Found another one

Edit: Appearently Brian and I think too much alike sometimes. But in all fairness he posted first. In any case they are some good photos.

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/10/earth_from_above_comes_to_nyc.html

Interesting Links

An image of biblical cross reference
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/09/photogalleries/2008-best-science-photos/photo6.html

Cool balloon artist
http://www.jasonhackenwerth.com/

Since it is October: Jack-o-Lantern homes
http://www.offbeathomes.com/jack-o-lantern-homes/

Light Beer

So this semester the apartment next to us is occupied by a group of great guys that go to school with Laura. They are all musically talented which means we get a free guitar, banjo, and harmonica concert pretty much anytime we open the door. Last Friday they had a party to celebrate one of their friends 21st ; which was surprisingly not as rowdy as we were expecting it to be. Even more surprising considering that the next morning they had about 50 glass bottles sitting on their/our front porch. Well, I couldn’t let all that glass go to waste so I spent Saturday making a couple of lamps out of them to give back to our neighbors.


Oh and I finally finished my wall clock that I started more than a year ago.

Concert

Sorry it’s been awhile since I have posted anything. Work has been going great with much design to do (so little time to write blog posts). This last Monday I went to go see Sam Beam (aka Iron and Wine) and Glen Hansard (aka the Swell Season) in concert. It was one of the best large concerts that I have been to. There was very little production to it, no fancy background images or fog, just great music and fun stories. Beam is one of the best lyricists I have run across and Hansard & co. really put on a fun show, effortlessly getting the audience into the music.

Here are some videos of these guys I found on YouTube (keep in mind the low quality of the videos does not do justice to the music):

The Swell Season


Iron and Wine




And here is a sketch of Beam I did at the concert. Not the best in the world but it was done standing up and I couldn't see the page I was drawing on. Kindof like the game in Cranium when you have to draw things with your eyes closed. It does highlight his awesome beard though.

An Opportunity for Design

To begin the story of my last two weeks requires some context for all the non-architect folks. In the process of creating a building you usually have a brief period of design and planning, followed by the putting together the construction documents, followed by bidding and construction. I really enjoy and excel at the design part, but due to several factors (being in a large firm, being on an aviation team which doesn’t have very many design opportunities, and having just completed college and thus being inexperienced) I have yet to design anything. Most of my work is on boring stuff like reflected ceiling plans.

As of late I have got to do some planning out at DFW. Though it isn’t really design, it was still pretty fun. That work had recently stopped so I was slated to go back to drawing expansion joints but was randomly asked to help out with a design team that was having trouble. Turns out that a large section of our aviation team was working on generating three schemes to a large client to completely redesign and rebuild their airport. (can’t reveal the client on the internet, top secret…) Needless to say I was pretty thrilled about the opportunity so I start sketching like a mad man, of which impressed our head designer and got my design as one of the three schemes to be presented this morning.

I am not boasting in my own merit, God has giving me the ability and the love of design as well as this opportunity. It has been refreshing to both Laura and I to see the quickness of this opportunity, as we weren’t expecting me to really enjoy my job until we moved to another place and firm. Hopefully I will get more opportunities now that some of my bosses have seen my potential. So here are some of my sketches (which won’t make a lot of sense given that I can’t really give you the context for them):

'where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain'

This past weekend we took our last trip for the summer. We traveled to Oklahoma City to visit one of Laura’s old friends and the science museum.

The memorial for the bombing

The Science museum.

This is for Grace. I was as utterly fascinated with this thing as Laura says you were.

The first Harley Davidson.

A very very small airplane.

Just a random sign on a local restaurant

It was then on to Tuttle, the small town in which Laura grew up. Laura playing in the creek behind her old house.

Finally we ended up in the Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge. This was a great place to camp. They had Buffalo, Deer, Elk, and Longhorns roaming about.

A few deer were in our camp when we woke up. Here is Laura trying to feed one.

Oh and they had some small mountains with some good boulders to jump around on.

A collard lizard

A small canyon we explored

On our way out we stopped the World Famous Meer’s Hamburger Restaurant. I don’t know about the world famous part, but they did have an awesome burger.

Redneck Paradise

This weekend Laura and I went exploring a huge unofficial dirt bike park that lies just south of DFW on a floodplain of the Trinity river. Among the acres of wildness we found lots of beer bottles, a curious armadillo, and a trio of really impresive tree houses. Against my better judgment (probably due to hanging out with Randy the day before) I decided to climb one, which turned out just fine. Some pics: