ststststatus.update

hello blogonites.

so i guess its been about a month since my last update on the state of affairs in the htx. while i cant say its been a terribly eventful and exciting month, its certainly had its milestones... as follows...

[june 4]

we attended/participated in the houston aia's annual sandcastle competition in gtx... see pictures of some of the castles here...

[june 7]

the wifey and i had our annual anniversary [heh, i crack myself up...] and as usual i showered her with gifts, threatened to take her to wendy's, and then took her somewhere much fancier [well, at least a little, lol]. this year was a particularly difficult dinner to plan as i was trying to rival last year's dinner at the melting pot ...which is pretty much the all time greatest karen dinner imaginable... it was quite an experience. not only that, but having just moved back to the h-o-u, i really had no idea what my dining options were, and ended up spending hours on yelp, open table, and other such websites trying to find a good idea [and ended up with like 40... geez... ] eventually i settled on Philippe, a fairly new, fairly swanky, establishment in the greater galleria area owned and operated by a fairly famous chef [allegedly... id never heard of him, but then again, im not exactly a houstonian-socialite-extraordinaire...]. it ended up being a pretty great experience and a pretty great night overall. the food was fairly excellent overall and for my "foodie" readers ill take a short deviation from the flow of the blog to discuss our meal, those of you uninterested, feel free to skip ahead a little...

*****

for drink starters we had a few cocktails. i had my standard crown & coke while karen sampled one of the special cocktail concoctions from the menu, the sheriff - el jimador tequila, pink grapefruit + red chile flakes. mine was ethereal as ive been off soda for a good month and a half at this point and that one half glass was beyond amazing... karen absolutely loved hers as well. she pretty much loves anything with grapefruit [more on that later...] and really enjoyed this drink. i had a sip and can say that i agree, it was quite yummy - for a fruity girl drink with an awesome name. ;]

for food starters we chose the crab + avocado from the 'contained decadence' section of the menu. id read a number of reviews boasting this particular appetizer and was pleased that karen wanted to try it as well - sounding pretty delicious be the description - crab + avocado with lime, cilantro, olive oil emulsion. mmmm.... the contained description above alludes to the fact that this little dish is served in a mason jar and comes with toasted bread slices to spread. the crab was absolutely some of the best crab ive ever had. it was so tender and juicy and the complements of avocado, cilantro, and lime made for a southwestern savor that was over the top. my only complaints [and i hesitate to call them that] were that the emulsion made for a frothy substance on the top that was a little strange at first, and that it didn't really come with enough toast to compliment the entire jar. however the second point is moot, considering they served some quite satisfying bread complimentary to the meal, and were happy to refill as needed - it was warm and delightful.

on to the main course. karen decided on the texas caesar - with bbq-brushed skirt steak, cactus, & shaved grana padano. i chose the mascarpone risotto - with red wine-braised chicken, bacon, & mushrooms. and to celebrate the evening, we decide to buy a bottle of bubbly and chose the segura viudas, brut cava - which one of the managers later made a point of mentioning was one of his favorites. im by no means an expert on wine vintages or brands, but we enjoyed this one very much and were glad we ordered it. first off, the presentation was excellent.

karen's salad arrived on a large boat-shaped dish and was loaded with ample skirt steak. she was satisfied with her selection, but wished the bbq sauce wasnt quite so prominent - it pretty much covered up all the other flavors. but the steak was definitely tender and juicy and prepared exactly as she liked it and all of the greens were crisp and fresh.

my risotto was certainly no disappointment. in fact, id say it was in the top 3 dishes ive ever had! the risotto itself was creamy and soft, the sauce was amazing! in addition to that, the thick cut bacon was delicious and complemented the mushrooms - so flavorful! - and braised chicken perfectly. the chicken was well cooked and melted in my mouth. my dish certainly had all of its flavors represented and i couldn't really pick any one outshining the rest.

and finally, for desert. we just couldnt pass up the texas "millionaires" tart - chocolate-caramel-pecan tart, texas grapefruit salad, & jasmine cream. [remember the mention of grapefruit?] now if youre anything like karen and i, when you first read that combination of ingredients you probably took a double-take and pondered the idea of chocolate, carmel, grapefruit and jasmine and scratched your chin a little... and we certainly dont blame you! what an odd combination to image... but if you are in fact like us, then you couldnt resist indulging your curiosity either - and boy-howdy, we were rewarded. the flavors compliment each other in a way you just wouldnt imagine! i was stuffed from my early dishes so i only had a couple of small bites, but karen certainly enjoyed her dessert =] [sorry, forgot to photo that one!]

*****

overall, a pretty great dinner, i would definitely recommend it! on top of that the restaurant had a very well designed interior, with kind of an edgy industrial feel over a chic elegance. karen and i loved the wine-box-lid bars and the super tall backed booths. our only complaint was the use of acoustical ceiling tile over the stairway/lounge [eww!!] but then again... we're rather snobby about acoustical ceiling tile, haha, so that was an unavoidable criticism from us ;] other than that, it was a little on the noisy side, but we were able to enjoy our light conversation between mouthfuls just fine. the management and staff were extremely friendly and went well out of their way to make sure our night was special. i give the entire experience 4.5 out of 5 stars and will certainly keep it at the top of my list for any special occasion dinners in the future. [at $$$ its not exactly something karen and i can afford to enjoy on any given day, lol! although was completely reasonable for the meal and experience!]

by the end of the night we were stuffed silly and ended up relaxing on the couch with the mutt watching one of our favorite tv shows before turning in with satisfied tummies =]

[june 11]

fragment/ornament - an installation intervention by artist karen brasier.

some of you may remember the blurb i posted in my last blog about karens upcoming [at the time] art show. well on june 11 that show came to fruition - after lots and lots of hard work on karen's part [and only a moderate lots on mine, haha, ever the artist's assistant...]. as part of the ongoing art-walk events held in downtown galveston by the galveston art center karen hosted a special showing of work shes been working on recently in the original home of the galveston art center in its gutted and partially reconstructed state [see:hurricane ike...]. temporarily the gac has relocated to a new location to maintain the day to day while the original building is under reconstruction. however, the progress has stalled out for the moment as theyve run out of money and need approx. a million dollars to be donated to complete the renovations fully. the space is pretty interesting to be in at the moment, and the show was quite successful in my humble opinion - presenting both the opportunity for people to see karen's recent works and also a forum to expose the public to the current state of the facilities and discuss whats still needed to bring it back to life. karens work for this particular show was a fitting accent to the state of the building as we were required to construct temporary walls for occupancy and the theme of her show focused specifically on elements of fragmented architecture. im quite proud of her and this most recent endeavor and can attest to all of the very hard [extremely sweaty!] work that went into getting this show together.

she still has big dreams and goals for her art, so expect much more in the future - ill certainly post as things happen =]

well... theres much more i could say about the house at this point, but this post has gone on long enough, and i think ill save that particular topic for the near future - and hopefully have some updated pictures to show for your patience!

hope youre all having a fantastic week, hug your dads this weekend and have a happy dads day!

sayonara.

dc[part.two]

[saturday | 5.2.09 | day.two]

so we got up at about 8:30am [although quite stubbornly and with much difficulty given the night before...] and got showered and dressed and then went downstairs to the continental breakfast around 9:30am. it was actually a pretty sweet breakfast, they had just about anything you could want and the best part was the breakfast burrito fixins! i had a burrito and a bagel with some oj and diet coke while karen sampled just about everything there was, lol! i think her eyes were a little bigger than mine, but she tried everything and seemed to enjoy it all.

after breakfast we visited the little brochure kiosk in the lobby and got some free maps and then headed to the room to gather whatever items we'd need for the days excursion and then soon headed out. the short 3 block walk to the metro was nothing this time around and we were feeling much more confident as we purchased our tickets from the machine and routed our trip through various stops and train switches. maybe 15-20 minutes later we were on the escalators at judiciary square and were delivered directly to our first stop, sweet! we knew we'd be close from the map, but theyre a little abstract and difficult to gauge exact location proximity to anything, and we were lucky enough to emerge from the subway directly at the front door of the first museum on our list for the day - the national building museum. well before we went in we took a second to look at our surroundings and it turns out judiciary square is a pretty cool little plaza with some fun landscaping features and statues. at the present time there was some kind of ceremony going on in the center of the plaza but we decided to walk around the extremities in the in the tree-lined paths to check things out for a few minutes as discreetly as possible. well, as much action as was going on center-stage and the fact that the city seems pretty used to tourism, no one paid us any attention as we looked about and snapped a few pictures before heading into the museum.

