Monday Visual Inspiration: Transplanted history

This is the actual piece of brick wall against which several gangsters were shot and killed in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre in Chicago in 1929. Apparently, when the actual building was being demolished in recent times, a private citizen purchased the portion of the wall with the bullet holes and blood spatter from 1929. Upon his death in the early 2000s, the collector's daughter took the wall/bricks and eventually sold them to the Mob Museum in Las Vegas.  (We toured it on our most recent visit to Vegas in February 2013--totally worth the ticket price, I might add.)

A piece of building constructed before the turn of last century captures pieces of a horrible moment in time in its bricks. It's taken apart and moved to another location. It's taken apart and moved again over 2,000 miles away to share that horrible moment with people who weren't even born when that moment occurred. Le Corbusier said that International Style architecture was meant to be relevant anywhere and not connected to any particular local style--it would carry its own meaning wherever it was built and viewed. Can we say the same for this piece of wall from Chicago? Does the meaning of this moment in time change when we take the wall out of a Chicago warehouse and reconstruct it on the third floor of the former Las Vegas Courthouse? The bullet holes are circled, just in case the audience can't figure out its meaning, after looking at so many exhibits of tommy guns, bootlegger's cases, and FBI bugging and recording devices.

Monday Visual Inspiration: All you need is love, and a Cirque de Solieil ticket

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The entry to the Beatles LOVE Cirque du Soleil show at the Mirage in Vegas.  Great show, amazing visions and interpretations of Beatles' songs, and wonderful acts and choreography.

Happy Anniversary and general awesomeness, yo.

Guy and I are in Vegas having a great time, hiking and walking and relaxing and goofing off.  It's good to take a break from the intensity of our work schedules, which tend to leave us bereft of energy for anything much at all these days. Today is 8 years since we got married at an Elvis chapel here in Sin City, and while it's been work and not always a picnic, it's also been wonderful and rewarding to spend my days and nights with someone who is just like me in all the right ways and completely different from me in all the right ways.  Cheers.

Really? Again?! Are you kidding me?!?!

Both Hazel and Gracie went to the vet last week for a routine checkup and teeth cleaning. Everyone's blood work and urine came out fine, though the vet found a little lump/mass of tissue on Gracie's lower gums. She removed it easily during the dental cleaning and sent it off for a histology report.

It came back as low-grade fibrosarcoma.

Great. Now I have another cat with cancer.

So this week, we'll go visit the veterinary oral surgeon and talk about how much of Gracie's gum and lower jaw may need to be removed to make sure we get all the cancer cells. Supposedly, this surgeon is really good, and she won't look terrible or really really different after the surgery, but I'd like to see some before and after pictures. After surgery, we'll probably have to do some kind of follow-up treatment. I gave Maddy chemo pills for almost 18 months when she had small-cell lymphosarcoma during 2008-2010. Funny now that I think about it, Maddy finally crossed the Rainbow Bridge last week in 2010.

Thanks, Universe. Appreciate the hell out of this.

Wat? Ai no haz cansurr, just a hungree.  Ware iz tuna, mama?

Guy and I leave for Vegas later this week for our 8th anniversary weekend with Scarlett and Baxter and all the bad kittehs at their house.  Gracie will be fine for the duration, I'm sure.  I'm sure Hazel, the angry 15-year-old ball of chorb, will have the worst time of it at home with the Psycho Floof while Mama and Papa are off cavorting.

Monday Visual Inspiration: Scotty's Castle, Death Valley National Park, CA

While Guy and I were in Vegas, we did an overnight trip to Death Valley again. (We went last year, but we didn't get to spend a lot of time there.) We managed to get pretty far into the park this time, and we got to tour Scotty's Castle, which was actually owned by railroad magnate Albert Johnson and his wife, Bessie. Walter Scott, known as Death Valley Scotty, was something of a shyster and a showman who convinced Johnson to invest in a gold mine in Death Valley that didn't actually exist. Even after Johnson discovered the truth, he stayed good friends with Scotty because he was so entertained by Scotty's tall tales.

