So long hair.

The only thing Griffin likes better than economics is explaining life using economics. Griffin has never really liked getting haircuts (no offense, Mom). You have to sit still—strike one. Hair gets everywhere—strike two. When the haircut is over, your melon shaped head makes you look eight years younger as opposed to the usual five (A day in the life of Griffin:

Griffin: I’d like a library card to get access to the internet.

Librarian: You know, you have to be at least 14 to get a library card without at parent present.

Griffin: How about 24? Do I need my mom’s permission to get a Dekalb County library card? She lives two thousand miles away—is that going to be a problem?)

--strike three.

As a result, in the last three years, Griffin has gotten his hair cut twice. Why wait so long for a haircut? The benefit of living a life haircut-free far exceeds any cost of growing long hair. That is, until recently.

As of late, the cost of long hair has been piling up:

Safety. Long hair is unsafe. Griffin had a difficult time riding his bike aggressively when he couldn’t see over his shoulder (long hair obstructs the view), and given his propensity for bicycle-related altercations, he needs every advantage he can get.

Hygiene. Related costs: there were none. To Griffin, his hair was beautiful. To Caitlin, hygiene and beauty were two different things. Beautiful his hair might be, but that does not mean it was clean. As for actual costs, there were none . . . which should raise some concern. How could Griffin use no more shampoo than he had when his hair was buzzed?

Jealousy. Caitlin got a ton of compliments on how wonderful and healthy and full of volume Griffin’s hair was.

Mistaken identity. A child in the nursery was convinced that Jesus substitute taught his nursery class.

And, you know, you can only get mistaken for a woman so many times before it starts to get old. Sure, its funny at first when your friends are wondering the name of that nice girl accompanying Caitlin in the car, or when the lady getting the sacrament at her home is confused about when they started giving women the priesthood. Call him old-fashioned, but Griffin prefers to be identified as male.

Thus, the day came when the costs of long hair exceeded the benefits of having long hair (benefits included not having to get your hair cut) and in one swift motion, it was all gone. One evening in September, Griffin, Caitlin and a picture of Griffin’s desired hair length, all arrived at the neighborhood Supercuts. This is how the conversation went:

Supercuts lady: Can I help you?

Griffin: Yeah. I need my haircut.

Supercuts lady: Okay, do you know how you want it cut?

Griffin: Yes. Like this (pointing to the picture).

Supercuts lady: I can do that.

Griffin left a lot of hair at that Supercuts, which he expected, but what followed, he did NOT expect. Every person, and it was literally every person, in his ward weighed in on which style they liked better (in case you were wondering, the ward split down the middle about which is better—Griffin-short hair v. Griffin-long hair). There was, in fact, so much commotion in his Sunday School class that he had to clear the air and let people express their opinion about Griffin’s optimal hair length before they would calm down and fall asleep to his lesson. Probably, the most disturbing thing was all the people who felt like Griffin had lost his identity when he lost his hair. What? Griffin was identified as the kid with long hair? It had become a part of Griffin? He wasn’t trying to make a statement. He wasn’t trying to be unique or original or cool. He just doesn’t like haircuts. He also didn’t realize that he would lose all of his strength—also that Caitlin would be confused as to who he was for the next few days. He will miss though the girls at Spelman asking him where he gets his hair styled and commenting on how much they love his layers.

". . . Mt. Fury? That sounds like an intense bike."

Well, January 21 was an intense day.

Let's break it down:

9:15 am - Griffin should have left five minutes ago for the train

9:23 am - Griffin gets hit by a car, on his bike, by a man who probably thinks he's at no fault for hitting a person on a bike.

9:24 am - Griffin survey's the situation, realizes that he's okay, and  the Mt. Fury is (of course) okay, and peddles on to catch the train.

9:25 am - Mt. Fury in tow, train is caught

9:36 am - Griffin misses his connecting bus 

9:37 am - Griffin tries, unsuccessfully, to beat the bus to its first stop

9:37 am - Griffin realizes he now has to bike 5 miles to school, and is going to be late for his 10 o'clock meeting.

10:15 am - He arrives at school late and frantically locks his bike to the bike rack.  All the other "expensive" bikes were intimidated by, well, the fury of the Mt. Fury (and yes, the bike WAS locked.  Griffin claims he double checked to make sure of it).

4:00 pm - After a typical day of school, Griffin scurries out to his sweet ride to quick peddle to the train in order to be early to his first day teaching at Spelman.

4:00:30 pm -  WTF?  Where's my bike? Who dared to touch the Mt. Fury?  After calling a friend who thinks that bikes might have to be registered on campus, Griffin runs, to the parking office.  The parking office lady was like, "Well, what kind of bike is it?"  Griffin responds, "Red and sliver, its a piece of crap.  It's a Roadmaster."  "Oh, its like a pedal bike, not a moped?  Oh no, there is no reason we would have taken it."  "Great," Griffin replies, "So it was stolen."  Idiots.  Well at least we know whoever took it is going to experience the wrath of the Mt. Fury.  Good luck with the sore bum and shifting into the higher gears . . . have fun trying to get any momentum down a hill!!!

4:15 pm - Griffin gets on a shuttle to the train.  After getting to the train, getting on the train, and getting off the train, it's now 4:58ish.  Class starts at five.  After erroneously hoping to catch a cab, and unsuccessfully trying to contact Spelman to tell the professor he was going to be late, Griffin realizes that he will be running the last mile and a half to Spelman . . . with a backpack . . . in a tie.

