MEGAPOST

Alrighty, so my backlog of photos is getting to me. It is 8:13 p.m. and I just woke up from my post-call nap. This is traditionally the time where I look at the clock and just right back to sleep through the rest of the night, but I feel a bit wired, so instead I'm finally going to put enough pics on here to satisfy myself. I'd just like to say that I have already worked 63 hours from Monday to Thursday. Yay me! Ok, buckle up...it's photo time. [note, these photos span from late october to now, so deal with that]


During my DC trip I went on a little nostalgia run. Thank me for sparing you all of the photos. But this one is key. This building is called the Toilet.


And this one is called the Shopping Bag.


I'm pretty sure this was my piano teacher's house. Sar, can you confirm? Sar, do you read my blog? Sar, if I mention your name three times in a post are you summoned before me? Sadly, no.


Perhaps the coolest accidentally-neato photo ever. My iPhone occasionally does this weird fisheye effect but this time it perfectly spared the middle part with Dubya's house. Crazy, eh?


Travelling on a plane with Lucie is infinitely easier with Melissa. This adorable picture is improved upon only by knowing that it was taken 0.5 seconds before Lucie beat her mother over the head mercilessly with that sippy cup.


Garbie's facial hair is in full swing. I'm a fan.


During my penultimate visit to Utah, Largies and Garbies at Mom's. Look how official Lar-Lar is!


My kid, who is 540 miles away right now, and therefore terribly missed, just being cute. And getting huge.


A refreshing break from the usual "all-natural, no artificial sweeteners" agenda.


The Best Truckstop Mexican Food between Rock Springs and Laramie.


Thank you, Denver International Airport Tram. My life is enriched. Seriously. And it's a quote by my junior high's mascot! Double bonus!


WTF? So I have to wear a dress to change my child?


New Orleans was a bit of a trip (double entendre, anyone?). Exhibit A: Palm trees and 80 degree weather in November.


Exhibit B: Sweet frenchiness everywhere.


It seemed a bit backwards down there however. Exhibit C.


Back at work: perty sunset from the 'spital.


Springfield, IL. I believe this was the actual springfield that the Simpsons is based in. K-Mart was a highlight of the town.


See! It's that Springfield! Ok, so it's not nuke-u-lar. Close enough.


Crossing the Mighty Mississippi. I should have photographed all of my rental cars. I logged some serious miles. This was in a camry I think. Ooh...exotic!


I was in the St. Louis Airport when all of a sudden I had one of those strange connections. On my way to France in 1998 we got stuck in St. Louis because of a storm and I remember this plane. I also remember sneaking a phone call home from the airport and my "travel companion" making me feel horrible for joking that I might turn on the t.v. in our hotel room. SINNER!


DIA became a very familiar site/sight. Unfortunately I got a little too comfortable and started to forget where I would park in the economy lot which led to one particular episode of wandering through a blizzard for 20 minutes with no coat before finding my damnable car.


Planes=cool.


Man, if we had gone to Lubbock I would have frequented the crap out of this place. Best too-nice-of-a-mexican-restaurant-to-have-a-drive-thru-but-has-one-anyway in all of west Texas.


We prepared Lucie for the frozen Tundra of Utah.


Roberto! Ladies, look at this guy. What a catch! Of course he dropped her on her head right after this. I'm JUS' Kidding!!!


Yasson! I watched a touch of HDDVD goodness, Apollo 13 style on his massive tv. NUTS.


Lucie with a cute dog that didn't try to kill her.


Lucie kickin' it in grandpa's shoes.


Lucie teasing Garbie's cute new kitty-meow.


Unky gar is looking unhappy! Maybe it's cause Lucie was attempting to destroy brook's place.


She's finally figured out (sort-of) presents!


A choo choo that was too-slow for me on the way home.


Another iPhone trick: Doesn't this look like it was taken against a blue screen?


Saw lots of this lately.


Wind-electricity-things rule!


Self-explanatory. (Captions beginning to falter...Josh is now ready for sleep.)


Perhaps the photo of which I am the most proud. See what you miss if you don't stop to pee once in a while?!?


Same pee stop, but now you can see my sweet ride!


Lucie will go into business. Or the arts. But this is cute anyway.


More cuteness.


Lar is 21! HOLY CRAP!!! Brook is less excited about it.


Garbies and Gramps chatting away.


A dog that did try to kill my daughter.


Ok, wait...this is the photo of which I am most proud. Seriously, gar...what is going on! I should put a black bar over your eyes and put you in a neurology textbook.


Present time! Car-tar was in on the action.


Lucie loves her some stroller-pushing (see previous zoo post).


Next time I will fly. This was scary.


As close as I got to seeing the Close Encounters mountain. What is up with Wyoming and weird stand-alone mountains?


Finally I have a camera that can take decent moon pics! I am so stoked!


Look how sweet this friggin' is!

So there you have it. I am caught up with blog photos.

BTW, Dad won the law contest (see below). He will receive a sweet song from iTunes.

By the way, In Rainbows is amazing. Perhaps the greatest part of driving back and forth from Utah to Denver was the opportunity to listen to tons and tons of music. Ryan Adams Love is Hell Pt. 1 is also a new fav. The Shadowlands is one of those songs that feels so familiar, like I heard it in the womb. Also, a good friend pointed out Jonatha [sic] Brooke. Wow.

I should find out tomorrow whether we're moving to the midwest. Everybody cross your fingers (for your respective causes).

Pete inspired me to give some end of the year thoughts. Having travelled all over the bleeding country and especially with the opportunity to come home for a whole week recently, I want my friends and family to know that it was amazing to see you. It always seems bittersweet because I get home so infrequently and seeing the people you love for 2 hours every few months sometimes is just enough time to make you miss them more. I guess, I will wrap this cheeseball in the following shiny plastic film: those of us who are fortunate enough to live in close proximity to people we love, should count ourselves lucky.

So put that in your pipe and smoke it. Did I mention that I want to rename this blog "So..." It kind of seems like my thing.

However, unlike Petarsky, I am not promising that this will be my last "missive*," so... (there it is again) keep your collective panties on.


*had to look that one up.

Putting the weso back into Awesome

Thank you to Gar for pointing this out to me. Why is this so sweet?

Welcome to Earth, Franco!

Check him out!

Way to go Cerebro!

Let's take a moment to ponder your many namesakes (or the people for whom you are a namesake? Too confusing)

Francisco Franco, a famous Spanish Dictator.
Gustavo Franco, a famous Brazilian Banker.
Joao Franco, a famous Portuguese Prime Minister.
Manuel Franco, a famous President of Paraguay.

Are you starting to see a pattern? Franco: YOU WILL BE FAMOUS! AND LATINO! AND SOME SORT OF POLITICAL LEADER! [Editor's note: Bankers are not Political leaders.]

Unless of course, you take after your middle name...In which case, little man, take some advice from my good friend Paul: Any time you feel the pain, hey, refrain. Don't carry the world upon your shoulders. Well don't you know that its a fool who plays it cool, by making his world a little colder.

hey there, Shblog. remember me?

Hey all you legal relatives/friends! I challenge you to hook me up with the actual ruling from this story. I know you guys can use your Nexis/Lexis/Westlaw/Voodoo/Oracle powers to find it. The article mentions enough of the ruling to let me know that the rest is going to be pure gold.

P.S. Somebody broke out of jail Shawshank-style. When will we learn?!?

etiquette

...which is French for "snobbery."

Dude sitting next to me on the plane: who declared the singular armrest between us yours? Moreover, when did you conquer the 4 inches of airspace on my side in the name of Elbowland?

Lady in the terminal: ***news-flash*** when you open a bottle of soda that has been shaken and it starts to spray everywhere, try closing the bottle. Amazingly it will stop spewing forth.

Carl Sagan has been blowing my mind tonight. (I can read- who knew?)

Be tee dub: it is a balmy 65 degrees in Houston and is sposed to be 75 in N'awlans tomorrow. Righteous.

What was my sign off supposed to be? Umm.

Peace out.

Spirit of St. Loser

I am sitting here in the St. Louis airport. Nothing terribly exciting about that, I just thought you should know. Maybe I should have written it as stage directions, not dialogue.

Anywho...I heard me a great misusage of "literally" the other day. Ready? Here goes: "I am literally between a rock and a hard place." I guess this isn't really a great misuse of the term, someone could literally be between those two things. But I like it anyway.

I have a bazillion pics to post here. Unfortunately I'm about to cross over from one bazillion to the number "never-mind" at which point no photos shall appear. We'll see how this weekend goes.