In the foreground, there's an unfinished swimming pool at Scotty's Castle. Johnson got in a fight with the U.S. government regarding his property--apparently, the survey that showed the property he'd purchased for his Death Valley home was done incorrectly, and the structures you see above weren't located on the land he bought. He stopped working on the house while he was in litigation. Not long after he won the suit, his beloved wife Bessie died, so he quit spending time at the house and eventually sold it back to the U.S. to be part of the Death Valley National Park. Hence, some of the buildings and the pool are just cast-in-place concrete with no beautiful tiles, and the pool is full of sand and weeds.




Johnson and his wife were very religious and didn't want to glorify themselves with their house. Hence, they named it "Death Valley Ranch" instead of "Johnson Ranch." Because they hadn't named it, Death Valley Scotty clamined the summer home as his "castle" to the paparazzi on the West Coast. Hence, "Scotty's Castle."

Even for being built in the early 1930s, the house had a lot of modern conveniences. Johnson owned a railroad (inherited from his dad, who died in a huge train wreck in which Johnson himself was terribly injured), but he was trained as an engineer. He channeled water from a spring a mile away and ran it through a series of smaller and smaller pipes, which provided the "castle" with pressurized indoor plumbing and water to run small turbines for electricity with which to light the house. A mosaic tile waterfall in the great room (pictured above) provided evaporative cooling in the house.




The music room (shown above) includes a complete self-playing organ, like the kind that played during a silent movie. The Johnsons could push a button and play any pre-programmed song as if a small orchestra was in the room. (The organ even has a glockenspiel in it.) Scotty's Castle has an organ concert once a year to raise money to pay the organ-repair-tuner-person to come out once or twice a year to keep it playing.

App-etite for distraction

OCD runs in my family, but we all manifest it differently. I indulge my obsessive habits through record-keeping in such a way that starts out as admirable and then ends up making me look like John Forbes Nash meets Adrian Monk. Example: I once read that a great way to find out where all your money goes is to write down every single penny that goes in and out and to track it based on what you spend it on: e.g., food isn't just food, but there's dining out-food and grocery store-food and snack-food. When you start to track money so specifically, you'll a) become more aware of where your money goes and how and where you can curb spending, and b) think twice about spending money, knowing that you'll have to write it down on the list. Most people will do this for a few months at a time until they get things under control right?

I did it for eight years straight.

It started out as a way to track my spending and became one more thing that I "had" to do. I finally stopped when I realized that it no longer made me conscious of my spending, which was the original purpose in tracking it in the first place. I had finally attained the spending and saving habits that I wanted--I was conscious of what I spent, and Guy and I had gotten our expenses down as cheaply as possible while still enjoying life. So, I finally put that little Moleskine notebook on a shelf to let it moulder in peace.

Ah, but now I have a smartphone, with which I can do dumb things. But this time, The Precious isn't about tracking money, but rather calories and activity. When I visited the exercise physiologist at the Canyon Ranch Spa at the Venetian, as I do every year in Vegas (and for which I am good-naturedly abused by Scarlett and Guy), I realized in talking with her that my usual habits of weekly nutritional choices and exercises weren't cutting it anymore for my now 36-year-old physique. It was time to refocus and rethink how I work out and how and what I eat. (As we age, it turns out, diet becomes more and more important. Sonofabitch, there goes my nightly cookie habit.) The exercise physiologist turned me onto an app called Lose It!, which has a bunch of preprogrammed foods (regular, name brand from the supermarket, and even restaurant) and exercises (run-of-the-mill and odd, including curling) that you can choose from to see if you're eating well and working out enough to achieve whatever goal you set up (gain, lose, or maintain weight). You can even program in foods, so if the app doesn't have your kind of soda (Izze) or canned beans (Kuner's Black Beans, no salt added), you can plug them in.

I've been using this for a week, and it's been eye-opening. First of all, I didn't realize how many calories that even healthy-ass me has been drinking. Five tablespoons of flavored Coffee Mate creamer have 175 calories and barely lightens up my coffee the way a half-cup of 2% milk will at only 61 calories. I learned that my favorite Chipotle concoction (chicken tacos, hot salsa, cheese/lettuce/sour cream) is a little over 600 calories (which are negative calories if you get food poisoning/stomach flu and barf them up, see Monday's post). I also learned that Kitty's and my favorite chicken tortilla soup recipe is only 264 calories per bowl (based on eight bowls per Crock Pot, which is what Guy and I usually get out of it), but it's got about 1,000mg sodium per serving (use low-sodium taco seasoning, Kitty!). This app has made it easier for me to actually maintain a food diary, the way nutritionists have been begging Americans to do for years--it already has a lot of the nutritional info for many foods programmed in, so you can just input something and know that you'll have some accuracy in your calorie intake estimates, which is what I've been wanting.

