Possumblog

Lunch With My Friend Jeff™!

But before that, the start of the big dig. If you recall, this is the before shot of one corner of the office. This is the empty recycling barrel. This is the recycling barrel AFTER spending nearly an hour on discarding. And here's the shiny clean [sic] corner after I'd neatened it up! Only three more corners to go! And four non-corners.

As I went through stuff, just as Skillzy predicted, I did manage to find some interesting stuff I'd forgotten about.

Those of you who live in Birmingham have probably heard all the hoo-ha about the new Railroad Reservation Park. We were working on that ages ago--here's an early sketch in plan, and a couple of quick perspectives. Looks nothing like what's going to get built, but it's rare that anything does.

This is a quicky sketch I did for a local building owner who was trying to fix up his place, and in a similar vein, another sorta neat thing I uncovered were the following sketches we did back when Pam the Liberal was here. We held a couple of annual conferences on historic preservation as a means to stabilize deteriorating inner city neighborhoods. Great fun. These boards were intended to show people what some of the old dilapidated buildings could look like if they were spruced up and repaired. We wound up making close to 40 of these drawings. These are some of the ones I did, but I also had some extremely good help from our intern at the time, Cara Graham. She was a peach, and a workhorse of immense productivity, and I was sorry when she left.

Anyway, this is the old (and now demolished) Minor School which used to be over off of Pike Road in Ensley. It's now a parking lot for a car dealer.

This is a unique old mansion over in Norwood that I think is still standing, although still unrestored.

And finally, this is a tiny, mid-30s gas station over in the Smithfield part of town that I thought could make a neat little corner cafe. It's still there, and still looks just like it does in the photo. I.e., a mess.

ANYway, that's what I've gotten done so far. Next is the top of the filing cabinets.

AS FOR MFJ™, we talked about the usual stuff over a plate full of sandwiches over at Sam's Deli in Homewood. Sure was hot outside. They really need some fans or something. But it was the usual kvetching about stupid people, cars, work (although I did get to brag about my new job), kids, relatives, cars, swarthy men of Middle Eastern descent, Chicago, car repairs, and stuff like that. Did our magazine swap, and as usual, he left with a much greater load of treasure than I did, not that I'm complaining. Much. Okay I am. Anyway, great fun as usual.

AS FOR THE NOT GREAT FUN--when I got back in I noticed someone with an IP of 71.36.200.142 (Qwest Communications in Denver) had left a few comments using my name. Nothing bad or dirty or anything, but it's just poor etiquette. They've been deleted, not out of malice or anything like that, but just to say that I'd rather you just pick another alias if you don't want to use your own name. Thanks.

Now then, more trash duty.

Posted by Terry Oglesby at August 3, 2007 01:42 PM