so when first we entered the museum what struck us both was the grandiose of the main atrium space. this thing was effin huge! it must have been at least 5 stories high with these huge columns that went all the way up to the clerestory [er... little windows near the ceiling, in layman's...] in addition to that there was a pretty huge fountain in the middle and the width and breadth of this thing... lets just say you could have probably but a few of our house's [which is pretty huge to be honest] in this space and still have room to spare without batting an eye.

anyway, we went to the information desk to inquire about tours and whatnot and then decided to just start visiting the exhibits on our own [the next tour didnt start for an hour and a half]. the first exhibit we saw was called detour and it was about all these popular tourist spots in the norway countryside. it basically chronicled 17 or 18 spaces that were designed as lookouts or viewpoints in a video presentation and then after the video there were a series of architectural models and boards of some of the places from the video. the models were freakin sweet. as someone who has built a number of architectural models in my day i had a serious appreciation for how well built these things were and was a little enamoured with the different techniques that were used. it was a really cool first experience for the museum and i was looking forward to what was next at that point.

so the next stop was a photography exhibit by some architectural photographer that was geared towards 9/11 aftermath in the form of a juxtaposition and comparison of interrogation spaces, worship spaces, and government spaces from all the various cultural viewpoints. it was an interesting collection, although after a little while it all started to look the same and the clever ironies started to get less and less clever as you saw more of the work. but maybe i was just distracted by the random gallery attendant who took an interest in my tattoos and decided to ruin my experience by talking to me for most of the duration of my visit while i was TRYING to concentrate on the artwork. at some point i just started nodding while he was telling me stories about his cousin the marine who got in trouble all the time and was kicked out after 6 months, yadda, yadda, yadda. karen totally abandoned me while this guy chewed my ear off for 15 minutes. punk.

anyway the next exhibit we saw was about architectural detailing in different materials - stone, metal, brick, etc. and it was kinda cool, but a little boring. at this point wed already been there a good hour and i was getting antsy to see all the other million stops on our list for the day so we made a quick trip through the gift shop to see if anything jumped at us [nothing did, hah, not for those prices...] and then we made our way to the exit. so the next stop on our list was "the mall" where there are tons of museums, monuments, landmarks, memorials, and what have you. its pretty much the tourist hot spot of d.c. where the smithsonian and all the famous stuff is. well, it was either back on the subway for a couple of stops or just walk the 6 or 7 blocks over, and considering how nice the weather was out [overcast and cool - perfect for site seeing!] we decided to walk. well it was actually a nice walk and we went through some nice garden plazas and government buildings [which make up like 75% of the downtown area from what we saw, lol!] until we got to constitution ave.

at this point we were a little awestruck by the mall. at one end you could see the capital building, directly in front of us was the national art gallery, in the distance the washington monument towered over the treeline and there were a half dozen other museums within eye-shot. it was a cultural enthusiasts dream come true, haha, and being the nerds karen and i are, we were basking in all its glory. we decided to venture towards the capitol building and then around the national art gallery to its entrance to kind of get a full view of the area before going in to the art gallery. it was pretty cool seeing the capitol building, even from the distance we were at, and i was really digging the architecture of the national art gallery as well. by the time we made it around to the front of the gallery we both got distracted by these awesome triangular shards jutting through the adjacent plaza and had to investigate them further.

