New blog templates, thank you Google. If only I could make one myself, if only I was that clever...or knew someone who was.
Anyway, every four years or so, most of the world's attention turns to the World Cup. Except for the US. With the exception of New York City. Nearly every bar with a TV is broadcasting all the games, and my only regret is that they are not timed to typical lunch time. 10AM? Too early. 2PM? Too late. I only have the upper reaches of ESPN channel 170 which repeats the games at night so I can watch The Beautiful Game as the Brazilians like to call it. I don't care that I already know the score.
On the eve before the final matches of Group C, I find myself actually hoping that the US gets into the Knockout Round. I'm not a big fan of US Soccer; it just pales in comparison to the European teams, not to mention the South Americans. In general, they're inconsistent, and just seem to lack the passion of the world powerhouses (that may be because they have relatively so few fans). But this time seems different. Keep in mind, this US team nearly won the Confederations Cup last year, losing only against Brazil. England also is just not up to their usual standards, and it looks like the second spot for advancement will be us or them. As a person of Irish decent, can I really route for the English? No, I say! That may have more to do with the fact Becks isn't playing this time around, even if he is there as silent support for them. I just hope it doesn't come down to a coin toss between them. It could happen - those are the crazy rules of the World Cup.
England isn't the only traditionally strong team that is having a poor showing - Italy lets the match with New Zealand, a team that consists of a mix of professional and amateur players, end in a draw? Spain loses to Switzerland? Don't even get me started on the train wreck of France. They've just fallen into soap opera histrionics and even seemed to be throwing their match today to South Africa in protest.
There is one good thing about the high number of upsets - what teams will end up in the round of 16 is unpredictable. NY Mag online had a list of scenarios for what would have to happen for each team to move on to the next round, and it's mind boggling. Lots of 'if/then' situations that read like math proofs and information about goal differential. No one seems safe, which makes for some interesting games.
The only countries that seem to have a slight cushion are the South Americans. All the participating countries won their first match, and then there is Argentina who won all three. Brazil and Chile may match that feat in their groups, but they are each facing Portugal and Spain respectively. I hope they pull it out, especially Brazil. Two reasons: I've chosen them to take it all in my office pool, and I cannot stand the Portuguese pretty boy, Christian Ronaldo (apologies to all my Portuguese friends).
With South Africa hosting, I think there was a lot of hope for more African teams advancing. Unfortunately, it looks like it may only be Ghana, but with the way things could go, who knows?
Back to my original point: why isn't the US consumed with soccer? Why do we call it soccer when it is called football nearly everywhere else? Some people say that it's the low scoring potential. To this I say that low scoring has nothing to do with the excitement of the match. There is constant movement, the ball is always in motion, and if you've got a lot of shots on goal in a game, there's nothing more nail biting even if the score is 0-0. The time keeping is better than any US sport: 45 minute halves with a couple of minutes added for injury time. With a cushion of 10 minutes, you know pretty precisely when the game with end. There is no overtime, a tie is an acceptable result (maybe that's why it's not popular in the US, no winner).
Obviously, most Americans have not watched soccer on Univision. If that had, there would be no resisting the excitement when the sportscaster yells, "GGGGGOOOOOOOAAAAALLLLLL!!!!!!!
Four years from now, I'm definitely headed to Brazil. What better place to see the World Cup?
My firm recently was awarded a project in Tulsa, OK (see, "the big Driller" on the left). When the marketing team was putting together the proposal and told me that I would be the Project Architect if we were to get the contract, I joked about how I couldn't wait to work on a project in Oklahoma, so I could go to the land of The Flaming Lips. Well, we got it, and I found myself on Tuesday, frantically finishing up some plans so that I could be ready to leave for the airport when the car came at 3:30PM.
There had been talk the week before. Tulsa? Really? A project in The Middle? Jimmy had joked about not knowing who would be more out of place, me, or Richard, the partner in charge of the project. Other than Chicago (which doesn't even really count), I'd never really been anywhere in The Middle. I'd driven across country once, and ridden the train when I moved from Virginia to San Francisco, but I don't think that really counts.
Tulsa is green, and has a few small rolling hills. Since I was expecting total flatness, almost to an oppressive amount of sky flatness, this was somewhat surprising. Even more shocking - Tulsa has a great number of interesting buildings. As I learned while I was there for a couple of short days, Tulsa was a very wealthy city during the oil boom, and had done an impressive job of creating a beautiful sky line (well, at least until skyscrapers found their way there). They have a great collection of Art Deco architecture throughout the city.
The most well known would be the Boston Avenue Methodist Church by Bruce Goff. There is a rumor however that a woman working for him was the true designer (just like Camille Claudel and Rodin!) The project I'm working on is for the Philbrook Museum of Art, and the founder of the Museum was Waite Philips, an oilman of the Philips Petroleum family. As we toured around the city on our last day, we saw a couple of the other projects commissioned by him - The Philtower and Philcade - and both were impressive in their own right.
