austin site pictures.
mt. bonnell and my brother's balcony with the kitties.

we went to mt. bonnell last weekend. it's a nice little place to view the rich areas of austin. hehehe.
my parents came to visit this weekend. my dad is kind of liberal with letting my kitties outside. he let tigger and dessy go outside to play on the balcony for an hour. I thought i'd try it. They didn't try to jump off and they enjoyed themselves... fun fun fun.




CLICK HERE FOR THE REST

it comes and goes.
there are moments that living is enough.
you ever think its just them or is it always you?
are you the one out or they all out.
how can so many people be so dillusional. it just doesn't fit.
it's so hard fighting against the flow of social thought.
either you're in or you're out..but it's not that simple.
there's much more to life and that's what I love about it.
that it is okay if everything isn't good. that you can actually appreciate the greyness
of it all. that you can smile, be happy, and cynical all at the same time.

but i'm losing it. must get it together. must find some direction.
wish i had a personal project or something.. some kind of conviction...that isn't just
about my perceptions... or even more extreme... to exploit them as much as possible.
ever think about writing a manifesto? as if i could ever be so sure of anything...

for some reason, on one of my list serves, this girl posted a joke about "giving head"... it was like the top 20 reasons why women shouldn't have to give head to men..and then there was this rebuttal at the end with 20 reasons why women have to "give head" to men.

First of all, I didn't even find the joke funny (standing outside of my position).
A few posts went out about how joking about "forced sexual contact" was only perpetuating a cycle of this attitude about how you can treat women...etc..etc..
and then there was this huge barrage of emails that went out about how women should just learn how to take things as a joke and stop always playing the victim..i think at one point, some guy said, "loosen up, rape may make you angry with men but you have to realize that there's always going to be that few group of men who get a kick out of it"...
;P what the hell is wrong with people. it's NEVER okay to stop telling people that rape is wrong or sexual harassment is wrong. it is NEVER okay to just accept the fact that women have to fear sexual assaults! it is NEVER okay for us to loosen up.. 1/4 students at my university is sexually assaulted each year. i hardly qualify this as "few"..

ugh...
ugh....

did i say ugh??

ugh.

what is it with internet junkies and their cats? perhaps its just that no other animal can truly empathise our lives....to live out our whole lives in silent contemplation.. to desire the basic necessities on a regimented schedule..and then for no apparent reason, have irrational desires. :) people say cats are dumb and useless and that dogs at least help people...but i say cats are highly intelligent beings who refuse to call anyone master... they are autonomous..you don't have to walk them, play with them, or take them out to poo and pee... they'll do everything by themselves and if you're lucky, they let you participate in their lives..and if you're REALLY lucky, they'll bless you with their love.. :)
mmmm....i love my kitties..
must go snuggles some fluffies.

well, i'm in the lab right now doing a group project.
it's kind of tedious and i feel like i'm doing a good deal of the work.
oh well. i just want to get done and now.
i'm hungry and have a long night ahead of me.
i had an ephipany during class today. i could use my indoor tent to sleep in to help
fight the cold at night. then i remembered that one time last semester my cats mysteriously locked themselves in my room and peed and pooed in my tent.
:( maybe i'll go buy another one. i think it will help alot.. so far three layers
of blankets aren't helping.

tattered tattered mind.

so go ahead and be naive..that's why humans aren't progressing at maximum rates..that's why one day we'll be extinct..because we failed to recognize that we are something greater than what we are...something more than this..but i guess complacency has its charm aye? lets lie like brocolli until it's time for us to die.

we went to defensive driving today.. a 6 hour barrage of fun. hehehe.
we actually decided to try out a comedy sportz one.. it was little extra but it included lunch as well. i thought it was going to be a lot more humorous than it was but after all, it was defensive driving. the first half the class was taught by some woman. she was relatively funny..the second guy who taught the last half of the class had me on the floor for the first 15 minutes of his intro...after that, it was pretty dry. we also got free tickets to go see their comedy improv night. they're supposed to be really good...i think they've won national championship or something. we might go check it out some time.

tonight i went to this lecture by Karim Rashid called Shaping our Physical World.
It was very interesting. I'm so glad to see that there are contemporary thinkers out there..breeding, producing...etc.. He talked about a very interesting subject for me..this concept of a transitory world. Our society, civilization, and cuture seems trapped in a grip of nostalgia. We refuse to live beyond the present. Designers at most design for the present..and most people live within the boundaries of the past. NO one is willing to hurdle into future thinking. He said that if you try to live your life within a 5 year frame, you'll find out just how deeply rooted in the past we are. Transgressing is a contemporary thought. it's the idea that we use technology to foster new creations, not just apply technology to known methods. this is something architecture has yet to grasp. It's as if we fear death so we opt not to live. He talked about not confining ourselves to boundaries of knowledge, professions, and passions. He was very open to the idea of humans evovling into social beings of multi-disciplinary professions. This reminded me of a lot...because he's always talking about pursuing his multitude of interests in the job field.

At the end of the lecture, one of our deans asked him a final question...something along the lines of "we have many fields of disciplines here tonight..blah blah blah..something something architecture. i was wondering if you could offer a comment about how this applies to architecture..etc"

The guy replied: "you see, i don't like the way you phrased that question. it's suggesting again these boundaries i was talking about. these things apply to all fields and all forms of thought. and you're question was bountiful of boundaries."

at this point, a lot of people started cheering. i started laughing. i did feel sorry for the dean..but this is the kind of thing that's out there. you have all this rhetoric about progression and advancement..but at the end of the day, the put down their thoughts and do what "you're supposed to do".. it's like a frame of mind you can't fast forward out of.. it was good to see that the speaker wasn't afraid to point that out.

WWW.KARIMRASHID.COM

i'm in the process of getting a new passport. :(
not fun at all. i got mine renewed two years ago but they mispelled my last name. i sent it in to get it corrected and they told me to send my birth certificate. I sent them my birth certificate. They sent back the passport telling me that they couldn't renew my passport without the birth certificate. A week later I got back the birth certificate saying they couldn't renew my passport without the passport. ugh. somewhere in all of this, i ended up moving and losing my passport. Now, I have to claim a LOST passport and apply for a new one. How fun is that?

They accept digital photos so I don't have to pay Kinkos 14 dollars for two small pictures of my face.

*UPDATE: I took my passport photo. Woohoo.

it's been raining like cats and dogs. dessy and tigger kept jumping from all the thunder. scaredy cats. :)

jerms' co-worker took this picture.. hehehe.. black mail pics.

i'm about to call it a day at school. i was doing more research for that elusive digital
mapping info. still no luck. i finally emailed some guy in the county office about finding the information. i'm in the studio right now. no one's here. i KNOW i should do some sketching while i'm on campus but i just want to go home... only 6 more to go.

woke up early and did some paid work. My first class this morning was canceled but I still have to go to school to work on a perspective. Then I have two long classes afterwards..etc..etc..

i had a panic attack this morning. I was thinking of things i needed to get done and how much i felt i couldn't do them alone. as if i were a retard or something. :(
sigh. i just want to crawl back into bed and make everything go away.

ever since i got an upgrade on my computer, my room has been a sauna!
it's so hot in here. i'm dying. time to downgrade so i don't have to pay money on the air conditioner. :)
last month's electricity bill was mad mad mad.

i've been doing reserach for my studio project. i'm hunting all over the internet, trying to find a .dwg file of new york's base map. unfortunately, i've run into dead ends.

still looking.

i spent all day walking around campus sketching. you'd think that i was having a jolly good time, but i wasn't. i was very tired and frustrated. for me, sketching is an inspired thing..but this is a practice/learning thing, so it's not fun at all. i wanted to sketch people, feelings, ideas..but my teacher has put the standard to architectural structures.
:P

my teacher is pretty cool. in one of his last emails he sent us, he wrote:
"to begin a dialogue with me (your critic), you must bring something to the table - go out and fill your tables - what does your gut say after digesting the information? does it belch? does it sing? does it WHAT? - draw it, model it, click mice on it, GET INSIDE IT < GET IN IN < go, go, go, GO - i'll tell you this - no eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn"

the last line i bolded was what i thought was tres cool. of course, i just got through last semester with a professor who didn't know anything beyond himself...poetic would have been out of the picture.

i'm getting hungry. i could almost just do an apple/orange thing. i'll see what the crew is having tonight.

just uploaded some pictures for my studio. we had to turn them in by 3pm.
i turned in my paid work today as well. Charmaine, John's girlfriend, and their friend Joseph are visiting us this week... well, actually till Wednesday. The house has been lively. It's so nice feeling NOT lonely in a house..even if i'm not conversing with people, it's nice to know they're there.

our new site for my architecture studio project is pier 9-14 in lower Manhatten. I compiled a few aerial photos and got this. pretty disturbing picure of the old WTC site.
as you can see.

i got a package this morning. my neighbor delivered it to me. apparently, the carrier left it with them while we were on spring break. It's the Izone webster..scans in your izone pics. I got it for free with a rebate offer from Sam's. Coolio.
time to scan in some photos.

i'm hungry. its 1:30pm. my stomach is growling. woke up kinda late today..:) it's a saturday! jeremy tried all night to fix his computer but something was wrong with his motherboard. We're about to go to Fry's Electronics and get him a good one. i'm going to pick up some cheap speakers for portable entertainment and some cd-rs for my dad.
i kind of want to see ice age now that i saw it got good reviews. i spent last night working on paid work...very annoying stuff. there is a peanut M&M bag sitting right to my left. its been calling to me for this past week. mmmmm. yummy peanut m&ms. must have one. red, white, or blue?

jerms just got off of work. we're on our way to grapvine, texas so he can get a more powerful power supply for his new computer. today, his lights and fans came in. i don't know if that's everything or not. oh well. perhaps we will go see a movie tonight. the movie selection is slim though.
we shall see. pork loin for dinner tonight. i do not know what that is.

my father has never fully understood me and my mother has never tried.
my brother is in his own world and everyone else is floating in between.
it's so claustrophobic in this world. never good enough. never done.
always going and hating myself. continuing onto whatever it is that i need to
continue on to. there really is no purpose...but that's not good enough.
you can't just use that as an excuse to lie here in pain. either you make yourself
get up or you just stay..stay and hope that tomorrow will produce something
that yesterday couldn't. i don't know what to say to myself anymore..except that
suffering is inevitable..no matter what the optimists say. there has to be some
balance. some happiness here and there..but why does it seem more like a cause and
effect rather than a perfect circle?

another wasted morning.
i did my research on nothing. i do that often. i research the vast sea of mutimedia seeing..looking for something, i know not what.
maybe an answer to a question i have yet to fully define. i read a girls journal last night...actually i have no idea what sex the lj user was.. i like that too...androgenous.
its about humanity, its about a body of thought and not about the sexes... she or he was truly enlightening...a unique..

ugh.
i passed by a hooters the other day thinking.. would i ever go into one? i keep thinking that it is the right of ourselves to exploit ourselves. but damn. women shall never ever be equal to man in power if she gains power through her sexuality. the kind of power achieved through superficial means is temporary and lacks a certain concrete structure in this society. i don't want to be one of those self righteous bitches but i am very distressed to see other women giving in the easy way.. for everytime it happens, it hinders my path to power. women have come so far, it sucks that we would give in so soon. videos especially piss me off. and society just kinda blows it off "boys will be boys".. and of course they can, they're in control. women are like toys, a lesser sort of human. i know that equality is a myth but sometimes i think we damn ourselves further than we have to...

went to Fry's today. I bought a PHP book because jerms refused to check out with only a dollars worth of goods (jumpers for his computer)... hehe so we combed the store for other things to buy..SO one dollar turned into 31. we also bought a cable for his dvd player. i couldn't decide on whether or not to get PHP or ASP. I don't know which one is better.

After we were done with Fry's, we went to this resteraunt (way out of the way) called Uncle Julios. His friends at work recommended it...said they had chicken fajitas to die for... man, the place turned out to be extremely expensive, really really bad service, and the chicken was "okay". I hate it when I get bad service at a resteraunt. It's like i'm being treated as if i don't count. I saw the waiter go around to other tables constantly but he kept skipping us. What sucks is that we have a mexican resteraunt right down from where we live that has relativley good service, decent prices, and you get free soft serve icecream and free yummy mints. oh well. now we know.

jerms is on the floor right now putting together his new computer. he had modded out the case. it's got two big holes in it where he's going to put in windows and he's also planning on painting it some neon orange..and putting in black lights. all that work for a computer case. :) ..and then there's the acutal cpu parts. i'm thinking about adding another case fan in mine since my computer is on the brink of overheating.
i have to leave the case open. it's like a heater.

i have a bank of lj users i go through every once in awhile..those that are not on my friends list...
its amazing how divergent emotions are.. how thought processes
range across the spectrum of posts. some are deep, contemplative, reflective, and somber. some are brief, snapshots, glimpses, acute..and other are superficial, funny, light, and smirkish entertainment. others..are artistic, beautiful, and sad.. while some can be professional, poetic, and smart. some made of lies and others painful truths.
some are vain, needy, and hypocritical..and some humble, silent, and morose...

whatever they express, whoever they touch, whatever they present to the masses..it's a good dose of multimedia... if i were a marketing company, i'd pay attention to mediums like this..where artistic vision and downright personal angst and boredom meet. a crossroad of the pathetic depression and naive exhibitionism... :)

how can we be so alike and different? i guess the sheep do come in different forms.
it reminds me of a discussion of decadence i once heard.. do not fear the lad who comes in with tattoos and the mohawk..fear the man who wears the starched collar tailored shirt, the man who carries his brief case, the man who, like you, has a ivory business card and cross pen, the one who goes to work on time every day and works overtime without complaint. i am mocking in my statement though.. i do not really mean "beware" for i see fit in society that there are these wolves in sheep clothing..the ones that smile like you do.. the ones that seem to be complacent.. there is a depth to their glare, there is a silent uprising in their breadth, and oh their mind..what racing thoughts and emotions.. you can not hear.. you can not hear. and you do not see..because you are blind. and here, in this forum, you do not know... just like me, just like you,
we could be the wolves or baahaahahaa.

watch american psycho if you don't know what i'm talking about. excellent movie about such existences.

jerms just went back to work. we had sandwiches for lunch.
i started today late again. ugh. i hate that. i feel so lazy. i wonder if its because i haven't left the house all week. i don't know. i just want to curl into a ball and go to sleep.
i want to be a cat... what a life.
i guess this is how i always feel when i'm dealing with things i just want to forget about.
i just want to dream it all away.

oh glorious wonder of a boy
who is shining like a fairy
in the night he is the sprite
of love whose fate has touched
the stars and gives to love
as if he has not given before
the muse of the darkest nights
the lord of nightmares he
yields nothing but the glare
of a thousand lives..
calling you forward,
do not fall, for his embrace is
eternal.....

speaking of children, when i was over at jerm's house this weekend, his mom showed my mom a t-shirt from the pet store.
it says

"Let me get this straight,
my grandchild is a cat?"

hehehehe..

doop doop doop.
i'm doing paid work right now. i'm basically drafting out some elevations. it's such a boring job...but at least i'm getting paid to sit at home and listen to my music. that's always nice. jerms and i plan to go eat at fazolli's tonight. it's this fast food italian place down the street. i love it. i don't know why there isn't one in every city.

i find it interesting that half of my lj friends are online moms. it puts a very interesting twist on parenthood...especially since i'm dreading my own fate as one.. (parental pressure).
anyhow, it's really great hearing the ups and downs. the reality of parenthood is that its an investment. sometimes you gain and sometimes you lose. Most of the parents on my friends list are single moms too so its a tougher reality to dish out...but somehow they get through it..and they don't lie about their realities either. it's a hard hard life. pushes and pulls ...with very few rewards. the entity is the only reward..the son or daughter..healthy and happy..that's the basics. it's not the glamorous hub-bub movies make out..or even the naive dreams of most anti-abortion groups. it's the real deal..
i still don't think i'm fit to be a mother..and on the eve of andrea yates's conviction, i'd say this whole parenting thing should never be taken lightly. it's not something you do half way...

and on the other side of my friends list are those who, like me, are nowhere near parenthood..and some even admit that its not their cup of tea. i like the balance.
some of us are to be the last of our legacy..and others will have their legacy carry on. does your legacy end with you?

yesterday, i was hideously lazy. i slept aaaaallllll day.. just like my cats. it was just so deliciously dark and warm inside the bed.. jerms had just put flannel sheets on..and mmm.. so warm..so cuddly.. all curled up with my kitties and blankies. i felt totally guilty for it of course. it was the highlight of my "vacation"...i think. what is it about dreams that catch us and hold us to our silent temporal deaths... just for a little while we are walking in worlds we will surely never grasp...and yet they draw us in like flies to the light.. closer..closer.. if we get any closer or deeper we will fall.. and so i could not wake up.. i dared not to.

the cats aren't supposed to be jerms's condo because pets aren't allowed. we've been hoping that they'd stay away from the windows and all yesterday they behaved. they laid on the bed silently..even after i had awoken. silly kitties. i think they like having a bedroom.

now i need to get some sugar into my system before i have the urge to fall back into sleepyness. it's so early 7:44am. wow. i have a ton of paid work to do before my spring break ends. they sent out a report in the company and it seems like i have a 100% productivity rate so my boss told everyone to give work to me. why do i see this as not such a good thing? overload? the next two months are going to be disastrous.

friday was a long day. i had to finish up my paper before spring break. it wasn't till the very last part of the day that i was through. john and i drove home to see our parents that weekend. i met up with jeremy there. on sunday, his family had a crawfish boil.. mmm. good stuff. that night we celebrated my dad's bday party. monday, my dad and i bought a dvd player that can play vcds from circuit city...and later that evening, jeremy and i went back to ft. worth...where i'll spend the rest of my spring break.

i watched AI again this weekend. I think i liked it a whole lot better the second time around...and i've made my assesment that i really like the movie minus the kid. Odd, i know.

I also watched two good short movies from atomfilms.com. One was called Blueberry Pancakes. It's about a girl who's trying to figure out why her family isn't coming together. The other is called Love, Death, and Cars about two soulmates who are sexually incompatible. They're both under Drama.
check them out here.


click the picture for the rest of the spring cats album (25 pics)



Dinner in Ft. Worth. Drum fish with carrots and green beans.and a cool splah of orange juice... compliments of chef jeremy.










Sailor Moon "ramen" type noodles from Thailand. hehehe.. cute.

i'm at the final stretch..standing on the threshold of finality. i can taste it.. if only....

oy oy oy. it's almost 5am. i'm so tired. errrrrrr. i'm finishing up my booklet for my site design paper. he's makes us come up with little booklet forms for the papers. i don't know why. anyhow. i'm really tired. i still have my theory paper to finish. i don't think i'm going to finish it for today. i guess i'll have to turn it in Friday. I tried writing it tonight but only got totally scattered thoughts.. i got my goal of 1000 words (half way there) but it's in dissarray. i have to go through it all and sort it out.

Happy Birthday !




morning breakfast


tigger helping me with my paper


working on the booklet format. it has taking me longer put the booklet together
than it did to write the darn thing.

it's late. i haven't started on my second paper yet. I've been on the phone with Jeremy talking about nothing in particular. Sometimes I just get so lonely I could cry. I don't know what this need for someone or something is..because as soon as I'm not alone, all I want is solitude. I think I'm going to invite my kitties in for some oreos and milk. mmm.

speaking of the little ones, here are some pics of tigger and dessy when they first
got to play in my room. there's also a pic of dessy laying in the fruit basket. She's not supposed to be there but darn she's so cute.

well, some time around 5 or so i completed my paper and drifted off into this crazy dream i still can't comprehend. school was long and boring. After my last class, theory II, I spent my entire time walking to the bus thinking about writing a book......that started with the word



"FUCK". damn.. can you imagine the possibilities? i'm going to research and see if any book has ever done that. of course i won't have the balls to go forward with such a thing. its actually the confrontation of such a non-distinct and offensive word that could compel me to write scores and scores of pages on the explorations of humanity.
geeeze.. what i would give for a hefty sum of freetime.

late.

i have about a page more to go on the paper. i'm kind of proud of myself for sticking to it. some time around 6pm today i found out that the paper isn't due tomorrow but on thursday. i'm still sticking to my deadline though since i have another paper coming up on thursday as well.

around 9 or so my brother and his friends came by and watched "THE ONE" via my new pc. :) they strung a huge cable from my room to the downstairs tv. i was tempted to watch it but resisted. I did catch a few parts... I'm never too fond of action plots but the visual are always nice. I think the Matrix was the last movie to combine a good script and great action.

I'm using SMLXL by Rem Koolhaas as a jumping point for my paper. On the borders of each page, he has an ongoing vocabulary... for example MEGALOMANIA, MELT, MEMO, MEMORY, MEN, MESS..etc. under each of these words he has some sort of translation of its meaning. The page i'm on has THIRD HAND, THIRSTY, THOUGHTFUL, THROUGH, THRUST, THUMBING



THIRD HAND: vacant spaces belong to it, the vowel O, all blank pages, the number zero, the animals wolf and mole, the hour before birth and the minute after death, the loon, the owl, and all the white flowers. The third hand opens doors, and closes them thoughtfully behind you. It is the other two that busy themselves with what goes on in the room.

THIRSTY: Buying things in America today is just unbelievable. Let's say you're thirsty. Do you want COke, Diet Coke, Tab, Caffeine-Free Coke, Caffeine-Free Diet Coke, Caffiene-Free Tab, New Improved Tab, Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, Pepsi Light, Pepsi Free, Root Beer, Royal Crown Cola, C&C Cola, Diety Royal Crown Cola, Caffeine-Free Pepsi, Caffeine-Free Diet Pepsi, Caffeine-Free Royal Crown Cola, Like, Dr. Pepper, Sugar-Free Dr. Pepper, Fresca, Mr. Pibb, Seven-UP, Diet Seven-up, orange, grape, apple, Orelia, Perrier, Poland, Ginger ale, tonic, seltzer, Yoo-hoo, or cream soda?
Do you want pineapple, papaya, guava, peach, coconut, apple, orange, strawberry grape-fruit, pink grapefruit, cherry-apple, apple-strawberry, grape, pina colada, sparkling apple or Juicy Juice? Do you want any of this fresh-squeezed? Do you want one of the fifty varieties of malteds, the twenty kinds of frozen fruit shakes, the fifteen kinds of cofee or thirty kinds of tea?

THROUGH: No, John, I am through with you as a client, a friend, or a man. The very thought of you makes me sick and would prevent me from doing anything fine or worthwhile for you. l want my plans back. All of them. And I don't want any money you have or can ever get.

THRUST: Do not thrust with the mind, Do not thrust with the hands, Let the spear make the thrust ---thrust without thrusting.



okay.. that is far too much procrastinating.. i just wanted to share THIRSTY with you since i found it amusing.

i would show you a picture of my dead apple but it's just too sad. apples have such a short skinless lifespan. my banana looks dead too. i never ate it.
i'm about to get started on my paper that's due tomorrow but i need to find some dinner first. tigger and dessy where in here earlier. dessy was making funny faces at me and whelping. i can tell she's been where she's not suppsoed to (on top of the kitchen cabinets) because she's covered in paint flakes. that can not be good.
i need to giver her a bath but i can't do that by myself. sigh.

speaking of alone, i finally did go to the grocery store yesterday by myself.
i got the necessary items and bolted. i truly am a hermit.

mmm.. lunch time.
i'm having a pbj sammich, 5.5 sourcream and onion pringle chips, a bananna, apple, and cup of low acid orange juice. Not too bad.



approx 500 calories. even fruit is loaded with cals.. it is so impossible to stay healthy in America. You can't go to the grocery store and find anything healthy unless you go straight to the produce section. Oh well.. perhaps when I die, they'll feel how heavy my coffin is and say "damn, she lived a happy life".. hehehe

actually got an early start this morning. i didn't make it far last night. i started working on paid work and then passed out till 4am where i decided to just shut down for the night.
i woke up around 8 something. I'm working on paid work now...tracing a site plan. :)
woohoo. i'm craving some sustenance.... maybe its time to go greet my kitties and grab some toast.

it's going to be a long day.

ugh. i have that hefty lump of anxiousness hanging in my throat. i always get this right after i have ridden a large wave of procrastination. i'm totally stressing over my papers right now. i have more of an idea of what i want to write now but nowhere near a solid concept. i have to stop thinking soon and start writing.. but not tonight. tonight i need to shower and start doing some paid work that should have been done Friday.
:( tomorrow will be crunch time. if i were diligent, tonight could be more productive. :P
we'll see.

