D E S I G N /// ck

in 12 easy lessons!

The hangers are working hard and the drywall finisher should start this week. I'm hoping it's all done by the end of the weekend. It's very exciting.

I found this when I was taking pictures for a project downtown. It's the back of a sign on an old 1930s parking garage. I really like the rust patterns.

Friday night I am riding my bike home from work. My wife has asked me to pick up a paper for her, so she can look at job advertisements. After a futile search for a paper stand at Kroghetto, I roll into the Pilot down the street from my place. After noting the irony of riding a bike into a gas station, I "park" and walk in.

The place is jumping! Apparently Friday night = gas station in my neighborhood. There was a line to the door at the second cashier, but only one woman at the first. I get in line behind her and soon find out why no one was there.

First I notice Kadeisha's (as I started calling her in my head) bleached blonde hair and ear full of jewelry. I count her earrings carefully three times (10) because she is buying lottery tickets (10) and taking her sweet time. Now that we have a state lottery, they've made up dozens of little games to play, most of which involve scratching off that silver skin that conceals the numbers to fortune, or bankruptcy. Kadeisha is cherry picking her games and playing them slowly (at the counter) with relish. She carefully considers each card like tarot reader, trying to sense with her fingers which will change her life. I watch, as she has the most exciting time of her week.

After waiting (10) minutes, Kadeisha moves to the door 50 bucks poorer and I approach the counter. The clerk looks at the paper in my hands and says, "Oh- papers are free on Fridays." I walk back to my bike and ride home.

Last night I had to confirm the water meter number in front of my house for the utility before we could hook it up. I took a hammer out to pry the iron cover off. After two tries I got it off, and that's when several hundred cockroaches looked up at me and panicked.


Jumping back and stifling the little girl squeal in my throat, I ran to the house post-haste and grabbed some insect poison. Running back, I saw that most of the roaches had made like underage kids and bolted from the party. I dumped some poison in, letting the stragglers know the party was definitely over. As they made a final bid for freedom, I started stomping. When it was all said and done, I had stomped 67 of them. 67 roaches. And those were just the stragglers.

That was my evening. How was yours?

...Rorschach is my favorite character in Watchmen.


I love the part when he gets thrown in prison with all the criminals he's caught over the years: they all keep trying to kill him, but he calmly survives and beats all of them to bloody (sometimes dead) pulp. He's the only character (besides the Comedian) who does whatever it takes to get the job done. I respect that.

After three weekends of hard, itchy work, the house is insulated. Now there are just a few odds and ends to do over the weekend to get ready for the drywallers, who are due to start on Monday.

At the request of Will, who was visiting Knoxville this past weekend, we went up and camped at Max Patch, the 4629 foot bald on the TN/NC border that seems to draw us back yearly:


I love the way the blue ridges fade into the blue of the sky.


Good times were had with guitars, roman candles (that woke up a three year old camping nearby, according to her sleepy dad), a galaxy of stars, and the largest steak kabob I've ever tried to roast over an open fire. Here's looking forward to next year!

West Virginia is the most medicated state in the Union?

Apparently so.

This makes a lot of things about home make more sense.

Well, it's been about a week since I got it, and I still love it. The interface is so intuitive and fluid, exactly what I've been wanting after dealing with Verizon's clumsy software for 5 years. It's just the right size and looks great. All in all, this is the best designed phone I ever seen.

Now I'm hyper connected at all times, which is a blessing and a curse. I think I'm going to turn off the email alert. But it is cool to be able to stay connected to everyone, especially friends who live far away. The only flaw is that all this connection takes a lot of juice. Whereas I might charge my Razr every other day, I have to be diligent about charging the iPhone because it sucks up battery power like it's going out of style.

Despite my heart's pitter-patter for the iPhone, all is not well in Apple Land. My MacBook Pro has decided it doesn't want to boot up. This just after syncing with the iPhone and updating the software- coincidence? I think not. Again, I love the industrial design of Apple's hardware, but I am becoming less and less impressed with their software. As they try to be all things to all men, their overall quality seems to have tanked. Back in the days of my Ti Powerbook, I had nary an issue. I hope they regroup soon and focus on getting everything back up to that level, before they become the next Microsoft.

Had a good time with the family this past weekend. We got most of the insulation installed on the second floor, and got to do some fun stuff too. Cameron and Colleen also got me sign up for Facebook. I'd been resisting it, thinking that blogging was the way to go (don't worry d e s i g n : :, you're still first in my heart). But Facebook is exactly what it purports to be- a "social utility". Apparently everone is on this thing. I've gotten over twenty friend requests in two days, many from people I haven't seen in a while. So I guess that's cool. One more thing to waste my time on the computer.