The Wedding
As you most likely are aware, my mom got married the other day.
Everything went off without a hitch (at least as far as I am aware). The ceremony went beautifully and the reception was fun (and well attended!). It was a little hot, but very manageable (in other words, not as hot as our wedding).
Oliver caught a nap on the floor in a room before the ceremony, since we couldn’t find the nursery. We had to wake him up just a few minutes before the ceremony to finish getting him ready. He spent most of the time playing in the back with Uncle John, which was fine, because we had our hands full.
Evie was a flower girl, and she was very excited. She did an excellent job, spreading the petals evenly and dumping the remainder of her basket at the end of the aisle. She even decided to clean up after herself, picking up the petals on the procession out. However, her favorite part was the nail polish she got to wear (and is still wearing).
I walked my mom down the aisle, but that was the easy part. The hard part was being the parent of a flower girl, which is a very stressful occupation! We were sitting in the first row, which was perhaps a little too close to the action. This meant that whenever Evie decided to be a part of something, she could get there before I could stop her. If she decided to stand with the bridesmaids, she stood with the bridesmaids. If she decided to walk up for a better view of the rings, she did it. The rest of the time she was just antsy, and we tried to keep her occupied.
All Oliver had to do was look cute, which he did as well as anyone. He had a black suit and bow tie, with a blue checked shirt and light blue Converse All Star shoes. He had a grand time exploring everywhere and dancing the night away. He was pretty wore out by the end of the night (Evie too!)
The reception was a lot of fun. I didn’t get much of a chance to talk to anybody because I felt like I was always chasing after one kid or another. In addition to family, I saw a lot of my mom’s friends who I haven’t seen in many years. Instead of a cake, they had a dessert table full of some really wonderful desserts. This is a really good idea, but on the other hand, it is tempting to take too many! Alas, before I knew it, it was time to take the kids home for bed. It always comes too soon! It sounds like the party continued long into the night, even after the reception was over.
Thanks to Dan and Allie for letting us stay at their house! We didn’t get much of a chance to hang out, but we were glad to have friends in town so that the out-of-towners could stay with my mom.
Today’s the day!
Congratulations to my mom on her wedding day! You’re a welcome addition to the family, Ron! I would say you fit right in, but I don’t know if that would be a compliment or an insult.
2 year anniversary
Happy 2 year anniversary to me!
2 years already, wow. Time flies!
In honor of our anniversary, I am posting this poem. This is the poem that Sara’s friend Jackie found for us and then read for us at our wedding. She was looking for readings to do and she sent us this one and she said, “Yeah, I know this won’t work, but I liked it so much I thought you should see it anyway…” Well, Sara and I loved it as well and we used it, even though it wasn’t traditional wedding faire.
So, without further ado…
True Love by Judith Viorst
It is true love because
I put on eyeliner and a concerto and make pungent observations about
the great issues of the day
Even when there’s no one here but him,
And because
I do not resent watching the Green Bay Packers
Even though I am philosophically opposed to football,
And because
When he is late for dinner and I know he must be either having an
affair or lying dead in the middle of the street,
I always hope he’s dead.
It’s true love because
If he said quit drinking martinis but I kept drinking them and the
next morning I couldn’t get out of bed,
He wouldn’t tell me he told me,
And because
He is willing to wear unironed undershorts
Out of respect for the fact that I am philosophically opposed to ironing,
And because
If his mother was drowning and I was drowning and he had to choose one
of us to save,
He says he’d save me.
It’s true love because
When he went to San Francisco on business while I had to stay home
with the painters and the exterminator and the baby who was getting
the chicken pox,
He understood why I hated him,
And because
When I said that playing the stock market was juvinile and
irresponsible and then the stock I wouldn’t let him buy went up
twenty-six points,
I understood why he hated me,
And because
Despite cigarette cough, tooth decay, acid indigestion, dandruff, and
other features of married life that tend to dampen the fires of
passion,
We still feel something
We can call
True Love.
Oops
That password to the snapfish site is ******** (Thanks Anna). My fault, I was thinking of the wrong address!
Ready to serve
Time to update because some random person told me to. I’m a slave to the masses…
Let’s see, what happened…oh yeah, I got MARRIED. What a head trip. I’m still not used to it and it will be 1 month tomorrow. (Happy Anniversary babe!) Let’s not forget the honeymoon to NYC and Alexis’ wedding last weekend.
For the photographer’s pictures go here, name: h*****h, password: s****k
For other digital pictures, including honeymoon pictures, go here, name ********, password ********. If anybody has any digital pictures from the wedding, please upload them!
Other than that it’s just been getting used to going to work every day again. We’ve been spending money like crazy and we’re digging a bit of a hole, so thank god Sara started her job today. Oh, did I mention Sara got a job? She’s working as a peds genetic counselor at CHOP (Children’s Hospital Of Philadelphia). Today was her first day! So far so good I guess. We can really use the money.
