An actual day in the life…

Ever wondered what living the exciting and fast paced life of an architect would be like? Well wonder no more, I spent the day following the 2009 AIA Young Architect of the Year around to see how his recent meteoric rise has impacted his daily life. It was fascinating!

5:50am – wake up

6:30am – shower

7:10am – leave for work

7:18am – arrive at work (pretty easy commute – only 4 turns from my driveway to the parking lot)

7:20am – check and send email, review to-do list, organize desk for today’s tasks

7:33am – research, specify and sketch out roof hatch access detail (S. Street)

8:35am – send out revised plat and legal description to developer and legal counsel (S. Street)

8:45am – send out letter to website developer for failing to provide services for which they were retained (nasty bit of business really)

9:10am – back on the roof access hatch detail (S. Street)

10:05am – staff meeting – focus on BIM and current workload of staff

10:40am – red line wall sections (S. Street)

10:42am – call from structural engineer re:soldier piers and the elastic quality of the soil spanning the gap (S. Street)

11:10am – look up directions to client meeting (26.8 miles away – ugh) for new dance studio

11:16am – check settings on feedburner email

11:30am – continuing education with sustainability service provider – cost versus return focus

12:30pm – thankfully, continuing education ends

12:35pm – leave for off-site client meeting (dance studio)

3:35pm – return from off-site meeting – 3 hours was too long to be at this meeting but they wanted me there. I could get what I needed from these meetings far quicker but I’m not there for me.

3:37pm – check voice mail (5 messages, most of them defeating in one way or another)

3:40pm – receive documents back from developer and attorney, review for terms, forward onto client (S. Street)

3:47pm – respond to emails and voice mail messages

4:06pm – try and contact neighbor for S. Street – need him to sign some paperwork in order to submit our drawings for permit

4:21pm – need a break, try and catch up on my tsunami magazine pile, make some popcorn and watch the rain come in. Interesting story about the Will Bruder library in Phoenix, feeling recharged that you can do considered design without breaking the bank

4:29pm – rethinking the decision to make popcorn because teeth are now full of shell bits

4:30pm – call contractor on S. Street to discuss the submission requirements for the City of Dallas newly adopted “Green Residential Ordinance”

5:05pm – leave to pick up my daughter from school program

5:20pm – get daughter, look at rainbow (pretty)

5:25pm – get home and start making dinner (chicken breast, beans, strawberries and 2 pieces of leftover pizza…as Bill Cosby would say “this is not your child”)

6:03pm – finish dinner, put away dishes

6:06pm – change into “wrestling clothes”

6:10pm – get beat down and kung fu’d

6:42pm – beaded necklace breaks, crying ensues

6:46pm – mommy gets home just in time to see daughter sitting on floor crying and I now look like a bad Dad (boooo!)

6:50pm – make bend-a-roo starfish and everything is better (yea!)

7:07pm – log onto computer and start typing in the day’s chronology

7:12pm – check site stats, looks like an aberration because total number of visitors has tripled (turns out links from the site were pulled into a Portuguese site (What Up Portugal!!)

7:22pm – work on Tuesday’s post on ceiling heights and Wednesday’s post (this one).

8:42pm – read some travel books on Paris and watch some TV

10:35pm – lights out

Dreaming….maybe I’ll get to design something tomorrow…..

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even better stuff from Life of an Architect