From Rebæk Søpark Kollegium

Today started bright and early. It was our first day of lectures, along with a boat tour and tour of the studios and campus.

8:30 – Met with my RA and several others staying at our dorm, all Architecture students, so I have no idea why I was assigned here. Also, all guys, too. We then headed to the Rødovre St. S-Train, which took us to Nørreport St. I'm going to have to keep an eye on my exit because every announcement of a stop name sounds like someone coughing. Then we met with all the Architecture, Interior Design, Furniture Design, and Glass Blowing studios in an open square, got on touring buses, and headed to the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts.

10:30 – Eric Skoven, the program director, introduced himself and gave a wonderful speech on Danish design as well as design in general.

"A chair is not finished until it has been sat in."

11:00 – An AMAZING string quartet played for us. It is considered good luck and taste to begin a get-together with music.

11:15 – We receive a tour of the facilities (library, studios, lecture hall) from our professors, and figure out which studios we are in. I am in Tube Steel A. It should be very interesting, and I am glad to be learning such a specialized craft while I'm here. Ellen is in the Veneer 1 group. Elizabeth is in the Tube Steel B group.

12:00 – Lunch provided to us. Tuna sandwiches and Coke Light.

12:30 – I head back with Ellen and a few others to pick up the papers, food stipend, and bus pass that we were supposed to receive yesterday.

1:15 – End up missing a lecture entitled "The Human Dimension in City Planning," which sucks.

3:00 – 2-hour field study by boat of the Copenhagen Harbor.

After that, they dumped us off in the middle of the city and said, "Good luck!" I found a few people from my dorm and walked with them to the Nørreport St. station. On the way, we passed a Netto store, a low-budget grocery store. I kept it very safe and purchased sandwich ingredients, fruit, juice, and Honey Nut Cheerios. I want my adventuresome food endeavors to be for when I eat out.

I regret to inform you that I did not take my camera with me today. I wanted to pay absolute attention to directions and instructions so that I could find my way back tomorrow, and I knew having my camera with me would bring the temptation of not listening and going off on my own. I've still got something like 45 days left here, so there will be plenty of time for touristy things.

I do have some pictures, though:

My seat on the first flight from St. Louis to Chicago. I got to switch from 13C to 12C (an exit row) because the people sitting in front of me were unable to speak English and therefore unable to help in an emergency.

Flight Attendant: Can you perform the necessary exit procedures?
Me: Yeah, yeah, whatever. Woohoo! I can't even touch the seat in front of me!



This was taken at 6:30 this morning, the sun already high in the sky.



The rest of these were taken at 8:30 tonight, in my dorm room.







And this is my trying to find out where the heck I'm going tomorrow morning. I think I've got it though, and it only requires one S-Train ride and one bus ride.

First Danish Meal: Pizza!

It's 11:00pm here in Copenhagen. I'm 7 hours ahead of home, and it has been a very long day, so I'm keeping it short.

Ellen and I are in Copenhagen, and we're safe and well and housed. Our luggage, however, is not. All our clothes, shoes, toiletries, everything, was lost in the hell that was missing three flights (yes three) and rebooking several times. Luckily, I had brought an extra change of clothes, my glasses and contacts case, my computer and my camera with me on my carry-on.

So I'm beginning to believe that I was never meant to have any belongings.

The rest of my experience, though, has been a pretty good one. SAS Airlines gave me 125 Euros (or 936 DKK) for putting us on later flights, and I've been using it to buy cab fare and basic toiletries, but I've still got a hefty portion left. Oh, and I thank my dad for mistakenly getting me Euro instead of DKK because the detour the Frankfurt allowed me to use them to get a calling card to let DIS know we were going to be late and a converter/adapter for my laptop.

Tomorrow is my first experience on the metro. And apparently a couple of tours through Copenhagen, so I'm excited. Better stories and pictures from the flight and first night after I get me some real, honest-to-goodness, horizontal bed-sleep.

2008 Summer Mix

This week (and last) has been horribly hectic, but I've managed to scrounge up a little ear candy for you. I tend to make a music mix every season or so, and this summer's mix will not disappoint those who like Indie Pop Rock, lady singers, or piano & violins. I worked hard and found free (and very legal) downloads of the songs, so get 'em while they last! Just left-click to listen or right-click and Save As to download. Needless to say, if any of them don't work, you can either send me a comment or check out my source of free and lovely music, The Hype Machine.

1. Elevator Love Letter - Stars
2. Campus - Vampire Weekend
3. Animals are Cut in Two - Half-Handed Cloud
4. Second Chance - Liam Finn
5. I'm Not Going to Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance with You - Black Kids
6. Think I Wanna Die - Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin
7. A-Punk - Vampire Weekend
8. In This Home on Ice - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
9. The Party's Crashing Us - Of Montreal
10. Soft Revolution - Stars
11. Foundations - Kate Nash
12. Mr. Blue - Catherine Feeny
13. I'll Follow You Tonight - Anna Ternheim

There are a couple repeat bands (i.e. Stars and Vampire Weekend), but that's just because I am continually impressed by them and their sound. The mix starts out kind of quick and happy, even "Think I Wanna Die," which manages to use the word twee, which is now my Favorite Word^TM. Then it gets into female vocals with Kate Nash and slows way down into Catherine Feeny and Anna Ternheim. So it's very fitting to the summer months: fast-paced and action-packed pools and zoos and sports then picnic and nap in the park.

Manhattan's Tornado

Well the last couple of days have been a blur. I had planned on having a pretty relaxing weekend. Movie Friday night, PGAV barbeque Saturday afternoon, chores and stuff Sunday. Well, I got to the movie at least.

My roommate and I got a call Friday from Amherst Storage saying that "Our unit may or may not have been COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY DESTROYED in the tornado that ripped through the town Wednesday night." Kelsey told me that she was on her way to Manhattan to survey the damage. I figured I would wait until she got there and saw it to decide whether it would be worth it for me to go down there.

In the meantime, I went to see The Happening with Tiffany, my mentor from work. The movie was pretty bad. Strike two, Mr. Shyamalan.

Then Kelsey called to tell me that our unit was COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY DESTROYED.

So I stocked up on Mountain Dew, took a 5-hour energy shot, and left around midnight. 5 hours later, I was in Manhattan, on my friend Tommy's couch, settling in for a quick nap. When Amherst opened, Tommy, Kelsey, her mom, and I headed over to take our chances at salvaging what we could.

I have never seen so much damage up close before. We started by taking pictures of things we could recognize. Scratch that. We actually started by going, "Oh my god, my chair!" or "Oh my god, the foosball table!" or "Oh my god, is that PORN?!?"

Yes, my friends, appparently the most popular thing to store in the state of Kansas is porn. It was EVERYWHERE. Nothing to lighten the mood like pulling pictures of naked women (and men) off of your broken belongings.

Here's the full inventory list. Bold means salvaged. * means partially salvaged. Italic means ruined/unrepairable. And ~ means never found.

Bed
Mattress
Studio Chair
Red Stool*
Zipper Chair*
Bike (!!!)
Couch
Filing Cabinet~
Bookshelves
Floating Shelf
Studio Supplies*
Portfolio Case
Dishes
Recliners
Coffee table
TV stand~
Sheets, Rugs, Comforter, Towels*
Locker Chest
Books
Lamps
Foosball Table
Nesting Cubes
Pillows

Not much made it. The bike did, thankfully, needing only new tape on the handlebars and a very thorough cleaning/slight rust removing. Amazingly, I found it on top of a comforter and a couch cushion. Both front and back packs on the bike had been blown off during the storm, but I found them less than 10 feet away. We found our belongings as close as a few feet from the unit and as far away as 50 feet. It all pretty much blew in the same direction, so it only took a few hours to gather it all.

While it seems like we lost a lot, it was nothing compared to some of the people we talked to. One woman had just moved to Manhattan and said she had put 90% of her belongings into storage, included an early 70s Cadillac.




And here are some other photos taken while at Amherst:





And this is what was left of our couch:





Here is where our unit used to be:







You can view the rest of the photos on my Mac Gallery.

Here's SkyCam footage of the tornado as it hit the storage facility (southwest side of town) and the campus:



And check out this video showing some of the aftermath:



That Toyota dealership is located right next to Amherst Storage. And the last 20 seconds shows what's left of a True Value.

All in all, to see just what a tornado can do was surreal. I wish I could have stayed and helped the clean up and recovery effort going on in the town. Kelsey and I feel ourselves very lucky to not have been in Manhattan when this happened. And very lucky that we didn't lose many items of sentimental value. We saw everything from diaries to picture albums to wedding dresses as we walked around the facility. Everything we lost can be replaced. Yes, we consider ourselves incredibly lucky.

THE Question

I found a neat little firm that does every sort of graphic design under the sun, and they do a lot of book design, inside and out. I love looking at the websites of graphic designers because not only do they showcase their work, they give visitors an idea of how they work and who they are. That and they give impeccable attention to detail. FWIS does this simply by how they organize their projects. Not only can you view them by type, but you can check out projects that they didn't get paid for, projects that they argued over, and projects that "scored [them] babes." You can just tell that they are doing what they were meant to do.

Speaking of which, yesterday I got the question that every full-time, paid-by-the-hour, time-and-a-half-overtime employee LOVES to hear.

Can you work extra hours?

It took me about 1/16th of a second for my brain to process this equation:

Working overtime now
=
Less working during the school year
=
More time for studio and shop
=
LOTS OF DESIGNING AND BUILDING COOL FURNITURE

And really, when it comes down to it, that's how most of my equations end. Needless to say, I agreed.

Also on the job front, although not mine, I found the absolute best interview/presentation idea over at Swissmiss:



Video paired with art/design has been around a while (check out Stefan G. Bucher's Daily Monster and witness your jaw dropping to the floor), and I LOVE LOVE LOVE to be able to see artists and designers in action. Everything from methods to tools to the way they position their paper or the music they listen to while working or the space they work in; it's all in a video. I had always thought a wonderful way to publicize the College of Architecture at K-State would be to produce a time-lapse video showing a hand-drafted finish sheet from the first pen line to the last. Or initial sketch to final design. Set to a good song like:

Of Montreal's "Disconnect the Dots" or
Phoenix's "North".

Maybe with my oodles of non-Planet-Subbing next semester, I can borrow a nice camcorder from the library and take that on. It would be pretty awesome, and I imagine useful, to see how I sketch or brainstorm in super-fast mode.

Top Secret

After a little bit of a design lull, for which I blame highly addictive television programs, I'm glad to feel creative this evening. I spent the night doodling and "creative suite-ing" some cover designs for my design internship journal, which I will be printing via Blurb Books.

The title and description reads:

Things They'll Never Teach You in Design School: One Intern's Journey into Corporate America

Flashy, eh?

The journal, in general, is a requirement for all K-State internships. It is worth 3 credit hours. For each one of the four months at the firm, we must write an entry about each of the following:

1. Assignment we've worked on.
2. Office procedures and how they are better or worse than other firms.
3. Attendance at an office event.
4. Attendence at a social outing. (This is mostly for students interning outside their hometown.)
5. An analysis of a local piece of architecture. (I'll be handing this in separately, since it's specific to St. Louis and I want the book to be a bit more general.)

Since the beginning, I had wanted to get the journal printed professionally, and since I was going to be getting one copy for K-State, I might as well get one for myself, and hey, why not PGAV? But writing in a way that would A. cover all the semi-boring stuff for K-State and B. be interesting enough for someone to read willingly, made it difficult. Then as I journaled, I realized I kept writing little tidbits of advice and observations, like:

Post-It Notes are the Eighth Wonder of the World!

Save early. Save often.

and

The UL ratings book sucks!

So the journal has now sort of morphed into a list that encompasses projects, procedures, and events. And it allows me to get my own voice in there, and not a boring "Today I worked on stair details. Tomorrow I work on more stair details. Yay!"

And don't forget to download this month's limited edition blog header:

Short for Kathryn Howell III

I've been having to do a lot of things in preparation for my upcoming study abroad in Copenhagen, such as making payments, ordering luggage, reading up on Denmark, arranging my flight, sketching like a madwoman, picking housing, uploading my transcript, etc. etc.

Well recently, I had to submit a photo of myself to DIS so that I could be issued a student ID. This is actually quite thoughtful of them, seeing as the alternative would be to catch us off guard and bleary-eyed after a 13-hour transatlantic flight. So I took some shots with my shnazzy camera and hooked her up to Beatrix (as in Beatrix A. Macbook). And what did I find, other than the ungodly horrors of what a wide angle can do when it's two feet away from its subject? Pictures from Chi-Town! Enjoy!

First up, beautiful shots of the city:











Next, some B&W:











I still have a lot to learn about my camera. Ashleigh, my sister-in-law, has already given me some very useful tips about settings I didn't even know I had, so she's to thank for some of these actually turning out semi-decent.

