Category: Life

Sometimes, I feel the need to talk about me (imagine that).

After we finally left town for our honey-night1, Ariesna nodded off and went to sleep for most of the drive. Once we got to Davenport, I got a bit too caught up in looking for street names and went past the place we were staying… a couple of times. *sigh* I’m convinced I’ve got less direction sense than a rock. I can learn an area so I know where I’m going but it takes me a fairly long time and even after years of living in this area; I tend to turn down a street only to be surprised when it joins up with a different street I’m already familiar with. All this is building up to say that I ended up having to tell Ariesna where we were staying before we found the place2. I did so want it to be a complete surprise. *sigh*

Any hoo, the place we stayed at is called Fulton’s Landing. It’s a late 19th century house that has been beautifully maintained and is decorated with many a wonderful antique. When we finally arrived, Ariesna & I walked inside but found ourselves faced with a small problem. There was no sign of the proprietor! After a bit of shouting hello and ringing the doorbell, I went back outside and started walking around the grounds to see if I could find somebody. Later Ariesna confided in me that just after I’d gone searching that she found a small note saying that our hostess could be found painting the front porch.

After locating Pat, our gracious and charming host, we headed back to where Ariesna was waiting and then up to our room. Ariesna was thrilled and while I did find it to be a lovely room; it was a bit pink for me. We freshened ourselves up a bit and then went to a nearby Japanese restaurant that we are familiar with from previous visits to the area. Their yummy rolls weren’t as good as the ones we’d had back in Kansas City once upon a time, but the Hawaiian rolls were fantastic3! Then she had the Shrimp Tempura and I had the Chicken Katsu. Both dishes were delicious and much larger than I remembered from previous visits. After eaching our fill, we headed back to Fulton’s Landing.

Just a brief side note for the single folks who read this blog: when you get married some day; make sure to eat a good breakfast and/or hide some sort of energy bar in your pocket/purse for later. That way you don’t starve as your wedding guests are likely to keep you so busy that the serving staff will remove your food before you get a chance to eat any of it!

We did get back to Fulton’s Landing without any troubles and had a very pleasant evening relaxing… and doing those things that newlyweds do. The next morning, we had a marvelous breakfast with the other guests: a couple from Nebraska with their daughter from Brazil and a writer from England. Apparently, he writes a column called “The Best…” for The European; this has him gaunting around the world finding the best places to stay, best foods to eat and writing all about it for his clientelle. After listening to him talk for a few minutes, I’m became convinced that I’m in the wrong profession. 🙂 After breakfast, we checked out but Pat allowed us to leave our car parked there so we could go for a walk around the area. There are many gorgeous houses over there, a few of them for sale –and quite undoubtably out of my price range–. It ended up being a longer walk than we had really thought we were in for, with a good chunk leading us up-hill but it also very enjoyable. Particularly once we left the housing area and got back down by the river with the cool breeze coming in off the water. Hmm, that was soo nice.

Then it was time to retrieve the car and head for home, which we spent just quietly enjoying the day & each other’s company. Later in the evening, Ariesna’s parents came up and we unwrapped all the wedding loot. It was a good haul. Heck, there were even gifts in there that were aimed more towards me than they were towards the bride. Don’t misunderstand me, there were plenty of gifts that were definitely picked with the bride in mind! And of course, there was also a nice selection of checks and cold, hard cash as well. All in all, I think Ariesna & I should get married more often if it’s going to bring in this kind of loot.

1 Due to time & financial constraints, we didn’t get to do a full honeymoon right now but we hope to do one later. Since it was just a night away from home, I’m calling it our honey-night. 🙂
2 For the record, she’d already noticed the sign for the place a couple of times before I broke down and told her.
3 For those unfamiliar with Japanese cuisine, these rolls are actually types of sushi.

