Central Park

One of our favorite parts of New York City was Central Park. It really does feel like you're stepping into a whole different world. Zoe met all sorts of new creatures there, including some of the friendliest dogs ever. Central Park dogs are so well-behaved, probably because they're so happy to be out of the flat. She also enjoyed the horse-drawn carriages and would always follow them with her eyes until they were out of sight.

While I was at my seminar Sara went exploring and was never able to traverse the entire park, we both agree that on the other side of the park there must be even more and better stuff, but we'll never find out. We saw a whole heard of cyclists having a race, and all sorts of statues which were not racing. On our last day in New York City we bought some food at a little street vendor and ate under the shadows of the skyscrapers next to the duck pond. And how could I forget to mention that we walked by the zoo and saw some seals! That was pretty cool. All the spring flowers were coming in, and it was gorgeous. There were tons of bridges there too. If I were a troll I would live under a Central Park bridge. A lot of good can be said about a city that spends so much time, money and effort to beautify a large chunk of itself. Don't worry, I didn't forget to mention Strawberry Fields, such a site merits it's own posting.

The McArthurs Take Manhattan

Just a few weeks ago Sara and Zoe and I accomplished my life time dream of visiting the Big Apple! How could any lover of tall buildings and historical monuments consider him or herself whole without putting a push pin on New York City.

It was our good fortune that the Exam MFE (Memorization of Freakish Equations) Seminar was to be presented right next to Madison Square Gardens over the weekend. As I spent 18 hours learning about stock option pricing, Zoe and Sara went about their tourism business, and we spent the day before and after, and the evenings seeing the sights. And boy did we see them! We rushed from uptown to downtown and everywhere in between. New York is one of those cities that never ceases to deliver tourism candy. You walk down the streets and come across stores and buildings with super famous titles and you find yourself saying, "Wow, I didn't know that was here" over and over again. The highest of highs for me is to stand at the base of some incredible structure, the ones that I've read about for years, and come to the realization that it is much better than I ever imagined. This is a constant in New York City. We're so lucky to have had so many opportunities to see our nation's greatest cities, and you're so lucky to have to see all the pictures and read all my endless blah blahing about them. Off we go!

Zoe's First Steps!

Zoe took her first steps Thursday!! Pretty cool, eh? I was next door at the church and Sara called to tell me, and I just about shouted I was so excited, I had to come home immediately. A lot of overly-proud people have this silly idea that if their kid walks early, he or she is a genius. I agree with them. You'll notice in the second video down there that she was getting far too excited to maintain the focus required to walk. This is classic Zoe. We love this little biped.

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.

Us, the Cats and Brother Brigham

The US Capitol building is chuck-full of historic and artistic splendor. I never knew there were so many murals and carvings and statues everywhere. Fortunately, we had Mike to show us where all the good stuff was. His tour featured the Senate side of the Capitol building, and actually included our viewing of the Senators in action in their chamber. It was really neat!

Here's the four of us standing next to the statue of Brigham Young. Every state in the US donated 2 statues of their own home-grown heroes. These 100 statues are dispersed throughout the building, including Utah's Brigham Young. Utah also donated a statue of Philo T. Farnseworth, who is famous for being the first man to have a name as cool as Philo. He also invented the first completely electronic television. Rock on Utah! Any thoughts on why it is that Utah claims Philo, but he actually invented his TV in Idaho?

I absolutely loved standing below the building's rotunda and looking at all the art work. You've gotta see it, the place is decked out with giant, famous paintings and statues, and according to Mike, a hidden hommage to George Washington. If you stand directly below the dome and look up you will see a painting of President Washington in heaven, where you stand there was originally meant to be a statue of George as he was in mortality. Below George, in the basement of the building lies the actual platform used when Lincoln was laid in state. Mike actually took us down there to see the platform, and it was WAY cool. Original plans were to have Washington buried there, but instead he has been interred at Mount Vernon. It would have been really cool if the statue would have worked out too. I guess it's the thought that counts.

Its sorta hard to tell in the picture, but Sara is squatting in the temporary hall built for the senate's use while their chamber was being built. There's just enough room in there for all the senators at the time to stand and conduct business. Story has it that at this same time the country was storing grain in the basement of the Capitol building. This attracted rats, so the government set cats loose in the building to catch the rats. These cats left paw prints in the newly laid cement floor of this temporary Senate hall. You really could see the paw prints in there, it was pretty cool. Anyone whose been through the capitol building knows that the place is haunted, according to the internet accounts, some of the resident spirits include these cats. Sadly, we got no picture of the phantom felines, if only we'd have had a digital camara at the time.

Mike and the Senate Tubes

This here is my bff Mike, we were inseparable all the way from Kindergarten to BYU. Much to our good fortune, he was spending the semester of our Washington DC trip hard at work as an intern in Utah Senator Orrin Hatch's office in the Hart Senate Office Building. Part of his many duties as a Senatorial intern was to conduct tours of the Capitol Building for curious tourists such as ourselves. I knew Mike would give us a great tour, but I had no idea it would be as unforgettable as it was. Surely the building itself is quite the canvas on which to paint a good tour, but Mike the artist made the tour a true work of art. Man, that's really poetic! A thousand thanks go to Mike for his tour! If you would like to learn more about the life and times of Mike, there's a link to his blog, The Foggy Bottom Tribune, over yonder to your right (my left).

I've got a bunch to say about the innards of the Capitol building, but I'll save that for the next posting. I do, however, feel that I must tell you about the secret tunnels that link the Senate Office Buildings (SOB's hee hee hee) to the Capitol building. Alright, so they're not so secret, but I had never heard of them. The United States Capitol Subway System was built way back in 1909 to link the Russell SOB to the Capitol, and has been added upon over the years. Currently the tunnels link all three SOBs and the House of Reps offices as well. Our little entourage got to take a ride in the little cars all the way from the Hart building and back, and I gotta tell ya, it was a ball!! The cars are so cute and little, and decked out in Senate logos. It was our electromagnetic chariot to the great collosieum. See the picture of Mike up above, which was taken in one of the cars. Mike told us about all the cool senator people he'd seen in these tunnels, and we immediately wished that we could be the little guy that runs the trains back and forth. Whodda thunk? Senate tubes. Pretty cool stuff.

We'll be back after this message...

We now pause in our travelogue to bring you the world's all time best commercial ever!! I saw this on tv not too long ago and there's been a piece of me laughing ever since. The finder's fee goes to my mother-in-law...perhaps I'll make her some spaghetti. Enjoy: