Got our wedding rings last night. Awesome. That's definitely gonna take some time to get used to, having metal on my finger, but I'm so looking forward to it. Can't wait actually. Then we had dinner at Davidson's. That place is doing well, but I think their food isn't as good. The panini was a little too thick. Went running this morning, after a 6 day lay off, increased the speed again, since it's a new month. Rough. But good. Finding more and more movies to record on the DVR, which is so good. Can you tell how happy I am with working HD and a DVR? It's awesome. I'm scared to put the humidifier out on the floor again, so I just left it in the bathroom and turned it on. Hopefully it won't humidify the bathroom floor. Still not sure how it managed to leak so much yesterday. Oh, and tried looking for the missing Vitamin Water flavors I need to complete my collection: Rescue, Vital-T, Endurance, and I've seen a couple other ones, Perform and Stress-B, both Lemon Lime flavors. Couple places sell 24 packs online, but I only need a bottle. No dance class tonight, first time in 16 weeks or so. Strange. Oh, and people are actually receiving invitations already. So that's good news.

Mach 20. Just changed service for my RCN cable modem to Mach 20. That's 20/2 Mbps down and up. That's just awesome. Granted, I actually haven't tried it out at home yet, and I'm definitely curious as to how the upstream bandwidth is for syncing my email when not at home. But seriously, that easy and simple. Email contact with RCN, verification of account, verification of cost increase, and config push out. Super easy. I like big companies, established companies, that provide quality service, of course, at a price, but it's worth it because it works. Snowing, which shouldn't really be a surprise cause it's Chicago, even though it's March. Water main construction work outside my building up inner lake shore wrecks havoc with traffic. But it's fun to see buses lined up during inbound rush hour. Yesterday there were 3 135's lined up in a row, with the 3rd one just about empty. Awesome. And this morning I saw 3 152's starting out down Addison together. I can understand how they can bunch up at the end of a route, but at the beginning? Really? Planning on a farewell gathering for the Fortress of Solitude on Saturday, with recovery on Sunday.

Lots of TV watching this weekend. Friday night, Something New, Saturday, Jarhead, Hustle & Flow, Goal!, Varsity Blues, Summer Catch, and Shade, Sunday, Poseidon, Cheaper by the Dozen 2, She's the Man, Lucky 13, end of Flightplan, Get Rich or Die Tryin', Ocean's Eleven. Seriously. All of those. 4 of those were DVDs, the rest HD off the DVR. And DVDs? Really soft. Actually I can notice the lower resolution. Anyway, I've only got maybe 1 more of those types of weekends left before getting hitched, which was also on last night, Hitch, that is, which is like 2 years old. Anyway, after movies, food. Tracy made crab alfredo Friday night along with some well cooked scallops, Saturday had some Hecky's Delivery with Russell, and Sunday had some Chipotle after going to church in the afternoon. Not a bad bachelor weekend at all. Definitely need to get some new Dining room chairs, as at least 3 of them are pretty busted, and it wouldn't surprise me if more are on the way down. Not sure if that will coincide with a new table or not, but definitely not till after the wedding. Hmmm, maybe we can put something on the registry? Currently moving furniture around again, putting the TV back up against the wall to the 2nd bedroom and the couch against the windows.

Headed out early today for a LASEK evaluation from Chicago Cornea. Hopefully I'll be good to go, and get it done soon. It'd be nice not to have to wear glasses or contacts till I'm older. Last night I moved living room furniture around, and I do have to agree with Tracy that it's much more open, with a ton more space, in the standard layout. I really should have taken more pictures of the layouts, but oh well. I do need to rework all the wiring though, try and get rid of any extraneous, remember to have an ethernet run for the Apple TV, whenever that shows up. I did manage to watch Stick It last night, but after the glut of movies from the weekend, don't have too much to watch on the DVR anymore.

