Heather Cox

This one is for you Heather…

For those of you who don’t know, Heather Cox is one of the final 24 contestants on American Idol as of tonight.  Heather is a friend of mine from home.  I met her through her older sister, Cara.  I worked with Heather for about 2 years at Speedy Chef in Elkin… that’s where all of us cool people work!  HAHA!

I’d just like to say good luck to you Heather.  You rock so much.  Congrats!!!  Put Jonesville on the map girl!

Love ya!

And to all of you American people… you had better be voting for her!!!

NEW!!! Axe Car Spray (don't use it!)

I figure this deserves a mid-week entry…

I just got my car back on Friday.  Two Friday’s before I was in an accident on 77, which did about $1,500 worth of damage to my car.  They replaced the bumper and had to repair the left quarter panel.  

Yesterday, Cathy and I decide to go grab some dinner between Studio and her 7pm class.  So we get started, exit the campus and make a left on Mallard Green… make it to the stop light which is RED… and I stop, but the girl behind me decides that she’d rather not do so this particular day.  Thus, I’m left with a brand new bumper with a crack in it and two busted reflectors.  

Surprisingly as pissed as you would think I’d be… I just laughed about the situation.  How often does something like this happen to a person???  Will delightfully pointed out my insight of things coming in three’s for me… I can only imagine what’s going to happen next to my poor little car.  

So after the girl hits me… we both get out and she comes up to me all apologetically.  Normally I’d be so against not calling the police… but as we all know… women have a way with tears.  She seemed sincere and wanted to avoid insurance issues due to several apparent speeding tickets… and since I know what that is like… I figured I’d be nice and cut her a break – I may need the favor paid back to me the way my luck is going.

But other than that yesterday was pretty good I suppose.  I did finally get an email back from the guy at Entasis wanting to set up an interview, which I’m really excited about.  24 was amazing as always last night, and I got about half the reading done for this week for Urban Theory.  Tonight I’m off to see my boy for Valentines day!

Ohh, and on a funny note… this was Sarah’s response to learning about the new accident…

Boskof: dude!  do not use axe body spray on your car!

Thought that was pretty hilarious!!!

Will You Be My Valentine?

I’m hoping you read this sometime soon…

I’ve never really asked anyone to be my Valentine before. I’ve had Valentine’s in the past – but none of them really wanted. So, I thought I’d try and make this a traditional year for us…

Will you be my Valentine???

If You Were My Valentine

If you were my valentine

I'd search the endless skies

to find the perfect starlight

that would compliment your eyes

and keep it in a wishing well

created just for you

and filled with my desires

to make all your dreams come true

if you were my valentine

I'd find the softest rose

to gently brush against

those sweetest lips, the angels chose

my heart is like a flower

craving for your morning kiss

mere words cannot pay homage

to a passion such as this

if you were my valentine

I'd treasure every day

the arms that open to me

and the tender words you say

I can't imagine dreaming of another soul so sweet

for, if your were my valentine

my life would be complete...

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY WILL. I LOVE YOU BABE!

What a weekend...

What a weekend…

So Friday I finally got my car back… YAY!!!  Cathy rode with me up to Lake Norman to pick it up.  I ended up having to go ahead and get 3 new tires, an alignment, and the transmission fluid done, which totaled a little over $800.00.  Kind of unexpected, but it needed to be done so… I don’t have to think about that stuff at least till the car is paid for again.  

Afterwards we headed down to Birkdale Village and had dinner.  YUM!  We ate at Red Rock Café and it was great!  I had a filet mignon served with garlic mashed potatoes and fresh stemmed green beans… Cathy had the same thing only she added a crab cake.  We had some calamari for an appetizer, a bottle of wine, and banana foster cheesecake for dessert.  Then I hung out with a friend for a bit – watched my favorite movie (Life as a House) and then some Golden Girls, Family Guy and Futurama.

Saturday I went down on Central with Cathy to do some research for her project.  Then we wert back to her place… she cooked all afternoon… and Pam and Melissa came down.  Then Will came down and we all played Battle of the Sexes.  It was quite entertaining.  

