300!

Wow, I just realized that this is my 300th post on my blog. Hardly a landmark accomplishment, but noteworthy nonetheless, I suppose.

Well, life goes on and we're getting by ok. I'm down to working 3 jobs and spending a fair bit of time looking for one good job. I want to build with a design/build firm but it's a bit hard to find them online. Those are firms who do the design and then go to the site and lead the construction process in order to maintatin quality control. I've mailed out 5 resumes in the past couple of days and am hopeful to get a reply on at least one of them. I decided that email just wasn't working so I cut my resume down to 2 [good] pages and wrote a [really] good cover letter then printed it and started mailing it out to builders for whom I want to work. I would love to find a real job and have all but passed over the idea of going back to work for a design firm. I get much more fulfillment with a saw in my hands than with a mouse. And there's such a disconnect these days between those who design and those who build. So my new plan is to begin a career as a builder and work my way into a design/ build firm. Eventually, I will find a way to become a philosophy/ design/ build professor. That's a rare thing to find and it would be extraordinarily fulfilling to me. But that's in the distant future. For now, it's a labor to get out of bed some mornings. Working 6 days a week is beginning to take its toll on me but I have to just keep going. It's most difficult that I work so hard to make just enough to get by. Not making enough to save. Not making enough to pay down my student loans. Not making enough to spend. Blah. We eat well and we make sure we have good clothes on our backs. Can't ask for much more right now. I've started picking up books again and have enjoyed delving back into philosophy, theory and history texts. I'm reading alot on our visual culture and I'm reading alot on craftsmanship and building. Well, maybe not alot. But I'm reading again... that's a start.

Katy has gone back to school this week after having last week off for Spring break (though it's called Reading Week here). She had a good rest and got to do alot of things for herself. She also had a good friend visit for a few days who has lived in Bali (Indonesia) for 14 months designing bamboo buildings. Now she's on her way back to Ottawa to finish up her degree. Kendra is a great girl and it was really fun having a house guest for a few days. We like it when our friends come through here. This week it's back to normal. Katy's already busy with homework and projects. It's going to be a tough couple of months for her but she's more ready for it than she gives herself credit for. I think this semester she's getting a good handle on what her program at UBC is trying to teach, which is very different from what she learned at Carleton and very different from what she's interested in. I'm excited because she's quietly developing her own research interests while she's slaving away in front of a computer screen. It's exciting watching her grow as a designer, though I don't often tell her as much. We have alot of conversations and get into some heated debates on architecture and building and school. It's good for us both, I think. Watching her go through UBC for a semester and a half has really shaped my views on education and my path forward, as I see it, has been greatly affected by her. I'm really lucky to have her around. :) And not just because she made me pancakes this morning for Fat Tuesday.
Well, back to the resume printing. All is well and we're all still alive here. The weather has been amazing for a couple of weeks and it's only started raining again within the past few days. Even now, though, the weather is pretty acceptable. Hope you are all flourishing, or at the very least, smiling once a day.