when we overlap

my encounter with a bug

What happens when a fifty-legged bug reads directions in spanish and english and also dances to feist. The first 50 sec. are a bit slow but continue watching....3 min. total.

Test

Hello world

Found in Chula Vista

In the midst of Highway n' Transit Glamour Shots for work, I wandered over to a park in Chula Vista to see an oddly familiar looking building. I asked the staff who the designer was, already knowing the answer. First, I had to listen to the 30 second staff commercial for community classes starting now and then a friendly staffer took me over to a framed Architectural Record article telling all about the Chula Vista Heritage Community Center by Southern California architect Rob Wellington Quigley. My first introduction to his work was at the Solana Beach Transit Station which takes its cues from the surrounding surviving quanset-roofed warehouses. The CV Community Center gestures a little bit to the rural vernacular which I'm guessing farms and ag existed prior to the suburban development of Otay Ranch. The mini-rec room feels a bit barn-like with it's swooping ceiling and roll up doors. The last time I was in a barn was Polar, WI, December 2007. Stepping inside the Medo family barn after a snowfall was quite magical. Quigley's space has no sense-driven sentimentality to it. It's a modern glass and metal building with a function that I hope performs well for the community of Chula Vista. They do offer Spanish classes there, maybe I should try the building out some time.

seen on the bus

No eating, smoking, feet-propping, radio-playing or arm-hanging allowed. However, muttering to yourself, boarding with multiple plastic bags, knitting, rapping, yakking loudly in mandarin and smelling funny are all permitted and encouraged. Qíguài!

*Mandarin for strange, weird, wonderful.

today's soundtrack

After a sandy morning of rollerblading through Mission Bay and Pacific Beach, the Mini Cooper known only as 'Juliette' (and her French Driver) was zipping me home when a song by Simply Red came on that I haven't heard since the days of cassette tapes. It was a coon's age ago, that a certain someone whom I never met, put that song on a mix-tape for me. I must have listened to it sixteen hundred and twelve times. I never knew the name of it, I still don't, but I at least know the name of the groups that sings it. It's fascinating how a song can become a portal. One minute, I'm enjoying the San Diego sun and the industrial scenery passing by me on Hwy 8, the next minute I'm transported back to a former apartment in Minneapolis and an intense virtual exchange with an unfinished ending.

Fast forward to the evening. Isa and I ended up at the Bamboo Lounge, which is a great place to be due to the Joanne Royal quartet and the soulful covers she does of all the notable jazz standards. A glass of Zinfandel, the whoosh of Chris the waiter extroadanaire running by and the evening is over in a blink.

Pernicano's di Baffi