Random things that make me happy

Lord knows Shorty loves to bitch about stuff, but I recently realized while attempting to meditate that I have a pretty damn good life and there's a lot out there to enjoy. Lest you think my whole life is boo-hooing about white-girl problems, here's an extremely-abridged list of things that truly make me happy.

• Top Gear, the British version on BBC America.  Few things actually make me laugh out loud spontaneously, and this show is one of them.  Watching Jeremy, Richard, and James hack up old cars, slide around a track and wreck things, and "take the piss out of" each other is a wonderful way to unwind in the evenings after ten hours of architectural bullshittery.
• Ink! Coffee. Roasted in Vail, Colorado, their 6610 Blend is strong but low acid.  (Translation: it cleans me out but doesn't give me a stomach ache.) Their coffee shops are clean and modern but cozy. Their staff is casual and hipster-ish yet professional and always pour a mean cup.  I go to the one in Cherry Creek North, but they have several around Denver and in the mountains.
• Kitteh pictures from my sister.  Nothing makes my day like random pictures of one of my sister's several kittehs roaming around the house, nomming something from her plate, playing on the sofa, or snoozing in a cuddle puddle.  Epic. Wuv.
• Homemade Greek Pizza.  Use either a Flatout! Wheat tortilla or a Boboli crust (or a rolled out pillsbury thin pizza crust) and top it with chopped up cooked chicken, quartered artichoke hearts, sliced kalamata olives, a little shredded pizza cheese, a little crumbled low-fat feta cheese, and some thawed or fresh spinach (red peppers or sundried tomatoes optional).  Bake in a preheated oven at 400 degrees for about 7-8 minutes, and top with fresh oregano when you pull it out.  Slice up and devour.  Pass out from the awesomeness.  Repeat as many nights in a row as you like.
• My arms. Since I dropped a few pounds this year, my arms have started looking super-cut.  Not only do I love the way they flex, but I love the fact that I can suddenly lift some pretty heavy stuff without breaking a sweat.  Looks like the new fitness routine is paying off.
• My husband Guy.  Sometimes, when I'm feeling proud of my arms, I'll run into whatever room in which Guy is sitting and start flexing and yelling, "You just won VIP Tickets to the GUN SHOW!! EHN!!!"  And Guy doesn't laugh--he just plays along and yells back, "Oh mah GAHH!  GUNS!!  It's the Guns of the Navarone, muthafucka!"

So what makes you happy?  What odd pleasure, great or small, gives you a lift?

...and now it's time for a break.

Due to a flash sale from Airtran last week, my sister was able to fly out on Saturday to visit me for a few days.  She hasn't been out for a visit to the Mile High Cit-tay since January of 2010, right before my kitteh Maddy crossed the Rainbow Bridge, which means she's just now meeting Gracie, aka The Floof. And Hazel hasn't been snuggled with extreme prejudice the way Aunt Kitty snuggles for two years.  Kittehs suspect nuffin.


It's been one thing after another at the office, with two big projects in very needy stages. Gestalt's Uber MOB is in CA, so every question is urgent; St. Ermahgerd is just starting schematic design, so we're making fast and crucial decisions regarding how the building should look and how the departments should be arranged and laid out.  I've been moving so fast and furious lately that I've actually been getting in Howie's grill, being defensive and reflexively irate.  Kitty's appearance in the Mile High gives me an opportunity to take a Monday off and bring my blood pressure down a little bit. 


Breathe, snuggle kittehs, flip through Elle Decor, and rest.

Happy Thanksgivin', y'all!

Guy and I are getting on a plane today to fly to Georgia for Thanksgiving (a Thursday flight was the only way to get the ticket price to a reasonable amount). We considered not going to Georgia for the holiday because Thanksgiving flying is more painful than sitting front row at a Miley Cyrus-Justin Bieber double-bill concert, but a) I like as well as love my family, and b) my sister hasn't been able to fly out to see me for nearly two years. So in order for me to enjoy my peeps and for Kitty and me to spend some sista-time, I must needs get my behind on a plane.

An unintended good consequence of flying on Thanksgiving is that we have our Thursday festivities on Friday, effectively bowing out of the Black Friday nonsense. Guy gets to sprawl on Mom's sofa with three cats on him and watch some football, and we annoy Mom in the kitchen while El Seebeno putters around in the yard with the dogs--not a frenzied shopper or overpriced plastic-thingy to buy in sight. Later in the weekend we might leave El Seebeno and Guy at a bar while we gals go doodling through a fabric store (again, mostly to annoy Mom) and then hang out at the farm to make Christmas cookies. Should be a good time, indeed. Here's hoping your holiday is a good time too, wherever and with whomever you may be!

O yayz! Iz Kitteh's Birfday! Lolz!

From http://icanhascheezburger.com/, naturally.

YAYZ! It's mai sister's birfday! Wishing luv and lulz and kittehs and a better job than what she's having to do now and a munniez and naps and MOAR KITTEHS!