we took a bunch of pictures and came to find out there was actually a restaurant or something under the plaza that these shards were skylights into so we took the long way into the museum by going underground, through the restaurant to check the shards out from the inside, and then through this really freaking cool l.e.d. installation before actually arriving inside the lower level of the art gallery. and right there in front of us, a serra! awesome! this was really an enjoyable day so far! we floated around the gallery for a little while before deciding we wanted to take the tour of the sculpture garden about an hour later and decided to grab lunch at the garden pavilion before it started. so we walked over there and had a really delicious lunch at the pavilion before trying to find the tourgroup. well as it turned out we asked an official looking woman where the tour started and she was the guide so we were in the right place! and if that wasnt cool enough, it turns out we were the first people shed actually given the tour to in almost a year and we were the only ones that showed up that day, so we got a very one on one personal, and casual tour of the sculpture garden and karen got to ask all kinds of questions for a project she had in her museum studies class. it turned out to be a really fun tour and she was extremely knowledgeable of the sculptures.

by the time we finished the garden we were both starting to feel a bit tired. it was around 2:30pm at this point and we'd been on our feet for hours already, but there was still so much to see! i wanted to try and see the washington monument, the vietnam veterans memorial, and the lincoln memorial while we were in the area that day, so we got started walking - not sure if we'd make it. the first one we saw was the washington monument. it was really freakin huge and everything youd expect - although in a much less immaculate condition than you always see in pictures. up close you could see that there was some history to this thing and it had been around for some time. well, being the nerds we are, we took the opportunity to take a bunch of fun shots of karen with the monument - like you do at the leaning tower of pisa or the like - haha, it was a lot of fun.

knowing how much we still wanted to see we made our stops short for the rest of the day and tried to just get to everything as quickly as possible. so after circling the huge block that the monument was on we came across the wwII memorial and checked it out, then were on our way again towards the vietnam war memorial. eventually we arrived but it was absolutely overrun with tourists, kind of a bummer and pretty typical of the day so far - there were so many people there!, so we tried to take a few pictures before getting out of the people soup and making our way over to the lincoln memorial nearby.

well after seeing the lincoln memorial, which was pretty cool, but again CRAZY crowded, and making a quick pit stop - we were done for the day and decided it was time to head back to the hotel. well, at this point we were pretty far from any of the metro stops so we could either walk to the closest one, or about equa-distant, just walk back to the hotel - so we decided wed just suffer through and walk back. luckily we were in pretty close proximity to the white house at this point so we were going to make sure to go by it on the way to the hotel.

on our way to the white house we actually just happened past the AIA headquarters in d.c. which was kind of a cool random accident and then sure enough we saw the whitehouse. and wow, that was an experience, it was pretty cool.

we also saw an armed guard carrying what must have been a freaking grenade launcher/assault rifle/rocket launcher or something. ive never seen a gun that big in my life, he could have taken out a tank with that thing! we definitely didnt mess with him, haha!

anyway, after the white house it was only another 4 blocks to the hotel and soon we were relaxing and resting our poor feet for a while, and while we were doing that i got in contact with my friend lauren who lives in dc and i havent seen since senior year at a&m and made arrangements to go to dinner with her. well, not long after talking to her we saddled up and trekked back to the metro for another ride on the subway. this time we went down to alexandria virginia to meet up with lauren and ended up having a pretty great time with her. we had this authentic-y spanish meal with these little snack sized portioned meals [the name of them escapes me... tapas?] and a lot of catching up. it was really fun to see her again, but by the time we were done eating we were EXHAUSTED and ready for bed. lauren actually volunteered to give us a ride back to the hotel [only about 5 miles away, the area is pretty dense] and after a couple of wrong turns we eventually got home and crashed for the night.

- end of day two. and again, im out of time, sorry!! -

in.my.house

just a short one to keep you all up to speed.

wednesday was a fairly successful day as well. we went to work as usual and did our whole work thing up until lunch time. i worked on more leed stuff, i assume karen did her usual as well. at lunch time we actually both had a lunch & learn. 

ill deviate topics for a moment here - have i discussed lunch & learns?

