January 10, 2010

Not a whole lot of good things have happened recently, in fact, almost none. I'm not completely sure what all has happened since my last post considering days have run together a lot lately. A couple days ago is the most fresh in my mind at the moment. I was going to go out to Steak N' Shake with Kayla, Zack, and Justin around 2 a.m. So I left a little early to get gas and pick Justin and Zack up. The car was running just fine. We headed down the street and got to War Memorial, things are going great and I mention how the car had been a little problematic lately when Zack says, "Wouldn't it suck if your car broke down?" To which the car replied immediately with a total engine shutdown, while I was travelling at 45 m.p.h. At that moment I was trying to get the car restarted but it wouldn't do it, so I pulled it over to the shoulder, let it sit for a minute and tried again, no luck, not even one turnover of the engine. So I got out and checked the engine, it was steaming and fizzling/popping so I closed the hood and got back in. We got ahold of Kayla and she came and got us and we went to Steak N' Shake, now it's about 3 a.m. if I remember correctly. Once we had our fill of conversation and food or beverage we headed back to my car for a possible fix, after a bit of canoodling no luck at all. So Kayla took us all home. I did not go to bed that night, it was a combination of horrible sleep pattern, caffeine, and worry that either the car would be towed/impounded/ticketed or my parents would freak on me.
I worked later that day as well, so it was a longggg day. I also worked that night, and William, my best friend, wanted to go see a movie that night, so of course I did after not seeing him for awhile. We saw the Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. I did not sleep for about 40 hours or so, it sucked. I ended up in bed at an early 1:30 a.m. last night. When I woke up I went back to work again, I should mention now that the last 3 shifts I've worked have been great, mainly due to the influx of beautiful girls coming to skate and the people I worked with. Then after work I watched a hockey game, picked up my Xbox from Burl's house, came home and ate, and sat on the computer up until now, in which I'm writing this blog.
This is the first blog in which I'll mention on idea I had today when we stopped at Kroger's for dinner. When we pulled up for some reason my attention was drawn to the roof of the buildings housing the several shops, including Kroger's. Some odd things catch my attention lately, but I think that's all a part of my mind trying to explore my surroundings, which I'm trying to do a lot more lately. Anyway, back to the point. It brought a memory back about how we should conserve materials and energy by moving back into city centers, which can only work if we provide jobs and supplies in the area within walking distance. But I thought, seeing this huge area of unused space on the roof, what if we took that same idea and reworked it a bit? When you see a downtown area, mainly one that is taking on the reurbanization idea, a lot of vertical space is taken up which allows for surrounding environment to be undeveloped therefore making the climate more acceptable. Now, if we applied that same "stencil" lets call it, to the business that promote urban sprawl we could provide several more people places to live. But what would make them more appealing? Well, one, it's within walking distance of shops many people feel the need to normally drive to so it saves fossil fuels and drastically cuts down on pollution. These spaces could also be affordable housing or government subsidized for the less fortunate allowing people to work their way back to the median and helping the city to eventually increase revenue. This is also appealing because it combats the very thing the buildings are a part of, urban sprawl. In a way it doesn't really stop sprawl, but because so many people come to these areas, stripmalls and whatnot, they become city centers and eventually downtowns deteriorate. So if these living spaces were built it strengthens this new city center. This contributes to an earlier idea I had had about a way to combat terrorism by making several different centers instead of one therefore making it harder to cripple an area like New York so easily. But in order for that to work and be environmentally friendly we would have to promote public transportation more, maybe once I think this stuff over a little more I'll come up with a better plan and post the clearer more readily do-able version.