Operation Grow Something Part 4: Tomatoes Gone Wild (Too Hot for HGTV)

The porch is doing very well overall, I must say. The garden started in earnest over the last weekend in May, and here it is, about 7 weeks later, and things are looking very green. While my cilantro has indeed given up the ghost, the oregano is firing on all cylinders. The lettuce and spinach have slowed a bit in their growth, but they're still not disappointing. My kung pao pepper plants have sprouted flowers--can peppers be far behind?--and even my basil plant has done well enough that I was able to snip off some leaves and add them to a chicken sandwich last week. Even my ornamentals are thriving, save for a few woolly thymes and little purple flowers that have followed the cilantro across the River Styx.

The tomatoes, I should add, have gone mental.

That's a Grape tomato plant on the left and a Roma on the right. Or maybe I have that backwards. I haven't looked at the little tags lately. At any rate, they've gone feed-me-Seymour out here on the east side. They're at least 30" high now, whereas they are about 8"-10" high on May 30. Wee 'maters have even begun to grow on them.

Guy asked me why I was even growing tomatoes. "You don't really like them," was his comment. "You hardly scoop them onto your tortilla chips when you have salsa."

"True," I replied, "but I just can't think of anything better to grow than tomatoes, especially in containers forty feet in the air. Besides, once the lettuce and spinach take hold, we'll have some badass salads up in here."

Guy grimaced at the thought of forced salad consumption. "Coudn't you find any mac-n-cheese plants at the nursery?"

I shook my head. "They don't do well in containers."

Guy read in the paper today that the average meal on an American table is trucked or shipped about 1,500 miles. Holy flurking snit. I think that's a lot of miles for a tomato, a handful of greens, a breast of chicken. If you build a building according to present LEED standards, credit is given if all your materials to build the building come from less than 500 miles away. How can we make that a standard for buildings but not for our food? Part of taking care of the earth may mean that we don't get Italian marble on our condo building in Denver. It might also mean that we don't get eight kinds of apples in the dead of winter. My industry and the firm at which I'm employed are doing our best to encourage environmentally-conscious design and construction products and practices. While that is to be commended, is it meaningful if I use no-VOC carpet in my designs and then go to the grocery store and buy lettuce from California and apples from New Zealand?

Recently here in Denver, Bike To Work Day was a big success, and it sure got a lot of people out of their cars and onto their bikes or even public transit. In our office, Wanda was in everyone's grill about biking to work, rather gon from being enthusiastic to becoming the Bike Nazi. She got a little in my grill a few days before the event: "Aren't you gonna bike to work on Wednesday?"

I turned to her and looked her in the eye, trying not to glare. "I carpool with my husband every single workday of the year in a car that get 30 mpg in the city on a drive that's less than 3 miles each way," I replied. "And on the weekends, I walk to the grocery store and then to the farmer's market, which is 2 miles each way. I recycle half my garbage, and every light in our hose is a CFL. Every day is Earth Day for Guy and me."

I didn't even mention that I'm growing tomatoes. If Wanda's nice, she can have some when they ripen.

In case of emergency, break glass...then wait

I've been doing so much fire-fighting lately, I should have my own calendar. I spent yesterday and today helping out Mickey on a 95% CD deadline. Evidently, his youthful intern had been working til midnight for several days in a row, and there were still some things that needed to be done that required the eyes of a licensed architect--things like what products are required in a wall section made of stucco or are the equipment pieces being shown in the interior elevations. Then this afternoon, I whipped up a ceiling plan for Prudence so she could have a plan to take to a 9am meeting tomorrow. Last week I helped the interiors gals whip out some drawings for a pricing set deadline as well. Deadlines make my day go faster, but then there's the inevitable slowdown afterwards. I wanted to work through lunch today to make up for having to take an extra long lunch yesterday to go run some errands and make some appointments, but I simply didn't have the work to do to make it possible. Instead, I went to lunch with Norman and Elliot, which I haven't done in a while. Norman and Elliot are a lot like Statler and Waldorf, except they're both in their late-30s and Elliot's probably a foot taller than Norman. Either way, I get a lift from their smartassiveness and banter--it's like they give each other verbal wedgies:

Elliot: Are we going to the Morning Diner again? Shouldn't be too crowded on a Thursday with Pixie in our group.
Norman: Sounds good. Pix, you ready?
Me: Jesus God, I can't get this sheet file to work right.
Norman: [puts on glasses and peers at my screen] Looks like some of Elliot's handiwork.
Elliot: Why, 'cuz it kicks ass?!
Norman: No, because it's fucked up beyond repair.
Elliot: How'z about you kiss my ass, Norm?
Norman: Is that a come-on?
Elliot: I'm not your type; I'm not inflatable. Pixie, would you stop laughing in the floor and come on? You're our ticket into Morning Diner.

