Tanya Olson

Ha! I guess I would fall into the plateau group if any. I don’t think oil will disappear in the next 4 years – I think we’ll keep wringing every last drop of petroleum /coal out of the earth no matter how deep and dirty, all the while defending ‘our way of life’.
I hate to use the term ‘magical thinking’ because I think it describes the wonder of…[Read more]

I’ll start with Mark’s “obvious question” since I won’t be here to discuss it with you on Friday…..
Personally, I work hard to keep my distance from apocalyptic predictions even though there is something about them that tugs on that old inner paranoia and superstition. I have a good enough imagination as it is and I’m still creeped out from wa…[Read more]

One of my all-time favorites Henry!

I absolutely agree. Setting up an LLC runs more like $800 – $1,000 and thats without the CPA – just legal fees – speaking from a place of having done it less than a month ago.
Sole proprietor you just have to register with the state and file state taxes, the federal taxes can be paid once a year on your regular tax form or you can set up quarterly…[Read more]

Not to be contrary, but many of the women landscape architects do indeed have small children at 45 having postponed childbearing to the last possible minute to give their careers the best possible base. Even for women well-established in their careers, there is the constant worry – ‘are they going to think I’m less committed to my career because…[Read more]

…and now for something completely different….http://www.slate.com/id/2304331 “Men are finished” debate. bwahahaha.

We have successfully done a number of these and they are WAY more worth the time and effort than the $$$ to advertise. I consider every time I show my face outside of my office to be ‘marketing’. 
#1 best for us – Creating relationships with architects, engineers, other designers. A huge proportion of our work comes through them. It is direct…[Read more]

Not mine. Many people with other degrees ranging from theology to psychiatry to product design, but no former architecture students…
 

I’m with you there. Plus, if architects keep their noses out of the landscape then how can I stick my nose into the architecture? 

Thanks for the clarification. Little of this comes through in the competition announcement, in my opinion.
Why would this not be ‘what it seems’? Why the hidden source and agenda? Why ask for a $150 entry fee, then decline to reveal the prize amount? If the prize is related to the number of entrants then SAY IT.
Compare your call for entries to…[Read more]

Hey Thomas – we have a camper in the woods with its very own outhouse if you’re in danger of becoming the King of the Hobos. On second thought, better Jim Tully than Ted Kosinski. Maybe you’re destined to write hobo poetry, pulp fiction and lasting ballads of Americana….
 

The key word here is ‘unstable’ environment for business – everyone is FEELING uncertain, Congress is so incredibly volatile and antagonisitc that people just don’t know what to expect, as you say. But my intuition is that without this FEELING of volatility we’d be recovering pretty well – more cautiously, but still recovering.
I suspect, from…[Read more]

Yes! We are thinking seriously about entering. We have a planner friend from New Mexico we’d like to bring in on it. I wonder about getting a team together representing most or all of the western regions…anyone interested? There’s no money in it, but the entry fee is only $45 I think…

Did you see the job posting for the firm in Aspen on the Land8 Jobs? Just noticed it the other day….probably doesn’t pay enough to move to Aspen, but you never know. It will come around – my mom has been a realtor in Denver and is starting to see the building industry pick up a bit…..

haha Jason – I always thought you were looking either nonplussed or seriously scholarly….

Thanks Brett – thats more encouraging.

Yep- me too – to me the perfect example of what cad systems are for – not a replacement, but a complement to the process. A much more fluid process than we would have imagined in ‘the old days’! ha!
 

Your hours sound about right to me – and I’ve been working in CAD for 13 years with several years of hand drawing design from schematic to cds before that. My process is very similar to the one you use – base drawing in CAD, hand sketches, client review, final plans in CAD.
My total design time for a small residential project is usually about 10 h…[Read more]

sorry – that was the Designed Landscape Forum conference, the first one of which was in San Francisco in Nov. 1996 – were any of you there?