It Is Free Latte Day!

This day has been a long time in the making, nine coffees to be exact, nine coffees from the same place.

Then there is the waiting. After I max out on stamps, stickers, hole punches or whatever the coffee card requires, I like to sit on it for a bit. I stop frequenting that particular coffee establishment and wait for the right time to cash in. You see, after buying nine, sometimes ten, regular coffees the entire world of espresso opens up. A free coffee, doesn't just mean a small, drip coffee. A free coffee means any size, type, flavor of coffee you could dream of. A free coffee, also means, a good day.

So you can see why I wait to cash these babies in and today was one of those days.

There was not anything wrong with my morning that made me need a free latte. It was just the moment I walked out my front door I decided. Today was a free latte day.

So instead of walking across the street to the bus stop, I turned right and headed down the hill. The whole time my wallet was burning in my back pocket. At the bottom of the hill, was Collegetown bagels and FREE, large vanilla latte.

At the counter I always act surprised. "Oh wow, I think today is my free coffee day."

The thing is, I think I am fairly transparent. The cashier is always genuinely happy for me and I think it is because they can sense my excitement.

Kari Visits Ithaca (Part Deux)

Finally, a story to tell. It has everything you could ever want in a story. A beginning, a middle, an end... a princess... a knight!

Of course, it is missing a major conflict and resolution so ok, ALMOST everything you would want in a story.

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The story begins on Saturday morning. I borrowed a car from my friend Steve and drove to the airport to pick up Kari. I arrived just in time to walk through the automatic doors and look across the terminal (it is a very small airport) to see her walking past security. It took her a few seconds to spot me but after that, it was magical. Music was playing, bells were tolling, confetti was flying, fireworks were exploding... it was magical alright.

Kari had taken a red eye flight out of LA and, after a layover in Jersey, finally made it to Ithaca, New York.

Our first priority was food. We went to the Ithaca Farmer's market but what seemed like warm weather to me, was actually quite cold and we moved on to Ithaca Bakery. Astonished to find a meager breakfast menu there we moved on to Friendly's (friendly Denny's) and had an incredible breakfast of pancakes, french toast, and a pot of coffee.

Later that evening, after a lazy afternoon catching up on sleep and TV shows (Get some Glee!) we headed to Moosewood Restaurant to meet some of my friends for dinner. It was great to introduce her to everyone and, after we finally were seated, we had an awesome time with everyone.

Sunday, after she had sufficient time to recuperate from her journey, I took Kari to Cornell for a tour of my studio and daily rituals. The weather had turned gray for the weekend (It is Always Sunny in Philadelphia... It is Never Sunny in Ithaca).
After trooping around campus we picked up some movies in Collegetown and went to lunch at the Collegetown Bagels, downtown. This is me and though my face is expressionless, that bagel, is awesome.
After lunch we walked over to Ithaca Coffee Company to get some work done. It was nice to integrate Kari into an activity I do fairly often: going to coffee shops and architecting.

We were fairly successful and to congratulate ourselves for such discipline we decided to go back to my apartment and watch an afternoon movie. Kari was cold and I don't remember how she manager to get wrapped into such a ball but she makes the most adorable bean bag I have ever seen.
That night we went to Sushi O Sake Japanese food for dinner. What we had intended as a light meal ended up a little extravagant.

After dinner we went to Madeline's for dessert. Kari had a swirl cake that was delectable and I had a raspberry creme brulle that was divine. Overall it was a good night for our palettes.
Monday morning came only too quickly. A mere 48 hours after she arrived in Ithaca I was taking her back to airport. We sat at the airport cafe drinking flavored cappuccinos, the kind that a machine makes by mixing a mystery powder and hot water, and tried restricting our conversation to happy thoughts, the kind that make you fly in Neverland.

It was a fantastic weekend, a sweet treat in our overly busy lives.

Cell Phone Journaling

Most days I am struggling to find the narrative in my life. It is no surprise that when I manage a blog post, it is independent snapshots that hardly fit into one continuous story. Still, here are some pictures off of my cell phone camera. It is a discontinuous, but wonderful way to look at the past few weeks.

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This is a picture of the Lackawanna County Commissioners office that I snapped on the bus ride from NYC after Spring Break. Lackawanna County, is itself unremarkable. I only took this picture because I wanted to document the fact that I was making a pilgrimage to SCRANTON PENNSYLVANIA! One of the department stores had a Dunder Mifflin sign in the window and that just made me happy.

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The weekend after Spring Break was Easter Weekend. A few of us decided to find a sunrise service and the only one was in a town about 10 miles outside of Ithaca. Four of us showed up at 6:30 for a service that consisted of a middle school boy leading worship, a youth pastor who forgot his sermon notes, and a congregation of about fifteen people. After the 20 minute service we went inside for breakfast where we were quickly introduced to everyone who was ever connected to Cornell - "This is Brian, he worked on Cornell's air conditioning twenty years ago." I have not felt so welcomed at a church in my entire life. We sat at a table with the pastor and had a great time rejoicing in the occasion.

A couple of hours later I attended another service downtown and afterward we headed to my friend Trevor's lake house where I snapped this pic. It is actually his boss's house and Trevor lives in the guest quarters but still, his boss lives in India and we had full run of the property. So after a morning of celebrating the traditional way, we celebrated Christ's resurrection down at the lake shore with cold beer and red meat.

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Last week the graduate students were offered a tour of the construction site in our backyard (Milstein Hall - the new architecture building). We got to wear those awesome red hard hats and look at concrete with our dean and structures professor. It was actually pretty cool to see the structural elements that we have been learning about this semester and to have our professor there to make those connections made it especially worthwhile.

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These past three weeks have been one big project after the next. When it came time to write my 20 page history paper I decided I needed a change of scenery and headed up to Mann Library in the agriculture quad. In a last ditch effort to do anything but my paper I found this stool under my desk and decided to take a picture. "Please do not discriminate against midget colleagues."

Sunshine

I apologize in advance for this blog post. For the first time this year it is above seventy degrees and sunny outside. My body is so excited my brain wants to be everywhere, doing everything at once. Of course this only means that I am giving half of these tasks a quarter of the required time with only an eighth of my concentration... So it goes.

Ithaca is Fences:
You may have heard about the recent string of suicides at Cornell and one of the preventative measures Cornell has taken, discovered by the students upon their return to campus, was to install temporary 10ft chain link fences on all of the bridges around campus.

100%:
On a lighter note, I just found out I aced my structures midterm and since no one at Cornell knows about my blog, I feel free to share it here.

East Coast Prep:
Cornellians cling to the Ivy League because it puts them in league with kids from Harvard (like Greece, the EU, and Germany). However, with the recent resurgence of the sun there is definitely something Ivy League about Cornell: the prep. A third of the guys on campus are rocking the long-sleeve button down, shorts, and boat-shoes combo. I am poking fun but at the same time, sort of tempted :)

Ducky:
I went on a run yesterday for the first time this year. I went down the hill from my house to downtown Ithaca and followed a stream that leads from the Cascadilla gorge (between my house and Cornell) to Cayuga lake. As I was running I noticed a single duck paddling downstream with the current. He was hardly using energy and looked at me with curiosity as he sped by on the smooth but quick channel.

Eat Dessert First:
Yesterday was equally beautiful outside and as studio was wrapping up a few of us were deciding on what to do to take advantage of the weather. The answer was obvious: Ice Cream. We headed into Ithaca to Purity Ice Cream and it was AWESOME. When we finished our treats we decided to go over to Five Guys (East Coast In-N-Out) for dinner. We sat outside and were truly in awe of life. The best part of the whole experience is that as we were leaving we saw a dad with his two sons that we had just seen at Purity. We realized we were emulating the ideal diet of a 9yr old boy.

Day of the Dragon

Graduate students:

Start of the parade:

Parade through campus:
The Dragon:
Dragon attacking the Arts Quad:

If you need me I'll be at Senor Tadpoles

Spring Break!

Here is a brief recap of my week:

Monday:
7:00AM wake up and have some cereal
8:00AM in studio
11:30 PM leave studio, come home and go to sleep.

Tuesday:
Same. Although I did go to one other class from 2:30-3:30.

Wednesday:
Oversleep, wake up at 8:00am, go to Cornell Store, go to studio, finish model
10:00AM techniques in visual representation class
11:15AM get out of class early for final accreditation presentation
12:30PM begin review
5:00PM Spring Break... also apparently St. Patrick's Day

GTBKI: Stella's

It's been a while since I've done a "Get to Better Know Ithaca" post.

Anyways...

Wonderland (noun):
a land or place full of wonderful things.

