My brother David arrives today in Chicago. I'm really looking forward to his visit. First of all because he hardly ever leaves his hometown, Lansing, MI, and second because I like spending time with my siblings. I don't do it enough and one of them lives in the same city as I do!

David is arriving on Amtrak, another first at least for him, around noon today. Unfortunately I won't be able to break away from work because of deadlines and the fact that he didn't commit to the trip until the last minute (typical for David) but I may take him out for lunch and send him on his way to a museum until I get off. He's interested in checking out the Chicago Art Institute and Millenium Park. Hopefully it won't be too cold today for the park. Tomorrow we're probably going to see a movie in the morning and play it by ear afterward. Bob and I have an engagement in the evening so David may hangout with my other brother, Andrew, for a while. On Sunday he heads back.

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The Thanksgiving venue has been nailed down. My brother Andrew's house will be the site and my father and his girlfriend will come in from Kalamazoo. They may stay the night but are as of yet undecided. Bob thinks my family is weird because no one talks. Maybe that's true but when we finally do talk things get decided, mostly out of frustration.

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The Thanksgiving venue has been nailed down. My brother Andrew's house will be the site and my father and his girlfriend will come in from Kalamazoo. They may stay the night but are as of yet undecided. Bob thinks my family is weird because no one talks. Maybe that's true but when we finally do talk things get decided, mostly out of frustration.

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Well Bob and I agreed on a date and made the reservations. We're heading to Coatesville, Pennsylvania the second weekend in December to visit my aunt, grandma and of course my mother. I seem
To do this every year. I get a little unglued in October and miss my mother dearly and then pick one of the coldest times of the year to visit her grave. That's not good for my mental health. I should see her grave in the summer too when the weather is nice and the landscape is lush and full. Of course I will also be visiting my grandma and aunt but it'll just be a quick in and out one weekend visit, barely enough time to hang my hat so to speak. Still, I'm glad that I'm going. I'm always happy to see my relatives. They aren't going to be around much longer and I feel that I should cherish the moments I can spend with them.

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It was good to get in an extra hour of sleep but this morning my ass is dragging from staying up late last night. I should never do that on a school night. Sunday started with walking the dogs and then cleaning house in preparation for having Bob’s aries470  sister, Kelly, and nephew, Ryan, over later for a pasta dinner. My stuff had spread out over the dining room table and it was time to rein it in. After cleaning up I took a shower and then headed out to indoor volleyball practice. The church gymnasium was tiny and old but Rocky-esque in a way. We had a good practice and afterward Kelly, Ryan and I went back to my place for the long awaited pasta dinner.

The food was great and the dogs loved the company as always. We watched TV for a while and after Kelly and Ryan left Bob took a disco nap while I watched a little a football. Later I got Bob up by annoying him awake and we got ready to head out to see the film “Violet Tendencies” a movie with Mindy Cohn who played Natalie on the Facts of Life, a favorite show of Bob’s and mine when we were younger. We got down to the Landmark Century Cinema in plenty of time and hung out at Borders across the street for a bit. Once in the theater we scoped out our seats so we could leave easily and not have to stay for the Q&A with the director (normally I would but it was a 9:15PM show on a “school” night). The movie was good and very enjoyable. It had a coherent plot and the characters were believable. Bob and I enjoyed it very much. We left and got home by 11:30 at which time Bob went to bed while I took care of some condo business before calling it a night.

current mood: sleepy

October is over.  Whew! The huge pink flag that hung in the main entry of Ogilvie Transportation Center is gone. The spires of Hancock Center and the Willis Tower are back to their traditional white color. And all negative reminders of my mother are slowly fading away. This time of year is always a little tough for me not because I miss my mom, I always miss her, but because I’m reminded of how she died. I know I’m supposed to celebrate her life and not grieve in her loss. But it’s hard when I know that it was the breast cancer that went untreated for so long because the quack doctors she was seeing couldn’t read a mammogram from a hole in the wall. I accept however that no one really is to blame. I know that it was her time to go, though I wish it wasn’t. It’s usually after this time of year that I start missing her really bad. Maybe it’s because of the holidays. Maybe it’s because of the huge pink flag, and the pink caps on my medicine vials, and all the awareness races, and pink ribbons people wear. People tell me that I should put my efforts into making people aware of breast cancer in her memory, but in my mind I think maybe if she never had breast cancer she’d still be her. Instead I get to stand on a cold, windswept hillside in Pennsylvania and stare at a stone for a few minutes wishing things had worked out differently.

