Like one waking from a deep slumber, I come to you now with tales of dreams from far, far away. Drink of these words deeply, gentle reader, for the days have been many, and silly.

I know what you're thinking. "Why doesn't he just leave me alone?" Well, I'm going to ignore that and go to the next question, which I believe is, "Hasn't it been about seven months since the last newsletter?" Yes, actually it has. I would love to blame the weather or the mosquitos, but California doesn't actually have either of those things, so I'm really stuck without an excuse. So... umm... sorry. Not to worry! I still love you. In fact, I love you so much I've created a blog right here so you can keep up with the minutia of my life! Just what the doctor ordered. If you're wondering what a blog is, take a peek over here for a definition. Eventually that blog will expand to become an entire site, and sometime in July of this year joshlewis.org will be born. It'll have original photos, original video, original music, and all sorts of other stuff. As you can probably see, that's where this newsletter is being hosted right now! I'm sure you're buzzing with excitement.

Before we begin, a subject change and a preview of something very exciting: Ken and Janell Lewis give it two thumbs up. Neal Redman calls it "unforgettable... one of those defining moments in my early years..." and says, "such a momentous occasion can hardly be summed up in mere words." Eddie Oroyan calls it, "amazing... miraculous... staggering... astonishing... prodigious... spectacular..." Actually, he went on like that for awhile. What modern marvel has excited and thrilled so many? Why, coming out to California to visit Stephanie and me, of course! Imagine the thrills and chills of Silicon Valley contrasted with the warmth of two dear friends. And let's be honest, it's been too long since you've seen the Pacific Ocean. Neal and I even made a little video about our trip to San Franciso, and you can see it here, or just download it directly (1 MB). QuickTime required. If you don't spot Neal the first time, try going frame-by-frame! Californian Vacation: coming soon to a website near you .

At the beginning of April, Steph and I moved into a new ground-floor apartment in San Jose. In fact, it's in the exact same apartment complex that the other one was in, but it's a little smaller, a lot cooler/cozier, and a good bit cheaper. We simply couldn't pass up such a stellar deal. Plus, the new one doesn't have all those deadly man-eating tarantulas. I never quite got used to those. Oh! We also got a digital camera, so we took some pictures of the new place from inside and out. It's got a wooden floor and an indoor brick wall, and a huge floor-to-ceiling window that lets everyone on the sidewalk see our whole living room and kitchen (if we don't have the blinds closed). It's like living in a fishbowl! I guess that would explain my urge to spread colorful gravel all over the floor and buy a huge treasure chest to climb inside whenever I need to be alone. I'm still working on convincing Steph. She thinks it should be a stage for a nightly puppet show. We could just put some speakers outside on the sidewalk for the performance and hang a sign that says "Come by at 7pm for Flibberty Jibbits and Friends!" I think I could agree to a puppet show if it was about fish.

This big window I mentioned has brought out some interesting characteristics in our pets. (Did you really think I would do a newsletter without mentioning them?) Grandmaster Henson (that's his real name) has always been crazy, but there's something about the big window that brings out the monster in him. He likes to spend his time guarding us from the dangerous sidewalk prowlers that pass our apartment every 15 - 30 minutes. When they're there, he does his part in taking them by surprise by bursting through the blinds in front of the window, barking and completely freaking them out. Henson used to be the nervous, jittery one, but now it's our neighbors instead!

Luckily 5 is a peacemaker. When Henson isn't being a control freak, she likes to sit in the 6-inch space between the blinds and the window and quietly meow once and press a paw to the window for each passerby, hoping that they will stoop down and say something like, "Oooooh, pretty kitty, yes! Look at you, you're so pretty..." and the like. We hear this going on all afternoon through the closed blinds. Secretly though I think she and Henson are working as a team. 5 is the bait, luring the sidewalk dwellers into an unsuspecting stupor over her cuteness while Henson sneaks up to just inside the blinds where they can't see him. Her innocent meow is the cue to attack. Then BAM!, Henson unleashes all his fury at the window and sends the victims sprawling into the street. The setup exposes their cruel efficiency and keen understanding of human nature.

Steph (seen here playing with fire last December at a Twin Cities restaurant) is still teaching Art because it turns out she's better at it than just about anyone you'd care to name. Especially considering this is her 2nd year on the job. She actually won the "Teacher of the Week" award in the San Jose Mercury News a few months ago, she was nominated for Teacher of the Year by many of her peers, and one day while I was visiting her at school, her principal pulled me aside (after meeting me for the first time) and said, "Listen, don't go losing your job or anything. We really want her to stay here." So I figure that's a good sign for employee-employer relations. I was so proud of her that I bought her a new iBook, which she has named "Savannah." After school on Fridays Steph hosts a Christian Club in her room, and the kids gather round and chit chat with other Christian kids, have pizza sometimes, and even study the Bible if the mood hits them just right. They're a tad unorganized at this point, but reportedly getting better. Steph had to take a hands-off approach at the group's outset for political reasons. Obviously I'm glad they're free to assemble peacefully.

