Stanford BING Concert Hall

Not usually much to post about work but a recent site visit last week did particularly impress me, so I figured I'd share it with ya...

One of the projects I'm working on is the new Stanford BING Concert Hall. It's a pretty artsy building that's going up on campus and I'm working on some of the engineering for the audience walls. The audience walls are... well they're audience walls. They're the funky walls that separate the different levels of seating and generally no one even notices them. That is, UNTIL now! These things are pretty cool looking...

Wood Panel Audience Wall

Well I thought they look snazzy. If you look closely you can see the texture of the wall. It's built one piece at a time, which gets stacked up along the wall height. You can see the layers better here...

And what's holding those beautiful panels up? The metal studs of course! That's the grey support behind the wood in the picture above. And the material I engineer all day every day. It's an exciting and dangerous lifestyle, but I choose to live it.  One more moment of geeking out for me... Here's a shot behind the wall before it gets covered...

Behind the scenes

Amazed yet? OK probably not really. Probably not at all, but don't worry I took more pictures of the whole place under construction. 

The Pit

 Down there is the pit where the orchestra will play and the entire theater has 360 degree seating. Not a bad seat in the house!

This next shot is another piece I worked on. It's going to be a giant acoustic "sail" and yours truly got to work on the support design :-)

Sail A

Not a bad little site visit if I do say so myself :) BONUS is that it was inside and cool on one of the hottest days of the year :) I'm fully expecting season tickets once the theater is open so let me know if you'd like to come. OK totally kidding on that one. But if anyone DOES get tickets, I'd be happy to tag along!!!

Almanor Cabin Work Weekend

Every year (occasionally every other) my mom's family rallies the troops and trek's to our cabin up in Lake Almanor for the work weekend. Every summer the family divides and shares weeks of vacation up at the cabin, which happens to be my favorite place in the world, but before this can happen, the cabin needs to be worked on and readied for another season of fun. This past weekend was that weekend.

With approximately 5.5 hours of driving on our schedule, this certainly qualified as a road-trip for Joey and myself, which meant one very important thing...

Burger King, Mc Donalds & Taco Bell

Road Trip Multi-Fast-Food-Pit-Stop! Only three spots this time, but they were they solid. I chose Burger King Fries, McDonalds Chicken McNuggets & a Taco Bell Crunch Wrap Supreme. And some tums to finish it off. Joe's a big McDonalds fry fan so he got some and the verdict is in... Burger King fries are officially greater than McDonalds fries.

We arrived late Friday night and woke up early Saturday morning to this...

View from the front yard

Not bad motivation for a "work weekend"eh? So once everyone had about seven cups of coffee each, we all grabbed some rakes and started attacking the pine needles. All pine needles within 50 feet of the cabins are required to be cleared for fire safety so we had a lot of work on our plates.

Uncle Steve, Aunt Karen, Cousin Jack and Trent...  Not even the kids get out of work weekend!!

Uncle Mark, Joey & Micah

Joey & Aunt Jenny

All work and no play makes everyone cranky, so we made sure to add some play time to our weekend! Ever thrown rocks into a large body of water? It's kind of amazing how much fun it is.

Jack, throwing rocks

Trent, throwing rocks

Rubi, swimming after the rocks

View of the cabin from the beach

A long long time ago, my grandfather and his dad used to come to this site and camp before there was ever anything else here. Eventually they built this cabin which has become our entire family's home away from home.

Cousin Zach, clearly THRILLED to be here.

 For the record, I'm pretty sure I woke Zach up with this picture. He was napping with his eyes open :)

Incase you ever wondered where I got my laziness from...

All that relaxing sure did work up our appetites. Time for some BBQ!

That's a lotta meat, can we even cook it all?

Challenge Accepted.

Dinner is served!

I've been eating at this dining table since I was a baby being bathed in the sink that the dishes were washed in.

Sunset

As the sun goes down, the bats come out and fly around eating the mosquitos. Sounds super creepy, but it's completely awesome and cathartic.

And the new addition to the cabin? A fire pit! 100% s'more friendly! It was a big, big hit.

Possibly the single best thing that came out of this weekend? The discovery of making s'mores with Reese's Peanut Butter Cups as the chocolate. Insanely delicious.

Sunday morning we had some more work to do including dropping off the truck loads of pine needles at the local lumber yard. 

Joey & me

Everyone please note... photographic evidence that I did in FACT do something besides take pictures all weekend. I also took pictures WHILE wearing a hard hat.

Well that was certainly enough work for my taste, so once we got back it was time for more fun. And nothing says fun like building rockets and setting them off in the meadow! There are a lot of boys in my family... in case you can't tell.

Cousin Micah - the rocket master

Cousin Jack's rocket

 Micah knows almost everything there is to know about rockets so he set everything up. Unforunately the trigger/ignitor was not working properly due to faulty batteries so Micah hooked up the next best thing...

Who needs batteries when we have a fully functional CAR battery. Yeah, that really happened. Micah re-worked the wires to the car battery and we had liftoff!

Bigger Rocket

 My uncle mark summed it up pretty well when he said, "less is good. more is better". Which apparently holds true for rocket size.

Aunt Karen & Cousin Jack

My ruggedly handsome husband :)

Jack's smile was about a mile wide after all that rocketry. It was priceless. Even the drive back to the cabin was exciting when we were enveloped with a family of cows.

My bro Kev, moo-ing at the cows

Back at the cabin, the boys got the mini-tractor working and decided to look helpful...

I'm not sure what this had to do with the cabin chores, but I sure got a kick out of it. Joey's holding on for dear life while Micah tries to flip him off. Poor Joey married into this. I tried to apologize to him, but he just high-fived me.

One of the last things Joey and I did before leaving Monday morning was go on our walk around the block and take a peak over Hamilton Branch. 

Hamilton Branch

The last time we were in this spot (almost 2 years ago) Joey got down on one knee and proposed to me. It was so cool to come back and re-live the memory, something we get to come back to every summer of our lives.

 All-in-all I'd say the weekend was a success. The cabin is ready for summer, my family is exhausted, and I feel completely blessed for the family that taught me how to work, how to love and how to laugh at everything.

Let's Go Giants!

Despite our hermit-like nature on weeknights, Joey and I made it out to a San Francisco Giants game the other Wednesday night to see the game and meet up with our friends John ad Becca (soon to be married!!!!) The clouds came rolling in, so we parked and then bundled up as we heading into the stadium.

View from our seats!

 One of the great parts about AT&T park (and there are many) is that every seat has a good view, even the nose bleeds. We sat in the bleachers just beyond the outfield and heckled with the best of 'em.

More view...

Now, there is a silly stereotype that the bleachers get much more rowdy than the rest of the ballpark seats, which I think is non-sense. I mean, yes the guy sitting behind us "may" have been arrested, handcuffed and taken away by some cops for pouring a beer on one of them, but come on now. I bet the poor guy was just sharing his beverage. Speaking of which....

The most expensive Bud Light you will ever drink

$18 later, we had our beers in hand.... Kinda steep, but when in rome? Drink like the Romans do.

Ballpark Garlic Fries!

 One of, if not THE, main reasons I love going to these games are the garlic fries. Everywhere you walk, you can smell them in their greasy, garlic goodness. I meant to get a fantastic photo of their full glory, but well, I was hungry. After chowing down for about 4 minutes, I managed to squeeze in this shot. Just imagine it with a lot more fries in there....

 Time for some couples pics!!! OK John & Becca, smile for the camera...

 Very nice John, but Becca, I don't think I caught your good side.... let's do that again...

OK seriously? You guys are meant for each other... Now BOTH of you smile!!!!

VOILA!

TADA!!! Adorable couple photo taken by yours truly. I seriously can't wait for these guys to get married.

Cheese!

OK OK, we get one too :) There may have been a few(5) out-takes before we got our decent shot, but that's the great part about blogging: You get to edit out all the bad pictures of yourself :)

The Money Shot

This has got to be one of my favorite group pictures ever. We could have taken a bunch more, but this was the winner no matter what :-) 

All in all, a fantastic night! Did the Giants win? No. But let's be honest, when there's garlic fries and friends involved... everyone's a winner. Except the Giants, they had a truly terrible game.

Mother's Day Bike Ride by the Bay

Today was Mother's Day and what better way to celebrate the woman who gave birth to you than by kicking her off the couch, and strapping her up to a bike for some forced physical exertion?? Okay, maybe not quite that tramatizing, because it was in fact a beautiful day and a ton of fun.

Joey, myself, Kevin, Trent and my mom loaded up the truck with all 4.5 of our bikes and headed out...

Ready Set Go!

Doesn't my mom look intense? She is.

The boys right to left: Kev, Joey & Trentinator leading the pack

Yours Truly. Trying to look as intense as my mom

Wait for it...

And then I choked on a bug that flew in my mouth

A note about the bug that I ate... I must have been coughing for at least 10 minutes. So much for looking intense.

Me & Momma

 Please excuse the fact that I have no makeup on and therefore no eyebrows. I could write an entire post about my invisible blonde eyebrows, but I'll save that little gem for you to look forward to another day.

Trentinator

Trent & Kev

Me & Joey - right before he eats it.

He thinks he is SOOO cool. Little does he know. NO ONE looks cool in a helmet.

Trentceratops. See what I did there? I combined Trent and Triceratops 

This was Trent's helmet hair after the ride. Too awesome to pass up a photo of this bad boy.

Not a bad little Mother's Day! And mom didn't get hurt, so that's a bonus right? In all seriousness though, Joey and I have a lot to be grateful for with amazing moms, stepmom, and new-mother friends who bring a lot of love, care & certainly good food to our lives. Here's to mom's everywhere! Overworked and underpaid, but certainly never forgotten!