Missing Link

Once again I’ve gone off for a somewhat lengthy period of time without providing any content for those who check here every so often. My apologies, but I promise I have a very good reason for my lengthy delay, and it mostly has nothing to do with laziness.

On May 30th, a few short weeks ago, I got married to a wonderful, amazing, beautiful woman – Ann. The wedding ceremony was beautiful, and the reception was everything I hoped it could/would be. The ceremony was at Holy Rosary Catholic Church in downtown Indianapolis, and was followed by a reception in the back yard at my parents house. The weather forecast called for rain most of the day, and that morning I prayed for the weather to hold out until AFTER the reception. I believe my exact words were something along the lines of “just please let the rain hold off until after the reception, then you can unleash whatever hell you want to”. Interestingly enough, about 5 minutes after the reception ended the severe weather sirens went off and we spotted a funnel cloud with a tornado starting to come down. It was, thankfully, moving away from us.

Ann and I followed our wedding with a week in Florida, which provided a nice and relaxing start to our marriage. You just can’t beat floating around in a pool, relaxing on the beach, and getting splashed by a 12,000 pound killer whale. We also saw dolphins, both in captivity and in the wild (feeding them in captivity, and having one swim up and past us slowly in the wild, we believe to say hello). We spent several evenings in a pool-side spa drinking wine and watching the sunset. We ate some really great food (including an absolutely amazing peanut butter chocolate truffle pie) and generally had the time of our lives.

Then we came home and opened wedding presents. It was like Christmas. We got a lot of great and amazing stuff. We also had a huge volume of trash from boxes, wrapping paper, etc. I think the trash collectors hate coming to our house now. Ann says he looked especially pissed off this week.

Things are starting to settle down, now, and Ann and I are relaxing into our lives together. I couldn’t be happier than I am now, waking up next to the love of my life every single day.   

Now, you’re probably thinking “so, if you got married on the 30th, and only took a week for the honeymoon, why have you not written anything about it until now?!”

The answer is fairly simple – it’s a matter of time. I’m back to work full time doing information security work for an amazing one to one marketing company. On top of that I’m helping some friends at the Open InfoSec Foundation by performing some contract work at night and in free time.

This coming Saturday I’m getting my feet wet with Motor Sports photography, as I’ve landed some credentials to shoot at the Mid-Ohio grand-am race. We’re leaving at 3am to make it to the track in time to get setup and start shooting when the drivers and cars come out, and the actual race is at 5pm, meaning it’s going to be a VERY long day. It should be fun, though, and having access is always nice.

Over this past weekend a milestone went past mostly unnoticed by me (I was busy!).  The milestone is that I’ve had my house for a year, as of May 15th.

When I bought the house it was everything I wanted in a house for this stage in my life, and it still is.   I had almost no furnishings to put inside,   no TV, no bed, and no things like towels,  sheets, napkins, placemats,  kitchen stuff, etc.     I had no lawnmower, no weed whacker, no grill, no silverware,  no home office trappings (desk, filing cabinet, etc)…. I essentially had none of the things I needed for a house.

Over the course of the past year I’ve made lots of progress (much of it with the help of my lovely soon-to-be wife, Ann).   I have furniture,  an entertainment center, a well-put-together kitchen,  a very sweet home office, two lawnmowers (it was necessary…), weed whacker, wheelbarrow, etc   In short – I’ve spent the past year turning this house I bought, into a home.   And not a moment too soon, as in the very near future my house is going to become the home Ann and I will share.

Yesterday after work I stopped off at the grocery store and picked up ingredients to make barbecue cheddar burgers (turned out amazing, btw), then went home and spent the evening out in the yard mowing the lawn and finishing the tilling for the garden.   Tonight I plan on pulling out unwanted plants (mostly things growing because birds dropped seeds in my planters ) and planting some flowers.  I’m determined to get a handle on my landscaping this year.

I’d like to grill some chicken tonight, with a side of vegetables and perhaps some form of bread (rolls or something).  That sounds yummy.  Later this week it’d be nice to have spaghetti with a nice meat sauce, or something.    Maybe that’ll be for Wednesday.  I might see if I can find a nice red wine to go with it.

I’ve been busy lately.  Really busy.

While I’ve had the time to write posts on here, I’ve decided to use that time to do other things (reading, playing WoW or other games, watching TV/movies/podcasts), and not writing about what’s going on.

As people around me (and people around Ann for that matter) like to keep pointing out – I’m getting married in two weeks (Less, actually).  To answer the single most asked question once and for all – NO, I’m not really nervous about it.  I don’t anticipate really being nervous.  Please stop asking (and stop asking Ann too) – it gets annoying fast.

The Bachelor / Bachelorette parties were this weekend.   Neither one of us were able to have all of our groomsmen/bridesmaids present, which sucked.  I had all but one, as MattyP! Could not make it as he’s from out of town.  He was missed.   I had a good time, though, but as with pretty much any Bachelor party I decline to go into details other than to say alcohol was involved.

Ann also had a good time, and for the first time in her life experienced a hangover.  I’m proud of her for reaching that milestone!

The unfortunate part of the weekend was that Ann and I had to take Sunday to recover, and thus did not get much done with our yard.   And by “not much” I of course mean “not anything”.

It’s a beautiful day today, though, so I fully plan on spending time outside once I get off work.   I love the great outdoors!

Maybe I can grill out tonight…

This past weekend was spent at a retreat house on the east side of Indianapolis. Why would I choose to spend my weekend at a retreat house on the east side of Indianapolis? I wouldn’t, to be honest. And I didn’t…. I was told I had to, so I did.

You see, Ann and I are getting married in… under 5 months now. As part of the preparation for marriage, the Catholic church decided that we needed to partake in a marriage preparation retreat weekend. So, dutifully obeying the commands of the Church, we went.

We went in expecting to have a terrible weekend. After all, it was a weekend where we were forced to go stay at a strange place, with strange people and do strange things. I was still somewhat sick from having the flu last week and Ann had a ton of studying to do for school. Neither one of us could think of anything we could want to do LESS than the retreat.

We were wrong.

I’m not going to lie and say that it was the BEST WEEKEND EVAR… it wasn’t. But just as it wasn’t the BEST WEEKEND EVAR, it also wasn’t the worst… by a large margin. You see – neither Ann, nor I, realized going in that this weekend would afford us the opportunity to hang out with each other and talk, and have fun, and joke around. Without distractions.

So, we did all that…. and we liked it. There were some other nice couples there too, which was cool. Nobody I’d call a new friend, but they at least made the weekend a bit more enjoyable.

Plus, the weekend was over by noon on Sunday, giving us Sunday afternoon and evening to spend doing what we wanted. In my case that meant installing Boxee on my AppleTV and testing it out by watching episodes of ALF, Ghost Hunters (both regular and International), and Doogie Howser M.D.

Right now I’m watching Indiana Jones’s (the new one, Crystal Skull) from Netflix, and later I’ll begin my journey through the world of 24 by watching the episode that started it all off…. the first hour of the first season… thanks to Boxee.