All in all, it doesn't seem like a bad place to spend some time. All the consultants that we met with while there are going to be great to work with, and the client is really satisfied with their decision to hire us (we found out that our competition was two other NYC architects).
One nagging question I have, which was the same as with the Cooper-Hewitt project here: Where are the other women? Why are all of the architects or engineers at a project manager level men? It seems that there are always women at the client side of the table, and Historic Preservation offices have no shortage of women, but why is it always me, alone at the table on the consultant side on these larger institutional projects? It's a bit frustrating.
One of the things that has surprised me about settling into my forty's is the number of times I've spent comforting my parents when a friend of their's dies. My parents have a lot of friends; they are in their 70's, and unfortunately over the last couple of months, they've lost a lot of people close to them.
A recent conversation with my father:
ME: How's Mr. Condon doing? (Back story: right before Thanksgiving, a dear friend of my parents, a contractor who had rebuild their kitchen about 18 years ago, had been diagnosed with Kidney cancer. Being 82, he had decided not to undergo surgery.) DAD: Oh, he died.
Then there was silence. The last couple of times I had asked this question when I talked to my dad is that his friend was still in the hospital, but was doing ok.
A couple of weeks later, when I was in San Francisco with my mother for Erin's baby shower, she casually mentioned that Mrs. MacVicar had died. Being in her late 80's, she was one of my parents' older friends. She hadn't been sick, so it was a bit of a shock. A couple of weeks later, my dad told me that Mr. MacVicar had died. He had been my father's barber for 20 years. A couple of years ago, my mother made my dad stop seeing him, because he would cut and talk and cut and talk and talk and talk, and my father would come back with a very choppy cut with very little hair left. He really enjoyed talking to Fred though.
Before the recent spate, in October, there was also Mr. Fagan, one of my parents' oldest friends from the Irish crowd. He died of a long battle with Prostate Cancer. His death was somewhat of a comfort - he had been sick for six or seven years. Shockingly, two months later in the days leading up to Christmas, another friend from the NJ Irish crowd, Mr. Lynch, died suddenly at home.
They have lost five friends in six months. When I was up visiting my dad the weekend of my nephew's and my birthday we were talking about it. After a draining conversation, he simply said, "Kerry, I'm just tired of going to funerals."
Last week, my cousin Maureen sent an email about my Aunt Totta, her mother. She had been diagnosed with Bladder Cancer. She's 78, and she's my last aunt/uncle on my mother's side. The other three, my mother's brother and sister, and my mother's sister's husband, have died of cancer. There is way too much of that disease in my extended family. She's doing well right now, but I keep thinking it's just a matter of time.
Right now, I've very thankful for my parents' health. Even considering my dad's heart attack from two years ago, they're both relatively healthy.
I have a thing for gadgets. I'm just really intrigued by things that can make certain tasks easier but are, in reality, totally unnecessary. I could be wrong, but it seems like a truly American thing to get the brightest minds together to come up with devices to make life in the US even more convenient, as long as you have the means to buy them For example, the image to the left is an egg topper, that allows one to remove the top of a hard boiled egg without burning one's fingers.
I recently received an electric toothbrush for my birthday, and was so excited that for a moment I thought that this was the best present I'd received in a long time - dental hygiene is high up on my list. I'm convinced that my teeth are so much cleaner, and that my dentist is going to be so happy with me the next time I see him. This is what the best devices do; they make people believe that machines are the way to better living.
Other devices that are in my future (that is, once I'm returned to full time work...): The KitchenAid stand mixer: A friend once told me that this kitchen tool is one reason to get married; it at least has to be the number one item that brides (and some grooms) put on their registry. It's an expensive item, and probably not one that many people receive as a gift. The last guy I dated had one, and I really took it as a sign that things were going to last - he knew how to cook and appreciated well made gadgets. Alas, that was not the case, so maybe I should take the stand mixer off its pedestal. I don't have room for it anyway.
The at home seltzer maker: A couple of my friends have one of these, and it's just a brilliant idea. I love seltzer, but don't buy it often since bottles quickly lose their fizz. The Europeans (or at least the Irish) were way ahead of us on this invention. When I was younger and my family took a vacation to Ireland, one of my parents' friends had one of these, and I've wanted one ever since (that was 1985). Fresh seltzer all the time. You can also carbonate anything - imagine fizzy coffee...luckily, this item doesn't take up much counter space.
Now if only Apple and Verizon would work things out, I'd finally have an iPhone. I may need to look into the HTC Incredible or the Google Nexus One.
