Isn't this a great pic? There's no friends like old friends.

Speaking of which, I've been googling the names of my old high school buddies that I've lost touch with, and I've come up with some pretty wild results. The wildest so far? A series of pics from a friend's (Matt Zollinger's) wedding reception. Check it out, East High 97

For no particular reason, I've compiled a list of famous people, both real and fictional, who have my same first name. I think everyone should try it. Not my first name, though. Yours. Of course.

Peter the Apostle
Peter Sellers (the Pink Panther)
Peter Postlethwaite (famous actor)
Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca)
Peter Weller (Robocop)
Peter the Great (emperor of Russia)
Peter Jackson (director, Lord of the Rings)
Peter Parker (Spiderman)
Peter Mitchell (Tom Cruise on Top Gun, which is ironic because when Josh and I would play Top Gun as kids, I would insist on always being Pete Mitchell, aka Maverick, though not cause we had the same first name.)
Peter Schickele (composer)

I can't think of any more right now.
This was a pointless exercise.

I've missed a couple of important birthdays; luckily they both happened on the same day (March 21st ((and ps, happy spring))).

1) J.s. Bach, my favorite composer, for two reasons:
a) The Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello. Due to the move to CA and my new adopted career, my collection of sheet music has dwindled to just two books.
i) Yampolski Cello Etudes
ii) The Leonard Rose edition of the Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello. and I must say, if all I ever really mastered on cello in my life were the notes in these two books, I would consider myself a great cellist.

b) The St. Matthew's Passion, which really brought Bach to fame, 75 years after his own death. Mr. Bach, two days ago, I'm sure that in some dark, gothic, German cathedral, a lonely organ played for thee.

2) Some lady whose name I'm ashamed to say I can't remember, but I thought her inclusion merited mentioning, as she was the lady who translated the entire works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and later retranslated "Don Quixote," which is a chore just to read, let alone to translate. And really, as we translators and interpreters make a career out of blending into the background, any reason to laud or applaud one of our kind is a reason in itself to post.

Here's a picture of one of the crazy howler monkeys right outside our hotel. Nothing really to do with this post.

But tell me if the following isn't something that belongs on the back of a How to Host a Murder box. Or a paperback airport novel.

Phil Spector was one of the greatest and most eccentric music producers in rock and roll history. The inventor of the "Wall of Sound," recorder and former husband of Ronnie Bennet of the Ronnettes, was known for describing his life as "Having devils fighting inside me." But until three years ago, this wig-wearing innovator lead a fairly innocuous life.

On the night of February 3, 2003, Spector met actress Lana Clarkson at the House of Blues. After a few drinks, the two were driven by her chauffer to Spector's house. Hours later, sounds of a tussle led Ms. Clarkson's driver to enter the home to investigate. What he saw was shocking.

"I think I just killed her," said Spector, standing in the foyer of his home over the body of Lana Clarkson, smoking gun in his hand.

Despite the incriminating details, you, as Mr. Spector's lawyer, believe him to be innocent. Follow the clues, dig deep, trust no one, discover the truth. Is this rock and roll legend innocent, or did the ghost of Ronnie Bennet drive him to murder? You decide!

ps- you gotta take a look at this guy:

Well, so we've returned safe and sound from the third world. What a blast. Above you can see a demonstration of my new mad surfing skills.

Here's a written recap of some of the highlights:

1) Driving the 50 miles of dirt roads to get to Nosara, the little surfing community where we sojourned
2) Getting immediately sunburned
3) Staying at the Lodge Vista del Mar, which in Spanish means Place Packed with Crazy Animals, where we were accompanied by a host of howler monkeys, a pack of racoon-like Costa Rican Pizotes, a rock-eating iguana, and a freakin huge jumping green lobster that looked kind of like a grasshopper. We all just about peed our pants. Especially me.
4) Lots and lots and lots of surfing
5) Going on the largest, longest zipline in the world, carrying us 2000 feet at a time 400 feet above the jungle floor
6) Awesome Costa Rican cuisine (the Mexican restaurants especially)
7) Last but not least, our harrowing traverse of the mountains along the Panamerican Highway, which as it turns out is nothing more than a single-lane road with literally NO shoulder, making it necessary for all disabled tree-carrying semis to stop right in the dead center of the road so as you have to pass them quickly with only a general idea of what might be coming down the pike in the other direction. I tell you, them Costa Ricans who kept passing me must have ice water running through their veins.

