My former intern in private practice joined the State Public Works Division half a year ago. He finally passed his last architectural exam.
At the time I was working from home, but I snuck into the office with party hats and poppers to properly celebrate at the Monday morning staff meeting.
Nothing like the smell of gunpowder in the morning.
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Getting your license is hard. 2010 was my year of misery, a slogging through seven tests. Never a moment of peace with the enormity always under the pillow.
And I was lucky, working only 30 hours a week. Those great recession paychecks were ugly, but I had “free” time to study.
Unfortunately, my guy’s celebration was short lived. In the past couple of weeks, we had a shakeup at our agency. He got picked to run our most public project, a room with our administrator, right before we head into the nasty budget season and the birth of his first child.
I’ll be there for him, just like I have all these years, cheering him on.
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Now that he’s been transferred out of our main office, I’ve been called back in from working remote.
After an hour of climbing the new play structure in an outdoor atrium, they raced around the small berms at Downtown Summerlin after the holiday light parade.
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This was our first holiday season (almost) fully out of our shell. We’re still masked and not dining out, but rubbed lots of elbows these past few months.
We attended the Downtown Summerlin Halloween parade, trick and treated at Calstock Court, visited the Clark County Museum Heritage Holiday, stood in line for the illuminated cactus garden at Ethel M (overrated), and came back to the outdoor mall for their Christmas parade. I forgot how busy the holidays can be!
With time, I wonder how we will judge this four year hibernation1.
It wasn’t all bad — before the pandemic we had tired of the dining scene, so we saved a ton of cash and learned how to cook white-people cuisine. We also successfully avoided COVID (so far).
But it wasn’t cheap. We worry how this long time might affect the kids. They seem fine, but are we deluding ourselves? Like everything else parenting, I guess we’re making shit up before we reap the whirlwind.
We went to the Clark County Museum’s historical park for their annual “Heritage Holidays” celebration. It’s been four years since our last visit, a completely different world ago.
I presume he enjoyed it a lot more than when he was twenty months old!
This photo was taken in a tiny two bedroom house, originally constructed in Henderson, Nevada around the Second World War.
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We have been extremely cautious about the pandemic so we still aren’t eating out. As such, much of this info is out of date, but I wanted to mention a few favorite Vegas places, but please do your own research.
Vegas Restaurants
Ramen was just becoming a craze and hadn’t made it to Houston before we left. So when we arrived, we went straight to Monta. It was still our favorite before the pandemic hit, though I’m not sure it’s totally worth the long wait.
Pacific Island Taste was a favorite at my office. My co-worker still vouches for it and we had them cater our holiday potluck a month ago. Get some Hawaiian flavors at the 9th island!
If I was going fancy on the Strip, I guess I’d pick the Bouchon at the Venetian. Strip restaurants are usually money grabs by celebrities so it lacks the passion you find with chefs at their original passions. But we’ve had a couple memorable Easter brunches with friends up at the top of this hotel.
Vegas Coffee Shops
Tony Hsieh’s Downtown Project wasted a ridiculous amount of money, but one of its legacies is the sunken courtyard with Mothership Coffee Roasters in the old Ferguson Motel in Downtown.
Nearby is Publicus, an independently owned coffee shop that has maintained a stellar reputation.
Le Paris Coffee and Pastry is an off strip gem on Decatur and Desert Inn. It was the place I’d take folks to show them the “real Vegas”.
Quirky Places in the Desert
The Clark County Museum is a great deal with general admission at $2.00. We should go there when the sun is out, I’ve heard there is more there to be enjoyed.
Cactus Joe’s is a nursery and variety store. Given that it’s primarily outdoors, this was one of our first visits when we started coming out of our shell. It’s a fun shop, even if none of the stuff matches our aesthetic tastes.
Calico Basin is on the outside of the famous Red Rock Canyon. It’s free and won’t involve a long wait to visit.
If you want to check out a big piece of civil engineering, the Hualapai Lot Trail Head gets you right there. It’s wild to hike in the hills overlooking the city, turn a corner and feel like you’ve disappeared into the desert.
