I took a detour from a life of aerospace engineering to work in architecture for a few years. I found recently I was actually doing fengshui, sort of. I did some plumbing and electrical design. That was dictated by rules much more strict than fengshui, but I now realize have similar end goals. Not having buildings burn down or get flooded with sewage certainly improves harmony. I did some land development in that too. The work was in the design of commercial retail where parking and interface with traffic was involved. All of this is codified "fengshui" that takes of volumes and volumes of rules. Biggest client was national chain of convenience stores, some with petroleum retail.
Those are the most beautiful things in the world. Out of a zillion restaurants I've worked in and the handful I've designed, exactly one was a virgin space that was build to be a kitchen and nothing else. That was glorious. Every other joint has been do-what-you-can-with-what-you-got and adjust on the fly. That's much more fun, but no way to run a railroad.
Tenant improvements. Only one I did was "vanila" ground up. Even then the stock plans had to be massaged to where the plumbing in the ground was. Existing gas tanks had to be replaced too, and there were surprises when they started diggin out the old ones. Another, technically a remodel since they left one wall standing, had to be worked and worked to get it to conform to codes and meet a minimum square foot for the client. Had to get very creative with parking. Got the minimum number of spaces in and it actually flows well. I did it all without calling the city engineer an idiot. (he was. most aren't. later found nepotism was involved.)
Driving across Wyoming today, I was reminded of that scene in European Vacation. The one where Chevy Chase gets stuck in the traffic circle, and every loop he says," look kids big ben". In my case it was look a cow.
What, no antelope? Thought for today, generated by Cowboy State Daily writer Aaron Trupen: Most cars in the U.S., including all of those that are sitting in traffic, have horns that honk in the key of F. This legacy standard comes from a horn supplier for General Motors in the 1940s who standardized them to simplify parts throughout the GM line. Other U.S. manufacturers followed suit.
No antelope. A couple years ago I had a close shave outside Gillette, when a herd crossed the hiway in front of me.
My friend and I had a fireside conversation the other night and decided Bigfoot, Yeti and all their kin are primitive Wookies.
It is true we have no gnus. Our "antelope" aren't antelope at all. They're pronghorns, Antilocapra americana, the only extant member of the family Antilicapridae. At our place, they are equines. My son has horses named Sasquatch and Yeti.
Catriona is getting ready for the interrogation scene. I bet she is digging out the bright light and rubber hoses now.
Just found this little factoid and had to post it before I forgot it: In 1893, there were 2 cars registered in Kentucky. They collided head-on.
Unfortunately, sometimes in the middle of dodging one horse or other animate/inanimate object, they crash into another. Horses are the original paranoid freak-out shows. My grandson's green-broke horse was being a PIA during our ride and wasn't the least bit concerned about causing a trainwreck with the other equines. Working with horses is a special kind of insanity.
You could try what we did when I worked a public-contact job - stop thinking of them as 'guests' and start referring to them as 'the enemy'.
On this day in 1957, Don Bowden, a student at the University of California at Berkeley, became the first American to break the four-minute mile during a meet in Stockton, California, in a time of 3:58.7. Do you plan on beating Don's time when you start out the door today?
No but you reminded me of and interesting one from a while back. California highway patrol were called to the Golden gate Bridge because of a car parked in traffic lanes. On arrival, the drunk in the car tried to tell police he wasn't driving drunk, because his tesla was in self driving mode.