I am a traveling fool lately. 2 weeks ago: DC. Last weekend: SLC. Today: Missouri. (Are you saying these out loud? Cause you should be, they rhyme. I suppose they also rhyme in your head, but where's the fun in that?) Tomorrow: Colorado. (Still rhyming, but now in a different scheme.) Friday: Down by the bay. (Well, New Orleans to be more precise. There must be a bay down there somewhere. Come on, work with me, Rhyme-haters!) Next Wednesday: Springfield, Illinois. (No more rhyming. Deal with it.) Following Friday: Lubbock, Texas. The land of Bobby Knight, I am told. For those of you not familiar with Bobby Knight, he is a post-modernist, art-deco, nouveau riche poet laureate. Please enjoy some of his works here. Following Sunday: Back to SLC. What is that, like, 18 trips in 5 days? Nuts.

By the way [which I think should be converted into one word a la alright (not aware that it's actually from the two english words all and right? You're welcome.) into Bythaway] I just finished Stephen Colbert's book, which ruled, and I can feel myself trying to write like him. Or like the team of writers he employed to help him write. It doesn't matter, just buy the book and read it. Cover to cover. It is LOL funny. And I don't even read books. I think the last book I read in it's entirety was All Quiet on the Western Front back in 9th grade (that's grade 9 for you Canadians). Allow me to give you a sample of it's goodness in order to spur you onward towards it's eventual purchase and reading (From a chapter on the future, specifically regarding a future where Robots have become self-aware and enslaved mankind):

Hey Robot! Congratulations on the utter subjugation of the carbon based creatures following the Great Purge.

Here's a proclamation I want you to broadcast through your Hivemind to your android brethren:
The next sentence is false.
The previous sentence is true.

I'll wait while your heads explode.
Now, to the human who has picked up this book in wonderment, having pried it from the still-clenched hands of the Iron Master who just self-destructed:

You're Welcome.

I mean come on...that's funny. Please Mr. Steve do not sue me. Book quotes are ok when they are in positive reviews encouraging others to purchase your work, right?

In other news, I have done something that I have long dreamed of doing. I bought some stock in Apple. I made $11.00 today!

Bythaway, if you want to see something awesome, check this out.

zoo pics

Until I muster the strength for the full DC trip post, please check out some pics here.

Here is a teaser:




Thank you to Dad, Mom, Grandparents, Gar, and Sar who all contributed to my sweet new lens to which all credit goes for these pictures.

Home (?) again?

So...(that's better) I decided to fly out to DC on the spur of the moment yesterday so that we could be with Melissa who had to come out here on Thursday for work. Flying with Lucie proved to be quite trying. Especially when she broke my glasses. [trombone: wah wah wah wahhhh]. But at least I got to spend all morning getting new glasses! Wondering around with poor vision with a cute but occasionally unhappy baby is also work. Highlights of the above stories: Lucie finally going to sleep as we took off, and then the wicked witch of the west next to us spills her effing club soda on us waking us both up. "It's only club soda," she "apologized." Great.
Lucie was checking out some big stuffed animals at a pretty cute store and fell onto a metal bar holding a shelf up. She got a bloody lip and I was sure that she would require emergent plastic surgery, but thankfully it was just a bloody lip. Still sucked. We bought a stroller and grover. She did not like either of them in their intended function, but did enjoy this role reversal:

You should have seen the conniption she had when I tried to actually put her in the stroller. Actually, you shouldn't have.

At least all was well in the end. Check it:

Look different from my old ones? Nope? Good.

putting the "bodily functions" back into "blog"

First of all, the requisite cuteness:

Just look at that 'tude!


Pigtails!


Now, to the business at hand:
Last weekend I was on call. Fact: being on call sucks on it's own.
I soon discovered that I had eaten something that my body really didn't like. I mean, REALLY. So much so, that...well, to spare you the details, let us say that said food was going to find it's way out of me by any means necessary. Wow...I so badly want to get into the nitty gritty details, but I'll save that for an email to specific parties so as to spare my grandparents and/or business relations that may, or may not, peruse this blog from time to time. [a propos: the other day I spoke with a canadian woman who spoke french with that elusive quebec accent. She said the french version of "from time to time" which is, oddly enough, "de temps en temps." Frenchy Frenchies say it like this: "deu tawns on tawn," but with her funny quebecian accent it came out "day tans ahn teh." Well sort of. Call me, I'll speak it for you.] So...(can't believe I didn't start this post with that) it was a rough evening. Fortunately some kind soul took pity on my and scored me some Reglan (metoclopramide) and I felt better...eventually.

