And Now, Finally...The Day Before & The Wedding

Well, despite my failing to keep up with posting during those last couple days before the wedding, things proceeded and everything went remarkably well.

Thursday and Friday were very busy days. Thursday morning Adam went to go get his tux only to discover that his shirt was about 6 inches too short. He stopped at Casual Male to get a replacement later in the day. Catherine and I caught up on some of my DVR shows. When Adam got home we went to the florist to check out the flower arrangements. After that we parted ways for most of the day. Catherine and I got some lunch and then headed up to Adam’s parents’ house for our makeup test run with Sarah.

We finished up there quicker than anticipated and decided to go over to The Meadows early. Adam’s sisters came along as did Catherine (the roommate.) We started decorating the hall with favors and other décor. Because we had so much extra help (Adam and Tony showed up a little after we got there) we finished up in about half an hour. After some final confirmations and the like with the hall I paid the bill and we were off.

Adam went back home while I took Catherine (the sister) to her hotel to check in. We happened to pull in right as my mom and June got there. They got checked in successfully and I called my dad and brother to see where they were. We hung out in the lobby for a little while until Evan and Jodi showed up. We helped them haul their stuff to their room and socialized until Catherine and I had to leave to go get our nails done. I got fake ones put on and that was an experience! I'd never had anything done to my nails so the dentist-like drill sounding thing she used to buzz down my nails was a little scary. But they turned out great. Much better than my normal, wussy nails. My one complaint is that they were so smooth I couldn't scratch anything. If I had an itch I had to just rub it vigorously.

After nails were done we went back to the hotel to check on everyone. Dad and Cheryl were there by then and we agreed to meet them at the church. We headed over for the rehearsal. Shockingly, everyone was there on time. Good job guys! It was pretty painless and a fun time. We went to Good Company for the dinner. Gifts were given, conversations were had, and I hope everyone had as good a time as I did. It was nice to have everyone together and for my family to meet Adam's.

After the dinner Catherine, Catherine, my mom, and June headed back to our house where we played a few rousing rounds of Snorta. (See previous post about this game...) Everyone went home, I did some final prep work, took a shower, and went to bed.

I woke up at 4:30 and couldn't fall back asleep. I don't think it was nerves but who knows. I woke up because I had three questions that we hadn't thought of and I needed them answered. But I just wrote them down and left them for Adam to deal with. And he did. Which was good. I got up and showered (with a shower cap on) and got dressed. My mom, June, and Catherine showed up around nine. My mom and I left June and Catherine to their own devices while we took a walk around the park across from our house. When we returned the three of them serenaded me with some schmaltzy tunes before we gathered up everything we needed and headed to the hair salon.

We arrived a bit early because I'm still not sure exactly how to get there but they were waiting for us. My hair went up pretty quickly and everyone else was able to get a style they liked. Even my mom gave it a shot.

After everyone’s hair was done we stopped at Erbert and Gerbert’s to pick up lunch. I felt slightly ridiculous going into the restaurant with my glammed-up hair and tiara. But what are you going to do? We took the lunches back to Adam’s parents’ house. Evan, Jodi, and Gabriel were already there along with Sarah and Adam’s parents. We ate lunch together and although I didn’t eat much (half of the sandwich and some water) it was a good time. It was nice to see my family and his getting along so well. After lunch Evan, Jodi, Gabriel, my mom, and June all took off to go back to the hotel to get changed. Sarah did my makeup and then Catherine (the sister) helped me get dressed while the other Catherine got made-up. After everyone was prettied up and dressed we hopped into Sarah’s car (well, in my case, I shoved myself into the car) and headed to the church.

As we came up 8th, Sarah and Catherine saw that the guys were standing outside the front of the church and yelled, “DUCK!” I reflexively put my head down to hide in the backseat. Adam tells me that they were getting pictures taken and he didn’t even notice we were there, but it was still a close call. Adam’s mom opened up the door at the back of the church and we snuck down to the Bride’s Room the back way. We hung out for awhile. Katie, my mom, Adam’s mom, and various other people (including the photographer) popped in and out in the time before the ceremony. We played “Duh!” for a bit to pass the time. The Catherine’s were stolen away for a little while to take pictures with Adam. Then my sister and I made our first joint trip to the bathroom since it’s pretty much impossible to go by yourself while wearing an enormous white dress. Interesting experience… At least I can take comfort in the fact that she’s a med student so perhaps she can write it off as practical experience. Anyway, as 3:30 came and went I started to get antsy. I had been told that Fr Mike would call me on the phone when they were ready so I kept staring at the phone, willing it to ring. Instead, Katie came down to get us when the time came. We rode the elevator up and got into position, the Catherine’s at the edge of the back of the church and me hiding further back. As the guys came out and the processional started, the roar of a train and its whistle could be heard outside. Of all the times for a train to pass… Geesh.

There are certain times in your life where you’re overcome with this surreal feeling. You’re not sure if it’s your life you’re living and you just move without thinking. I got this same feeling during my high school and college graduations. There are pictures of me walking up to get the diplomas, shaking important peoples’ hands, but I really don’t remember it too well. This is how it felt to walk down that aisle toward the front of the church. Yes, I definitely concentrated on not tripping and keeping my dad off my dress, but other than that my mind was clear. I have no idea who was in the pews and since my back was to them most of the ceremony I couldn’t peek later on. We got to the front, my dad made small talk with Adam for what seemed like forever (in his defense, he was just following Fr Mike’s instructions) and then we got started. I had been concerned about the kneeling thing in the dress and big shoes. There was no need to worry. The dress kind of padded my knees and I had no trouble getting up and down in the shoes. Whew!

The ceremony is a little clearer in my mind than the trip down the aisle to get there was. There were certainly times where I really had to concentrate to make sure I said the right thing into the microphone. I could just see myself saying, “I, Adam” or something equally stupid. But most of the time it was just listening to what Fr Mike had to say and standing up and kneeling. Everything went well. No one tripped, there wasn’t a baby meltdown from the pews, nothing caught on fire, Dave remembered the rings (although Adam put mine on backwards…), everything went as planned.

After the ceremony we came back up to the front to have the marriage license signed and take pictures. It went pretty quickly and was almost painless. I say “almost” because almost everyone who took pictures with me kept yanking my veil. It was attached to my head! Ouch. The pictures in the church were mostly family with a few singles of me and some wedding party. When we were done Catherine (the roommate) bustled my dress while the guys messed around with our flowers. We headed outside where I decided it might be prudent to remove the veil since it was pretty windy.

Adam and I got into his car (closely followed by the photographer, snapping away) while the other members of the wedding party divided themselves. We went to City Park for the second round of photos. There were some people at the fountain as we arrived but they left soon after. We took pictures in front of a garden-looking area first. While we were there a group of high-school aged hoodlums on bikes showed up and started screaming, laughing, and jumping around in the fountain (interesting, since there’s a sign that clearly states “no jumping in the fountain.”) We managed to avoid them and even got to take some pictures in front of the fountain. The problem with that was the wind kept blowing in our direction so we were getting wet. Adam and I took a couple more pictures by a tree and then walking back to the car. The photographer actually got in the back seat of the car this time and took more pictures before we left for the reception.

When we arrived at The Meadows (earlier than anticipated!) we waited outside for the DJ. We ran into my uncle John and my friend Tina and swore them to secrecy before we let them go inside. The DJ came out to do a final confirmation of some stuff and then we went inside to wait in the foyer for our Grand March.
We were announced, went to the table, and then stood there for a minute looking dumb since we didn’t know how to tell people that’s all we had, go back to the apps. We went over by the cake, cut it, had some good photo ops, and then the party could start. We tried to say hi to everyone there but I’m sure we missed some people. Everyone looked like they were having fun and it was good to see everyone mingling. We were a little late getting the head table to start dinner because we kind of lost track of time. Oh well. We had some toasts, Fr Bob said grace, and then dinner started. The food was wonderful. Yummy potatoes. After dinner came cake and although it was delicious I couldn’t even eat an entire piece. (Fear not, I made up for it with the top layer we took home.)

We had our first dance to Clay Aiken’s “Everything I Have” (Adam probably hates that I just told everyone we danced to Clay Aiken!) and even though the song is only something like three and a half minutes long it seemed like forever. After that the DJ took over and people danced. We did the bouquet toss (which I sucked at) and garter toss. Then we got to make Tony and Paula dance together which is always the best part. I got a little scared when guests started what seemed like a mass exodus. Lots of people did leave by about 8:30, but enough people stuck around and were having fun that we were able to make it to 10:30 (versus an 11:00 original stopping point.) After the last dance we pow-wowed with the parents to make sure they had their instructions and then we took off.

We got back home and I immediately had Adam let me out of the dress. It wasn’t really that uncomfortable, but the sequins on the bodice had left a rash on my arms and I really wanted to get out of the boning and strapless bra. And the garter. The stupid garter cut off the circulation to my leg and left a big indent. And my feet… my poor feet! Ugh. Anyway, after de-dressing I stood in the bathroom undoing my hair. I counted 31 bobby pins of varying sizes and two tiny rubber bands. And a can of hairspray, some putty stuff of some kind, and lots of hard work with a curler. After I managed to extract all the pins and foreign objects I stood in the shower, letting all the crap dissolve while trying not to yank on the snarls. It all came out pretty well and left my hair just slightly frizzy the next day. And then we went to bed.

The next morning we were up bright and early to finish packing, get ready for a week away from the house, and prepare for our impromptu breakfast party. Everyone showed up, enjoyed some donuts, divided up our leftover cake, dropped off all the stuff from the reception, and had a good time until we kicked them out so we could get to the airport. Although I suppose we didn’t have to be as rude as we were since our flight was delayed over an hour and a half. Oh well.

So, there’s my recap of the wedding. Hey, I’m only a month late…

As far as I know, everything went off without a hitch. If there were any problems, everyone did a great job of hiding them from me. The flowers were gorgeous and everyone who has seen the pictures comments on them. My hair was great and it looks very red in all the pictures. The food was wonderful, the cake rocked, the venue was lovely. My only complaint, perhaps, might be the DJ. He kept playing songs that no one was dancing to. And he kept playing songs that I’m not sure you CAN dance to. And he was not as interactive as I’d anticipated. But, oh well, as long as people had fun it’s ok. I was happy with how it all turned out. Now I just need to get my act together and put the hundreds of photos into the photo album.