Evidently, the guy who runs Tha Diner, as we at Design Associates call it, recognizes me best out of all the DA employees who frequent the place, and when I come along we get seated really quickly, sometimes ahead of people who were a little ahead of us. Norman commented that I'm like a $20 bill to the maitre d', except that you don't have to actually give me away. I retorted that I also don't have to be passed under the table, which made Elliot do a spit-take on his soda.

While at lunch, we chatted about the tiresome nature of not being busy enough. I lamented about the scattered nature of my daily tasks these days, and Norman chortled. "That's been the past year for me," he replied. "I mean, I've had work to do, but it's been a one-room radiology equipment project here, a two room renovation there, nothing huge. I've been doing the kind of work that, if I had staff working for me, they'd be doing it. But if I handed this stuff off, what the hell would I do?"

"And I feel so exhausted at the end of the day!" I remarked, "And I know I haven't really done anything!" Norman and Elliot seconded that emotion. Being underemployed is exhausting, just in a different way than being overemployed. I felt bad for the young intern working on that project with Mickey today. He's been bored out of his mind for the past month while the project has been VE'd into oblivion, and now suddenly he's working 16 hours a day.

Really though, that's the nature of architecture. It's something of a feast-or-famine business. In fall of 2005 and the first half of 2006, I worked no less than 56 hours a week every week. While Wheatlands was getting built, I then worked a good 40-44 hours a week, and as it wrapped up in late spring of 2007, I transitioned to working on MHRC for Jann and was still a steady-but-intense 40 or so. As MHRC has wrapped up for now, I'm scrambling to stay occupied. While it makes me crazy not to be steadily busy, other managers get to exhale when they find out that a competent employee is completely available to help them with any task, large or small.

I guess I don't mind overall. It's better than being unemployed.

Have mouse, will travel

You may have noticed a dearth of architecture-related posts on WAD here lately. That's because I've been living up to the title of this blog lately: drinking. Okay, I'm kidding. But don't tempt me.

Work has been slow. To keep me occupied, Jann and Howie have been sharing me to work with anyone on any and everything possible. A few days ago, I helped Prudence, the head of interiors, draw up some plans she as-builted in the field, and I helped one of her gals set up a set of drawings in the new software. A day later, I looked up some code issues for a small tenant finish suite for another project team. Last week, I helped Jann tweak a narrative and a floor plan for some possible work at MHRC. Earlier this week, I was helping another associate in the office review and research some of our typical details and notes sheets that we include in every drawing set. This afternoon and tomorrow, I'm helping Mickey and his team work on a drawing set that's going out tomorrow for final coordination. I feel like a hired gunslinger--well, mouseslinger--traveling from team to team to help them with whatever problem they have.

To be sure, I'm very appreciative of the higher-ups trying to keep me busy, ergo employed. But doing lots of little stuff means that I often am not sure what I'm doing from one day to the next, and I'm frequently given tasks that take me less time than I have to do it. Hence, I'm fiddling around or trying to make a 6-hour task s-t-r-e-t-c-h into 8 hours. Added to that kind of stress is the stress of doing jobs that aren't yours. While I do my best on every task I'm given, because after all one's work is one's signature on everything, it's hard to get really into something that you're not really going to get into for more than a few hours. So, combine having to stretch tasks out with not feeling super invested on anything, and I find myself unable to concentrate or just finish a task in the time I know that it usually takes me to do something. I'm having problems just focusing. I feel a little scatterbrained and flighty, and I find myself totally worn out at the end of the day, even though I know I didn't really "work hard."

