Back from Cali. Wish I could have had a chance to meet Tracy's Aunt Linda, after all the kind words spoken at the wake. Got to meet a lot of Tracy's Dad's side of the family, including some that won't be able to make it to the wedding. So it was a sad but good trip. Special thanks to Tracy's cousin Gene for putting us up for those few days.
It was my first time flying JetBlue, and having my own TV was pretty cool, even if I didn't use it on the way out (sleeping) or on the way back (working on the program and sleeping). And I liked flying into Long Beach airport, nice and small. But the turbulence was a much more than I've experienced in a while, and that was during cruising altitude. Not sure if it's a factor of the Airbus A320 or weather. Played Halo 2 for the first time with Tracy's brothers. Of course got an In-n-Out burger.
And now we're in the home stretch, 8 days and counting. Headed out to Tracy's tonight to help putting together wedding favors. We'll finish up and start putting together programs. A couple more dance lessons early next week. Gotta put together music for the DJ as well. Go through response cards to double check counts.
Definite countdown. Definitely taking care of things. Friday night went out to Tracy's, rode with when she picked up her parents from O'Hare, had dinner at Olive Garden. Then at her place we worked on the wedding favors. Went out the next morning to get more ribbon to finish up the favors, as well as look for more program ideas. Finished off the favors while watching Monster-in-Law. Tracy made spaghetti for dinner for everyone. Back at my place, watched some DVR stuff, while working on table arrangements. Sunday did some more table arranging, after exercising, went out looking for paper for programs, found some at Paper Source in Evanston, put in a warehouse order for some cover stock, and finished up the placecards while watching Thank You for Smoking. Oh, and picked up some Papa John's for dinner on the way home. Good stuff. I think I like it so much because of the sweeter sauce. Need to finish off the programs in the next couple of days and assemble them. Not sure of how much info we should put in. I've also got to update the website with additional information. Another dance lesson today, last one before the wedding tomorrow. Also wedding party gifts are on the way. Also putting together checklist, which reminds me we need to finish up the photo montage. I might be using an Airport Express to pipe audio to the DJ system, instead of running cables. Something else to play with. Also, I'm picking up my own RIZR, in a couple of preemptive stikes. My K750i seems on it's last legs. Case is falling apart, and it's reception fades comes and goes, and it randomly turned off by itself 3 times last Monday. And I'm not getting an iPhone until Tracy's contract is up which is November, so I need something to tide me over, and prices have fallen on the RIZR enough for me to talk myself into it. I would have wanted a PEBL, but there's no EDGE on it, or stuck with Sony Ericsson and gotten a Z310a, but that's not available yet.
94 hours from now I'm gonna be married. Finished up last couple of placecards last night, just have to put those in alphabetical order. Finished designing programs and printed out pages last night. Just have to get around to cutting and assembling them tonight. And then some additional handouts, probably, to design and print out, verses to some hymns, and some things to do in the tween, that time after the ceremony and before the reception. Also updated the website a little, lightened the background a bit, added a downloadable program on Ceremony, shuttle times on Accomodations, updated directions and the map on Directions. Probably adding an Overview and a Vendors page soon enough. Had our last dance lesson before the wedding. Love the latin dances. I like how most moves are transferable between steps. Random financial note: Apple rocks. I'm off work until the wedding, which is nice. Just trying not to break anything. Weather's quite nice. Oh, also tried out the vitaminenergy, the energy drink version of Vitamin Water. A little too much I think. I'll stick with the subtler Vitamin Waters instead. Headed out for final meeting with Jill at Bolingbrook Golf Club tomorrow morning.
Went out last night with Cousin Arnold and Zack and Noah, coin and ring bearers extraordinaries. They had gone to the Field Museum with Tracy and then we met up at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company for dinner before watching Spider-Man 3 at the IMAX. Fun to hang out with new family before they headed back to San Jose this morning. Kids are adorable too. Got to play the repeating game with Zach. Awesome. Spider-Man was ok, seemed a mish mash though. Too much going on. Or maybe it was not staying true to the comic as much. Not sure what it was, but just not as good. Also, seeing on IMAX meant seeing lots and lots of pores. Special effects have gotten pretty good, and I only noticed a computer generated person when Spidey saves Mary Jane at one point. She definitely looked fake. Also opened up some more envelopes. Still got lots to open up, and got to get rid of old before bringing in the new.
So there's a movie filming downtown, something with Angelina Jolie, I think it's Wanted, which actually sounds like a pretty cool movie. Anyway, they're closing lower Wacker all this week after 7pm for filming, which makes getting around here on a bus a little difficult when it gets close to that time. So I took the brown line home last night. First time in a while for that. Anyway, filming for the next 2 weeks or so. Last night Tracy made Chicken Teriyaki for dinner. She'd also done laundry, opened up more presents. I think we could both get used to her being a housewife, but I don't think we could live on my salary alone. But dinner on the table when I get home? Nice. Not having to worry about finding open laundry machines at night? Sweet. Just enjoy it while it lasts, I guess. Watched some more stuff off the DVR, House, Scrubs, The Office, and How I Met Your Mother. Also worked some more on the Photo Montage, for inclusion on the Wedding DVD. Got to figure out a little bit on how to work in Garage Band and Quicktime Pro for soundtrack work. Also need to figure out how I want to handle photos of the wedding, cause I definitely want any guests to be able to upload pictures, but I don't want to run out of space, either. So still pondering that.
