May 2024: A Trip to LA. To Talk.

May 22: I flew out to LA once more, this time because I’d be presenting at the conference of the Mormon Scholars of the Humanities once more…but not on James Joyce this time! This year I talked about Marguerite Young and her novel Miss MacIntosh My Darling. Also, it was the last week of school, so Liz couldn't come along. I’ll just get that bad news out of the way if you were here hoping for Liz pics. (Don’t worry, though, next post will have Lots!)

Mom, Dad and Grandma picked me up and we all went to Schreiner’s German Grocery Store for sausage sandwiches in Glendale. (I do not know if it’s full name is “Schreiner’s German Grocery Store” is it’s full name but it fits).

Back to Grandma’s for a little rest (I now remember that my flight out of Columbus had left at 6am) and then went to Alhambra for haircuts with Dad. Then I stopped by Cal Tech to check on the turtles … nearly 80 of them were out and a LOT more were at the top pond than the bottom. This isn’t the usual situation there.

For dinner I picked up Howlin’ Rays for everyone. And then I got a patty melt to share from Lucky Boy because it was time for them to all try this patty melt I’ve been getting every now and then the last few years. And while I was getting the patty melt I also ran into the Trader Joe’s across the street. It was a perfect pick up mission. The Mapps joined us and boy these pictures don’t do their visit justice. You can’t even see Blair! Oh well we were eating and having fun, that’s all. Also: I got the spiciest level heat from Howlin’ Rays and I’m telling you now that I do NOT need to do that again. Also: The patty melt was a giant hit. Of course.

May 23: Dad and I went to Claremont for the conference. Heard lots of great presentations, interacted with friends (colleagues?) I hadn’t seen for a year. It was a long day. Food was hard to find on campus, we ate ramen after for dinner. Not a lot of pictures. Was taking notes and revising my presentation in my mind the whole time. But here are some pictures from the campus.

May 24th: The day of my presentation! I got up at 4am (a.k.a. 7am in Columbus, so actually I slept in) to make a slide show (which you can see here) for my presentation (a version of which you can read here). I had had this idea the morning before: What if I made my presentation entertaining? And I think I did! People seemed to really like it. Mom, Dad and Grandma came. I was flattered to have them there. Dad took this picture of me presenting, it looks like I presented to 3 people But actually it was over 20. He also took this picture of me A’ing a Q. That’s like my favorite part of the presentation game, if I get asked questions after. Also, that’s not my Dr. Pepper. Get real.

After the presentation it was lunchtime and we went to Del Taco. What a great way to celebrate. Dad got the salad. Wow. I had never seen the Del Taco salad before. Or such a big handicap parking lot…I mean space!

Dad and I stayed for the rest of the conference and then we all met up again back at Grandma’s and headed downtown for dinner at Damian. We like Cosme, we like Detroit, it was time to try Enrique’s fancy Los Angeles place. Grandma came too, I was a little worried if she would like it. Well, guess what? She LOVED it. Super big hit of a dinner, what a great feeling.

The food we ate was:
-”Chips” and Salsa
-Guacamole
-Salmon Tostada
-White Bean and Veggie Tlayuda
-Potato and Artichoke Huarache
-Ricotta Tamale (just about killed us all dead with joy)
-Soft Shell Crab Tacos
-Pollito al Pastor
-Swordfish
-Carne Asada
-The Hibiscus Meringue (we also had 3 other desserts)
-Mom and Grandma with the corn soft serve, one of those 3 other deserts

May 25th: Mom and Dad and I went to the LACMA in the morning. Turns out most of it is closed for renovations, but that’s ok, I just wanted to see Metropolis II in action and I did. Other good stuff on display in the contemporary building and then some good WWI and Persian stuff in the building across from the contemporary building. Also saw those famous lamp posts and the big rock.

The LACMA is right by the new Academy of Motion Pictures museum so we went into their lobby and saw an original Millennium Falcon model and the camera they shot those Star Wars models with…there was a presentation going on, that’s why it’s crowded. And we walked over to the tarpits to have a look at tarpit things, too.

On the way home we had lunch at Villa’s Tacos, which keeps winning awards and, you know what? I say it deserves them all. What an awesome and delicious operation. Don’t be scared of the line, they really keep it moving and get you that food.

Here’s some around the house pictures from Grandma’s. For dinner we had Lucky Boy because everyone wanted a patty melt again! I tried the bacon avocado cheeseburger and, wow, it blew my bacon avocado cheeseburger expectations away! So much bacon, so much avocado. Lucky Boy DELIVERS. Keep your eyes out for pictures of me in my next post wearing my new Lucky Boy t-shirt.

May 26th: Off to church! And from church I go to the airport and fly on home to Liz, just in time to repack for our next trip. It was a trip-filled end of May! You’ll see!

Best 20th Anniversary

On May 31st, 2004 I made my first blog post over at briggie.blogspot.com. I had taken a Memorial Day hike along the Appalachian Trail with some friends and I wanted to share pictures from it. I thought maybe a “blog” (whatever exactly that was) would be a good way to do that. A little googling lead me to the blogger platform and I signed myself up. I picked the title “Steady Mobbin’” because I thought my friend Lucas from high school would think it was cool. I did not consider that the blog title and blog address should be the same, so they weren't. And back then blogger didn’t do its own photo hosting, so I couldn’t figure out how to get pictures on the blog. So my first post ended up being about a celebrity sighting at Benny’s Burrito’s during my post-hike burrito meal. Three years later I would make an blog anniversary post with the pictures from the 2004 hike.

Soon after starting the blog I figured out how to host pictures on other sites and paste the html code for the pictures into my blog. All those hosting sites are gone now so all the pictures from the first few years are gone now, too, making a scroll through my early archives a bit of a depressing visit to a boneyard.

The late-mid 2000’s blog boom came and went and yet I kept posting. In mid-2015 I decided to start a “more professional” blog with its own URL after I had had a few articles published at another website. This was perhaps a foolish pivot, but here we are. I manage to post about monthly now, sometimes twice a month, and look back in awe and wonder at how I had so much to say or post so often 20 years ago. I guess it’s because I didn’t have a smart phone to look at?

I think my most popular post ever was this one about sea otters and river otters.

I am still proud of my three long form posts,
This one about a family trip to Disneyland
This one about a wild goose chase at the Mexico City temple
And this one about the last day of my mission.

Blogging has been a fun hobby. Back in the day I was getting up to 200-300 hits a day — which back in the blogging boom wasn’t as many as other friends were getting, but still — now I’m getting about 15 hits when I make a new post. Yet I still have a nice little time when I open squarespace up and start choosing which pictures to post. So will I blog for another twenty years? Really I don’t see why not! Thank you for reading and visiting.

Feb through Mid-May Catch Up

Here’s a big post of things that Liz and I have been up to for the last four-ish months that weren’t going on trips (except there’s a bit of one trip in here).

FEB 25: One thing we’ve been doing a lot of is taking walks! Here are a couple of pictures from a visit we made to Prairie Oaks park one Sunday afternoon.

March 9: One thing Liz has been doing is performing at least monthly at the Hyde Park Steak House downtown. Here’s a few pictures from one night she was playing there where we also met up with some friends for dinner during and after her set. The Hyde Park Steak House food is growing on me!

March 11: A big thing that happened is we got Liz a new car! We test drove a Tiguan on a Friday night and by Monday I was like “Yep, think I better go get it” so I got it! And lightly surprised Liz with the purchase. It was fun to go driving around in it together on night #1, showing it off to all the relatives. Happy memory.

March 13: And even though we had a new car we took a long walk a couple days later to La Super Torta, one of our favorite local establishments.

March 17: Part of saying Hello to new cars is saying Goodbye to old cars, but Liz’s Accord went to a great home. And also, we saw Katie and Anne play the music for Lizzie’s high school production of Anastasia. And also, did you know we have a cat?

March 23: Celebrated our anniversary with a night out at Speck Italian Eatery. What tasty classy time for us.

March 26: Well, I guess we have car buying fever? I found a too good to pass up on Volvo V60 opportunity so I did not pass up on the opportunity. And since March 26th I’ve sure spent a lot less time watching station wagon YouTubes (a lot LESS time, not NO time)

April 13: Dinner with friends and showing off Liz’s new Grandma Taylor dress.

April 14: A Sunday morning walk in the neighborhood.

April 17: Mini-Golf Home Evening! I think we tied extremely high scores. Just learning the ins and outs of the course.

April 20: Ok, turns out we are NOT remodeling the bathroom just yet — but we have added some furniture to our front “yard” (but this is not our front yard).

April 21: Early morning Sunday walk at Battle Darby park. That’s not its real name, but it’s close. There’s bison there. And early morning Sunday walks lead to Sunday morning naps.

April 27: Liz went to SF for a wedding, so I went to Dublin for a Chinese buffet. Maybe I’ve had enough Chinese buffet now. But what I can’t get enough of is watching families and friends having a great time at Chinese buffets. Really puts smiles on faces!

April 30: It was my birthday! Celebrated with Sichuan food with Katie and Joel. It was nice and spicy and tingly.

May 2-5: Zipped over to Chicago for the Star Wars marathon. I also: went to the Izakaya with Mom and Dad, walked around downtown Friday morning, enjoyed an AWESOME dinner at Superkharna before the marathon, and saw a Veyron on a flatbed during my nice drive home.

May 11: Took a nice long walk along High Street and Liz made a great decision: We should take a trip to New York. And now that trip to New York is right around the corner.

May 12: Early Sunday morning walk at…uhhh…Three Creeks park?

May 15: I had a GREAT time going to a rock show by myself on a Wednesday night. After a little walk around the neighborhood (and seeing a Chinese restaurant I think I would extremely like) I extremely enjoyed: Salt, En Love, Destiny Bond, Jivebomb, and SPY. When I got home Liz was like “look at your smile!” and yes, the rock n roll made me smile.

May 17-19: A big thing that happened was it was Mother Anne’s 70th Birthday and all the siblings assembled in Columbus! There were lots of dinners at Joel’s and Katie’s, a birthday celebration at PF Chang’s followed by cake at our house, a guy’s trip to see a Transformers celebration at the movie theater, a little walk amongst the trees by Liz and me, and a cat photoshoot in Orient. And, honestly, there could have been a lot more people in these pictures. I apologize. I’ll do better next year.

May 19: And Liz and I still have a cat. And take Sunday evening walks.