Oversharing Blog Post #too many

Hopefully this can be the last over-sharing blog posting for a while. Believe me, I’m getting just as tired of it as you are. I was going to try and do one of those expandable post things so you could click if you wanted to read all of this but it looked too complicated. So read on if you'd like. Or don't. It's your choice. We're all adults here.

I had mentioned a while back that at my last doctor’s appointment they gave me Seasonique in place of the Seasonale I’d been on for the past two years because it mysteriously quit working (tons of breakthrough bleeding.) I started taking the Seasonique right away and for about a month things were fine. And then in the middle of July it started. It went on and on, ebbing and flowing, completely unpredictable, uncontrollable, a constant frustration. I had to break down and buy maxi-pads for the first time in about six or seven years because I couldn’t predict when it would start or stop so I didn’t want to use tampons. There were days I actually had to take drugs to be able to function because I was cramping so badly. The Wednesday before the wedding was one of those days. After returning from the drive-in with Adam and Catherine I laid down in bed, took two Pamprin, and tried to relax my discontented uterus.

I had considered calling the doctor in the week before the wedding to see if there was anything they could do to help me out, but I didn’t. I probably should have. On Friday morning it was still there. At that point, though, there was really nothing I could do about it except make the best of the situation. Luckily it wasn’t turbo-style, just an annoyance, but it still lingered at the back of my mind throughout the whole day. When we left for Alaska it was a minor inconvenience. But by Wednesday it was back with a vengeance and made the excursion in Skagway almost unbearable. It was the longest one – an eight hour bus/train ride up to Yukon and back – and let me tell you it’s not a pleasant situation, being stuck in a bus for hours in that condition. I stayed sitting in the back of the bus most of the time. I didn’t want to risk standing up because it was such a disgusting feeling. We missed our opportunity to get our picture taken by the “Welcome to the Yukon Territories” sign because I’d decided I couldn’t wait and tried to go to the bathroom on the bus. By the time I came back out everyone was back on the bus. I broke down in the back of the bus, fearing I was ruining our honeymoon because my stupid body refused to cooperate. I’m tearing up even writing about it now.

I know it was frustrating for Adam too but really there was nothing either of us could do about it. I had not anticipated it would reappear so fully (blindly optimistic of me, I suppose) so I was forced to buy overpriced stuff from the ship’s store in brands I didn’t like just to survive it. Wednesday was definitely the worst day and though it remained a bother, I was able to function and deal with it a lot better for the duration of the trip since it was confined to just one area rather than attacking my whole body at one time.

This, of course, led to discussions about what we were going to do when we returned. I had considered throwing the Seasonique into the ocean half way through the trip but I reconsidered that when I realized that I was completely unprepared for a full-blown appearance. So I kept taking the pills although I abandoned my 7AM on the dot concern to which I had remained so religious. I stopped taking them the Sunday we got back. And, true to my prediction, was soon thereafter hit by the full-blown, hormone-control-deprived results. Without anything foreign in my system it went through its usual route and was gone about a week later. For the first time in over two months I could get dressed without worrying about getting the towel dirty or deciding which level of protection to go with.

*sigh*

But this still left us with the decision of what to do. I had actually talked through this a little over lunch with Catherine (the sister) on the day before the wedding. I know there are many non-hormonal birth control methods out there. My problem is I like most of the effects of the hormonal methods. I was on a 28-day pill for a couple years back in college and it was great. And even the Seasonale worked wonderfully for almost two years. I went on the 91-day pill to avoid all the side-effects of my natural cycle. I’m all for having something control it a little. Plus, most non-hormonal methods require, uh, planning (ahem.) We’re lazy. It’s much easier for me to pop a pill every morning.

So I called my doctor yesterday afternoon to request a prescription for the 28-day pill again. It’s not my ideal solution but I’m hoping it will solve my breakthrough problems (as in, there should be no unexpected bleeding. EVER!) and will be a satisfactory and dependable birth control method until it’s decided to un-control birth. We'll see how it goes.

Weekend Recap (and my new hideous driver's license picture)

With Adam no longer working every weekend we’ve been trying to figure out what to do with the two days we didn’t previous have to spend together. This weekend his parents were out of town so he couldn’t spend most of Saturday outside working on filling in the leaky basement window like he did last weekend. Instead we did some power shopping on Saturday morning. We were originally going to go look at snow-blowers but after some thought we decided to wait on that to see how much snow we actually get at the house. He warned me that I might be recruited to shovel but we’ll see about that. :) We went to Home Depot to use up some gift cards we got and bought fire extinguishers (a little late…) and rakes (a little early...) We also looked at what they had for fireplace doors since we plan to replace the shoddy screen with glass doors to keep the cats out and the soot and ashes in. We have all the evidence we need to know that the cats have already been exploring it.



The only size they carried in the store was the medium and we needed the large. So we went to Lowe’s to see what they had. All of their glass doors were by special order only and since we had a lot of gift cards we picked up the brochure to look at and think about. We also picked up a fan dimmer switch since Adam wanted to change the fireplace fan to be adjustable. We stopped by Menards to see if they still carried stand alone glass doors but discovered they carried only the same kind of doors with a frame that Home Depot and Lowe’s had. We went home and Adam changed the fan switch over without electrocuting himself. We then went back to Lowe’s and ordered the fireplace doors since we couldn’t do it online because we had an additional 10% off coupon. We got the doors and some random hardware (for hanging the fire extinguishers) for less than $20. Yay for gift cards! We stopped by Walmart on the way home to pick up a gazillion pictures and announcement cards I’d printed the night before. Adam baked our second batch of Amish friendship bread (yum) and watched some football while I cleaned hamster cages and prepped the announcements and pictures. We headed over to Menasha for the Rotary Club’s Seafood Fest for dinner. It was a decent-sized event with live music and very reasonably priced (and good) food. It was a bit chilly but we walked a little by the lake before heading back home. On Sunday we went up to Green Bay to visit with Adam’s grandmother (and restock on cookies.) We stopped for some shoes and additional pictures before getting back home to watch the Packer game. I spent most of it putting honeymoon pictures in the photo albums and doing laundry. Adam painted the garage side-entry door this weekend and we started stacking firewood in the storage space next to the fireplace inside the house as well. All in all I think we did ok for keeping busy.

My week is a little busier than usual with hand bells tonight, IMA tomorrow, and a UWO accounting group get-together on Friday. I went to the DMV during lunch today and would have been in and out in about 5 minutes except for the fact that the teller I went to couldn’t figure out how to change my name on my car title. She sat there clicking around on her screen and getting frustrated for about 15 minutes. She finally got fed-up and told me to go to a different clerk. She was able to do it in 2 minutes, I got my picture taken, and was out of there. *sigh* It never goes smoothly at the DMV. So I am now officially a Paalman:



I’ve sent off most of the notifications to change my name elsewhere. Now if I could only get the HR person at work to get me the paperwork. Our new checks arrived on Saturday along with my new debit cards. Things are going well.

The Aftermath of a Wedding

1) My nails are in terrible shape. You can tell exactly how much they’ve grown in the past month because you can see where they filed the heck out of them before gluing on the fake nails. It’s going to take some time for them to grow enough to get rid of the ugliness that also makes them break off in sheets a lot faster than normal. Argh. I think this is a thinly veiled ploy by the nail salons. They make your real nails look like crap so you have to keep going back to them to make them look pretty…

2) Adam is constantly telling me that I need a hair cut. I started growing my hair out last year so the hair stylist would have a little more to work with. I haven’t cut it since a week before the wedding. Adam wants me to chop it off back to above my shoulders. I want to grow it out indefinitely. Let the power struggle begin.

3) I have a wedding dress taking up room in the guest room closet because I can’t decide what I want to do with it. I really don’t have any reason to keep it other than the fact that it’s, well, my wedding dress. I’m 99.99% sure I’ll never wear it again. I don’t plan to keep it for a hypothetical daughter of mine to wear. So I’m at an impasse. Do I get it cleaned and preserved and keep it in the back of the closet or in the basement? Do I sell it (on eBay, to a consignment store, etc.)? People I’ve talked to so far are divided. There are those who look horrified when I suggest I might sell my wedding dress. Others are of the more practical camp and understand that it takes up space and is pretty much useless. I don’t know. I suppose I should decide eventually.

4) Along the same lines we also have a unity candle, wedding bears, and a bunch of other wedding stuff from the reception. Are you supposed to keep that stuff? Is it wrong to throw it in a box in the basement? Are you supposed to display it somewhere?

5) We still haven’t gotten around to printing any of the hundreds of reception and honeymoon photos. We recently got the professional pictures back and they’re sitting in a box by the computer. I think we need to go photo album and picture frame shopping…

6) My name-change process is moving along slowly. The corporate HR person at work is having problems getting me the paperwork (read: She keeps “forgetting” to send them to me through the intercompany mail system…) so although my email has the correct name, my paycheck, benefits, and 401(k) are all wrong still. I’ve changed my name at our main bank and ordered new checks with the correct address as well. I have a couple more credit cards to change along with the second bank. That’s the bank where the mortgage is though so I have a few more steps over there since I need to add Adam to that (well, not to the mortgage, but to the house deed.) My new SS card arrived today so I can get my new license now. Then we'll head to the insurance company and hope that our rates go down now. It’s going along easier than I anticipated but I’m sure I’ll still be in last name limbo for a few more months.

7) Thank-you cards have all been sent out for gifts received. I tried to do that as soon as I could so I didn’t forget about it. It seems like such a tedious process and most people (myself included) probably don’t really even read them unless you’re close to the person. Meh. Etiquette is annoying.

8) I’m already tired of people asking, “So, how’s married life?” It’s not really that different from “living in sin life.” What has changed? I guess I’ve got a slightly heavier ring to wear. I don’t know. It’s not that getting married wasn’t important. I just don’t see the life-changing aspects of it. Maybe I’m missing something or I need an attitude adjustment. Or perhaps since Adam and I lived together for awhile before we made it official I went through that transition a long time ago. I don’t really remember moving in together being some big shock or struggle though. It went pretty smoothly. But maybe I’m repressing memories… We do annoy each other occasionally, that’s for sure. We both have habits that the other finds obnoxious but that’s just how it goes. We’ve managed to be married for 27 days without fighting. Yay for us!

