So the big news is I got fired. 
Okay, not really, but it does feel a bit like it. The short version is that the company that hired my boss (and therefore me) apparently was unable to secure adequate insurance on the Greenville,SC project and the hospital decided to award the project to the runner up instead. The part that feels like getting fired is that we really had been hired for the project, and we had already started working. It would have been much easier if we just hadn't got the job in the first place.
I've still got a day or two of work left on the OSUMC archival project and then I'll be officially looking for work. So…anyone out there got any good job leads for me? 
Thanks to Adam for this very cool website: Wikimapia – A zoomable map of the world (based on photos from Google Earth) that anyone 'edit' by identifying landmarks they recognize. I identified the nearby Schiller Park (where we go walking frequently) and a couple other nearby locations (a random Starbucks for instance).
It's kind of spooky to zoom in on your own house, although fortunately we live in a very tree-filled neighborhood, so you can't pick out our specific apartment too easily.
Thursday night about 10:30 p.m., we got a call that Kurt’s dad (who was recently diagnosed with myelodysplasia–a sort of pre-cursor to leukemia) had collapsed and was being taken to the hospital by ambulance. We got on the road shortly thereafter, arriving at the hospital in Jellico, TN, at around 5:00 a.m. Friday. When we made it back to Kurt’s parent’s house to crash for a few hours, the sun was already starting to come up (hence, the photo), and Kurt and I had been up for more than 24 hours straight.
The collapse was determined to have been triggered by a red blood cell count that was so low that his body wasn’t getting enough oxygen (which is better than say, a heart attack, but is still not great). Fortunately they were able to bring him home from the hospital Saturday evening.
Two employees taking a smoke break directly outside the back entrance of a store. On the door a sign reads: “Fireworks sold here. No smoking allowed.” Behind them through the open door, less than six feet away, the first of several rows of fireworks on display.
I have to preface this movie review by declaring that first, I did read the book, and second, I liked it. With that in mind, I'm also going to fly in the face of thousands of thumbs-down reviews of The Davinci Code movie, and say that just like the book was a fun read (but wasn't necessarily a piece of great literature), the movie was a fun view (but isn't likely to win any Oscars).
Tom Hanks and Audrey Tatou (yes, that's the girl from Amelie) play the two lead roles, characters drawn together by a murder in The Louvre Museum in Paris, France. One is apparently the world's expert on secret societies and decoding symbols and codes, and the other is the grand-daughter of the newly deceased. They are soon chasing clues that seem to imply some pretty big secrets have been covered up by the Catholic Church and its enemies for centuries.
I've seen much better performances from both of these actors, so that was somewhat disappointing, but then their on-screen roles were pretty one-dimensional: primarily deciphering clues and running from danger. Better performances were delivered by the supporting cast: I enjoyed Ian McKellan as the slightly eccentric Mr Teabing and Paul Bettany was eerily convincing as Silas, the devoutly religious assassin.
Let's make no mistake: The Davinci Code works better as a novel. There are many ideas and concepts presented that just don't work well on screen, and as such, the movie suffers. In fact, I'm actually not sure how well I would have liked the movie if I'd never read the book. Each step of the trail of clues is described in the book with sufficient detail to sound convincing enough and as a reader, you feel like you're given a chance to ponder the clues and figure some things out for yourself. On screen, many of the details are lost, and I imagine it probably sounds like a hodgepodge of crypto-jargon and confusing leaps of logic, and the audience is definitely the outsider looking in.
The Davinci Code has become something of a cultural phenomenon, and as such, I think it is worth investigating. If you haven't seen/read the story I recommend reading the book. If you have read the book, and if you did like it, then I recommend seeing the movie.
Here is an amazing video clip of an autistic artist drawing an amazingly accurate 4' high panorama of Rome, after viewing it once from the air by helicopter:
high-res version
low-res version
Read more about Stephen Wiltshire here and here.
