Going to Waste

So here I am on my own blog on a New Year's Eve, mostly because I want to use a link I keep here, and I see that Pixie over at Why Architects Drink has a new post up.

(Link to said post, for your convenience.)

And I'm reading what she wrote and I'm thinking, "Hell!"  Or if you want to be Southern about it, "Hay-ell!" Because the way she's been feeling lately is the way I've been feeling.  Except my depression and anger is all tied up with the fact that I haven't been practicing as an architect these last six or seven years.  I'm not designing houses, I'm cleaning them.  And I'm not giving people design advice in the conference room of an architecture office in return for a reasonable professional compensation, I'm giving out design advice in the aisles of the Big Blue Box Store for next to nothing.

And some nights I get so angry about it I pray God to make the time go fastfastfast till I can go home, because I'm tired of acting all nicey-nice and I'm afraid that if I get one more customer asking me some bloody fool question I'm going to rip his bloody fool head off and he'll deserve it, too, for being such a bloody fool.*

Thank God it's not like that every night.  And the last night it was, a co-worker left me some chocolate and I ate some on break and came back feeling half-human.

Which is about all the anti-depressant drugs this kid can afford.  Or wants to take.

But something has to change.  I put off till the last minute doing the continuing education it would take for me to retain an active architect's license: what the hell did I need it for, the rate I've been going?  But I made the effort and got the CE hours in and some to spare.  So can I do anything with it in 2014?  It would have to be on a freelance basis.  I doubt I could convince any architecture firm in the area that I could be useful to them, especially with the economy still in the tank.

But heaven help me, I have to do something.  What I'm doing now does not pay the bills.  And it makes me feel I've wasted my education, my talents, and my life. And I can't go on feeling that I've wasted my life.

And I don't have much life left to waste.

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*No, not all the customers are bloody fools.  That's the anger talking.  But some are, and when they are and I'm in that state of mind, it's scary.  Bring on the 80% cacao . .  .

Fork in the Road?

I got my renewal papers for my out-of-state architectural license today, and they weren't exactly welcome.

It's not that I mind renewing my license. No, indeed. Just the opposite. The problem wasn't the renewal form, per se, it was the notice that came with it. As I'd read previously in the registration board newsletter, my home state will henceforth be strictly enforcing continuing education requirements, and if you haven't fulfilled yours in the past year, you should go on inactive status and can no longer call yourself or practice as an architect.

I don't want to go on inactive status. I want to keep my license active and current to maintain myself some semblance of marketability. But I haven't been able to gain any continuing ed credits this past year-- it's just too expensive. I mean, here I am, barely scraping by on part time work, and I'm supposed to blow $500 on a one-day conference for a couple of credit hours? That's the typical price for these continuing ed offers I get in the mail.

So I'm stuck. I have till the end of the year to do something about it. Between now and then I could find out how I'd get reactivated, once I put myself on the inactive list. Barring a miracle (like getting a full time job with a lot of Lunch-and-Learn continuing ed sessions where I can fulfill the requirements painlessly and for free), I don't see how it can be avoided.

I see myself heading down a road I don't want to travel. And from here, it looks like a dead end.

The Practice of Architecture as Benedictine Monasticism

This afternoon I picked up a phone message from the client for the little drawing I did, per the last post. The fabricators, he says, want to know the deflection and the loading for the new beam that's going in.

Fine, I tell him, I can work that out.

What I didn't mention was, hey, um, this wasn't in the original scope of work. The fabricators were supposed to take care of that themselves, given the info supplied. I finished the drawing I was asked to do, and he's paid me for it. Which is good. But the invoice I handed him last week was already discounted to reflect what he was willing to pay.

So now do I tell my EP that doing these calcs will be extra?

Golly Moses, no. I'm going to revert to the style of my past employers going back to the '70s and '80s and eat the fee to retain the good will.

I have to wonder, had they not beaten it into our heads in architecture school that we'd better not be in it to enrich ourselves and that becoming an architect was equivalent to taking a vow of poverty, chastity,* and obedience; if my early architectural practice role models had had harder heads for business; if I didn't have a neurotic attitude towards money such that I believed and accepted this bs, I'd be a Rich and Successful Architect by now. But back then, Architecture wasn't about making money, it was about Serving the Public and/or Doing Beautiful Design. Good grief, we practically paid the clients for giving us the privilege!

And now the concrete has hardened in the form and it's too bloody late for me to change.
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*Well, sorta, but mainly because we'd be too busy cranking out drawings to indulge in any such frivolity.