Well, the eval went well yesterday, I'm a good candidate, and I'm going under the laser tomorrow. Everything checked out, and the upcoming dates they had available were Thursday or April 12, at least in the downtown location. Seriously. So, I said yes to Thursday, and figured out the details later. So yes, getting LASIK. Appointment was fine yesterday, easy schmeasy, but having those eye drops that stop your eye from focusing was weird. Or maybe it was the dilation stuff. Either way, it was odd not being able to have near field focus ability for a while. But go figure, surgery tomorrow is at Illinois Masonic, pretty close to me. My mom's coming out on her day off to shuffle me around. So today's my last day wearing glasses. I've got to get some antibiotic and rewetting eye drops. Yes it's awesome. Yes it's scary. I'm gonna get parts of my eyes lased away. Seriously. Vaporized. Wish me luck.

About a couple hours left before I go under the beam. Talked to my brother a bit about it this morning. My mom's cleaning, biding time until she goes with me. It's her day off. Watched a bit of Happy Endings this morning. Not bad. Quirky indy feel with a bigger budget. Like The Opposite of Sex. Also starring Lisa Kudrow. Watched Race the Sun last night. For a Disney movie from the mid 90's, it's pretty good. So yes, a little nervous. Picked up my antibiotic eye drops and artificial tears last night. And just waiting. Got my follow-up appointment with Dr. Saul tomorrow set up. Hope everything goes well.

So I'm not wearing glasses. I'm not wearing contacts. Yet I'm seeing. Pretty damn well too. So I guess it works. So my mom and I roll up in a taxi to Illinois Masonic, head up to the fifth floor to the eye surgery center, fill out some forms, then I get more pictures taken of my eyes, blood pressure which was pretty high, and some eye drops for dilation, then waiting, more pictures, waiting, then they cut the flaps. A little weird to have your eye open and then have the vision disappear. Wait 20 minutes. Then I go under the laser. Just got to look at the red flashing light. That's all. Can't really blink cause it felt like they put a clamp on to prevent blinking. After each eye, Dr. Epstein takes a quick peek at them, and I put on my black wraparound sunglasses, keeping the eyes closed, hop in a cab, put the eye shield on, sleep for an hour or two. Put in some antibiotics and anti-inflammatory eye drops. Eat some pizza. Keep the eyes closed, even though vision is available, if a little blurry. Start using artificial tears. About every 1/2 hour. Definitely trying to keep the eyes closed, but I could use them if I wanted to. Listen as Tracy watches V for Vendetta. More eye drops. Sleeping. Wake up, see the clock. I guess that's good. More eye drops. Eyes continue to work. More eye drops. Seriously. I can see. I don't think the full impact will hit me until later, but for now, it kind of feels just like I'm wearing contacts. I'd been wearing them for 14 years or so. And now, never again. Awesome. Headed out to Tracy's tonight, got a meeting with Fr. Larry tomorrow morning, then heading out to Woodstock to hang out with my mom, and thank her again for taking care of me yesterday, before coming back in on Sunday for brunch with April.

Eyes keep chugging along. One bad thing about getting LASIK: I've noticed how dirty the vent is above my shower. Seriously disgusting. Also something I've never seen before. So got the eyes checked out by Dr. Saul, my usual optometrist, and the surgery went well, as I checked out at 20/20. Then headed over to Tracy's, made some crab quesadillas for dinner. Saturday headed over for a meeting with Fr. Larry, the priest who's gonna marry us, and got some stuff to fill out. Then we went driving around looking for a breakfast place, and didn't find anything in Romeoville, Joliet, or New Lenox and ended up back in Lemont at the Pancake Cafe. We headed out to Woodstock to see my mom, went to mass, and dinner at Deeter's. Headed back in to the city and ended up watching The Pink Panther (the new one with Steve Martin) before heading to bed. Sunday we had brunch with April, stopped by Kozy Cyclery, then headed downtown to watch 300 and checked out Fox & Obel (the truffle frites are awesome) and got some hot chocolate from Vosges Haut-Chocolat before heading home and watching An Inconvenient Truth and leftovers for dinner. And all throughout the weekend I'm dropping the artificial tears. Good stuff. Oh, and found some Vitamin Water Rescue, so now I've only got a couple left to find.

Other things I've noticed not wearing contacts: don't have to worry about it being windy, also, I have no problems catching a couple winks on the bus ride to work. It's definitely sinking in more and more that I have good vision, the first time since maybe 3rd grade. Or possibly before that. It's so odd. I wanted to watch Into the Blue last night, but the DVR had already deleted it. I'm not sure what I want to do with the collection of Heroes that I'm gathering, as I'm still missing a couple episodes. I'm hoping for some reruns so I can pick those up and we can plow through the rest of the episodes. Or when the Apple TV finally ships maybe I'll go ahead and buy the season from iTunes. Same deal with Scrubs. Anyway, watched the end of Happy Endings instead, and ended up watching Benchwarmers, cause it was on. Tonight I plan on watching The Sentinel, and put the speakers in the right places, and print out the 2 last remaining invites to go out. And more leftovers for dinner. Random readings: Kevin's blog is pretty good, and David Thorpe's insights into players at ESPN is great, the kind of stuff that I love reading about, and not just game recaps.

Seriously, the Sports Gal should have her own website. And I want her and Sarah to hang out. Because I think they could totally be friends. That and Sarah needs to write more, Russell needs to as well. Hope Kevin keeps it up. I do like reading blogs so much more when it's actually people I know. But they never keep writing. Anyway, I actually did what I wrote I said I'd do last night. So that's good to see. Taking the train out to see Tracy tonight, and pick up Puck. Finally resized my Windows XP drive on Parallels, which allowed me to install drivers for the iSight which means I can use it in Windows, but that actually doesn't get me anything. Did some more backups last night as well. Chicago weather continues to be Chicago weather, with record breaking high temps yesterday and a 30-40 degree drop between then and tomorrow. Awesome. I figure there's another snow in store before the 2 weeks of spring. 59 days or so.

Well, it's been a week without glasses or contacts. I just noticed last night that my glasses are sitting on the bottom shelf of my coffee table. I have my week later follow up with Dr. Saul tomorrow, but as far as I can tell, things are going great. A little dry-eyedness, but that's expected. Vision's good. A little bit of haloing at night, but not too bad. Is it really a life changer? Yes. There are definitely more and more "wow" moments, where it hits me that I'm not wearing contacts or glasses, or that I seem to be able to see more, or things seem clearer. But yes, great so far. So took the train out to Tracy's last night, got picked up. Tracy saw one wife picking up her husband, and they had the pickup down to a science, he was the first off the train, she rolled down the passenger side rear window for him to put his briefcase into the backseat before hopping in the front set and jetting out of there. We picked up some groceries, made dinner at home, watched some TV.

Got some carpaccio last night at Mia Francesca's on Clark. Ok, if a little busy. Tracy's been craving it, which transferred over to me, so I went looking online for possible venues. The other place I want to try is Bice, which has a supposedly good carpaccio. We're also tempted to try it at home, if we can find a nice butcher to get us a fresh enough piece of meat. Which makes me think, what foods would you never consider making at home but would order in a restaurant? Anyway, entrees were ok. Nothing too special. Desserts were good, and the cappuccino was especially tasty. On the way home we picked up some brisket for corned beef, with the flavor packet, and the trimmings. That's for Saturday. Tonight I'm gonna try and make some crab ravioli, some roasted zucchini, some garlic bread, I think. I also need to copy and replace the hard drive in tMac before dropping it off at the Oak Brook Apple Store tomorrow morning to get the power supply replaced. Maybe I'll talk Tracy into walking out with another computer, cause I don't like sharing mine. That's about it.

