Paul is surprised to already be photographing Lucia's 18th birthday. 

This week has held more than a few surprises for us here at Team Elledge, so we thought we would share a few with you:

Paul and Leasha's beloved Italy was knocked out of the World Cup!

More surprising than Italy's loss was the fact that the U.S. team advanced!

We shot a job this week with the new(ish) Phase 65+ back, and we were actually able to shoot (reasonably) fast with it! The CaptureOne software and the backs have come a long way...

Turns out that even tornadoes find Chicago a lovely place to come visit in the summer!

The display on Apple's new iPhone 4 is so dense, individual pixels can't be distinguished by the naked eye! Yet another reason Paul must have one now.

Burger diplomacy works! Apparently Obama thinks Ray's Hell Burger is the best place to feed a hungry Russian president and discuss world affairs.

General McChrystal learns the hard way to heed the words we at the studio live by: if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all!

And finally, a YouTube video that is truly a surprise almost 30 years later. No one at the studio can resist the Pickle Surprise! Check it out!  

We here at Team Elledge are no exception when it comes to enjoying the "beautiful game" of futbol. While we are busy enough (knock on wood) that we are not able to catch many games live, we are definitely keeping track of the matches and rooting for our respective teams. Paul and Leasha are, of course, cheering on Italy, while James is pulling (predictably) for underdog Cote d'Ivoire and our newest team member, John, favors Brazil.  Paul actually happened to be in Italy during the last World Cup, and he thoroughly enjoyed getting to experience this global event in a foreign country!