19 years ago...

we had a big party after a Saturday church service. Lots of friends and family were there to share a grand time. Then we went for a short weekend trip out of town so that we would be home again for Christmas, as all of our families were still around and we didn't want to miss the fun. We had our whole lives ahead of us.

Good times continue to be had by all. We have the rest of our lives ahead of us, and we're happy to be able to share that with the two freeloaders that live with us...

Inane football on Monday night

This is why I don't have a career in professional football, or any sort of football, for that matter:

Two seconds left in the half, Redskins-Giants on Monday night. It's an ass-kicking, plain and simple. Redskins have a chance to get on the board with a chip shot field goal. Easy-peasy, lemon squeezy. Three points is better than nothing.

So as they line up, in the middle of the snap, the holder (who is the punter) stands up and the ENTIRE line shifts to the far left side of the field (all except the TE, who assumes the responsibilities of snapping the ball). WOW!!! I'm such a sucka for gadget plays, I'm thinking that this will work and miraculously the 'Skins will regain the mo that they have so comically lost all game. It seems so obvious. Overload the left side, overwhelm the G-men, and suddenly we're on the board with 6 points. I'm all amped up, thinking that this will complete the trio of trick plays my boys in red have presented to us, the gullible fans, this season.

Only problem is that the very first gadget play, in the first game of the season, came against tonight's opponent, the New York Football Giants. So it's not as if they weren't expecting SOMETHING.

Back to the play. Commandant Coughlin decides to call a time-out, so as to make a minor adjustment. I would assume that he figured that his opponent would kick the FG, and we're off to the locker room.

But no. Redskins pull the same trick out of the bag, only this time the Giants line leaves a few guys back during the shift. Like 4 of them. Meanwhile, I'm thinking WOW!!! This thing could work! as the ball is snapped, the linemen, untouched, overwhelm the punter turned QB, who throws a desperation lame duck toward the end zone, only to have it intercepted and almost run back for a TD. That would have been a 10 point swing, a comedic touch.

Isn't the definition of insanity to do things the same way and expect a different result?

Timeless weekend

Weekends are usually reserved for running errands, attending mandatory events related to family (sports, social, or otherwise), and (hopefully) recharging after a typical suburban middle class drone 40 hour work week.

Unless it snows 20 inches.

Then the cars stay put, we sit around and spend time with each other, catch up on so many things that we're typically "too busy" to do, and have a lazy good old time. Time goes by the wayside; the days are much brighter due to the reflecting sun on the snow, and I quite possibly gained a few lbs., given the amount of food I consumed. Gotta keep the calories up to fuel the shoveling. I would insert the perfunctory photo of the snow covered landscape here, but we've all been bombarded by the endless accounts on the local news, so there's no need. I've never seen such happy meteorologists.

For its uniqueness, this was a great weekend.

Good words from the Hammer

Perhaps one of the highlights of my professional life happened earlier this week, when my former studio critic/professor, known fearfully as the Hammer, as in Sledgehammer, paid me a simple compliment about the work we're doing on a joint project.

Architecture school was rife with instances of cutting criticism of work that one labors over for a seemingly long time and then pins it up on a wall for judgment. Even the name of the process, the design "jury", conjures images of exposing oneself to frank comments with little regard for feelings or acknowledgement of hard work. Everyone knows that the process is difficult, and no one cares about the "suffering", since it really isn't. What counted was the final product, and more often than not it was pretty crappy, since we were all students.

So we developed a thick skin, and those who didn't either didn't finish architecture school or went on to become insufferable prima donnas. Lots of THOSE in our field, to be sure. The scant praise that many of us received, especially from the Hammer, grounded us well and ultimately served us in a good way. I like to remind others that our work is just Tab "K" in a development binder, a single piece of a multi-piece puzzle that is the development of a building within an urban fabric that has to be paid for somehow and approved politically and bureaucratically.

So a simple "you're doing a great job" from an 84 year old acclaimed modernist, on a project we're collaborating on, was a great way to begin one of the last weeks of a tough year.

The tangled web we weave

December brings many an evening of glad-handing and back-slapping with colleagues, competitors, clients, contractors, CAD jockeys, civil engineers (soft "c" there) and all other types of people beginning with the letter "c". The holiday parties abound, and there's some good munchies to be had at these shindigs.

So tonight I went to a 20th anniversary open house of a firm that we collaborated with on a major project last year. It was a beneficial relationship, as we were beholden to the design architect and did not have to worry about paying other engineering consultants, as we WERE a consultant as well. Unfortunately the project went by way of the economy earlier this year, and when its reiteration surfaced, most of us were left out in the cold as a result of the new partnerships forged and requisite financial re-arrangements.

The following run-on sentence describes just one of the tangled webs we weave, thusly:

Last year we joined forces with an architecture firm that needed manpower to complete a large senior housing and multifamily housing apartment project with a public agency that had to demonstrate to the State that they had financing to make this thing happen so they commissioned us to complete the construction documents in such a way that it was like putting the cart before the horse (which it was) and after a long fall/winter of producing documents the rug was pulled out from under us as the economy went south and the public agency needed to find another development partner to make the deal work (which they did) although it did not include the original design team, as a matter of fact the team chosen was a client that I actually had an active project with and they chose one of our competitors to redesign the project leaving me with that feeling of a knife in buried to the hilt in between my shoulder blades that generated the question "WHY?" which will never be answered but I don't care anymore as life is too short and I have moved on and in the meantime the architect who we collaborated with is now working closely with a consultant who once worked closely with my business partner on other projects and is now going in a different direction and I don't know if there is any subtext to that (there probably is--isn't there always?) and in the meantime I rushed off to my son's band concert where I saw a construction manager who locks horns with my business partner on a fairly regular basis but is such a good guy that I try to keep work separate from socializing, though that's often unavoidable, so the upshot of all of this is that I get to see all the players at these parties and we all make nice, despite some awkward moments and suppressions of things we think but don't say.

I'm good at making nice. It's gotten me far.

Capital Cross 2009

This will be short.

I first got hooked on CX watching this race, 5 or 6 years ago. The next season I put together a 'cross rig and did Charm City and this one, and cyclocross is now the thing I do.

Unless I'm not that into it.

This past Sunday being the last race of the season (exceptin' fer Cross My Heart on Super Bowl Sunday), but that's technically "next year", I dutifully attended this one knowing that my legions of fans would be there, and who am I to disappoint? As I went to registration to get my number, I saw 2 people go down hard in the icy parking lot, riding no faster than I was walking. I sidled up to the friendly (but cold) volunteer, handed over my license, and said, with a smile, "Just put me down for DNF. It'll save everyone some time." So she told me not to sign my release and asked her fellow volunteers just how to register a known result for a registrant who somehow could foresee this result. "Just a joke" I said. She didn't laugh, but then again she was stuck registering a bunch of certifiable loons who thought that "racing" in these "conditions" would be "fun".

The course was actually much more rideable than the parking lot, and after kitting up and pinning up I pre-rode through the muck, learned which lines to pick through corners, and familiarized myself with a course I've raced at least 3 times in the last few years, although under entirely different conditions.

It didn't do much good, as in the middle of the first lap I found myself off of the beaten track on a fast, icy section and went down, not so hard that it hurt but with such little control that I found myself oversteering every turn afterwards and being tentative in places I usually let rip. After almost going down again on a benign spot near the start/finish I just packed it in. Officially DNF, first race didn't finish this year. My mind was not willing, and in all honesty neither was the body. Here's a little taste of the fun:

Special thanks to Bill, who has been filming this fine stuff all season. My crash was almost in the same exact spot as that shown in the lower left corner at about 4:43 of the video, by the guy in blue, though I was already quite a bit behind Bill at this point. Don't quite know what I was thinking.

And of course, thanks to my friends who show up to watch us slog on through. And of course, my boys who I see on the odd Sundays in the fall--Kemal, Neil, Jeff, Paul, Jim, Steve, and everyone else. It's always a great time, even when it's not.

Next year is just around the corner...

Speaking Spanish to an Italian...

I had one of those experiences this week conversing with an engineer about emergency generators, you know, the discussion about something you just know a little bit about with someone who knows every detail about the subject. You sort of understand, but you don't really, so you go for the big picture, but the engineer doesn't GET the big picture, as the details are what are important to them. So we end up talking at cross purposes sometimes, and simple conversations can turn difficult.

In the late spring I joined a group of musicians to jam with various stringed instruments. As I am a virtuoso with all of three chords, I usually disappear into the background pretty easily and just try to strum along, knowing that my hopeless technical deficiencies will be easily covered by the group and my somewhat healthy sense of rhythm. The only problem was that this group was much more of the folk music variety, and people were showing up with dobroes and lap steel guitars and zithers and one two-stringed thing that I had never seen nor heard before. The only other guitar in the room was a friendly dude who could finger and flat pick like nobody's business, and he talked to me about tuning down and other things I just don't really know. We weren't even through half a song when I packed it in. So some days you hear a language which sounds somewhat familiar but you just don't really understand what's being said.

I know this has nothing to do with this, but this was really freaky a coupla nights ago--while our boy Alex was getting suspended by the NHL for an inopportune knee on knee hit, two Panther teammates had an accidental altercation...