Down in the Deep South, Y'all

I went on my very first business trip last week. It wasn't actually that they needed me, but it was more because I had been working on the project for a really long time and they thought I should see what I've been working on. Soooo, it was mostly like vacation!

I flew into Jackson with James' wife and baby. The baby is quite the screamer. She screamed during the entire flight and then she screamed the entire ride into town. I thought her eyes were about to pop out of her head. Fortunately, it was only 20 minutes to my hotel. I'm sure to the casual passerby, it looked like James was picking up his wife and child and that adopted daughter from a previous marriage.

The hotel room I stayed in was bigger than my apartment. I had my own personal foyer, balcony, gigantic bathroom, two televisions and turn-down service. Actually, I didn't like the turndown service because for some reason they always turned on the television and all the lights...2 hours before I got back to the room to turn it all back off... In any case, having all that room and not having to share was quite unsettling. I kept expecting a couple of people to show up at any moment to say that I don't get all that space to myself. The hotel was really nice. It's located in downtown Jackson where, surprisingly, nothing happens at all. Everything closes around 7 or 8 so when my flight arrived super late, I had to beg the innkeeper for a little food. She was kind enough to take me to the kitchen where I grabbed a bowl of cereal. Breakfast was great though. Grits are amazing, and so are freshly sliced and herbed tomatoes.

Day 1 was pretty much me following Hugh everywhere. I had breakfast with Hugh and his wife. Then we went to a meeting where they selected the artist that would have her work displayed throughout the courthouse. The first one had a really lovely presentation. Her work is very spatial, very architecturally imbedded into spaces. That's why we were all surprised when she showed us her proposal for the court house and it was just a rectangular chainmail curtain hanging over a stair case. The second prospective artist was a nice old man who made what amounts to steel mobiles. I think the court's qualm with that is that it looked like mobiles of little shiny knives. The last one was the unanimous pick. It was a colorful, frothy, happy looking cloud made up of strips of glass. After that, I had to sit in on a punchlist meeting - basically where the client and tenant griped about what they didn't like and what they wanted us to fix. By then it was the end of the day, and I went out to dinner at a fancy place called Julep with my former coworker, Mary, who just happened to be going to school in Jackson.

Day 2 was tiring. James and I spent the entire morning running around the building making a field observation report. Then we had lunch with his family (they were in Jackson for the 2 week stay as well). Back to the site, back into the building. At this point, my steel toe boots had become like shackles. They're tight around my ankles, so it keeps rubbing when I walk. Fortunately, we just had a quick jaunt through the mud (at one point, I got stuck because of the suction and had to pull myself out by holding onto the fence) and then we went to the roof and back to the trailer where I was released for the day. After going to my room to change into my comfy shoes, I walked to the local architecture school where Mary's class was giving final presentations. I liked seeing what their school looked like and what they were working on. Very different focus from CMU. I can honestly say I never poured a block of concrete in my life, nor would I really know how to begin. The presentations themselves were a little disappointing. All the drawings were really small and no one showed any process work. Ah well. I gave Mary a few suggestions. Don't know if she took them or not. In any case, after presentations were over, she took me to a Vietnamese place for dinner. Giant bowls of Pho for only $5.50!

The last day was the construction meeting. I sat between James and the guy running the show. It was pretty boring, just going through the schedule and making sure things are in compliance. At one point, the tenant freaked out at James for not updating our drawings to reflect what they changed and the client freaked out that we weren't giving the tenant what they wanted. James just blinked. I got a little riled up. The client forgot that THEY were the ones that told us not to make the changes. Ugh. The tenant also later criticized James for not thinking outside the box, and all I could do is write in my sketchbook, "So says the 'architect' with the baby soft hands and cushy government job." That guy hasn't even tried to think outside of the box in years. He can't even read shop drawings right.

Whatever...After the meeting, I hopped into a car with the security consultant and he drove me to the airport. The last stretch of flying from Atlanta to New York terrified me. Everytime we got turbulence, I'd break out into cold fear-sweat. Urgh, I hate flying.

It was a fun trip, but I sure am glad to be back in New York!