Monday Visual Inspiration: Halloween 1981

I found this while flipping through some old photo albums. It wasn't the Halloween pic I was looking for, but it's still a good one. Kitty (left) and I (right) were ready to go trick-or-treating on a chilly October night in our Mom-made costumes. Halloween in rural Georgia usually means being driven door-to-door by your parents to the seven or so houses of your neighbors (all at least a half-mile apart). Stopping at my grandmother's was the evening's highlight--homemade sugar cookies and a chance to chat with her by her always-roasting-at-twice-the-temperature-of-hell fireplace. Sweet tea and sugar cookies...how did I ever get to sleep?

Man, I was creativer when I was younger

I was recently going through some stuff my Mom had given me from her house, and I found a few pieces of pink construction paper with some childhood drawings on it. I found myself laughing and blushing as I reviewed the drawings, some in pencil and some in crayon, marker, and colored pencil. I was amused, cheered, embarrassed, and a little bit in awe of what my eight- or nine-year-old self had come up with during a spare afternoon during one of Mom's custodial weekend visits.

Believe me, this isn't one of those "oh, remember how wonderful childhood was, how innocent and fantastic and how everything was so much better when we were kids" kinds of commentaries. Childhood tended to be pretty chaotic for me, between my dad trying to block Mom from seeing us or dragging her into court, or my sister Kitty and me trying to defend ourselves from the neighborhood girls that started the rumor that Kitty and I were "devil worshippers". Frankly, being an adult is fucking awesome, and I wouldn't trade it for any overly-romanticized view of childhood that the occasional nostalgia-waxing email forward tries to pawn off on its readers. But I found myself considering something while looking at the images that had tickled my brain recently in a quiet, non-architecturally-induced-panic-filled moment. I realized that, as a kid, I was pretty damn creative and bright.

I would make up stories that had sequels and soundtracks. I made up musical bands and singers, and I would write their entire album's songs and even sing a few of them (just the singles that were released, not the B-sides) out loud. I drew the band's members, and even some of the bands and singers I made up had feuds, and I think one of them lost their drummer to breast cancer after I entered high school. (That's the thing--even after I stopped actively engaging that part of my imagination, it would still return to me now and then, and I'd do a VH1-Where-Are-They-Now with those imaginary characters.) At Mom's house, my Lego set spread out over my room (and also into Kitty's room and down the hall when it suited us and in the basement when she had one), and I made up more characters to populate my own version of Legoland. My Barbies started their own rock group too, kind of a fancy-schmancy white-girl version of En Vogue. (Then, Kitty and I took the Barbies out in the yard and threw them up at the power lines that ran across our front yard, trying to zap them and make them melt. I never said we were normal children.)

I drew a great deal, but I never wrote much down, per se, as it always seemed like my mind went so much faster and farther than my hands could write. Those who have seen my handwriting can attest that writing (as opposed to typing) is a laborious task for me. But their names remain in my head like it's 1983: Botae, a multi-talented woman; her dad Oz, who looked like my mom's Dad in Michigan and was born super-old and nearly died at birth (about 29 years before I'd ever heard of Benjamin Button); Oz's dogs Junior and Bunior (okay, I wasn't that creative); and Mr. Invy, who was mayor of Legoland and somehow allowed Devo to move into the neighborhood and drive around in their red-and-black van, which my sister named "Devo-Machine" and would dead-pan narrate its thoughts and voice. (I'm actually laughing so hard I can't type as I think about her narrating the Devo-Machine. I can't express the utter hilarity of my 11-year old sister saying in a robotic tone "Devo-Machine is getting ang-gry, Devo Devo Devo.")

I didn't tell a lot of people about these characters, as I seemed to know/feel even as a child that imagination would be mocked. I kept my drawings to myself, mostly, although Kitty was really good about encouraging and adding onto my ideas ("If you're drawing clothes, then you should draw jewelry and shoes to go with the fashions, Pixie! And your store should sell neon shoelaces!"). So now, here in the light of day, who were your imaginary friends and creations? Tell me while I muster up the courage to post some of these pictures I drew.

Iz birfday LOLZ!!!!

Today iz birfday of mai favorit sistur EVAR!!! Miss Kitty over at Educated & Poor is thirty-mnndghfs, so hop on over and wish her a happy birthday full of kittehs and doggehs and chikinz!!

Demolition and memory

I recently got a text from my sister recently in the form of a photo. It was of a pile of rubble and a few small pieces of mechanical equipment, and in the foreground was a chain link fence that said "WELCOME TO BOOGER COUNTY ELEMENTARY VISITORS PLEASE CHECK IN AT OFFICE." I called her quickly and left a message, and she called me back moments later to explain: yes indeed, Kitty's and my old elementary school had been demolished in the past week. A new elementary school had been built in the past few years, and I had heard somewhere that the county government was going to take the old elementary school over to use as city and county offices, storage, and some community-center-type uses. Evidently, this was not to be.

Architects spend their lives learning how, what, and why to design things to be built. Secretly, though, we're fascinated by demolition--watching the tearing down of something is mesmerizing and downright incredible, and I know we're not the only ones. When Glasnost Construction announced at a recent OAC meeting for my project at Gestalt's Bierstadt building that they would start demolition of a few areas next week, nearly everyone in the room--clients, architects, project managers, and engineers--exploded with an excited "I wanna knock something down!!" We all love on some strange level to destroy something, as if we were all mortal incarnations of Kali: the goddess of destruction and resurrection. It's as if we know that once we knock something down, we make room to build something new, even if that new space only becomes an open space or park.