Piling up all the old kitchen stuff on the dining room table. And wow, there's a lot of stuff I've accumulated over the years. Like a lot of stuff. But it makes me happy, because it's out with the old and in with the new. Gives me a chance to streamline. Tracy's been opening gifts, so that's how it's getting started. She actually used some of the stuff last night to make dinner (steak, asparagus, home fries, and a sauteed tomato salad). While we ate we watched Mission Impossible: III. Made me want to watch Alias, or kind of felt like I was watching a movie version of Alias. Anyway, pretty good stuff. The Rabbit's Foot is right up there with the Process from The Spanish Prisoner and the Briefcase from Ronin.
Well, a week goes by in married life. And still married. Tracy once again made dinner last night, a red wine stew. Yum. Watched some House and Raines. Looked over some Honeymoon stuff. Odd news, one of the diamonds on her wedding band popped out, and then she managed to find it on the carpet later that day, but even then, they aren't supposed to do that. Hopefully James & Sons will be taking care of that today. Headed out to the Argao's tonight, taking the train since Tracy's taking my car. Headed back in tomorrow to pack. More Gallery twiddling on the wedding web site. Photos take up a lot of space. I just need to work on the theme before I release it to the public, and hopefully then guests could start uploading photos. Sunday we head out to Ft. Lauderdale to hop on the Caribbean Princess for a 7 day cruise around the Eastern Caribbean. 2 Days at sea, followed by a stop at St. Maarten, then St. Thomas, another day at sea, a day at the Princess Cays, then back to Ft. Lauderdale. Should be fun. Get to use our new luggage. Oh, and I went to Macy's yesterday to pick up a Hotel Collection Nickle Micro Cotton Blanket, because I knew they had one, and they weren't showing up as available on line, like that color was discontinued. Otherwise, not too much else on the docket. Supposedly the ship has internet access and a wireless cafe, but I'm not sure if we'll get around to updating.
Back from the Honeymoon. In short, it was awesome. Been away from cruising too long. Seas were a little rough a couple of days, but got some sun, sleep a fair amount, read some, eat some, and hang out with the new wife. Got some snorkeling, some kayaking, and a little sight-seeing done on the islands as well. Like with the Wedding, I'll get around to doing a full write up on the Memex about it. Also, when I get around to finishing up a theme for the gallery on the wedding website, I'll get Honeymoon photos posted there as well. But overall, a good time, had absolutely no problems the entire trip. No bad stories to tell, didn't fall off the boat, didn't get sick. Just a great way to relax.
Got back on Sunday, picked up by the in-laws. Ended up getting dinner at Olive Garden before heading back in to the city. Unpacked a little, repacked a suitcase with dirty laundry to bring back to the in-laws for a BBQ on Monday. Also worked on a DVD in iDVD for a Honeymoon photo slideshow. The wedding AV has turned out to be a showcase of Apple products. Showed that off on Monday. Hit some golf balls as well, and hopefully getting some lessons soon along with the Russells. Watched some TV in there at some point, and plowed through my feed subscriptions in Google Reader. Lots of stuff, but nothing too exciting. Not much on the horizon. With the Wedding and the Honeymoon out of the way, no vacation days till a while, it's just back to the grind and getting used to being married.
Tracy broke out the knives to make dinner last night, along with the new grill pan and press. Awesome stuff. She also washed some new sheets, a duvet, and we broke out the new pillows and comforter. This is the good part of getting married. Watched some reruns over dinner, 30 Rock, The Office, and I finally caught the musical episode of Scrubs. Pretty good. Cleaned up a little, set up tMac, since that will be replacing Argon, the Cube. But got some work to do there. Started splitting up household chores, and I got vacuuming and the bathrooms. Skipped out on going running this morning, I'll get back to it tomorrow. Also found out how to do SEEM editing on the RIZRs, so fixed a couple things there (Tracy's charge light shows up when charging, our Sundays in the datebook are no longer in red, and I get to switch between Dialed, Received, and Missed calls in the recent call list. Hard to believe I have to do stuff like that get to UI somewhat close to what I had with Sony Ericsson phones. Oh well.
After dinner, that Tracy made of course, a stuffed chicken breast and corn on the cob, we actually ventured outside instead of plopping down on the couch in front of the TV. Kind of nice. I remembered by summer is a little annoying, because of all the bugs and stuff. But it was nice. Maybe we'll get into the habit. We'll see. I didn't go running yesterday, but managed to get a run in this morning. Contemplating training for a marathon, just to have something new to plan for. Also, as I was trying to get our Photo Montage and Honeymoon Slideshow converted for use on the Apple TV, I found that if you used any iTunes bought songs, you can't export from Quicktime any files that use those songs. Annoying. But there's always ways around it. If I can ever get around to figuring out how to switch tMac to OS X Server, I'll try and consolidate iTunes and iPhoto and movies onto one machine and one account, but of course something that's accessible to my wife as well. Ugh. Trying to normalize data files isn't as easy as normalizing a database.