Got the eyes checked out yesterday. Week later, all good. Actually slightly farsighted, which is good. As healing continues it'll even out. Also, I get to stop the drops, the antibiotics and anti-inflammatory. Now just the artificial tears from here on out. Got back to Tracy's, started making a backup of tMac. I thought firewire was faster than it was. I had to use it in target disk mode since it kept shutting down in OS mode. I made some crab ravioli (used wonton wrappers as a shortcut) for dinner. Not bad. Not exceptional, but didn't use anything too fresh, so that hurts. Also got some Green River in honor of the holiday. Saturday dropped off tMac at the Oak Brook Apple Store. They topped off the processor to see if it would shut down, and about 30 minutes later a nice electronic burning smell overcame the store. The machine never shut down, which was interesting. Upon taking a peek at the innards, some of the capacitors were starting to expand, one actually might have burst. Awesome. I was getting worried that it wasn't shutting down so I'd have to take it back without getting fixed. Anyway, Tracy and I did some shopping, I picked up some pants, sweaters, and jeans. Tracy got some cookies and some lotion. We got back to my place, started up the corned beef, and finished off The Office and Scrubs on the DVR. Watched Just Friends and The Family Stone.

Sunday was nice and lazy. Slept in, got up, Tracy made hash like Alton Brown said how to for lunch, watched Deep Blue Sea on TNT, (I don't think I've ever seen that unedited for TV), before finally heading out for a walk before church. We made it down to Pastoral and picked up a nice Goat's Milk cheese from France, partly due to it's strength and nationality (Tracy has a bias against domestic cheeses). After church we picked up some walnuts with plans to finally make some caramelized peppered walnuts but that didn't happen. We just ordered ribs from Hecky's, which weren't nearly as good this time around (I think because they were Chicago style instead of smoked), which we ate while watching Take the Lead, another ballroom dance movie. Not bad. We looked over the rest of our wedding stuff, and it doesn't look like we're missing anything. But of course that's not completely settling. There's only 54 days left. So yes, the stress is getting to me a little. Just scared that we're gonna forget something, that's all. And strangely enough, Tracy is nice and calm about everything, and I'm the one kind of freaking out. Whatever. I'm sure everything's gonna be fine.

Yay. Apple TV is shipping. I got my notice. Should get delivered by Friday. Sweet. Which means I get to watch Veronica Mars and Studio 60 on the big screen. Awesome. And we soon get to find out what it'll take to transcode DVDs for use with the Apple TV, which means I might finally find a use for all the hard drive space I have. Think about it, Varsity Blues on demand, Serendipity whenever I feel like it, all 5 seasons of 24 back to back to back to back and so on without ever having to wait for disc changes. Awesome. Anyway, Tracy and I went and saw I Think I Love My Wife. All I knew about it going in was that Chris Rock was in it, and the co-captain from Serenity was in it. That's it. Who knew it was about a married couple, the tribulations of getting bored, and a hussy. Not bad, but I didn't know it was written and directed by Chris Rock too. Definitely felt like a platform for him. And Steven A. Smith has a part. That's funny. I also got to finally eat some Dippin' Dots, which I've been craving ever since Great Wolf. The Banana Split's so good, which I settled for because the Cookie Dough was out. After the movie we finally went through the response cards we've received so far. No surprise, beef is the clear winner, but fish is ahead of chicken for second place.

I finally decided to close up the radiator valves in the condo. So it was cool, but I did it in anticipation of the 20 degree uptick following today's rainy weather. Made Lemon Chicken with Special Rice for dinner last night, at Tracy's request. Ordered up some wedding favors. Watched Chefography about Paula Dean, and How I Met Your Mother, that Barney does a great David Letterman impression which was odd because David Letterman got sick and couldn't do his own show last night. Anyway, we also caught the last episode of Sex and the City on TBS, cause it was on. Went running the morning, and it's not easy, even only with just about a week off. I tried using artificial tears from a bigger bottle, but I'm just not happy and went back to the preservative free individually packaged and sized versions. And it's much better. I always clean out the Walgreens whenever I wander in. I'm a big fan of the Thera Tears. I tried a different brand, but the delivery mechanism was all wrong (hole was too big so drops were too big). One of the Thera Tears eye drops boxes I got is new fangled, with fancy foil wrappers and the actual individual container has an angled neck, so it makes it super easy to get drops in. Besides eye drops, T-Mobile now carries the RIZR, which is tempting since my K750i seems to be showing its last legs, but I don't want to get anything big since I'll be getting an iPhone as soon as I can. Headed out to Bryan's tonight, getting Smoque for dinner. That should be awesome.

