On Tuesdays I play in a soccer league near Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood. The field house is actually a converted manufacturing plant. There's also a very large Hispanic population nearby. The resulting aesthetic is a combination of Aztec murals and loading docks. To top it off, they aways have some Latino Pop blasting through the sound system. It's a unique place to play, to say the least.

The Museum of Science and Industry like to think Big. A wing of the musuem is currently being renovated for a new exhibit about the science of storms. The new exhibits require that a lot of work be done above the ceiling. To facilitate this work, the contractor has errected a work platform- three stories above the ground level floor!

Cranes on barges? Pumping concrete into the river? It's all part of a $22 million project to create a continuous public river walk between the Michigan Avenue bridge and State Street. Typical Chicago attitude: No room along the river? No problem. We'll just build it.

And you tell me that Chicago couldn't handle the Olympics, please. We've reversed the flow of our river, built the tallest buildings in the world, and reclaimed over 1,000 acres of land from Lake Michigan.

All winter we've been able to monitor the progress of the new river walk from my new office on the 15th floor of the old IBM building. Learn more about the river walk here: http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/theskyline/2009/03/the-chicago-river-walk-a-dream-about-to-take-a-big-step-forward.html

The Wabash Street bridge over the Chicago river has been raised to allow crews to work along side the south bank of the river.

Can you see the new light-colored building in the distance, in the center of the photo. I helped design that building. A 25-story condo tower sits on an existing 10-story parking garage. We had to pour a 6-foot deep mat and 16-foot deep girder on top of the parking garage to spread the load out to the larger existing columns. Read more at Structure Magazine: http://www.structuremag.org/article.aspx?articleID=846

Trusses support the cables for the cable cars at the Squaw Valley ski resort near Lake Tahoe, Nevada. These large supports carry 12-person cars up very rough terrain.

Two Chicago landmarks: the Watertower and the Hancock tower. The old watertower and the pumping station across the street were the only buildings left standing after the 1871 Chicago fire.

The Hancock tower was the tallest building in the world upon it's completion. The engineer, Fazlur Kahn of Skidmore Owings Merril (SOM), had to pioneer several new design technologies to make the building possible. The large exterior structural cross braces are part of the architectural charm of the building. Legend has it that Kahn performed rudimentary motion experiments (to simulate how a person on the top floors might respond to the building sway) on a turntable at the Museum of Science and Industry on display to explain the inner workings of a washing machine.

When I returned to my office from a meeting on Wednesday, I discovered a crime scene around the entrance of the building. Rumor spread quickly that someone had jumped from one of the Marina City towers. If you're able to view the photo in high enough resolution, look at the red car. Apparently, the jumper crashed into the parked car, after first clipping a light pole. Rumor also has it that someone was in the car at the time. This is plausible since the street is no parking.

The van behind the car is the city clean-up crew. At the time of the photo, they were unrolling a hose to wash the blood from the street. Creeped out yet? You won't see this working in suburbia.

Say hello to Sue. She's the largest, most complete, T-Rex skeleton in the world. You can check her out at Chicago's Field Museum. Another of my favorite exhibits are the actual pelts of the man-eating Tsavo lions who's story was retold in the 1996 movie "Ghost and the Darkness." The hero in that movie (as in real life) was a civil engineer!

Every Friday evening I play indoor soccer. This competitive pick-up game is great practice for my Tuesday night league. We play in an old fieldhouse in Chicago's west loop area. The roof is supported by wood bow-string trusses that span the entire width of the pitch. As a result of the low ceiling, we're forced into playing with a lot of short passes on the ground.

Everyone gets into the Irish spirit at Chicago's South Side St. Patrick's Day Parade.

Refreshing for the big city, the parade really had a local feel to it. Most of the floats were sponsored by the local trade unions. It was interesting to speculate on which unions had more clout, based on the size of their float, or, in some cases, pimped out tractor trailers. Based on that observation, the Pipe Fitter's union is the place to be. But what exactly is a pipe fitter?

One week later, the parade's organizing committee announced that this 31st showing of the parade would be the last.

The National Building Museum in Washington, DC during the E-Week family day event. Thousands of kids (and their parents) participated in engineering activities. I volunteered to help students build towers out of a few straws, pieces of paper and tape. The day's highlight was a demonstration by one of the cast members of the Design Squad TV show. He used an automatic climbing device to quickly scale ropes up into to rafters of the enormous building.

Inside the Block

Looking up through the central atrium of the incomplete Block 37 project in Chicago. Before opening, the temporary roof enclosure will be replaced with a large skylight allowing light to flood the interior of the retail center.

March 19, 2009. View of Millenium Park from the 24th floor terrace of 310 South Michigan Avenue.

Smithsonian National Native American Museum atrium dome. http://www.nmai.si.edu/

Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Space Ship One - first privately financed manned space vehicle. Upon re-entry, the rear wings angle up to slow the vehicle's descent like a giant shuttlecock.