When Kitty and I were kids, Dad used to say that it was weird to drop us off at the elementary school, because when he was our age it was the black high school in his county (yes, kids, before 1964, the year my dad graduated from the white Booger County High School, the U.S. was South Africa without the diamond mines and the good soccer team). It seemed strange to him because walking those halls had been a socially forbidden act in his day--this was a place of separateness, of less-than. Now it was the place where all children, regardless of race or socioeconomic status, gained the foundation for a solid education. He never mentioned to us if the county renovated the school any in order to hand it over to the white kids.

However, I do know that the metal building that was the "new" gym was not original--it was added on after 1964 for sure. Moreover, I recall when the county added on a new building in the front lawn/courtyard space that became the new library, music room, and art room. It was built in the mid-1980s, right around the time when I was in 3rd or 4th grade. According to Kitty, everything is gone now from the site, even that "new" building. This is the part of demolition that horrifies me as an architect. The building is younger than I am, and it was demolished? Really?!

When we build, part of what goes into our material and design decisions is the building's function, which dictates an explicit or implicit life cycle--we call that building an "x year building." For example, the University of Colorado in Boulder dictates that its buildings as 100-year buildings, meaning that they have to last in decent shape for at least 100 years. Other school buildings as well as hospital buildings are often designated 50-year buildings or more. A strip mall, by contrast, is often thought of (and sadly, constructed) as a 20-year building. But if we assume that the library/art room/music room building at a rural county elementary school was built in 1985 and torn down in 2010, that gives a school building a lifespan barely past a PetsMart in the next county. Where is the logic in that?

I suppose some of my irateness is due not just to my professional perspective and training, but also a bit of wistfullness. When we were kids, our dad would be driving us to our elementary school and would point at a heavily-wooded area on the corner of two rural roads. Through the woods, the roof line of a dilapidated building could be seen. Dad would gesture at the hidden building and say how that was the cafeteria/gym of his old elementary school. "The actual school building burned down when I was in high school," Daddy would reminisce, his gentle Tom-Hanks-like southern accent searching for the words to explain nostalgia to his two daughters who were barely old enough to miss anything from the past. "Reckon either lightning ran in on it or someone burned it down."

"I wish someone would burn our school down!" Kitty or I would laugh. (We found school itself mildly tolerable, but the people who attended with us were insufferable.) Strange to think of that now that someone did knock down our school, down to its very foundations. When Kitty showed up with Mom at the elementary school's site on the way to a craft fair, there were just a few piles of rubble and a small Bobcat piling up the last of the chipped-up concrete slab.

Happy Mommy's Day!

Happy Momma's Day to all my momma-readers out there! I have so much to thank my Mom for, the whole gift-of-life thing notwithstanding. Here are just a few of the lessons I've learned from my Mom:

Fearlessness pays. In 1981, my mom (who posts on this blog and on my sister's as Wilderness Gina) applied for a job as a carpenter on a hotel construction site. She needed a job, and she knew that the best-paying jobs were those being done by men. So through all the hassling and harassment (yes, she was occasionally fired for refusing some cretin's advances), my mom not only made decent money throughout the 1980s, but she held her ground in the male-dominated field of form carpentry. She even learned some crazy mad carpentry skillz that allow her to now work on her own house. I've co-opted that same fearlessness (or I've tried to anyway) while working in architecture and construction. I'm not afraid of heights (like Mom), and I'm not afraid to tell a contractor, "Ur doin it rong." I've worked hard to know what the hell I'm doing, and then swallowed the fear and spoken out when something wasn't right on a jobsite or in a set of drawings. (However, I have so far resisted the urge to remodel my condo. So far.)

Have options. Over the years, Mom has developed a wide range of talents, all of which she has been able to use for monetary gain as well as to keep her sanity. Mom's ability to visually organize and prioritize allows her to clean a room or a house in no time flat (side note: Mom, the condo is funky again; when are you flying out to attack my kitchen with a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser again?). She has continually practiced her sewing talents such that her quilts, blankets, hats, and clothing are in demand around town (and in high demand by her daughters, one of whom owes her for recently making some extremely cute stuff for her--check is in the mail, Ma). Her construction skills allow her to be her own contractor, and she even developed some auto repair skills along the way. While my skills are considerably less useful (architect, writer, stand-up comic, public speaker), they still allow me to easily wear different hats at work and in my personal life.

Be independent. At one point in the early 1990s, my mom's second husband (whom we all fondly call "Shithead") left her with mounds of bills, and she had to file for bankruptcy while living in a house that didn't even have running water (to be fair, it's the house her dad grew up in, and she was restoring it to its former glory). Mom marshaled her skills and parlayed them into some sort of living--she worked at a local sewing plant, making men's suits; she cleaned a couple of churches, and she did tons of odd jobs for the farming widows in her community (one of whom was her ex-mother-in-law, my dad's mom). She had a 1977 brown Toyota Celica on which she replaced the starter and could set the points herself. I remember once that we had to pull over one pitch-black night to tweak something under the hood of that Celica, and this big Southern dude pulls up behind us, gets out, and asks my Mom while she's under the hood, "Can I hep yew with anythang, ma'am?" Mom said without missing a beat, "Yeah, hold this flashlight and hand me that wrench. Thanks." Classic. Mom.

