What will happen next?

It’s that time of year. We reached a whopping 75 degrees today; a feat in Chicago even in July. As our thoughts begin to drift towards summer hours and new summer interns, we can’t help but wonder if Andy will return. For those of you that have been following the nail biting saga here, I’ll bore you with the details.
About 21 years ago, a poor couple was wandering the cold streets of Chicago with a newborn baby in their arms. The only place that would let them in out of the cold was a small architecture firm. This act of gratitude did not come without a hitch. For their act of “kindness”, the couple was to sign over their son, their first born, into servitude to the firm until the child graduated from college.
For years, this small band of architects nurtured the young baby into a full grown architect. Introduced to Froebel blocks at an early age, Andy developed a keen sense of space and form. The excitement in the office when Andy could hold his first exacto was something to behold only to be outdone by his prowess at computer aided drafting. This May, the day of reckoning has come. After years of cutting foam-core, rendering relentless masonry piers on Photoshop, writing transmittals, and creating fantasmagoric details of bathroom tile, this child, Andrew, will be graduating from college. It is a bittersweet time. A time when Andrew might realize his freedom or realize in his heart that those people that took him in years ago turned out not to be such bad guys after all. Will he return to assist in making those piers even more relentless, to make those bathroom tile designs really shine, to create the perfect office form so that transmittal writing becomes a joy for everyone or will he break out and leave Chicago for greener pastures?
As summer approaches, we know that Steve the younger will be returning and that there will be a number of new employees at SGW but will Andy be back. The big question is: how will we ever properly debate movie trivia without is facility with IMDB?

Update: New Orleans (shuffleboard with the ladies)

Well, I’m back here in Baghdad….I mean New Orleans. Things are going great down here, if you like mud, trash and a foul stench permeating everywhere. OK, so that is not so different from before K-day. Since returning to the fine city I have been drinking and wondering around aimlessly shouting at the roaches, which seem to have faired quite well while everyone was gone. Luckily the beer still flows and there is no shame in sitting on your stoop with a 40. Of course I’ve had no stoop to sit on being on a cruise ship for a few weeks. That was quite an adventure. You would not believe how crazy the 70 year old women are when you start playing shuffleboard. ‘Ol Betsy almost took my head off with the shuffle stick after I beat her a second time last Saturday. Why the hell would they put a deck full of retirees on our boat anyway? Luckily I will be moving out this week to this fine new apartment. I took a picture for all to enjoy. Looks good doesn’t it? There’s a little cleaning to be done, but I think it should be fine.
Well, I will have more to say later, right now I have a date with a spry 67 year old lady I met at the early bird special on deck 12. Maybe I’ll get lucky, but first I need a couple Pabst to loosen up.
One last thing, Stuart is right on with the Bareback review. That movie has been burned into my brain for weeks now. It really changed me…..I really miss Pete now.

-Steve the younger

Life With Andy Again

Well, Andy's back and he has started decorating the office with a vengeance. He is a little crazy but we like it that way.

He has been busy spreading all of the vast knowledge has has attained this semester. It's amazing that you can learn so much about movie trivia in architecture school.

Unfortunately, in gaining Andy, we have lost Steve. As you can see by the reaction of the ladies in New Orleans, Steve had to go back to school. It looks like he is spending more time drinking and socializing with people on the streets than doing actual work. Hope he can get that thesis done.

Andy replaced?

Well, today we officially got over Andy’s absence. The “irreplaceable” intern Andy has actually been replaced with a new intern, Steve “the younger”. Steve is a refugee from New Orleans and has completed the trio of Tulane folks in this little corner of the architectural universe. After hosing him down and getting him a decent change of clothes, he seems to fit in quite well.

Since arriving at SGW, he has been busy helping Steve “the elder” get his shit together with the endlessly exciting task of filing. Some project managers do this work on their own but Steve “the elder” is a bit too important to waste his creative talents on such a mundane task.

We are still schooling our new intern on how to navigate through IMDB but hopefully he will catch on soon. Last week, we spent a bit too much time trying to determine if Jessica Biel is a good actress or not. Andy’s expertise really would have come in handy. Our arguments about cinematic minutia are getting a bit out of hand and we could use someone to sort this out for us so that we can actually get some work done.

On a side note, in an informal office poll, most people believe that Jessica’s acting talents can not be ascertained by the body of work she has produced so far. Only Pete truly believes she is a bad actress.