Mike and Music

1) We got upgraded to this AMAZING suite at the Westin.  The Admiral Suite.  It was two stories and was just incredible.  My favorite part was the full-size jacuzzi tub and gorgeous views of the city and the water (depending on which way you looked).  The complimentary chocolate dipped strawberries and two bottles of champagne (one each night we stayed) were also fabulous.

2) Mike keeps fiddling with his wedding band.  It’s cute.

3) We’re about a half hour from heading to the airport for our flight to Vancouver.  We’ll have a few days there before boarding our cruise down the coast of North America.  Woo hoo!

4) People have been sending us links to their photos from the wedding, and they’re great.  It’s so fun to see what other people saw while I was all in the moment.

5) I’m going to turn off my cell phone soon.  I can’t remember the last time I had my phone off for more than a few hours.  Ah, vacation!

More posts in a couple of weeks!

After a crazy week (heck, a crazy year!), Mike and I were officially married last night.  It was a wonderful (quick) ceremony, and a really fun celebration with all of our friends and family.  We had a ton of fun and are excited to get the pro pictures back, which we’ll post on here as soon as we get them.  In the meantime, here are a few teaser shots.

Mike and I in took a quick self-taken shot on the morning of our wedding:

Me and my girls:

These next few pictures are small because I borrowed them from my brother’s MySpace page and I don’t know how to re-size them…

The Mayor, groom, groomsmen entering the ceremony site:

Saying our vows…

After the ceremony, the officiant and the bride:

Our first dance:

Cutting the cake:

There!  Don’t you feel like you were there?  If you were there… thanks!  We feel very special and lucky to have such great people in our lives, and we’re very happy you were able to share in our happy day!

Well, before we go to the chapel, we had to get a marriage license.  Mike and I did that today.  We’d read online that the San Diego County Recorder and Assessor’s office recommends having an appointment if you go to get a license on Saturday, but we figured it was one thirty and how busy could the office be, anyway?  Pretty busy, as it turned out.  When we walked into the office, we were both taken aback at how many people were crammed into the office.  And interesting people, too!  Women in fancy wedding dresses (why would you wear a fancy wedding dress if you’re getting married at the courthouse?), men in shorts and work boots, vaqueros in cowboy boots and huge belt buckles, etc.  There were also a pretty good number of interracial couples, which surprised me for some reason.

We gave our name to the clerk, she told us to wait, and wait we did.  It actually wasn’t too bad, though, and finally it was our turn.  The clerk made some comment about my name– “wow, what a nice name,” she said, to which Mike replied, “thanks!”  It was great.  She looked at our drivers licenses, compared the info on them to what we put on our application, and then disappeared.  A few minutes later she came back with a type written license, told us where the witnesses need to sign and where the officiant signs, took our fifty bucks, and that was it.  Much more simple than I expected.

We also ponied up the extra $1 to get a “Just Married” bumper sticker.  Mike wanted to get one.  Don’t ask me why!

One year ago today, Mike and I still weren’t sure if we were actually going to be able to take possession of our house on the date we were supposed to (9/14).  We were packing our stuff in the old place on Ivy Street.  We were wrapping up work in preparation for the two weeks each of us too off work so we could move and renovate our new place.  We were nervous about paying the enormous mortgage.  We were excited about the prospect of becoming homeowners and landlords.

One year later, we have the house and have had good tenants for several months (one since Nov. 2007, and the other since Jan. 2008).  We renovated the units, though it took longer than we expected, and we’ve done a ton of work on our place.  We’ll soon be turning our attention to the outside of the house (building a deck, new stucco, exterior paint).  We’ve gone from being boyfriend and girlfriend buying a house to engaged couple who own a house, and in ten days, we’ll be husband and wife homeowners.  It’s mindboggling how much change can happen in a year!

Today I took Rey to the dog park, and after about a half hour, we wandered over to the water fountain so Rey could get a drink.  He often will stand on the step and stretch toward the water fountain, but today he surprised me by jumping INTO the fountain.  It was adorable.  (It was also the sort of thing that would have pissed me off before I became a dog lover, assuming I would’ve wandered into a dog park and seen it happen, which I wouldn’t have.)

I just read this, and it blew my mind: John McCain, who is 72 years old, is 22 years older than Alaskan statehood.  Wow.

