Stella!

OK now, my dear good people of blogworld, all of whom I’m assuming are sitting on their lovely porches enjoying a beautiful summer evening in a perfect world of love and happiness (you may say I’m a dreamer, right?), I’m coming to you at this hour so fine with the wonderful news that we have some new snaps for you all you all you all y’all to see.  And these just aren’t any ol’ snaps.  Oh no, my friends, these are of the newest and littlest member of the Otis & James Family (once you get in, good luck getting out), none other than the lovely Stella!

So, this blog post is going to be about two things.  One of them – of course – is going to be about Stella, and the other is going to be about something else that is also near and dear to me, the Grateful Dead.  But we’ll get to that in a moment.

You see, Stella is the daughter of the Original Otis & James Employee, none other than the always lovely and talented Brittany, and her equally as lovely husband, Steve!  We have had the good golly wondrous pleasure of working with this couple all the way from engagement pics, to their wedding and fun pics, we have worked with their siblings & family.  We not only enjoy this couple, we truly love this couple, as they have been there for us through thick and thin (and trust me, my friends, when Brittany first started working with us, it was pretty thin!)  And now, well, now we have the honor of working with the newest addition to their family, the gorgeous Stella!

We couldn’t be any more proud, happy, and honored to be their friends, and to have them always be a part of our family.  It just seems like yesterday that Brittany came up to our office on a hot summer day, covered in paint and dirt from her summer job at Minot State as she made the plans for her wedding, and now look at them!

Now, when I found out that they had chosen the name Stella, my heart was immediately warmed, as I have always loved this name.  You see, good blog friends – and in no way do I consider this to be silly – one of my favorite favorite favorite songs by the band The Grateful Dead (GD) is a song called Stella Blue.  To those of you that are familiar with this band and this song, you’ll know why I love it so much.  To the rest of you, let me try and explain.

As is with any band or musician that is popular, there are the mainstream songs.  For the GD, those would be songs like ‘Touch of Grey‘, ‘Truckin”, maybe even ‘Ripple.’  But then there are the songs that you have to dig a little deeper for.  The songs that take on a life of their own as they are played on live.  The songs that speak to your heart and soul.  Stella Blue is one of these songs.  It’s has a chord progression that just breaks your heart, and a bridge that is straight up out of this world.  Maybe some of you out there know this, but the GD is a band that at one point, was just about all my world consisted of.  They are the music of my youth, and they bring nothing but smiles and wonderful memories and joy to me!  Some of you may write this music off as a dirty hippy thing, but I would beg to differ.  After the pics, I have included the song – this is the album version (when played live, things really went out of this world, as Garcia seemed to physically inhabit the song when he played it) give it a listen and you might see what I mean.

So, basically, Stella is kind of already one of the køølest kidz out there, in my book.  Enough words (Brittany, I’m sure you’re tired of spell-checking this thing already), so I’m just gonna say that we love you guys, and to all my good people out there in Land of Blog – Enjoy!

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