Maybe the water was too hot.

A Salvadoran restaurant just opened a block from our office. I went there for takeout at lunchtime Wednesday.

Ordered a guanabana shake and a pupusa, which is a Salvadoran tortilla, thicker than a pancake and filled with cheese, which melts as the tortilla is griddled. What to do while waiting?

Look at what's hidden in plain sight, of course.

The traffic and the drivers are one thing, but wilder yet is what lies just over the shoulder of our Jersey Interstate Highways.

One of my favorite places to contemplate nature is at the intersection of I-80 and I-280 in (approximately) Pine Brook, where traffic often slows to a crawl, making it easy to roll down a window and pull out the camera.

A few days ago, in posting some pictures from my bathroom series, "I'll Be Right Back...", I promised not to gross anyone out.

Though this picture has nothing to do with bathrooms, I cannot make that promise today.

How about all four?

Photography isn't always about seizing "the decisive moment" or even recognizing that one has just done so.

Sometimes it's about having the patience of a grazing animal or the stubborness of one that refuses to seek a greener pasture--just yet. The line between stubborn and dumb can be pretty thin, as we often see in our politics.

But whatever drives you on or holds you back can finally tumble you into clover. Which is how I wound up taking the photo I posted yesterday of a busboy sitting on a shoeshine stand in a men's room, thumbs flickering over his handheld device. (Oops, that doesn't sound right.)

A busboy found a good way to get off his feet as a long evening wound down Monday night at the Birchwood Manor in Whippany.

They're everywhere. Strange beings with serpent's heads, raising their steely necks above the rooftops of our cities and towns.

Run for your lives!

That's the title of a series of pictures I started in 2002. This picture was taken Friday during our visit to New Brunswick.

The full title of the series is, "I'll Be Right Back: Visits to Men's Rooms and Bathrooms."

I promise not to gross you out.

An interesting afternoon in New Brunswick with Rutgers University staff and archivists, who are helping us find material for our July cover story, THEN AND NOW.

But getting out of New Brunswick at 4 PM on a Friday on Route 18 South....

You'll see a lot of these as this blog continues--things that stop me, that seem to have a spirit, that I can stand in front of a long time, until I lose my concentration or feel that the kind and indulgent person waiting in the car may soon lose her patience.

Oil prices fell Wednesday, the AP reported, after the Federal Reserve cut interest rates and a government report said U.S. fuel supplies unexpectedly fell last week.

The most famous scarecrow of all time was Ray Bolger in The Wizard of Oz, but in these parts we have a bigger problem, geese, and are still trying to find effective ways of scaring them.

Windshield wipers were challenged throughout the day Monday, as were umbrellas, galoshes and all the rest of the stay-dry paraphrenalia.

From behind the wheel of my car, traffic looked like this...

Waiting for a takeout order is a good time to zone out, read a paper, or, if you're like me, start looking at one's surroundings closely and hopefully. I use the word in the old-fashioned sense. I will never give in on hopefully.

At about 100 paces from our office door, Anthony's Pizza and Pasta is not only the closest food shop to our office, but a good one, making fresh tasty subs. The looking around is also quite good.

Forsythia are in bloom. A stubborn plant, it heralds spring in its brassy garish way, flourishing where people want it, where they never wanted it, where no one remembers it even exists.

Pitted against neglect and decay, as here, it mocks our indifference to what we have left behind.

Raise your hand if you're against sprawl. Unruly, unchecked, unregulated growth. It's everywhere, it's stubborn, and it's in our face.

But at this time of year we are reminded of another type of sprawl, just as stubborn and in our face.

Bless its heart.

The poet William Blake saw the world in a grain of sand. Well, how about in a thingamajig on top of a rusty metal fence in Edgemont Park in Montclair?

A handsome coffee parlor named Greenberry's opened a few doors from our office on the Morristown Green over the winter. Dark wood panelling, comfy armchairs, friendly baristas, designer chocolates....sound familiar?

The Greenberry's chain started in Virginia in 1992, and Morristown is its first outpost in New Jersey. Their point of distinction seems to be that they don't overroast their coffee like a certain viral franchise we could name.

