GRIZZLY PEAR

written snapshots

Category: Artifacts

  • 2023 Retrospective & 2024 Prospective

    I’m trying a new format where I just comment on things with three bullet points. Hopefully it will help me blow through the backlog of old blog drafts. Thought I’d try it out by looking at the year in review and the year to come.

    But you must read Andrei Atanasov’s No. 26 – Dancing In A Supermarket first! I don’t care if you make it back.

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    2023

    My theme this year was “catching up”. I feel like I did just OK with the theme, but the more that I think about it, it was an eventful year as we started re-integrated back into society despite our pandemic caution.

    Highlights

    • Buying a House
    • Visiting San Diego (twice!)
    • Two great architects joined the Division

    Hobbies

    • Reading — Homer and Tarot
    • Substack — finding fellow wanderers on Notes
    • Fountain Pens — Sketching and Calligraphy

    Lowlights

    • Getting the house ready for move-in, renovations are still miserable.
    • Didn’t exercise nor eat well enough, gained weight.
    • Distractions, unfocused focused, especially the second half of this year.

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    a year
    a life
    goodbye
    tomorrow
    smiles and
    sorrow
    hello

    When calligraphing, I have to be completely focused. This morning I chose John Coltrane’s Giant Steps instead of the usual Chicken and Dumplin’s by Bobby Timmons. That slight change was enough to add an extra O to the page. Fortunately, the early mistake kept me ultra-concentrated for the rest of the exercise.

    It’s been twenty years since hand drafting at the ground floor of Ron Bogley’s house. Small residential doesn’t pay well, but it was the most fun I’ve had as an architect. Graphite on vellum is a lot more forgiving so I would listen to the baseball games as I lettered.

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    2024

    My theme for next year is “settling in”. For the new house and everywhere else. The first half of the year will be a mess between the house and the biennial cycle for my government job. Hopefully the second half will be a time of customizing the home to fit our needs, it’s been a decade of always thinking we’re moving soon.

    Settling In

    • At the new House
    • Returning to the Office (again)
    • Digital Places and Processes

    Practices

    • Sketching and Calligraphy
    • Exercising
    • Reading my repeating “little library” and pushing forward on the classics

    Tiny Targets (and goals)

    • Three deep breaths on a yoga mat every morning. (I’d love to do the 8 Brocades three times a week, but I’ll start tiny.)
    • Sit down and say a small mantra before eating anything, including snacks. (The big goal is to lose a couple of pounds a month, but the numerical goal failed spectacularly last year. Maybe instilling a mindfulness practice is the first step in the process.)
    • Do something with a pen every morning (It would be nice to finish my OPM Letters and clear out my pile of read books to be blogged.)

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    new book
    new year
    new month
    new week
    new day
    Foundational Hand
    new font 

    I wrote this on 12/26 with a new-to-me font from The Art of Calligraphy by David Harris. I messed up the word order on the last line (working from bottom up) and kept it for the rest of the poem. But it sounds wrong so I went back to the original wording in the light blue scribbles.

    I’m not sure if I will stick with Foundational Hand for a long period (as I did with Uncial) but I’ll give it at least a week before exploring other fonts.

    This morning habit of writing a tiny poem for calligraphy practice has a highlight of this season to close out the year. Thanks to Beth Kempton and Nadia Gerassimenko for catalyzing the #tinypoem project! I just got Mary Oliver’s A Poetry Handbook — hopefully her wisdom will help me write gooder before I start publishing them in earnest.

    On to another 366 days of discovery in 2024!

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  • happy holidays

    Instead of the usual everyday magic, here is the holiday card that I posted onto Facebook for my friends.
     

    For the past two years, I’ve been hassling the family to take a hike in the hills above our house. Once you get up the slope, it’s an easy jaunt down the old mining road.

    About a half a mile in, you come across the foundation of an old building. I have no idea about its original purpose, but it’s now a canvas for graffiti artists and a delight for the occasional wanderer.

    The kids jumped around this colorful place as the sun set behind our heads, bathing the Las Vegas strip with a golden orange aura.

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    While cleaning up our PC desktop, I found a photo from our visit to Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego at La Jolla last March.

    This was quite the treat because Vegas regrettably is short on art museums.

    It wasn’t easy to wrangle two young kids around high priced pieces of art; the guards were not amused. But after years of not seeing high art, it was so totally worth it.

    With a location a block away from the Pacific ocean, this museum was magic for sure, though hardly “everyday”.

    Here’s to finding magic throughout the new year!
     

    A five year old dangerously close to a Peter Alexander sculpture

  • A History of Happy Holidays!

    Happy Holidays! 2023! (to 2007!)

    Sixteen years ago, I was trapped in the studio over Christmas because the master’s thesis was presented in early January. During a sleep deprived break, I slammed together a silly holiday email to friends and family.

    That started a personal tradition of sending a physical postcard at the end of every year. After the kids arrived, I went digital with three cards — for work, family, and social media.

    Each December, I comb through our photos and clean up my contacts. It’s a great way to re-live the year and still a lot faster than handwritten postcards.

    Please enjoy this selected history from my post graduate life (minus the family mugshots!)

    2023

    After the completing the building, we discovered that it did not have enough safety factor for the fire sprinkler system water pressure. We spent half a million dollars replacing the backflow prevention devices with low pressure loss units. It was an incredible headache, but the team worked hard together, and it could have been much worse.

    2022

    The stucco exterior wall of an building for mental health services. This was originally built as an outdoor stage. It’s now a mechanical room and the seating area has been fenced-in as a yard for the chiller. One of the highlights of 2023 was when the architect on this project joined our division. I’ve been blessed to work with great people.
    Same photo with a giant holiday greeting in the sky. We decided to play it safe. As a government worker, it’s prudent to be slightly boring.

    2021

    A partially ground concrete slab where the polishing was stopped where the future carpet finish would be installed.
    The transparency glitched as I was picking the font, inspiring a this frenetic postcard with lots of words and some strange bars on the sides. As with 2022, we stuck with the moderately stale option for final distribution.

    2020

    A construction photo of the central stairs at the new Education Building at Nevada State College. During the pandemic, I would visit the jobsite on my own on Sundays. It was a meditative activity.

    2019

    An odd clerestory (without windows) in an administrative building for a agency serving disabled clients. I have no clue what the original architect was trying to do, but the best perk of being an architect is discovering into oddball conditions like this.

    2018

    A pit toilet at Valley of Fire State Park foregrounded by red desert sands and scrubby bushes. This photo has been the wallpaper on my work phone ever since. It was so hot that the Ranger’s station had a giant sign warning against hiking in the park.

    2017

    A flash of lights from the Cactus Garden Christmas display at the Ethel M Chocolate Factory in Henderson. At the time you could just walk up and meander. They now charge for entry and it takes an hour to get in.

    2016

    Looking up at the ceiling and the queue monitor at the Clark County Building Department. Now, everything is submitted digitally and the building is a ghost town.

    2015

    Blurred lights inside a bus. The readable neon is written in English, but it was taken in China. I pray for peace between these two superpowers. A few leaders will “win” while the rest of the us suffer greatly. I’d almost feel sorry for ourselves, but then I remember we still have the great privilege of being inside the empire instead of being among those outside looking in.

    2013

    Our loaded truck for moving out to Las Vegas. The compartment is only half filled because this was the smallest truck that could tow our car.

    2012

    Two rabbits chilling underneath a coffee table, Peppercorn is splayed out on the floor while Badger is washing his white face.

    2011

    The dining area after the bookshelf had an unfortunate reckoning with gravity. The homemade shelving system was based on something my dad used years ago in from a Sunset book, but Ikea is too cheap to beat now.

    2007

    An eye-bleeding page with horrific fonts married to diagrams and preliminary renderings from my master’s thesis project. I’m awful at graphic design, but I have fun making bad graphics.

    And with this, I am finally, fully done with “work-work” for the year! What am I going to do with myself next week (and how shall I survive the tsunami of delayed tasks in 2024)?

  • Merry Christmas!

    Woke up early.

    Checked my phone. Post a comment on a blog.

