Tina & Jeff's Blog

2006-06-12T22:43:00.000-04:00

It's been well over a year since our last post here. I'm 99.999999% sure that no one is reading this, either. But, in case someone does....

We passed the 2 year mark! Woo hoo! It really does seem like just yesterday that we were planning the whole big event. But yeah, it's been over two years. And to make it even funnier, people we haven't seen in awhile wonder when we're going to celebrate our first anniversary. Too cute, actually. Apparently, time is moving faster for them than for us.

It's been a good two years, though. Lots of fun trips, bought a house (and yes, almost everything works now), having a good time in general!

See ya' next year!

2005-01-22T21:09:00.000-05:00

As of today, we've been married 8 months. Woo hoo! Neither of us has suffered any significant damage and we're still friends. Oh, and Allie looks like the photo on our wedding website again (but that's just seasonal while it's cold outside down here).

Our latest concern is that we're both sensing a bit more padding around our respective middles. Tina already had a gym membership... which was about to expire. So she went to the gym to do her renewal and they were about to convince her to sign on for 3 more years for $299... when (much to my delight) she asked "and what deal can you give my husband?"

Their response was that they'd give me 2 years for $399. She said "hang on while I call him" and reached me on my cell. "Jeff, I'm at the gym renewing my membership and we can add you for $399 for 2 years." I replied "well, what deal are they giving you?" Tina responded "$299 for 3 years."

I quickly said that I would sign on if they would give me the same deal they gave her. She put her hand over the phone, talked with them for a second and came back on the line. "Uh, the manager is able to give you the $299 deal, but he can't waive a $10 card fee." To which I promptly said "take it!".

So we both got 3 year deals for $299... which works out to about $8/month for a gym membership. Not bad, actually. And it was made even more funny when I talked with someone at work who is paying $40/month for a membership.

Thus, we've been trying to go to the gym as often as possible... even made it through the holiday season without missing too many days. We both lost weight in those first couple of weeks. But work and other obligations have hurt us recently. Now we have to get back on the wagon.

Starting tomorrow. ;)

Orlando travel during Charley

2004-08-14T09:32:00.000-04:00

Tina and I were attempting to get to Orlando yesterday for a conference
(before we knew that Charley was going to head directly TO Orlando).

We were booked on a 2:10p flight on Delta... and we kept VERY close watch on
the flight information throughout Thursday evening and into Friday morning.

And while the advice to watch the websites and check before you drive to the
airport is generally a good idea, the airlines have to keep up the data on
those sites for the information to be valid.

What I mean by this is that during yesterday (Friday) morning, Delta decided
to cancel and then reinstate flight 6402 at least 3 times of which we're
aware (signing up for e-mail notifications was a great idea).

At 8:15a, flight was on.
At 9:50a, flight was on.
At 10:40a, flight was cancelled.
At 11:00a, flight was on.
At 11:05a, flight was cancelled.
At 11:10a, flight was on.
At 11:50a, flight was cancelled.

During all of this, Jeff called Delta at approximately 10:40a (when he first
received notice of cancellation to see if we could get another flight) and
was either talking with someone or on hold through 11:35a. By that time,
the flight was reinstated (twice) and so the rebooking agent told him that
it was no longer necessary to rebook at all.

In the middle of that one conversation, Jeff's callwaiting rang through. It
was a Delta agent. While he had been on hold at 11:10a and the flight was
on, we had both printed out our Boarding Passes online. This second agent
was calling to tell Jeff that he was on a list of folks to be rebooked
(because of the 10:40a or 11:05a cancellation). Jeff asked her "are you
sure" and "can you please check the flight status right now." She did,
realized that Jeff was correct and that the flight was now going. She hung
up.

Jeff went back to his call and spent a few more minutes relaying the
conversation to the rebooking agent. She told him that it appeared that the
FAA had approved all flights to and from Orlando until 3pm. Since ours was
a 2:10p flight, we were fine and that the flight was going to be the last
one out of the day. We got a momentary chuckle out of the interruption
again and then hung up.

[Note to reader: Are you confused yet? Try living this adventure!]

By 11:30a, Jeff was in his car, headed home from work to grab our bags and
get to the airport.

At 11:45a, Jeff received a call on his cellphone from a male Delta agent
telling him that flight 6402 was cancelled (again) and that he had been
rebooked for Saturday's 3pm flight. While he was debating this with the
Delta agent, our home phone rang... it was a female Delta agent calling for
Tina's reservation to tell her that she had been rebooked for Saturday's 2pm
flight.

OK. So Jeff now has a cellphone pressed to his right ear, a cordless home
phone pressed to his left ear and he addressed both agents at the same time.
He told them that he wanted to first confirm that the flight was actually
cancelled.

Both typed and confirmed that the flight was cancelled. Jeff then asked to
make sure that both he and Tina would be on the same flight. The female
agent got testy and said that it was "ridiculous" that Jeff was taking up
two agents' time with this. He agreed that it was ridiculous, but that he
needed to make sure that both of us flew together and that this wasn't going
to be worse than it already was.

So Jeff got the male Delta agent to continue with me, thanked the other for
calling and went down to only one cancer-inducing product on the side of his
head. Jeff didn't want him to cancel the 2:10p flight on Friday because by
now, we had lost all faith in Delta's ability to cancel a flight and keep it
cancelled (we've had prior problems with Delta and bad weather). So we had
him hold a reservation for the two of us on the 3pm Saturday flight (just in
case... and note that it wasn't the 2:10pm flight).

We hung up and by that time, Tina arrived home to meet Jeff to go to the
airport. She saw that the message light on the phone was blinking... and
hit play. It was two messages from Delta. Calling her to say that the 6402
flight was cancelled and that she'd been rebooked. Each time the agents
called, however, they had rebooked her on a different flight.

After a few moments' discussion, we decided to just go to the airport. It's
only a few minutes away and it wouldn't hurt, especially if Delta had
another change of heart.

By the time we reached the airport, parked the car, went through security,
got to the gate... and were reminded that the flight was cancelled.

The gate agent had an interesting bit of information, however. We could
cancel our tickets and get a FULL refund because the flight was cancelled by
Delta. So we did (and with luck, we made the right decision given the path
of Charley).

[Side note again... this trip was for a HOBY conference... something we're
both pretty involved in... and HOBY was telling us that we shouldn't bother
to come down on Saturday, but that we could "buy the flight out from them"
(which we didn't want to do for $500 since flights to Orlando are currently
at $120 or so) or that it would be "credited" for 2005. Neither option was
good... so finding out that we could cancel and get HOBY a full refund was
awesome for us.]

Then we went looking for another flight somewhere else because we figured
we'd already boarded the dog for the weekend and had packed our bags to go
somewhere. But that's another story. :)

Anyways, the moral of this tale: Delta doesn't know how to do flight
information. Delta also doesn't know how to cancel their flights and handle
severe weather. BUT, folks SHOULD ask for and get a full refund if their
flight was cancelled and the trip is not worth going later (don't know if
you have to be at the airport to do it, but we enjoyed getting a receipt of
the refund as "evidence" from the gate agent).

OK... time to go watch a movie and stay dry on the couch!

~Jeff & Tina

2004-05-30T20:25:00.000-04:00

Well, if you're so interested that you're still reading this area looking for notes... then I might suggest another hobby! :)

Actually, we are on our honeymoon and are quite enjoying the rest, relaxation and the calm gentle surf pounding the beach just outside our window.

Anyways, we're having a great time but we did want to thank everyone for attending and helping us celebrate our special day.

Thank you all again!

Love,

Jeff & Tina

ps. Look for a special Honeymoon Report several weeks after we get back!

2004-05-05T23:11:00.000-04:00

We... are... very... tired!

All of the last minute details are happening NOW!

Finalizing cake, food, tables, chairs, reception plans, favors, napkins, more favors, pictures, travel arrangements (not ours), program, floor plan, flowers, DJ, rsvps to multiple events, rehearsal dinner, and whatever else we can't remember at the moment because... did I say we're tired?

Despite the fatigue and occassional frustration being experienced by all involved, we are really looking forward to the wedding (only 2 weeks and 2 days to go!).

Lots of our friends and family are coming and we can't wait to see you all!

Good night!

2004-04-26T12:54:00.000-04:00

Well, we know that it's been more than 20 days since our last post... and for that we apologize.

But during those last 20 days, let us see if we can't get you to understand WHY it's been so long by describing some of the events that have happened!

Maybe the best thing to do is take it in chronological order:

April 17th: We went to the Albright Wedding Picnic at Covington Shelter. Not only did we get to spend time with Tina's family, but we also got GIFTS! And not just any gifts... but some of the coolest things we were hoping for (ok, quite literally, the "coolest" thing in Jeff's opinion was the icecream maker). But seriously, we were so grateful for everyone's well wishes for us both. Taking them back to Tina's for storage and inventory for thank you notes was the evenings' activity and then after they were entered into the wedding database, Tina set about writing thank you's (we heard it was much better to get them done along the way rather than waiting until the after the event was over).

April 18th: One day later was the Hawfield's Shower. Oh my - another pile of presents! We couldn't believe the amount of people who were so generous! This has got to stop, though, as Tina took it upon herself to write the thank you notes again - and she had over 50 of them to do this time! (Perhaps it's payback for when Jeff addressed all of the wedding invites?) In any event, moving around the storage room is getting difficult.

April 19-23: We made, addressed and sent the Rehearsal Dinner invitations... made the final floral plans and have to reconfirm some stuff with the cake and catering people. And, as part of the wedding process, Jeff has been planning to sell his home. The house sold several weeks ago and Tina has spent a LOT of her spare time helping Jeff pack up all of his belongings and move them out of the house. Somehow Jeff didn't realize how much stuff he really had. But the entire week was spent boxing up more and more stuff. On 4/22, however, Jeff started to get sick (cold? flu? who knows - it just couldn't have come at a worse period in time). We had to get everything out of the house by Sunday night and there was still a lot to be done.

During the week, all of the utilities were scheduled for shutoff, mail was forwarded and movers were scheduled to come on Sunday morning to move the really big stuff. Waking up at 7:15am on Saturday, we set to work with boxing, packing, organizing, cleaning, sorting and trashing anything that remained. Bedtime arrived WAY too soon at 11pm on Saturday - and we were up again at 7:15 on Sunday to do last minute preparations for the movers.

Again, time moved too quickly - and by 9:30, the movers had arrived and started the process of loading the truck. Now, we can't begin to tell you how efficient these folks were. Or perhaps they weren't tired from moving all day the previous day... or being sick... or having a wedding to plan, etc. But they were REALLY fast and had the entire truck packed with stuff by 10:45a.

Jeff went with them to the storage location and directed the careful balancing act of cramming everything he owned into a 10x20 foot space. But it worked! Tina, meanwhile, was STILL PACKING! She gallantly used her car as a "truck" for the weekend - much to her dismay considering how much she loves her vehicle. And by the time Jeff was done with the movers at 11:45am, he met up with Tina for storing more stuff at her condo.

Upon unloading, we realized that we only had 3 or so more loads of stuff - and that while we needed to eat, we were under a 5pm "new buyer walk-through" deadline with the house. So we went to the cars to drive together to eat... and Jeff's car battery light came on - indicating that it wasn't charging!

OK. Time to panic. First, call AAA. They can have a tow truck there in 45 minutes. Second, go in Tina's car to grab a quick bite at McDonalds. Third, get a call from the tow truck company that they don't have any flatbeds currently available and that it would be a good hour before they arrived. Fourth, start talking at lunch about other moving options - and the car repair bill because we both believed that it was a dead alternator.

Fifth.... take a REALLY deep breath and relax.

OK... sixth, back to the condo to wait for the tow truck and help Tina organize stuff in her condo. Seventh, tow truck arrives and the guy steps out, introduces himself and indicates that he's a Vette owner - and that Jeff should describe the problem. Jeff does... and eigth, tow truck guy says he thinks it's a broken serpentine belt... and it IS!!!! Woo hoo!!! So the total fix isn't going to be too bad... but only one place is open on Sunday and they tell me that they had a slow day to that point and had sent their tech home. They weren't sure they could get it done that day but they would call their tech to see if he'd come back in.

He did... car was fixed and Jeff was back at the condo by 2:45ish. OK. We had 2 hours and 15 minutes to get as much stuff out of the house as possible and then CLEAN the house to make it look good for the walk-though.

We hurried back to the house and moved 90% of the remaining stuff into our cars. We were going to have to make one more trip - but that wasn't even a concern any more. We had about 1.5 hours now to clean the house from top to bottom.

Tina got the bathrooms and vacuuming the upstairs. Jeff worked on cleaning the floors downstairs and had to clean out the garage, too (keep in mind that the garage walls haven't been visible in almost 3 years).

When the buyers showed up at 5:15 or so, we scrambled to grab last second stuff and get out of the house. Back to Tina's condo, we unloaded the cars, let Allie sniff her way around the condo as well... and took a 10 minute break on the floor moaning about how much each of us was in pain.

By 6:30, we were headed back to the house for the final trip. We loaded up the car - took a lot of "farewell pictures" and had a few moments of house reminiscing. Jeff left all the keys on the countertop, locked the bottom latch, closed the door and then used the keypad system to deadbolt the door. Jeff left his house for the last time around 7:30pm on 4/25/04.

OK... so one more task is now complete in preparation for the wedding. Tina and Jeff are both in pain at this particular moment... but we suppose that it's worth it (and we're going to be saving for movers for the next time, too). Oh... and Jeff's still sick, too. :)

2004-04-04T11:45:00.000-04:00

The next item on our list was a meeting with the Duke Chapel Organist. This guy is a "requirement" as per the terms of the Duke Chapel contract - we have to PAY him regardless of whether we choose to USE him. Care to guess what we're doing for music? :)

So we went to the Chapel yesterday for our appointed meeting with him. We are taken up a back stone, spiral (small) staircase to the organ loft. Squeezing into the loft, we sat on one side of the keyboard and Tina's folks sat on the other. From our vantage point, we were able to look down on the pews all the way to the altar.

The organ was amazing. Dozens of knobs lined the walls to either side of the three-keyboard organ. Not to mention all the pedals placed right beneath the hovering feet of the organist.

In a masterful display of ability, the organist was able to run though several selection choices for each part of the ceremony. He played most (if not all) of each song - pausing with one hand to quickly change the knob choices to each side of him. From A Midsummer Night's Dream to Pachabel's Cannon to Trumpet Voluntary, he played each (and based on the knobs either pushed or pulled could make the organ SOUND like different instruments as well).

We noticed that the tourists coming through the Chapel would stop and look up to the organ as each piece was performed. It was amazing... not to mention it was all played by memory.

As some of you might imagine, I asked if he could play Take On Me - by A-Ha. Unfortunately, pop music is not allowed in the Chapel in any form, especially as played by the organ. However, I was able to get him to perform Tocatta and Fugue in D Minor in its entirety (if you don't remember the song I unfortunately can't give you any lyrics - there aren't any... but you can download it via Kazaa or Limewire). Scared the tourists at the first moment. Now all that we needed was to have it dark and rainy - and the Chapel decor would lend itself to a black and white horror movie.

Anyways, we were able to pick all of the music necessary for the service in about 45 minutes - and had an amazing free concert as well. I'm actually really excited - I think people will enjoy the music, not to mention the organ itself.

2004-03-30T18:58:00.000-05:00

Well, it has been a while since you have heard from us and we have a good excuse. We've been planning a wedding!!! Last week was a busy "wedding week". Just to name some of the more notable events, I (Tina typing this time) had my bridal portrait taken. I haven't seen the proofs yet, so I suppose I really can't tell you how it went. It was a really busy day.

After the portrait Jeff met my family and me for "All-you-can-eat Nugget Night" at Chick-fil-A. This was not really a wedding related event, but apparently Jeff and I have worked up quite an appetite planning this wedding. Between the two of us, we put away 35 nuggets. Yikes!! After nugget night, we went to Duke Chapel to meet with the wedding director to determine very important things like where everyone will stand. :)

Probably my favorite part of picture day was my flower bouquet. We had a smaller version of my bridal bouquet made for the pictures. The flowers were beautiful (you will have to wait until later to see what they look like). I have really enjoyed looking at them ever since last Thursday! Friday was a busy wedding day as well. Jeff and I applied for a marriage license. The decided to give us one, so I suppose we could get married any second now if we really want to. But we won't, because the invitations have been mailed (among other things). :) Friday afternoon we met the caterer at the Doris Duke Center to plan the layout for the reception. It is going to be really pretty and hopefully a lot of fun. I can't remember what else has been going on, but it is a lot. I am not sure if we ever mentioned that we finally booked a honeymoon. Woo hoo!! Ten days in the sun. I can't wait.

That's all for now! Check back with us later. We will try to do a better job of posting our wedding related activities.