The photo you see here was not  taken at Greenberry's (heaven forbid), but at its polar opposite, a one-of-a-kind place around the corner called Jersey Boy Bagels.

With all due respect to Forrest Gump, a box of chocolates just can't compare to a pickup truck for that "you never know what you're gonna get" quality.

This one was parked in Wallington, a few blocks from a very good Polish restaurant, Krakus. (Have the pickle soup. Seriously.)

As you'll see as this photo blog continues, I love pickup trucks. Maybe because they have beds. This one was parked yesterday near our office in Morristown.

The telephone poles were taller than the trees in the new West Orange neighborhood my family moved to in 1963.

To call the Fab Faux the world's greatest Beatles cover band, while true, doesn't do justice to how insanely good they are. These five musicians---the best-known is probably the human beanstalk Will Lee, the innately comic and hugely talented bassist of Paul Shaffer's David Letterman band---are dedicated to duplicating live the entire Beatles catalog exactly as it sounded on record.

Even the Beatles could not do that after their first few albums. And that's why there are five musicians in the Fab Faux--they aren't about looking like the Beatles, they are about bringing the music of the greatest rock band of all time (sorry, Mick and Keith) to life on the hugest canvas--live performance--at the highest level of musicianship.

But this post is about more than the splendid performance of the Fab Faux, whose concert I attended Saturday night at the Shea Center at William Paterson University in Wayne. It's also about a song written for a seriously afflicted child (and recorded in part at the concert). It's about a volunteer group called Songs of Love that has now created exactly 15,000 such songs, each one different. And it's about the recipient of that 15,000th song and his family, who were at the concert.

Widespread joy broke out among the New Jersey Monthly staff this morning as two new offices--reflecting the latest in modular design--were unveiled at our headquarters on the Morristown Green.

The green-and-white banners are flying.

I happened to be walking though Five Corners, West Orange, on my way to Gaffer's Pub for one of their excellent cheeseburgers with frizzled onions. Saw these banners:

"Just can't wait for the Oscars tonight..."

Good thing blogging involves typing, not talking, because my voice is gone due to excessive screaming and shouting during and after the Giants' amazing, take-it-to-em Super Bowl win tonight.

Two quick post-game notes....

Finally made it to the Prudential Center in Newark, new home of the Devils, rock concerts--and great pastrami sandwiches.

We saw the Devils break out of their home swoon with a 6-2 victory over the LA Kings. But the real star of the evening was the building itself.

The glass entry tower is visually dramatic yet efficient in moving large numbers of people. The concourses are spacious, inviting, brightly and beautifully lit. Everything flows. The arena itself has excellent sightlines, comfortable seats and a sense of drama heightened by the pitch of the rows and the dazzling 360-degree electronic signage. Like NJPAC a few blocks to the north, the Rock makes you feel part of its glamour and proud of its state-of-the-art design.

The staff are incredibly pleasant, helpful and polished, whether they're bartenders, ushers, food servers or security people. You feel safe, you feel welcome, and you feel you're in on something special.

And the food is exciting. I never thought I'd say that about stadium concessions, but the area on the upper concourse called "A Taste of Newark: Specialties From Newark's Famous Wards" isn't your average concession stand.

Driving home through the Holland Tunnel Saturday night, I felt guilty. We had had the kind of evening that you can only have in New York, and I had thoroughly enjoyed it. What hit me as we emerged from the tunnel into the glare of the gas stations on both sides of the bumpy highway, was  a feeling of disloyalty. 

Flashback to First Night--December 31--in Montclair. Onstage, the Fab Faux, the mind-bogglingly good Beatles cover band.

"Happy New Year!" bassist Will Lee called to the audience. He's from Texas, but he spoke very well. (Years of playing in Paul Shaffer's Letterman band have ironed out his regionalisms.)

Guitarist Jimmy Vivino leaned into his mike and noted that on this side of the Hudson River, the correct greeting is "Happy New YEAZZ!" The audience, packed into the pews of the First Congregational Church on South Fullerton Avenue, shouted back in kind.