That night Jason Slatinsky was house sitting for Betsy West – the chair of instruction for the College of Architecture.  So – as Cathy likes to call him – going against his Gold Child character he decided to throw a party at her house.  It was mostly grad students – most of whom I don’t know so I felt out of place – but compared to past grad parties this one was great.  I’m sure it had something to do with the fact that the group I went with (Cathy, Pam, Melissa, and Will) made up about 1/3rd of the party.  HAHA!  But it was definitely a good time.  Chris Weiczorek and Robin Koch were there… but that’s about it for 5th year students.  

Robin and I recalled the great parties that I used to throw back in 2nd and 3rd year.  They were so much fun… I guess because I was really good friends with the majority of people who came… and Jay and Chris’s band would play.  I really do miss getting to do stuff like that.  I’ve got a feeling I’m going to miss college life a lot – despite how much I say that I’m tired of it.  

The girls decided they wanted to go downtown to a club so Will and I headed back to the apartment and went to bed.  I was pretty exhausted; we decided to lie around till about 12 this morning.  

I had a meeting at the library at 2 for my Urban Theories class.  That was fairly productive.  It’s going to take a while to crank the rest of this stuff out.  It’s a pretty intensive project.  

Now it’s a little after 7pm and I’m at Jenkins and Peer getting some things finished from last week for Kevin.  I have a feeling this week is very much going to suck!  I have a review on Friday that’s going to take a lot of preparing for.  I have code reviews on Tuesday and a meeting tomorrow around 2 for my independent study.  So I must get back to work so I can get home and do some reading.

Weekend Review

And now for the weekend update…

Friday-

After an exhausting week…filled with way too much work besides school…I traveled up to Wake Forest for my first ever Drag Queen Show.  I can’t say that I would have gone under normal circumstances, but since it was to support the mostest awesomest person in the entire world - of course I couldn’t turn that opportunity down.  I was most impressed with the event, however.  I don’t know why, but doing stereotypical gay things are just not situations that I seek to place myself in.  If given the option to go to a straight club or a gay one, I would most definitely pick the straight club.  Shock is good for everyone though… not that I was in shock… it’s just good to step outside the box occasionally… to do something most untypical of yourself.  Sometimes you even find that you enjoy the things that you think you might otherwise not.

The show itself was great.  Apparently there were Queens from all over the state, some of them from Charlotte… and they were the top.  Performances ranged from Celine Dion, to Cher, to Reba… haha!  Costumes, in my opinion… Cher was tops.  But what gay guy doesn’t like Cher???

Saturday-

For the most part was really awkward.  I had planned all week on going to a birthday party for Suzanne.  She’d made special steps to only invite Kiffin and I to the party because for the most part it was a family event.  I called to find out what time the party was, but never heard back from Suzanne.  I’ve tried calling Kiffin’s cell all weekend and my phone just cuts off.  Hopefully I’ll figure out what’s going on today in studio when I go for the 1pm meeting… that I’m pretty excited about actually… (LOL… right Cathy?).  

Other than that I did a lot of reading for my Urban Theories class.  This class I’m still undecided on.  We are reading a lot about market effects dealing with urban planning – translation: it’s a lot of boring shit about stuff I’m totally uninterested in.  I understand the need for such investigation I suppose, but I don’t think it so much belongs in a theory class.  We should be investigating past-present social issues in my opinion – how space affects the way that people function in society… how we have changed the space we set aside for the public in the past 100 years and make comparisons with other countries.  One point I brought up in class the other day deals with the theories behind comprehensive planning.  Comprehensive planning doesn’t seem to hold a leg in today’s economy in my opinion.  The idea of putting a plan out there for a city to follow for the next 20-30-50 years seems preposterous.  The way that technology changes make it pointless, besides that fact that population prediction and such are merely that (PREDICTIONS!!!).