This app makes me keep my phone out on my desk, which is something I always swore I wouldn't do with a phone. I like having a cell phone for my convenience, not other people's convenience. I've had acquaintances give me shit for not picking up my phone or even having it on when they call, but me having a cell phone is not so they can reach me, but rather so I can reach them when I choose to do so. It's a phone, not a leash, or even a shock collar. But having said that, I like having my phone nearby so I can input in what I've done (walking? yoga?) or eaten (Hershey's Kisses? pork chop?) and see what effect my choices have on my goals. So, yes, it feeds into my particular flavor of OCD. We'll see how long this lasts.

Monday Visual Inspiration: Just as I got back, I ran out of gas

Guy and I had a wonderful time in Vegas. We rented a convertible and promptly got forehead sunburns driving around Death Valley, where we toured Scotty's Castle and the Ubehebe Crater. We spent a lovely night at Scarlett's and met The Cowboy, of whom we approve. (Not that it matters--Scarlett will do what Scarlett will do, but we thought he was an excellent, happenin' dude who is the yin to her yang, the boot to her spur...or whatever equestrian metaphor works best here.) We had a great time at the various shows we saw on the Strip (Absinthe was FANTASTIC, and Elaine Boosler is still funny after 20+ years on the stage), and the food was glorious.

We got back to Denver, and Guy had to immediately turn around and fly to a meeting on the East Coast for two days. Howie and Bosley were both out of the office most of the week, so I spent the week doing quiet catch-up work, which was sorely needed. It was a great week, and I was ready to meet with Howie and Bosley on Friday to get back into the swing of things, when--

Bleecchhhh.

Someone short and pesky awoke at 4am with either food poisoning (from her beloved Chipotle!) or a 24-hour stomach bug/flu/crud. I wasn't able to keep water down until 11am. I mean, heaves so bad that I was thinking Okay, my stomach is definitely empty, there can't be anything left and then another volume of fluid would come out, and I'd yell in my head Where the hell did you find that at? What, were you saving it? It left me absolutely spent to the point that on Friday, I literally only had three saltines and a bowl of chicken noodle soup at 6pm. I ate some bland stuff on Saturday and did nothing. I mean, nothing. Well, I worked on some writing on my laptop for a couple of hours, but that was it. Nothing. I slept a lot and didn't drink enough water, but that was it.

I lay there on the futon, looking at Guy, pitifully. He got up from the computer and came over and spooned me, saying, "I think I need a nap."

"I think you do too," said I. "I'll take one with you."

We were quiet for a bit as college basketball ran quietly on the TV. "Guy?"

"Hm?"

"Is this what every Saturday is like for you? Just doing nothing?"

"Yeah. Feels good, doesn't it?
"Yeah, it does."

Monday Visual Inspiration: Vegas, baby!

We're in Vegas having a lovely time for our 7th anniversary, so I don't have shit to post. Back next week with good photos and stories and some much-needed rest!

Monday Visual Inspiration: Scenes from a Vegas weekend, Part 2

Okay, so after Death Valley, we drove back to Vegas proper to spend the night at a little resort on the edge of town known as La Casita del Four-Footed Dictators. The proprietess of this establishment, Scarlett, welcomed us with open arms, open wine bottles, and the most amazing mini bundt cakes I've ever seen and tasted. The staff and service at La Casita was exceptional, to say the least.

Baxter, the concierge, was ready with a mini tennis ball, after which he would chase with such zeal when it was thrown across the room. He would Tokyo Drift into a wall to get that thing mid-bounce.

The bellman, Thomas O'Malley, checked our bags.

Security was provided by Tinkerbell. Formidable, that one.

After a night good food and drink and the Carrot Top show (whose birthday is on our anniversary, by the way), we were off to a little outlet mall shopping (I know, how American) and then our hotel. The Aria has only been open for about 14 months or so, meaning that it's still mostly in good shape, and we scored a great deal to stay there. To get to the Aria's self park, you have to access it off of Las Vegas Blvd (most places you can access their self park decks off of the back roads running parallel to the Strip). As we drove past City Center (the complex in which Aria is located), I snapped this photo (I think this is Koolhaas' building, but I'm not sure).