So, I'm trying to find other things to keep my enthusiasm up until a real project comes up. i mean, I usually have to do this sort of thing where I work on just one project for several months, then I work on lots of little projects for a few months. I'm ready for something to sink my teeth into long-term.

Feh. Just...feh.

Operation Grow Something, Part 3

It’s been a month since I started the garden on the porch (what I call my balcony—as a Southerner, I can’t think of any outdoor space as anything but a patio or porch). Things are mostly looking good, as you can see in the photo above. Most new and existing plants have taken well to their new abode, or at the very least haven’t been harmed.

The boxwood (foreground) has grown some straggly new leaves/branches and will need pruning into a proper topiary shape soon. I can’t decide if it should get a little bigger, or if I should keep it at this size for now. Its pot will allow it to grow a little, I made sure of that. The tomatoes (midground) have more than doubled in size, and the farther one, a Roma plant, has a wee green fruit on it. I’m so excited at the thought of real tomatoes on my deck I have my eyes crossed, but lawdy do them plants drink some water. If I skip a day watering, I probably pour a gallon or two of water in that Earth Box to get it back up to speed. I shudder at what’s gonna happen when I’m gone for a couple of days over the 4th of July weekend to St. Louis. Meanwhile, the McKay’s White (background) is blooming a great deal, and I couldn’t be more pleased. I was worried about her when I brought her out here, and she did wilt a bit as she got used to the balcony. I’ll probably have to pull her in towards the building while we’re gone in case there’s a windstorm. Don’t want it to beat the snot out of her just as she’s thriving.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the balcony against the building, my herbs and container arrangement are showing mixed results. The container on the ground has some little blue and purple flowers in them surrounded by some wooly thyme. Looks like two of the flowering plants are okay, one is failing, and the fourth has flatlined. One or two of the wooly thymes have coded as well. Up on the brown table, the herbs and peppers are doing pretty decently, but the cilantro (spindly on the left) is in a continual battle against aphids. I sprayed it twice with some probably-not-okay-for-eating bug/aphid spray, but at this point it’s not about edibility but pride. The fucking aphids are not taking any plant of mine. I’ve had to battle them on and off for the English ivy, and I had to literally wipe each leaf of my arboricola (nearest foreground left in the very top photo) to save it. I have a vendetta against aphids the way Frank Gehry appears to have a vendetta against buildings that keep out rain. Anyway, I’ll probably have to bring the cilantro indoors while we’re gone, as it seems to suffer the most if I skip a day watering.

The garden delights more fauna than just humans, however. Sunday morning, Hazel was hunkered down in the kitchen floor, meow-barking at something outside….

What in the…?
Well, I’ll be.

Hazel assured me that she could get that bird if I’d just let her outside, but I decided not to give her the chance.

A good question/quandary

WAD commenter Amy B (whom I think is an architect on the East Coast? Correct me if I'm wrong, sista) made the observation that Mikhail asking for just an interview and tour of a firm even if they're not hiring is good self-marketing. On the one hand, I'm there. It's good to learn about other firms, and it's good to give a firm a positive face and name that they can call on when things get popping again. Also, as Amy B observed, maybe Mikhail will be relaxed since the pressure's off, and he may make an even better impression, which will bode well when they need to hire again.

At the same time, I wonder: isn't that just one more person calling and bugging a firm in a shitty economy? Firms all over Denver and the Front Range are laying folks off, especially interns. Mikhail told me that lots of his friends from college are getting laid off. And I'm not surprised, really; interns are easy to replace, no offense. There's a lot of them coming out of school, and they don't all stay in the profession. Architecture schools start with a class of about 100 kids and whittle it down to about 40 or 50, if they're lucky. And the profession does the same thing. So, I wonder if Mikhail calls on a firm in this economy, will they see him as bugging them?

Maybe it's the woman in me that feels like any attempt at contacting others is "bothering" them. Just this week, I was trying to put together a few more outlines for my next few Intern 101 seminars on how we get business, and I forwarded them to our new head of marketing, Veronica, and our only woman partner at DA, Audrey. Both Veronica and Audrey gave me a lot of good advice on ideas and things to cover in the seminars and offered to help, but I guess I didn't fully understand what "help" meant. After I emailed my outlines, Veronica came by my desk and asked if I was planning to do the presentations myself.