Last but not least, get pumped for the greatest time of year…football season!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Got fantasy drafts coming up and I’m getting into the full swing of things. Let me just say this:
I smell Superbowl for the Packers.
Okay, time to just get caught up on this
Okay, I’m going to bring this thing up to speed in one big blur, because that’s what the past 3 weeks have been like anyway!
Hmm, think back, what happened. Mostly it was just working all day and then coming home and putting things away like mad. We had so much stuff to unpack it was rediculous. Sara got a bad cold and was miserable for the last few days she was here. We got all of our considerable amount of pictures hung up. I love our apartment. Sara has such nice things. The things of mine that we kept meshed well with her things. I’ve never had a super nice apartment before…this is the first one that really looks like a real person’s apartment, not some college appartment. Basically, I’m in love with our new place. I also really love that we just have tons and tons of things to hang on the walls from when we were in Italy, pictures either taken by us or bought while we were there. I think it’s so much better to have things hanging up that are unique and mean something, rather than just something we bought at the store.
Anyway, when we were walking around in our apartment barefoot, the bottoms of our feet turned black! How gross is that? So after Sara left I put away all the rest of the stuff that I could and then I rented a steam cleaner. I wanted to use it on the old apartment before I turned in the keys, but those carpets weren’t really that dirty. The ones here though? Filthy!! It was so gross emptying out the water…it was pure black. It was kind of hard doing the carpets here by myself because I had to keep emptying the stuff and moving everything around, but I’m really glad it’s done.
Nothing else really big happening I don’t think. The wedding is just CAREENING towards us (two weeks from yesterday)!! Not a day goes by that I don’t have at least 5 wedding related things to do, and the same from Sara. She’s in MI staying with her parents until the wedding so that she can be closer to deal with things as they come up. We’re firing like 10 emails a day back and forth with important information and questions about all the different phone calls and stuff. The good news is, I think we’re going to be good on money…we might be flat broke afterwards, but I don’t think we’re going to have to go into debt at all. I think everything’s coming together well.
I bought a wireless router. It is SO SWEET having wireless access in the apartment. I got the card for Sara’s laptop before I had my router and we found out that someone else in the building must have one too because we immediately got internet from their network!! Of course that would be dishonest…. O:-) When the wireless router came it worked great, but then it went kaput like 2 days later. I went through the whole song and dance with tech support and they eventually decided the router was defective and they told me to return it to where I bought it. Unfortunately I bought it from Amazon, so I was going to have to ship it back and all that stuff. I couldn’t be too upset about it though, because Amazon was FANTASTIC about it! They emailed me a form to print out to get free shipping to return it and within like a day they had already ordered my replacement and sent it to me. I got the new router the day after i dropped the old one in the mail! They were super helpful, not to mention quick and efficient. Sadly, that’s a lot to ask for now a days. Unfortunately, I now have the new router but Sara took her laptop and the wireless card home to MI.
Me and Dawna and Jeff and Tony have been playing poker like maniacs. I got Dawna and Jeff hooked on Celebrity Poker Showdown so that’s why they always want to play. Tony had never really played poker before but he’s pretty good. Jeff’s major flaw is he’s a terrible bluffer and yet he tries all the time. 
Dawna is a little better, but she gets impatient and doesn’t pay all that much attention to the game. She’s also a big risk taker and most of the time it doesn’t work out for her. Tony is really hard to read, I haven’t picked up on his tells yet. They’re giving me a big head about poker though because I’ve won all the money 4 out of 5 times and the one time I lost I had a straight and the other guy ended up having a straight flush…what can you do?
Alright, that’s good enough for now. I’m sure there were 100 other little things I could have put in there during that span, but I’ve been SO BUSY and probably will continue to be until the wedding. Don’t expect too many updates!
Another Super Productive Day
Superstar USA is even better today than it was yesterday. I’m hooked for sure.
So what did I do today…Tried to set up an appointment for Sara with the DJ, but just had to leave a message. Tried to reserve 10 more hotel rooms, but I have to wait to hear back from the manager. Got our honeymoon hotel to change our room from 2 queen beds to 1 king bed. Found out we won’t be able to do the eating tour we wanted to do in NYC, so hopefully we can find another one. Set up my address change with the post office. Set up my cable and electricity to start at the new place. They have a great special running with the cable…for $14.85 less a month I get digital cable and HBO for 7 months PLUS free installation. I also got my car washed, did laundry, and packed up 3 closets worth of crap.
I’m going to go make some Watergate Salad (pineapple and pastachio (sp?) pudding) for lunch tomorrow and then read until bed.
Oh yeah, turned on the air conditioning for the first time today…long overdue!
Part 7 – Sara’s visit
Not too much to note from that Sunday until Wed. when Sara got here. We did move to our new building at work and it is AWFUL. Aside from the fact that everything is old and dirty and nasty, the worst part is that JUST MY SECTION of the room is 80 degrees every day. The other parts of the room are cooler, but not by me, no sir! It’s AWFUL baking in the sauna every day.
