Lux, originally uploaded by sunburntkamel.

our puppy arrived tuesday. she is so adorable, even sparky can't hate her. 9 week old puppies are time consuming, though, so don't expect much in the way of posting for a while.

we went to the auto show with my parents. we saw a devil car, complete with horns:

i also passed a video where i could have sworn i saw a built in nitrous switch in the new corvettes.

the next day, we drove up to the dells for the weekend. we spend saturday doing fun silly stuff, like visiting the tommy bartlett exploratory:

sunday, we went to house on the rock, which is apparently a museum built by a crazy person. this was the first thing we saw, driving up to the place:

inside, the actual house is covered in filigree, like this:

the whole thing is built around the rock, and doesn't really follow any discernable plan. but it does lend itself to all sorts of cool little twists and turns like this:

after touring the house, things get very strange when you move into the museum proper. complete with a 3-story scene involving a squid eating a whale eating a boat:

and then there were 'the streets of yesteryear', where there were doll houses and bizarre musical instruments, like this one, which is called 'the peacock', but it plays 'the flight of the bumblebee':

we also checked out the cave of the mound, but i didn't take any of those pictures

i've accomplished only a few things:

• i finished reading midnight's children
• i posted about architecture (roughly) once a week for a month. since november, not so much.
• i've supplanted my addiction to SG. my subscription ran out in december. i've since managed to peel stickers off of just about everything they were once affixed to. i still have the american apparel clothing, though, which somehow managed to convince someone that i needed their copy of the dvd
• all of my portfolio is currently presented on archGFX. i realized that the remaining project wasn't really portfolio worthy. i have some nicer renderings of a very similarly detailed project from my current office that i'll eventually post.

i am in progress on some of the major stuff, tho.

• **********************
• i'm reading a book on entrepeneurship that makes my brain hurt. the thought of running my own firm is more terrifying than ever. free-lancing does seem more manageable, though.
• i think i've actually done my 1170 units of IDP. i just need to put them all in spreadsheets, and get those pesky 10 units of volunteering done. it's not so difficult for me to volunteer, as for me to find a licensed mentor who's also volunteering.
• the top 50 independent films thing. movies like 'mad max' and 'blood feast' really make me question the authority of the list, though.
• There'll be a mini road trip next weekend.
• UT2K7 is now called UT3, and isn't coming out for PC.

i'm going to need to go through and write better goals for a bunch of items, some of them are straightforward failures, some of them are just life not going in the order i thought it would

what is it with penguin movies bringing out every agenda under the sun, though? now i feel bad for liking their independence from the 'grow up, get married, have kids' ideal that most movies adhere to. honest, i just saw it for the cute baby penguins CG, i wasn't pushing my liberal agenda!

• January:
  got old
• February:
  did a whole lot of naval gazing
  celebrated 2 years with the wifest
• March:
  bought my first car, ever.
• April:
  quit smoking, under protest
  became addicted to  wordpress geekery
  went to the dentist for the first time since high school.
• May:
  became an award winning designer
  lost a cat
  had fun in san francisco, since chicago wasn't any.
  well, except for meeting a strange man in daley plaza
  started mission101
• June:
  Moved into the best apartment i've had yet.
  Started smoking again
• July:
  Had some friends over, and took them to canada
• August:
  took a tour of chicago
  lost my job
  which kinda erased the possibility of having a decent anniversary
• September:
  found a better one
• October:
  Had our first party in the new apartment
• November:
  the new job made me really like architecture again
• December:
  weirded out my entire family

Wow, it's like the whole year is a footnote to may. I also saw a bunch of shows, including: stars, deftones, dog fashion disco, the dresden dolls, cut chemist, and in flames.

I think overall it was more good than bad, by a nose. Until i read the wifest's list, i'd almost completely blocked out forgotten the bad stuff.

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