Thankgiving giving is next thursday! and the day after the official start to the christmas shopping season. So PLEASE let me know what you want for christmas. I really need help with ideas. This is assuming that 'you' are someone that i buy presents for.

If you need some ideas for me, i have racked my brain to think of some stuff i want. You can access the list by clicking the green link on the top right side of this page. Easy, right? I'll keep updating it as i think of additional things.

Christmas is in 38 days!

reasons that it's a good thing to have your phone stolen:

6. You get to spend days shopping around for a replacement phone: stores around town, online, ebay auctions. It's so exciting!
5. You get to reenter all your contacts... again.
4. You avoid all those pesky calls from friends and family.
3. You get to pay full cost for an overpriced cell phone that will probably break as soon as you drop it.
2. You get to help out a bunch of strangers with their international calls to Colombia, Venzuela, Panama, etc.
1. You have two chargers; one each for work and home.

so... some people just suck. like my neighbor who plays his music so loud that it was making it hard to hear our tv earlier this evening. or the person who swiped my cell phone and racked up a fortune in international phone calls. or the telephone company that is going to try and make me pay for it all. Jesus wants me to love these people, but it's hard enough to just not hate them.

now, do i fork out the cash to get the fancy phone again? (say yes.) either way i have to pay for a phone, full price, without the incentives you get when you sign up for a new plan. why not pay a tad more for the good phone? it's hard to go back once oyu have the good stuff. since i just started my plan, i can't get a discount from the store... yet. they thought if i would wait a month i could get a discount. but the discount price is basically what the phone is going for on ebay. crap i forgot to bid on the phone! two good auctions just ended 10 minutes ago.

whatever, i'll put it off again for another day.

Here's a great distraction for y'all. Go to www.jacksonpollock.org and create art just like the master painter/dripper/splasher.... move your mouse around on the blank screen, click to change colors.

here's my creation!

have fun.

mac or pc? everyone has an opinion, and frankly, i'm sick of the whole conversation. but i bring it up because i have a solution: both. i don't mean that both are better, i mean get both!

we got new imacs at work last week (mac). but we use a program called parallels to allow us to run windows xp(pc) in side a mac window. so we use mac for everything except pc-only programs, autocad in our case. and i love it!

there are a few quirks though. for instance, my number pad keys won't work in windows, and right now i can't delete anything in windows. that could be a problem pretty soon, but for now i just put all my trash in a single folder until i figure out the problem. perhaps it's just a faulty windows installation problem. anyway, it tells me that the path to the recycle bin is not valid or something.

all this to say that i played with the built in web camera and photo booth program to make these pics. they have built-in effects that are pretty fun to play with when you just need a break from it all.

my bosses curated an art exhibition for their friend that opens tonight. Christopher Adams makes these amazing sculptures that are unlike anything i've ever seen; you can't stop staring at them! They are reminicent of something biological, although neither plant or animal similarities really explain it. Some are beautiful while others are scary or squirmy. Different pieces cause different reactons depending on the person. Also, they really look best in groupings, whether thematical or seemingly random. That's just a tip in case you end up buying some. The show is at the Ricco Maresca Gallery, 529 W 20th Street, 3rd floor. click HERE for a sneak peak; I took some pictures while they were finishing the installation.

being low in the money category, i've been really good this year about not shopping and buying clothes and other stuff. but my phone is 3 years old and lacks lots o' technology, and my shoddy black shoes have cracked soles that let the water in, so i got these beauties shown here: nice, right?

the phone was basically free, but not quite; that's after rebate and not including some made up setup fee. i wanted to upgrade to the black model with a 3Mp camera, but i promised myself that i wasn't going to spend money for a fancier phone. but this one is great. i love the slide!

the shoes came from the puma store. i got fed up with shoe shopping for something i liked and could still wear to church (choir dress code). i decided to give up on the wear-anywhere shoe and just keep a pair of dress shoes at church, and buy what i wanted for work and play. these shoes are finally a break from my last 3 pairs that all looked the same.

now i just need... (it never ends, right?)

I went this morning to meet a friend because i'm helping with his house addition project. I needed to go over some concerns of mine and try once again to pry closely guarded details from him. But we didn't really talk much about the house because i met him first at his friend's bike shop where i saw this beautiful bike.

This bike is his gift to me for my help so far, and i'm sure as an incentive to work faster on the project. It's a Trek full-suspension mountain bike just loaded with carbon fiber (seat post, entire rear suspension frame, handle bars, even brake levers!). My favorite feature is the grip-mounted lever that allows you to "open" and "close" the front and rear suspension on the fly. So cool!

We tinkered with the bike at the shop, i picked out some shoes for the clip-on pedals, took some test rides down the street, talked a little about the house, and then drove to a bike trail to break in the new bike. I was laughing the whole ride because it was so much fun; the difference from my old bike with no suspension to this is quite extreme. You should be jealous now.

Success! after a lot of phone calls, faxes, stress, early mornings, long lines, and patient waiting for mail, i've managed to register my car in new york. why does doing the right thing have to be so hard and expensive? the shady way was so easy... but no regrets.

my next task is to alter a fence. my car needs to get past it so i'll have a place to park when i'm not driving. once i come up with a plan of action, i'll get to pull out my toolsand do some sawing and drilling and screw.... we'll see how that goes. i have more experience telling other people how to build than actually doing it myself. but i'm confident.

my house mates are out of town for 10 days. you know what that means! wait, i don't want to know what you were thinking. but i'm sure i'll miss them by the time they return.

if you're looking for me tomorrow, i'll be at the beach.

welcome back! that's what you should say to me as you read this. lately i've been taking a break from this blog mostly because i've been too busy to do anything worth writing about. this hasn't changed, but I thought I should break the dead spell.

summer in the city has been hot (like everywhere I hear) and busy (I'm running at least four projects at work, and more potential jobs keep popping up that always require immediate attention). despite this, i've managed to make it out to the beach a three times so far. last past weekend was the best, with great waves for body surfing.

on the downside, my car has been giving me problems. maybe it's crying out for attention? maybe it wants to give up the fight? it's just that i'm not quite ready to let go. First there was a flat tire that involved really tight lug nuts and a lug wrench that sheared in two! that was a debacle. Next was a dead battery. I got jumped four times that day before my friend David helped me install the new one. (he did most of the work.) Lastly has been the battle to legitimize my car registration, which involves getting insurance in New York, exchanging my out-of-state driver's license, bill of sale + transferring the title, new registration, and vehicle inspection. I managed to get auto insurance after selling my left arm and right leg, but I somehow lost my social security card, thus preventing me from doing the rest. this morning I went to downtown Brooklyn to apply for a new SocSec card, but I won't get it for two weeks. So since my car registration expires today, I had to get my car off the street this weekend. But my parking spot on long island was so long vacant that my uncle has fallen in love with having it for his own use. makes sense since it's his driveway. now I have to think up a way to get the car through a fence to store it past the driveway (technically in the back yard). I guess i'd better get out my tools and my drawing pencil!

I've posted a few "sketch" renderings of the current design for a retirement house for mom and dad. It's just first floor interior shots to help everyone get a feeling for what the design is like in 3D. There's really no materials on anything yet, but most of that hasn't been decided anyway.

let me know what you think. that's a lot of glass in the living room, huh? all the furniture - sans the corner cupboard - is from Knoll since i have their entire product line in digital files.

My bosses designed the sofa facing the wood burning stove so i thought i'd put that in.

click on the picture to see the renderings or here if that doesn't work.

what did you do memorial weekend? yeah? that's nice. i became an uncle on sunday! thanks, it took a lot of work and... oh, i guess i had nothing to do with it. anyway, here's a pic i got from the happy parents of Lincoln Davis Emerson. someone told me his name sounds very presidential. although there hasn't been an Emerson president, maybe this could be the first.

So congrats to me, and to Chris and Holly, and my folks for becoming grandparents. I can't wait to see the little guy!

so do you think these scary looking flowers are a natural phenomenon? or maybe you don't think scary, but rather something softer, like furry. whatever, they're pretty neat-o.

in the background is a new stainless steel kitchen. would you believe that most of it came from IKEA? not too shabby.

this is what's in my peripheral vision while i stare at my computer monitor all day long at work. nice, huh? On the left by the cranes is Renzo Piano's NYTimes building going up. Between the Empire State Building and the One Madison Avenue tower you can just make out the top of the Chrysler Building. it all seems a lot closer in real life, and moving around you can get a better view of certain buildings. But we don't get tto see the sunsets anymore. i can't wait to move back into the office once renovation is complete. but they just started.

Allergy season has KILLED ME for the last month! It's been miserable. a few days ago a friend hooked me up with some great under-the-counter medicine, and now i'm feeling normal again. Thank God and Hail Cesar!

I felt so great today that i went out for a bike ride over the bridge, across lower Manhattan, and up and down the lower west side. the parks over there are great. i took a rest out on one of the piers turned into a park. great views of the city, new jersey, and up and down the Hudson... even the statue of liberty. i laid on a wide, curvy bench and people watched and watched the water taxi come and go.

I also rode up to see New York's first Gehry building going up, as pictured to the right. I think it's his first all-glass building as well. at first, from far away, i thought the bottom part-the glass- was a billboard rendering of the building. but no, that's it. Frank's buildings always look great half built, when you can still see all the different layers. but i look forward to see how the curves continue to the top and terminate. From the south side-not this view-the bottom completed portion looks pretty regularized and uninteresting. Perhaps the top gets a bit more funky.