Despite the small and pathetic amount of work I had prepared, I had another meeting with the engineering professor for the Clovis Apartment Complex project on Friday. I ended up spending all of Thursday night preparing for the meeting – doing more site research, drawing up an existing site plan in AutoCAD and Adobe Illustrator, and beginning to do a diagram of the proposed changes… but I was not happy with the results. Tackling a project like this always takes longer than you think it will, especially if you aren’t excited to work on it, and even if it is the only thing you want to work on. I had interesting ideas for apartment layouts in my head, but I knew that it wouldn’t be worth it to suggest anything beyond the logical. The previous scheme that the engineer showed me maximized out the amount of apartment units that could fit on the lot. I am not sure if he is looking for a design solution or a math solution. I even asked him that, and he avoided answering.
I felt a little frustrated during the meeting. He requested that I prepare a fee for the meeting so he would have an idea of how much he would have to pay me. He wasn’t very specific about what he wanted me to do when he told me to decide on a fee, so I prepared an hourly rate. I wrote up a letter of agreement with my contact information and the fee, and gave it to him. Then, at Friday’s meeting, he wanted to know exactly how many hours it would take me to do the job (so he could calculate the cumulative fee). This is the part when I asked him if he wanted complete design services or a simple math calculation of how many units he can fit on the lot. He must want a design, because he is asking an architecture student for help, but he wouldn’t come out and say that. It would be irresponsible of me to tell him an exact amount of time and money when I am not even sure what he wants me to do, so I was pushing for him to give me a better description of what he wanted, and I didn’t get it. I felt weird trying to give him an estimate of how much time it would take me to do an unknown project. I just think he wants cheap student labor. I most certainly should not be hired solely based on the presentation I gave him. It was too underdeveloped. If he asks me to take the job, I will know that the other students were asking for too much money. He seems interested in exploring different ideas for the apartment layout, but I don’t think he would want me to take the time to really give him something great.
I have other news that is more interesting than this. About a month ago, I received an email from Steven while I was at work. He told me that eating meat was really starting to gross him out (because he was visualizing eating meat off of a an alive chicken’s leg when he was eating chicken legs, etc.), so he was going to try giving it up and see if that worked for him. I felt really surprised and excited when he sent me this, because it came completely out of the blue. I hadn’t been pressuring him at all to give up meat. He rarely ate meat at home, but that was his own choice. I was so surprised when he wrote this to me that I actually wondered if someone at his office was writing an email on his computer as a joke.But it turns out it was Steven. And he was being serious. It probably shouldn’t have come as such a surprise to me, since he has always been so supportive of my choices, and never really been that big of a carnivore anyway.
So he hasn’t had any meat for about a month now. It didn’t really affect me at first that he wasn’t eating meat because I already don’t (duh), but this weekend, when everyone at my grandmother’s cabin was eating ribs, I had someone to support me in my decision not to eat them! Usually I just eat the meatless salads that are available and call that a meal, but this time Steven was doing the same thing… so it made me feel good. I never felt out of place not eating meat, but with Steven doing the same thing, I felt like we were a team. Not a team against everyone else, but our own special group.
I am certain that most people who know me will think that I forced Steven to become a vegetarian. But the people who know me well will know that is not true. Like I have said before, it is none of my business what other people eat, and I don’t plan on becoming involved with that part of their lives unless I am cooking a meal for them.
I am currently trying to solve the Rome puzzle – for what days should I buy my plane tickets? How will I pay for the plane tickets? Where will I live? When will Steven come and visit? Are my friends Alejandra and Cristina coming? The instructor who teaches the Rome Prep Seminar has told us that we are absolutely required to stay in the university provided apartments, but I don’t see how this could possibly be true. They can’t force us to live anywhere, and I know I haven’t signed a contract saying I will. I haven’t even heard the horror stories about living in those apartments, but I know I would prefer not to live there. I am sure they are cramped, have zero internet access, and awful bathrooms. I don’t care if I have to walk up a zillion flights of stairs, or take my laundry to a laundromat, or cook in a small kitchen… I just don’t want to do it in an apartment with 4 or more other people that I don’t know that well. Luckily, Steven is helping me find an apartment over there (because he doesn’t want to stay in the university apartments when he visits!). I have found some places online and emailed a remax agent over there. I don’t know if it will work out. Money wise, I may have to stay in the apartments, but I am going to try my hardest to figure out an alternative solution.
