all work and no play

Katherine is working on her architecture portfolio while she is here visiting us. She will be applying to graduate school in the coming year and since she will have a full load at school, there won't be time to work on it. Besides that, we have her "captured" here with us. No friends dropping by to pick her up to go somewhere; no phones ringing off the hook while she is trying to work.... etc. etc. It's just too bad that she is not getting out much in the city while here.

She got her models photographed before she got here, but didn't get her drawings scanned. She found a place that would scan them for her and she got to know the guy at the place - he spoke a little English and all was good. She would bring a few drawings in to him each day. But what she didn't realize is that nearly everyone vacates during the month of August, and her friend at the scanning place is no different. He is now closed and on vacation, so she has had to find a new place to have the drawings scanned. Not so easy.... nothing is easy!

She went to a place near the other one, but their prices were ridiculously high. We decided to walk around the neighborhood to see if we could located someone else who could do this for her. We saw a parked car with advertising on it and it appeared that they could scan things. We wrote down their address then set out to find it. But no.... they really didn't scan things. So we were off again in search of a place. We headed down to the area where there are a few colleges and found exactly the kind of place she was looking for.... the sign even specified that they do architectural drawings. Only one problem.... they had moved. We wrote down the address then consulted Mappy and found out it was quite a distance. She decided to ride her bike the next day but on that particular day, it was raining cats and dogs.... (les chats et les chiens). So on the next day she rode to the place. But she arrived during the noon time when everything closes! She had 2 hours to kill, so she ate lunch then found a McDonalds and had some ice-cream.

She also used up more time sitting in a nearby park and talking to a couple of guys who wanted her to teach them English. One of them offered her 20-30 euros per hour for the lessons but she told them (in French) that she was only going to be here for a couple of more weeks.

When the scanning place re-opened after lunch, she asked them how much it would cost. It was another outrageous price and she called me to see what she should do. While she was packing up her drawings, they "discovered" that they had told her the wrong price. It was now going to be a more reasonable price. She left the drawings there and came home with a promise to pick them up the next day after 5:00 p.m.

She has to make the pages for her portfolio in PhotoShop. Only problem was, we didn't have the software. We sent Jeff down to buy it, but once installed, it was in French!! There was an option to make it in English, but we never could get it to work. Nothing is easy!!

See her work below!