Real Estate Candy

There's nothing like the crisp smell and orderly stacks of 2500 freshly printed postcards! This 4-unit condo-conversion project took longer than expected to complete but is now finally 90% finished and selling. My girlfriend and business partners undertook this venture as first-time developers and it has been an important learning experience. The ups and downs and in-betweens of this project have driven home some project management rules: 1. You can never be too organized 2. Schedules Change! 3. Money, Money, Money 4. There is no such thing as a perfect contractor, contractors should not be left alone, nor should be they paid up front (so far I believe this is true for everyone except Chris the Carpenter). I also learned that Perfection has its place...and it's not in rehabbing 90 year old buildings. From the Developer's perspective, too much Perfection was bad for the bottom line. From a consumer's perspective, this is an outstanding condo with not bang for the buck but an explosion. We've got 2 sold and hopefully are close to moving the other two. For more info stop by 4101 Grand Ave S or visit http://www.4101grand.com/

Minnie and Seven

Our two girl kittens in Minneapolis. I think this footage is Animal Planet material! It may take a minute to download but it's worth it! http://malindalaunert.com/jen/cats.html

Only Some Want to Fly

Flying from San Diego to Phoenix to Minneapolis : Symbols and Patterns in the landscape. Sometimes the cloud patterns (far right) look a lot like brain matter.

TriMesters

Look at it this way, with school starting part-time in January I've got a 9 month sabbatical for Art, Design, Invention and Engineering. I just have to not blow it. I have to not sabotage, ambush, or defeat myself or waste time when it shouldn't be wasted. This includes avoiding the following; excessive consumption of anything that's not part of my regular diet, quitting JTs Blocks on Yahoo Games cold turkey! And limiting relationships that do not contribute to my goal. These 9 months are my baby, my pregnancy and time is my nutrition for two. So now that I'm pregnant I'm going to need a doctor. I'll need ultrasounds, regular checkups, and reassurance that I'm not going to give birth to something with 11 fingers and one eye or worse, stillbirth, because I might die too. For too long I've treated my creative im/pulses as an after-hours pursit. You know what happens when someone has a kid? Their life is altered and changed forever. They go from person to parent and their kids become everything to them. That's the way I've got to look at this.

Park Patterns

1. Vent cover2. Timken Art Museum Screen 3. San Diego Museum of Art doors

Now that I have long hair it seems an infinite number of strands are settling everywhere. I pick up my own hair many times a day and if I thought about it too much I'd go nuts. So, instead of frowning upon the presence of hair in my space and regarding it as an invasion I posed the question, "is there another way that hair can inform, relate, and/or define my space?". So I set a bunch of hair aside in a box cover. At the same time I've been trying to come up with an organizational solution for the Telephone-Cubby-Hole-Thing in the wall (if there's a more precise architectural term for this someone please tell me). So today, I've answered my question of how can hair inform/relate/define space. Fig. 1 - Scanned Hair Fig. 2 - Plotted Intersections Fig. 3 - Points in space

The last polaroid illustrates how the "Plotted Hair Points" would be represented throough extruded three inch Finish Furniture Screws with hex-heads. The Furniture Screws will (self)organize the cubby space.Here you can see how voids or areas emerge to hold my most often used stuff: Ipod Nano, PDA phone, Business Cards, Mail, Keys, Polaroids, Library Card, Credit Cards and ID. I'll do a follow-up post when the real project is done.

Driving and Food

An hour and a half on my feet at the California DMV in stiletto's and a black swimsuit was harsh! Not to mention a little cold but I did succeed in getting my unofficial temporary driver's permit. The DMV photo was taken before last night's after-art-party-performance-art of eating a Jumbo Jack w/cheese. I looked up the nutritional 'fo on Jack in the Box company website this morning. 690 calories and 42 grams of fat. YUM! I'll have to limit the Jumbo Jacks to a couple per day.