Extreme Balcony Gardening, part 3

Nothing like getting up the morning after a major thunderstorm and seeing your garden glow in the lovely morning light. I took these photos around 6:45 am on a Saturday. You can see that a smaller stalk of corn is leaning over in the green box--seemingly a casualty of Friday night's storm.

A closer inspection reveals--gasp!--little ears of corn beginning to grow! Look at the silky thingies coming out! Eeeep!

And holy schnikeys! I have a few li'l red grape tomatoes, ready to go! Not enough to make chili in the Crock Pot yet, but enough to chop up and throw on a mini pizza or into a salad.

Still don't have the guts yet to pull up the carrots and see how they're doing (in the circular container), but I think they're close. The lettuce in the two long boxes is still kinda small--wonder if I should thin them? Would that get me bigger/better leaves?

Any day now, my people, we'll be eating our very own produce right from the balcony. In the meantime, reckon I should put on my big girl pants and hit the farmers' market.

Retarditecture

I don't talk much about what my husband, Guy, and his firm do. However, the following story warrants repeating, with identifying details left out, of course. The firm at which Guy works, Acme Architects, Inc., has offices in several cities in the country, and they work on some pretty high profile stuff. On a mixed-use project that Guy is on, Acme has teamed with a really high-profile architecture firm. I mean, a name you might know from newspapers (and all my architect readers would know the name for sure). What happens on some projects is that one firm does the initial design and then passes it off to another, local firm that finishes the design and works out all the construction details. In this case, Guy's firm would be inheriting the design from this big-name firm, and he was excited to work with them. He might get to go to New York to meet with the designers on the project and even meet the high-profile well-known architect who runs the firm. Very cool.

It is at this point that I will name the high-profile firm "Scooby-Doo & Associates." There's a good reason for this.

Here's a little fact for you: three courses (rows) of standard brick are 8" high (including mortar joints), and three bricks in a row are 24" long (again, including mortar joints). Hence, we try really really really really hard to make sure a building's dimensions "course out", or that the heights between things like tops of doors and bottoms of windows are evenly divisible by 8" and the distance plan-wise between things like door frames and column bump-outs are divisible by 12" (you can cut a brick in half or hide half of it in a corner, trust me). This makes coursing easy, which makes construction and fabrication easy. The less your masons have to cut bricks, the less time and expense goes into your construction. (Remember: in the U.S., labor is more expensive than supplies.)

So, Guy gets SD&A's initial design for the building last month. It has a stone and brick exterior, a stone base with brick up top. Since most of the building is brick, you want to make sure that the pieces of stone course out, right? Mm-mm, not the fine designers at Scooby-Doo & Associates. Each of the stone units is 10.25" high. That courses out to Jack Squat. Frickin' ridiculous. Guy calls them last month--yes, a month ago--and tells them that in his review of their magnificent design, he noticed that the stone base units don't course out. Finally, a month later, this past Monday, he had to bring it to their attention again. They finally looked at the problem, realized Guy was right...and then told him that they would need a week to come up with a good solution.

Um...what?

Guy was blown away by this. "These fuckin' high-designer types," he mused, annoyed. "They have no idea how a building actually goes together. I mean, seriously. This is just one of several things I've found wrong in their drawings. And it took them a month to confront the reality of that! And it'll take them another week for them to 'assess' the design and 'figure out a solution'. It doesn't take that long to recourse your stone units. Jesus!"

"How can they not know how to put together a building?" I mused.

"Because," Guy responded, "a high-end design firm rarely if ever takes a design all the way through to completion, and detailing a building for construction documents and then having to monitor its construction teaches you how a building actually goes together. And these guys never get that experience. So they're really good at making buildings look good and cool and interesting, but they don't know shit about how it actually gets built."

"So," I mused again, "you're Velma and they're Daphne." Guy chuckled in agreement.

Look, I've met some architects and designers who worked for really high-end firms, and some of them know just how a building goes together. But others don't. That's the down side of being a really good designer--you get so good at making things look awesome that you never learn how to make things work. And in order to get licensed, you have to know how to put a building together. But if you're a good designer, you can get paid serious mad cash to make things pretty, therefore there's no impetus to get licensed. And in my cheesy li'l opinion, that makes you only half an architect. Earn your hours and credits, get the experience, take the tests, and get the license.

Let's just hope they don't turn into Scrappy-Doo before the end of the project.

Showing up is (more than) half the battle

The other morning, I had just finished up swimming laps and doing paddleboard drills for 40 minutes when I saw a guy from another floor of my condo building out of the deck of our rooftop pool giving me a thumbs up. I finished tying my lavender fleece Hello Kitty robe and walked over, giving him a high five.

"Man, you're my inspiration!" this fellow, an entrepreneur in his fifties, said to me. "You're out here, gettin' it done!"

"Well, showing up is at least half of the battle," I replied.

"Man," he continued, all jazzed up, "I just signed up for the _________ Challenge; I'm gonna lose 25 pounds and kick some ass!"

"Right on!" I replied as I stepped onto the elevator.

I wish this dude all the luck in the world, but I'm not optimistic. I've seen him appear and disappear from the top-floor fitness room in our condo. He's told me about the juicing/detox workout system he was doing, this one workout thing, this other workout challenge, and so on for a few years now. My point of view is this: if any of these worked, you wouldn't be doing another one ever three to six months. I have to say that he never seems to look any different to me. He's the same size, shape, etc. everytime I see him. And he doesn't look bad, mind you, but he never seems to look any more or less in shape. (Maybe I'm not paying that much attention, either. I'm awfully self-absorbed at times.)

I've been working out every morning, six days a week, for almost eight years now. People get kinda blown away when I say that, but the truth is that showing up is often the hardest part about getting into shape. Making yourself put on the t-shirt and shorts and go to the gym, or lacing up the sneakers and going for a walk or run, or rolling out the mat and doing yoga...that first step or two, the showingupness, that's often the hardest part. Everyone has different reasons for not showing up: I got busy, I was tired, I'm not seeing any results, skipping once won't hurt anyone. Then they don't show up again, and then they don't show up yet again, and then they quit showing up.

I can't not show up for a variety of reasons. Even if I drag through my workout and take it easy, I need the activity to reset my mood. Ever since I had to go off birth control pills about five years ago (they unnaturally jacked up my blood pressure), I've had to use exercise and the ensuing endorphin release to moderate my mood. I realized ust how much I depended on that boost when I sprained my ankle two years ago and couldn't work out. I was a ball of cranky fury for about three or four months. But even though I couldn't do much, I'd strap on my walking boot or wrap my ankle in a brace and limp to my yoga mat and do a few seated poses and a few exercises that my physical therapist gave me. Soemtimes I'd limp upstairs to the gym and do some upper body and abs stuff, just something. And sometimes, especially early on, I would limp into the living room, roll out my mat, and just lay on it for half an hour. I just kept showing up.

And now, even still, I get up and do some yoga, go to the gym, go for a run, go up to the pool, whatever. Some mornings I'm hell on wheels and make great time, have tons of energy. Some mornings I drag through. Most mornings I'm in between. But I show up. I show up, and while I'm there I might as well lift something or run somewhere or do something. Showing up is the first step for any endeavor--work, hobbies, relationships, everything, anything. Just show up--you'll figure out the rest.

Some good news for the 4th

We got word this week that we got the job we interviewed for on Thursday. Hooray! It's another surgery renovation, like what I'm doing for FCH, so it's not unfamiliar territory. However, every hospital is different--they all have different volumes of different types of procedures and different scheduling issues and different personalities that will be working in the departments, etc. So we'll start meeting and designing with them very soon--they're already moving forward with contracts and the project schedule.

This is damn fine news indeed, especially for me. FCH will likely get to the point where there's not enough work for both Intern Kimmy and me, and I'll need to find other things to do while she makes stuff happen on that project. I'll need to be available for Intern Kimmy, and I'll have to do things on it as well, but sometimes I'll need to back off and let her get stuff done or have her do some redlines from me. And let's not forget the kickoff meeting for the outpatient center with Sven at the end of July; that should keep me busy as well.

So, not that anyone's reading this, but there's some good news for everyone's holiday weekend. Rock on!

Really? Someone else likes me?

I got the most unexpected compliment recently from Sven. I passed him in the office kitchen, and he mentioned that he had been talking with the facility development director for Colorado for an HMO whom I had met and worked with in the past year. While another guy in the office is finishing up the master plan that I was working on for them in the fall of 2008 and winter of 2009, I've been working on FCH. Anyway, the state facility development director for this HMO told Sven that they would soon be starting some master planning and space planning and site planning/selection for a new outpatient facility that would include a bunch of departments--clinic space, radiology, lab, physical therapy, and outpatient surgery.

And was Pixie available to work on it?

I was flattered and told Sven that I'd be glad to work on it as long as Bosley didn't have any issue with it. Sven said that when he told Bosley about it, Bosley's response was, "Well, how can we tell them no if they're asking for Pixie by name?" He said that he and Bosley would work something out.

I have a feeling (or maybe it's just a hope) that I'm about to get pretty busy in the next few months. I'll have to get used to it again, but man, that'd be nice.

Extreme Balcony Gardening, part 2

The garden is rocking along, my people. We've had an entire week of sun and temperatures over 80; it's frickin' heat wave. Maddy went out to check ont he garden with me Sunday morning, and of course went over to rub her face on the iris leaves. I don't think I've been keeping it damp enough--the tag I got with it says it likes "boggy conditions." Meanwhile, I need to get some kind of trellis for the Viriginia creeper (the tall thing in the middle of the photo below). I bought it to help screen my seating area from the hoi polloi at the neighboring pool below, but I still have its vines tied up. Not very screeny.





The garden in general is enjoying some good growth and morning sun, and it's become even more verdant and productive.




Wh-wh-what? What is that in my corn? Are those the beginnings of cornulence? Squee! It is! Two of my corn stalks have these cornulent things growing in the tops. Down low behind the corn, you can see my bean plants growing. I planted those a few weeks after I got the corn plants into last year's Earthbox, and so far all six plants are growing. We should have beans at some point.




My tomatoes, as usual, are losing their minds and going all feed-me-Seymour in their new Earthbox. You can see some li'l green tomatoes already at the base of one of the two. Both of my tomatoes this year are grape tomatoes. They tend to produce faster/earlier in the season and consistently all the way through the summer even into early October.




In the foreground here, the circular container has carrots, which are progressing nicely but I don't think are ready yet to be picked. The two long boxes beyond the carrots are my lettuce mix, which sprouted from year-old seeds. They're ready to thin a little this week and throw into a couple of sandwiches or salads.


It's really been satisfying to watch stuff grow and produce this year. Guy thinks I may have maxxed out the balcony in terms of weight limit (the balconies on our buildings are cantilevered concrete slabs about 4"-6" thick). But I'd love to keep growing veggies, even if I don't do a lot of decorative plants. I like knowing that I can keep something growing and living in a semi-inhospitable environment, which is rather a metaphor for life sometimes, isn't it?

A girl in trouble is a temporary thing

While practicing for the interview this week, I finally had a chance to talk to Howie about his behavior over the past couple of weeks. I started by asking him how he thought the economy and Design Associates looked. He described some things he'd seen that were good signs and tings that didn't give him much hope, but overall we were just trying to keep things steady. I asked if there was anything we (Team Howie) should know about, like are we about to do another round of layoffs. His response was no, and so I said, "Well, just checking, because I don't know if you know this or not, but you haven't been acting like yourself lately."

Howie sat back in his conference room chair a bit. "Really?" he said, looking genuinely surprised and interested.

"Yeah," I replied with a slightly pained expression. "You've been a little more impatient lately, and...well, one of the things we all like about working for Team Howie is that you never make it personal or say anything rude or snippy, even when it's our fault for messing something up, but lately it seems you've been a little more impatient, and some of your comments have been, ah, rather sharp. And it's not like you to be like that--ever--so we were wondering if maybe you were nervous about some layoff coming, or maybe if we don't get this project some of us need to start getting our resumes together--"

"No, not at all," Howie replied. "There's no excuse for me to act that way, but yeah, part of it is working for Bosley again after a break from Pomme de Terre. He can be pretty tough to work for."

"Very true," I agreed. "He'll say things occasionally that make me go, 'where the hell did that come from?' so I'm glad to know it's not just me."

"--and that's no excuse, but that's part of it," Howie continued. "Part of it's also that I have to go after work, and...going after work is a slow process, so when I've spent a lot of time doing slow stuff, all I want is 18 things right now."

I said, "I can totally understand that. It's like being stuck in traffic for half an hour on your exit ramp, and finally when the traffic clears--"

"--I punch the gas and go straight into a concrete wall!" Howie finished. This made me laugh pretty hard, because unlike most overly pushy people, Howie is aware of how his M.O. can backfire.

So we talked some more about management and scheduling and trying to stay busy, and when all was said and done, Howie thanked me for mentioning it to him and asking if all was well. I wouldn't say anything to him unless I knew that he knew how to act better, and I'm glad I finally mentioned it. He seems like he's been in a better place for the past couple of days, and hopefully that will hold until we get some more work in the office that allows everyone to breathe a little more.