showdown in chicago

I’m not eating any wheat, gluten, or bread right now which is crazy. I
actually really like it – I thought I’d shrivel up and die without bread
but it turns out there are delicious alternatives to wheat, like sorghum
beer and rice and almond bread. I can’t wait to go out to dinner with
jiddy when I get back to ny. In other news, I am bored as hell here at
work. Oh my god. It’s beyond descriptions of boredom. The guy whos
supposed to be my boss just made a joke about someone else playing the
skin flute. This presents a dilemma: does this comment open the door for
me user these kinds of idioms, or am I disqualified by being an intern and
the youngest/newest/least paid person in the office? I’m not totally sure
I want to find out – after all these people pray before they eat
applebee’s for lunch.
In other news I am so excited for the fourth of july because we are going
to the horse races in grand prairie! HORSE RACES! Hahahha also they have
fireworks. Holy crap. I have to look into getting a ridiculous pastel hat.
Or is that just at the Kentucky derby? Who cares.
Actually I have a feeling that a more fitting outfit for a horse race on
independence day in ft.worth, texas would probably be a bikini made from a revolutionary-war era American flag and cowboy hat. by the way i am becoming more and more obsessed with abe lincoln, i am at the part of my book where he just gained the republican party nomination.


also, i got some info from columbia, like about ids and email.

iphone approaches

oh boy, either a lot or very little has been happening in my life lately. i have a full time job as a graphic designer for this ridiculously inept "volunteer abroad" company which has seen a 300% increase in sales in the last year, and i'm producing their literature. oy!!! it's run by these two nepalese guys who seem to be.... prismatically transforming business geniuses. they're constantly changing - like friday i made a brochure for one of the other companies they run, this one called global future inst., and the brochure listed them as forestry, agriculture and poverty researchers. wha??? five days a week all i see is them convicing naive college students that the guy meeting them at the airport in nairobi isn't someone they found loitering outside a bus station on their last visit (he is). but they are really nice. it's just been the weirdest experience ever. i overheard a conversation the other day where this 22-yr old canadian volunteer was calling saying they wanted to go home because they got chased by people with machetes. the people at the office were like "we're not giving you a refund, this is all hearsay." booyah!

i have also been living in the loft which i have made into a very cute little place. for two more months i will be here before leaving for manhattan. i can't wait to go back, mainly because all my friends are having parties every night and i want to hit that before studio starts!!! jarett got a part in a production of macbeth, reinforcing the constant stream of people insisting he's going to be famous. justin and he are living together, about 10 blocks from my future abode! or, not having gotten a place yet, neighborhood. this is lucky because it will be easier to join parties, so that we can find justin his future relationship, with someone from the GSAPP. it's his goal for this year and it would suit both of our interests, a marriage!

today my mom is away in madison, having a little reunion party with her best friends from grad school. dad, annicka, and i went to burger bar last night in the west village (imagine prenzlauer berg in berlin, but only 4 years old, planned by a new urbanist, and populated by wealthy texans - albeit fun). it was amazing. i had a turkey burger with cranberries, avacado, pepperjack, and sweet potatoe fries. and the best mojito i've ever had! ever! delicious. like drinking minty heaven. burger bar is this sort of up-scale after-bar hangout, sort of done up in copenhagen-chic --- big huge ambient chandaliers, lots of wood and metal. it stays open til 3am every night so all the dallesiens who can't stand to set foot in a diner love it!

many other things have been happening to me - it turns out i am "on" the celiac's disease scale, though my tests are "overall" negative - so i'm getting on a gluten-free diet! oh shit!!!!! so i have been eating special almond rice bread and cookies, which i actually like better than the gluten-y old kind. plus, i dont feel like puking after i eat it. though, strangely, i've actually been getting more rashes since i started (rashes are a big indicator of celiac's)

i skipped work to meet with an architect here in our neighborhood the other day, who regaled me with stories of working under michael graves at princeton in the seventies and going up to columbia for the football game, and has a son doing conceptual art at harvard. i think i may have impressed him by trotting out my almost encyclopedic knowledge of alvar aalto. he was telling me about how he visited alvar's own house in finland which he'd "never met anyone else who'd been there," and i identified the house. oh yeah! he sent me on my way by saying we should have a beer. awesome.

