back to school

The garbage trucks are unbelieably loud! They are practially vibrating the whole house and I can't hear my music anymore. hah.

Yesterday, Thursday, was my first day of classes. I woke up at 6:30 to give myself plenty of time to get ready, and then left at 7:30. Traffic was traffic, I think it took me about 45 minutes to get downtown. I went to my usual parking lot, but the lane i turned into was the center lane for both the lot I use and the lot on the corner. So this guy walked up to my car and said the lot was closed for the day and told me to park across the street. I interjected and said I wasn't trying to park in this lot I was trying to turn left, "is this one closed too?" and the guy said yes it is, go across the street. Unhappily I turned around, made my way across the street and waited in a long line of cars for an unfamiliar and unfriendly lot attendant to give me a ticket for my window. Later that day I was walking by the lot- i will expand on who I was with and where I was going later- and the lot I usually park in was totally almost full, working as usual, that guy lied to me... and he said "hi ladies" when we walked by, which aggrivated me further. I'm picky about where I park, I don't think that's a bad thing!

Anyways, I finally got to class and was surprised by the number of people! It was the largest class in the interior design department, four or five people couldn't even get in. There were about 30 of us? That's not unusual for a general studies class, but it is when you get into departments. The professor's name is Gray Adams, and he's a very distinguished man, he's been teaching forever and an interior designer for 20+ years. The class is going to cover history of architecture and interior design from egyptian times to the contemporary... including furniture, motifs, etc. He was pretty entertaining. After my 8:30am class, which ends around 11:30, I have nothing schedules until 6pm! That's forever!

There happen to be 3 other girls from SPU attending FIDM, one who started in the summer, and the other two the same as me. Three of us have the 8:30 class together, so afterwards we went across the street to the Met, an apartment building where the two girls starting this quarter are living. We all hung out and ate lunch, and then went to the Starbucks down a couple blocks to satisfy the girls caffeine cravings. This is when we walked by the lot. We were really curious why they blocked out a whole lot, and all the meter parking on the street on the other side of the school. There is an apartment building on the other half of the block that the school is on, called the Renaissance Towers. Turns out all the trailers and trucks were there because they were filming for the show 'Nip Tuck' which I have never seen or had interest in seeing, but they were there, taking over.

After many many hours of sitting around trying to brainstorm what I'll do with my break time in the future, it was finally time to go to class. So off all four of us went to our Retail Design Concepts class. Our instructor was funny because he was kind of awkward, but he was a prof at USC or something previously, and I believe he is an architect. Over the quarter we will eventually produce the drawings and floor plan for our own retail space, given only the parameters of the possible building size. We discuss the project more next week. From our classroom you could see the lights up at the pool area of the Renaissance, they were filming. We got out of class early and I left for home.

Overall I think classes will be interesting, but I think it will be an easier load than I've ever had because we only meet once a week and they are all design classes! I'm excited to work on projects and be in studio.

Today I tried to get into this back storage space that's outside covered with vines. The doors are really tall and broken, so essentially they are just leaning against the shed. I wedged my way in and put some empty boxes in there and cleared out some space in my room. Next I think I will try and figure out some layout issues, I need a desk or something too.

Tonight I'm going to meet up with Ashley and we're going to sketch a retail space at the grove for our first Retail concepts assignment, it's really simple. We're just sketching a basic layout, writing down materials, and sketching a basic circulation example.

On sunday I really reallly reallllly want to go to the rosebowl swap meet! It looks fun to rummage thru everything. On Saturday I'm going with my friend Melinda to an art opening in Santa Monica. Slowly I'm finding ways to fill up my time. Maybe once I start my other three classes I'll have more to do.