    Realize it’s Christmas!

    Wrote a tiny poem.
     

    I don’t
    believe
    in Baby
    Jesus
    no more
    so I
    Christmas
    all the
    Harder

    I grew up conservative Christian. And Asian-American. My parents left Hong Kong and Taiwan and met here in the States. With the clarity of immigrants, they sensed that Christmas was a frivolous, secular holiday.

    When my sister and I were teens, they gave in. We started exchanging small gifts. My mom added small decorations around to the house but never bothered with a tree.

    We still drove down to LA from the Bay Area on Christmas because traffic was lighter. We’d eat at my grandparent’s favorite dim sum place in Monterey Park. (My aunt suspected that they liked that spot because the tea was brewed extra strong.)

    We didn’t buck the holiday, but we never gave it religious significance. For a real Christian, every day is Christmas and Easter. Picking out holy-days still feels kind of pagan.

    I drifted away when I grew up. It didn’t do much for me emotionally, and I finally bailed when George W. Bush co-opted the religious establishment to support his optional war. Even so, I always planned on taking my kids to church on Christmas, so they could feel the religious origins of this season.

    That notion died with the election of the Trump. My wife (never religious) was so disgusted with white evangelicals that she didn’t want our kids anywhere near such cruel hypocrites nor be tempted by the pomp and circumstance of their celebration.

    Instead, every year I put up a plastic tree from Ikea on Thanksgiving, buy a few toys, wrap the last six months of library book sale finds in old architectural printouts, watch a Christmas movie, and clean everything up on New Year’s Day.

    Last year ago, I told my daughter the myth of Jesus. It blew her mind. I might as well have grown a third head (or narrated the nsfw story of Lot and his daughters).

    An all-powerful deity came down to this filthy planet to be born in horse shit, grow up as a carpenter, start a small cult as a wandering sage, only to be executed in excruciating fashion. All to pay the blood penalty for the evil committed by his own shithead creatures.

    So here I am, suddenly marveling at the magic of Christmas. Say what you will about the religion, that’s an awesome story.

  • go

    The Sunday after Thanksgiving, we went to the park to so they could ride their bikes. He proudly said knew how to ride a bike. I said, not really — I had taken the training wheels off his bike. He was unhappy about the change but made a go at it. Not perfect and couldn’t keep it up for a sustained period…but he did it!

    In the month since, his skill has jumped with each trip to the park. He needs to learn how to brake, but it’s remarkable how quickly they pick things up!

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    I finished grad school in time to get slammed by the Great Recession. I avoided being laid off but dropped to 30 hours a week. I spent some of those extra 10 hours as regular at Cafe Brasil.

    When things picked up, I still showed up on Friday mornings to sip an espresso before heading out to the office. I’d ponder the week that was almost complete and consider the coming weekend.

    Normally these sessions wouldn’t result in any insight. I’d often just chat with another regular. But occasionally something would pop up. Once in a blue moon the “brilliant” idea might surprisingly turn out to actionable.

    Unfortunately, adulting means outgrowing a loving parent who can disappear training wheels at the right moment. A distant second best may be regular semi-contemplative practice to reset the mind.

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  • family

    A few nights ago, kids brought Mommy Bear, Daddy Bear, and Adventure for my bedtime. They also gave me an old sweater to dress Daddy Bear. I put it on him this morning, brought in Bear Bear and took a family portrait.

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    This post is an example of why I am such a huge proponent of sharing your work online, again and again over time.

    Can you see it? (Clue: I’ll keep original formatting on the previous alphabet.)

    As I was setting this post up for this next round of images, I accidentally hit a comma instead of a period.

    Of course! I always wanted an non-intrusive spacer, and what’s smaller than a period? But a period is a touch too insubstantial and carries weight as an ending. A comma is a tad bigger and actually means “pause”.

    It took me six posts to figure this out….or sixty-one posts including my OPM letters, which used a ~ tilde. I could have never thought this up in the abstract.

    A digital space of your own gives you the space to grow. It lets you experiment one step at a time. Just start! With something imperfect! Now!