1) Sarah Palin has a Tina Fey-thing going on. Maybe it’s the glasses that make me think the two resemble each other. That and the sarcasm Palin displayed last night in her speech at the Republican National Convention. Very ballsy to say that Obama doesn’t have any experience, given her thin resume.

2) Now that the wedding is only a few weeks away, it’s time to start writing all these enormous checks to the different vendors. My ING account is looking very sad these days, and my check writing hand is getting tired.

3) Last night, Mike and I were walking to the dog park and I started waxing philosophic about my neighborhood. I grew up just a mile or so from where we live now, and we spend a lot of time in my old ‘hood. It’s sort of weird to walk by the park and see the same stuff I saw 20 years ago, the same people (in many cases) who have known me since I was little, etc. But it’s also really cool. I know the place like the back of my hand, and there’s so much to love about Golden Hill/South Park.

4) My birthday is coming up. I keep forgetting about it because of the wedding and then every once in a while I remember. I’m looking forward to being another year older. And I’m glad that I won’t yet be the big Three-Oh.

The Knot is a wedding planning website.  They have all sorts of resources for brides-(and grooms)-to-be, including a wedding planning checklist.  The list is full of stuff I have no interest in doing, as well as a lot of propaganda from the Wedding Industrial Complex (you know, the folks who tell you that you need to spend at least $28k on a wedding because that’s average and this is your Special Day and you don’t want to be just average on your Special Day), but there is some helpful information on there.  I’ve been checking things off as I do them, and have checked off the items that I have no intention of doing, just to keep the list from being overly cluttered.  Well, I looked at the checklist today, 16 days out from the wedding.  That stupid list shows me as having 184 to-dos!!!  I’ve already checked off 121!  The Wedding Industrial Complex strikes again!

Sometimes Mike and I go to Costco and get something we need, like toothpaste or toilet paper or soap.  This inevitably means we walk out with some enormous quantity of the product, generally thinking “wow, we got such a good price for buying in bulk!”  We get home, put the stuff away, and, in more instances than I’d like to admit, promptly forge we have it or forget where we put it.

Since we’re having people over to the house before the wedding, I’ve been cleaning and putting things in order.  There were a couple of boxes of toiletries and personal product that had been stashed in a closet, and I pulled the boxes out and started going through them.  You wouldn’t believe what I found in there!  Bottles of shampoo and conditoner and lotion– full!– packages of razors and razor blades– when I just bought some (at Costco) because I didn’t think I had any– and more.  I knew that we’d gotten some monster load of toothpaste, but couldn’t find it, so the other day Mike and I went to Target to buy some.  They had two packs on sale and I thought, “we can save money if we buy two tubes!”  So two tubes it was.  Well, unpacking last night, guess what I found.  Two tubes of toothpaste from Costco.  Argh!

The lesson here, really, is to be careful what you buy in bulk.  And to remember where you put it.  And that if you ever need to brush your teeth, you should come to our house!

In the six months that we’ve had Rey, we’ve all made progress.  Mike and I have adapted to having a dog and all that it entails (one of us coming home after work so we can let Rey out of his crate, putting extra thought into going away for a weekend, buying dog food and treats and toys, etc.), and Rey has gotten use to being domesticated.  He is really good and seems to be happy with us, and he’s gained about three pounds since we got him.

When Rey first came to stay with us, giving him a bath was a huge adventure.  He hated going into the bathtub and hated having the water sprayed on him,  and would shake all over the place, spraying water in all directions.  He’s gotten better about bath time now, going into the tub willingly and standing still while I wet him down and apply the shampoo.  Rey still hates water on his face (but so do I), but the massive drama off bathing him has mostly died down.

The one exception to that is once the bath is done.  He’ll jump out of the bathtub on his own, and seems to like being towel dried.  He still shakes (and it’s really cute, because the shaking starts at one end and then moves along his body), but it’s most like once a bath time, not multiple times.  Once that’s done, though, he tears out of the bathroom and runs all over the house, barking and growling and throwing himself onto furniture.  He rolls all over the couch in the living room, he rolls all over the loveseat in the den, and he rolls around like crazy on our rug.  He runs in circles all over the house and jumps up and down in the air.  It’s almost like he feels emasculated (well, whatever the dog equivalent is) and has to show that he’s still a studly dog.

I took some video footage of the aftermath of a bath, and as soon as I figure out how to put it up here, I will.