Thursday, April 27, 2006

....And We're Back

Well, I'm married now.

Its pretty cool.

Trying to communicate in writing all that the past month or so has held is going to be, uhmmm, difficult. Being the slightly dedicated blogger that I am, though, I will make an attempt:

Wedding ceremony
Overall things went off without a hitch. Well, at least not too much. The photographer was an hour late. The caterer apparently didn't hear some of the specific requests we had regarding the cake. And somebody added oil to the chocolate fountains (an unnecessary step with the fine, fine chocolate we had purchased). The last one is actually my biggest pet peeves. We had tested the fountains and chocolate to make sure they didn't need any added oil yet somebody decided they did. The result: uneven chocolate flow. Like I said, this complaint in only worthy of the "pet peeve" classification.

Other than the above trivial items, things went well. The ceremony was Jewish styled and we enjoyed the oddities therein (The bride entered first! Gasp! Shock!). We had a great showing from people all over the place. (One odd fact we noticed: it seemed that the further you had to travel, the more likely it was you would attend. A lot of very local people we expected didn't show.) In particular, I was overwhelmed with how many of my friends from all over the nation were able to make it. Thanks, guys! I give our ceremony two thumbs up.

Pictures are available here

The Honeymoon
The honeymoon got off to a rocky start as we had to interrupt it early on to head back to Oklahoma for a funeral. Katie's grandfather passed away the evening of our wedding. We could have stayed in town for three days but, considering we had already paid for hotels, we decided to just go ahead with plans. Driving back for the funeral took three days and two nights out of our honeymoon but, well, that's just the way things go. It was a good reminder that we're not the ones calling the shots.

The secret honeymoon location was a cabin outside Woodland Park, CO (near Colorado Springs) (showing here, brown roof in the center of the screen.). The place was great, had a wonderful outdoor hot tub which we indulged in regularly. We didn't do as much hiking as I would have wished due to my back injury but did play a lot of board games including a sweet two-player version of Catan. We hung out with some friends in the area, went to a nice Italian restaurant where I had two bottles of Henry Weinhard's root beer for $9 (Note to self, ask the price on the drink before you order it.), and enjoyed the scenery. Honeymoon: two thumbs up.

The Move
This last weekend we moved all of Katie's stuff from her apartment into our new duplex. I think that I'm tired of moving Katie; I've done this five times now and I think that we're done with this for now. And now that we're married, it has become my personal mission to help free her from her bonds of materialism.

Well, probably not.

At least we can get rid of all the duplicate items that we each had. Like spatulas.

Needless to say, our place is a mess and it will be at least a month before we approach any kind of order. When its organized enough, though, we're going to have a house-warming party and use our chocolate fountains.

And this time, I'm not going to add any oil.

Moving Katie for the fifth time: two thumbs up due to favorable weather and the fact that she was moving in with me. Otherwise, two thumbs down for having to move her one more time.

The Gifts

There's not too much to say about the gifts other than there were a lot of them. I didn't expect near this many and we had to spend a most of a Saturday sorting them out. Sadly, due to the varying locations of our friends, we ended up having to register at five stores and returns are going to be a bit tricky. We ended up with a number of items we didn't ask for nor have much use for but, hey, that's how things go. We're thankful for the generosity of all our friends.

Gifts: two thumbs up, even for the stuff we didn't want because we know they meant well.