    And one day, the gods may grant you a flash of insight, possibly the perfect typo at the right time. But you gotta show up, again and again.

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  • Edge

    She balanced the spoon on the edge of her bowl and had me record it for posterity. In the meanwhile he snuck away from the table, most likely to google Pokémon while she read her ebook.

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    In the theme of “E”, shout out to Everyday Magic thread on Notes. Every Saturday Charlene Story starts a thread for people to share their beautiful mundane worlds. Here’s the one from last week.

    Every few weeks, I collect my recent contributions for this blog series. While there, I wander through all the entries. It’s a great mental reset to walk the world through others’ eyes (and be jealous of everyone else’s luscious green landscapes!)

    Starting a thread once a week might not seem like a big effort. But having blogged on a schedule, I know how hard it is to act consistently without fail over months, which is why I don’t blog on a schedule now!

    So thanks again Charlene, for being our wonderful Everyday Magic host!

  • delight

    Ever since the got a Pikachu stuffie from the claw machine at the Primm Mural Gallery (formerly an outlet mall), they’ve been into Pokemon. He wanted a Pikachu and she drew an Eevee with a witches hat. Their lights from the jack-o-lanterns left a bold mark on the ceiling.

    The unseasonably warm autumn meant that these poor pumpkins went mold in a couple of days. But still, it was a day of carving and a few good photos.

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    That Pikachu might have been the most impactful dollar that we’ve spent (for good or ill). It’s turned into a costume, a change in TV habits. Pokemon Go has me walking in circles around the house to hatch eggs and the kids just forced me to try out the Pokemon Sleep tracking app. They’re constantly drawing different Pokemon when they aren’t playing. He’ll walk up and start talking about random creatures and evolutions, without no explanation or context (of course!)

    I recently heard on the Cortex podcast that Pokemon may be the most successful IP of all time. It’s hard to argue from this household. Lord help us if we get into the TCG card game, or if we ever get a Nintendo.

  • compass

    I used up the last of the Waterman blue my dad gave me years ago. My guess is that this ink is half a century old. The boy helped me fill the cartridge so there’s three generations in this pen.

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    In my recent search for pens, I’ve tried up a bunch of cheap pens. It’s fun to explore each assemblage of plastic and steel.

    As I mentioned a few weeks ago, if I could only pick two it would be the Pilot Kakuno and Pilot Parallel. The Kakuno with an extra fine nib is a tight writing instrument, and the Parallel is a unique tool that is creates an expressive line and suited for calligraphy.

    If I could to create a second pairing, the Sailor Fude Nib Pen is a similarly wide pen that goes great with the Sailor Compass. At $30, its twice as expensive as the other pens, but the build quality is noticeably better than cheaper pens.

    After graduating college, I treated myself to a Pelikan M600 which now sells for about half a grand. Even accounting for the piston mechanism (that has survived two decades of neglect) and the butter smooth gold nib, I don’t see how the M600 is $470 better than the Compass.

    As with many things in this world, the first few bucks makes a huge difference in quality. After that, the extra dollars only temporarily mollifies the ravenous criticism of a connoisseur.

  • blizzard

    We went to hallOVeen at the Magical Forest, a little amusement park that the non-profit Opportunity Village opens up for fundraising during the Halloween and Christmas holidays.

    The kids enjoyed the Blizzard. Mama and I only lasted once each. So we let them sit together for another spin around and around and around and around and around…

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    The kids are growing up fast. Only yesterday, they needed us to play with them. Now they keep each other amused (when they aren’t arguing!). And she’s got books. The whole world on her Kobo with a Libby account. She’s read through the Harry Potter series at least twice and was Hermione this Halloween (he was Pikachu).

    Right now they’re watching Harry Potter #2 downstairs. I can’t do it. I don’t have anything against the series. I was just old enough to miss the excitement over the series as it came out. We watched the first movie and it did nothing for me. And the thought of spending 283 minutes on the second film pains my soul.

    I’ve never been good at entertainment if I wasn’t in the mood for it. I wish I could be a little less judgemental when watching TV, but instead I’m up here writing notes about my finicky media habits.