Anyway, Tuesday night I was telling Sara about how excited I was that she was coming and how I was planning on all this stuff to do for her when she got here. Sara told me that she felt like I was only doing this stuff to make up for going to a strip club on my bachelor party. This made me REALLY REALLY upset because first off, I don’t feel like I did anything that I need to apologize for and second off, here I am planning all this nice stuff like making food for her and giving her back and foot massages and she wants to cast doubt on my intentions. I would think that most girls would be happy that a guy was willing to do all that. Sara has an amazing ability to really upset me. At that point I felt like the whole week was ruined because everything I did was going to be cast into suspicion. Sara thinks that sometimes she says things to hurt me when she’s unhappy because I’m so emotional and she knows she can hurt me. I mean she’s not concious of this, or at least she wasn’t until that moment when she figured it out. That’s not a very nice quality, so hopefully now that she knows she won’t do it. Okay, so Sara got here and we had a discussion about finances, which I don’t really care about. I trust her 200% to handle everything, because she loves it so much that I know she will do a good job. I think she wants me to be a part of it because she’s afraid she’ll mess something up and she would be really hard on herself if she did. That’s the funny thing…I wouldn’t be mad at her, but she’d be much more mad at herself. Sara had said she wanted snacky food so I scraped the whole making dinner thing and went to the store and bought cheese sticks and taquitos and stuff to make bruschetta and spanikopita and a bag of chips and a couple of 2-liters of Pepsi One because that’s what she drinks. We didn’t eat even 1/3rd of that stuff! Thursday after work we went bowling with all the work people. I did good on the first game, but not so good on the second game. I think even Sara beat me. 
Tony kicked some major ass. They put out a pretty good spread there at the bowling alley and I took advantage of it. We tried to go to Target and Bed Bath and Beyond but we didn’t find what we needed. Friday I left work early and we went over and signed the lease for our new apartment. This was really the day I was looking forward to because I really wanted to show Sara the new place!! Then we ate at a little italian sandwhich place that our landlord recommended and it was great. We drove down 30 to the city and saw a lot of the neighborhood, but then I accidentally got some coke on the sleeve of Sara’s shirt that she likes (and looks really good on her). Unfortunately that really ruined everything because she wanted to go home. I felt bad but secretly I was kind of upset at her because I was having a really good time and I had so looked forward to this…in fact it was pretty much the only thing we really did that was fun the whole time she was here. Anyway, check this out. We went to Bed Bath and Beyond and bought something off of our registry!! The duvet cover that we really really liked was going on clearance so we were worried that it wasn’t going to make it to the wedding. Since it was on clearance it was 40% off, plus we had a coupon for 20% off of one item. On top of that, Sara had a gift certificate given to her by the Down Syndrome group. After all that we got a $200 duvet cover for like $60!! Oh yeah we also went to IKEA…lots of shopping that day. Okay so then Friday night we went over to Dawna and Jeff’s with Tony and we all played Trivial Pursuit Pop Culture Edition. The game took WAAY longer than expected (like 3 ½ hours) so we didn’t leave there until late. Saturday was pre-marital counseling day, hooray! ::sarcastic:: I thought it was okay, but Sara just rolled her eyes and sighed all day. It didn’t teach me anything I didn’t know really, but I had never really thought about it in terms of my relationship with Sara, so that’s really what I got out of the day. I spent all day just thinking about relationship stuff…for that reason I think it was good. Unfortunately, the relationship coach we happened to get was the main guy from the thing and neither of us really liked him very much. Whenever that guy was in the room Sara would cry, because that’s what she does in situations like that, which prompted the guy to tell us that our relationship was fragile. What an asshole. That really pissed me off. He doesn’t know shit about us or our relationship. We went to this great place for lunch in the city though. It was called “Two Goodfellas” and the service was really bad but my sandwhich was fantastic. It was also HUGE! Thank god I just got a half instead of a whole, because it was just gigantic. Anyway, we got through that, so that was good. After that we went over to John and Melissa’s new house. It was really big, 4 bedrooms, and since they bought it in Jersey rather than philly, it was only like $180,000. You couldn’t get that house around here for less than $300,000 and possibly a lot more than that. The neighborhood is really nice too. The house is kind of weird though…there are all these crawl spaces all over the place and they’re like secret passages, you can go in one closet and come out another in another room. The weirdest part of all is that they have this one little 4×4 landing thing that is on the second story and carpeted with a railing, but there is no way to get to it, other than another one of those little crawl spaces. It’s almost like it’s a little display area of some sort. Oh yeah, and more more thing, they took out most of the garage to make the kitchen bigger, but the garage door is still there. You certainly couldn’t fit a car in there, maybe a Mini if you somehow parked it sideways. It’s nice that they can use it for storage and all, but it’s just funny to open a garage door and just find this tiny storage area. We also ate at Don Pablos. Thank God for Mexian food!!! Oh how I’ve missed you. Sunday I wanted to have some fun since we had mostly worked the whole time she was there, but it wasn’t in the cards. First we went and washed Sara’s car, then we came back and did a crap load of laundry. We also watched School of Rock (it was okay, exactly what you would expect) and took like a 2 ½ hour nap. Okay, I think that was about it.