Don't trust Whitey. Wait, no, I learned that from Samuel L. Jackson.

Take care of your self and your health. When I was ten, my Mom could still lift me out the car when I was fast asleep (and dead weight), and take me in the house and put me to bed. Even now at the age of 61, she can wriggle around under a house and install piping, drag big-ass plants around the porch, push a lawnmower across her acre-plus yard, haul bricks and cinderblocks (CMU), repair and replace the tin roofing on her house (which now has running water and TWO bathrooms!), and chase dogs and cats around. Some of the lessons I learned from her were about what not to do--take care of your teeth, if you think you have a tumor get it checked out--but overall, Mom put a lot of effort into looking good and taking care of your health so that you're left with something decent during the back nine. Just last night, I called Mom from the medicine aisle of King Soopers, describing my symptoms and asking what I should be taking. Mom told me what to get, give the meds a day or two to work, and if they're not working, go to the doctor. And lay off the cocaine.

Have a sense of humor, and use it. Not everyone gets my Mom's humor, but she is absolutely hilarious and irreverent, and I love her and it. Mom has zero problem heckling authority, friends, and loved ones. She also recognized the fact that well-placed humor can diffuse a tense situation, and I use my humor on a regular basis to break tension, liven up a dull meeting or workplace, and (hopefully) make the day go better for myself and others. It rarely fails.

So HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY, MOMMEEEEE!! [patpatpatpat on your cheek]

Back to the yawn

My sister's plane left about an hour ago, bound for Milwaukee and then Atlanta, heralding the end of her Spring Break with me out here in the Mile High Cit-tay. It's always good to see here, even if she's worn out from working or cranky from the gooberishness of her school's leadership. We had a great time shopping, eating, goofing around, watching the Weather Channel, farting on each other, and even visiting a local no-kill cat shelter to pet some needy kittehs and begin to entertain the idea of getting Hazel a new, younger buddy to whoop up on. (This is a ways off though, y'all--just thinking is all I'm doing.) We also came up with a list of completely innocent phrases that can be made gross or at least sound like horrible acts of obscenity which belong on Urban Dictionary, such as "chocolate mermaid" and "toaster strudel".

I was fortunate that I was able to do a great deal of major spring cleaning before she got here, but there's still more to do. Plus, duty calls: the remodeling projects at Gestalt are starting to really cook, and I only have a few more weeks until I have to turn in the final version of a presentation I'm doing at an industry conference later this year. The next couple of weeks are going to be pretty busy, followed by a couple of fairly busy months. I guess I shouldn't complain--busy beats the alternative.

Meanwhile, happy birfday to my Mommy! YAY!!!

In lieu of another real post, here's an interesting website

Nicole, a reader of WAD and contributor to The Fixer Upper Blog, has written this article on 100 Amazing Buildings Every Architecture Buff Should See. She's got the whole gambit covered, from Catal Hoyuk in Turkey from 3700 BCE up to the latest (and now world's tallest) tower in Dubai. Even if you're not going to visit these sites, it's a delightful Headline-News-type romp through architectural history.

I'm still enjoying my sister's visit, hence some of my laziness. The rest of my laziness is due to dealing with the latest crisis du jour at Gestalt HMO involving sequencing construction and providing temporary spaces for the various departments being remodeled. Regardless, I'm taking this Friday off for a day of relaxation and goofing off with Kitty before she heads back to Georgia.

Here and gone again

I just got back into Denver from Georgia last night, and we're leaving today for St. Louis. We were going to leave tomorrow, but the approaching snow and ice will make driving across Kansas difficult and uncomfortable. Driving across Kansas under the best of conditions is boring and uncomfortable, so why throw black ice in there as well? Hence, we'll drive partway this afternoon/tonight after we have a late lunch with Elliot, and then we'll drive the rest of the way there tomorrow morning. So I'm not even going to have 24 hours at home. And y'all, my kittehs missed me. Well, sorta. Maddy and Hazel tolerated Papa last week, and they were sorta amused to see me last night. Maddy almost didn't know who I was, it seemed. Silleh kitteh.

The condo is kinda grody. Once I'm done posting, I've got to go sweep and Swiff this place and take out the recycling, and I had to wipe down the kitchen this morning after an hour on the treadmill. Evidently, Guy was living like a bachelor all week while I was gone, and I'm telling all of you because his mother reads my blog and I hope she gives him hell for it. (I'm kidding--no one has to heckle him; I already did last night and this morning.) But we might have Elliot come in and give Maddy and Hazel some wet food while we're gone. (Maddy just jumped in my lap and purred her agreement to this notion.)

