It's cool and overcast this morning in Los Angeles. It reminds me of San Francisco or fall in the Midwest. I LOVE it. Lately I think I've been suffering from overexposure to sunshine, if a person can suffer from such a thing ... my problem with too much sun is not only that it dries everything out, but also that I feel guilty on weekends when I need to work and it's so beautiful outside. Also that it frankly just tires my eyes out, but I digress. If I could figure out a way to bottle up the sun and send some to my friends in perpetually cloudy places like Seattle, please know that I would.

The good news is I've been enjoying a resurgence in productivity lately. Over the weekend I ignored the sun and stayed in both days to work on my thesis. I'm still not as far as I would like to be but I've made substantial progress and have figured out a path to making my web site work, which is very satisfying. This progress comes on the heels of a conversation with my thesis professor last week in which he informed me that he and my chair were "worried" that I was overburdening myself, between this and all of my other responsibilities. I had to chuckle because it's certainly not the first time I've had this conversation with a professor before, but it was probably the most cordial. I do appreciate their concern ... it's legitimate concern, but the good news is that the first half of the semester was crazier than the second half will be. Plus I've had to learn how to say "No" and I'm getting quite good at it.

I also started my second-half-of-the-semester class this morning, and I'm pretty excited about it. The first half of the semester class ended up dealing very dryly with dogmatic issues in a way that I wasn't terribly comfortable with; I felt like the class was trying to teach theory, but it didn't give us the chance to debate it and then we had to regurgitate it in a very specific way. The second class already seems more engaging - tough in a room with 95 people - and we get to talk about cities, one of my favorite topics. This is why I wanted this certificate!

Lastly, I know I talk too much but I wanted to let you know that the USC Stevens Institute (which I blogged about here) launched a new application on Facebook that I think a bunch of architects would find useful. It's called MatchYard, and it allows people to team up with others who use the application to work on projects of any kind. I could see architects using it especially in competitions where maybe you want to work on something but you need someone with a different skill set to partner up with. In any case, check out that link, it's an article on USC.edu that yours truly is quoted in :o)


an image of MatchYard's interface