Weekend Update
Well, the biggest thing to report is that we officially have an apartment now!! It’s in Wayne, PA on the main line. It will probably take me 20-25 minutes to get to work. If Sara were to take the train into the city it would probably take 30 minutes. If she had to go to Camden…that’s another story altogether. The best part about the apartment is the area. It is convienient to everything, including a Peace A Pizza, Bertuccis and Taco Bell! The apartment is decent sized, but I have a few concerns. It doesn’t have a dishwasher and the kitchen is kind of small so there’s not much place to put dishes. There is no counter space in the bathroom. The closets might be too small, although this isn’t as big of a deal because each apartment gets some storage space in the basement. I went to IKEA yesterday to look for like a wardrobe to hold extra clothes in and something to put in the bathroom to compensate for having no counter space. The other weird thing about this place? There are washer/dryer hookups for each apartment, but they’re in the basement. This is still better than having to share washers and dryers with the apartment complex, because you don’t have to feel bad about leaving your stuff down there. Another nice thing is that there are lots of windows. This is especially nice come from my apartment which is something of a cave.
Oh yeah, did I mention this place was CHEAP!! That’s important.
Nothing else too exciting going on this weekend. Dawna made like 5 kinds of cookies on Friday and I gorged myself on them. The NFL draft is this weekend, but that’s super boring. Better to read about it after the fact. Oh, I finally got around to painting the broken corner of the picture frame Sara gave me. We did an EXCELLENT job matching the paint. It won’t hold up to scrutiny but a distance you can’t tell it was broken at all. Hmm, what else. Went to IKEA yesterday obviously, and then ate at Macaroni Grill afterwards. I’m spending too much money, I need to cut back. Dawna and Jeff are bad bad bad influences. Made some phone calls to find out who hadn’t gotten fitted for their tuxes. Showed Tony where the new apartment was going to be and drove around there for a little while (this is when we discovered Taco Bell). Told my mom that Sara and I didn’t want to open our wedding gifts in front of everybody and besides, we have to be out of Lafayette by noon anyway.
Okay, too much stuff going on, I need to post this and be done with it!
A lot done tonight even though I have nothing to do
I left work a little early today to go see that apartment. It’s not going to work out because it’s too small. I also dropped off the movie I rented over the weekend and got some cheese from the grocery store (and ice cream sandwiches!). After that I came home and watched Gilmore Girls and talked to Rody about the bachelor party which is the weekend after this. I tried to look at the web page for my health insurance to see if it would cover pre-marital counseling. That led me to a page that let me look up family counselors. Tomorrow I’m going to have to call them and see if any of them accept my health insurance. We also looked up some on another web page Sara had, and one of them was on both pages. After that I looked up rental car information because it might be cheaper than a 1 way ticket to Sara’s when I go to help her move. It’s amazing how widely the price varies across companies!
So tomorrow the calls I need to make are:
2 rental car places
3 or more counselors
The one apartment place that’s in the lead right now
and, if I feel like it,
Any of the 5 or so apartment places that didn’t call me back
That’s about it. I’m going to be seeing Sara a lot next month, which is a good thing!
Good night.
51
I feel like there’s not much to do now that I don’t have school!
I came home from work and made a bunch of phone calls. First I called the guy in charge of the place where we’re having our reception. Sara gave me a list of questions to ask him. You know, it’s quite amazing, every time we have something we want to do, he says yes. No matter what it is, he makes it happen. Maybe I shouldn’t be so amazed because that’s the way people should be when you’re giving them lots of money, but frankly they aren’t. This guy though…he’s awesome.
Next I called 7 apartment complexes. I have 3 appointments set up but most of the places either didn’t answer or I left a message on an answering machine. I’ve decided that I’m going to make my decision after the places I see on Thursday. If I don’t hear from anybody else before then, so be it. I’ve looked at about 7 places, I’ve got 3 more for sure to look at and another 6 or so that I’ve called but haven’t seen. Nobody can say I wasn’t thorough!
Other than that I’ve just played guitar and watched T.V. tonight. I feel like there are things I should be doing, but I really don’t think there is. Oh, I was going to put a little extra in my final but the info I found didn’t really change anything, so I didn’t resubmit it.
Oh, one more thing, I weighed myself today. I was expecting something really bad since 1) I’m not working out AT ALL, 2) I’ve been eating easter candy like crazy, and 3) I’ve been eating bad things and going out to eat. I think I forgot to mention it in here, but on Friday night I had a full cheesesteak from both Pats and Ginos!! NOT on the diet plan. But you know what? I was down 4 pounds from the last time I weighed myself! I was 208, which was only 1 pound heavier than at the end of the contest.
Weekend Update
Okay, the trip to NC was good and I’m glad I went, but we didn’t get to do anything fun unfortunately. It was still a good trip though.