i keep thinking i need to just run. run. run. i'd probably only come full circle and find myself in the same situation. i always do. am i living the same cycle every day?
i know there are many people in this world who don't.

excerpt from my notes on reading for my paper:
"as humans advance into a more transient lifestyle, is not there home more "the world" than 111 Smith Street? Are not our homes the civic structures, the recognizable structures of what we claim as human, as ours?..the plane, the bus, the train, the cheap hotel rooms, the crowded markets, even the pattern of people moving in the street??"

i wrote that in response to this passage of John Ruskin's, "The Seven Lamps of Architecture." :
"I say that if men lived like men indeed, their houses would be temples---temples which we should hardly dare to injure, and in which it would make us holy to be permitted to live; and there must be a strange dissolution of natural affection, a strange unthankfulness for all that homes are given and parents taught, a strange consciousness that we have been unfaithful to our fathers' honor..."

urgh.. minor glitches everywhere. today i found out that my computer won't shut down.
we've tried everything short of re-formatting my computer. instead of shutting down, it simply just keeps rebooting. :P
oh well. it's a problem i'll deal with later.

jerms brought up his vacuum so i was finally able to vacuum the condo.
whew. i feel much better. i hate dirty carpet.
i also shed like mad, so it's been annoying having my hair strewn all over the floor.
i should be getting a new vacuum sometime soon i hope. the other one finally died during the first of the year.



i saw this cool final fantasy: the spirits within wallpaper on a "rate my desktop" site.
the site was pretty lame but that one desktop was cool. i've been trying to find it but with no luck.

i really need to go grocery shopping still. i don't want to go by myself and jerms has already left. i asked my brother if he wanted to go and he said he had homework. i think i'm just going make him come along.. why can't i go to the grocery store by myself??

just got through setting up my new pc. i have xp running on it now and that's taking some getting used to.



jerms and i went to go eat with a friend earlier today at some barbeque place. i had some brisket and sausage and jerms had some ribs. we then went to Fry's and jeremy got some puter parts for the new pc he's putting together for himself. He's doing some case mod stuff to it... window, lights, silver wires..etc.

i still haven't started on my papers. :)
i'm so bad.

oh well, we're going to go get something to eat now.
what's open at this time of night? denny's, ihop, taco cabanna, kirby lane.. basically early hour type diners.. hmmm.

mmm.. it's lunch time. i'm so hungry but there's nothing to eat.
i need to go to the grocery store some time today. I haven't started work yet.
i've been surfing ... ooop.. john just called. he's at the bus stop and the bus hasn't come yet.. 20 mins has passed by... he wants me to go pick him up and take him to school.. ooooop. he just called again.. the bus finally arrived.

now, where was i..
oh yes, i'm very hungry. what to eat? maybe i'll go ask the kitties if they can fix me
something. :)

i have two papers to write this weekend.
one is for my theory of architecture II class.
the other is for my site design class.

I'm going to write about Architecture as an Ethical Position, citing readings from Victor Hugo, Notre-Dame de Paris, John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture, and Louis Sullivan, "The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered"...

I'm not really sure how well my professor will take my writing.. he's actually not a theory professor but a history guru with a PHd in Architecture History. I somehow get this feeling he's totally engrossed with the concrete values of classical truths in architecture. I'm totally the opposite. I feel that in order for humanity to progress, we have to shed these past notions of truths and order. It shall be interesting to see how he interprets my paper. I'll just have to make a strong case so he can't dock points for me not taking a solid position...that way I'll know if he's hitting me for having diff. ideals. Cruel.. but I guess that's what happens when you're as paranoid as I am.

I've been downloading some anime wallpaper lately.
I've got great wallpapers of Lain, Vampire Hunter D, DBZ, Record of Lodoss, Kenshin, Ghost in the Shell, and Final Fantasy X.
the picture quality is great...and I've been picking the ones with succinct graphics.. not frilly stuff all over the place. I think too much graphics is kind of distracting.

Jerms is rolling into town tonight. We're supposed to go to a friends house warming party. I'm not sure if I want to go now since I've found out its only going to be a drinking/game party. Jerms and I don't drink so I wonder how awkward that will be. Oh well, I'll bring some taboo over and that should be fun.

Guess I better get started on researching. I'm such a lazy bum.