Ladies of the Internet, you missed your chance! By the time you’re reading this, my fiance Ariesna and I will have completed exchanging our wedding vows and will be shoving cake into each other’s faces1. I’ve known that this day was coming up for some time, but it hadn’t really sunk in what was happening until the rehearsal tonight2 at the church. The sun was shining down and flooding the church with light. My groomsmen were following me to the front of the church and would crack into “Whistle While You Work” or something equally silly. We got to the alter area and we waited for the bride’s maids to come up and finally for Ariesna to be walked up my her father. Then we were holding hands and she was staring up into my eyes with this smile that just radiated joy at me. I’m pretty sure the pastor said something or other to us, but I wasn’t really paying attention to him at that point. I did hear something about practicing our kiss and that part went really well. Then it was all over and back to my Mom’s place to finish up a few last minute things before I headed back to the apartment while Ariesna headed down to her parent’s place.

I’m sure that seems horrendously old fashioned but we’re not going to get to see each other until we show up at the church for our day of wedding bliss3. She’ll show up at the church and get changed into some sort of remarkably girly wedding dress that I’ve yet to see. I’ll show up fully outfitted in my kilt. Yup, a kilt. I’ve got some Scottish blood in my veins and over the past couple of years, I’ve become more interested in that side of my ancestry. Back in the early stages of planning these festivities, I decided too get a kilt and wear it at the wedding. Many of my male friends and family have mocked this decision, particularly after learning what the full outfit cost but I think it’s a good investment. Though I do have to wish I’d found those online kilt rental places earlier so I could have the groomsmen in kilts too. Perhaps then they’d not be so quick to make snide remarks about me wearing a “dress”. Oh and that reminds me, I’ve heard and read many a good quip as a reply to what is worn under a kilt. Most of them I just laugh off, but I’ve got one that works for me. When asked by my oldest brother what I planned to wear beneath my kilt; I told him if he really wants to know, he has to buy a ticket from Ariesna to find out. :p

I apologize if this post seems even more rambling than my usual babblings… But I’ve got my country’s 500th anniversary to plan, my wedding to arrange, my wife to murder, and Guilder to frame for it. I’m swamped. So now I’m off to get some rest; because as you know, if you haven’t got your health, you haven’t got anything.

1 Note: I am under a threat of pain of death if I get any cake on her dress; so I’ll probably be all nice and gentle when I feed her that first piece of wedding cake.
2 I’m writing this post shortly before midnight on Friday, 6 May 2005 but I’m going to change the date/time of the post so that it doesn’t appear until the wedding ceremony has begun. I may get my past/present/future tenses a bit mixed up because of this, but you’ll just have to cope with that.
3 And yes, we’ve already heard many, many, MANY times about the lady from Georgia who had her break down and ran away to Alberqueque. Rest assured safe guards are in place so we won’t be kidnapped and so that neither one of us goes any further insane than we already are. Thank you for being the 900th idjit to make that joke to us.

If you’ve tried contacting me by email lately, I apologize for not responding but my Internet connection went down again last Thursday night and they can’t come out to fix it until Wednesday of this week. I’ll try checking my email occassionally on break at work, but the cruddy webmail interface may mean that I’ll miss your message amoungst all the spam and posts to the email lists I’m subscribed to. *grumpf*

I took a moment to update my Portal today, as I realized that I’d started classifying some of my links in WP as things that the page wasn’t setup to display. After doing that, I noticed blogs that I’d not read for a while and took a quite trip over to Uncommon Woman‘s site. After catching up on her recent posts, I looked over her blogroll and just clicked a bunch to take a look at what she reads. I thought Feministe had a nice design, so I took a closer look at her posts and that lead me to Cat Town.

For the record, laughing so hard you snort your hot tea will clear your sinuses up (at least a little bit) but it’s bloody painful. Also, I’m pretty sure I’m going to burn in heck for laughing at it.

My internet connection went down over the weekend and I ended up taking a half-day of vacation so I could be around for my appointment with the repair guy from 1-5. *grumpf* Why can’t they make appointments like normal people (e.g. 3-4)? Anyways, as you can see my internet connection has finally been fixed and I’ve been catching up on my email and reading the blogs that I do. The following quiz was found via AWelkin: