It's been a year now...

So at work there's this tradition.  Every month there are staff parties during the day where we eat pizza and Oreos (double stuffed, of course) until we're about to burst, and then the publisher and founder of the House announces all of the birthdays and special events that are happening for the staff in the next months. In September there was a wedding, a birthday, and a five year anniversary.  At the end of the meeting the publisher (this marvelous, gruff man in his mid-50s that is totally like the exacting grandfather I never had) asks each person with a milestone what they learned that year.   There were some nice answers, and some kind of weepy ones. Lots of things about appreciating what we have, and how great it is to be alive and among friends. I kept thinking that my birthday is next month and I have no idea what I would say... and the possibilities kept drilling away in the back of my mind. I've learned a lot this year, but nothing that sounds all that good boiled down to 25 words or less. How do you express what it's like to graduate from college, be unemployed, then find the job you think you've always dreamed of? Or how can one sum up seeing your closest friends spread all over the country, or realizing that living at home wouldn't be torture at all?  I've eventually come up with this:  I've learned that the people who said that High School is the best time of your life really are as delusional as I've always thought. When you really think about it.. isn't every time of your life the best time?

This was leading somewhere. In honor of my one year Hanson-run-in anniversary, I thought I'd post the llama paprazi photographs that I took in the Tulsa airport returning home from the second Mabee show on September 27, 1998.  Before you check these pictures out, you might want to go read Heights, Hanson, and Humiliation.

Good lord. Will you just look at that big, white thumb? Here's the best shot of the ones I was able to snap as Hanson walked by me on the way to thier first class seats. Not shown: the bemused faces of the other people who were waiting with me. They knew who Hanson was, but they just couldn't quite get their minds around why this twenty-something was snapping pictures.  Just in case this picture looks as bad on your screen as it does on mine, Mr. Hanson is to the extreme right, walking in front of the bright windows with a backback slung over one shoulder. Zac is centerframe, his head turned away from the camera. He hadn't noticed me just yet ;)   Taylor may or may not be visible to you as a darkish smudge on the left in a dark blue shirt, jeans, and a white baseball cap.  The woman standing next to him is, I've been told, Eva. She's put in appearances in a bunch of things, including TT&MON and Fanatic. 

Here's a close up of just Zac.  My first act after returning home was, of course, to drop the film off to be developed, and because this happened to be at home and I happened to be headed back to school for a busy week of classes, my parents picked them up when they were ready. My mom looked through them while we were on the phone, saying "you know, your hair looks so nice in this airport picture!"  I was all "ummm... so... there were no pictures taken of me in an airport."  When I finally came home to get the shots the next Friday, imagine my surprise to realize that my own mother had thought I was Zac. At this point I still had like 50 pounds and 5 inches on the kid!   When I disintegrated into a whining teenie before thier very eyes in Houston, Zac came over to stand near me and I realized that he was probably about 5'5''.  I towered over him at the time... the rumor is that by today he'd be towering over me.

Scanner abuse clause #101: upload many random pictures of yourself to webpages, making people wade through them before they get to see what they really want to see. ;)  I just thought I'd throw this up for the heck of it. Yes, that is indeed a mariachi band.  The first I'd ever seen, actually. This lovely portrait was taken at an amazing little Mexican restuarant in Old Town San Deigo over Christmas break last year, and the person in the grey jacket with the *huge* coke is indeed a llama!  See, my mother's not completely insane. I have vaguely Zac-ish hair, only mine is more red than blonde.  Oh, and this is after probably an hour of "we're going clubbing in Tiajuana" primping, too. So apparently it's safe to say that my hair almost looks as nice when I wash, blow dry, and style as Zac's does when he... rolls out of bed. Yup. Life is fair, let me tell you!

Um hi. So my attempt at enlarging/making Taylor visible didn't work.  But here he is, in all of his black blot glory!  Oh, and by the way, he really *is* wearing a Michelob shirt in the picture, but you can't see it very clearly here. Probably because you can't see anything very clearly here.. but you see what I'm saying. Sort of ;)

So now you know why it took me an entire year to post these pictures -- I knew they'd look horrible when scanned.  This is taken a nano-second after Zac gave me his patented "yes I know you're a fan and yes I know you're required by some cosmic compulsion to do that, but it doesn't mean I have to like it" look.  This combined with being brushed off by Taylor might have sent me home an unhappy llama if Zac hadn't apparently had time to see the humor in the situation. When my row was finally called a few minutes later I climbed on the plane, utterly unable to whipe the grin off my face, Zac was watching for me, really looking like he was waiting for me to do something entertaining.  But as I mentioned in my review, I wasn't going to humiliate myself for a good hour yet!  Also of note in this pic: Taylor on the left with his hair pulled back in a ponytail and his baseball cap on.

Yes, the other pictures were of low quality, but hopefully not bad enough to make you wonder where the Hanson is in this one ;)  There's no brother H here, but I had to post it anyways. This is the backyard of Phillbrook museum in Tulsa. Isn't it gorgeous?  It's in the middle of this beautiful, oil financed type of neighborhood, and it houses the work of some relatively well known artists.  If I lived in Tulsa I would go here to write.. it's incredibly peaceful.

This picture is to be filed under: "My god, llama's a freakshow."  It's two hippos balanced on an underwater rock in their marine environment at the San Deigo Zoo.  I just think it's incredibly cute, and I have to say that if there's really such a thing as reincarnation, I *so* want to come back as a hippo. Any animal which has the optimal waist measurement of five feet can't be all bad!  Looking at this picture after the fact, it looks rather like these two are cheerily drowning one of thier own, but that is indeed a rock they're resting thier dainty little hooves on, not another hippopotamus.  They are actually dangerous creatures, as shocking at that sounds.  In Ancient Egypt the sons of the Pharoah used to prove themselves by hunting hippos in the Nile, and the reason it was such an impressive royalty-type diversion was that people tended to be attacked by them.

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