Break time is O-VAH!

And so, I’m back…from outer space.

Still getting acclimatized to my looming work deadlines and overflowing inbox.

Will this picture suffice, with the promise of more interesting blog type material to come?

Let me know.

Gold Diggers of 2008

Powering down the home stretch for the wedding.

Although the ‘To Do’ list hardly seems to be shrinking, indeed the opposite appears to be happening, we are making noticeable progress in getting ready for the big day.

A while ago I noticed a key flaw in my budgeting. I budgeted X amount of dollars for the wedding, but neglected to mention that this amount was also supposed to cover any honeymoon expenses.

Unfortunately, only the wedding budget was crafted around figure X and it when it came time to start planning (and paying) for the honeymoon it became apparent that there was a hole in our finances. Well, my finances anyway.

So things got stretched a little bit and the important stuff (transportation, lodgings) were able to be covered. But food, walking around cash and fantastic miscellaneous are regrettably still beyond my means.

That means these items may have to be taken care of by Senor Credit Cardo.

Which I hate. If there is one occasion when you can justify a smallish amount of debt it should be your honeymoon. But I’m so debt-phobic that I’m likely to bend over backwards and spend as little as I can in order to keep any potential debt accumulation to as small amount as possible.

I don’t want to go hog wild on my honeymoon and break the bank. Hell, I don’t want even want to dent it. But I do know that if I’m paying for things on credit I will begrudge each and every penny spent. And the last thing I want to do on my honeymoon is pinch pennies.

Save the dates? Save yourself.

Wedding madness continues to grip our little corner of the world.

Saturday was brunch with a group of friends and an oppurtunity to welcome one couple's first child to the group. Does this mean that we officially have a group mascot?

I held her twice for about 20 minutes a pop. She was a cute little tyke and I know that kids may not be to far from own future.

Poor kids, they're going to have to deal with a father even more immature than they are.

But first, the wedding, or at least the wedding planning.

After brunch we corralled one of the groomsmen (and his wife) to take a photo of us for our save the date cards (magnets?). And yes, we picked the coldest, windiest day of the year to do so. It's amazing how far your standards will plummet or how quickly you forget the little things (LIKE ACTUALLY CLOSELY INSPECTING THE PICTURE) when you're serious danger of frostbite.

But after a couple misstarts and some tragic trial and error we thought we actually had some decent material to play with. Until we got home and actually looked at it on the computer. That's when we found that out of the couple dozen photographs we took not one was a winner in the "save the date sweepstakes". There were uncomfortable looking poses and bad smiles (me), lighting issues (the world) and just some rather ho-hum shots.

S spent hours with the photographs, playing with lighting levels and trying to coax something printable from the pictures, but to no avail.

Now we have to find some time in our already complicated schedules to jam another photoshoot in.

Not cool. Pun absolutely intended.

An early pass at some vows...

I think it starts strong, but it ends in pure shmaltz.

Ultimate Frisbee has given me a lot over the years, good friends, good health, twisted ankles, cut up knees and a seemingly endless shopping list of other aches and pains.

But I never thought it would give me a person as special as S.

I first met S at the start of a new Frisbee season. She’d taken a couple classes and was a little nervous about having to step on the field for the first time. But you’d never know it from the way she acted.

Her smile instantly lit up the room and worked it’s way into my heart as well.

Playing it cool, it never pays to play your cards too early, I made sure that I was always available if Stacey wanted to throw the disc around before the game or down a pint after it.

My goal was to play this strictly long term. Maybe at the end of the season, if things worked out well, I’d work up the nerve to ask her out. But it didn’t really work out like that.

The more time I spend with Stacey the more I realized that there’s no way a woman like this was going to be single three months from now. If I didn’t move, and fast, I was going to miss out on a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

So I asked her out and for some reason that neither one of us has ever really been able to figure out, she said yes. One date turned into two, two dates became two weeks, and two weeks became two months and the next thing you know I’m trolling jewelry stores and trying to figure out a way to talk to her parents ‘alone’.

I’ve lost a lot of Frisbee games over the last couple of years but in the end I’ve won the only thing that matters.