...you smell like a monkey...and look like one too!

I feel guilty plotting an 'out' now as today I realized what a nice bunch of people I work with. Not only did they take me out for the planned birthday lunch (Tlaquepaque in Willow Glen, yummy), but they conspired to pick up my husband to surprise me and then later, a smaller crew of them surprised me in the lunch room with one my favorite cakes from flour flower...Basically I was walking around with a steel grate in my hand trying to track down the head designer with a question, when my manager demanded me to come over to speak wtih him to get me over to the kitchen, as if I was in trouble- but he never speaks to me that way so it was clearly suspicious. As soon as I near the lunch room and see a circle of grinning expectant faces I knew...only one other time did that happen, and it was my bridal shower in NY. Then, since our office is about 100 people and they got a regular little round cake (for maybe a dozen people), they whisper-sang the happy birthday song, at speedy tempo, to try and do it before the poachers started surfacing from the cubicles. It was really cute. They even had the bakery write 'Feliz Cumpleanos Wendy' in honor of my office Spanglish (sometimes used for gossip).

Meanwhile I chatted with my contact working at Desirable Design Company and the more I learn about it, the more excited I get, but I really am trying not to get my hopes up since I know how hard it is to get in...and it's quite different than traditional architecture so it's hard for me to gauge where I'd stand. At the very least, I have an insider husband-of-partner-of- good friend who has promised to slip my app in to Those in Power so at least I won't get lost in the shuffle.
I thought I was done, but taking his advice, will disregard the electronic submission request on their web site and make a printed copy of my portfolio. Which, as I looked at it, decided to redo the whole format closer to my last edition since I think it still looks better. So on we go again...

I'm pretty tired from staying up late all week doing portfolio stuff, so today's lesson is a quickie on the #1 concerns for developer (not designed for specific entity) architecture:
1. any type of building: Can someone fall and die off of it from any point?
2. Schools: can one kid throw another kid over to die at any point?
3. Pool areas: can anyone slip, trip, drown, fall, or otherwise die at any point?
4. prisons: can someone use any part of the building or its accessories to kill someone? (the escape part is pretty tight...I searched and couldn't find an out, and I hear they're all 'inside jobs' these days)
5. Courthouses: Can someone pass or throw a weapon to a convict...er, defendant, so that he/she can kill anyone at any point?
Yes litigation has taken over architecture too...funny in school we always think our primary concern is making sure the building doesn't fall on anyone (rare given codes). Now, it's making sure nobody finds a way to fall off the building, or uses the building to kill someone.

Another funny part in architecture is in picking the people you use in renderings (artistic portrayals of the buildings/spaces) No fat people, no minorites, everyone is Wonder Bread perfect. Often the people are ambiguous outlines, but sometimes more realism is demanded. My husband once used photos of the actual students he had taken while on site for a school project, because the kids were in uniform. When the School Board saw the renderings, they complained that they wanted all the fat kids out...but many of the kids were, and they were their actual students...not to mention they weren't morbidly obese, just carrying a little pudge in the middle. Nonetheless away they went, which made me wonder what those people were thinking when they walked down the hall and saw their students...were they mentally 'weeding?'