Good to be back.

On a side note, our baby is now the size of a lime and weighs half an ounce.

End Transmission.

Guess what...

Hooray!
Sheri, what do you think about all this?


How 'bout you, Pete?



See y'all after Spring Break.

I had a very strange flashback last night. At some point shortly after we moved to Utah, my brother and I were having a sleepover with some of his friends. Translation: Adam was having a party and my mom made him let me horn in. Anyway, we started telling a scary story about a strange, skinny man with blue skin who would drive around in sunglasses and a mack truck terrorizing the populace and eating lightbulbs. I remember the lightbulbs in particular. Anyway, after we found that we couldn't sleep out of fear that the blue man would soon come bounding down the stairs (though he might have been unable to eat due to his dark glasses and the fact that we didn't have any lights on), Adam began to cheer us all up with a funny story, and so related to us the tale of the wonderful John Candy film: "Summer Rental." Ah, memories.

The public has spoken: Let Ash win and just put a blanket on it. I suppose that's our only recourse, as we're flying off to Costa Rica for a week and won't be around to shoo him off. He's going to put a perfect little Ash-groove on our poof.
Well, in case I don't post again before 5:00 on Thursday morning, see you on the flipside.

Ash: "In me you see a dog divided."

We love our dog. It's true. He's such a sweetheart. Whenever I'm sitting in the "internet chair" by the front door (the only place that Comcast was willing to put an access point), He always sits either between my legs or right next to me so as he's sitting on my feet.

And a more persistent dog I truly have never seen. Well, okay. There's Sheri's grandpa's dog that climbs trees to get her frisbee, but that's just sheer determination. Ash is more of a puzzle solver, and he'll go to great lengths to get what he wants, especially when it comes to his own physical comfort, and he'll do quite literally anything to spend the day lounging on our beanbag chair (the poof).

We block off the living room with chairs, he skirts around them. We cover it with boxes, he sleeps beside them. We cover the entire poof with random objects, he pushes them off. We decided once that it might work to vacuum him every time we found him sleeping on the poof, but he just seems to weather it. When we adopted him, we expected that he was beaten pretty severely on a regular basis, so nothing we could physically bear to do to him phases him in the slightest. I swear to you I can see the disdain in his eyes when I come after him with a newspaper.

"You," he says, "you swing that thing like my grandma! Give it your best shot." Then he laughs and pees on the linoleum. If we're lucky enough to have gotten him off the carpet in time.

Our latest devices to keep him off the poof involved:

1) Not one, but two dining room chairs, one on the floor, one on the arm of the couch
2) a coffee table so he doesn't hop over on the mantle in front of our fireplace
3) my backpack wedged between a chair and the leg of the couch
4) a large, heavy box so he doesn't crawl under the chairs
5) our air purifier under the couch so he doesn't crawl under the couch
6) and just for good measure I puffed up the poof really high so that he'd think twice about jumping up on it.
7) oh, and I put his bed right in front of the heater so that he'd have a good, warm, comfortable alternative.

So today we come home from church, and he's trapped himself in the living room. He was smart enough to hop off the poof before we walked through the front door, but he couldn't extricate himself from the incriminating area. He just sat there, blinking at us innocently.

"What? You didn't bring me back a bone?"

Then he trapped himself under the couch trying to crawl out and lick our faces off.

Anyway, happy third, Ash, as far as we can figure.