well on the apartment front i am having a hard time of committing. i am excited for rhode island because i'm gonna take the train into manhattan, sign a sublet or lease, and then take some of my friends back up to the beach houses for a few days. i can only imagine what the meeting of those two little universes will be like. irish swedes and russian jews. remarkably alike, theyre actually almost exactly the same, when you really get to know them.

im sunburned today

i can wait, i can wait

Ooh boy, office jobs are so boring. I mean, some kinds of offices I enjoy very much –ones that are in a field I’m interested in, ones which are doing something important, or even just ones that are doing something totally boring but have a good culture – i.e. the employees like each other. Unfortunately my summer job doesn’t really fit into any of those three categories. my computer hasn’t arrived yet (after four days of full-time work) so basically I am doing ridiculous and useless work, like checking the entire website for spelling and grammar errors. Needless to say they picked the wrong guy. But then again, I now am dreading the arrival of the computer, because it means I’ll be held accountable for semi-independent work (creating all their .pdf graphic files in indesign). It’s just counting down the hours that really gets to you. Like right now, I have five and a half more hours here, since I’ve been here for two and a half. God this place is weird. It’s in this weird old seventies office building off of the freeway that goes to the airport. It’s one of those office bldgs with the orangy-glass cladding. From the window I’ve been sitting at, I can see the city’s skyline and the freeway leading towards it. The white dome of the Cowboy’s stadium is to the left, while endless car dealerships and fast food places are to both sides. One fun thing is to watch the weather roll in and out – it’s so flat here that you can see for hundreds of miles, so storms that are in Oklahoma are visible to the eye.
This building is really a dump - tons of mirrors, a rickety elevator, cockroaches, and an ornery maintenance man who claims he’s retired! Today they told me that the men’s bathroom is being used by “vagrants” at night, because the door lock is gone. I asked what vagrants, and they were all “don’t worry!” and I was like, I’m not worried, I meant seriously, what homeless person would come all the way out here on the airport highway to use these shitty bathrooms? And go to all that trouble? So my opinion is it’s an inside job. Oh boy am I excited to get out of work. Maybe it will be sunny and I can go to the pool.
This weekend was kind of sad simply because it rained the whole time, and I was so excited to go to the pool. But father’s day was yesterday and that was great because I made dad some blueberry and raspberry pancakes.

pavan

i discovered i really like all bands on 'flogsta danshall.' i wish i had known when i was in dk.. just didnt pay attention i guess. but now im really getting into it. its good for summer. i am obsessed by looking for an apartment in new york. i found the best place ever but it's 20 blocks south of avery, and people say that no one in the arch program should live beyond walking distance since you have to go home at like 5am every night. i dunno, my mom says i'd just have to alot some money each week to taking cabs home. still, it would suck to have to take the subway so much. i mean its walkable but itd take longer. i dunno. plus this place doesn't move in until nov.1 so id have to find some other place for two months??? which would blow. but it's so beautiful, three windows on the 10th flr of a building on broadway and 101st. niiice!!!

i had a job interview today, it went well though it seems like the job might be a little bit boring. basically producing indesign files for a study abroad organization. i mean its full time and pays awesome, but honestly i'd rather not work in an office and have to carry through every day with the awful 9-5 office talk. for some reason that really got to me at my last office/graphics job. it just gets to you after a while. i never expected to feel that way... but right now i just want a job at starbucks and call it a summer.

were going to wisconsin this weekend to annicka's graduation, im really excited. mom and dad are going early to go to a conference in madison, and then on saturday im flying in and then we'll all drive up to appleton. YES! i love appleton! then i am going to drive home in the scion with annicka and all her stuff, which is going to be awesome because on monday we're gonna go to chicago and stay with caitlin, whos gonna be there. her grandma has an apartment really high up on lakeshore drive, i cant WAIT to see caitlin. she's annicka's friend who lives in dallas and is so awesome. but i wanna go see IIT again and then maybe around..then we'll drink that night and so on. oh chicago i love it. then we'll drive straight down through the country, probably stop in omaha to see our grandma jean. then get home. im really excited cuz we'll be able to stop and take lots of pictures and see all the weird stuff along the way. i am personally looking forward to the weird alien nebraska plains myself. last time i was there i didn't have my polaroid out and missed getting a picture of them i think.

