Ahh the cliché and every architecture school admission councilors worst nightmare. The Legos and architecture essay. I once heard that the essays at a select school were perused for the Lego introduction and the applications were tossed. Well lucky for me I hated Legos I gave up early on them after a few frustrated attempts to separate two identical pieces. Later they introduced a “separating tool” but by then I was over it.
I also had some great distractions; I found one of them in the attic last week. My grandmother built me a massive dollhouse for Christmas when I was young. I spent the following ten years thumbing through catalogs, tearing out pages, and begging for different types of furniture and accessories. I’ve decorated, moved and wallpapered it a number of times over. My parents gave me full creative freedom even when I insisted on yellow curtains and a giant gothic bed in the living room.
I discovered it in the attic a few weeks ago I’ve been thinking about it more and more. Do little girls still play with dollhouses? What’s the shinny new modern version of a doll house? Am I wrong to be nostalgic about something that was meant to train little girls to make good homes? Granted I am over thinking it a bit. I also wonder what is going to happen to my 5,000 square inch colonial. Little girls and their dollhouses are cute, grown women and dollhouses is just creepy.

I’ve really grown tired of reading and hearing about “these times”, I woke up this morning and decided my usual coffee and blogs was not helping the annoyance. It was all making me a little stir crazy so I thought a break and some time out of the house would do me good. It has been sunny lately but usually upstate winters are long and grey. So I threw on my sneakers and spent the better part of my afternoon in the Memorial Art Gallery.
I know it’s a small gallery in comparison to others in larger cities but I love the collection especially Binh Danh’s prints and Walter Goodman’s, Print sellers Window. I think what I love most about the collection is it’s ability to please. I find little changes my mood more then an afternoon spent in the portorate rooms of the mid 1800′s. I think those that love the seriousness or emotion of post WWII art or the irony of the past two decades would keel over at the thought. It’s just much easier to get lost in the small lace details of the womens high collars and the mens cuffs then it is to be faced with desperation or frustration. When I want to escape “these times” I visit the affluent subjects of the portrait rooms.

So a challenge! Turn off those computers for an afternoon. Just three house walk away (leave those Blackberrys and Iphones behind), grab some coffee, take the dog for a walk, do what ever you’d be doing if all those electronic distractions just disappeared. I highly recommend it.

(note: the conflict of you reading this on a computer is not lost on me……so stop reading!

I mean it turn off the computer………)

Finally a snow day! I seem to be finding myself stranded due to the snow a lot lately. I’ve been cooped up in the house all day so I had a break to pluck out a blog post. Last week thanks to a burst of early March snow and an overzealous SUV driver I ended up in a ditch with my mothers Honda. It still amazes me how fast people try to take turns when their is an inch of snow on the road, to add injury the SUV that forced me into the ditch sped away once he was clear of danger. boo.

I’ll keep the ranting to a minimum but I must say, it does not matter how big your car/sub/mini van/truck is we will all slide on ice. So please SLOW DOWN!

Anyhow while sitting in a ditch waiting for AAA traffic whizzed by and I was unaware of a three car accident just twenty feet from me. I had been sitting in my car for twenty minutes when I started seeing fire trucks, ambulances, and sheriffs. This was not right it was to much for simply a car in a ditch, it happens all the time in NY. So I crawled out of the car in my gym shorts and sneakers only to alarm a group of firefighters standing near by. They quickly came over and:
“No I was not in the accident…no I am not injured….I’m just waiting for a tow truck….yes I know what carbon monoxide is….”

So standing in the heavy snow in shorts is chilling and they made me crawl into the back of a warm Jeep to wait. Until the tow truck came I sat in the back with two volunteer firefighters.

Did I mention I love the snow….

Power Mill Park, originally uploaded by GinaMoe.

If you have not already guessed (my loyal 18 readers) I’ve decided to come back out of cyber-obscurity. Due to a series of isolated encounters I thought it best to pull the plug but as they say, when it comes to the internet things move quickly. So my break was a blip on the blogging radar.

Outside of the internet psychology is not as quick; it’s an internal event that takes far more time. I wanted to gain perspective and I thought that through change, contradiction and patience I would grow. But I feel now after spending a few hours trapped in a snow storm in Power Mill Park that constant change leaves me with nothing left, nothing unchanged. I can’t expect to find perspective when a value has not been held for a single moment. So here I am left surrounded by what I am and have always been. A silly loud square peg stuck surrounded by a world of round holes.

Nulla:

I’ve become increasingly sensitive about my online exposure. I also don’t believe that I have much to share as I have put much of my digital and architectural work on hold. I’ve been taking a lot of photos but most of them are analog and I’m a bit behind on the development and scanning process.

So I will be taking the blog down for an indefinite amount of time.
Cheers
=va=

It’s been some time, but the length of my stay here in NY has dulled my excitement for the charms of rural living. Apple picking is one of my favorite past times and last weekend we were invited to collect apples at a farm in Sodus. The little puppy below is Tyson he’s a fox terrier and quite the whip. He was so hilarious running after the fallen apples and carry then around the orchard. They were twice the size of his head and he carried them around by the stem.
A small note about some apple trees is that they need to be harvested in order for the apples to come in the following year. If the market for apples is poor it is too much to harvest them then they will make so that means, free apples! There is nothing better then pies “straight from the tree”. I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.
Best.
=va=