But it was a wonderful, relaxing week in Georgia,hanging out with my sister and mom and getting lots done on my presentation that I have to do next year, donuts for breakfast and BBQ for lunch and dinner, and kittehs on the bed every morning and night while we sleep, relax, or read magazines. A few lines from the week:

• "Did you just fart, or was that the cat?" "Which cat?"
• "This is the Toilet Shuffle, a forgotten dance of the 1960s!"
• Me: "Why do all my cookies look retarded?" Mom: "Operator error."
• "Mom, what would you do if we bought you this fabric to make a dress out of?" "Disown you."
• "Why are those two trying to reproduce?! God, now I can't eat my pasta."
• Mom: "Don't bother the cat, she just went in her little house and went to sleep!" [cute voice] "Don't 'sturb it! Go 'way! GO 'WAY!"
• Kitty: "I could have lived my life without ever knowing what an upstairs tenant or a hot pocket was. What has been learned cannot be unlearned." Me: "You know what we have to do now, don't you?" Kitty: "What?" Me: "Tell Mom." Kitty: "AUUUGH!"
• Mom: "Why did you have to tell me what those were? God, I need ear bleach." [sighs] "Six years of college...twelve if you count her sister...."

See, Kitty and I have learned that we can't embarrass Mom, so now we're going for grossing her out. We can't do anything so awful or silly that she'd leave us in the middle of Target or the fabric store, so we just try to get her to give us the "why in God's name would you say/think/do that?" look. It's the best we can do.

I can haz break? Yayz!

Y’all, it’s been a nice couple of days here in Georgia, not drawing anything and not fretting about flashing details. Hell, I can’t say I’ve worried about a whole lot of anything the past couple of days. I’m about to be gone from work for three weeks, and as you’ve likely been able to tell from my past few posts, I’m gone not a moment too soon. I’ve been reflexively angry at the sound of Howie’s voice, my heart immediately sinks when I see certain engineers’ names and numbers flash up on my phone’s Caller ID, and I’ve been unable to drag out of bed to go for a walk or run or do yoga or anything. How cranky do you have to be to not want to do yoga? Honestly. [shakes head and purses lips disapprovingly]

When everything leaves you flat and annoyed and inconsolable, it’s time for a break. I’m lucky Guy bought me tickets to GTFO of Colorado for a week, because having a change of pace and scenery is startlingly helpful. First of all, it truly is a change of pace. Guy and I realized it over Thanksgiving when we were here—cars drive slower and take longer to pull out of driveways and parking lots, people walk and talk slower, folks wait their turn everywhere and aren’t in a rush to get done, and so on. One of my well-traveled coworkers commented that the closer you get to the equator, the slower people move—“Maybe it’s the heat, and maybe it’s the gravitational pull, but there’s less movement and less hurrying.”

The scenery helps too. Everything’s green, like super green. It’s been raining buckets here in Georgia for a several weeks now, and the trees are amazing shades and hues of reds, yellows, and tans, while the manifold evergreens provide a lovely contrast where leaves have fallen. The humidity makes my hair curl delightfully (I don’t even have to style it, really) and makes my skin moisturized and almost dewy. I need so little lotion to be here, and I don’t wake up from sleep parched and drained. Kitty’s HKC is quiet, except for the occasional BONK! of something being knocked over by its quadripedal denizens or a long, low train whistle arcing over the still countryside as it chugs through town. We awake to the sound of Leroy the rooster “rrt-rr-rrtr-RRRR!”ing between 7am and 8am, and we drive to D2U along a two-lane country road/state highway and enjoy the rolling hills and surprise goats and sheep sightings along the way.

My posts from here to the end of the year will be irregular, but I’ll post something here and there to update my faithful dozens of readers on my little climb back to sanity and stability. And I’ll do my best to work in a Mile-High-Visitation version of Ask Mom.

Where's the fun, man? Part 2 of 2

(Part 1 is here for those of you catching up.)

The search for less painful workouts has been on for at least a year now. It began a couple of years ago when I sprained my ankle really really really badly (go here for the first installment of that 31 flavors of misery), but it's become an even more urgent search with my recent general agitation and search for identity, blah blah blah. The first step in any healthy exercise regimen, which I usually forget about until Vinnie reminds me while I'm using my cold drink glass to ice a hip or ankle at the bar, is rest. The body needs rest in order to heal properly and (re)build tissues that you've worked out. Every now and then, maybe once every three or four months when I remember, I do an active rest week in place of my regular workout. I walk at a nice but not exhausting pace (about 4.0 mph, which is about how fast I walk around the office or down a sidewalk) instead of running or doing intervals, and I do yoga instead of lifting weights. I rely on movement first thing in the morning to set me up for the day, but I don't need to do tons of activity every time. Just enough that I don't fall asleep again if I lay my head back on the yoga mat while stretching or cooling down.

It's only been in the last couple of months that I realized that yoga could be a completely acceptable replacement for one of my cardio days. I generally do tough cardio M-W-F, weights with occasional yoga Tu-Th, and a long "fun" walk on Saturdays. A good yoga routine can replace one of those tough cardio days and still provide good health benefits. "You know, Pix," Vinnie said when I mentioned this back a couple of months, "we have research that shows that strength isn't built by microtears in the muscle fibers but rather by the muscle pulling away from the bone. And there are plenty of non-painful exercise that makes that happen, including yoga. It's not the worse thing you can do." So I do yoga. And when the weather's good, I can swim on the rooftop pool. But now that the weather's gone to crap, what's a girl to do for an alternative to her workouts before she loses her mind?

