did i mention i love craigslist?

I know I've talked about this before, but I really, really do love craigslist. I'm not really sure how I've never used it before, but it is definitely awesome! So far, I've rented my apartment in two days, sold my honda accord in one day, and sold my couch in two days. We still have one car to go, but overall, these are definitely good results. Now I keep trying to think of other things to sell. It's like reverse shopping!

by the way.. happy halloween. The photo is from our recent trip to Chicago, in the entrance to a buisness in Lincoln Park.

visiting the site

Well, today I went on my last site visit, since my last day at work is Friday . They will be pouring the concrete floor tomorrow for the basement. Finally we have gotten out of the crawl space! Fortunately, I can continue to watch the progress on the contractor's webcam.
The owner made a funny comment about us small town mice in the big city. This project site is just a county over from our hometown.
Now if only I can finish those architectural precast shop drawings by my last day on friday...

paring down

In our time in Richmond, we have managed to accumulate a lot of STUFF. Obviously, we won't be able to bring most of this with us to our new apartment in the city- which means we have to either store it, give it away, or sell it. So, that's where Craigslist comes in...

This is my new favorite thing in the whole world.

Who knew that there were people out there just waiting to buy your stuff? Its like ebay without shipping! Now we will set out to sell the couch and both cars. Only time (and my inbox) shall tell what response we will get.

the new apartment

After a weekend in Richmond, and a weekend in Knoxville for our friend Lisa's wedding, we're back in the city to find an apartment. I want to wait to get a job until we have moved, because I want to take my time. The culture of a firm is very important, and I don't think this is a decision to be rushed in to. That being said, apparently people in New York don't want to rent you an apartment if you don't have a job. Go figure. Fortunately, we stumble across a 6 month lease with a landlord who is a bit more flexible. And then, just like that, we have an apartment in New York.

Twice the rent and less than half the size, but its still awesome!

We measure and photograph the space carefully. We'll model the space and our furniture so that we can plan what we can take. All I know at this point is, we'll be getting rid of a whole lot of stuff.

a very long night

It is about 6 pm on Friday, the 28th of September. We are putting the finishing touches on Zach's portfolio, and printing a final copy. I have decided that we need to upload some photos using our new card reader, and go ahead and plug it in. It is then that everything falls apart. The computer freezes, and won't respond at all. We turn it off, turn it back on. It won't restart. There isn't power to the keyboard OR mouse. You know that feeling in the pit of your stomach, where you think you are going to throw up with panic? Multiply that by about twenty.


This is the image we were trying to get off the camera. A photo of our thesis book. The one that almost ruined it all.

In our rush to finish everything up we haven't backed up the files. We have piles and piles of backup laying around here... and we didn't backup these particular files. And of course, the computer is doing horrible things, that we have never seen before. Zach begins to rip things out of the computer, trying to discover the source, and shortly thereafter I begin trying to rebuild a week and a half of work in twelve hours. I have given up by now, there is no way we are getting those files off the computer. We continue this panicked mode into the night, working as quickly as possible to salvage what little information we have remaining. And then, amazingly, Zach somehow is able to use another hard drive, in a different computer, and reinstall windows. We plug in the external hard drive to the excruciatingly slow usb 1.0 drive in this old computer, and start pulling the files that we need. At about 5am, we are printing again. We are back to where we were 6pm the night before. I pack our stuff, we take a shower, and walk over to the bus at 6:30. Somehow, amazingly, we had managed to get everything done.

We decided to take an early morning bus from Richmond. Although the bus is always an interesting experience, nothing beats the price. The bus leaves at 7:15 am, which means we wait amongst a desolate landscape on Broad and Boulevard. But, we are on our way to New York, portfolio in hand...