Friday we cleaned like mad!! As you may or may not know, Sara is the messiest person on God’s green earth. We spent all Friday night cleaning the living room, but it was well worth it.
Saturday morning we finished cleaning the living room and vacuumed and swept. Seriously, what a difference the cleaning made. I wish we would have more time to clean. Then after that we went to the craft store to look at some wedding stuff and to Target to add some stuff on to our registry. We ate at Ruby Tuesdays because we had a coupon (this was the only “fun” thing we really did…I know, lame). Then we went home and worked on wedding invitations. It took us the entire rest of the night to figure out how to print on the envelopes and then print the outer and inner envelopes. We also downloaded and installed the drivers for her scanner and got that working.
Sunday morning we got up and created, printed, cut and folded our insert. That took about 3 hours. Sara still has a lot of work ahead of her assembling them all, but we didn’t have the stamps, so there wasn’t much else we could do at that time. I had to go anyway because it was already kind of later than I wanted to stay, what with the whole 8 hour drive (for the record, it took 9 1/2 this time because of bad traffic).
Nothing too exciting for Easter…we had sloppy joe’s for lunch and I had KFC on the way home for dinner. I brought down an Easter basket for the two of us, but I think we kind of got candied out.
Okay, I wanted to go to bed early tonight…why doesn’t that ever happen?
Quick one
Paid a HUGE stack of bills tonight and then filled out my budget for the month. Finance wise, things are looking okay for the wedding…not great, but okay. Gave my paper a final read and emailed that to my group members. Played guitar for awhile tonight too. I was hoping to go grocery shopping and also maybe organize my guitar tabs into a binder tonight, but I didn’t get to that because I had to go have a rediculously huge (but delicious) dinner and Buca Di’Beppo’s. Mmmmm, family style italian.
No word from Schafer today about how his court date went. I tried calling him and got no answer…I hope that doesn’t mean he’s in jail already.
My brother got his birthday present today! Damn those quick bastards at Amazon, it’s too early! Whoever thought I’d be complaining about good service, but when they said it would take 2-3 weeks I believed them. It took like 1/2 a week.
Okay, bed time.
I was going to go to bed early tonight, why didn’t I?
Yesterday I was very productive, but the thing I feel the best about was finding the exact font that was used on our wedding invitations so that we can make an insert to go with the invitations. It took a long time, but I was glad to find it.
Also weighed myself yesterday and I was down 4 lbs., for a total of 29 lbs. in 7 weeks. WAY more than I thought I’d be able to lose! Go me. I should win the contest quite handily.
So why the gloomy mood? Sara was supposed to come up here this weekend but she decided not to. I decided to go down there so I could see her, but the circumstances just aren’t right. So, the moral of the story is that I don’t get to see Sara for 4 more weeks, making it 6 in between seeing her. That’s not good! 
I was thinking tonight, since I’m out here on the East Coast and all, why do I spend my weekends sitting around watching T.V. with my thumb up my ass? Dawna, Jeff, Tony and I should just take off to D.C. or NYC or Boston or even just go into Philly, spend a weekend or even just a day hanging out and eating good food. I know Jeff knows good places to hang out in D.C. since he used to live down there. I have to be careful though, I’m starting to sound dangerously like the “pre-grad-school-actually-fun” Shane.
Okay, I was going to go to bed early tonight, but somehow that didn’t happen. Oh yeah, that reminds me. Someone forgot to tell earth that it was supposed to be spring…couple of inches of snow out of nowhere. So what did that mean to me? Took me 45 minutes to get home, rather than 2 minutes, which meant that I only had 10 minutes to throw together a PB&J sandwhich to eat in the car on the way to class…which took 50 minutes rather than 30 to get to, mind you, so I was 10 minutes late. Crappy traffic.
UUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH
My allergies kicked in today with a VENGENCE. Usual symptoms, watery eyes, runny nose, headache, sinus pressure…in short, I’m a mess. I’m going to bed right now even though it’s about 2 1/2 hours before I normally do. I’m not tired but my headache is pounding and I need to close my eyes for awhile. The worst part of the day was trying to get groceries while feeling like this. I have to remember to start taking my medicine tomorrow. I worked out but it was quite lackluster.
Sara met with the mean cake lady and the florist today. Sounds like it went pretty well. Just another thing to mark off the checklist.
I think I had other things to write but I’m too sick to think or type.
Another weekend comes to a close
I had a marvelous day watching the Scare Tactics Marathon for like 10 hours today. God I love that show. Luckily I watch it so rarely that almost all of the episodes were new. I also finished up season 4 of Sopranos and then watched the season premier tonight over at a friend’s house. Another great episode, that show just gets better all the time. I’m very impressed at the way they do a good job replicating the strained atmosphere in the house when a separation/divorce is going on. Oh how well I remember that awkward feeling from my parents.
I didn’t slack ALL day though. Worked out of course and I bought my bro’s groomsman’s gift like I said I would. I did go back on my word about buying ’s wedding present though. I had no choice, the one idea I had of what to get her was going to be more that twice what I should spend on it, but I got such a *F*A*N*T*A*S*T*I*C* deal on it that I couldn’t pass it up. Wish I could brag more here about what a deal it was, but she reads this.
My sister confirmed yet again that my mom is a weirdo:
Sophia6800: i would just like to inform you that mom recorded herself sleeping last night so she could hear if she snored or not
erith1: did she listen to the whole thing?
Sophia6800: yeah i couldn’t figure what that noise was, until i asked her, then she told me and i cracked up
Eh, that’s it, I should probably go to bed so I’m not dead tired at work tomorrow.
Not a very interesting day
But a nice one nonetheless! A very lazy day, but I still managed to get the wedding pianist finalized, dishes and vacuuming done and state and local taxes figured out. I know that sounds like a lot of stuff, but in a whole day with literally NOTHING else to do, I still had plenty of time to read, watch bad sci-fi movies (my favorite thing to do on the weekend!) and talk on AIM. Sara had the bridal shower today so I spent hours on the phone with her, my mom and my sister. At the shower one of the games they played was where they asked Sara a bunch of questions about me to see how well she knew me. She did pretty good…even the ones she got wrong were good answers in general.
Question: What was your first pet?
My response: I had a dog named Heather.
Sara’s Response: Sara guessed my dog Lady which I had in high school. Not a bad guess, but Heather moved with me from WI.
Question: What was your first car?
My response: Light Blue Chevy Celebrity
Sara’s Response: Sara got it, including color. Sadly that car was still around when we started dating (my Sister had it).
Question: What is your favorite music group?
My response: The Dave Matthew’s Band
Sara’s Response: Sara got it. This was pretty easy, but my mom thought Ben Folds which is actually a great guess…lately I have definitely been listening to Ben Folds a lot more. Overall I’d still have to go with Dave though.
Question: Who is your favorite author?
My response: Stephen King
Sara’s Response: Sara got it, too easy. My mom didn’t though.
Question: What is your favorite movie?
My response: The Big Lebowski
Sara’s Response: Sara guessed Clerks. That’s a pretty good guess considering I have a giant Clerks poster signed by Kevin Smith hanging over my bed. None of the old ladies at the shower had heard of either movie.
Question: What is your favorite TV show?
My response: Scrubs
Sara’s Response: Sara guessed West Wing, which is definitely right up there. Last year, maybe West Wing was my favorite, but I like Scrubs more and more every time I see it.
Question: What is your favorite season?
My response: Fall
Sara’s Response: Sara guessed summer because that’s when girls wear tank tops! Good reasoning, but I prefer fall.
Question: What is your favorite kind of Girl Scout cookie?
My response: Samoas
Sara’s Response: Sara got it; this was a no-brainer.
Question: What is your favorite kind of candy bar?
My response: Milky Way
Sara’s Response: Sara got it, which I’m impressed with. I didn’t like nuts much, so Milky Way is like a Snickers with no nuts!
Question: What is your favorite food?
My response: Bacon
Sara’s Response: I have to admit, cheese is a fantastic response. I don’t just love cheese, I’m IN love with cheese. In fact, from now on, I might say cheese is my favorite food. This doesn’t excuse her from getting this right though because this question was the one question she missed from the “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire” game I programmed for her for Christmas a few years back.
Question: What is your favorite snack food?
My response: Popcorn
Sara’s Response: She got it, too easy.
Question: What is your favorite restaurant?
My response: Maggianos, but I’ll accept Mancinos or Banditos.
Sara’s Response: Sara guessed Peace-A-Pizza. This was a pure panic move for her. First off, she only had to guess 1 of 3 answers and second, even my mom got it right!
Question: What is your favorite type of cologne?
My response: Eternity for men
Sara’s Response: This one was a gimmie!
Question: What is your favorite ice cream flavor?
My response: Edy’s Cherry Chocolate Chip or Samoa
Sara’s Response: Sara guessed Mint Chocolate Chip because ONE TIME I wanted to get it and she didn’t. It was just a craving!
Question: What is your biggest pet peeve?
My response: People calling me Shawn.
Sara’s Response: Sara guessed messiness because I’m always harping on her about her messiness. I don’t enjoy messiness but it’s not as bad as people calling me Shawn. Besides, it would have been rude to point out her faults at her own shower.
Question: What is your lucky number?
My response: 8
Sara’s Response: Sara guessed 21. She had no idea, so she just pulled some number out of her ass. I picked 8 when I was super little because my birthday is Jan. 8th, 1980. (TWO 8’s in there!) Okay, I know that’s a lame reason, but I was very small when I picked it and it just stuck after that.
Question: What is your favorite department store?
My response: Kohl’s
Sara’s Response: Sara got it, even though it’s a stupid question.
Question: How old were you when you had your first kiss?
My response: 14 and her name was Shari Pentangelo.
