I went to Chicago in July.

I visited Chicago in July to see as many friends as I could. The Pitchfork Music Fest was going on that weekend and I was able to score a few free tickets so I saw some music too. A pretty great weekend.

The first is a pic of my friend Karen with her daughter Opal. Opal is the daughter of Courtland and Karen and she's about a year old now. Opal, not Karen. Karen is older than that, around my age. I stayed with Courtland and Karen when I was homeless before I moved to Austin. They are awesome people.


Next one is of my friend Joe. Joe goes to architecture school at UT Austin with me. I also spin records with Joe and our friend Ryan. We're pretty great DJs. We used to have a weekly gig spinning records but I don't know if that's going to happen anymore. Someday I'll get a picture of the 3 of us.

This might not be the greatest picture of Joe but I wanted to put it up because I convinced him to drive up to Chicago from Lexington. We saw some live music and drank some drinks and did a little dancing at Danny's. But first he and his girlfriend wanted to go out for fancy sushi, which we did. You can tell by and the Asians with the funny white coats and fancy bitches behind us.


Last but not least: drinking PBRs on a warm summer day playing kick ball on the roof of the Butcher Shop. I don't know if it gets much better than this.




I stayed with my good friend Rob (one of the guys playing 4 Square) and Sara and saw a bunch of other friends too (Kevin Mosier, Chris Connelly, Jeff Parker, Jason Ajemian, Josh Abrams, Kim Ambrez, Adriana Durant , Dante Carfagnia, so many people...)

On Friday night I saw Slint perform Spiderland, GZA do Liquid Swords and Sonic Youth play Daydream Nation. Each was amazing in its own way, though I have to say Sonic Youth killed. Kim Gordon just danced up and down for about the last 15 minutes of their set.

On Sunday I saw some more music at Pitchfork with Joe. Some of the highlights for me were Cadence Weapon and The Field. Cadence Weapon is, apparently, a Canadian and is also a great rapper. Plus he was wearing a Suns Charles Barkley jersey, which is pretty fresh.



Then The Field played. He is a Swedish DJ/Musician who makes epic minimal techno. That too was pretty great. He also apparently likes Flock of Seagulls and sailors.

Oh, and my sister's pregnant.

Yes, I will be an uncle. I can't believe it. She is due on October 2nd, which is pretty soon. The Sylvester and relations have October locked down. That's Oct. 2 for her, 6th for me and Ryan (Herling), 10th for Dad, 11th for Stephen (Herling) and 16th for Anthony. Libras kick ass!


Here are Kate and Anthony. They've been kind enough to let me stay with them in their basement (don't worry, it's finished) for the whole summer while I'm working at Coop15. They have a nice house in the Greenwood area. They live across from an elementary school, much like Alexis and I do now.

Their dog Boca needs lots of attention.


Katie was also pretty excited recently to start to set up the baby's room. New crib!

New House in Austin

I moved into a new place with a good friend of mine from UT. His name is Alexis Kurland and he is a lot taller than me. Like 6'5". He grew up in Oakland, CA and Albuquerque, NM before moving to Portland, OR. He majored in Philosophy but now is going to be an architect. He can talk smart. He also waits tables. I don't have any pictures of him but he took some of the house (it's actually a duplex) and cut them together nicely in Photoshop. I think I'll just use them instead of mine because he did a good job.




If you ever want to send me something--you know like a letter or even a present of some sort--I now live at:

1404 A Ashwood Rd.
Austin, TX 78722

Oh dear. I haven't updated this for a year.

Well, the summer is almost over. The time to return to Austin and UT is approaching and to be honest I'm filled with dread. Oh, I like school fine, I'm just not ready to go back yet.

Here are some pictures of Seattle. It probably would have been better to post these at the beginning of the summer but what can I say? I'm lazy. This really is like web sssssssppppppppppaaaaaaaaaacccccccceeeeeeeee log. Anyway, I've been here since late May. Summertime in Seattle is amazing. Probably the nicest summer (at least weather-wise) I've ever lived through).


Here's the office where I work. It is a small residential design company called Coop15. Don't ask about the name, I have no idea. Architects love words and like to think they can be clever with them. They rarely are.




Here are some pics of a few of my co-workers. They are all "intern-architects" officially. That means they've had a ton of architecture school but still aren't legally allowed to call themselves "architect." There's about 3 years of internship and a number of tests to take before that can happen. Ah, protectionism! The first is a pic of Zeke checking some drawings in the conference room. The second is of Steve and Trevor up to no good. The desk I sit at is in the lower foreground.



Here's a nice pic of the Queen Anne neighborhood. It is really nice and pretty fancy. It is also really white (like, I suppose, most of Seattle). That part is still strange to me. I don't think I've seen one black person here since I started work.

Queen Anne is on top of hill just north of downtown. My bike ride is brutal because I have to ride down Phinney Ridge, cross the Fremont Bridge and then ride back up Queen Anne hill. Then reverse on the way home. Usually by Friday of every week I need a break off the bike. I know, poor me. I think the bike ride to work is actually one of the reasons this has been such a great summer. What's better than riding your bike to work everyday when it is 70 degrees and sunny? OK. I better post this before it gets too long.... DS

Final Pics

Some final views of the project. Still no paint (it was raining almost every day) or final landscaping. That's to come some day though!

Ramada

Here are more pictures of Dad and I finishing off the ramada.

Ramada construction

Here's some pics of the installation of the first post, the flagstone path with the posts and beams alongside, the first posts and beams up from the corner of the lot, me using the hammer drill to place the straps in the existing concrete pad for some posts, and a close-up of the wall caps for the outside beams.

more pics...

Here's some pics of the flagstone path and the completion of the ramada. I don't know the days they happened anymore but hopefully they are vaguely in order. (Or reverse order as the case may be.)

Day 3 of Patio Building

We put CMU caps on the wall and coated it with SBC

Day 2 of Patio Building

After dry stacking the CMUs we coated the wall in SBC.

Day 1 of Patio Building

First we set a course of CMU in the SBC (that's Surface Bonding Cement to y'all) and then dry stacked the rest of the bricks.

4th of July Trip to Sequoia

In over Paradise Ridge...

New Bridge over Eagle Creek

Hanging out at Redwood

Out Timber Gap

Pete's Candy Store

Photo's from Pete's Candy Store in Brooklyn on Sunday night. It was an informal debut of some new music by Dan Kaufman for his upcoming Tzadik release.

I've gone and dorked out...

I've created a myspace account until I can get time to build a real website....

http://www.myspace.com/dansylvester

Never fear, I'll still post photos here when I can.