thought was very clever.

12. There were three blonde college-age American guys sitting next to me on the train to the airport, two of whom ended up on the same flight as me back to Madrid. I eavesdropped unashamedly on their conversation and found out they went to school in St. Louis. They actually mentioned Creighton whilst chatting. It felt weirdly nice to sit and listen to Midwestern English for a bit.

my favorite internet meme

Okay, not my favorite. But one of my favorites!

I love "Bunway Airlines," which shows up with some frequency on I Can Has Cheezburger. It brings back fond memories of playing with stuffed animals with Leslie and Erin at Grandma Dyer's -- Friar Bill the Canadian goose Beanie Baby, proprietor of Friar Bill Airlines, and Private Bryan, a rabbit in overalls with bendy ears that could be styled in thousands of ways.

a note to myself

Probably it's noticeable that I use this blog as much to keep notes for myself when I find something cool as a broadcasting device.

So, a note to myself: OK Go remains cool, several years after the infamous treadmill video. More evidence of coolness.

On the theme of videos. I watched this one without sound. At first I thought the guy was wearing a tan colored trench coat; when the camera zoomed in more I could identify his uniform and felt kind of weepy.

holy shit

I will be home, barring flight delays and other such catastrophes, in 16 days.

argh

I've already started to wear down the tips of the new felt-tip pens I bought. . . not even at the beginning of the summer. I think I got them in late July.

things I feel guilty about

1. In all the time I have been living in Madrid, I have taken out the communal trash in my apartment once. It always seems like someone does it before I ever think of doing it -- showing that my tolerance for filth is much higher than average.

In my defense, I have bought all of the toilet paper for the last three months, the hand soap, and the dish soap. This comes out to a total investment of. . . er. . . 15 euros on my part. I'm not sure if I am making my case better or worse.

2. Despite the fact that they are a preppy, shallow, overpriced company, that does not make clothes for people shaped like me, I love J. Crew. I love their stylists. I love a lot of their products. I insist to myself that I'm just "studying their catalog so I can find things like these elsewhere for less," but will I actually do that? No. Probably not. But I still enjoy flipping through.

I love these shoes. These shoes + skirt + gray opaque tights = yes.

A selection of the "fall looks" from the website. What do I like? Skillful use of neutrals. Heels with socks. Structured jackets -- LOTS of them. Gray opaque tights. Textured skirts. Sparkles in an otherwise very plain ensemble. Skinny jeans that I imagine I could wear without looking like . . .unnnh maybe the Venus of Willendorf.

More fall looks. . . I also really, really like their menswear section. The two hats and bracelet are from the men's category. I also love the middle dress.