Sara’s Response: Sara was close with a guess of 15 and Addie Nickelson. I actually only dated Shari for like 2 weeks in the summer and then started dating Addie right after that. Very good guess. This was news to my mom by the way.
Question: Who was the first musician or group you saw in concert?
My response: My dad took me and Dan Brand to see Carmen, some Christian singer.
Sara’s Response: Sara guessed Dave Matthews (who I’ve seen 8 times I think) but I knew she wouldn’t get that one. Even my mom was like, “huh?” Hey sorry, that was my first concert, nobody said it was a good one!
Question: What brand are your favorite pair of shoes? What year did you get them?
My response: Birkenstocks! Everybody should know that one. I believe I got them in ’95.
Sara’s Response: Of course she knew it was my Birkenstocks. I love those things! She guessed that I got them in ’94 and it was ruled that with my memory she was probably the one who was correct. One whole decade spent with them. I should throw a party.
Final results, Sara got 9 out of 20. Not too bad!
Nala has this new thing she does now when I’m riding the exercise bike…she gets up on the coffee table right by me and stands up on her hind legs and just reaaaches for me with her front paws. It is so cute that I have to stop riding and pet her, which only convinces her to do it more and more. That’s okay though, it’s definitely a good habit to encourage.
Tomorrow I need to go shopping to get my brother’s groomsman present. I was going to get a wedding present for Sara as well, but my sister helped me convince myself to wait until it gets closer so that 1) she doesn’t get one before I give her this one and 2) she can take it back if she needs to.
Well, it’s way past my bed time. Good night internet!
So much for spring break
I have so many things I’ve wanted to write down in the past few days but I’ve been too busy to do it. I don’t have class this week, but I’ve been working 10 hour days since I took Monday off.
Okay, quick things first:
Thanks for 11 years Gilbert. Packers fans everywhere will miss you, but none more than my sister. I seriously think she cried when she heard the news.
I did my federal taxes the other day and found out I owed $800! For whatever reason I was apparently claiming 3 on my W-4’s rather than 1. The mistake has been fixed, but that $800 is going to hurt the wedding savings. :-/ I’m doing state tonight, so we’ll see if I owe any more.
Here’s a 10 on the crazy meter. That’s my friend’s dad, my friend who is going to be an usher in the wedding. How nuts is that? I am upset that the article tries to paint him as this big evil child molester that has been coaching football just to get close to little boys. I know that is not true because I know the guy, but anybody else reading this story will probably blindly follow the media’s sensationalist suggestions about him.
I have been completely intolerable for the past week or so. Seriously, if I deserve some serious ass kicking from Sara for putting up with me. Every time I talk to her I have just been the biggest ass. Any little excuse to argue with her I have, even if I didn’t care about whatever we were arguing about. Whatever she says, I just automatically disagree with her. I seriously have no idea where this is coming from, it’s almost like I’m having an out of body experience! It’s like I’m just completely freaking out. I’m going to call her and apologize tonight. She’s been so good the whole time though, like she’s not holding it against me. I spent a long time thinking about what was going on and I’m not really sure, but it pretty much has to be the wedding. Picking out tuxes really got to me for some reason…made it real in a way that nothing else had so far. My crazy mood swings started that day and so did my dreams…I’ve had no less than 1 wedding or baby related dream per night. This has to be what it is, but I still don’t understand why it would make me act like that. Why do I have resentment towards Sara? I’m hoping that it’s just a little hiccup as my subconscious gets ready for the married life. I’m not really worried about it and it doesn’t make me question the wedding at all, only makes me question my subconscious coping strategies. The thing that baffles me is my inability to understand what the underlying problem is, because I can’t fix it until I understand it.
Alright, that is a condensed version of all the stuff I wanted to get down here. I should have more time coming up this weekend, so hopefully I won’t be forced to put this off!
14
Now that I’m starting to have some friends on here, I’m going to try to cut this up so that my entries aren’t so long. The problem is, I never intend to write so much and it just kind of happens!
I got 387 out of 390 on my Operating Systems final, but someone got 388. It better not have been 85…after all the crap I gave him about beating him by 1 point on the first test, it would be revisited upon me 10 fold.
So I finally had to decide about the job at work and I decided to take the new job on Horizons. I’m going to start on April 9th.
Apparently, everyone on both sides had assumed I would keep the job that I had, so I think everybody was a little shocked. Andrew and Ben looked like they were going to cry and Jeff said, “You….BASTARD” and joked that he was going to screw me over on my next appraisal. He also said, “You might as well go tell Dawna so she can start gloating.” Even Garold (who I don’t even like) came over and told me he would be sad to see me go. Hell, he’s one of the reasons I’m leaving! Then I went downstairs and told them I was going to take the job. Tony was so happy he told me, “If you weren’t a guy I’d hug you!” He then interrupted a meeting Dawna was having and told her and she yelled “Yippie!” and disbanded her meeting. I have to say that both reactions made me feel a little good inside. Maybe that’s wrong, I don’t know, but oh well.