Graphite Fingers

Congratulate me. I've just nearly-finished my first bit of architecture work in over two years.

"Bit" is the operative word. It is the slightest, the lightest of projects. A whim, a wisp, a trifle. A mere scribble done to edify the fabricators of a new structural beam, that will be installed to replace an existing bearing wall in a local residence. No design, no actual calculations on my part, just documentation of existing conditions with notes on the distance to be spanned by the new support.

Nevertheless, it might prove important for me, since it's for the Executive Presbyter of my presbytery, and if any of our churches need renovation work, it would be nice to be referred.

I did the drawing by hand. Even if my AutoCAD program hadn't expired last December, I wouldn't have used it for this project, since it was a student version and everything you printed out from it bore the scarlet letter of "PRODUCED BY AN AUTODESK EDUCATIONAL PRODUCT." In other words, "Naughty, naughty, you've used this relatively-cheap student version for your professional work, instead of paying us for the full version that costs ten times more!" Nope, that'd look bad.

There are free computer drafting programs available on line. But I've already learned AutoCAD and why do I want to confuse myself learning a different one? At least, a different one that nobody uses in any professional office.

So it's drawn in my old pencil-on-vellum style, barring a couple of things on which I need more information from the owners. On things like this, hand-drafting can be faster in some ways.

Still, it'd be nice to have my own full version of AutoCAD, even without 3-D. But at well over $1,000 for an individual license, how can I manage that?

Well, maybe, by way of eBay . . . I'm watching an auction for a full version of AutoCAD LT . . . which ends tomorrow at 12:51 my time . . . which is ten minutes before I'm due at the final planning meeting for the local committee for the North American Festival of Wales that's taking place here in Pittsburgh over Labor Day weekend . . . a meeting that's fifty minutes away and that I must attend . . .

Hmm. I guess I'll watch it till I have to leave, throw in a bid if the spirit moves me, and let the results take care of themselves.

My Cut-Rate Grand Tour: Day One, Part 2

Tuesday, 6 December, 1988
Oxford to Caen

LA MANCHE, 5:05 PM-- I did get a cab right quick out front. I was in good time for the station and the train to Portsmouth Harbor. Changed at Reading. I regret to say the luggage is beastly heavy, especially with me trying to get a cold and having had no sleep and no food to speak of. Providentially, I keep finding people who volunteer to carry my bag for me, for which I am grateful.

The countryside between Oxford and Portsmouth was lovely, the sun shining and the fields an intense but mellowed shade of yellow green. There was an old man in the train from Reading, where I had to change, who lives near Portsmouth and was telling me about how he used to go camping with the Boy Scouts on the Isle of Wight. He pointed out the castle at Portchester, I think it was, and said it dated from the 1000s.

The ferry was late coming in, due to choppy seas. We didn’t get underway till way after 4:00 (3:00 PM is proper sailing time) and shan’t be in to harbour till very late. I do hope the bus into Caen is still running.

This is a French ship, the Tregastel. It’s like Montréal on board, in that the staff all speak French primarily but since their English has to be good, too, I feel a little foolish practicing my rudimentary French. Thus far I have been mixing it, and not adding in any Russian. We will see how I handle it when it comes time to buy dinner.

It’s a pity we got started so late. It’s quite dark now and I won’t be able to get a view of the open sea. There is a bit of a swell, producing a feeling as if the ship were making a continual righthand veer and rather as if one had gotten pleasantly tiddly. It’s making me quite sleepy . . . .


10:20 PM, FRENCH TIME-- Did you know the French are an hour ahead of the Brits? Whether it’s got to do with the country’s longitude east or if they just never go off Daylight Savings Time, I don’t know. Well, that’ll give me longer to see things in the afternoons, though an hour less sleep tonight. If I’d known we’d be this late I’d’ve hired a cabin and stretched out. As it was, I nearly fell asleep sitting at a cafeteria table before dinner.

Turned out I had no option about using French when trying to get something to eat. The chef-cum-server didn’t have any English. English food though: fried fish and chips, all luxuriously greasy. Poisson et frites, s’il-vous-plait!†

When I was finished and started to unwrap the chocolate angel Friedhelm* gave me the other day (I remembered to take it with me at the very last minute and ate it this evening so it wouldn’t get squished in my new satchel), the man who carried my suitcase onboard for me this afternoon came by my table and asked me, in French, if I were French and returning home.

No, I told him, je suis une Americaine.

He eventually sat down and we had a nice long chat. He had no English at all and you know about my French. We did communicate after a fashion and I think I got the gist of most of it, if not the details. It was hard to tell if, when I couldn’t follow him, it was due to my lack of vocabulary or to his digressive style.

I think the latter, in the case of his telling me about his friend who has a fishing boat in Brittany and then getting off on the tale of all the American tankers that’ve broken up and left oil slicks all over the Bretagne beaches. Maybe I missed something about how the fishing wasn’t as good as it used to be.

He lives in a suburb of Caen, had just been over to England for the day, and was now coming back. Likes boats. He says there’re about seventy hotels around Caen. I just hope I can find one whose proprietor won’t be angry at being rousted out at midnight.

It shouldn’t be much longer now. I’ve been seeing lights on the horizon for over a half hour and we appear to be drawing even, as I write.

(It’s 11:10 PM.)


CAEN, 1:10 AM-- My Norman helper continued to keep me company off the ferry and into Caen, until he’d seen me into a hotel pres de la gare ["close to the train station"]. I never got his name. Though I suppose I could’ve, if I’d been quicker on the uptake. For some reason on the bus from the ferry port he was trying to tell me his birthday and ask me mine, and when I didn’t understand he showed me his entry permit, which certainly had his name on it. The interesting thing is that his permit said he was born in 1948. My apologies, but I would’ve said he was nearly ten years older than that. That’s a year younger than Eric* [a former (single) architectural employer]. But then, Eric’s always been a handsome cuss. That’s why I put up with him for so long.

Continued fun with the French language. I have to work on my numbers and stop adding them up in the air in front of me.

He asked me if I’d been speaking French in the US. No . . . (only to myself and in writing, which I want to express untoward thoughts towards ineligible objects . . . ).

Passed the château on the way here. Lit up at night. It was William the Conqueror’s. Of course! Survived the bombing in WWII, apparently.

Settled on a hotel near the station. Whole string of them here. This one is called L’Hôtel du Depart. Up the street a ways is L’Hôtel du Arrive. Humorous people, these Normans.

This place strikes me as odd, but I think I’ve discovered why it doesn’t seem quite as nice as it could be. It’s because this whole street (or place) is totally packed with hotels and brasseries, and I think subconsciously I was affected by thoughts of Honolulu’s Hotel Street, famous from Magnum and Hawaii 5-O. And it is not a nice place.

This is setting me back 100F [about $20 at the time], with a sink and a bidet in the room and WC down the hall, just like at Coverdale*-- except for the bidet. I can’t find the light for the washroom, but that’s like Coverdale, too, where according to time-honored Oxford tradition, the mirror is small and in the darkest corner of the room.‡ I can see how God has used this past fall to get me used to such major trials and tribulations as these.††

Speaking of WCs, I’d read of how casual the French are about bathrooms and I witnessed that one on the boat.

Actually, I made the first faux pas. Just after I’d gotten on board I saw a sign saying Toilet and so I went and used it. On the way out I noticed the urinals and wondered if it were a coed john, again like Coverdale-- until I got to the door and noticed it had a pictograph for "Men" on it. I was glad no one else was around to see.

But then just before dinner, I was in a bona fide ladies' room, getting ready to wash my hands, when a man came in and quite matter-of-factly headed for one of the stalls to use the stool. (Stall door closed, of course.) I quickly stepped out into the passage to verify that I hadn’t made the same mistake twice--no . . . So I (mentally) said ok! and went back to the sink to do what I was doing. My nonchalance may’ve had something to do with yesterday evening, when I was the casual witness to the scene of several future vicars stripping to their briefs and changing into their pantomime costumes in front of God and all the rest of the cast. Nic Chistlethwaite* had some really brief black ones on but he’s no good for a cheap thrill-- he’s too skinny.

The decor here is basic Motel-6 in a blue version (chenille bedspread exactly like the ones at Covers) but the plumbing fixtures are new and nicely-designed. And I am greatly enlivened to see that the closet door is fitted with one of those plastic and metal foil recessed pulls, from Häfele or Ironmonger, such as we found to be useless at the Griffons’ [a residential project I'd been working on in the States]. Here they solved the problem by fastening a screw straight through the middle and into the wood. Tacky-- but effective.
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†NB-- I'll translate the French, German, etc., only if I think the meaning may not be obvious. But unsupplied translations cheerfully made upon request!
‡Dorothy L. Sayers allusion, from Chapter 1 of Gaudy Night
††Warning! Major self-deprecatory sarcasm alert!!