James

James is a very good friend that I hardly ever get to see. Although we both technically live in the Valley of the Sun, we both live in "outskirt" cities separated by at least 85 miles. The last time we saw each other was when Spencer was 5 weeks old and a good 20 pounds lighter.

Amazingly James had a meeting for work last week at a restaurant a mile from our house. Of course he came over and of course I took pictures of them on the same couch. Spencer didn't want to sit on James' lap but he was totally fine with sitting on the arm of the couch. The only problem was getting these two turkeys to look at the camera with their eyes open in the same picture.

All four eyes are closed.

Two eyes open, two eyes closed- no eyes looking at the camera.

Four eyes open, only two looking.

Again, two eyes open and two eyes closed but they flip-flopped from the previous picture. Now James is not looking.

This was the best I could do.

If I am a humorous writer at all it is because of James. I met him when I was an intern at the Arizona Senate and he was a Constituent Services Rep. The legislative session is a very busy time, but the majority of the year (interim) is full of looooong, boring hours. James and I would send each other funny emails all day long to pass the time.

Once I become an Assistant Analyst our offices were very close to each other. I would send an email and, if the office was really quiet, I could hear the ding in his office announcing that the email had arrived. I'd listen for him to start laughing before I would walk down there to join in the laughter.

Somehow, we got started emailing each other real articles that we had altered in someway. They started really simple with just a few details changed but after some time we started changing just about everything in the article. We called them "alticles" (for altered article). We actually have two books full of all the ones we wrote. We definitely had our favorite subjects- Governor Hull (and her oven desk), Secretary of State Betsy Bayless (and her mobile command unit), and a certain Republican Staffer who shall remain nameless (because I don't want to get sued and subpoenaed to share all the articles we wrote about him or her.) These alticles are chock full of inside jokes but I'll try to find a few that I could share on the blog. They are golden.