in our little industry, theres the overarching organization which most registered architects choose to be a member of - the AIA [american institute of architects]. well as a membership requirement you pay dues like so many other professional organizations, as well as various other little requirements - one of which being the AIA's commitment to continuing education even after professional registration. i can't speak to other professions on this one because i honestly have no idea, but the AIA believes that as architects we have a responsibility[and really just the need if we're being honest] to stay informed on current trends in our industry and all those related [which is a LOT] if we're to be the best at our jobs and id say if we're to stay relevant in the world in general. so what this means is that members of the organization have to fulfill x number of points of continuing education each year to meet the guidelines and stay in good favor or what have you. as a result, pretty much every architectural office out there [im speaking specifically of u.s. based, obviously] has regularly scheduled "lunch & learns." this is where some product manufacturer, distributor, or other professional relevant to architecture and its related industries [take door-knob manufacturers or software developers for example as options in this realm] come to the office during lunch time [so as not to waste valuable billable hours], provides lunch, and gives an hour long seminar over whatever the topic is. [so if the guy develops the software from my previous example, he gives a seminar on the relevancies of different software types in the industry, what trends are occurring within the profession involving software vs. traditional methods, and ultimately slips in briefly how his software is a better fit for our office's needs than all his competitors] in return, we get a couple of points towards our c.e. quota, and this guy [yeah, i know im not being pc, get over it] gets the option of having our office spec his product, service, etc.

so during the lunch in learn [or "l&l" for short, or "cell" as its referred to in my office - continuing education lunch & learn] karen got a call from a blocked number and excused herself to answer it, didnt get it in time, and there was no message or callback... weird. we assumed if it were one of our people they'd try again and ignored it. about 5 minutes after my l&l ended i got a phone call from the plumber scheduled that day saying hed be at the house in about 20 minutes, so i coordinated with karen and she met him out at the house. 

from what i can tell it went well, but the guy either didnt know how a high-efficiency water-heater works or was just trying to pull a fast one on us, because he told karen that the current water-heater was venting through the wall instead of the normal through the roof and that he'd have to install a "special fan" to correct this when he installed the new water-heater... the reason its venting through the wall is because its a high efficiency water-heater [be it old and in need of replacement, probably one of the first models] and they vent through the wall... thats how theyre designed. so either the guy is ignorant of his profession, or thinks we are. [im betting on the latter, or maybe just hoping, lol!] 

so she got that taken care of, we'll get his estimate in a day or two. [speaking of, we got the other guys estimate later after i blogged, and it was almost double the first plumber! what?! not to mention he was trying to get us to install new waterlines and venting for the laundry that we already have and look like theyre in perfectly functional condition... is everyone going to try to ef us? seriously? what happened to honesty and integrity in your craft?] so we we're looking good, now we just had to get the energy guy out to connect the electricity and gas, and we'd really be in business. 

well karen picked me up from work as usual and my first question was "what happened with the energy guy?" turns out he never called her... weird... so she called them. the blocked call she missed in the l&l - yeah, that was their guy. so she had to re-schedule that for later on this week. possibly today [thursday] or tomorrow, i cant remember which now. but i do know they gave us a smaller window this time around, 12-4, so thats cool. 

so yeah, thats the update on the contractors. 

hope youre all having lovely days. holla back!

post.script: happy birthday kimber!

post.post.script: daft punk is playing in my house, in my house. 

that is all.

contractors.galore

so today has been a busy day... i wont bother with the topic subtitle/section business, its all about the house these days. :]

monday.

so monday morning the first thing to do on our list was to figure out this barricade situation. the woman i had talked to on saturday said we could go to the city buildings & inspections office and that they would give us the keys to the locks since we were the homeowners and we had the right to access our property. thats good news, right? lol! so apparently they were supposed to open by 7:30 and we figured wed just stop by there on the way to work, get the keys, and then one of us could meet the electric company guy we had scheduled at some point between 8 & 4 [really specific right? freakin energy companies...] out at the house to let him in. no problems right? haha, its never quite that easy.

so we get to the city office at around 7:45 and ask the receptionist to see the guy who id tried calling a few times. she sent us on our way, and after waiting upstairs for someone to fetch him, we met dave, and he was a really nice guy. he walked us through everything we were going to need to do to obtain permits, what we needed to do to get the house up to passing inspections, you name it, the guy was a wealth of great info. except the keys, lol, he forgot all about those until he was about to send us on our way and i was like oh, one last thing, could we get those keys? haha, he laughed and went and talked to a lady who came out to tell us the bad news. the contractor who was out over the weekend doing all the work still had them. so we discussed our options and we decided to swing back buy tuesday morning before work to get them and she swore shed have them for us. so... close enough. whats one more day?