"When I'm in town in October," Kitty said during the summer, "I want to take a pole class. There's one not far from your condo, and it looks really fun on YouTube."

"Yeah, okay," I responded. I had zero interest in attending such an activity, but I'm glad to do what Kitty wants while she's here because my urban lifestyle affords her access to lots of things that she doesn't get living in the boonies in Georgia. So, on a cloudy and cold Saturday afternoon, we show up at the pole dancing studio in time to watch a more advanced class finish up just before our Introduction to Pole class.

And when I say pole dancing, I don't mean a bunch of Polish people dancing to a polka, which would be an honest mistake. I mean as in swinging around a pole and gyrating like you were working for tips in a g-string pole. Pole. Dancing. The room was mostly dark with loud music blaring, and there were five or six brass poles in the room braced firmly between the ceiling and the wood-look sheet vinyl floor, and there were women swirling and hanging and gyrating around and on and off these poles. Okay. Fair enough. That looked simple enough to accomplish.

Finally, it was the beginner's class' turn. We rolled out yoga mats on the floor and began stretching and doing some basic hip circles and rolls. It was at this point that I got extraordinarily uncomfortable with the whole thing. It's one thing to make these kinds of movements, it's another to make these kinds of movements in a roomful of strangers in a slightly darkened room while the class teacher keeps telling us to "go within", and it's still yet another to do all these tings with Usher and Prince playing on the iPod speakers. I don't "go within" to baby-making music, mm-kay Poopsie? Because if I do, this will turn into a very different class altogether. It's just...weird. And I'm totally comfortable with my sexuality and my identity as a woman--it's that this whole ordeal so far felt artificially intimate. I calmed myself down by telling myself that I only have to do this for two hours, and if Kitty wants to come back she can come back alone, or you can suffer another two hours, it won't be that bad.

But then, we started doing some other floor exercises, moves, and stretches that, while suggestive, were quite a workout. I mean, it really took some abdominal strength and tricep and deltoid strength to do the moves. And while they took effort, they were...new. And kinda fun.

And then we got to the pole. Turns out that picking yourself up onto a pole to swing around is really REALLY HARD. Dancers make it look easy, but it takes a lot of back and ab strength to make that move look smooth and not hurt like hell the next day. So we all tried some moves and some swirls around the poles, taking turns because there were ten people in the class and only six (I think) poles, but really getting into it. And when I say getting into it, I don't mean I was shakin' my boo-tay and thinking about getting it on or heading over to one of the strip clubs in town to see if I could pick up some extra money for the holidays, but I got into the idea of moving for the sake of moving. If, as the class instructor said, there were no rules here, then I could very well follow a butt swivel with a pointed toe leg lift like I was in ballet and then do a standing split that I learned in a yoga class in Vegas. The very notion of movement for the fun and sake of movement--and to the beat of music you liked, even!--was suddenly a really new concept to me.

Kitty and I went back a couple of days later for a private lesson with the main instructor and studio owner, and it was a blast. We learned some new strength and stretching moves, and we practiced some more with lifting up on the pole and spinning around, which was still hard to do. Our muscles ached terribly from the first class, but hell if I was going to miss the chance to throw myself into a state of centrifugal motion (as opposed to centripetal--since I was in the rotation, I was in a noninertial frame of reference, no?) and lift myself off the floor if only for a second. Also very cool were some of the conversations and philosophy that we discussed. We talked about engaging in movement for oneself and not for the pleasure of someone watching, and we also discussed taking up space, which women aren't taught to do. Think about it--if you're a girl, you're taught to take up very little space on the bus, to sit with your knees together at all times, and to move out of the way when ever someone's coming or passing. To hell with that--move the furniture out of the way and get your groove on.

Also worth noting were the women that attended the classes--our beginner's class had a size-16/18 girl with about five classes under her belt, and she could move. A superskinny librarian-looking woman pushing forty had great success in doing turns on her first try (turns is the official word for swinging around a pole), and a volleyball-player-looking Asian girl had great floor moves despite never having any dance training whatsoever. It was quite a relief for the class though when Kitty confessed that she'd daintzed before. One girl suddenly burst out "Ohthankgawd! I looked at you during the warmup and thought 'damn! I'm behind!'"

Since those lessons, I haven't been back to the dance studio, but that's because a) their classes start at 6pm, and that's about 12 hours after I start working out, but more importantly, b) I'm not much of a class taker when it comes to workouts. I prefer to lead myself most of the time, what with being the most motivated person I know. But I've been doing at least one day per week of just dancing around the living room like a goofball/exotic dancer/Paula Abdul-wannabe to playlists on my iPod...because it's fun. I get my heartrate up, and I get a good workout, but overall it's just fun. I'm so used to focusing on the "work" part of "workout" that I never realized it's not supposed to be such drudgery. I've managed to keep 20 pounds off for over four years. I think it's time to enjoy the process.

I may have to start using the raquetball court to dance in. The living room is getting too small for me to bring it old school to some Janet Jackson at 6:30am.

Squee!