I said, "Well, it'd be better if someone else spoke, like you or Alex or Howie or Audrey, but I'm willing to do it if no one's schedule allows." She finally got it out of me that I hadn't asked anyone else to help because a) I was trying to get my thoughts together, and b) I didn't want to add more to others' workload. Veronica's usually stern look softened a bit. "Pixie, I said I'd help you, perhaps I wasn't very clear. But I agreed to help you with this," she said. Just then, Audrey walked up and said, "Perfect! You two are here! Hey, why don't we all go to lunch this week and brainstorm how to do the next two or three Intern 101 seminars?"

Holy shitsky. Did a partner just ask me to lunch?

So, after a couple of morning meetings, we three women are off to lunch to discuss the path of the next few seminars. And I could have had this done and put together already if I'd gathered my courage to just ask people to help me. Alas, I was hesitant because I was afraid of being a burden. However, as Kellye said when I related the story to him, he said, "You know, you can't be responsible for other people's schedules. Just ask and let them be responsible for their schedule."

This is all stuff I know. I just forget sometimes and get all chickenshit.

Looking for work in all the wrong places

Recently, I've been helping a former Design Associates employee, Mikhail, get his cover letter and resume in shape for looking for jobs. Looking for jobs in this economy is hard, but especially in my field it can be brutal for interns with only a couple years' experience. Simply put and with all due respect, interns are pretty easy to come by. Now, good interns? Those are harder to find. Mikhail has enthusiasm, drive, initiative...and not a lot of good experience. I mean, he had some good experiences, but he kept getting paired with bad managers, folks who either didn't want to or just weren't able to give him the teaching and directing he needed. So, when things got slow, he was gone from DA.

I had to help him clean up his resume and cover letter, mostly of my own initiative. I don't think our youth have been taught how to really put one of these together. First of all, he's barely in his mid-twenties, and he has a two page resume. Um, no. Unless you've been to the moon, cured cancer, and caught Saddam Hussein, you shouldn't have a two-page resume when you're 25. I gave his some tips on how to edit his pre-DA experience so that it would all fit and be concise and interesting/eye-catching.

Next, I had to clean up his cover letter. In its one paragraph, he tells the prospective client what he's looking for: experience in yadda yadda so on and so forth. Again, umm, no. In a shitty economy, you are not calling the shots, they are. You have to tell them how you can help them, why they should hire you over all the other schmoes sending them letters. Be direct and confident, but again, you're selling your services, not buying a place to get experience (even though that's what you do).

Finally, I had to clarify for him both on the phone and in my return email to him that you never, never, never work for free. In his cover letter, he asked to come tour an office even if the company wasn't hiring, but I'm of the opinion that you're only sending your resume to firms that have posted somewhere that they're looking for help. Otherwise, don't bug them. Furthermore, don't list in your email, cover letter, anywhere that you're willing to work for free for a while. If being unemployed is driving you that crazy, then get a job at Starbucks or REI or something. But don't ever, ever, ever give away your skills for free to a for-profit firm. It's not just about how you went to school for a long-ass time to do what you're doing, but it's also about the culture of non-payment and underpayment that inhabits architecture. We have a long history of undercharging for our services, and it does no one in our profession any good to play the starving artist card. It's bullshit. Get paid to do what you do. If the prostitutes on Colfax Avenue won't do it for free, neither should you.

My love/hate relationship with Brad Pitt

Nothing bugs me like famous people trying to co-opt my coolness. Take Brad Pitt. He grew up in Springfield, Missouri and went to the Missouri School of Journalism at the University of Missouri–Columbia. Word has it his focus was in advertising, and he left a few classes shy of earning his degree. Since then, he has enjoyed a remarkable career in acting and even some film producing. Yet according to his Wikipedia profile, he's a "knowledgeable fan of architecture." IMDB.com quotes him as saying, "I'd like to design something like a city or a museum. I want to do something hands on rather than just play golf which is the sport of the religious right." Supposedly, he once said, "If I hadn't been an actor, I would have been an architect." Really? Is that why you majored in journalism and didn't even finish school? You wouldn't have lasted a day in architecture school, my well-cheekboned friend.