It is my opinion that Master Plans should be most general but strictly enforced.  They should discuss things like how to acquire general green space, the amount of new property for residential, office, etc, public transportation issues, etc.  Ultimately the city is only going to invest money in these things when it’s available.  Furthermore, theories change!  What we practice today is basically traditional planning theories developed in Europe, which oddly enough is now being called ‘NEW’ Urbanism.  They set standards and zoning regulations that place buildings on the street edge instead of allowing parking lots to dominate the areas adjacent to the road.

Basically, when automobiles took over the word, the pedestrian lost the battle.  Instead of building for people, we built for the car.  We design buildings that can be seen from the highway and signage that can be read while traveling at 70mph.  We lost all attention to how people react with building, place, and space.  We are now realizing that we messed up, and to fix it, we are going back to previous generations of planning and calling it new.  I’m not certain that this is an appropriate answer.  People are not the same.  We don’t act the same in society.  I think this directly is a response to the types of spaces that have been built since the automobile.  If you go to Europe for instance, the social context there is dramatically different.  People actually interact with one another.  I’ve never been, but that’s why people enjoy going to these cites.

Technology has changed the way that we function in society.  Cell phones, iPods, portable handheld computers… all of these devices that we have invented to give us complete access to the world at any moment in time, ultimately are reducing how we interact with the world.  Going back to traditional planning I don’t feel is a mistake for the time being.  I do question the field’s apparent apathetic approach.  We should be constructing our ideas in a new way, one that reflects the here and now.

This is also my argument in architecture.  WE SHOULD NOT BUILD A HOUSE TO LOOK AS THOUGH IT WAS BUILT 100 YEARS AGO!  And you society idiots that tell us Architects how we should do our job – well, you should all just die!  LOL!  Just imagine for a second going to the doctors office and telling the doctor, “No, please don’t use the most up-to-date technology in performing my operation.  I’d must rather you use traditional forms of medicine practiced 100 years ago.”  That simply wouldn’t happen.  Architecture should be the same.  You are coming to us for our services, our understandings of the world.  The building materials and technology offered to us are our surgical tools to assemble in meaningful ways such that you might perceive or understand the world in ways you had never thought about before.

Wow… that became a long little sidetrack.

Sunday-

After sleeping in : ) all morning, I finally made myself get out and do something errands that I’d needed to do all last week.  Then I went and hung out with some friends on campus and finally ended up at Kate’s.  We went to Northlake and spent some money… got some beverages to engage in super bowl activities … and spiced up the night a bit.  LOL!  I must say Kate and I do have a way of making for an interesting evening.  I also had a wonderful conversation on the computer with Will last night.  I think we both let go of some things we’d wanted to say.  It was so awesome.  

Monday-
After returning to my place at 5am… I showered and headed to Lake Norman to drop off the car and have it repaired from the accident.  They anticipate 5 days in the shop… and the loaner… non other than a PT Cruiser.  LOL.  I made it to work a little before 9… traffic coming from the Huntersville and Lake Norman exits is insane in the mornings.  And so now I sit here at the desk preparing for another week of Jenkins Peer and school.

Let the games begin…

  

Survivors

ALL THE KIDSWHO SURVIVED the 1930's 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's !!
 
First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant.They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes. Then after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-based paints. We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when werode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.
 
As infants & children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, booster seats, seat belts or air bags.Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.
 
We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank koolade made with sugar, but we weren't overweight because . .. WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING! We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back  when the streetlights came on.
 
No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride downthe hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem. We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 150 channels on cable, no video movies or DVD's, no surround-sound or CD's, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or chat rooms..........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found  them! We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were nolawsuits from these accidents. We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever. We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays,made up games with sticks and tennis balls and, although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rangthe bell, or just walked in and talked to them! Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!! The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law! These generations have produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever! The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TODEAL WITH IT ALL! If YOU are one of them . .. . CONGRATULATIONS! You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up askids, before the lawyers and the government regulated so much of our lives for our own good. And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave (and lucky) their parents were. Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it?