Crit, Scotland Plans & Quiz Night

A lot of my time lately has been spent holed up in the studio room working toward two deadlines this week although did get out to take this great picture of Tower Bridge. Tuesday was spent wandering around Clerkenwell and Finsbury looking for a subject for the second personality of place project. In the evening I treated myself to Pizza Hut takeaway (I love sweetcorn and tomato pizza) and watched the Olympics in the hostel’s TV room. While I’m grateful for EuroSport’s 24-hour coverage, and it’s mostly live, it’s very strange to not hear much about Americans.

Chris sent me balloons for Valentine’s Day and Sandy had just done laundry so we played a little game of balloon volleyball over the clothesline in our tiny little room! Thanks for the entertainment, C.

I’ve nailed down my travel plans for my upcoming 9-day break (Feb 25^th-March 5^th) during which I am headed to Scotland. I’ll spend Sunday through Wednesday in Edinburgh and Thursday through Saturday in Glasgow; I was fortunate to find cute single-room accommodation in two guest houses in both cities thanks to Rick Steves’s guidebook recommendations. And since I have the time, I’m taking buses everywhere instead of trains – it’s substantially less expensive and National Express runs good services throughout the UK. I am so excited; several other people from our group are headed in the same direction so I’ll be able to meet up with them but I can’t wait for a private, quiet room and full cooked breakfast… although I don’t think I’ll be trying the haggis.

On Thursday afternoon we all went to Woods Bagot’s office for a schematic design critique. Unfortunately the crit ended up being more about presentation than content but it’s always good to get outsiders’ feedback. We feel somewhat limited because we don’t have the ability to build physical models or print more formal presentations but we’re doing the best we can with hand drawings and limited computer work. After jacket potatoes for dinner at The Black Lion pub, all 15 of us collectively participated in quiz night at the hostel’s bar downstairs and won! We haven’t done much socializing as a large group so it was fun to be together in a situation where we didn’t have to do any work. A good time was had by all, although some more fun than others… and thus for some, Friday was spent recovering. A previously-set Friday deadline was unanimously petitioned ahead to Monday.

My pedometer currently reads 112.23 miles – Sandy and I did a little dance when it turned over 100 miles while walking through Charing Cross station on Wednesday. Three weeks down, eight to go!