9) Fortunately the “So, when are you going to have kids?” questioning hasn’t started up yet. Well, except for one of our waitresses on the cruise ship. She served us at Le Bistro for our complementary honeymoon package meal/wine/cake deal. When she discovered we had just gotten married she suggested that perhaps we could start our family while on the cruise. I just laughed. No way.

10) I don’t really have anything else wedding related to say here but I figured a list with ten items was better-looking than a list with nine. Wait, I lied. We’ll be sending out announcements soon… whenever we get our act together and print some pictures. *sigh*

Cats, Part Deux

Adam managed to get a photo of both cats - by laying on the floor and sticking the camera upside-down under the bed. Meh, whatever works.

Ted is on the left, Conner on the right.


We took down the cage this morning and are content to let them roam free together since they apparently get along just fine and Ted's cold seems to be gone.

Professional Wedding Photos...

can be found here. Enjoy! We've got a copyright release if any of you want to print any of them. Let us know if you need a copy!

Kitties!

This past Wednesday night we went out to the Saving Paws shelter to take a look at two cats we saw on their website we were interested in. Their names are Conner and Theodore. And they are the newest members of our growing menagerie of animals. Here's Theodore (who I've taken to calling Ted):



He's in a cage right now for a few reasons. 1 - He and Conner are both cats who were rescued from down in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. They are a little traumatized. 2 - He and Conner don't know each other so we want to avoid an all out Kitty Death Match fight. 3 - He has a kitty cold and Conner has giardia (a parasite thing in his digestive system) so we want to keep them apart for that reason as well. He doesn't seem to mind it much and should be able to be out of the cage in a week or so.

I don't have a picture of Conner as he is a master hider and wouldn't stay in my sight long enough to get one. He looks a lot like Conner, but a little bigger.

The Final Damage - Our Wedding Budget Results

This is the most complete breakdown of our wedding budget you'll probably get. Now that it's over I'm less likely to analyze it further. So here we go (along with the huge space blogger inserts when you put a table in...):

Category	Amount
Administrative	236.62
Gifts (all)	809.42
Bridal Fashion	1,169.89
Bridesmaid Lunch	70.26
Cake	428.60
Cameras	106.87
Ceremony	34.96
DJ	615.00
Favors	193.41
Hair & Nails	227.96
Honeymoon	5,432.17
Photography	1,984.50
Postage	95.15
Reception (Food, Linens)	1,760.40
Reception Décor	407.28
Rings (excludes engagement)	1,018.48
Stationery	105.99
Grand Total	14,696.96

You may notice a few categories missing: flowers, alcohol at the reception, to mention a couple. This is because Adam's parents generously covered those categories so I have no information about costs since we didn't pay for them. My parents also chipped in a bit but they are of the "here's some money, do with it what you will" camp so I did include the dollar amounts from their categories in our totals.

Any questions, feel free to ask. I might have done some creative combining to get the number of categories down.

In other wedding news, we got an email from our photographer with a link to our proofs. It's password protected so I can't share them but I browsed through them a few days ago and it looks like there's a lot of good stuff there. More on that in the future.

Identity Crisis and a Guy with a Gun

Gah! Falling behind on blog posting!

Anywho, forget the weekend because I'm probably not going to get around to talking about it. You can see the great tree chopping from the last post. We also did some shopping. Had some people over for a cook out last night. That's about it.

Today I went to the Social Security Administration building during lunch to apply for a new card in the Paalman name. Did you know they have armed guards at the SSA office? A dinky little building in downtown Oshkosh and they've got a big guy with a gun sitting at a table when you walk in. And they have an automated machine to give you a number that the clerks never call. In any case, it was a piece of cake and I should have my new card in 7 to 10 days. Then I get to go wait in a line at the DMV. Then I get to wait for months to get everything else changed. Woo.

I'm kind of in a Paalman/Dodds limbo. I'm Paalman at work but Dodds pretty much everywhere else. It's an identity crisis of kinds. Who am I? Luckily my initials are pretty easy to fudge a D to a P or vice versa.

In other news, I finally went through all our pictures and weeded out the crap so we can go ahead and print them. I ended up with a little more than 500 total - wedding, reception, and honeymoon. And this doesn't include any professional pictures! Wow.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, my favorite picture so far is courtesy of Evan:

Adam's Weekend Project

KILL THIS TREE!!!





So he lopped off its branches...




Pulverized it with a stump grinder...




And turned it into a hole and a pile of sawdust...

Whale Watching Video Clips

Mentioned these videos before but I hadn't uploaded them yet to share. I have a fourth one - a longer one with the humpbacks with some great noises and fin whackings but it refuses to upload so I guess that one will stay with me. Boo.

Harbor Seals:


Humpback Whales:


Orcas:

Now That's Service!

I promise eventually I'll finish up my in-progress post about the rehearsal and wedding. Eventually. I've been busy. And sick.

Anyway, I sent my request off to the Outagamie courts on Wednesday for copies of our marriage certificate so I can get started on my name change process. I almost died of shock when I saw what was in the mailbox when I got home today. (Click on it for the full size image, complete with blacked out identity-theft prone information!)



Talk about a fast turn-around! Wow!

A Little Late

But still exciting...
From Monday's Paper:

Pictures

Ok, so pictures of the reception and honeymoon are up on Flickr. We won't have the professional pictures back for a couple more weeks. All are public so you shouldn't need to sign in to view them (I think.) Hopefully I got them all rotated correctly. Let me know if you find one that's still sideways.

They are in no particular order and you might find some duplication since we had 20 cameras at the reception and a digital and film camera in Alaska. Speaking of Alaska, the pictures named IMG_XXX are digital from my camera and pictures named 30465XX are from the film camera.

I left all but a very few in the sets. I think I deleted maybe 10 from the honeymoon and only 2 from the reception (for bad light, blurriness, or "what the heck is that?"ess)

So enjoy!

Honeymoon - Day 7

It was another rough night. The boat rocked and neither Adam nor I slept well. We woke up kind of late although the fact that we left Alaska’s time zone and lost an hour didn’t help. We went to a late breakfast at Blue Lagoon, dropped off our express debarkation and comment forms, got some chocolate at the shops on deck 7, and headed back to the room to catch up on some sleep lost last night. Adam proceded to get sicker as the day went on. We managed to make it to the honeymoon/anniversary cake party at 2 but after that he laid back down and didn't get up again except for bathroom trips. I spent part of the afternoon/evening on the balcony, part of it trying to get the duty-free store to refund our money for some bad Milka chocolate (which they finally did), and part of it watching movies in the room. I went and ate dinner at the buffet by myself and smuggled a bag of saltines and some coke back for Adam. We had a Pub Crawl excursion planned for Victoria but we didn't even get off the boat. I suppose I could have gone by myself but I didn't really want to. We spent the evening watching a James Bond movie (the one with Halle Berry) and feeling sorry for ourselves. Stupid sick people who come on the boat... Grrrr

Honeymoon - Day 6

Today was our third and final Alaskan port of call. We docked at Ketchikan early this morning – around 6. We had our wake up call for 5 so we could shower and eat before heading off the boat. We got onto the bus that took us to the dock for our Lighthouse, Eagles, and Totem Poles excursion. It was another water-based trip. It took us around the area showing us eagles’ nests and babies, a totem pole park, and their revered lighthouse. Overall a good tour. They at least had some freebies. It got pretty cold while out on the water though. After returning to the dock we stopped at a couple stores to pick up the last of the souvenirs we wanted and then headed to the Great Alaskan Lumberjack Show. It was raining a little before the show began but the weather held until the very last event. It was pretty much pouring during the log-rolling competition. Our team lost but it was still a good time. We stopped off at the last Milano store to get our Alaska CD before getting back on the boat. Adam set the metal detector off again (Tylenol was the culprit this time) and after dropping off our purchases we headed up to the buffet for lunch. Apparently every other passenger had the same idea because it was busy. We ended up sitting outside to eat. After lunch we went back to the room for a nap. We went to the early show of the cruise ship’s dance company’s Garden of the Geisha. It was an interesting performance. Lots of modern dance with some ballet and some circus-style rope twirling from the ceiling. After the show the ship’s crew came out and sang some cheesy song about how we’re part of the Norwegian Cruise Line family now. Blech. We went to Blue Lagoon for dinner again and both Adam and I got the burger and fries. We happened to be seated next to an older couple who lived in Chicago but were born and raised in Neenah. Odd… After dinner we killed some time in the room and then headed up to Spinnaker Lounge for the adult themed Second City improv show. Honestly I was kind of unimpressed. Some of it was "Who’s Line" rip-offs and most of it was highly un-adult-themed unless you consider throwing a few obscenities in adult-themed. After the show we went up to the chocolate buffet. It was amazing, lots of chocolate food items as well as ice sculptures, chocolate sculptures, and chocolate everything. Once again everyone on the ship had the same idea so we filled our plates and took them back to our cabin to enjoy.

Honeymoon - Day 5

Today is the second day at sea. We went through Glacier Bay this morning. We woke up and had breakfast at the buffet again. We headed up to the top decks as we approached the biggest of the glaciers of the day. Got some good pictures and then headed back inside. It was cold this morning – about 45. We went in between the indoors and outdoors while we cruised through multiple glaciers for most of the morning. We also had coffee to warm us up. We ate lunch at the Summer Garden. I had chicken fingers (which I suspect were coated in coconut) and a lemon-rosemary chicken. Adam had an apple bisque and a burger and fries. For dessert I had chocolate ice cream and Adam had pecan pie. After lunch we headed back to the room for a while. I offloaded the pictures from my camera – current count is 148. After a lazy afternoon of napping, watching movies on the ship’s tv, and glimpsing a few whales, we got dressed and went to dinner. We had reservations at Mambo’s – the ship’s tex-mex restaurant – and one of the no-cover-charge ones. I had a Caesar salad with cute mini tortilla chip croutons and chicken fajitas. Adam had shrimp quesadillas and bbq pork ribs. For dessert I had this chocolate pastry and ice cream thing and Adam had flan. We were entertained throughout our meal by Los Tres Hernandez, some quasi-Spanish/Mexican music (only one of the three is remotely Hispanic.) After dinner we headed back to the room to call it a night. Tomorrow morning is an early one.