I had a pretty good time in NC. I think both of us were a little moody over the weekend, which took away from it a little bit, but it was still a good time. I hate going all the way there and then fighting with her. I think that now whenever I’m with her, I’m really touchy because I’m overanalyzing every little thing, asking myself, “Are you going to be able to live with this the rest of your life?” I know that’s just making everything worse, but I can’t help it.
JCS was good, but you could tell it was not being put on at the highest level. The sound quality was pretty bad (although that didn’t matter as much since I already know all the words anyway) but there were some interesting takes on things in this production. The biggest thing was that it was set in a little bit more modern times, with kind of a “raver” bent…for example, a big saggy-jeans wearing, tattooed Judas kills himself by shooting up rather than the more traditional hanging. It was also a little risqué considering that every church youth group for miles was in the theater!
Sara is the worst thing that could ever happen to a diet! I’m going to pay her to spend one day with each of the people in the contest. “Let’s get ice cream! Let’s get cappuccino! Let’s buy Girl Scout cookies! Let’s go out to eat! I don’t want to make that for dinner, let’s make gorditas!” I think we managed to do pretty well though. Well, I did at least but I can’t speak for her.
Larissa just picked the “hot guy” rather than the “average guy” on Average Joe 2. No matter how much nicer the average guys were than the hot guys, she instantly liked the hot guys just because they were hot. Nice guys finish last again! I hope she dies.
Well actually, she ended up getting what she deserves. The “big twist” at the end of the show was that she had to admit that her last boyfriend was Fabio. Who cares, right? Well apparently the guy she picked did because he got all pissed off and immature and dumped her over it. Oh well…she picked the hot guy rather than the average guy and, well, that’s what you get.
God, girls are so obsessed with the way guys look. Don’t they know what kind of stress that puts on us guys to conform to their body image? Well you know what? To hell with their unrealistic body images! Down with the women oppressors!
Okay, time to get to bed.
Trouble in Paradise
So, thanks to my last post I ended up getting in a big fight with my fiancée today. I think I just learned my first lesson in, “why people’s journals are supposed to be locked up and hidden under a mattress”. I was totally blindsided by it, it never occurred to me for a second that she would be upset by reading that. In retrospect, after talking things out with her tonight, I can see why she would. For the record, nothing in there was directed at her. Every time we have a fight and I have a chance to cool down, everything always seems so pointless. I spent a large part of the day thinking about this and being pissed off and thinking, “I’m not talking to her until she talks to me first!” and now that it’s all resolved I just think, “wow, I can’t believe I wasted a second thinking about this, how stupid.” I still don’t retract anything I said though, I feel stronger about that than politics or religion. For me it IS religion.
I think this is the first fight we’ve ever had that I wasn’t the first one to crack. I can’t stand making her upset or having her be mad at me, so I always call her and tell her she’s right and I’m an ass. It’s not that I lie to her just to end the argument or anything, it’s just that usually once I take a step back and look at the argument, I realize how pointless it is. I worry about always quote unquote letting her win, though. One reason why is that she’s gotten so accustomed to me being wrong that I feel like a lot of times she discounts my opinion right off the bat. I’ll admit that I sometimes I lack common sense and I have an awful memory, but sometimes I actually am right. The other problem is that I worry that she doesn’t see me as very manly. Luckily for me, she’s smart enough to be with a person that treats her right and takes care of her, but all of my experience with women (both through dating and observation) is that they like the guy who is a complete jerk and never cares what they think. She is a competent, intelligent person but she has said on occasion that she likes it when I take charge of things, so I have to assume deep down that she has the same unconscious inclination towards having a man swoop in and take care of her. I’m very confused about this because it seems to go against everything I know about her. Also, any time I’ve actually tried to take charge of things she immediately starts questioning/disagreeing with my decisions, so it’s nearly impossible to actually do so. Women always say with their mouths that they want a guy who respects their opinions, but with their actions they seem to say that they want some 1950’s man-in-charge type relationship. Could this possibly be true? What I’m trying to say though, is that I’m worried that if I constantly admit defeat, she will lose respect for me and that she’d rather be with a different type of person. It’s funny that I still worry about that after all this time.
With the wedding coming up so fast, I think about it almost exclusively. I wouldn’t say I’m a commitment-phobe, but it is definitely something that is very hard for me. When we have a fight about our belief systems it really makes me realize that we have a lot of differences, which of course makes me wonder if we really should be getting married. I know that sounds like I have doubts about marrying her, but that’s not exactly true…it really has nothing to do with her. These questions stem from my nervousness about getting married, not from any incompatibilities between the two of us. I was completely amazed to find out she has no questions whatsoever about whether we will stay together or not; I thought them only natural. I guess it’s because her parents are not divorced. I’m practically paralyzed with fear that I will somehow mess this up. It’s not really a question about if I should marry her, more like a question of if I should EVER get married. There’s no question in my mind that I will never find anybody better than her.
Okay, waaay past my bed time.
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