I know, I know, I haven't posted lately. Bu my sister is here until eeeeaarrrllyyy Wednesday morning, and we're making the most of the long weekend. My deadlines on TCMC and FCH last week left me in a good place to take Friday and Monday off, and so I am. We've spent the weekend shopping, reading a plethora of cheezy-poof magazines she brought from Georgia, telling obscene jokes, and just goofing off in general. Very good times.

Happy birthday Dad!

If my dad were still alive, he'd be 63 today. I rather think he'd be proud and glad of the way that my life has turned out. I think he'd rather like Guy as well; they'd have likely gotten along quite nicely. Usually on Dad's birthday, I like to celebrate a little with a nice dinner and a glass (or two) of wine and watch some comedy. This year, however, the celebration will have to wait til later in the week: I have a DD deadline on TCMC on Tuesday and the handover DD deadline on FCH on Wednesday. Intern Timmy and I spent Sunday in the office working on TCMC, and Intern Kimmy has been spending lots of late nights and lunches getting FCH in shape to pass off to Contigo Architects so that they can finish the DDs and CDs on the project. And after those two deadlines, my sister is coming into town for her Fall Break. I'm really looking forward to seeing her, but I have hardly had a chance to a) get excited and b) clean up the Happy Kitten Highrise in anticipation of her arrival.

So, I have a few more days before I can clean up and rest. The good news about all this overtime I'm about to have to pull is that I can take some time off right afterwards. Kitty's visit is timed just right for me to take a day (or more) off. So, please be patient, my peeps--I'm not gonna be able to post much this week while I slog through these deadlines, but all will be well again in a few days.

Vay-cay-shun, all I ever wahn-ted...

Thank Jesus, Mary, and Eero Saarinen, I'm in Georgia finally for a long weekend with my sister, Miss Kitty. My plane landed last night around midnight in Atlanta, and about two minutes after they opened the door to our aircraft, the fragrant humidity wafted back into the plane and folks began exclaiming, "Man, I forgot how humid it was here! I was not ready for that!" I was thankful for that humidity, however--it makes my hair curl nice and purrty, and I don't have to wear moisturizer for the whole weekend.

Today was spent getting French manicures at our favorite li'l local spa, and tonight will be lasagna and brownies with Mom out at the Happy Kitten Farm, where the cats roam free, the dogs have a porch to sit on, and the cell phones don't pick up. Tomorrow will be more debauchery and evening drinks and cookout with Linda Lou, Kitty's colleague, for whom I'm doing the guest lecture. Sunday is yet more debauchery, and then Monday is the lecture (well, a girl's gotta work). I'll fly back Tuesday afternoon.

I can't begin to describe how ready I was/am for this long-ass weekend. I was so annoyed and furious at work (not a good way to be when you need to stay employed), and I really didn't have any tolerance for anything but reading magazines and going for a walk. Working out made me tired and annoyed, working made me cranky, and cleaning the house left me homocidal. So this weekend came at just the right time, before I ended up on the evening news, or worse, "Cops". So I'm gonna go hang out and do lots of nothing following by dropping some knowledge on the chirrens. Stay tuned: Monday is another architectural quiz, so be ready!

The Great Brownie Debate

I love to bake, but my attempts at baked goodness at altitude are hit and miss.  I found a decent chocolate chip cookie recipe, and five years of tinkering got me a serviceable buttermilk biscuit recipe.  However, I've yet to find a good brownie recipe, so I just gave in and started buying the Ghirardelli brownie mix from the grocery store.  I was telling my sister about how fantastic the brownie mix was, when I learned that my sister is a brownie purist pod person.

Pixie:  Holy crap, Kitty, this mix has high altitude directions that actually work!

Kitty:  Man, that's great!  What kinds do they have?

Pixie:  Hmm, they have a chocolate frosting that's pretty good, and a walnut brownie mix...

Kitty:  Ooh, that sounds good.

Pixie:  ...but our favorite is the chocolate chunk kind.

Kitty:  Chocolate chunks?  in your brownies?  Eeeuuww.

Pixie:  What?  It's good!

Kitty:  Euuhh, I dunno.  Brownies shoud either be plain or with nuts, no chocolate chunks.

Pixie:  WHAT?! Are you kidding?  What could be better than a brownie with chocolate chunks in it?

Kitty:  A brownie without chocolate chunks in it.

Pixie:  You're high.  The only thing that makes a brownie better is MOAR CHOKLIT!

Kitty:  Gross.

Pixie:  What the hell's the matter with you?  You don't like chocolate chunk brownies?  Why the hell not?

Kitty:  The chocolate gets in the way of the chocolate.

Pixie:  [head explodes]

So sound off people: how do you like your brownies?  Do you like massively loaded brownie, or are you one of the brownie purist pod people?

Y'all, it's fixin' to be on. And Guy is scared.

At the end of this month, I'm off to Georgia to guest teach a class for Linda Lou, Kitty's colleague at D2U.  (Some about the class last year here and here.)  I'm looking forward to it for sure.  I need to dust off what I did last year and see if it needs any tweaking for this year. I'm sure I can find something that needs sharpening.