so anyways. dallas. weird. ive been riding my bike around everywhere. mom was in dc a few days ago so dad and i were hanging out, we went to little katana where i had the best sushi ive ever tasted, in particular a sunny roll which is shrimp tempura, crabmeat, avacado creamcheese wrapped in some kind of rice noodle with orange and eel sauce and one other i forget.. heres a picture of it

i cant wait to go back and have another it was so great.

holland?

i am cultivating an almost god-like knowledge of summer tv. have you seen the commercials for this new show, "pirate master?" the voice over goes something like this: "it's DANGEROUS!" and this guy says, "to be a pirate, you have to be COOL." wow, that does sound dangerous!!! it's basically a group of idiots running around the bahamas following a "pirate map" that was obviously made by an intern.

i am so bored, so so bored. yet whenever my phone rings, i am terrified that it will be someone wanting me to work for them. my mom is away at a committee meeting in washington so dad and i are just hanging out. yesterday we went to go get these flats that ive been trying to get for like 3 months now but couldn't find in the right color/size, but i found them over by SMU at a store called "cotton island." here they are:

this place is the epitome of the whole dallas/smu culture.. check out this picture of their store:

basically the people who work there are ridiculously done up, tanned, blond girls who are like...so nice. so sweet, so southern. i mean i'm sure it's a front but i love it so much. when we left my dad was like "you know, every girl working there came from the same model didn't they?" SMU is so weird... i'm fascinaed by it, and yet i know i should be repulsed by it because everyone else is. but it's so interesting and weird. forte describes it best, his wife went to SMU and he can do a hilarious impression of dallas women.. "oh youahh're funnn!"
anyways then we went to mockingbird station which is one of these new shopping/entertainment centers that are everywhere here, which i actually kind of like because in dallas' case there's a few that are actually pretty cool looking and have good restaraunts. actually i think the reason i have a soft spot for this kind of expansive and excessive development because it reminds me of oresund in copenhagen. anyways this one at mockingbird station has the angelika film center, which i always thought was unique to new york, but it turns out there's three in texas and one in new york. boyah! my dad wanted to see the new paul verhoeven movie, "black book," which as you might guess, is about holland during world war two. i'm a sucker for war movies so i enjoyed it. before that we went to the adjacent trinity hall for some dinner, and i was excited because they serve strongbow there. we sat outside and for once it was sunny.

ive watched marie antoinette twice today...weird

magasin

oh boy this is really starting to get old. i really hate to complain because i know i'm the luckiest kid... im just running out of stuff to be excited about or something. i guess yesterday was good, we went out to brunch at la duni with burt, the dean of my parent's school, and his wife.. burt is really awesome and loves to talk architecture so that was fun, turns out hes friends with antoine predock so that's really neat. predock is 'kind of a big deal' around here... i drove over and saw one of his houses in highland park last summer, and kinda liked it:

and then later it cleared up for like 5 minutes (it's been raining literally for 8 days straight now) so i took the refurbished bike out for a spin around oak lawn, which was unexpectedly awesome. when i had that bike at school, you know, it's from the 70s, i was always freaked out by it because the front wheel wobbled and the breaks didn't work...now both the iron pig and dad's bike are running like a charm. i took it down to walgreen's to get some pictures developed, and then after dinner, mom and i rode down to the katy trail (one of those rails to trails things that leads from our neighborhood to downtown dallas) and rode all the way down to victory plaza, where the w is and the new mandarin oriental next to it, and not far away from the koolhaas/foster construction sites. its only like a 2 mile ride, you can get there in like 10 minutes. we also found out that the parking lot of the theatre in turtle creek is a popular cruising spot! take notes. anyways i was gonna go back today with my camera to capture the progress on construction, but it fucking poured all day of course.
we went to the mall and i returned these bright blue jeans i bought, cuz it turns out they were just a little too crazy for dallas. that's typical. the color palette here is more subdued than up north, and i forgot that. dad, however, bought all these shirts and one of them is insane - like purple and green with these ferns which mom and i told him look like feathers. we told him to return it but he refuses. we'll see, i know mom won't let him wear it.
but anyways i have been sick for the last week, and ive been taking robotussin nighttime before bed, and its making me CRAZY. like i can't wake up at all during the day, and if i have to do anything within an hour of taking it i can't wake up from this really weird, crazy sleep. i mean people in highschool used to 'robotrip' or whatever, but i thought you had to drink like an entire bottle of the crap to feel any hallucinigenic effect? i'm taking a pretty normal amount, and last night i had a crazy waking dream about "the girls next door." wtf?????!!??!?!? im gonna go get some other kind of medicine if it stops raining ever.
in other news i finished "undaunted courage" and have started on "team of rivals" which is about abe lincoln and his cabinet. i mean honestly, its more of a sleep aide than anything, i read 2 pages and without fail i doze off... but it's really interesting, just really slow. obviously.
i want to go see the new 28 weeks later so bad but no one here will go with me and since my computer is broken my dad is refusing to let me download it on his since he could get in big trouble i guess.
my mom keeps saying if i want to go back to ny right now i can, but i dunno...i need to get a job and save some money before the fall and living in ny i can't see how that would help.