so later on i ended up making a number of phone calls and talking to a variety of contractors. first, i scheduled 3 different plumbers to come out and give us an estimate. all three are local and i just found them using a google map search for the closest to our area, and these are the guys that popped up. one of them even had some ratings on google and they were encouraging, so i felt good about it. so i called all these guys up, gave them my info and scheduled them all for as soon as possible. so we ended up getting one guy for tuesday [today] between 8 & 10am, one guy for tuesday but we didnt get a time frame from the woman on the phone, and the last guy for wednesday between 12 & 4pm. additionally i contacted the new mason [the friend of the window guy] who was very happy to hear from me and said hed love to come out either tuesday or wednesday morning to check it out and we could go from there, and then i called the roofer again who promised he hadnt forgotten about me and would try to be there by wednesday to have a look, thursday at the latest. meanwhile, karen was calling the energy company to try and re-schedule them to come out on a day when we actually had access to the house, and she made that for wednesday as well [although still the really specific time frame of 8-4...]

so all in all we had a pretty successful day i thought. i felt good about how things were going, and even more so how smoothly they seemed to be going even with a few hiccups.

tuesday[today, for those of you keeping score]

so this morning we got up early and got over to the city office at 7:30 and great news, she had the keys! so we were in and out of there in no time flat, just a copy of my i.d. in case anyone wanted to dispute who had the keys, and off we went. so we're headed back to the house and karen is on the phone confirming what time the first plumber would be there, ah... 30-45 minutes. crap. now what?

 so we decided to turn around and id take karen to work [because her office is anal about starting at 8am sharp] and then id meet the morning plumber, take her the truck, and then shed meet the afternoon plumber [hopefully on her lunch break]. so, i dropped her off, turned around, and arrived at the house at the exact same time as the plumber and another truck with two guys who got out and walked towards the house as well... masons? yesss! score. so now i had not only a plumber on time, but also a mason who showed up at all, and i had the joy of juggling both to get an estimate at the same time. well it went just fine. the masons had a look around outside, the plumber did his thing in the basement and when it was all over with i had an estimate in hand from the plumber [nice guy, by the way] and the mason [also a nice guy but technologically challenged] promising to drop off an estimate at the house either wednesday or thursday. sweet. things are lookin good. 

so i took karen the truck and then went to work [only an hour late after all this, not bad at all] and did the whole work thing. right now at work im working on getting leed credits for 6 different schools we're working on, and its a good learning experience, but tedious as hell. for those of you that dont know, LEED is a certification that a building can achieve for designing and building sustainably and efficiently and is a program sponsored by the USGBC [united states green building council]. its a good thing for all new buildings to get, and is a great start in driving our nation to thinking about energy efficiency and what we can do to reduce our impact on the environment. anyway, ive been working mostly on daylighting points lately, but thats not really the point of this post. 

at about a quarter to noon i get a call, its the other plumber, he'll be at the house in about 20 minutes. so i called karen and off she went to meet him. i dont have any gory details of their exciting meeting [lol] but i know it went well, and the plumber should email us an estimate by wednesday afternoon at the latest. 

now. 

so after a long day, we're doing great i think! tomorrow weve got another plumber coming, the energy guy, and potentially a roofer. so house repairs are looking up at the moment, and hopefully they stay that way! honestly, if all wed gotten done today was gaining access to the house id have been pretty happy, but in my opinion we surpassed that by leaps and bounds! 

well, i think thats it for now. if you havent already noticed, look carefully at the blog layout and see if you can find what i changed today, lol! i know, i know... im a nerd. but i cant help it, its who i am. [and i love who i am, heh]

"catch you on the flip side yo"

[for 10 awesome pts in chris' book of awesome, email me and tell me where that quote is from. no cheating, and dont post it directly on the blog to spoil it for everyone else. and seriously, no cheating. just whatever knowledge youve got locked away in that head of yours. hint: potatoes]

post.script: lcd sound system is rocking my world as of late. lovin it. 

post.post.script: http://www.shapeofamerica.org/ [get inspired!]