He was given a tour of Frank Gehry's office along with Angelina Jolie, displaying her first Pitt-caused baby bump, and even told Vanity Fair that he respected Frank Gehry a great deal. He even had Gehry design a wine cellar for him and then-wife Jennifer Aniston. (According to some sources, he had a small apprenticeship at Gehry's studio, but reports conflict. Besides, y'all already know how I feel about Frank Gehry.) He's a Frank Lloyd Wright fan, and celebrated his 43rd birthday at Wright's Fallingwater. The latest word is that he's now investing in a sustainable/eco-friendly five-star resort in Dubai, saying that "architecture has always been [his] passion." Evidently, so is investing in a country charging us over $100 a barrel for oil.

More evidently, if you're a famous actor, all you have to do is call up a famous architect or super-rich developer, and you can go hang out with them. And while you're hanging out, hopefully some of the mysterious brilliant/creative/highbrow cache from the starchitect or developer will rub off on you, and you'll be cooler, or smarter, or whatever adjective allows you to leave Springfield, Missouri in the dust.


Everyone thinks architects are cooler than they are. And if they can't stomach the work and tenacity and energy it takes to be one, they'll just hang out with one, and everyone will think they're cool. Shame on you, Brad Pitt, I think to myself when I see him in photos with famous starchitects like this:

And yet...

Pitt's Make It Right Project--designed to build 150 homes in NOLA's poor-and-devastated Lower 9th Ward through donations of money and architect's efforts and to use sustainable design technologies and design and construction practices--is arguably doing more for Katrina's homeless than all of FEMA in the past two years. (Denver comic and veterinarian Dr. Kevin Fitzgerald recently said, "I'm beginning to think that FEMA stands for 'Forget Everything, Move Away'.") I have to give him props for promoting green design and construction, no matter where it's happening. Remember, ten years ago, hybrid cars and solar energy were high-falutin' tree-hugging concepts. Now, an increase in demand combined with some pretty nice tax breaks (here in Colorado, anyway), these technologies are becoming rather affordable and downright attractive.

I also have to give him mad props for the story Gehry was telling about the above photo. He told Newsweek that he didn't know who took that photo, and he only met Brad for a few minutes and that Brad hasn't even called since he visited the office. So Brad loves and leaves starchitects? Nah, probably he left Gehry for the same reason he supposedly left Jennifer Aniston--they were both boring sticks-in-the-mud. While Gehry may have a sense of humor about himself enough to be on the Simpsons, I nearly chewed my leg off to get away while watching part of the documentary about him, Sketches of Frank Gehry. That shit shoulda been called Everyone Should Whack Me Off While I Show You How Brilliant I Am. I would have named it Wonder How This DVD Would Sound In a Wheat Thresher, but mercifully the Netflix DVD of it was messed up and kept hanging up and skipping, so we cut it off after about half an hour. Pitt probably realized that Gehry's joy is not in making art that people can use and enjoy, but in building stuff that speaks of his own grandiose notion of how buildings should look. Run, Brad, run!

And I do have to give Pitt some credit for his own modesty, such as this quote from the 10/13/97 issue of Time magazine after the release of Seven Years In Tibet: "You shouldn't speak until you know what you're talking about. That's why I get uncomfortable with interviews. Reporters ask me what I feel China should do about Tibet. Who cares what I think China should do? I'm a f---ing actor! They hand me a script. I act. I'm here for entertainment. Basically, when you whittle everything away, I'm a grown man who puts on makeup." So, while he's using his fame to get houses built in New Orleans, he's acknowledging that he's hardly a policy maker, and that we all need to take the words of famous people with a grain of salt and a large margarita. According to comic Brett Butler, who once showed her house (then for sale) to Pitt and Aniston, she described the scene as if Aniston was appalled by any trace of humor, and Pitt was cracking up the whole time, especially when he asked what she looked at with a telescope in her living room, and she replied, "Oh, stars, you know. Joan Collins lives across the lake and I watch her get undressed."

So, yet again, I'm left with mixed feelings about Brad Pitt. I don't appreciate him buying his way into the world that I've worked damn hard to be a part of, but I appreciate his endeavors to share that with everyone and to use his fame and interests to help those less fortunate. So, for now, I can't cast him into my mass grave with Paris Hilton and Whitney and Bobby. For now.