The Boomearring

While on the topic of graduation, the following story begs to be told, and likely will be much to the chagrin of my mother-in-law. My father-in-law, Randy, got Diane a pair of genuine sapphire earrings for Christmas the year before I graduated. Somewhere between the commencement and the parking lot, one of those sapphire earrings found its way off of Diane's ear and into the masses of beaming parents and graduates. We spent a lot of time dodging between people, staring at the ground, in pursuit of the renegade gem, to eventually come home empty handed. Then I was off to Paris, and the matter was forgotten...at least until about a month later when I got a very excited e-mail from Diane, saying that the erring had shown up at home on the top of the stairs. Weird. We all knew she had brought it with her, I remember them both being on her ears when we were in the Marriot Center. Diane thinks it was caught in her hair, I think it hitch hiked back.

A Bit of Pomp, a Touch of Circumstance

After two years in the frozen wasteland of Rexburg, Idaho and two more years dodging the choking clutches of potential Zoobieism in Provo, I graduated from college. In retrospect, I was very fortunate to have experienced college life from all possible angles: 1 year as a premie, 1 year as a swingin' RM bachelor, 1 year as a fiance and 1 year married to my sugar mama. For those of you who don't speak Mormon, a premie is a college student who has not yet been on a mission, an RM is a Returned Missionary, and a sugar mama is the graduated and fully employed wife of a college-going and very relieved husband. My college years were great, but boy was I ready to move on.

The commencement itself was pretty exciting I guess...I sorta wish I could have sat with my family rather than all the strange Actuarial Science and Statistics graduates. But I did very much enjoy walking around campus that morning among the beautiful spring flowers, and the international flags that were flying all around, all the while knowing that as Summer crept in, I was forever creeping out. In anticipation of my upcoming internship I got myself a picture next to the French flag. Sadly I was unable to conjure up a breeze sufficient enough to make the flag identifiable, you'll just have to take my word for it.

I love Milwaukee in the Spring time...Not!

I'm looking out the window on this, the second official day of Spring. It is quite the depressing scene as our fifth inch of snow for the day falls onto the never-plowed streets of downtown Milwaukee. Is there no mercy? I figured it would be a very appropriate time to post this picture, which was actually taken exactly two years ago in my in-laws backyard in Utah. Look at the blossoms and the mountains and the grass and the girl...what a beautiful scene! Maybe it'll start looking like this in Milwaukee before June?

And speaking of the weather, there's a statement that I hear a lot in every city I've ever been to: "If you don't like the weather here in (insert city name), just wait five minutes". Does that phrase irritate anybody else as much as me? That's how it is in every city, people, you're not special! There is another city-related statement that totally trumps that one though; "whatever happens in Vegas stays in Vegas". Gosh, I feel like a moron just for typing that. It might have been remotely clever the first time I heard it, but the 1500 times I've heard it since then are about 3000 times too many. The other day I heard it on an advertisement for one of the Crime Scene Investigation shows (I think it was the one that totally desecrates all songs by The Who), and it immediately shifted up the list to my number one obnoxious phrase slot. In case you were wondering, the previous number one was when athletes say they'll give some percentage greater than 100 of their efforts into the game. Oye, am I just an angry person, or does anyone else really get irritated by stuff like that?

Uncle Kason and Aunt Sara

Being an uncle or an aunt is a pretty cool gig because you don't really have to do any work, but you get a lot of fringe benefits. Sara and I had the good fortune of gaining said title twice in 2007. The first was my sister Alisa and her husband Chad's little baby, Emery. He came in February during the Olympics and I had no idea that it would feel so cool to hold my nephew. It helped a lot that he was a very cute little baby. There was a big shin dig over at my folks' house in April, with the sun all shiny and the food all tasty. When their family came to visit us last year (those pictures are forth coming) Emery and I had a ball playing on, around, above and below the airport escalators. He's two years old now, and I still don't know where all that time went.

We were once again rendered Uncle and Aunt when little Annie Brown came our way in September. She's the daughter of Sara's sister Jennifer and her husband Nathen. Annie is so named because her parents' first date was to see the play Annie. We were going to follow the same naming convention with Zoe, but the name Shrek didn't really seem to suit her. Perhaps we should have gone with Donkey. Only a few days after we had gotten to know little Annie, we were on our way out to Wisconsin. We set a picture of her on the dashboard as we made our way through the plains of South Dakota and Minnesota. We really miss Annie, but the web cam helps a lot. We get to hear her say "Hi hi hi" and she is very good at mooing at us.

I really feel like having these two little sweeties come when they did was an assurance to us from on high that kids aren't anywhere near as scary, sticky and smelly as we once thought. Or at least, when they are you love them enough to see through the sticky and see your own flesh and blood who love and trust you fully. And then, you just don't want to ever mess with that trust. But those are all word for some future blog, there's plenty of baby a brewin'. Thanks Alisa and Chad and Jennifer and Nathen for letting us share some of those special times with your babies!!

My Wife's an Award-Winning Artist!

The world needs to know that I married a stellar woman. Not only is she a little dish of cuteness, but she's also an award-winning artist! For many years Sara has entered a piece (that's fancy art lingo for "picture", sorta like how all those orchestra people always call their songs "pieces") into the Utah's Hogle Zoo Art Exhibit. I know it sounds like an exhibition of little kids' pictures of crayon monkeys, but its actually a very serious and renowned exhibit in Utah art circles, and very few of the entrants get their works put on display. All pieces must depict an animal, which is why I think it is such an important art show in Utah; a lot of the local artists specify in wildlife.

Anyhow, Sara has been submitting to the exhibit for a long time now and she always gets in. Check out the cool giraffe intaglio print she did, right behind her. Intaglio is a print technique where the artist etches the image onto a copper plate, applies ink to the etchings and then runs the plate with a moist paper on top through a printing press. She did this many times with separate plates for the foreground and background (and a number of "grounds" inbetween). The final product is really cool...cool enough to win Sara an award at the exhibition! I was so proud of her the night that the awards were handed out. A lot of people came to her to discuss all the deep meaning and technique of her art. It made me feel like I got myself quite the catch. I think it was our third date that Sara showed me her art, I remember falling in love with her so much that night!! She's like my own little Yoko.

The Valentine's Day Massacre

I'll bet you thought I'd never get done posting pictures of our Washington DC trip. Suffice it say that we really liked it out there, but since we aren't fluent in jive, we wouldn't have been able to completely merge with the DC culture, and were forced to come home.

Our next big and exciting event worthy of taking pictures of was the death of our beloved car Gus the Periwinkle Mirage. He was a good and decent car who was always more than willing to give me complex auto mechanic challenges which were most often remedied via bungee cords, wire hangers, or a large amount of hammer blows. Gus was the first car I ever bought with my own money. Sara and I met and fell in love in this car (not literally). I locked my keys in his trunk when we got engaged, he drove us to the airport on our honeymoon, and he was supposed to take us in style to dinner on our first Valentine's Day. Instead, he became a Gus sandwich between two Utah Valley mini vans on my way home from school that afternoon. If you think the squished trunk looks bad, you should see the front!

It ended up being a good thing though, because we became the adoptive parents of Nermal the Reddish Civic a few weeks later. Given Gus's pre-existing conditions, the nominal claim check we got from the insurance company after his death was a lot more than he was worth. Funny how with super old cars, when a wreck renders them totaled they actually go up in value (so long as you're not at fault). We really like Nermal.

Has anyone else noticed that in all my pictures I'm either wearing my goat sweatshirt, or my AC-DC tee shirt? Am I truly white trash enough to wear the same shirts in every picture, or is it just a strange coincidence? I'm not sure, but I do know that AC-DC totally rocks.