After checking in, we had tapas and then headed off to see the "adult" Cirque du Soleil show, Zumanity. (Not for children or the prudish, that's for sure.) I snapped this photo just before the ushers got on my case about no photos in the theater at any time madame, are you from Oklahoma City or something?

Our room was fantastic. Even though we didn't look at the strip, we had a great view and amazing amenities. Even the bathroom felt futuristic--the toilet was in its own frosted glass enclosure.

[middle of the night--Pixie and Guy awake to the sound of loud sex next door]

Pixie: [groggily] Is that someone's TV?

Guy: [not moving] No, it's our neighbors getting it on. It's coming through the door between our rooms.

Pixie: Well, it's almost 2am: he can't be that good at this hour. She should get an Oscar.

The next morning, Guy went off to play poker (where he was one of two left at the table and split the pot with the other guy) and I went to the spa. The entry to the spa was amazing--I'll post more photos of it later. The black monoliths below are fountains--water slowly and barely audibly pours over them. Oh swoon!

My aesthetic reverie was broken by a personal trainer who nearly killed me while I went through a workout with him. (Yes, I got a personal trainer while on vacation. I'm not normal.) However, the workout made the stone massage and facial afterwards feel that much better.

The next morning was our departure day. Here are a few shots of the 24-hour dining establishment at the Aria. I know--their "everyday" cafe looks like a Michelin five-star establishment anywhere else. Those glass-looking cones are heavy plastic discs cut and stacked on each other. Of course, Guy and I scratched and picked at everything to see what it was made of. Being an architect is like being an alcoholic--even if you're not a practicing one, you're still one. You can't stop wanting to know what everything's made of and can we do this on a project at home?

Just an amazing space, one of several dozen amazing spaces in the Aria. Unlike the Amargosa Opera House and Motel, I think I could get Guy to go back to this one.

Monday Visual Inspiration: Scenes from a Vegas weekend, Part 1

We did a lot over our anniversary weekend, so in order to do it justice I really need multiple posts, rly sry.

First, we landed at the Vegas Airport (McCarran), which is designed like a casino--shiny, overwhelming, and with little natural light. This photo does not do justice to the chaos.

Then we drove about two hours to the Amargosa Opera House and Motel, which is on the edge of the Death Valley National Park and is supposed to be haunted. The rooms were spare and old school--no TV or phone--but okay overall. I would go back to them; Guy, not so much.

The skylight over our shower.

Note the original early-20th-century bathroom tile and fixtures.

Hand painted murals on the rooms' walls.

If a room wasn't occupied, the door was just left open so you could walk around in it. This room was supposed to be haunted. I stood in it for three minutes and didn't hear anything. I'm a pretty shitty ghost hunter.

The Amargosa Motel in the morning light.

Then it was off to Death Valley. After breakfast at the Furnace Creek Inn, we headed to the lowest point in the U.S.--the salt flats. Standing on them at 282 feet below sea level, you could look up to a mountain right next to the flats that was over 11,000 feet above sea level. Talk about varied terrain.

There's a sign on this rock face waaaaaay over your head that says "SEA LEVEL". How cool is that?

Salt, salt, and salt. It's effing amazing.

Me: Is the ground salty?

Guy: I dunno, let's check.

Me: [leans over and licks the ground] Crap, it is!

Guy: [holding a piece of salt in his hand, standing upright] You know, you could have picked up a piece and licked it like a normal adult.

Just before this part of the road along Artist's Drive, the sigh says "DIP". No kidding.

Natural Bridge Canyon.

Closer to the parking lot in Natural Bridge Canyon.

Along Mosaic Canyon's hike.

Also along Mosaic Canyon's hike. The rock was so smooth you could slide down it.

Happy 6th anniversary!

We're in Vegas, loving and living it up. We're actually spending tonight with our friend Scarlett, then tomorrow and Sunday nights are at the new Aria. Lots of photos and stories will follow upon our return. Word, my peeps!

Picture frame at a shop in historical St. Charles neighborhood in St. Louis, MO, at Thanksgiving 2010.