the gender roles that the missus and I inhabit are based on physical attribute - I'm the brute squad responsible for heavy lifting and reaching things on high shelve, and she is responsible for everything below my knees ;-) I shovel snow and take care of the yard (which I enjoy) and she supposedly enjoys washing the dishes.
my quality of life has been declining since 2001, damn grad school & student loans. I made more money in 1998 then I do today.
feel free to read between the lines...but i did specify marshmallow peeps
i think the economic aspect of women working is somewhat interesting. given the current economic crisis, i'm a bit curious how the demographics of working men/women during previous depression (1870s, 1930s...anything pre-lib) compare with today's context. i thought i read somewhere that during the depression of 1930s unemployment was 10-20%, but did that include adult women (presumably, most of whom were stay-at-home types)?
of course, i've also been recently chewing on the fact that the species holds pretty close to a 50/50 percent ration of men & women gender. considering how much young men love to engage in destructive behavior (guns, motorcycles, skydiving, wars, etc)...it would seem like women would easily outnumber men after about the age of 30.
LB and Gin I agree with your sentiments. I don't really feel that gender roles should have a hard definition, but I do find it important that at least one parent have the ability to be around when the children are home. It's sad that it is so hard today to make ends meet on one income. I grew up as a latch-key kid too, and I sometimes feel I missed out, but I understand that my parents did what they had to do. That being said though, we pretty much always had a home cooked meal and we all sat down and ate dinner together at the same time every day, no ifs ands or buts. The TV was ONLY on for weather and for snippets of national news.
TK - It sounds like you and the missus have a good system going. Why should she shovel the walk if you are more physically capable? I'm so used to doing everything myself that I think it's going to be difficult handing it over to anyone if the right person comes along. That being said I won't miss mowing the lawn or shoveling the snow.
SH - I totally hear you on the grill thing. I do grill out, but it's never EVER the same as when my dad cooks it. He is the grill master.
One more thing.... I love to cook, but I find it incredibly sexy when a man knows his way around the kitchen. The last guy I dated didn't and I feel that's one of the reasons why it didn't actually work out.
I love a man who cooks, but can't imagine it being a big enough issue that it was a reason we didn't work out. However, the last real bf I had was the sort that would either go hungry or order pizza night after night if I wasn't around. That was a problem because it made me feel guilty if I wasn't there to make him dinner, and that just blows.
I see gender roles as just that: roles. Choose to play them or not, the only person it should affect is your partner. I've been told I come off as someone who would not be into the typical feminine things, so it always surprises the men I date when I lapse into something supergirly, like pedicures or baking.
HI RATIONALIST!!! Glad to see you've come up for air briefly. There were MANY reasons the last one didn't work out, but him not knowing how to cook (and thinking he could, poor thing) didn't help matters. And what woman doesn't enjoy a good pedicure?
And actually b/c I am such a big foodie that the guy I meet/date has to have a healthy and diverse pallette. He's gotta like to eat more than just meat potatoes and not have an issue if I decide to eat a slightly mooing cow (sorry folks I don't do it that often but when I do... yummmmmy).
Is it true nam, you make good Indian? When are you cooking? I'll be right over ;o)
"'She was apparently increasingly frustrated with what she perceived to be Mr. Bryant failing to live up to his domestic responsibilities,' Cartwright said. White had given Bryant a certain amount of money to use to buy groceries, he said, and 'she didn't feel that he had spent all of the money on groceries for her.'"
indeed that looks good. i think i will have salad for lunch.
it helps to have someone at home LB. we were also latch-key kids. i didn't know it at that time and still don't see anything overtly wrong with it as a practice, but my wife or i, and usually both, are always home by 6pm for supper with kids. often enough it is just one of us, which is unfortunate, but we both can cook and get the kids cleaned and ready for bed. gender roles seldom come up. culture roles do. i teach the english and the art to the kids, and help with math homework, she checks the japanese homework and teaches japanese table manners (different from the ones i grew up with - i didn't know i was supposed to keep one hand on the rice bowl at all times until the kids were learning it)...and we get by. anyway, it would be awesome if one of us could stay home full time again, just as you say it makes life sooo much easier, and i guess that is my own goal.
there is however no doubt at all that i am supposed to earn the money. japanese women do not in general respect a man who cannot support the entire family on his own. very leave-it-to-beaver here in that respect. you are not a man if you can't get it together enough to buy the house and car and groceries and all the rest. my wife doesn't go that far, but its still there in the subtext no matter what...and her mom is totally on board with the idea. she even objected when i went back to school to get phd. it didn't matter that it was the best school in the country and that i was getting a salary to go...anything outside of the regular track here is treated with such suspicion. men don't go to school, they work in an office. end of story. i guess that partly explains why men work such long hours, and why there is actually a medical term for death by over-working (ka-roshi). being a man can be a bitch, too.
Melt,
yes i do. You're welcome anytime. Actually cooking for a women is definetly one of my "dating" moves. I feel accomplished and like to show off. But i think key is sharing in a relationship at least.
Jump,
man, ka-roshi... Hahahah. Somethings are so culturally contextual i guess.
I have never really loved starfruit. Not sure why. Even when they are sweet.