Gross bodily function story numero dos:
I was "scrubbed in," as they say, to a surgery the other day, which means that they had run out of tables in the operating room and I had to crouch on the ground and the patient was lain across my back for the duration of the procedure. [joke] When one is scrubbed in, one is not allowed to touch anything outside of the "sterile field." Unfortunately one's masked face is outside the sterile field. This becomes troublesome when one has an itch, or say, when one's glasses slide off of one's face because one's daughter has stretched the bejeebers out of them. So this particular time, somebody told a joke and I let out my level IVa laugh which is simply a snort of air from the nostrils. Little did I know that a snot rocket had just finished it's pre-flight checklist and was ready for launch. Thus, I laughed a hunk of snot onto my, thankfully mask-covered, upper lip. But of course, I couldn't reach up and do anything about it, so I was forced to let it slowly slide and slither down along the crest of my lip and around to my chin before it nestled itself squarely on the chin-mask junction. 20 minutes later when the case finally ended I wrested the mask/snot complex from my disgusting face.

I am post-call right now. Prolly (R)* going to regret telling this story.


P.s. My brother has a car?!? What's next? A mustache? Done and Done.

*A registered trademark of Garcorp.

"How not to visit new york", or "Josh Seeks Sympathy for Crap Birthday"

So I was on call for my 29th birthday. This meant spending my lovely evening putting out proverbial fires, but thankfully no literal ones. I saw some gory/heinous stuff. I'm not sure gory is spelled like that. But whatev.
My emotional state went through the following stages over the course of the night:

The worst was when my eyeballs were no longer tracking together.

At least I had some birthday cake:

Mmm...Didn't these used to not be hostess?

Besides being a crotch shot:

...this also displays the ridiculous array of pagers one must adorn themselves with whilst on call at a certain hospital. Kids, can you count all seven pagers?

At least the city looks cool in the morning.

Pretty sure that building in the foreground on the left is where Dozer is summoned to on Ghostbusters.

So then I went to New Jersey for an interview, which was fine. I had 8 billion years afterwards before my flight so I thought, "hey, I'll go to manhattan and take some sweet pictures with my awesome canon camera." But instead, I tooled around in horrible traffic unable to settle upon a parking spot and spending approximately 3 hours driving at 3 miles per hour across the whole damned island. I NEVER LEFT THE CAR. And here's the kicker, my bladder was emptied twice! Summation: do not DRIVE in manhattan. It chupas huevos. Here are the crap iphone pics I took instead of the glory that could have been.

First, a bentley:

Sweet, no?

The new apple store:

And some creepy dude in front of it.

Scariest bridge crossing ever:

Taking this photo nearly cost me a rental car.

Again, risked life and limb for this shot:

Non in any way worth it.

Hey look:

It's the chrysler building. From queens, no less.

At the very least I have a better idea of the layout of the various buroughs of NYC now. Unfortunately I don't know how to spell burroughs.

Getting tired of writing. Eliminating unnecessary words. Typing in headlines.

Got to JFK. Bought Steven Colbert's book. Laughed embarrassingly loud. Everybody buy it.

Didn't take off until late. Slept on plane. Got home at 12:30 a.m. Realized car was parked in $3.00/hour zone with no daily maximum. Discover Card footed the $110.00 parking bill. Pondered my stupidity. Pondered some more. And some more.

Ok, so next time, fly into NYC and take a damn cab!

I've been wanting to do this for some time now. Let's see if I can manage it.
Ok, I'm done. It's crap, but was still fun. This is pretty close to what the size comparison would be if the Burj Dubai were being built in Salt Lake City:

The Church office building is 28 stories tall. So far the Burj has 156 completed stories. Chew on that, Trident.

One last thing. This is an example of a good, nay...great movie preview. Movie Previews and Music Videos are, perhaps, my favorite forms of media. Geez, what does that say about me? I think it's because they are both short enough that they can be made to be perfect, with no opportunity to be distracted, bored, or lose that old suspension of disbelief. Granted there are a ton of crap trailers and even more crap music vids, but there are many many of them that are totally great. I should link to my favorites. But that would take a lot of effort. Hey, you 3 people who read this blog, why don't you submit your favs. Maybe I will be inspired to list mine.