And yes, that was Panic at the Disco a week BEFORE I saw them in St. Louis. We happened upon them very much by accident while trying to find Paper Source, the most beautiful store I have ever laid eyes upon.

And here's just a little nugget I spotted while in a Tacky Tourist Shop:



Both spelled my way, I might add.

Don't Forget the City

This evening, I set aside some quality time that I could throw away at the movie theater seeing Sex & the City. I went to see this 2 AND A HALF HOUR film with my work buddy, Stacey, and her mom. And we all walked out thinking the same thing: it was better than we expected.

Now I'm sure that if I had watched more than 2 AND A HALF HOURS of collective Sex & the City episodes, I would have been more giggly and bouncy while exiting the theater, but having little to no history with the characters actually did not matter. It's kind of sad that you can recap 6 seasons of a television show in 5-minutes, but it was done pretty well.

Charlotte was, bar none, my favorite of the four characters. She's all bubbly and giggly and then BAM! she unleashes a torrent of hate at Big that rivals that of the nuns from my high school. That and I feel bad that she pooed her pants. (Yes, I'm one of those people that can't use the accepted terms and instead uses words like "dookie" and "wizzle." And no, I will never grow out of it.)

Tomorrow, I've got plans to see Speed Racer with a few people from work. I know what you're thinking:

"But Kate, you willingly watched an episode of COPS, visited Martha Stewart's blog, borrowed an electronic jazz remix album from the library, saw Sex & the City, AND now you're going to see Speed Racer? In theaters? And will pay!? How can I believe you have any good taste in you whatsoever?"

But you see, I have a philosophy when it comes to the arts. If all you look at or take in is good film, good television, good design, then everything you ever see is the best and you have no adequate rating system. Plus, people love to hate things. I think people bond more over collectively hating something than loving it. It's like, "Oh, you hated No Country for Old Men? Me too! You're cool with me."

What am I saying? I'm going to Speed Racer because I'm kind of hoping someone has a seizure while watching the movie.

Big Plans

School has been over for a few weeks now, and the Summer Movie season is starting to get its groove on. There's a handy little guide to movies coming out this Summer over at firstshowing.net that gives release dates and previews.

So far, I've got 3 of the 22 under my belt: Ironman, which was uh-mazing; Prince Caspian, which was very entertaining; and Indiana Jones, which was downright bad. But I have high hopes for others on the list:

The Happening, M. Night Shyamalan's first R-rated movie. Something about end-of-the-world movies just makes me all tingly inside.

Wall*E. I don't think I've ever fallen in love with an animated character so quickly. 20 seconds into the trailer and I'm speaking incoherent baby babble.

The X-Files I Want to Believe. And no, I am NOT ashamed. At least I don't want to see the (hopefully) last movie in the Mummy trilogy.

And Tropic Thunder, the movie that will launch a thousand quotes.

Also coming this Summer are the Olympic Games. Recent ads for the games show memorable moments in Olympic history narrated by non other than MORGAN FREEMAN! I have many times expressed my deepest wish that Morgan Freeman would follow me around for a week and narrate everything that happens to me. And seeing these ads gets me ONE STEP CLOSER.

Miracles Happen

The past week has been a flurry of events, namely the Honda Civic Tour at the Pageant featuring Panic and the Disco. I not-so-secretly went because Motion City Soundtrack was opening for Panic. And they did not disappoint, playing all the best songs from their new album Even if it Kills Me, like: "Last Night," "Broken Heart," and "This is for Real" among other favorites.

This is the fourth time I've seen them live (does Warped Tour really count?), and I'm not actually that huge of a concert-goer, but it's worth admission alone to see their keyboardist do handstands off his Moog synthesizer.



While at the concert, I pretty much nagged the rest of my party (work people who also do not dance at concerts) with endless vigor to visit the shirt shop next door. And when we got there, I fell in love with this:



Except mine is in girl-size and a more pastel yellow. I'm sure there will be many a picture of me in it when I post from Denmark, seeing as it is now the shirt that I wish to be buried in. Before, it was this:

Fall 2008 Class Schedule

{Printable bookmark version to come}

Monday, Wednesday, Friday

8:30AM - 12:20PM : Capstone Studio
2:30PM - 6:30PM : Furniture Design Workshop

Tuesday, Thursday

10:30AM - 11:55PM : Lighting Lab
5:30PM - 6:45PM : Expository Writing II
8:30PM - 10:00PM : Capstone Programming