Hi tuna! I'll have to blog soon about the perils of thesis, but yeah, I get to breathe occasionally. I saw DubK yesterday which was nice, and sent out a bunch of resumes and sample portfolios today. Now it's back to work :(
whether you do the grilling, change the oil, catch the hot rivets on the hundreth floor of a dubai skyscraper on a hundred and ten degree day, tyou're not a real man unless you make a comment on the manny pacquiao thread. its just that simple.
btw, we seem to share the same history. i used to be line cook then was sous-chef in life before architecture. i wooed my current wife while teaching her and her friends to make authentic canadian apple pie at my home.
Well hello everyone. I'm checking in from cloudy but lovely Seattle, where I will be until Wednesday. I came up here with two of my best friends to visit the third best friend. Together I dubbed them my "life decision-making council" and gave them the responsibility of telling me what to do post-graduation, as I was tired of deciding for myself. They concurred with the "go to Hawaii and figure out your life while taking your exams" plan, so I'm moving towards that goal now....
I do love it here though. If I got a job here I would set up shop in a heartbeat!
Aaron, congrats to you and the GF on your plans! I know next to nothing about those programs but that's cool that you can get a dual degree.
Regarding the cooking / women's lib discussion, I have no idea how to cook mainly because my mother didn't grow up learning so I had no basis to learn. She was of the right age to rebel against traditional women's roles, but also her mother treated her like dirt a lot of the time, so she didn't have a lot of incentive to hang around the kitchen for no reason. I do love to cook though so I try to get better at it....there is a creativity there akin to designing or making clothing that I can appreciate.
Regarding the idea of gender roles and supporting your family in today's society, it's interesting but did you know that working families actually earn less today than they did in the 70's? After adjusting for the rate of inflation over the last 30 years, we actually do earn less, by about $5000. So it's no wonder that it takes two parents to support a family because it's nearly impossible for a middle class family to live on one income nowadays. Needless to say, women are stepping up to the plate and becoming breadwinners in the family...especially since the sectors that have been hit the hardest in this downturn have been male-dominated industries like manufacturing. So it's no wonder we feel like we're struggling....we are.
I plan to go to Downtown Seattle tomorrow, I did the EMP today, and it was ... eh. Aside from the library (OMA), any other suggestions for what I should see here?
The Olympic Sculpture Park, definitely. Pike Place is always fun, I still get a kick out of going there no matter how many times I've been. And, um.... hmm. That might be all I've got. I just love to wander downtown, don't really need much in the way of destination.
Some Seattle-ite archinecters will need to weigh in here: last time I was in Seattle (1994-ish?) I fell in love with the spatial sequence of VSBA's Art Museum stair. I mean the grand stair along the exterior plaza, where the big working man ( Jonathan Borosky?) sculpture as placed. I thought the movement up the site on the inside while seeing the same sequence right outside the window was really beautifully composed. But! I don't know that it still exists; didn't the Museum sell off the plaza for development or something?
Also, it's touristy but go see the flying fish at the Market, it's really fun and the guys throwing fish are often fairly hot.
our roles are weird, and i know less about what 'should' be as i get older. we both used to work and made about equal pay. i used to be the only one to cook for us; my wife flat refused because she had grown up being expected to cook for her dad and brothers. things were generally pretty evenly split.
but then, when she got pregnant with #1, i wasn't getting home from work early enough to cook, and she took over because she was too hungry to wait.
4yrs later, she cooks just about everything, does most of the house stuff, takes care of the girls for the most part, and i go to work and i am the sole income.
the only exception to this is that, since i'm gone all day, the evenings and weekends are the times she gets free-time/play-time, so that's when i'm doing the home thing. we haven't worked out yet when my free-time/play-time is.
if such a thing makes sense, i used to be the 'feminist' in our relationship. this is not how i thought things would work out.
UGH!!! Carbon Monoxide alarm went off at 3am. Called in the fire dept. but it was just a malfunction. All they did was reset the damn thing for me. Fortunately they were friendly and somewhat easy on the eyes. Now I'm dragging my ass with only about 4.5 hours of sleep.
WK, I liked just walking around Alki beach area when I visited Seattle. Also, the Queen Anne neighborhood. Don't miss Gasworks park and sitting on the big hill watching the boats take off Lake Union. We wanted to do the Underground Seattle tour (starts at Pioneer Square -- another area worth walking around) but ran out of the time. My sister says it's fun though, and the night-time tour includes a cocktail at the outset.
And, if you want a really oddly fascinating thing for an architect, go take the Boeing manufacturing tour up in Everett (20 mins drive) -- it's astounding! Very well orchestrated tour. You actually get to watch workers put together 747s and the new Dreamliner (with curving, flexible wings). Extremely cool.
wK - take the ferry to brainbridge island for Bloedel Reserve - an early work by Laurie Olin and Richard Haag (who also designed gasworks park) and not to be missed for the giant stumps.
It was last year, and yes, it WAS awesome. Definitely one of my all-time favorite random tour / destinations, right up there with the Al-Hambra for how surprisingly fascinating it was.