I must reiterate that she teaches Art, but she still stresses the other facets of education in her lessons. So sometimes she'll assign essays and papers instead of drawing or other visual projects. Usually the papers are pretty good, but every once in awhile a paper like the one I'm about to share with you comes around. It said, amongst other things (and I shall preserve the text exactly for posterity's sake), "Art can be ugly, beautiful, or something eles, what I think is if a person paint a pianting and is beautiful, but smells, even you stand far away you will smell it, but I will still call it art, because is not just smells bad and you don't call it art, art is maning to let you look at but not smell it, is not like this panting suck it smells, and I don't like it." Amen, young man. We all know how you feel.

Last December I shocked many of you by returning to the frozen tundra without the hair so many of you had grown used to seeing atop my head. But I heard predictions that it was "just a phase," and that I would come back to my hairy senses soon enough. Well, as you can see from the picture on the left there (where else am I supposed to put the camera when no one is around to take the picture for me?) I'm squeakier than ever, and loving it. Just think: I can go as Dr. Evil on Halloween and only need some talcum powder and a fake scar for a costume. Mr. Clean and I are are more alike than ever before (minus the gold earring). The strange part about being completely Norelco bald is that people assume that I'm tough. For those of you who know me well, or really know me at all, the thought of Tough Josh is funny. But since shaving I've had so many tough-guy assumptions from strangers that I simply can't ignore it. Steph and I were thinking of buying bicycles and going biking on the weekends on some of the local trails, and when I asked a cashier at a store if he knew of any bike shops near by, he looked me up and down and said, "Motorcycles?" Walking up to the meat counter at a local grocery store one weekend I was greeted by the butcher with, "So... ya think the Raiders are gonna take it today?" My only response was a befuddled, "I dunno, we'll see," while honestly thinking in the back of my mind, "Okay, that's football, right?"

As far as the 9:30 to 6 goes, Apple is a very exciting place to be right now, and I'm loving it. I'm doing a ton of web development (which seems to be spilling over into my newsletters--hope I didn't get any on ya) and it's fun to be able to do technical things and creative things, designing layouts and stuff. Unfortunately my website is Apple-internal only so I can't show it to ya. Sorry. But there's a lot of other exciting things going on at Apple that I can mention briefly.

If you haven't heard about the iTunes Music Store, you should definitely check it out. Hundreds of thousands of songs brought online from all the big five record companies with independent labels likely to come soon, and you can download each song for 99 cents. Or an entire album for $9.99 in most cases, no matter how many songs it has on it (unless it's fewer than 10, of course). It sounds great, it's easy to use, and I have to admit it's quite addictive. I've already discovered new acts like The Flaming Lips that I never would have found before. (Be sure to check out their album "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots." Crazy stuff.) And I'm legitimizing my MP3 collection now too! (If you don't know what I mean by that, then I'm not going to explain it, because it's way too embarrassing.) I mean, we all love Thomas Dolby's "She Blinded Me with Science" but we're not going to buy The Golden Age of Wireless to get it, are we? Well, now we don't have to, and it's perfectly legal and cheap. I could go on for hours about the significance of the iTunes Music Store, and probably will do so at some point in my blog, but I'll spare y'all from it right now so I can save it for later. Let me just say that if a person was going to plot the ten most important events in Apple's history since the introduction of the Macintosh in 1984, the introduction of the iTunes Music Store should be one of those ten.

Apple can be a truly great place to work, but one of the downsides of the job is that spammers like to target our addresses for some reason. Apple on the whole gets 4 million emails each week, and half of those are spam. Luckily they filter most of them out on the server side so I never have to see them, but every once in awhile one squeaks through. Bit of friendly advice from what I've learned as a web developer: never open spam. Don't even look at the text. Spammers have a sneaky way of telling if your email client even opened and loaded the message (unless your email client doesn't render the fancy HTML-type email messages), and when they know you opened the spam they just send you more. Clever, huh? If you're like me though, you can sometimes find humor in the subject lines (minus the obvious ones that I don't find humorous at all). I got one the other day that proved to me that the spammers know nothing about me at all. The subject simply asked "Miss your natural hair color?" I had to laugh at that one. Close guys, but not close enough.

Well, it seems this newsletter has fulfilled its duties to me sufficiently, so I will release you all now. But before I do, I must simply say hey, drop me a line! Read my blog, comment in the Peanut Gallery, let me know what you're thinking. If you want to email me, you can either write to joshlewis@mac.com, or literally anything @ joshlewis.org. Seriously, try making something up (with no spaces or punctuation), and then put @joshlewis.org after it, and it'll get to me. Now go! Go back into the wild! Fly to freedom!

We love you guys!

PS > Picture linking frenzy!!! Monterey Bay Aquarium - San Fran with Eddie - 5's Rainy Day