So, my Apple TV is probably sitting on the floor in my foyer, since it got delivered today, a full day earlier than expected, according to FedEx. Awesome. Except that I won't get to play with it until 11-12 tonight, cause I'm headed out to Tracy's for the evening. Of course, that's after I spend a whole lot of time in traffic heading out to the Oakbrook Apple Store to pick up tMac, and maybe a new Airport Extreme Base Station. Beside that, I've got a new wedding favor to show Tracy, but that's about it. But I'm definitely excited to see what the Apple TV is like. I snuck in a haircut today, because Mabel was all booked up tomorrow. Probably get one more haircut in the next 50 days, probably 2 weeks before the wedding. Seriously, 50 days. In other news, my dad made it back from the Philippines yesterday, after getting stuck in Minneapolis due to weather for a bit.

Surprisingly heading down 290 to Oakbrook wasn't as bad as I expected, a mere 45 minutes from downtown. Picked up tMac. No problems there. Picked up an Airport Extreme Base Station, since I had an Apple TV sitting at home, and I got an upgrade card for Carbon. Buying things from Apple Stores is too easy. Pick something up, have a sales associate scan it with the Easy Pay doohickies, swipe the card, walk on out. So easy. Too easy. Get to Tracy's, put her old hard drive in, boot it up, no problems. Fan's a little louder. But it actually goes to sleep now, and doesn't randomly shut off anymore. Good times. While I did that, we watched Chefography on Giada De Laurentiis. I am amazed at how these chefs know they want to get into food at such a young age, like at 12? Staring at food displays and watching in the kitchen? Wasn't me, that's for sure. Foodieness bloomed late for me, not till late college at least. So we had to get some Italian food and went to some place in Homer Glen. It was just OK. Had to do some work, so Remote Desktop'ed in after dinner. Then got home, unpacked my goodies, played around with the Apple TV a bit. So far, in the brief time spent with it, kind of disappointed. But I need to spend more time with it. Tracy's working her last weekend, mom's coming in to help a bit more with condo cleanup, and I'm tempted to start that Master Cleanse diet thingie.

So the big news is that my mom came out and helped, well, more like I helped, clean out a bunch of my old stuff. So the closet has plenty of space now, things got cleaned up and room was made for wedding presents in the 2nd bedroom. I finally found a temporary use for those cinder blocks and plywood from the stadium seating living room setup: shelving for wedding presents. I'll have more room in the 2nd bedroom after I remove some additional old old computers for recyclying (15" monitors, old pc's) tomorrow morning, before I head out for a meeting with our ceremony music director. She was busy on weekends and nights through Easter, so I had to bite the bullet and take a morning meeting. Anyway, on to the weekend recap. Friday night Tracy picked me up from work on the way home from her work. We went grocery shopping, I picked up some Tilapia, and she went searching for crab legs and didn't find any to her liking. She ended up making a potato salad to go with her pastrami reuben from Samuel's Deli (she had a long day). I poached the fish in white wine with tomatoes and basil. I think I overcooked it a little. We watched an episode of Raines and might have watched something else, I don't remember. Saturday my mom came out, did some cleaning, and we went to a wake out in Franklin Park followed by dinner at Woo Chon. Sunday more cleaning and trying to get DVD rips on the Apple TV. We got dinner from Joy's before my mom headed home. I managed to watch Imagine Me & You (very sweet love at first sight movie), Into the Blue (pretty much what you expect), and Transporter 2 (likewise). Also started watching the last few episodes of Studio 60 on the Apple TV, which is growing on me. I'm liking it more and more. I was watching the Apple TV reintroduction part of the iPhone video podcast introduction on the Apple TV from my couch. Awesome. It's pretty sweet. The photo screensaver would make a great thing to loop at the reception for the photo montage. Actually, it'd be a super easy way to do the photo montage. Hmmmm.