I would love to get out to the Bloedel Reserve... Haag's work is very interesting from photos / lectures and I'm sure is just that much better in person.
I will say that the Boeing tour is probably a little more interesting if you have even a tiny working knowledge of how planes are put together; however, they really do have it set up so well that you don't need to know anything and you will still enjoy it. Plus, they talk a lot specifically about the design of the facility; it was the first of its kind and really the design (of the building & of the manufacturing process, which are really pretty integrated) is what they are showing off on the tour, almost more than the planes, honestly.
Also if you hang around afterword you get to watch the test pilots put the brand new (gleamingly unpainted) 747s through their paces! We got to watch an amazing low-flying pass (never allowed in real life of course) and watched it all from standing about 250 yards from the runway. Awesome!
Wonder: If you take the Boeing Tour wave to my cousin as he is most likely one of the guys on the floor doing non-destructive structural testing of the composites. He is a toe head you can't miss him.
I'm not a fan of pre-hire work, noone remembers you did it, you dont get credit for it,, recenetly, it seems to me its all about credit, thats what i see everyone around me working towards,, i hate it
I learned a new weather word today (and I'm sort of a weather geek, so I thought I already knew most of them): Derecho
Beautiful, yet slightly scary. I remember seeing something like this outside of Chicago once, and just about crapped my pants. I was out driving when I looked to the west and saw it... Managed to make it home (and into the basement) just as the tornado warning sirens started going off.
A close friend of mine, Lou Carlozo, was a writer and editor at the Chicago Tribune for about 16 years.
(Lou introduced me to Blair Kamin a few years ago, and as a result, I think a solid third of the architecture books I now have on my shelf were given to me by Mr. Kamin since then. Publishers are constantly sending Mr. Kamin books in hopes of getting some publicity in the Trib. As a result, he has massive piles of books at his desk that he never has any hope of reading. Whenever I met Lou at the Trib for lunch, I'd usually say hi to Blair and I was strongly encouraged to load up on as many of Blair's books as I could physically carry out of the building.)
Lou was laid off by the Trib a couple weeks ago, along with about 50 other writers in the newsroom. Ironically, he had been writing a Tribune blog about how to cope with the recession. The same week as the layoffs, the Tribune Company was asking a bankruptcy judge for permission to pay out over $13M in bonuses to its executives... And people wonder why newspapers are a rapidly-dying species.
Anyway, Lou is now writing a blog at the upstart site True/Slant, and today he just posted a touching piece about Dom DeLuise. From what Lou writes, it sounds like Dom was a real class act. RIP, Dom.
LiG I have some friends who are Trib casualties as well. Rough times. Thanks for the link, always good to know where the good writers can be found on the intarwebs...
Does Kamin need a new gopher to siphon extra books off onto? I could volunteer...
This hastily made promotional video of Cleveland is old, I saw it at least a week ago, but it still cracks me up every damn time. We could all make them of our own cities! vado, please start writing the jingle; I'll do storyboarding after my deadline tomorrow.
And yes I have a deadline tomorrow, which is exactly why I'm currently posting youtube videos to TC. Procrastinator extraordinaire.
Gin - Gorgeous photo. I remember seeing something like that while driving through Wisconsin in high school. Absolutely riveting to look at but kinda scary to drive through.
Oh man ADA toilet elevations? Really? Twenty five years later including four years self-employed and I'm still cranking these things out late at night?!
<sigh> But the check's already cleared, so I guess I can't complain.
****melt, it was good, actually, but the first time we tried it (last week, with shrimp instead of chicken) it was only mediocre at best...didn't have the balance of ingredients right. this time we:
-lightly breaded the chicken w/a mix of panko crumbs, flour and seasonings,
-lightly pan fried the chicken in olive oil,
-removed the chicken and added additional oil, salt and pepper,
-added some garlic and onion,
-added some lemon, and then shortly after started adding white wine,
-messed with the mix until the balance of flavor was good,
-added some seasoned flour to thicken the oil-based sauce into a light roux,
-threw some cherry tomatoes on at the end,
-put the chicken back in the pan, covered it for a few minutes,
-served over pasta.
total prep and cooking time = about 20 minutes w/2 people
the first attempt, last week, was based off a recipe that the GF found and wanted to try out. this week's version was a bit more of a remix, and of course benefited from our experience.
AP - pan fried or sauted. What heat level on the stove. Olive oil is so fussy sometimes, it often burns when I have the temp too hot. :o/ Sorry folks. If you want us to, we can take this discussion to Food Central
LB - That video was funny. ADA toilet elevations. Gotta love 'em. Do you have a template you use so you can kind plug and chug those things. We use them here and although it changes slightly for every restroom, it's nice to have the basic heights and grab bars already "inserted"
In other news, anyone else notice Facebok is changing the way you keep up with people's lives? I just found out one of my brother's cats died last night via my sister-in-law's status update. RIP Stinky.
but the cinco de mayo festivities (buckets of tequila) left me pondering the events of 1862...what if mexico had not defeated the french? how weird would it be if mexico was part of france today?
Speaking of mexican "independence" from france or at least a French born "monarch...
I have always wondered why both mexican and asian (specifically Vietnamese) restaurants/food always have fried ice-cream. the only thing I can think of is that they were both briefly French "colonies"....