Stella's Cafe is located in the heart of Collegetown and they have an interesting program. Stella's is half coffee shop and half bar/lounge. That does not mean that the owner's attempted some ambitiously cool hybrid where, one might imagine, the coffee shop atmosphere prevails during the week and the lounge atmosphere prevails during the weekend. No, half coffee shop and half lounge means that the owners literally built a wall all of the way down the middle of the property. The left side is characterized by antique wood and the musty atmosphere of a dingy college coffee shop. The right side is sleek, suave and incorporates all of the decorative elements unique to lounges in general (weird wall sconces, bad art, dangling blown glass lighting fixtures).

The two sides are for the most part completely separate. They have different entrances and different employees. One might not even notice that these two shops are really flip sides of the same coin. However, there are several elements that they share. One is the kitchen in the basement. Another is a strange portal in the wall that houses an abstract sculpture. The last and most interesting, is the bathroom.

I really have no idea why the bathroom adopts the character it does. Perhaps the owners wanted it to fit both sides equally well. However, whatever the motivation, the feeling I get when I walk in is really, I imagine, the same as Alice falling into Wonderland.

First of all, in keeping with the strict demarcation of space, both sides of Stella's have their own door. However, these doors only lead into an antechamber where one might actually access the restrooms. So, entering this small room you will see two doors, to the two gender neutral bathrooms and a third door that leads into the other half of the shop.

Once the door you entered closes, you are left to face four identical doors in a dark, entirely blue room. Floor tiles, doors, walls, ceiling are all different shades of navy blue. Furthermore, the ceiling in here, is nearly double the height of either the bar or the coffee shop.

But that is not all, you are not alone. To the side there is always, always a guy sitting on his laptop and as a rule, this guy will do nothing to acknowledge your presence.

The first time I used the facilities at Stella's and I made it through the trip that is that back room, I retreated into one of the bathrooms and nearly forgot where I was and what I had come to do.

Sunday

The longer I go without out a blog post the more intimidated I am by the prospect. So much time has gone by but it seems like so little has happened. To further add to my hesitation, I escaped Rand once last week to attend a lecture outside of the AAP (College of Architecture, Art, and Planning - host of the AAP lecture series which brings/bribes all the bigwig architects out to Ithaca) in which a famous poet told us, in regards to blogging and amateur poetry, "self-expression is terribly overrated." That alone deserves a post but I am forced to delay that discussion at the moment.

I wasn't joking about not having much to report. We have our next deadline on Tuesday at 9:00pm and coursework has been relentless these past two weeks. I am doing fairly well in studio. Well, I am at least pleased, my professor is impossible to read.

There is a accreditation visit by NAAB next week, a big one for the M.Arch 1 program as we are candidates for accreditation but not yet accredited (required to become a license architect in the United States). Next Friday is also Dragon Day and since one of my classes meets during the time and my Thursday classes are both shared with the undergrads, Spring Break starts on Wednesday!

Jean Baudrillard

Last Friday as I was doing my Theory reading I turned the page to see the next subheading to be "Santa Barbara." My excitement took hold of me as I wondered what French sociologist and notable PoMo (last week I learned that in the academy, this is the cool way to refer to post modernity) philosopher, Jean Baudrillard had to say about my beloved city. I just had to share what I read next.

On the aromatic hillsides of Santa Barbara, the villas are all like funeral homes. Between the gardenias and the eucalyptus tree, among the profusion of plant genuses and the monotony of the human species, lies the tragedy of a utopian dream made reality. In the very heartland of wealth and liberation, you always hear the same question: "What are you doing after the orgy?" What do you do when everything is available - sex, flowers, the stereotypes of life and death? This is America's problem and through America, it has become the whole world's problem.

Awesome.

I had been reading about the paradoxes of the Centre Pompidou and the implosion of French culture so I don't know what I expected. We are talking about post modernism here. Still, I could not stop laughing when I saw that the next three sections were devoted to Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Salt Lake City. Turns out last spring, Drew, Ryan, Rob and I went on a road trip through hell.

Snow Days

Some classes were canceled today,
Lily Chi's studio met outside.

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This was the scene at Cornell as we left campus for our studio site visit. Glad everyone else was having fun.

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Afterward we went to eat downtown. We spent half of the time taking pictures (each of us had a camera) and half of the time laughing at Armando who has not slept in three days.