Watched Brick last night. Great movie. Film Noir set in high school. Kept me enthralled for a couple hours. Picked up a pastrami reuben to eat while watching. That's because Tracy had one last Friday and I didn't. So I had the craving. Brought some old computers to the electronics recycling center, which is only open on Tuesday mornings, Thursday afternoons, and the first Saturday of the month. So opened up more space in the 2nd bedroom. Then headed out for the meeting with the music directory for the wedding ceremony. Got our songs picked out. Then drove back in to work. There was way too much traffic for 9am this morning on the side streets. Shouldn't all those people have been at work? Not to mention all the semis on the road.

45 days or so. Tracy picked some premade pecan encrusted chicken from Jewel for dinner, all she had to do was fry it up. It was pretty good. She also found some asparagus and wrapped that in cheese and prosciutto. Yum. Watched some American Idol, House, and a repeat of How I Met Your Mother from Monday. And that sums it up. Weather's taken a downturn, which is nice. I like it cooler. Otherwise, not much is up. Got more wedding favors in yesterday, need to get those out to Tracy's for staging. Her dress came in, and she's getting fitted for it next Monday. Got one bridal shower this weekend, and I'm also getting my first physical in a long long time this weekend as well.

Got more sample wedding favors, and have to decide amongst the ones we have. Got an upgraded Airport Extreme card for Carbon, to do 802.11n, so I spent a good while taking apart my MacBook. Got stuck on two screws in the battery compartment. Very annoying. But finally got it apart and back together, and everything seems to be working swimmingly. So I take down my existing network infrastructure, my hodge podge mix of Linksys, Asante, and Xincom, and replace it with the Airport Extreme Base Station. So that seems to go well, except I seem to lose DNS after a while. Apparently, it doesn't pass through DNS requests on the LAN side, but rather forwards requests, because it is, itself, a DNS server. That's if it's set up as a NAT box. But after a little more troubleshooting, it looks like it's just on the wireless side, not the LAN side. So I've got some more tinkering to do. But it's much nicer having one box instead of 3 sitting on the desk. And that also makes me an almost all Apple house, with just a Motorola Cable Modem. Also started watching The Man in the Iron Mask. I just like the movie, another guilty pleasure I think. Headed out to Tracy's tonight, hopefully record some more RSVP's.

Got my order from Dr Soda last night. Those 6 flavors of Vitamin Water that I couldn't find locally? Shipped from LA. Awesome. Which means I have a complete set. I'll drink a new one every work day, starting today with Vital-T, a nice lemon tea, until I complete the set next Friday. And then I'll post a picture. Odd thing, there were all earth toned colors. The liquids were anyway. It's just awesome. I might have to start doing some other obscure packaged goods shopping online. I think Cheerwine is available. Besides that, my Sony Reader came as well, thanks to my Sony Rewards Points. It's tiny, and super readable, in the light anyway. So I don't have to carry around any more books. Well, at least the ones I can get from their online bookstore, like the Baroque Cycle which will be my first purchase with the $50 credit I get. I love getting packages delivered. It's like a mini Christmas every time I open my door when I get home. Last night out at Tracy's, picked out placecard holders and ordered those and went through the rest of the received RSVP's. There's only one that we can't read. Still waiting on a bunch of my "friends". Found some Sudoku games for Tracy to play on tMac, since she'll be unemployed after 10pm this evening. And Akira asked last night, but RCN cable and internet has been stellar. No problems. Speeds have been fine. I don't do a lot of downloading, so I don't notice if I'm using enough downstream bandwidth, but I have no complaints. Slight audio dropouts on the DVR, but I can usually work my way around those with some tuner swaps, pausing and live tv button presses, or channel changes. AEBS seems to be working all right, didn't have any issues with it this morning. Headed out to Woodstock tonight, taking Puck, expecting to have to carry plunder home. Also got that physical, blood workup tomorrow. Of course I'm worried, I haven't had any of that done in a very very long time. Odd physical stuff, I last worked out Monday morning, and my calves are still sore. Odd.