Do the French have freid ice cream?
Anyone care to enlighten me?
****melt, definitely pan fried...burner at low to medium-low (we have a gas stove that runs a bit hot, so I usually start at medium-low and bring it down gradually, otherwise the garlic gets burned etc.).
nam, i have no idea who created it nor how it ended up being so prevalent in mexican and asian restaurants, but fried ice cream (and fried cheesecake for that matter) is a delicious act of culinary brilliance.
Couldn't make it to the Boeing factory tour but I am going to the REI Mothership! They've got one of the largest indoor climbing walls in the world! (Like I'm going to climb anything...)
I had lunch with DubK today... no REI for me, unfortunately. I've been getting the emails about the anniversary sale, but can't spend the money :(
Then I found a job post for a major network of museums on the east coast, and decided to apply for it even though the deadline was today. So, we'll see how that goes! But it definitely felt good to apply for a job that I knew existed, instead of just applying to firms that I hope, might have openings.
A little late to the gendering debate here... I was too unsettled to respond earlier but I have to get it off my chest. (Thanks LB and LiG for stepping in just when I needed it.)
Historically, it was considered "women's work" to run the house; not to do these tasks yourself, but to manage a household staff who did them for you. As women were not allowed to work in any other capacity this was a sort of default, left-over position; not something women are inherently any better at than men. In fact, think of cooking itself : women are traditionally considered "cooks" and yet chefs are traditionally male. Why is the professional version of the same task gendered differently? Because women didn't work, and were therefore ascribed the lesser of any given task. Not because of any particular innate gender-orientation of the task itself... women and men seem to be equally adept and skilled at cooking.
Thankfully, we've moved beyond such limited thinking and I think we've come to see that humans are veritable rainbows of strengths and weaknesses, and it's extremely difficult to categorize one particular gender as being innately adept at one particular thing.**
At this point in our time, I think a person is ill-equipped for this world if he/she can't adequately cook for him/herself, sew, iron, clean, diaper a child, etc among many other required life-skills. Gender be damned; there are just things you need to know to get by in the world. My great-grandmother took it upon herself to make sure each of her children were thusly prepared and so my grandfather is the one who taught my grandmother, at age 27, how to cook, starting with how to boil an egg which shows you how much that girl knew. She, in turn, taught my 28 year old grandfather how to drive. She was also an accomplished golfer in an age when women weren't allowed to play sports and certainly weren't encouraged to be loitering around golf courses.
Coincidentally, I've known far more great cooks (who truly love it) that are male than I have female. However, my point is that it's useless to attempt to draw any kind of conclusion any particular way on the gendering issue. We've been historically conditioned to accept a particular belief at face value, and fortunately our world has finally moved beyond that limited view.
**side note : I'm not one to say that women and men are 100% the same; I don't think we are. I think, for example, that women -- on the whole -- do tend to be better peace-brokers than men, and tend to be more emotionally aware (although the most moody, "emotional" people I've met have been equal numbers male & female). I think it's impossible to draw anything more specific than very broad and meaningless generalizations based on gender.
REI is so cool. I don't have too much money to spend but as most of my jackets are either done or inappropriate for my current or future lifestyle, I picked up - on sale - a lightweight rain jacket... and a cheap portable french press with a matching mug. Super fun!
I agree with manta's comment re: basic life skills that people should have in this day and age, regardless of gender. Which makes it nice when you meet someone (like WonderMan) who can fix a car, when I can't, but I can darn well sew (and WonderMan can't).
I am still mulling over that "Derecho" from above. I love weather!
~~~~~
One conclusion that my "Best Girlfriend Life Decision-Making Council" came to over the weekend was to scrap the idea of me getting a storage facility to hold any of my stuff. They said I should get rid of everything I could and ship the rest to them or to other willing parties, like my parents. Friends, this is going to be HARD. I have a couple pieces of furniture - my big IKEA storage unit comes to mind - that I adore, and that I invested a lot of energy into. I am considering putting the bulk of it on Craigslist and perhaps having a contest to store the rest. Like, if you agree to take one of my boxes, I won't tell you what you're getting but it will include a gift for you inside. I guess I'll have to see how much stuff I actually have left when the dust settles...in the meantime, does anyone want to buy a TV? :o)
Thread Central
the gender roles that the missus and I inhabit are based on physical attribute - I'm the brute squad responsible for heavy lifting and reaching things on high shelve, and she is responsible for everything below my knees ;-) I shovel snow and take care of the yard (which I enjoy) and she supposedly enjoys washing the dishes.
my quality of life has been declining since 2001, damn grad school & student loans. I made more money in 1998 then I do today.
feel free to read between the lines...but i did specify marshmallow peeps
i think the economic aspect of women working is somewhat interesting. given the current economic crisis, i'm a bit curious how the demographics of working men/women during previous depression (1870s, 1930s...anything pre-lib) compare with today's context. i thought i read somewhere that during the depression of 1930s unemployment was 10-20%, but did that include adult women (presumably, most of whom were stay-at-home types)?
of course, i've also been recently chewing on the fact that the species holds pretty close to a 50/50 percent ration of men & women gender. considering how much young men love to engage in destructive behavior (guns, motorcycles, skydiving, wars, etc)...it would seem like women would easily outnumber men after about the age of 30.
