Fallen Planners on a Boulevard of Modernist Dreams

Hey Planners,

Its been a while. I feel like the drunk guy at the end of the party who wants to hear Hotel California one more time, but hey i've been told the role suits me. The gracious glow of fall has reared itself on peninsular halifax bringing with it the best and worst that halifax has to offer in the form of conscientious stoop sitters, rotund tourists rattling on about the lack of starbucks and ridiculous tandem bicycles. But i would be remiss if I didn't mention the return of planners new and seasoned to the hailed halls of Ralph Medjuk. As a "staff" member of the Faculty of Architecture and Planning i have been taking it upon myself to fill the sordid or liquid roll of all the planners in our small fraternity that is MPLAN 09.

At the back to school party i managed to drink enough for everyone in the graduating class i think. Channelling all of you I managed to make quite the impression on Halifax that night. I took to the streets with the goal of convincing Frosher aged girls of the importance of the concept of Sustainability while interrogating the owner Willy's for his poutine recipe in the spirit of Graeme Brown. Needless to say I kept a low profile for a couple of days after that entertaining evening.

Next I attended the back to school lunch mingling with the 2nd years as i managed to plow through as many chocolate chip cookies as possible before I had to make awkward chit chat with the likes of Guppy and Patricia. The egg salad was a little stringy but overall a good lunch, well apart from getting cornered by Paula Costello about tennis. She had recently noticed that I advanced to the Semi-finals at the Nova Scotia Open so decided she would get her revenge for never receiving my work-term info by asking for a tennis date, naturally i attempted to channel Patrick due to his experience with older women and side stepped the issue gracefully.

The next weekend i managed to get roped into another Mplan social affiar. Chops and I started the night by ordering beverages at as many old halifax haunts as possible: Elephant Castle, T-Room, Barrely's, Pogue. The planning crew was at Bearly's for a CIP rep party that ended up being a bite of a how should i put it delicately shitshow. Long story short the CIP rep ened up dropping $500 on beer at the pub as we stumbled on to the next party where we proceeded to make enough noise to warrant a visit by Halifax's finest, take that Frosh Week. At some point in the evening i was persuaded to partake in a harmony for an acoustic rendition of high and dry by radiohead, don't quit your dayjob soward. Next we headed to the Friget for TJ's Bday. I was warning everyone of the potential of running into some disingenuous lawyers, it seemed important at the time. Instead we ran into a crew of rowdy Newfie's who appeared to be on some kind of combination (rum-run, stag. road trip) either way they were going through the shots as fast as julia got a job in Vancouver. So i decided that they needed another hand. I would have settled for one shot, but the one gent i was talking to appeared to get some kind of sick pleasure in watching my face after i took a shot, Grant Macdonal always said 90% of communication was non-verbal. So there were a couple of shots on the house. IT got fuzzzy after that but i do remember taking a quick cat nap on a generous lawned traffic median some where near the commons, felt like Corduroy dreams if you ask me.

Well those were a couple of degenerative adventures that i have shared with the planning community in Halifax. I am enjoying my time in Halifax , the intramural soccer team is looking good this year we are dedicating our run to Ken as a reuslt of our practice ball and Chris's cleats belonging to Ken. Steph and I are off to Montreal and Ottawa for Thanskgiving. Just had a good conversation with Frank about the unit and its direction, its nice having access to a guru when you are looking for a pick me up. I was working on a cool housing proposal plan for CMHCfor the unit that made me question if i was still in Grad school. I ended up with the facial hair and loss of sleep to prove it, but hey how can you enjoy the weekend if you don't have to work one every now and then.

peace

Ross