Honeymoon - Day 4

Today was an early day. We actually set up a wake-up call but managed to wake up naturally about 3 minutes before it. Weird… The boat had already docked (about an hour early) when we got up. We showered, ate a quick breakfast at Blue Lagoon and headed onto shore. Second port of call – Skagway. We got there a little early having learned from yesterday’s bus situation. It was a lot easier to get off the boat this time too. We were the first people on the bus and claimed the back seat as ours. Although this was a “deluxe” motorcoach so this put us right by the bathroom. The price you pay for comfort I guess. The tour started with a tour of Skagway and took us north into Canada and the Yukon. Our guide, Trevor, was entertaining and told lots of interesting stories, some true and, I suspect, some false. We stopped numerous times along the route for pictures. We ended up at Caribou Crossing in the Yukon for lunch. We had a tasty barbeque and potato lunch. We browsed the gift shop where Adam successfully found his Cubans (shhhh!) We visited the sled dogs that are bred and trained there. We socialized with two horses that roamed the yard. After that we got back on the bus, headed a little further north, and then headed back down south. We were taken back to the White Pass Railway depot and boarded the train. About two hours through mountains, gorges, bridges, two tunnels, spectacular views, and steep grades got us back to Skagway. We had a lot more time in Skagway than we had had in Juneau and in addition to our raffles and free stuff we actually did do some shopping. We got back to the boat early and breezed through security. They did take our ulu knife though and we’ll have to pick it up at the end of the cruise. We went back to the room, changed, and went to the bar before going to dinner at Le Bistro. This was part of our honeymoon package. We got a free bottle of wine, a cake, and the cover charge was waived. I had cream of mushroom soup served in a bread bowl and chicken with moreilles mushrooms. Adam had lobster and shrimp martini, French onion soup, and salmon. All very good once again. For dessert I had an apple tart and Adam had crème brulee. The waitstaff sang to us as they presented us with the cake. Slightly embarrassing but by that time I’d had some wine so perhaps that’s why my face was red… We also showcased our lack of class by making the wine glasses hum to check if they were real crystal. After dinner we sat in the lounge for a little while listening to the jazz pianist and waiting for the boat to leave the port. We headed back to the room and went to bed.

Honeymoon - Day 3

We ate breakfast at the buffet again this morning. Seems to be the same choices each day. We spent some time out on the deck by the swimming pool. In coats, under blankets, and cuddled together of course. It’s a chilly one! We spent some time on the other side of the boat as well and ordered margaritas at 11:30am. They came in plastic souvenir cups. We had a light lunch of mostly bread to make sure we weren’t tipsy for our first shore excursion. Today was our first time off the ship since boarding in Seattle. Juneau was our first port of call. We arrived around 1 but had to wait for another NCL boat to leave the dock before we could actually get on dry land. It was a little congested getting off the boat but once through the crowd of people who didn’t know what they were doing it was ok. We got on the bus for our Mendenhall Glacier tour. Cruises and these tours are not made for tall/wide people. The bus is a normal Greyhound/Coach kind of bus and when Adam and I sat in a seat together we were totally squished. Of course they book these tours to the max so we couldn’t have individual seats. We solved this problem by getting back to the bus after the glacier really early so we could claim the back seat (technically 3 seats so it made for more room and knee room for Adam.) Anyway, after a mini town tour from Lowell, our bus guide, we stopped at Mendenhall Glacier. Took lots of pictures, visited the museum and visitor’s center, and watched some salmon spawning. It was a little rainy and mighty cold. But not unbearable. Speaking of bears, some people saw some over by the creek the salmon were in but we didn’t have the pleasure while we were there. After getting back on the bus we drove to the docks and got on a catamaran boat to go whale and wildlife watching. The boat was much more roomy and comfortable. We got out into the open water and managed to hit the wildlife watching jackpot. We saw a pod of orcas, at least 8 humpback whales, and a group of harbor seals sunning themselves on a buoy. I got videos and pictures of them all. It was a good time. The naturalist aboard was very interesting and deseminated all kinds of good information. We arrived back to the pier a little early and to kill time before the buses returned we watched the Alaska ferry dock in front of us. Back on the bus we rode to the center of town, did some power shopping (well, not really shopping… we had raffle entries to drop off and free stuff to redeem) we walked back to the ship. Unfortunately the ship was much further away than we thought and it began to rain again but we eventually got back and got dried off. We didn’t have to walk the jogging track tonight, that’s for sure. We ate dinner at the buffet since I had a craving for mashed potatoes. We discovered that the buffet doesn’t have mashed potatoes… grrrr. We called it a night soon after we ate.

Honeymoon - Day 2

We didn’t set any alarms for this morning since we didn’t really have anything we had to do because it’s a day at sea. We woke up around 7:30. After showering we went to breakfast at the buffet. It was decent. Many choices and the only lines seemed to be for custom cooked omelets. After breakfast we stopped back at the room to ditch our jackets and pick up sunglasses. It had rained during the night and was kind of cloudy when we woke up but by 9:30 or so the sun had appeared and things were looking good. We spent some time next to the pool on Deck 12. We headed to the Crystal Atrium for the 11:30 Alaska Brand Seminar where we got lots of discount coupons and a coupon for a free charm and tanzanite item in Skagway. We ate lunch at the casual Blue Lagoon Café. I had the wonton soup, a hamburger and fries. Adam had fish and chips. Both very good again. We went up to the buffet for dessert and then returned to the room for a nap. After a relaxing afternoon of pretty much doing nothing we got dressed up in our good clothes and headed to the atrium for “Dress up or not” photos. We stopped back in the room to change into something more comfortable and then went to the theatre for the Second City comedy group. They were pretty good with lots of relevant, ship-related sketches. After the show we went to Indigo for dinner. I had a watermelon/fried feta salad and orzo. Adam had more shrimp cocktail and the seafood extravaganza which included lobster, mussels, and all kind of other smelly food. For dessert I had a chocolate mousse thing and Adam had strawberry sorbet. Pretty good again. Not as good as last night, but this one was free. Once again, we bumped into the couple from the hotel and shuttle as they were leaving and we were ordering so we said hi. Strange… We returned to our room right after sunset (around 9pm!) and hung out for a bit. We had a towel animal on our bed to greet us.

Honeymoon - Day 1

We woke up with the alarm this morning. I had been up a few hours earlier and managed to be able to take my pill at the correct time. This will probably not continue since I really doubt I’ll be motivated enough to wake up at 5am (well 4am when we get to Alaska) every morning. We showered and headed downstairs for breakfast. It was a pretty good spread. Pastries, even eggs. After breakfast we went back up to our room and took a nap until about 11. Then we headed back to the lobby to check out and wait for the shuttle to the pier. We met a nice older couple who also were to sail on the Pearl. When the shuttle arrived we squeezed into the van and were informed two more people had to get on still. We all managed to fit along with all our luggage.

A long and rainy trip to the pier took us through gray, run-down, industrial areas of Seattle. We got to the dock a little after 1pm. We dropped off our checked bags, stood in a few lines to have our tickets and passports checked, get our room cards and pictures taken, and finally get onboard the ship. Start to finish was probably 45 minutes. Very organized process that went smoothly considering how many people there were to load onto the ship.

We checked out our room and after we discovered we weren’t even supposed to be there yet we went up to the buffet for some lunch. It was kind of intimidating and we barely made a dent in the food choices. We wandered the ship a little until the announcement for the lifeboat drill came over the PA system. We happened to run into two of the couples we had ridden to the dock with in our wanderings. And they say it’s a big boat… The couple from the hotel actually decided to send the champagne from their room to us since they don’t drink and they knew it was our honeymoon. We went back downstairs to our room to get our life jackets and then went to our assigned muster station. The drill itself was relatively painless. When we returned to the room Adam’s bag had been delivered but mine wasn’t there yet. We wandered the ship some more and watched the boat leave the pier from the top deck in front. Then we walked around to the back. We came back to the room so Adam could call his parents and drop off his camera. My suitcase arrived while we were there and I unpacked while Adam enjoyed our balcony. We made arrangements to eat at Cagney’s Steakhouse, one of the specialty restaurants onboard (and the one with the most expensive cover charge.) We changed to meet the dress code and headed up. It was a fabulous meal. I had chicken and mashed potatoes and Adam had a steak with onions. I also had an absolutely to die for chocolate dessert – Sinful Chocolate Obsession. Adam had Bananas Foster. All in all a wonderful experience. We stopped for a drink at the martini bar and enjoyed some jazz music while we were there. We also ran into a couple from the shuttle ride for a second time! We went back to the room to change and get jackets and then walked a lap on Deck 7 and another on Deck 12. We called it a night after that.

Not so Happy Feet

Happy Feet was delivered to our door last week (yay for Blockbuster Total Access!) We watched it on Sunday morning before doing our shopping etc.

Within the first 2 minutes I looked over at Adam and said, “is it bad that I already want to barf?” I mean a penguin was busting a move to Prince…come on now…

This film has its good elements. It has its bad elements.

On the good side: Penguins are cute. There were a few respectably funny jokes. The short, Mexican penguins? Hilarious.

On the bad side: Cheesy, cheesy, cheesy. Bad Moulin Rouge rip-off. Why would a penguin have man boobs? Thinly veiled social commentary disguised as a kids movie much? A tap-dancing penguin? Really? I found the whole premise completely stupid. I found the 1950’s musical style of randomly breaking into song distracting. And the elephant seals? Totally creepy.

Ok, so I suppose it’s obvious that this won’t make it onto my favorite movies list. It was such a stupid movie that I can’t even bear to write any more about it.

T Minus, well, I guess it's 2 now...

So far I’ve managed to stay on schedule with all the things I’ve needed to get done. That’s pretty amazing considering I’m a master procrastinator.

Our marriage license is safely waiting with all our other rehearsal stuff. It was a piece of cake, picking it up. It took about 30 seconds. The whole licensing procedure was pretty painless actually. That’s kind of nice. Now I get to start filling out the name change paperwork. Woo…

I made the final beauty appointment needed (for nails) yesterday afternoon. At least I think I made a nail appointment. Why is it that every nail salon is owned and operated by someone of Asian persuasion with barely a grasp of the English language? For all I know I might have made three appointments for Chinese water torture, but I hope not… I also placed the order for lunch on Friday at Erbert & Gerbert’s. Once again, not the most articulate and efficient salesperson handled this so I’m hoping she got the order right and it will be ready when I come to pick it up.

Monday night was pretty boring. I don’t even really remember what I did. I do recall that I started packing and I’ve gotten as far as I can go until I do the final loads of laundry tonight or tomorrow morning. It should be interesting trying to get all the stuff I flung in the general direction of the suitcases actually into the suitcases.

Last night I had some errands to run before I headed home (as previously mentioned) and when I got home I cleaned hamster cages, did dishes, and then crashed. At like 8. Seriously. But I figure I won’t be getting the greatest sleep for the next few days so I’m ok with that.

Today is my last day at work for the week. I’ll be leaving at 3 and heading up to Kaukauna to pick up the dresses. They’ll be dropped off at Adam’s parents’ house for Friday. That’s really the only thing I have to get done today. Adam’s picking up Catherine (the sister) sometime today and we plan to go to the drive-in tonight assuming the weather cooperates. I’m hoping Adam cleans the guinea pig cages at some point. I might do laundry. But that’s about it.

Thursday will be busy, but hopefully not crazy-like. I’ve tried to space appointments out so that if we start running behind it’s not a huge deal. And Friday should be fine. The weather looks good

and I’m confident that everyone will do what they’re supposed to and things will work out fine. And if not, what can you do? Really, at this point I’m looking forward to the rehearsal dinner tomorrow night, the reception on Friday, and finally being able to relax by Sunday night. :)

T-5

Reader crisis resolved. Even though every time I called either my uncle or aunt I got voice mail the first time Adam dials my uncle’s number my uncle answers it. Grrrr. Fortunately he’s fine with taking over the first scripture reading although he’s not sure if they’ll arrive in time for the rehearsal. It should be fine either way.

Headcount is final so, please, no more RSVPs from irresponsible, rude, unable to plan ahead people. You can’t come. Place cards are done, numbered, and alphabetized. Itineraries are done, copies of passports and flight plans are made. Pet care instructions for Katie and Chris are done.

I will pick up our marriage license at lunch today. I will go to the bank to get a wad of cash for the honeymoon. Hmm. Perhaps I shouldn’t announce that. It might make me a target for the throngs of people who read this blog.

Anyway, I haven’t started packing yet. Well, the suitcases are out and ready against the wall in the bedroom and I did throw a bottle of shampoo in it. I don’t think that counts. I’ve got one or two more rounds with the washer before we leave so I’m going to probably pack two or three times.

Speaking of the washer, I did some laundry on Saturday afternoon and when I went to start the dryer the knob thing to start it fell off in my hand. Luckily it still started but I was left with a semi-broken dryer. I kind of forgot about it until yesterday when I did the other half of the laundry. Luckily Adam was still home when I remembered it so he could come down and look at it. He took apart the top panel and discovered a piece of plastic had broken off. He used some plastic glue or something from his modeling stuff and it looks like that might work. Otherwise we’d be calling Lowe’s and telling them to fix it.

We’re also having some trouble with our programmable thermostat. It keeps turning itself off. I’ve never had anything to do with it so this one is definitely not my fault, but it’s still annoying.

Also annoying are the multitudes of crab apples that fall on our driveway every day. Adam rakes/shovels/brooms them off to the side every evening but there always seem to be more the next morning. And you run them over, squish them, step in them. It smells like rotting apple juice. He informed me last night that the tree will be coming down.

Home-ownership is never dull I guess.

But the weekend was pretty dull considering what’s going on this week. Adam had 3-on-3 all day Saturday. I opted not to go to church with him but I did join him and the rest of the group for dinner at (of all places) Good Company afterwards. We sat back in the French Quarter which is where our rehearsal dinner will be on Thursday. We were on one end of the room with two bachelorette parties occupying the rest of the room. I was the one who pointed out the bride-to-be’s veil adorned with plastic penises (peni?), which is pretty traditional these days, but apparently shocked some of the other people in our group. One of the guys at our table heckled the nearest partiers. It was kind of creepy in a dirty old man kind of way and I’m certainly glad I wasn’t on the other side of it all. Ick. Anyway, by my observations there were no fewer than 4 different bachelorette parties going on while we were there. Must be wedding season.

Sunday was a lazy day. We did some quick shopping in the morning (needed color ink for the printer for the gift card box – dude that’s expensive!) before Adam left to go help with clean-up at the church. I did a little clearance rack shopping at Kohl’s and Shopko and managed to pick up some shirts. After returning home I watched some Sex in the City to kill time before Adam got back home. We just kind of hung out all afternoon. Adam grilled out some steaks for dinner and I actually ate (a very well done, non-mooing) one. He joked that he wanted to take a picture to prove I ate steak but he didn’t. He got pay-per-view wrestling so I spent the evening watching Finding Nemo on the Disney Channel. That’s about it.

The fun starts on Wednesday.

A Discovery

I was just going through the closet o' wedding crap to get it organized for the chaos that is next week Thursday and Friday and I noticed our bears. They were still naked in their "take me home" boxes. So I got them dressed. Keep an eye out for these cuties at the reception:

T-6

One of the results of Thursday's meeting with the reception hall was that I had to go find a box for cards at the reception since the ones they had were rejects from previous weddings which the guy assured me were all hideous. So this morning I made it my goal to find an un-hideous version, for cheap. I started at Party America. They are still in the process of re-doing their store so things are all over the place and kind of crazy. I saw a lot of wedding stuff, but no boxes. I then headed to Walmart. Once again lots of wedding stuff, no boxes. I was about to go to Hobby Lobby when I remembered there's a WEDDING SUPPLIES STORE on Wisconsin Avenue. Perhaps I should go to the WEDDING SUPPLIES STORE for the WEDDING SUPPLIES I'm looking for.

Duh.

I walked in, was promptly greeted by a nice employee who pointed me in the direction of their card box section(!) I was in and out in about 2 minutes and spent $15. *sigh* Do I always make things harder than they need to be or is that a recent development?

Anyway, final haircut was done last night. I threatened the stylist with death if she screwed up which she found hilarious for some reason. Luckily for her she took off the teensiest bit and it looks fine.

I dug out our suitcases last night to start packing and noticed that Adam's is significantly larger than mine is. I suppose this could be ok since his clothes are significantly larger than mine are but I think I might have to put some stuff in his anyway. Aren't you supposed to pack half and half anyway in case one bag is lost?

As the final hours approach we have been thrown another curveball. Adam's uncle, Craig, lives in Florida and was planning on flying up and was going to read one of the bible passages for us since he's also Adam's godfather. This week he managed to mess his knee up and no longer feels comfortable making the trip. Perfectly understandable. But this leaves us one reader short. Last night I called my uncle John (who happens to be a pastor so he's a pro) and left him a message asking him if he'd like to take over the job. I'm hoping to hear back from him today but my dad tells me he's notoriously hard to get a hold of so I might have to track him down via my aunt, Kris. If he declines (or never responds) I guess we'll have to take a look at the list and see who else we can recruit. Kind of reminds me of Katie's wedding where Adam volunteered my services at the last minute when one of their readers went MIA. Never a dull moment. And Adam's mom had just printed all the programs...

I'll have to re-do the seating a little to adjust for this change but I hadn't put table numbers on the cards yet so it's not a big deal. That's on my list for tomorrow.

Weather Watch 2007 Continued

Bwahahahahaha

T-7

So the meeting for the reception hall last night wasn’t so horrible. The guy seems nice enough and even though apparently the previous person left no information about our choices I think we worked it all out. We had to go over color schemes and table set-ups again (that would be the third time for this now.) We confirmed our totally awesome buffet choices and verified that none of the pricing had changed. In an unexpected good news moment he informed us that he wouldn’t charge us the $2 surcharge for being under 75 people since we were so close (we’re at 71.) So that’s nice. We talked about room set-up and confirmed that the divider/foyer wall will be in place so we can make a dramatic entrance. All of our questions were answered and fortunately the answers didn’t create much extra work for me.

In another unexpected good news moment Adam’s mom told us she was going to pay for the champagne toast even though originally she hadn’t even wanted there to be one. So that was nice too. Our part of the estimated bill will be paid next Thursday when we stop by to decorate the hall with our floating candles, favors, and various other items. I was relieved to hear that they have nothing scheduled for the day before our wedding because that leaves us time to make sure everything is done the way we want. This makes next Thursday a pretty busy day for me but it should all work out.

After returning home and dumping a garbage can full of crab apples from the driveway in the dumpsters back at our old apartment building (shhh, don’t tell anyone!) I sat myself down in front of the computer and took care of our cruise registration and finished up the itineraries that will be given to the parental units at the rehearsal dinner. The printer was unnecessarily crabby (a color cartridge error even though I was printing in black and white) and the NCL website keeps losing my account information, but eventually everything got done. Then I could spend some quality time with a couple cuddly furry guys (ok, so three if you include Adam, but he was in the living room watching wrestling.)

Adam got a hold of the DJ this morning to confirm some stuff that was dependent on the results of the meeting last night. I’ll be calling La Sure’s about the cake this afternoon. My last pre-wedding haircut is tonight. The weekend should be pretty low-key. Adam has 3-on-3 tonight and all day tomorrow. I’ll be joining him after the tournament for 4:30 mass and then dinner afterwards. Sunday is clean-up and I’m staying away from that. Just a few things on my to-do list for this weekend and the beginning of next week. Then I should be set to shift into super high gear on Wednesday and Thursday.

Woo

T-8

Final dress fittings are done and over with. The easing of the neckline on my dress worked fine and it fits as good as it will. Catherine’s dress also fit quite well (whew!) with just a minor stitch or two in the back to prevent it from poking out weird. Off to be pressed and I’ll pick them up next Wednesday.

The shoe issue is also taken care of. They look pretty good with the dress (whew again!)



I was worried they’d be too shiny but they go well with the beads on the edges of the tiers and straps.

An unforeseen issue has come up though. Ok, perhaps not unforeseen, but something I hadn’t thought about. Catherine W. questioned my "no nylons" stance since their dresses are just below the knee and also asked about toes. Since my feet are covered I hadn’t given too much thought to legs and toes. My sister doesn’t want to wear nylons and my concern with them is that the dresses are so sheer and light that you’ll probably be able to see where the hose cut off at your waist. I don’t know. Catherine W. is right when she says they make you look more polished and neither of them have tan legs so we might enter ghostly pale territory in pictures. I have a little time to think about my options still I suppose. I just want them to be comfortable both temperature-wise and appearance-wise.

In any case, the one meeting I’m worried about is tonight – the reception hall. They’ve had a lot of changes in management and we’ve dealt with two other people before this new guy. I hope everyone has communicated amongst themselves and all our previous negotiations and request have been carried through the change process. We’ve got a list of questions to get answered and I’m hoping it all works out splendidly.

I’ll probably regret saying this, but everything has worked out pretty well so far (knock on the hugest piece of wood on earth…) There was a minor flower thing (purple hyacinths were unavailable) but that was no biggie since they were just accent flowers that were easily replaced with delphinium. I guess we’ll have to wait and see how tonight goes so we know if I can relax yet.

Current (and hopefully final) headcount is at 75, including 4 babies. So we didn’t really make our minimum but since it costs more to pay for 71 than it would for 75 (there’s a $2 surcharge per plate if under the minimum) I’m hoping they’ll let us fudge it a little.

We got so close… a lot closer than I had expected considering the pathetic response rate we were at back when the RSVP were due. I was just amazed by the number of people who didn’t get the cards back to us on time (or at all.) I can’t attribute them all to flat out rudeness. Some of these people got a pass since I knew they were busy or had other things on their minds. But some I just can’t understand. How hard is it to put a check mark on a line and seal an envelope? You didn’t even need a stamp. And the post office comes to your house. Grrr. Know how to not forget about it or lose it (as was the excuse for the majority of these late responders)? Do it right away. Duh. Ok enough about that. I know it’s like beating a dead horse. There are two kinds of people in the world - polite ones and rude ones.

Weather Watch 2007

So far, so good

T-9

We successfully applied for our marriage license yesterday afternoon. It’s a pretty painless process. We spent more time sitting on a bench waiting than we did inside the office filing paperwork. There was a line - must be a popular time to get hitched. In any case, I’ll be stopping by on Monday during lunch to pick it up since there’s a 5-day waiting period.

We also had our final meeting with the photographer last night. We planned out posed pictures, set a loose time-table and talked about what we wanted to have documented and what we didn’t care about. Then he took us into the back room where they have the huge printers and showed Adam some pictures he took of a brand new private plane built out at the airport across from Adam’s work.

Other than that the evening was pretty dull. We stopped home quickly between the court house and the photographer to check mail and drop my car off. We ate a fast-paced dinner at Applebee’s. We did some shopping to prepare for being gone for a week+ and some prep work for this weekend’s 3-on-3 at the church. That’s about it.

Failure

I tried. I really did. But I just couldn’t do it.

Blood Diamond had been sitting on the end table by the couch since last week and I was determined to watch it. I popped it in the DVD player last night after Adam went to his 3-on-3 meeting. From 00:00:01 it was violence, warfare, and Leo with a bad accent. I made it through about 45 minutes before I threw in the towel. And this movie is almost 2 ½ hours long.

I admit defeat. I really didn’t care if they recovered the big diamond and righted all wrongs. I was just tired of people randomly driving up in trucks and taking out whole villages. I know this is the reality for too much of the world but I guess I’m one of those people who prefer to escape into a better reality by watching movies.

There are probably a few others still on the list that might have this same fate but I’m honestly trying to sit through them all. Perhaps this is the Cinderella Man for this year…

Still on the list to watch:
Children of Men
Curse of the Golden Flower
Dreamgirls
The Good German
Happy Feet
The Last King of Scotland
Letters from Iwo Jima
Little Children
Notes on a Scandal
Pan’s Labyrinth
The Pursuit of Happyness
The Queen
Venus
Volver

I actually started Venus a while back but had to return it before I could watch it all. That was during the house-buying/cleaning/moving time period.

It's a Zoo out there...

This past weekend was full of ignoring the Big Event approaching and having fun in other ways.

Adam had a fiscal year-end get together for his team at work on Friday evening. It was at Willie Beamon’s so I was fine going along. We had some drinks and some food. I tried to be adventurous and ordered a Caesar chicken wrap instead of my usual chicken tenders (which are really good there!) Somehow red onions ended up in the wrap and after double checking that the menu had said nothing about onions, I complained (ok, so I had Adam complain for me) and they made me another one. Which I took home and ate yesterday.

The highlight of the evening was when one of Adam’s coworkers showed up and attempted the mad cow burger challenge: a massive burger with pounds of toppings, a huge bun, and a pile of fries. Eat it in 30 minutes and it’s free. He made it through the burger in impressive time but couldn’t do the fries. It was a good time for everyone though, egging him on and cracking jokes about his toilet.

Saturday morning we woke up too early. We pondered what to do with our day and decided to call my Dad et al and see if they wanted to go to the Milwaukee Zoo with us. We called them a little before 8 and apparently woke them all up. Whoops. Catherine agreed to join us on our mini-vacation so after getting dressed and turning around to get the camera we forgot to bring with us we headed to Sheboygan Falls and picked her up. A stop at Arby’s in Port Washington got Adam and me a little lunch and some time to look through all of Catherine’s Guatemala pictures.

We made it to the Zoo a little before 1 and although the line to get into the parking lot seemed long, there were actually plenty of spots open relatively close to the entrance. I wanted to beeline to the Shark and Sting Ray Reef since that’s really the reason we went down in the first place. It happened to be all the way across the Zoo from where we parked. We finally made our way there and paid the $2 to get in. I couldn’t reach the shark. I don’t know how any kids could either since I’m hoping my arms aren’t disproportionately short. Adam had luck of course with his big monkey arms. (Heh, he hates it when I call them that.) Anywho, we headed to the Sting Rays and I didn’t even attempt to try and pet them. I didn’t want to fall into the water. I did get some video of Adam and the pack swimming by.



After washing off our hands we headed back out to the rest of the zoo. Nothing particularly spectacular to report really. They did have two koalas that were cutely asleep when we visited them.



We skipped the big cats since we were getting close on time and wanted to stop by Sprecher’s on the way back. Here are some highlights:


See all the pictures here.

As previously mentioned, we made a quick stop at Sprecher’s Brewery on the way back home. We then headed back to Sheboygan Falls in off-and-on showers. We stayed for dinner and then headed back home.

Sunday we woke up too early again and Adam spent most of his day getting supplies for and re-screening the windows in our bedroom. I did all kinds of random stuff and didn’t get around to doing anything wedding-related. Yay! This means my wedding to-do list is exactly the same length today as it was on Friday. *sigh* I plan to get four or five things checked off tonight hopefully. Luckily time is running out so I can’t procrastinate for much longer.

This week is full of final meetings, confirmations, and our last round of painful dispensations of money. Tomorrow we’ll be sneaking out of work early and heading to the court house to get our marriage license. Then we have our last meeting with the photographer where we’ll pay off his balance (ouch) and go through shot lists and schedules. Wednesday is Catherine’s dress fitting and my final fitting. Hopefully all goes well there since there’s not a lot of time for error. Thursday is our meeting with the reception hall. We’re meeting with their new guy, who neither of us has met, and he seems to be kind of a dick. Hopefully my first (phone) impressions are mistaken since I don’t really want to have to put up with surprises or conflicts this late into the game. On Friday I’ll be calling everyone else, La Sure’s and the DJ, to finalize schedules and work out any outstanding questions and details. I figure this leaves me with next weekend, Monday, and Tuesday to have millions of worst case scenarios run through my head. I already had one dream on Saturday in which all of our guests (including the wedding party) came down with the stomach flu and no one came to the ceremony or reception. Although I blame this more on a Travel Channel show I watched about bad cruises than wedding jitters…

Anyway, everything is under control. So much so that I find myself standing in the guest room, staring at the closet full of wedding stuff, wondering if I’ve forgotten to do something. My theknot.com checklist has 24 things on it and most of them are being taken care of this week. If I’ve missed something I don’t know what it is. I think I’m just a little crazy.

We're up to 71!

Including the 4 babies, that is...

So close!

Just for the record, it's 18 on Team Martha. 51 on Team Adam.

Had to get that out there...

Another Oscar 2007 Update

I’m totally sucking at this Oscars thing. That said, I’m probably doing better this year than I did last year. Yay for Blockbuster Online!

Anywho, we watched The Good Shepherd last night. This is definitely not one I would have chosen to watch on my own. It’s almost three hours long. Three long, boring, drawn-out hours of annoying flashbacks, flashforwards, and other overused cinematic devices (black & white to color, etc…) Basic story is about the birth of the CIA. As simple as that sounds, it obviously encompassed more than that in order to take up three hours of edited footage. Matt Damon (who I’ve really had quite enough of for now, seriously) is Ed, a Yale poetry student who gets recruited into the secretive Skull & Bones society. He then gets tapped for a special position during WWII overseas which then turns into a position in the (then unestablished) CIA during the Cold War. Lots of Russian, German, spies, deceit, double-crossing, etc. Angelina Jolie plays his wife but she’s only in the movie for like 10 minutes so I’m not sure why she got so much attention.

Overall I was bored for most of the movie. I’ll admit I’ve never been one for historical fiction movies. Or war movies. Or spy movies. Or movies with Matt Damon. Ok, so this one was just doomed from the start. Adam seemed to not mind it. Of course there were parts that were more interesting than others. Matt Damon in drag singing “I’m Called Little Buttercup” for example.



But unfortunately that one happened in the first twenty minutes of the film and the others were few and far between.

Now I need to cleanse my mind with some Spongebob or something…

Time to Laugh a Little

The Dilbert Blog had another great post the other day about jokes. I admit, I sat at work and read through all 500+ comments. There were a lot of great jokes there. Unfortunately the majority of them were tasteless, offensive, or so dirty I wouldn't dare repost them here (but that doesn't mean you can't click on over there and read them for yourself ;) ).

Here are a few of the ones that had me trying to muffle my laughter at my desk:

Random Jokes:

Two muffins are baking in the oven. The first muffin says "Man, it's hot in here." The second cries, "Aaaah! A talking muffin!"

*****

You know Quasimodo, the bell ringer at Notre Dame.

One day his boss came up to him and told him, "Quasimodo, the job is too much for you. I've hired you an assistant. Show him what to do."

Quasimodo took the assistant up to the bell tower to show him how to ring the bells. "Just watch this," said Quasimodo. The hunchback then lined up about 50 feet from one of the bells. He then sprinted towards the bell and crashed into it face first. This set the bell in motion.

Quasimodo then walked back to assistant and said, "You try it."

The assistant lined up about 50 feet from one of the bells. He then sprinted towards the bell and crashed into it face first. This set the bell in motion.

Unfortunately, the assistant flew off the bell at unusual angle. He exited the bell tower and crashed violently on the street below.

Seeing this, Quasimodo ran out of the bell tower and out of church as quickly as he could. When he arrived at the accident scene, a large crowd had formed.

A police officer saw Quasimodo and said, "A terrible thing has happened. This man is dead. We must contact his family. Do you know his name?"

Quasimodo looked down at the corpse and said, "I don't know his name, but his face rings a bell."

****

A man goes to the doctor. He says, "Doctor, you have to help me. I can't stop singing 'The Green, Green Grass of Home'."

The doctor says, "Yes, I was just reading about this in a journal. You have a condition known as Tom Jones Syndrome."

The man says, "Is it common?"

The doctor says, "It's not unusual."

****

Q: What is the definition of "Endless Love"?
A: Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles playing tennis.

****

(A slightly dirty joke)

One day, a penguin on vacation driving through Arizona breaks down. He has the car towed back to the only garage, and is told it will be 2 hours before they know anything. He sets off about town, and sees an ice cream shop. "Boy! Ice cream would sure be nice right now!" said the penguin as he mopped sweat from his brow.

The penguin orders his ice cream, but then finds that he can't use the spoon like people. He starts raking the ice cream into his mouth, creating quite a mess with his wings.

He then returns to the garage, and asks the mechanic if they know anything about his car. The mechanic says, "It looks like you blew a seal." The penguin replies, "No, it's just ice cream."

****

(This one is my favorite considering my current frustrations...)

A vampire walks into a bar and orders a mug of hot water. Suprised, the bartender says, "But I thought vampires only drank blood." The vampire pulls out a used tampon and responds, "I'm making tea.”

****

(This one goes out to all the Catholics out there to whom I will be related to by marriage in less than 3 weeks...)

Q: Why are Catholics glad Christ was crucified instead of being stoned to death?
A: So they can go like this (MAKING THE SIGN OF THE CROSS) instead of like this (BEATING FACE RAPIDLY WITH FISTS).

****

(And, finally, a wedding joke)

Two antennas got married.

The ceremony was nothing special, but the reception was awesome!

Defeat... (Or, should I say, De-feet)

I'm having somewhat of a shoe crisis. It’s pretty much a crisis of my own making. I’ve been procrastinating about picking out shoes for the Catherines for about six months. So when Catherine W. brought up the fact that seasons are changing and fall shoes are starting to appear on the shelves I agreed with her suggestion to get my butt into gear. So I headed out to the shoe stores I love last Saturday.

I don’t love them so much anymore.

I started at Shoe Carnival only to discover that the store is going out of business. This means that there’s pretty much nothing left and even if I did find what I wanted the chances that I’d find the sizes I need are slim. Grrr.

So I went to DSW. They also seemed to be in a transition of some kind. It could be that dreaded season change or something else but their selection was lacking and there were rows of empty shelves. And lots of clearance racks. Not good.

After these defeats (ha) I didn’t have the motivation (or the desire) to go to the mall to check out Payless. I peeked in at the shoe department at Wal*mart later on in the day when I went to visit Adam and I saw what could be a prospect.

When I got home I went online to Target’s website and found a shoe that I really liked. I couldn’t find it at the store though and when I went to order it online on Wednesday I discovered why – it’s not even going to be released (to stores or online) for another six weeks. The wedding is in three. Drat.

So Wednesday night Adam and I were hunting high and low on various websites for silver strappy sandals with a wide, low-ish heel. I kept coming back to Kenneth Cole Unlisted styles. I had seen them previously at DSW and they showed up on eBay, Amazon, and a few other such sites. We watched an eBay auction for the correct sizes last night and got outbid at the last second. Grrr. And it turns out the style I like is a discontinued design. I just have all the luck…

So for now here are my choices: Tonight I’ll go back to Wal*mart and see if I really like the shoes I saw. I’m going for cheap and easy here since I don’t anticipate either Catherine will really ever wear them again. Wal*mart would definitely qualify as cheap and easy. Second option is to go to Payless, see if they have anything, and if not just go with the generic bridesmaids shoes they carry. I suppose a third option is to just let them choose their own shoes and not worry about it. I’m less likely to go with that last one though because the dresses are pretty short and people will see their legs and feet. And I’d like some consistency. And I'm a control freak.

This is pretty much the last decision I have to make and I’m totally dragging my feet. Wait… I still have to decide what I’m doing with my hair… Anyway, hopefully the shoe thing will be resolved by tonight.

The Place Cards are Taking Over

And it's so sad since we can't even hit our 75 guest minimum but it looks like so many people are coming...

My life in a word - wedding

Still not much is happening around here. I’m slowly plugging away through my wedding to-do list. The fact that there are still plenty of RSVPs lingering out in limbo puts a cramp in my table assignment/place card completion but there’s not much I can do about that. I guess I need to determine a final cut-off date for responses. We don’t have to give the reception hall the final headcount until three days before the wedding but I’d like a little more time to get things prepped. Right now we’re up to 59 (plus 4 babies!) Not exactly the turnout we were hoping for, but we have to take what we can get. There are 20 or so more out in no-man’s land so perhaps the number will increase some more in the next couple weeks. Who knows? Not me, as most of the outstanding replies are from Adam’s side. :)

On the administrative side of things, we plan to go down to the courthouse in Oshkosh on the 7th to apply for our marriage license. Winnebago County is pretty basic – birth certificate, SS#, verification of residency. No blood tests or anything else weird. But it does cost $95. That seems a little steep to me for a piece of paper, but whatever. We can’t get married without it so they’ve got us.

Luckily there are not too many blank lines left in the budget at this point. Anticipated additional costs include the final payment to the photographer, disposable cameras for the reception, the reception dinner costs (less our deposit, and will actually be paid after the wedding), and some of my costs – alterations, hair & nails, bridesmaids luncheon. We’ll also have the additional honeymoon costs to take care of afterwards (excursions, other money spent on food, drinks, souvenirs, etc.) But that should be it. All the gifts, favors, apparel, etc are taken care of and paid for. I think we could have pulled this wedding off without going into debt with no problem at all. And I guess we did. It’s not the wedding that caused the credit card balances to spike – it was the house. That makes me feel pretty good about the whole deal. Afterwards I plan to have a post detailing our final budget. Right now (if all the outstanding amounts come close to my estimates) we will have done the whole shebang (including rings and honeymoon) for under $15,000. Exclude those two big hitters and we’d be at just under $9,000. Cruising is not cheap.

Anyway, this next week is pretty dull – my calendar is actually totally blank – but after August 1st the craziness starts. I look at my list regularly to make sure I’m not missing something totally obvious. It seems like I should be freaking out more or have more to do but I’m not seeing anything glare up at me saying “get me done!” I guess this is a good sign indicating that we were as proactive as we hoped to be. It’s still kind of scary to think that in three weeks we’ll see if all this work and money has been worth it. I’m hoping everything goes smoothly and everyone has a good time. I’m doing my best to not be too controlling about things and I’m definitely trying to avoid any Bridezilla moments. I do get tired of the “wedding experts” constantly giving unsolicited advice but I suppose this happens with anything like this. And can I just say right now that I can’t wait for the baby bingoeing to start…

On a non-wedding related note, I find it disturbing that Bush’s colonoscopy was headline news. Scott Adams had a great blog post on that subject the other day – check it out.

And now some random wedding-related photos:

I picked up my veil at the second fitting this past Thursday since I'll need it for my hair test run the first week of August.



And here it is in the closet o' wedding stuff.

It's pretty well organized so we shouldn't have too many problems getting everything where it needs to be. I busied myself this morning wrapping gifts and playing with place card designs. We need to finish the program and meet with the photographer and we should be good to go.

Also, our Bann showed up in the bulletin for the first time this week! How exciting!



And here's a completely random picture of Mo and Einstein...

Final Pictures of House (Maybe)

Here are just a few more pictures to tie up the loose ends on the house thing...

The mini-blinds in the guest room, so obviously missing from this picture

have now been installed



We got the sheers up in our bedroom as well



I realized I never took any pictures in the basement although I suppose that was because there's really nothing down there. But now that we got the futon together

I decided to head down and shoot our new washer & dryer as well.



So, pretty much everything is done. There's some outdoor things on the list still (although getting grass to grow when it never rains is tricky) and we've got a few things to take care of in the fall (fireplace & snow related.) Other than that we're settled, unpacked, and mostly still in one piece.

Camping #2 - but not really...

Argh! Blog falling by the wayside!

Anyway, this past weekend was to have been camping attempt #2 but we decided to bail on that before we even got up to Door County. We had been monitoring the weather all week and as the humidity and chance of storms kept creeping up we opted to stay high and dry at home.

Kind of.

Since we both had off on Friday we decided to go to the drive-in movie on Thursday night. We only stayed for the first movie (Ratatouille) but still had a good time. On Friday we decided to take a day trip to the Mall of America. It has remained our favorite Marshall’s location and the fact that there’s no sales tax on clothing in MN just sweetens the deal. We stopped by Adam’s grandma’s house on the way and visited for a little while. Four hours later we found a parking spot in the huge garage and went to look for food. We just wanted something light to tide us over until we stopped for dinner at an Applebee’s (we had a gift card.) We went to Taco Bell and got those new taquito things. Very Unimpressive. Anyway, then we did some shopping – Marshall’s (clothing), Gourmet Chef (new measuring cups – with a bonus egg separater!), Lego Land (Legos - duh), Big Dog (more clothing.)

And then we went across the street to IKEA.

Good lord.

And I thought Bed, Bath, and Beyond was a dangerous store for me to go to!

We followed the blue arrows, looked at all kinds of interesting furniture, decorations, and kitchen stuff. Mmmmmm, kitchen stuff. We managed to get out of the building with only 2 things – some new dishes and a strainer scoopy thing for the deep fryer. Perhaps it’s a good thing that there’s no IKEA remotely close to Neenah…

We got gas (it was cheaper in MN) and then headed back home. We planned to stop at an Applebee’s along the route home when we got hungry but we discovered that there weren’t too many of them. We ended up driving ¾ of the way home before we found one. The wait wasn’t too bad and we ended up paying less than $10 for the meal. Yay for gift cards! The remaining drive home was uneventful.

Saturday we did some power-errand running. Bank, Lowe’s, Alltel, Walmart, Blockbuster, Copps. Then we managed to finally take down the tent that had been up in the basement since last weekend. And put the futon together. We also watched another couple movies – In Good Company and Gray Matters.

Sunday we got up and went to church together for the first time in like six months. Then we went out for breakfast. Back at home Adam continued putting his ginormous (it’s a word now, look it up!) Lego car together as I cleaned cages, did laundry, did dishes, wrote thank-you cards. We headed to my dad & Cheryl’s for their anniversary party, stayed for a few hours, I was mistaken for Catherine just twice this time (and not mistaken for Brooke at all!), and was continuously asked when we got in and when we were leaving (People… we live an hour away, it’s not like we need to stay overnight! Grrr!)

Anywho, we came back home and continued in much the same matter as the rest of the afternoon. I watched another movie – Pizza – and then eventually went to bed.

This week has some potential excitement: Tomorrow is the final board meeting (hopefully) for IMA. Thursday is my second dress fitting. Friday is Adam’s appointment with the doctor about his hands. We’ll see what happens.

And according to the Official Wedding Countdown: 32 days to go.

Camping Season 2007 - Attempt #1

I think we can consider camping trip #1 of the season a success. True, there were some bumps along the road to outdoor bliss, but we managed to stay in our tent for two nights which didn’t happen at all last year so right there it’s successful.

Adam worked until about 2 on Friday afternoon so I spent the morning packing, grocery shopping, and prepping the house and pets for a weekend alone. I drove up to pick Adam up and we went on our way. We made a few stops before really getting on the road (picked up his newly sized ring, paid off our honeymoon, picked up some new Crocs for him, got gas, returned the cable equipment from the apartment) but then we cruised up to Door County. The road construction on 57 has definitely improved since two years ago. A greater portion of it is now 4-lane divided highway type rather than back-road 2 lane type so that was nice. We got up to the campsite and checked in. We got to our campsite and realized it was right next to the bathroom. Not too close as to be obnoxious, but close enough that it was convenient for the mid-night trips.



We also noticed it was right next to the road. I didn’t really notice the cars too much but then again the park closes at 11 and I sleep with ear plugs so who am I to comment on night noise.

We got the tent up quickly and as I began to assemble the sleeping bags and air mattress we discovered that the thingamajig we brought along to power up the electric pump was too wussy to make it work. Having not brought the battery pump as a backup (Adam’s sister still had it from a few weekends ago) we had to make an unscheduled trip back to Sturgeon Bay’s Walmart since pretty much everything further north was closed or didn’t carry camping stuff. We picked up some firewood on the way since it’s now forbidden to bring wood into the park (some kind of evil tree-hating bug epidemic…) We also stopped for dinner before heading back to the campsite. We ate at Julie’s Café which is right at the entrance to Peninsula State Park. I would highly recommend it. Adam had the fish fry and I had this Caesar chicken pita wrap. It was great food and even better dessert. And very reasonably priced considering its location. After dinner we finished setting up camp, Adam got a small fire going for a bit and then we called it a night.

Saturday morning we both woke up around 5:30 and Adam went outside and played with fire for a bit while I laid in bed some more. We got up and went to take showers around 6:30. We went back down to Welckers – we like their shower stalls. After getting prettied up for the day we went to have breakfast at our favorite Door County breakfast spot – the Gibralter Grill – only to find out they were closed. Hmm. We looked at the ads in the park’s guide and decided to go to the only place open at 7am – The Cookery. I had chocolate chip pancakes and bacon and Adam had eggs, hash browns and toast (and some of my bacon.) After the nausea of taking my pills before I ate passed it was ok. Once again, the food was great and pretty reasonable. We left Fish Creek and made the journey to Northpoint to catch the Washington Island Ferry. Once on the island we bee-lined to the Ostrich Farm. My beloved pot bellied pigs were nowhere to be found but the rest of the animals were still there. They also had a kangaroo this year (although he looked thoroughly bored and didn’t move at all the entire time we were there.) I got some good pictures and videos of Adam feeding some of the animals. (Take a look at them here.)We also got to see a newborn baby goat. It was born while we were there and we got to see the “find the mother, corner her, grab her by the horns, seclude her, bring baby to her, make them bond” process.

After the farm we drove around for a while, checked out the Sand Dunes (Very Unimpressive – if you want dunes go to Kohler Andrae), and planned to eat at a drive-in on the island but changed our mind when we got to the ferry dock right as they were boarding.

We drove back to Ellison Bay to check out one of the restaurants in the Washington Island booklet – The Viking Grill. Once again, good food. I had a chicken sandwich and Adam had some whitefish chowder and a gyro. The service was a little spotty but overall ok. We happened to hit Ellison Bay during their “Old Ellison Bay Days” celebration. We checked out the art fair and got some decoration stuff for the house. On the way back to Fish Creek we stopped at our favorite candy store – the Door County Confectionary. We got back to the campsite around 3 and sat outside for while. Then we took a nap in the tent until it got too warm. Adam started the fire around 5 to make sure we had enough time to burn all the firewood we had left. We grilled some hamburgers for dinner but had to forego the s’mores since the marshmallows took on water in the cooler and the graham crackers I had packed expired last November. Whoops. We sat outside by the fire until it burned down far enough and then we went to bed.

Sunday morning we woke pretty early again but went back to sleep for another hour or so somehow. We got up, disassembled camp, took showers, and headed to breakfast. We tried another restaurant from the park guide – Pelletier’s. They’re more well known for their fish boils but their breakfast is pretty good too. I had French toast and breakfast fries and Adam had eggs, bacon, toast, and hash browns. We tried to eat slowly since we had until 9am until the last place we wanted to stop opened but we didn’t want to take up space so we decided to just drive and wait in the parking lot for about ½ hour. After that last stop we headed home. We made a little detour in Green Bay hoping the furniture outlet we got our table at would be open but they are closed on Sundays. We got home, unpacked, and then headed out for some home-improvement fun.

The weather was perfect – no rain, not too hot, I didn’t get sunburned. Aside from the air mattress mishap it was an almost perfect camping weekend. Our second (and last) camping weekend is coming up July 13-15. We’re at Peninsula State Park again so hopefully we get a repeat performance of this weekend.

Is there a non-judgemental, undistracted doctor in the house?

** I’ll try and keep this post family-friendly but I can’t make any guarantees… Don’t say I didn’t warn you**

This past Wednesday was the day we’ve all been waiting for since March (ok, so maybe just me.) It was my yearly doctor’s visit. I really only go so they’ll renew my prescription (which they won’t do without poking and prodding me) so it annoyed me that much more when I called for an appointment back in March only to find out the NP I’d seeing for the past two years was “on leave” and I’d have to try and get in with the OB-GYN. No openings until June. Ugh. So I waited, dealt with the horror that was the end of April/beginning of May, all the time anticipating that I’d be able to get some insight and advice today.

I called about ½ hour before my appointment time to make sure she was running on schedule. The first thing I hear is “well, one of her patients just went into labor but it’s her first so it might take awhile. She should still be able to keep your appointment.” Wonderful. I head to the clinic, check in, and wait about 5 minutes (which, I’ll admit, was remarkably quick service.) The nurse calls me in and takes me to the exam room. All the normal stuff – weight (eek!), height (still 5’ 2½”), blood pressure (130/70… is that bad? – they told me last year I was a bit above normal but I tend to hyperventilate in hospitals anyway…), heart, talk about the stupid forms they make you fill out every single year even if nothing changes. Then they tell me that the doctor has a PA with her today and would it be ok if she sat in on the exam? Pfft, I don’t care. I’d never met the doctor before either so what’s one more stranger looking at my delicate parts going to matter?

Then they gave me the hugest gown ever to change into. Seriously, I could have wrapped it around myself twice. I’m not sure if I should be insulted or whether everyone gets the tent-sized one. Anyway, the PA comes in and introduces herself and informs me that the she will do most of the exam (if that’s ok with me.) She checks eyes, ears, nose, lungs, heart (again?) We talk about random crap and then she gets down to business while she lectures me about doing self breast exams. When that’s over with she goes to get the doctor for the really fun part. In the meantime we’ve talked about my issues and she also discusses this with the doctor. She comes in bearing samples of a different pill – Seasonique – which apparently has a bit more estrogen than Seasonale and is supposed to eliminate some of the side effects. We’ll see if it works. I still plan to screw with the weeks though to ensure I won’t have any wedding/honeymoon timeframe issues. Of course, my body seems to do whatever it wants so I can only really do so much.

Anyway, as I was lying down (and getting lectured about the risks of shaving…ahem…), the doctor got paged. Apparently the baby decided to make its appearance earlier than expected. So, I got an “express Pap” (not my words, the PA said that…) What I think I got was gypped. Not that it’s a particularly pleasant experience in the best circumstances, but when an inexperienced PA tries to do things in a rather sensitive area quickly… ouch. And they basically swabbed and ran. I think they skipped about half of the exam. I distinctly recall being poked and squeezed in the ovaries last time… I was left on the table in a gown with the PA calling over her shoulder to call if I had problems with the new pills. Nice…

So I got dressed, didn’t even check out (the receptionist was MIA), and went back to work a lot sorer than anticipated.

Now, I really liked my previous doctor (well, nurse practitioner, but whatever.) She knew about some of my problems and wasn’t distracted by women in labor. This has always been the downside of going to an OB-GYN so I wasn’t too happy that I got shifted over to one. Stupid babies… The NP was also much nicer and less judgmental. Granted I don’t go to these places for a boost in my self-esteem, but I also don’t go to them to be lectured on how I choose to maintain myself. Geesh! Why can’t BCP be OTC? It would be so much easier. Even though this exam is fully covered by my insurance I just wish I could skip it. I guess maybe the doctor answered my questions. Although she was so distracted by trying to move the exam along I don’t know if her replies were as helpful as they could be.

In any case, glad it’s over for another year. Don’t think the insurance should have to pay for the whole thing since they skipped a bunch but that’s not my problem. Re-considering switching to Adam’s health plan after the wedding, but will definitely look into a new NP regardless. Hope the new pills work miracles and I’m suddenly cramp-nausea-3½ weeks of bleeding-free. If not I might be awfully crabby on my wedding day…