Abject Apologies

I would like to apologize most sincerely for failing to write an entry last night. I was distracted, you see, by a gingerman with a yen to play trivia games - not trivial games, mind you - at a bar, and really, how can a girl resist?

As a result of last night's shenanigans, I earned the nickname "Betel Nuts." No, it's not a sick reference to inappropriate acts committed with Beteljuice, but the name of a nut chewed by residents of the Middle East and the Subcontinent that has a stimulant effect - I believe it's a mild narcotic. Betel Nuts happened to be the answer to the question: Name the stimulant nut that, when chewed, will cause you to hawk red loogies.

I knew the answer. I was the only person in the bar who knew the answer. I feel smart, now.

I will be making a repeat appearance at the same bar next week.

That's "play," now on to work.

I've spent the past few days drafting interior elevations of the bathroom that's going into the house I'm working on. Yes, DAYS on this bathroom, changing joint lines in the limestone wall surface, adjusting reveals in the wood paneling on the bathroom walls (!), thickening walls so medicine cabinets can be tucked discreetly behind mirrors in the wall.

It's kind of tedious and it takes forever to do, but every hour I complete is an hour towards my Intern Development Program requirements. On top of that, I am learning a ton about how buildings fit together: all those little details that you don't learn in architecture school.

That's one of the things that is sort of overwhelming about my job: every little detail requires me to go through the construction drawings of a previous project to fish out the details so I know how my boss likes things done. And, as I said before, the school I went to was a "big picture" school; I've met several people who've all commented on the fact that my fellow graduates tend not to be the construction document people, but are placed straight into design departments.

That's what my alma mater groomed me to do: design, and hand off the Construction Documents to "plebes." That mind-set, although it creates competitive students with above-average design skills, can be detrimental in the workplace, because a psychological divide is set up between the Construction guys and the Design guys. So I'm glad that I'm now at a firm where I'm simultaneously designing and doing construction documents: I don't have to worry about losing my design "edge" but I'm also honing my decidedly dull technical skills.

(Creative Commons Attribution licensed image found at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Village_People-01.jpg, courtesy of Flickr user Jackie... yeah, follow the links from Wikimedia to her page if you want more info)