current mood: discontent

Last weekend my partner, aries470, and I went to Detroit for a quick weekend trip to attend a reception for my alma mater and photograph a building that I completed as project architect.  I had not seen the finished building so it wanted to see how it turned out as well as get photographs for my portfolio.  We left the dogs with Bob's sister and fought through Chicago traffic to arrive in Detroit late Friday night.  We stayed at the Southfield Marriott right next to where I used to work at Harley Ellis Devereaux.  We got a great deal on the rooms and it was central to where we needed to be.  The one thing I regret on this trip was not getting together with my friends who live in the Detroit area but between photographing the building in Sterling Heights Saturday morning, the suit and tie reception at the Detroit Yacht Club Saturday evening and leaving early Sunday morning to photograph another building in Kalamazoo, Bob and I didn't have much time to spare in the Motor City.  There will be a next time, I promise.
The reception at the yacht club in Detroit was to help fund a residential college for the students of University of Detroit Mercy the School of Architecture.  This residential college would augment the program that is already in place but suffers from a funding problem due mostly to the recent devaluation of the Dollar to the Euro.  The college was approaching the alumni to help with this effort to renovate a building the town of Volterra, Italy (left) had donated to the college for thirty years.  It's a worthy cause that I hope to contribute to.

The Beaumont Physicians Office Building (right) was built a few years ago when I was with Harley Ellis Devereaux .  I was the project architect on this five story building containing doctors offices, a pharmacy, a optometrist office, and a cancer center.  It is connected to the main hospital by a bridge crossing over Dequindre Road.  Originally a canopy was supposed to extend off the north face but this was changed at the last minute by the developers of the building.  Because they had such phenomenal success leasing space in the building, the developers wanted to have the ability to expand the building to the north.  This rather ugly tan wall on the first floor can be torn down and the building expanded.


On the way back to Chicago we stopped for a while in Kalamazoo to photograph the Western Michigan University College of Engineering.  I was the project architect on this building constructed on the outskirts of Kalamazoo in a new educational/business/technology park.  The purpose of the park was to meld an educational institution with the business and technology that the students would eventually be a part of.  I worked with Rosetti Architects in Birmingham, MI as the design architect.  This project involved coordination with parking deck consultants, paper technology equipment consultants, laboratory equipment consultants, precase concrete panel consultants, door hardware consultants, and extensive civil engineering.

current mood: dorky

It's been cold and rainy outside, typical I suppose for Chicago in fall. I'm at the office working, not so typical these days. I'm feeling distracted so I thought I would write a post to accentuate that.

One thing that has been going on for a while in my life is I decided to join the condinium association board. I thought it would be fun and in some ways it has been. In other ways it hasn't. I've always been the type of person to work behind the scenes to make sure things are organized for those who need to make decisions. I do this in the workplace and to a large degree I try to do it at home. Those on the condo board, including me, were all new to running a condo board. And some of us are a little more hot tempered than others. I tried to provide some organization to the madness by instilling paperwork standards based on my own company's standards. It was pretty successful. Where I think I failed was in putting too much authority in the president, who was one of the hot-heads. At first he wanted everything done right away and when the Board members couldn't do it he did it. This caused a lot of angst on all sides. We eventually settled into a rythmn but I can't help but feel like he must feel like we gave him authority and then took it away.

Now we are dealing with getting money from the developer for unfinished items in the building. The problem is the developer is the father of the builder and the builder is one of the directors of company the father runs that developed our building and still owns four units in it. Thanks to the real estate bubble going bust we still have unsold units.

To top everything off we have a major issue between one hot-head resident and the hot-head president over noise issues that could end up in court. The board initially tried to accommodate both sides but the matter quickly degenerated to the point of no return and no their party is happy with each other.

Isn't serving on a condo board fun!

It's hard to say what's going to happen next. Everything it seems is uncharted territory. But it's been an experience to write about that's for sure.

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It's been a while since my last post. I've been off in Facebook land and caught up in other things. So much has happened since back then. The highlights are I've been elected Secretary of my condo board, been to New York City for a relaxing yet fun filled Fourth of July, planned a trip to England and Paris for this coming New Years, been irradiated, played on a softball team with a group of great guys and spent time with my sweetie (always worth mentioning.) I plan on writing more so hopefully I won't have to think of everything I've done for the past year.

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Testing LJ App.

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