Late last week, Kitty forwards me an email from Airtran with some text to the effect of "Look, they're having another sale, so let's buy Mom her tickets to come see you this summer."  A few minutes spent on IM got us agreeable arrival and departure times for Mom in mid-July, and we're each only a $116 lighter.  I forwarded the confirmation email to Guy so he could make notes of when he should start drinking heavily for the week Mom's here.

We were driving home from work that day, and Guy brought up Mom's visit:

Guy:   So...your mom's coming to visit in, um, July?

Pixie:  Yup, Kitty got a really good price on her tickets, Tuesday to Tuesday.

Guy:   So what's she gonna do while she's here?

Pixie:  I'm gonna see if I can borrow a sewing machine or rent her one so she can do some sewing.

Guy:   [raises eyebrows] You're putting her to work on her vacation?  I didn' t know your mom was a nine-year old Malaysian child.

Pixie:  [holding up one hand] Look, I asked her if that would feel like making her earn her keep, and she said she sews for fun, so she's fine to do some sewing while she's here.  She'd prefer it over watching TV all day.

Guy:   Well, I guess it'll keep her off the streets.

Pixie:  [sighing] I know...if she's not tagging brick walls with graffiti, she's boosting cars for parts.  And at her age...

Guy:   You know, I have a pass to the Botanic Gardens and to the Museum if she wants to go to those.  She can actually go somewhere while she's here and not be under house arrest making Nikes all day.

Pixie:  Hm...I suppose so, huh?  I could take her during lunch and then pick her up when we come home.

Guy:   What, she can't walk?

Pixie:  Honey, the last time Mom walked for any length at this altitude, she nearly passed out.  Between the lack of oxygen and her sciatica, I'm not gonna make her do that.

Guy:   She needs to go for a walk.

Pixie:  [cutting eyes towards him] You need to go for a walk.

Guy:   [taking mock offense]  What?  I've been going for a walk with you on Wednesday nights for two weeks in a row!

Pixie:  And I'll take Mom for walks while she's here, but there's no amount of training she could do in Georgia to prepare her for the thin air here.

Guy:   She could take the bus.

Pixie:  [cutting eyes again]  I am not putting my mother on a bus.

Guy:   You don't think she can handle it?

Pixie:  I'm not dragging her out here so I can put her on a bus.  

Guy:   [looking out window]  You don't think she can handle it.  You think the bus hooligans are going to scare her.

Pixie:  Look, my momma's street, homey. She carry a nine and pop a cap if some wanksta try to step to her shit, she ain't even play!

Guy:  [staring at Pixie]  I have no idea what you just said.

Pixie:  I'm saying that my mom's tough.  She and Michael Graves are starting their own gang.

Guy:  [looking out window again]  Whatever.

Pixie:  You'll see.  She'll be totin' a tech nine in Target Periwinkle Blue.  She's bad.  She'll be like a white Foxy Brown.

Guy:  What'll Graves be, Ironside?

Miss Kitty has thrown down the gauntlet.

As Miss Kitty has refused to remove those outrageous and trashy UGA stickers from my old pickup truck, I am now forced to fire a warning shot over her skunky red-and-black bow with a little story about said wayward English professor.

When we were kids and forced to share a bed because out-of-town guests were staying over, I hated it. It's not that I minded the company per se. Kitty and I have always--always--been extremely close. However, Miss Kitty makes for a terrible sleeping partner. She kicks, she steals cover, and she talks in her sleep. An eight-hour night with her results in only about two hours of real sleep for da Pixie, cuz it goes a little sum'n like this: her foot makes contact with my knee, then she rolls one way and the other to pull the comforter off my feet, then she mumbles something incoherent. I turn over to try to ignore her. Bad mistake: I get a foot in the ass and all blankets are removed from my torso. Then she mumbles something else.

Sometimes kids grow out of this. Our Kitty, alas, did not. In college, we had to share my bed when guests stayed in hers one holiday weekend. Within fifteen minutes of lights out, the rumpus began.

Kick.
Grab.
Punt.
Yank.

I yanked the blankets back from her linen-greedy paws and rolled over onto my back. She got still, and just as I was about to drift off to dreamland....she sits up in bed. She sits up, leans over her knees, pauses, and says:

"Needs more sauce."

WHUMP! She collapsed backwards again and didn't. move. a muscle. the rest. of the night.

Meanwhile, on the other half of an increasingly too-small bed, inquiring minds want to know what the fuck needs more sauce and why was this the moment to share this revelation. Asking her this the next morning provided no solutions.

"I said what?" Kitty asked.
"Needs more sauce," I replied. "What the hell were you dreaming?"
"I didn't have any dreams last night," she said. She gave me a skeptical grimace. "What did I say? 'Needs more sauce'?"
"Yes. Evidently, we were in need of sauce last night, or at least more of it."
Kitty shook her head. "I don't remember saying that."

She did it again when I was home alone for Christmas before Guy was able to fly into town for the weekend. We were snuggled up under her homemade quilts, listening to the rainfall outside and NPR on her little radio, and about four in the morning, she turned over, held up a hand and said, "Well, if it's not gonna work they need to try something else."

I stirred. Renee Montagne was on NPR talking with a guest about a recipe for holiday cheese balls. "If what doesn't work?" I asked.

No answer. The Mystic Oracle of Random Bullshit was done for the morning.