Las Vegas Books is a used bookstore that opened a couple of years ago by owners who moved here from Minnesota. This is the quintessential Las Vegas story. Come here and work hard, and you will establish a reputation in no time.
And if you want decade-old tips for Houston (we left in 2013) here are few highlights.
We loved walking through the Menil art collections. It was our last stop before leaving the city.
The quirky Orange Show is an inspiring testament to what one determined person can make.
The Port Authority offers a super cool, free 90 minute boat tour of the shipping channel.
If you have time for a full day detour, run up to the Kimbell Art Museum at Fort Worth. This building is a required visit for any architect.
Houston Nostalgia in Restaurant Form
Cafe Brasil is where I started a Friday morning caffeine and contemplation routine, with a shot of espresso and a scone.
Wandering around the neighborhood, we discovered La Guadalupana and fell in love with their pastries (almond croissants!), vampiro (beet, carrot, and orange juice), and their mojarra frita.
Our favorite breakfast plate was the migas (Mexican style egg scramble with tortilla strips) at Baby Barnaby’s. This American posh fusion took it this TexMex breakfast plate to another level.
In Bellaire (Chinatown), we would get the Spicy Fried Tofu at Star Snow Ice in the Dun Huang Plaza. It paired great with their sweet Hot Tofu soup. Sometimes we would start a meal run with Fried Tofu as an appetizer, go to another restaurant for the entree, and return for Hot Tofu as dessert.
Hopefully I didn’t steer y’all wrong in with the food, but I can vouch for the other stuff. And I’m always happy to chat about my towns. I hope you have fun in the desert (or swamp!)
Tangents from a few books about money. I heartily recommend the one by Harry Browne; the rest are OK.
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Fail Safe Investing, Lifelong Financial Security in 30 minutes, Harry Browne, 1999
If you’re a wimp (like me) this is the best book on investing. And if you get interested in Risk Parity style portfolios, check out Frank Vasquez’s “Risk Parity Radio” for up to date opinions and advice on this style of portfolio construction.
If you want to speculate, look elsewhere. Harry Browne advises that your profession will be your primary source of wealth and warns against taking risks like investing on margin.
Clean, clear advice. Some specifics are outdated (such as how to purchase investments) but his conservative concepts are solid.
I plan on revisiting this book every year. I’ve taken a more aggressive approach than his “Permanent Portfolio” (more stocks, less gold and bonds). Still, I thank him for introducing me to Gold. It’s a controversial asset but a game changer for me. It added a third uncorrelated asset class to ballast the portfolio, which made me more comfortable with investing heavier in stocks.
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Explore TIPS, Harry Sit, 2010
Gotta start somewhere and I was curious about Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities when I started my investment journey in 2022. I’ve gone with a different investing strategy.
TIPS are bonds with inflation insurance. Harry is a fan of going heavy on TIPS relative to nominal bonds. (I believe a properly diversified portfolio will compensate for inflation with the other asset classes, so I don’t like the extra cost of the inflation insurance).
Purchase them at auction, the secondary market or via ETF’s. Harry Sit is open to all investment avenues.
I-bonds are more like CD’s since they can’t be sold on the secondary market. Harry Sit is not a fan.
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Value Averaging, The Safe and Easy Strategy for Higher Investment Returns, Michael E. Edleson, 1993
An optimized way to pour cash into the investment market.
“Value Averaging” is setting a goal for how much you want an investment to increase over time and purchasing accordingly. Unlike “Dollar Cost Averaging”, Value Averaging pushes you to buy more when the markets are down and less when they’re up.
If you want to be awesome, the book gives a bunch of math to optimize the investment curve.
As a retail investor playing with small sums, I believe optimization is a waste. After learning the basics, the smallest edge requires a ton of study. Any such such bet will be overwhelmed by the capricious whims of the gods. Better to enjoy the finer parts of life.
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Die Broke, Stephen M. Pollen and Mark Levine, 1997
I found the book in a random giveaway pile in Berkeley, maybe in lower Sproul Plaza. Two cities (and decades) later, I finally read it.
Great title and interesting provocation to reevaluate our relationship to money, work, and retirement.
I love books with unique structures. Part 1 is a short self help mindset manual. Part 2 is an alphabetical list of chapters with practical advice. (Since this book is almost thirty years old, I lightly skimmed the second part since I presume most of it is out of date.)
I enjoyed Part 1, partly because I already agree with their four key maxims. I view employment as a transaction not fulfillment, believe in avoiding debt, and doubt the positive good of leaving a large bequest. I’m not totally sold on the maxim of “Don’t Retire” but I appreciate their skepticism of the modern retirement paradigm.
The boy is notorious at not doing his part of cleaning up. One Sunday, the girl figured out a hack, enticing him to help. They took videos of each other cleaning up — and played it backwards on the iPad to great hilarity. Viola! A clean playroom!
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Our daughter had jaundice that kept us in the hospital an extra night after her birth.
Late into that third night, I walked around the ward in a sleep deprived haze. I suddenly realized that my parents were just making shit up as they went. I also realized that this was now my fate for the coming decades.
Maybe some parents know the answers; do they figure it out after the 3rd or fourth kid?
But I ain’t got no epiphany to share after almost ten years in this parenting game.
I’d love to think that I might have something to do with raising them right. But I suspect that our main job is to avoid traumatizing them and to avoid spoiling them. And to share cool stuff along the way.
Between those two wide bounds with that fuzzy directive, I wonder if we actually exert all that much influence over our kids.
Who knows, I’ve been making shit up all along the way.
We have limited screen time for the kids, and they have been spending it slowly working through all the free episodes on Pokemon TV. I’m very close to canceling our Disney+ subscription, but here are some goodies from the past few few months.
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Elementals, Peter Sohn, 2023
Another forgettable Pixar movie. Two months after watching it with the kids, I remember almost nothing from the film.
But the visuals are cool.
All I remember are everyone else’s opinions — the overblown negative commentary when it came out, the reaction that it’s actually good, and my kids enjoyment.
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Spirited Away, Hayao Miyazaki, 2001
The train scene is one of my favorite moments in film. Beautiful, slow paced, fully earned.
My personal preference still lies with Isao Takahata (My Neighbors the Yamadas and Pom Poko) and Whisper of the Heart (Yomshifumi Kondo, 1995), but this movie is the Ghibli masterpiece. So good that Mama and I talked about watching movies together as a family more often.
Over the years, I had developed a silly notion that Spirited Away is ponderous. It is slower than blame western animation’s junk food freneticism, but it earns every minute. Each frame is gorgeous and no time is wasted. It’s paced perfectly.
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The Nightmare Before Christmas, Henry Selick, Tim Burton, Danny Elfman, 1993
Watched it again for Halloween, I suspect this will be a annual tradition.
Last year, I suddenly noticed Mr. Burton’s cuddly spookiness everywhere. I wonder what it feels like to be an artist who has visually conquered a holiday.
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Mickey’s Christmas Carol, Burney Mattinson, 1983
As I remembered it from growing up. Fun like The Muppet’s Christmas Carol, but shorter. But we haven’t found our Christmas movie yet.
The boy kept counting how many ghosts were in the movie.
But as a compliant citizen of these United States, I’ve embargoed this painstaking painful rendering from public consumption until 12:01 AM, Pacific Standard Time.
If you want to see a fun video on the subject, check out Jake’s analysis on the Corridor Crew.
To get political for a moment (before things get really political this year), I can’t help but rue the opportunity cost of coddling Disney over the past four decades. We can’t see what didn’t happen, but I suspect that our artistic cultural malaise is partly due to giving mega-corps an extended monopoly to milk their cultural content when they should have been inventing new properties (like a Chibi Mannequin) to opiate the masses.
Then again, if I’ve learned anything from foreign cinema, the machine always wins. <Insert commentary on late stage capitalism and neo-liberalism>
Oh well, AI will solve all our problems.
Prompt: Mickey Mouse as Steamboat Willie with a Fu Manchu moustache to hide mistaken shading during the initial drawing. Style to be fountain pen with purple ink on a lined notebook. Add handwritten calligraphy to celebrate the New Year in Gothic blackletter and label the drawing with cramped Uncial.
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(The kids thought the first drawing’s head was a bit small so I gave the people what they wanted)
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.
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.
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
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)?