For the past six years, I've gone upstate for a weekend around my birthday since it's also the time of my nephew Parker's birthday. Seven years ago I spent my birthday in the hospital waiting for him to be born; he finally arrived at 4AM on March 26th, missing my birthday by mere hours (dang kids, always trying to upstage the adults).
In the last two years, he's gotten very bratty about gifts, and if he sees a GAP box he moans and groans and completely mortifies my sister. He hates getting clothes. Unfortunately for him, that's usually what I get for him. As I've told him, he grows too fast, and he can't walk around naked. This year, I got him a pair of Converse sneakers, denim colored, which he liked.
After a dinner of pizza and ice cream cake (Carvel with the chocolate crunchies) I went up to the Compound with my dad. The next morning, I saw the destruction my parents have been talking about since the blizzard that brought them 21 inches of wet, heavy snow; large tree branches down all over the yard, and smaller trees destroyed by the larger branches that fell. The yard was littered with the wooded casualties of that storm. The late February storm was a boon for the tree removal industry of Dutchess County; it was only this Saturday night that the contractor called my dad to tell him that they were coming out on Sunday to start the work, more than four weeks after the storm.
I returned back to the city today on the 12:50 train. I wanted to get back so I could pay attention to Salem and make my usual Sunday yoga class. At the Beacon train station, this group of four got on the train, and immediately two small dogs started barking. I looked up from my book, and sitting across the aisle from me were two guys, both probably 6-feet tall, dressed in fake fur squirrel costumes. One was carrying a briefcase and wearing a "I heart NY" t-shirt. One of their companions asked if I would switch seats with them since she wanted to get the Hudson River in the background of the photos. I of course complied with their request - how could I refuse two guys willing to go out in public dressed as squirrels? Lots of passengers were asking questions, and the conductor joked with them about forgetting his squirrel traps. One of the squirrels quipped that that is how he lost an uncle. There were lots of photos taken, and they ended up getting off the train at Tarrytown. Story is, they were putting together a proposal for an "I heart NY" campaign.
My office is moving. The partners are looking for a permanent space (my fingers are crossed for the space at 39 Broadway, a 15 minute walk for me), but for the next three to six months, we will be in the same building seven floors down.
As I've been cleaning up my desk, I'm having to finally deal with all the personal items that have accumulated under my desk over the past 4 1/2 years, such as: A picnic basket: I inherited this from an ex-coworker who was moving to New Orleans. This has been under my desk for, oh, maybe 18 months? A single black slingback shoe: I'm hoping it's match is at home.
A pair of black patent leather heels: These have only been there for a week. By the end of the day, my feet were killing me, so I wore another pair of shoes home that had been sitting under my desk for a couple of weeks.
An insulated lunch bag: Not really sure how long that's been there.
A lamp: Not sure about that one. Maybe free swag from ICFF?
A vase: Flowers from my 40th birthday. Almost exactly a year ago.
15 CDs: Half of them are from the Score! subscription a group of friends got me for my birthday last year, so they've been under the desk for the past couple of months. Brought them in to add to my iTunes.
A 15 foot long carpet runner: This was a new addition to the under the desk collection last week. Benefits of working in an architect's office.
Growing up in an Irish community, St. Patrick's Day was a big day for celebration. When my sisters and I were in elementary school, we would give an Irish Step Dancing demonstration in all the other classes in the school. My mother cooks corned beef and cabbage for dinner every March 17th, and she would bake a soda bread in the morning (that is not reserved strictly for March 17th though). After an overindulgence of currants when I was four years old I would pick them out of the bread when ever she served it - my mother would keep boxes of them in the pantry since they were hard to find, and Erin and I split a box of them once (about 2 cups between us). That experience ruined my stomach lining for a while, and I couldn't stand the sight of the shriveled fruits for a long time - this also extended to raisins since they were so similar.
No matter what my aversion was to currants, I liked the taste that they left in the bread. Since the recipe was my Nana's (my Irish born grandmother), I always saw currants as the authentic fruit for Irish Soda Bread. To this day, when I see The Bread with raisins, I scoff and dismiss it as a pretender.
This predisposition against raisins left me surprised when my cousin Maureen was raving about her Soda Bread recipe which she had gotten from her mother (my mother's sister-in-law). I assumed it was the same recipe, but she sent it to me, and it was not. Her recipe called for raisins, and also eggs and baking powder. Shocking! I was all astonishment. It differs from my mother's recipe quite a bit, and I assume that its a totally different type of bread. We've agreed to try each other's recipes since we each swear by the one we have used for years. We'll see.
most of the world's attention turns to the World Cup. Except for the US. With the exception of New York City. Nearly every bar with a TV is broadcasting all the games, and my only regret is that they are not timed to typical lunch time. 10AM? Too early. 2PM? Too late. I only have the upper reaches of ESPN channel 170 which repeats the games at night so I can watch The Beautiful Game as the Brazilians like to call it. I don't care that I already know the score.
