Ayse: December 2004 Archives

Somehow, I managed to convince myself that I don't need to hold on to every terrible book I've read, just in case I might be tempted to buy it again. So I made up five large boxes of books and went over to Pegasus Books in Berkeley to sell them. I've sold books to bookstores before, and this was a primo selection, including a lot of good copies of standbys.

They bought half a box of them.

You'd think I'd be angry because of that, but they bought half a box of them for considerably more trade credit than I was expecting for all of them.

How odd. Well, we'll try taking the rest down to Book Buyers in Mountain View, which is where I usually sell books. A bit of a drive for book selling or buying, but more likely to lead to those books being out of the house and fresh, exciting new books being in the house.

This is the time of the year when people get all nostalgic and stuff about what happened in the last year. A bunch of people I know have posted "what I thought of this year" posts, and it seemed like a good idea, so I jumped on the bandwagon.

...

If I sit still for long, it's quite possible to forget that I have 50 percent of my optimal lung capacity. But then I get all stupid and do things like decide to rearrange all my architecture books and move a bookcase, and the lungs remind me that that is not allowed.

Anyway, I'm still feeling like crap. I do my inhalers as prescribed and I try to rest as prescribed, but it is not easy. I have finished all the knitting I had yarn for, and tonight Noel took me to Barnes and Noble, but none of the books appealed (I really don't need any form of Simple Knits). So I think tomorrow I will visit Imagiknit while we're in the city feeding a friend's cat, and maybe they will have some interesting yarn that will inspire me and keep me occupied while I rest and rest and rest.

I can't stop coughing. If I talk to anybody for more than a few minutes, I go off on a coughing fit. I feel dizzy and weird. Unfortunately, I'm out of albuterol, and that lovely codeine cough syrup that was so nice expired a long time ago. So I must attempt to see my charming new doctor tomorrow. Fortunately, I have reason to believe he will be at work this week.

Like everybody else, I hate traveling at Christmastime, but this is not a preferred alternative, frankly.

Ana has decided John is her new favourite, and his desk is her favourite place to lie during the day (he locks her out of his room at night, or she'd sleep with him).

I took some photos of Rosie playing with her chew hoof in the yard this afternoon, trying to be a very good dog while the heating guys insisted upon tempting her with saws and drills and kneeling on the floor (OBVIOUSLY to play with the dog).

...

We had a little dinner party yesterday, one of those dinner parties that keeps getting smaller and smaller because some of the hosts are not coordinated about inviting people, and some of the guests had other commitments or illness crop up.

...

Notebooks. We keep notebooks. OK, architects' notebooks don't have to withstand solvent spills, but they do have to stand up to Coke or glue. Which is why I am saving this link to lab notebook information here.

Some quotes:

Not everyone sets out with the goal of patenting a process or contraption, but you might stumble onto something important and in such an event you must have a notebook that supports your claims. If you have not kept up a proper laboratory notebook, other researchers and their patent lawyers will beat you to the Patent Office and to the bank.

Some researchers insist on reserving the left-hand page for "cryptic notes to self, and quick calculations", and the right-hand page for "real" entries. Do not do this. This strategy undermines the more important goal of keeping a notebook that is truly dechipherable by others. If you have made "calculations and notes to self" without proper narrative explanation and justification, you, too, will probably find the left-hand page unusable after several months have elapsed.

Good stuff.

Yesterday was the last day of classes, and at the College of Architecture and Environmental Design that means one thing: crits!

I have some photos from third and fourth year crits, plus photos from my own studio: my classmates and my work. So read on.

I'm in a frenzy of model-building this week, for our crit on Friday (arch school speak: a crit is when you set up your work all nice-like and everybody piles on and gives you what-for about it. This is actually desireable because most of the time the feedback you get comes from the teacher or your friends, so on this one day you get to hear a lot of other responses to your work and learn from them. Or have your heart broken if you're a fragile flower).