i've got a tigress back at home, and i need someone with soul power

oh god i think i have enough time now to write a post. it's been a WEIRD few days. or i guess, weeks now. i graduated, it was so weird... so fast. the senior donee dinner was amazing: forte brought all his own wine, year 2003 for the year we entered slc, and french in honor of michelle meyers leaving this year. we drank so much, and then it was the faculty show, and then the dance - so funny. then we went to a party in mccracken, and discovered a way to get up on the roof. it was really wonderful, i love roofs. so anyways then graduation happened, i could write a lot about it but you know, it was a graduation!

the real highlight was that night, when we went to AQUAVIT. it was quite literally, the coolest and best resteraunt i've ever been to in my life. just imagine: jacobsen swan chairs, a utzon-esque undulating wooden slat ceiling ala bagsvaerd's outer rooms, poul henningsen lights, verner panton chandaliers...oh god.

we ate in the dining room, sitting in these very 70s textiled booths. each table had a alvar aalto vase with nettles in them. we ordered aquavit to begin with - i chose raspberry lime and tried vanilla, pear and black pepper. if you don't know, aquavit is a scandinavian liquor which is basically ike schnapps or vodka, which is surrounded by a lot of tradition and so on - i remember my swedish relatives challenging my dad and grandpa to an aquavit drinkin contest or something when we visited them. so we began with that, and they bring it in these beautiful chilled crystal glasses which look like shot glasses with stems. also, aquavit is by far the most expensive place i've ever eaten - damn. so of course this is one of those places where they give you 3-4 little tasting plates of stuff the chef is trying out, the first one was mushroom soup with sort of pickled shrimp, and then there was salmon foam, smoked tuna, and caviar. i started my actual dinner with this really famous thing the chef magnus makes, the lobster roll, which is a really thinly rolled thing of lobster, pickled apples, and trout roe...and it comes with this little shot of frozen lemon lime juice! i also had to get an elephant beer because that's a classic thing to drink with fish. and then for our second course i ordered shellfish stew, which wasn't really a stew, it was a plate of one of each: lobster, scallop on mushrooms, something else i forget, and some kind of flower stuffed with crabmeat. and then the water poured this saffron/saslify soup all over it...delicious. and then we had this rose hip soup with lime foam over it, and then we had dessert, for which i had a chocolate truffle with lemon sorbet thing. my mom was so excited, because on the dessert menu they had fruit suppe with pepparkroker, and she said grandma ina and grandpa helge used to make it for dessert, and she hadn't seen it since then.. i am writing all this down because it was literally the best meal i've ever had. whoever this chef is, i guess he's a young swede who was raised somewhere in africa, but he's brilliant. we got little packs of pepparkroker to go, haha!
oh god it was so magical...i just had to write about it so i won't forget.

so here i am back in dallas, bored as hell and both trying to get a job while trying to hold out as long as i can without doing it. it's been rainy since we got back - kind of depressing. i don't know anyone here now that caitlin's in chicago, and annicka doesn't come home for another few weeks. my mom took me to see "the lives of others" which was fantastic. not much to report otherwise...the long cold months of boredom at a crappy job await... i'm okay with it though!