After an incredibly work-heavy fall, and a December spent almost entirely in New York conference rooms or working around the clock at my kitchen table, I resolved to make a change in January:  I would meet new people, try new things, and make an effort to have a life outside of work even on weeknights (gasp!). […]

The first project for the semester in my interior design class is to create a full set of design materials for a bathroom.  This entails a floorplan, elevations of the four walls, and selecting all of the hardware, finishes and accessories that would go into the room — everything that you’d need to give to a […]

Today lesson in interior design class:  floor plans and elevations.  We practiced basic drafting techniques with a simple living room floor plan and an elevation of the wall with the fireplace.      Then we had studio time to work on the first draft floorplan for our projects.  In my case, this entailed my taking the […]

Holy cow this is weird.  I’ve got a student ID and a parking pass, a syllabus, and homework.  What is happening?     I’ll tell you what’s happening:  Today was the first class of the semester for Intro to Interior Design at the Corcoran College of Art & Design.    As predicted, it was a […]

I’m apparently terrible at catching up.  Here are links to a couple of new posts about Vietnam.  I need to focus on getting through the rest of them or it’ll be Christmas by the time I’m finished!  (I’ve left the other catch-up posts on this list, too, in case you missed them.) Bai Tu Long Bay — […]

When life (and by “life” I mean Lincoln Center) gives you lemons, eat a Belgian waffle and talk about the lemons later.

I just worked a 9 to 5 day. Note that both times were “A.M.” (Technically I should say 7 to 5, since I put in a couple if hours at the hotel before the first meeting.) Everything starts again at 9 tomorrow, er, this morning, so I’m off to bed.

Q:  What did the billionnaire philanthropist call himself after giving an incredibly expensive organ to the Kennedy Center? A:  An organ donor [chuckle, chuckle] Said organ was unveiled today for its debut public performance.  My friend Jennifer (another Kennedy Center alum) managed to get special tickets and brought me as her plus one (her husband is […]

“Jason, you’re really good at weightlifting,” said the Crossfit coach this morning in front of the whole class.  “Anyone ever tell you that before?” Nope.  In fact, if I had to vote for the least likely combination of words in the English language, that would have been it.  So let’s just let that soak in for […]

The upside of going to work at 4:30am after becoming deranged by a series of false fire alarms is that you’ll get a lot more accomplished before 10:30pm than you would have had you gone to work at 8am or 9am like a normal civilized person.  For example, you can bill 12 hours at work AND […]