LB and Gin I agree with your sentiments. I don't really feel that gender roles should have a hard definition, but I do find it important that at least one parent have the ability to be around when the children are home. It's sad that it is so hard today to make ends meet on one income. I grew up as a latch-key kid too, and I sometimes feel I missed out, but I understand that my parents did what they had to do. That being said though, we pretty much always had a home cooked meal and we all sat down and ate dinner together at the same time every day, no ifs ands or buts. The TV was ONLY on for weather and for snippets of national news.
TK - It sounds like you and the missus have a good system going. Why should she shovel the walk if you are more physically capable? I'm so used to doing everything myself that I think it's going to be difficult handing it over to anyone if the right person comes along. That being said I won't miss mowing the lawn or shoveling the snow.
SH - I totally hear you on the grill thing. I do grill out, but it's never EVER the same as when my dad cooks it. He is the grill master.
One more thing.... I love to cook, but I find it incredibly sexy when a man knows his way around the kitchen. The last guy I dated didn't and I feel that's one of the reasons why it didn't actually work out.
I love a man who cooks, but can't imagine it being a big enough issue that it was a reason we didn't work out. However, the last real bf I had was the sort that would either go hungry or order pizza night after night if I wasn't around. That was a problem because it made me feel guilty if I wasn't there to make him dinner, and that just blows.
I see gender roles as just that: roles. Choose to play them or not, the only person it should affect is your partner. I've been told I come off as someone who would not be into the typical feminine things, so it always surprises the men I date when I lapse into something supergirly, like pedicures or baking.
HI RATIONALIST!!! Glad to see you've come up for air briefly. There were MANY reasons the last one didn't work out, but him not knowing how to cook (and thinking he could, poor thing) didn't help matters. And what woman doesn't enjoy a good pedicure?
And actually b/c I am such a big foodie that the guy I meet/date has to have a healthy and diverse pallette. He's gotta like to eat more than just meat potatoes and not have an issue if I decide to eat a slightly mooing cow (sorry folks I don't do it that often but when I do... yummmmmy).
Is it true nam, you make good Indian? When are you cooking? I'll be right over ;o)
SH - is that starfruit on that salad? YUMMMY!!!! Dmmit I just ate an hour and a half ago and I'm still hungry. GRRRRR!!!
Just don't end up like this couple:
Newark apartment fire allegedly ignited in anger over grocery shopping
"'She was apparently increasingly frustrated with what she perceived to be Mr. Bryant failing to live up to his domestic responsibilities,' Cartwright said. White had given Bryant a certain amount of money to use to buy groceries, he said, and 'she didn't feel that he had spent all of the money on groceries for her.'"
indeed that looks good. i think i will have salad for lunch.
it helps to have someone at home LB. we were also latch-key kids. i didn't know it at that time and still don't see anything overtly wrong with it as a practice, but my wife or i, and usually both, are always home by 6pm for supper with kids. often enough it is just one of us, which is unfortunate, but we both can cook and get the kids cleaned and ready for bed. gender roles seldom come up. culture roles do. i teach the english and the art to the kids, and help with math homework, she checks the japanese homework and teaches japanese table manners (different from the ones i grew up with - i didn't know i was supposed to keep one hand on the rice bowl at all times until the kids were learning it)...and we get by. anyway, it would be awesome if one of us could stay home full time again, just as you say it makes life sooo much easier, and i guess that is my own goal.
there is however no doubt at all that i am supposed to earn the money. japanese women do not in general respect a man who cannot support the entire family on his own. very leave-it-to-beaver here in that respect. you are not a man if you can't get it together enough to buy the house and car and groceries and all the rest. my wife doesn't go that far, but its still there in the subtext no matter what...and her mom is totally on board with the idea. she even objected when i went back to school to get phd. it didn't matter that it was the best school in the country and that i was getting a salary to go...anything outside of the regular track here is treated with such suspicion. men don't go to school, they work in an office. end of story. i guess that partly explains why men work such long hours, and why there is actually a medical term for death by over-working (ka-roshi). being a man can be a bitch, too.
Melt,
yes i do. You're welcome anytime. Actually cooking for a women is definetly one of my "dating" moves. I feel accomplished and like to show off. But i think key is sharing in a relationship at least.
Jump,
man, ka-roshi... Hahahah. Somethings are so culturally contextual i guess.
I have never really loved starfruit. Not sure why. Even when they are sweet.
Hi tuna! I'll have to blog soon about the perils of thesis, but yeah, I get to breathe occasionally. I saw DubK yesterday which was nice, and sent out a bunch of resumes and sample portfolios today. Now it's back to work :(
whether you do the grilling, change the oil, catch the hot rivets on the hundreth floor of a dubai skyscraper on a hundred and ten degree day, tyou're not a real man unless you make a comment on the manny pacquiao thread. its just that simple.
yeh it is crazy nam.
btw, we seem to share the same history. i used to be line cook then was sous-chef in life before architecture. i wooed my current wife while teaching her and her friends to make authentic canadian apple pie at my home.
Well hello everyone. I'm checking in from cloudy but lovely Seattle, where I will be until Wednesday. I came up here with two of my best friends to visit the third best friend. Together I dubbed them my "life decision-making council" and gave them the responsibility of telling me what to do post-graduation, as I was tired of deciding for myself. They concurred with the "go to Hawaii and figure out your life while taking your exams" plan, so I'm moving towards that goal now....
I do love it here though. If I got a job here I would set up shop in a heartbeat!
Aaron, congrats to you and the GF on your plans! I know next to nothing about those programs but that's cool that you can get a dual degree.
Regarding the cooking / women's lib discussion, I have no idea how to cook mainly because my mother didn't grow up learning so I had no basis to learn. She was of the right age to rebel against traditional women's roles, but also her mother treated her like dirt a lot of the time, so she didn't have a lot of incentive to hang around the kitchen for no reason. I do love to cook though so I try to get better at it....there is a creativity there akin to designing or making clothing that I can appreciate.
Regarding the idea of gender roles and supporting your family in today's society, it's interesting but did you know that working families actually earn less today than they did in the 70's? After adjusting for the rate of inflation over the last 30 years, we actually do earn less, by about $5000. So it's no wonder that it takes two parents to support a family because it's nearly impossible for a middle class family to live on one income nowadays. Needless to say, women are stepping up to the plate and becoming breadwinners in the family...especially since the sectors that have been hit the hardest in this downturn have been male-dominated industries like manufacturing. So it's no wonder we feel like we're struggling....we are.
I plan to go to Downtown Seattle tomorrow, I did the EMP today, and it was ... eh. Aside from the library (OMA), any other suggestions for what I should see here?
The Olympic Sculpture Park, definitely. Pike Place is always fun, I still get a kick out of going there no matter how many times I've been. And, um.... hmm. That might be all I've got. I just love to wander downtown, don't really need much in the way of destination.
Some Seattle-ite archinecters will need to weigh in here: last time I was in Seattle (1994-ish?) I fell in love with the spatial sequence of VSBA's Art Museum stair. I mean the grand stair along the exterior plaza, where the big working man ( Jonathan Borosky?) sculpture as placed. I thought the movement up the site on the inside while seeing the same sequence right outside the window was really beautifully composed. But! I don't know that it still exists; didn't the Museum sell off the plaza for development or something?
Also, it's touristy but go see the flying fish at the Market, it's really fun and the guys throwing fish are often fairly hot.
our roles are weird, and i know less about what 'should' be as i get older. we both used to work and made about equal pay. i used to be the only one to cook for us; my wife flat refused because she had grown up being expected to cook for her dad and brothers. things were generally pretty evenly split.
but then, when she got pregnant with #1, i wasn't getting home from work early enough to cook, and she took over because she was too hungry to wait.
4yrs later, she cooks just about everything, does most of the house stuff, takes care of the girls for the most part, and i go to work and i am the sole income.
the only exception to this is that, since i'm gone all day, the evenings and weekends are the times she gets free-time/play-time, so that's when i'm doing the home thing. we haven't worked out yet when my free-time/play-time is.
if such a thing makes sense, i used to be the 'feminist' in our relationship. this is not how i thought things would work out.
ka-roshi may end up being my cause of death.
Morning all.
Jump,
Now i just have to get and urban planning/architecture degree.
Rationalist good luck!!! Not too much longer right?
DubK, good to hear you have settled on a plan.
Finally, Steven it sounds like although you and your wife have worked out a good balance....
UGH!!! Carbon Monoxide alarm went off at 3am. Called in the fire dept. but it was just a malfunction. All they did was reset the damn thing for me. Fortunately they were friendly and somewhat easy on the eyes. Now I'm dragging my ass with only about 4.5 hours of sleep.
WK, I liked just walking around Alki beach area when I visited Seattle. Also, the Queen Anne neighborhood. Don't miss Gasworks park and sitting on the big hill watching the boats take off Lake Union. We wanted to do the Underground Seattle tour (starts at Pioneer Square -- another area worth walking around) but ran out of the time. My sister says it's fun though, and the night-time tour includes a cocktail at the outset.
And, if you want a really oddly fascinating thing for an architect, go take the Boeing manufacturing tour up in Everett (20 mins drive) -- it's astounding! Very well orchestrated tour. You actually get to watch workers put together 747s and the new Dreamliner (with curving, flexible wings). Extremely cool.
Kind of a unique design problem!
Steven, I know you're in Louisville but maybe your firm might be interested in entering this?
wow. big project, and exciting! ...but with lots of pre-hire work to be done.
thanks, manta. i'll pass it on to the big guys.
Manta - Did you really take a tour of the facility? Was that pre or post 9/11. That would be so AWESOME to do.
wK - take the ferry to brainbridge island for Bloedel Reserve - an early work by Laurie Olin and Richard Haag (who also designed gasworks park) and not to be missed for the giant stumps.
It was last year, and yes, it WAS awesome. Definitely one of my all-time favorite random tour / destinations, right up there with the Al-Hambra for how surprisingly fascinating it was.
I would love to get out to the Bloedel Reserve... Haag's work is very interesting from photos / lectures and I'm sure is just that much better in person.
I will say that the Boeing tour is probably a little more interesting if you have even a tiny working knowledge of how planes are put together; however, they really do have it set up so well that you don't need to know anything and you will still enjoy it. Plus, they talk a lot specifically about the design of the facility; it was the first of its kind and really the design (of the building & of the manufacturing process, which are really pretty integrated) is what they are showing off on the tour, almost more than the planes, honestly.
Also if you hang around afterword you get to watch the test pilots put the brand new (gleamingly unpainted) 747s through their paces! We got to watch an amazing low-flying pass (never allowed in real life of course) and watched it all from standing about 250 yards from the runway. Awesome!
Wonder: If you take the Boeing Tour wave to my cousin as he is most likely one of the guys on the floor doing non-destructive structural testing of the composites. He is a toe head you can't miss him.
SH,, thanks again!
I'm not a fan of pre-hire work, noone remembers you did it, you dont get credit for it,, recenetly, it seems to me its all about credit, thats what i see everyone around me working towards,, i hate it
RIP dom deluise
got called home before lunch to nurse my wife and sapling back to health - not swine flu, but a cold & teething...
I learned a new weather word today (and I'm sort of a weather geek, so I thought I already knew most of them): Derecho
Beautiful, yet slightly scary. I remember seeing something like this outside of Chicago once, and just about crapped my pants. I was out driving when I looked to the west and saw it... Managed to make it home (and into the basement) just as the tornado warning sirens started going off.
A close friend of mine, Lou Carlozo, was a writer and editor at the Chicago Tribune for about 16 years.
(Lou introduced me to Blair Kamin a few years ago, and as a result, I think a solid third of the architecture books I now have on my shelf were given to me by Mr. Kamin since then. Publishers are constantly sending Mr. Kamin books in hopes of getting some publicity in the Trib. As a result, he has massive piles of books at his desk that he never has any hope of reading. Whenever I met Lou at the Trib for lunch, I'd usually say hi to Blair and I was strongly encouraged to load up on as many of Blair's books as I could physically carry out of the building.)
Lou was laid off by the Trib a couple weeks ago, along with about 50 other writers in the newsroom. Ironically, he had been writing a Tribune blog about how to cope with the recession. The same week as the layoffs, the Tribune Company was asking a bankruptcy judge for permission to pay out over $13M in bonuses to its executives... And people wonder why newspapers are a rapidly-dying species.
Anyway, Lou is now writing a blog at the upstart site True/Slant, and today he just posted a touching piece about Dom DeLuise. From what Lou writes, it sounds like Dom was a real class act. RIP, Dom.
LiG I have some friends who are Trib casualties as well. Rough times. Thanks for the link, always good to know where the good writers can be found on the intarwebs...
Does Kamin need a new gopher to siphon extra books off onto? I could volunteer...
also, damn, that picture is beautiful!
Lemon Chicken, an inter-gender collaboration.
This hastily made promotional video of Cleveland is old, I saw it at least a week ago, but it still cracks me up every damn time. We could all make them of our own cities! vado, please start writing the jingle; I'll do storyboarding after my deadline tomorrow.
And yes I have a deadline tomorrow, which is exactly why I'm currently posting youtube videos to TC. Procrastinator extraordinaire.
Man,
That is awesome and so pretty LIG.
Hope you don't mind me posting to my own blog...
AP - that looks quite tasty. Is/was it?
Gin - Gorgeous photo. I remember seeing something like that while driving through Wisconsin in high school. Absolutely riveting to look at but kinda scary to drive through.
Oh man ADA toilet elevations? Really? Twenty five years later including four years self-employed and I'm still cranking these things out late at night?!
<sigh> But the check's already cleared, so I guess I can't complain.
****melt, it was good, actually, but the first time we tried it (last week, with shrimp instead of chicken) it was only mediocre at best...didn't have the balance of ingredients right. this time we:
-lightly breaded the chicken w/a mix of panko crumbs, flour and seasonings,
-lightly pan fried the chicken in olive oil,
-removed the chicken and added additional oil, salt and pepper,
-added some garlic and onion,
-added some lemon, and then shortly after started adding white wine,
-messed with the mix until the balance of flavor was good,
-added some seasoned flour to thicken the oil-based sauce into a light roux,
-threw some cherry tomatoes on at the end,
-put the chicken back in the pan, covered it for a few minutes,
-served over pasta.
total prep and cooking time = about 20 minutes w/2 people
the first attempt, last week, was based off a recipe that the GF found and wanted to try out. this week's version was a bit more of a remix, and of course benefited from our experience.
lb, that video is hilarious.
AP - pan fried or sauted. What heat level on the stove. Olive oil is so fussy sometimes, it often burns when I have the temp too hot. :o/ Sorry folks. If you want us to, we can take this discussion to Food Central
LB - That video was funny. ADA toilet elevations. Gotta love 'em. Do you have a template you use so you can kind plug and chug those things. We use them here and although it changes slightly for every restroom, it's nice to have the basic heights and grab bars already "inserted"
In other news, anyone else notice Facebok is changing the way you keep up with people's lives? I just found out one of my brother's cats died last night via my sister-in-law's status update. RIP Stinky.
i'm still alive...
but the cinco de mayo festivities (buckets of tequila) left me pondering the events of 1862...what if mexico had not defeated the french? how weird would it be if mexico was part of france today?