5:15 pm - Griffin arrives at his classroom, catches his breath, apologizes for being late, explains he had some issues with transportation, and then teaches an awesome class.  Nobody really cared about his tardiness, and in fact, he got everything taught that needed to.

7:00 pm  - Home at last.  A pretty crazy day, but nothing Caitlin's ribs, potatoes and lemon dessert couldn't fix.

So to recap:

1 fight:  Car v. Mt. Fury.  Car suprised attacked the Mt.  Fury.  The Mt. Fury still won.

6 miles biked

1 bike stolen  

1.5 miles ran

1 class taught

4 ribs eaten 

0.5 lbs of cheesey horseradish potatoes 

14 oz of lemon dessert 

A pretty awesome start to my teaching career.

While filing the report the next day, after being asked the make and model of the bike, Officer Thompson said, ". . . Mt. Fury?  That sounds like an intense bike."

Indeed it was.

Honest to Blog.

The last five months of our lives can be best understood by a series of shots of food we've prepared and eaten--some prepared by our own two hands (that's two hands per person, so four total) and others enjoyed at a price.

"Oui? Oui are American cuz this is America--greatest country on Earth."
To your right you'll notice the homemade macaroni salad. Prepared just the way Griffin likes it. Lots of garlic and onion and no celery. Please take notice to your left, the blackberry infused patriotic jello . . . and up top: all the man meat you could ever want.

Fruit pizza. This one has become a Independence Day tradition. Wait, hold on a sec, it's just been confirmed: this is our first tradition!

Chicken cordon blue (That's the American spelling.) For those of you who choose not to recognize France as a country, chicken cordon blue is a chicken breast stuffed with ham (turkey in our case) and swiss cheese. This particular dish was rolled in a macadamia nut breading and served with greens and bacon-macadamia nut brown rice. I think we were celebrating something . . .
Griffin is having an affair with these pork chops. Grilled pork chops with a homemade savory applesauce.

Griffin + birthday = texas sheet cake = cake coma

Here's a quick tour of our Easter eggs: I wrote the equation for the normal distribution (as discovered by Gauss) and Caitlin drew sperm swimming around the egg. Yeah, we're creative.

Funnel-cake day. This one takes Caitlin way back to her days working as a state fair carni. She loves Styx.

Nothing says "Happy Birthday Caitlin. I'm so proud of you and all that you do and think that you are so wonderful and fun" like a candle and creme-brule. Happy 18th Caitlin!!!!

Caitlin's cream cheese frosting birthday cake. Thanks Bobbie!

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMmmmm . . . ribs. Marinated, smoked and slow cooked on the grill for two hours. These were honestly the best ribs I've ever had. These ribs embarrass Ribs Etc. Caitlin + recipe + love = Mind blowing ribs.
A happier man there never was.

So, as you can tell . . . we like to eat. Luckily the married weight has only gone to Griffin's hips.

Another day, another blog.

This blogging thing is proving more difficult then we assumed. I'm sure I just need to get the hang of it - I'm not that stupid, right? So, since we live so far from most of our family we figured maybe some of them (or just someone in general) might want to see some of our pictures from Hawaii. Griffin surprised me with a trip to Hawaii for our one year anniversary. We went like 2 months before our actual anniversary but that's ok though.

When I got off the plane from my 13 hour flight Griffin greeted me with this beautiful fresh flower lei! I was tired but not too tired to love my lei!

Just cracking nuts at the macademia nut farm. We frequented the Tropical Nut Farm. They gave free samples. Griffin loved the garlic flavored mac nuts - he did not love having to sleep on the couch later:)

Looking down on our side of the island.

She can't even wait until noon before she starts drinking. Fresh coconut juice? Yeah it does not taste like coconut flavored otter pops.

Caitlin wearing China Man's Hat.

Cute little huts on the beach that people stayed in. Not sure if they lived in them or rented them.

GRIFFIN: Caitlin, did you just take a picture of those strangers playing on the beach?
CAITLIN: No.
GRIFFIN: How many times do I have to tell you? You can't just do that. It looks creepy when you take pictures of random kids.

I caught this crab with my bare hands for Caitlin. Actually, he/she was already dead/eaten when we found him/her. Caitlin took lots of pictures after failed attempts to eat the remaining crab meat.

USS Arizona Memorial.

Inside the USS Arizona.

Sunset beach. Caitlin + sea lion = trouble. She makes friends very easily.

So as we walked up to the beach at Waimea bay the life guard came over the loudspeaker and said, "The shore break is especially dangerous today. People have broken their neck and died at this beach." -- Then we went to play (and we are proud to report that both our necks are fully functional).

The beautiful Laie Temple.

Haleiwa at sunset.

One early morning, Griffin goes out to skim board.

At this point, after four days of continual use, the battery on the camera ran out. Now, Griffin had the presence of mind to fully charge the camera battery before they left, but not enough insight to actually bring the charger (that's why he's just a doctor in training).

Our first post.

Yesterday, after much consideration, we decided to start a blog. At first we didn't want to succumb to the peer pressure. Everyone has a blog and though we like peering into everyone else's lives and stalking them, do we really want people looking at ours? And the answer was a "hell yes!" This is as close to famous as we are going to get!! So here we are. This is the beginning of the adventure we call our lives. Feel free to laugh, comment, and cry with us when we cry (Which for some of us is more often than others). Right now it is Sunday - and we are already missing part of Griffin's nap time - hence why he is getting a little bit fussy. So, we will add more later today.