Speaking of mexican "independence" from france or at least a French born "monarch...
I have always wondered why both mexican and asian (specifically Vietnamese) restaurants/food always have fried ice-cream. the only thing I can think of is that they were both briefly French "colonies"....
Do the French have freid ice cream?
Anyone care to enlighten me?
****melt, definitely pan fried...burner at low to medium-low (we have a gas stove that runs a bit hot, so I usually start at medium-low and bring it down gradually, otherwise the garlic gets burned etc.).
nam, i have no idea who created it nor how it ended up being so prevalent in mexican and asian restaurants, but fried ice cream (and fried cheesecake for that matter) is a delicious act of culinary brilliance.
Couldn't make it to the Boeing factory tour but I am going to the REI Mothership! They've got one of the largest indoor climbing walls in the world! (Like I'm going to climb anything...)
LB, have you seen the second attempt? More of the same but still pretty funny.
REI is muy $$$
but i like that i can return something years later :)
My coworker registred at REI for her bridal registry.
So apparently Carbon Monoxide monitors go bad after about 6 years. Who knew? Guess I know what I'll be doing this weekend :oP
I had lunch with DubK today... no REI for me, unfortunately. I've been getting the emails about the anniversary sale, but can't spend the money :(
Then I found a job post for a major network of museums on the east coast, and decided to apply for it even though the deadline was today. So, we'll see how that goes! But it definitely felt good to apply for a job that I knew existed, instead of just applying to firms that I hope, might have openings.
Mmmmmm, fried icecream. drool.
A little late to the gendering debate here... I was too unsettled to respond earlier but I have to get it off my chest. (Thanks LB and LiG for stepping in just when I needed it.)
Historically, it was considered "women's work" to run the house; not to do these tasks yourself, but to manage a household staff who did them for you. As women were not allowed to work in any other capacity this was a sort of default, left-over position; not something women are inherently any better at than men. In fact, think of cooking itself : women are traditionally considered "cooks" and yet chefs are traditionally male. Why is the professional version of the same task gendered differently? Because women didn't work, and were therefore ascribed the lesser of any given task. Not because of any particular innate gender-orientation of the task itself... women and men seem to be equally adept and skilled at cooking.
Thankfully, we've moved beyond such limited thinking and I think we've come to see that humans are veritable rainbows of strengths and weaknesses, and it's extremely difficult to categorize one particular gender as being innately adept at one particular thing.**
At this point in our time, I think a person is ill-equipped for this world if he/she can't adequately cook for him/herself, sew, iron, clean, diaper a child, etc among many other required life-skills. Gender be damned; there are just things you need to know to get by in the world. My great-grandmother took it upon herself to make sure each of her children were thusly prepared and so my grandfather is the one who taught my grandmother, at age 27, how to cook, starting with how to boil an egg which shows you how much that girl knew. She, in turn, taught my 28 year old grandfather how to drive. She was also an accomplished golfer in an age when women weren't allowed to play sports and certainly weren't encouraged to be loitering around golf courses.
Coincidentally, I've known far more great cooks (who truly love it) that are male than I have female. However, my point is that it's useless to attempt to draw any kind of conclusion any particular way on the gendering issue. We've been historically conditioned to accept a particular belief at face value, and fortunately our world has finally moved beyond that limited view.
**side note : I'm not one to say that women and men are 100% the same; I don't think we are. I think, for example, that women -- on the whole -- do tend to be better peace-brokers than men, and tend to be more emotionally aware (although the most moody, "emotional" people I've met have been equal numbers male & female). I think it's impossible to draw anything more specific than very broad and meaningless generalizations based on gender.
REI is so cool. I don't have too much money to spend but as most of my jackets are either done or inappropriate for my current or future lifestyle, I picked up - on sale - a lightweight rain jacket... and a cheap portable french press with a matching mug. Super fun!
I agree with manta's comment re: basic life skills that people should have in this day and age, regardless of gender. Which makes it nice when you meet someone (like WonderMan) who can fix a car, when I can't, but I can darn well sew (and WonderMan can't).
I am still mulling over that "Derecho" from above. I love weather!
~~~~~
One conclusion that my "Best Girlfriend Life Decision-Making Council" came to over the weekend was to scrap the idea of me getting a storage facility to hold any of my stuff. They said I should get rid of everything I could and ship the rest to them or to other willing parties, like my parents. Friends, this is going to be HARD. I have a couple pieces of furniture - my big IKEA storage unit comes to mind - that I adore, and that I invested a lot of energy into. I am considering putting the bulk of it on Craigslist and perhaps having a contest to store the rest. Like, if you agree to take one of my boxes, I won't tell you what you're getting but it will include a gift for you inside. I guess I'll have to see how much stuff I actually have left when the dust settles...in the meantime, does anyone want to buy a TV? :o)
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