2004-03-15T23:17:00.000-05:00

Alright, so we're watching Average Joe: Adam Returns. Adam was the runner-up (aka 1st loser) from the first Average Joe tv reality show... and this time around, he was getting to be the selector amongst all the women that were chosen for him.

BUT, the people who did the choosing were other male losers from that season (his Average Joe buds). One of them was sent to eHarmony.com to input Adam's 500+ question personality profile to find his "perfect matches" as participants on the show.

Of the advertised thousands of possibilities, Adam had *2* "perfect matches" according to what they told us on the show - and we were sitting here wondering what eHarmony would tell us about OUR personalities (we already had a pretty good idea that we wouldn't be found to be a perfect match for the other).

So what do you think we did? Yeppers, we each logged on to eHarmony.com and we each answered the 500+ questions about our lives. The whole process took about 45 minutes (we weren't doing a lot of "thoughtful" consideration of the essays - and in fact, the site said that your first impulse was probably the best answer anyways).

But when we were done (we finished at almost the exact same moment), we each read our own personality profiles (yeah, they described us pretty accurately... and probably 30% of the rest of the population, too). Then we switched computers and read the OTHER person's profile. Yeah, we each felt that it was generally accurate.

So we thought to take it the next step and let eHarmony do a "search" against their database to see who was perfect for each of us.

Wanna' guess what they found?

Keep thinking...

Try again.

Nope, not quite.

Oh yeah... there were NO matches. For either of us. In the WHOLE WORLD!

So, either we're complete losers.... or perfectly matched already.

Try it yourself: eHarmony.com

2004-03-11T20:12:00.000-05:00

We haven't had much to report recently... we're pretty organized and thus not much is actually left to do!

In the last few days, we've delivered all of the bridesmaid dresses to the individual maids. ;) We've found the "method" we're going to use (within the guidelines provided us by Duke Gardens) for a Bridal Sendoff (we're not allowed to throw anything that would stay on the ground, like rice or birdseed).

We've also finalized the bridal party flowers (but we still have some others left to confirm with Tina's mom), the unity candle has been purchased and we're working on a guest book, pen and cake topper.

I also re-confirmed our Rehearsal Dinner location and now one of my next tasks is getting THOSE invites together.

Phew.

2004-03-01T22:19:00.000-05:00

Sorry we haven't written much lately, but a lot has been happening.

First Tina had her first Bridal Shower this past weekend - and we walked away with quite a haul! I couldn't believe the amount of stuff we had to take home ... we even had to send a bunch home with her mom! It's really incredible to see the amount of family she has that cares about her.

I showed up near the end of the shower and walking in, I was the only guy in a sea of almost 30 women! Sitting near the door - not really wanting to come all the way into the room - I was counting the people and I realized that there were more women on this side of her family than I had in ALL of my family throughout all of my life. It was really amazing. :)

We then needed to write our first batch of thank you notes. OK... so *I* didn't write them. My job was stamps, return address labels, sealing them and then entering in all the gifts in our database. BUT, we got them all done pretty efficiently.

All of the invitations (minus two we don't have addresses for) are completely done, inside and out, too.

Most cool of all, in the last 5 hours, was the acquisition of our wedding bands. We didn't know what to have engraved on either of them... so we just picked them up. Now we get to each choose what to have etched in the others' band. Tina's got room for about 26 characters. I've got room for about 10. Any suggestions for Tina or me?

So as the wedding inches closer and closer, we're about done with all the planning... we just have to let it happen.

2004-02-22T19:40:00.000-05:00

When Tina chose the bridesmaid's dresses, she found that she could get them at a significant discount from BridalMart. And while the addition of the name "mart" (such as KMart, Wal-Mart and Kwiky-Mart) usually doesn't imply a label you'd find on a fashion show runway, it was the EXACT same dress, just at a better price (about $70/dress cheaper). So we were willing to enter the melee that happens on a weekend day at BridalMart back in November to order the dresses.

As we were placing the order, Tina read through the contract they placed on the counter in front of her. Scanning it pretty quickly, she noted her concern that the document she was about to sign stated that BridalMart was only required to deliver the dresses by the day before the event. As the date listed on the form was May 22, 2004 (the actual wedding date), we were a bit concerned that at worst, BridalMart ONLY had to deliver the dresses on May 21st.

Talking with the counter clerk, we discovered that she had no ability to change the terms of the agreement. They would still only deliver the dresses by May 21.

A quick-thinking Tina, however, solved the issue. She asked the counter clerk if she could change the event date. The counter clerk said she could... thus the date of our event as far as BridalMart was concerned became March 22, 2004. This would give us 2 months' lead time in the event the dresses were not exactly as promised.

Tina signed the paper and BridalMart told her to check her mailbox for the postcard letting her know that the dresses have arrived. [Note: If you're a business owner and you're going to tell folks that they have to "do" something on a time schedule, please find a faster method of contact rather than the US Post.] We thus waited for the next three months.

Yesterday the postcard arrived. Let's forget that they didn't know how to spell "bridesmaids" on the pre-printed postcard (they had it as "bridesmaides"). The postcard told us that we had two weeks to pick up the dresses... from the date they arrived (which was a full week before we actually saw the postcard).

Luckily we were headed in that direction today... so we now have four bridesmaids dresses hanging around the house. If one of them is yours, we'll get with you soon on how to pick it up.

2004-02-21T09:54:00.000-05:00

(Note: This is a cross-over blogisode - meaning that it's the same post here as on Jeff's personal blog with minor differences. Thanks for playing along.)

Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!!!!!

I'm tired of addressing wedding invitations.

My fingers feel like they're going to fall off. But at least the outside envelopes are done, now to do the insides.

What's that you say? Why am I doing it by hand? What possessed me to grab a caligraphy pen and hand-write 200 or so invitations?

Well, I'm a sadist, really. And I'm cheap. An addressing service (yes, folks, there are people paid to address envelopes) will do it for about $1.50/envelope. This includes the outer envelope - the one with:

Mr. and Mrs. Full-first-name-middle-name-last-name
Fully spelled out street address
Fully spelled out city, state and zipcode

And the inner envelope:

First name of each adult on the first line
First name of each child on the second line

But as I'm only done with the outer envelopes, I still have to repeat the process with the inners. Sound simple? Sure. Simple for me? Of course not.

First we had to order the invitations - you can read about some of that adventure in other posts on this blog. We paid a little extra so the envelopes would arrive sooner than everything else (with the idea being that I would actually get started addressing them sooner. I tried.

I say, "I tried," because my first few envelopes were done with a caligraphy marker... and without me knowing that I was supposed to be doing the full-name-no-abbreviation thing apparently required by formal southern tradition. OH, and I had wanted to do the caligraphy in purple. Apparently, only black is the allowed color. Oops.

So first was a trip to get black caligraphy markers. I came back, did a few envelopes and Tina then informed me (after an hour of addressing) that while these were fine for my friends, it wasn't going to work for her family. I realized that this meant that I was doing it wrong for everyone and was going to have to go back to the store.

See, the marker has a wide tip. I needed to see if there was a smaller version. I found two more black caligraphy markers and returned home to discover that nope, they're the same size. Which meant that I just wasn't going to be able to use markers for this. I was going to have to (insert dramatic pause here)... buy a real caligraphy pen. (I also had to get a "light box" - a little translucent table with a nightlight installed under it - so that I could project guidelines drawn on a piece of paper inserted into the envelopes. This way, it appears that I'm really great at making letters of equal height and in a straight line.)

Three guesses on who doesn't know the first thing about caligraphy pens but had to learn quickly while standing in the aisle of the store! :)

Yes, I found what I thought I wanted, went home and opened the box. These pens aren't the $2 bizillion pens that they used to use for nice writing. They're idiot-proof pens for people like me. I followed the directions to insert the ink cartridge, attach the right "nib" and tried to start the ink flow.

Hmmmm... no ink flowing. I wrote with a down-stroke, an up-stroke, a side-to-side stroke. No flow. I tried a damp paper towel to help siphon the ink down the nip (this is a real suggestion made on the instruction sheet... I didn't just make it up myself). No flow. I tried shaking the pen. No flow. Finally, I shook the pen in sharp downward motions (like I was 'resetting' a thermometer) and then used the paper towel method. Flow.

Now I started addressing. It's an amazing thing to see how small I can get the letters with a real pen.

And today, two weeks after I started (and LONG after the rest of the invitations arrived thus showing us that we wasted a bit of cash on the envelope rush order), the outer envelopes are complete. But only because I did 80 of them yesterday.

So my fingers feel like they're going to shrivel up and fall off.

2004-02-18T19:06:00.000-05:00

Well, not much wedding stuff has been happening recently. We've been busy celebrating Valentine's Day, trying to sell the house and doing other random stuff.

But I still have to do the invitations.

However, I DID enable "commenting". Which means that if you look at the end of this post, you'll see the word "Comment." If you click on it, you'll be able to enter your own direct comment about a specific post (ie: if you want to talk about the donation link back in January, go to THAT entry and click the Comment word beneath that post.... or perhaps you'd care to share your own horror story about Belk's). Anyways, whatever you post, we all will be able to see.

A warning, however. Anything posted that's inappropriate will be removed at our discretion. So, if you care to try to tell the world that I still carry my blankie around, be advised that that comment might never see the light of day! ;)

Have fun!

2004-02-13T22:17:00.000-05:00

Wow. 400 people have looked at our wedding website. Well, 400 views. And if you click on the counter, it'll give you all sorts of interesting statistics. For example, the busiest viewing hour is between 4 and 5 pm and the busiest day is Wednesday. 81% of you use Internet Explorer (no surprise here given the fact that it's preinstalled on the same 80-something% of you that are viewing from some flavor of the Windows Operating System).

Perhaps most interesting is that 3% of you use the Safari browser (which is unique to Macintosh users). I thought that *I* was the only Mac user looking at my own website. But it's simply not possible to account for all 3%. Then again, we don't know all of who is reading the site as only *12* of you have signed our guestbook.

But the most esoteric statistics are the screen resolution and color depth settings that you guys use. Did you know that of the standard screen resolutions (1600x1280, 1280x1024, 1152x864, 1024x768, 800x600 and 640x480), there is another .5% that uses some "other" setting? I don't know what that other setting can possibly be. Does one of you have a REALLY big or REALLY small monitor? CONFESS! :)

It's good to know, though, that all of you use a setting better than 256 colors! It means that our purple main page should look very good and not all funky to any of you. ;)

OK... on to more serious wedding stuff...

We've done a lot of work in the last week or so. First we had to go get stamps. We need a LOT of stamps (two for every invitation - and as you can guess, the inside is different than the outside). Would you care to guess whether you can get the same design in the same quantity at the same post office?

Of course not. So we've got a lot of stamps. And we like them. So you better like them, too! Even if the return-envelope stamp isn't the same as the outer envelope stamp.

The next step was to buy our wedding bands. After much searching, a lot of discussion and several trips to various jewelry stores, we found the ones we wanted. Thus, as of today, that piece of our planning is DONE! Woo hoo!

Tina's portrait is scheduled... the Mother of the Bride's dress is ordered... and I sent the tux instructions to the guys.

But invitations haven't been getting addressed at the speed at which I would really like. The reason for this is quite simple. It's a HUGE project. There's the box for the outer envelopes. A box for the inner envelopes. The "light box" to shine light through the envelopes so I can see the guidelines. The pens. Extra paper. The invite list. The whole mess takes up my kitchen table.

I've had house showings, however, all week. So I can't pull it all out simply to put it all away again a few hours later. I've had so MANY showings, however, that I'm hopefull that the house will sell and I can just spread out again for a little while.

And if all this isn't enough, Belk is still giving us fits. Just don't shop there AFTER this event. But DO shop there now if you are looking for gifts for us (as all of the poking, prodding, complaint calls to customer service, etc, finally yielded the stocking of stuff we asked for). It's taken us almost 2.5 months to get them to bring some of our stuff into the Burlington, NC store (we registered in the Raleigh store so Burlington would say that Tina is "not one of their brides").

As you might imagine, our argument is that Tina is a Belk Bride, not just a RALEIGH Belk Bride. Belk's central customer care line agrees with our train of thought... and they're encouraging Burlington to hop the same train. Thus the Burlington store now has a load of stuff on "our" shelf back in the China/Crystal area. Just go and ask if you can't find what you need. And if you REALLY have trouble finding "our stuff", ask for Stacy Stankoski (she's the Merchandise Coordinator) to help you.

Granted, asking for Stacy only works at the Burlington Belk store ... I doubt she can help you if you're at Crate and Barrel or some store other than the Burlington Belks. Then again, go to the Burlington Belks and ask her if you're having some sort of difficulty you think she can help you. I'm SURE she'd love to meet you! :)

2004-02-05T21:38:00.000-05:00

How many pens does it take to address a few hundred wedding invitations?

Well, apparently it takes quite a few until you find the one that's going to allow you to write the names and addresses without smearing the letters together.

All in all, I've been to A.C. Moore 3 times in the last 3 days. But I think I finally found the right pen, ink and the lightbox (which allows me to see the guidelines through the paper). So I actually might get all the envelopes addressed in my lifetime. Can't you people have shorter names or live in a state with only one word (like my friends Joel & Steph in Ohio)?

But that's really all we're doing as far as wedding planning is going. Some of you apparently haven't donated to our honeymoon fund yet, though, so scroll down and play along. :) We really want to go some place cool.

2004-01-31T17:52:00.000-05:00

A warning to all potential future wedding couples:

DO NOT USE BELK DEPARTMENT STORE (HUDSON'S, HUDSON BELK, etc)!

I'm SOOOOOOOO angry (and so is Tina's mom).

When Tina and I registered at Belks, we did so because it's simply one of the only (if not THE) department stores near Tina's home town. We realized that not everyone is using a computer to buy as much stuff (especially wedding-type gifts) as we do, and we wanted to make things as easy as possible.

Actually registering at Belks was pretty simple. They enter in your personal data into their system, hand you a pricing gun and let you loose in the store to zap everything you want. After an hour or so, you can pretty much scan everything you could possibly desire and then it's a part of your registry for folks to access.

During this process, we found really nice purple towels. They're the exact shade we want and they're really soft, too. But the description of the sizes and pricing was REALLY confusing. They have washcloths, hand towels, bath towels, shower towels, bath sheets and bath mats. With the exception of the bath mat, each of the towels got progressively larger.

We obviously didn't need all the sizes, but we registered for washcloths, handtowels and the shower towels. The problem is that the UPC barcode for the shower towel wasn't properly entered in the Belk computer system. So while the UPC barcode was the right number for the shower towel, the DESCRIPTION of the towel was listed as the bath sheet.

This problem confused more than one person who have already tried to buy us gifts (and was even more confounded when someone wanted to do ME a nice favor and get me the bath sheet because there's "more" of me than Tina). We went to Belks and exchanged the towels. Then we went to the Wedding Registry folks and asked them to change the description in their computers to avoid this problem in the future. As you can probably guess, they don't have the ability to do this and gave us a little comment card so we could tell the folks at Belk HQ to make the appropriate changes.

We left that Belk that day, at least confident that if someone bought us the wrong towels, we could simply exchange them for the right ones.

But no-ooooo. That was not to be. Tina's mom discovered yesterday that the purple towels are no longer in stock at Belks. They've been deemed a "winter" color and have been recalled by the manufacturer to make way for the spring colors. So now NOBODY can buy our purple towels because they've all be returned to the manufacturer.

This didn't go over very with with Tina's mother. She called Tina, who in turn called me (while I was in Detroit yesterday). Since I was driving and had nothing else taking up my time, *I* decided to call Belks to see what was what. I even spoke with the same person we met with face-to-face when we had the initial towel problem. Three guesses as to what she was able to do for us.

Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zero.

I asked why we weren't notified that they were going back so that WE could have the opportunity to purchase them prior to their return shipment. She informed me that it was just too late. There was nothing she could do - that I should choose another color. And then she passed me to a manager over that department (who, of course, wasn't in and didn't return my call).

So that's the towel issue with Belk.

Next comes the "things that we registered for aren't at the Belks near Tina's hometown" issue.

Tina and I already knew that this might be an issue. So we specifically drove out to THAT Belk and had a face-to-face discussion with their wedding registry people to make sure that at least a few place settings of our china and flatware (and some crystal) would be in that store. They promised us that they'd order a few settings and get them in just for us (apparently they have a bin in the back with our names on it just for this type of situation).

As of yesterday (two weeks or so since our visit), the wrong pattern was ordered and sitting in our bin. Not only that, but discussions between Tina's mom and Belks centered on the fact that they refused to get any more stuff in stock for purchase. Tina's mom explained that there is even a shower or two coming up that people are shopping for... and only then did Belks begrudgingly agree to hold *5* place settings of the right pattern... but only until the end of February. I can only imagine the rest of the conversation as Tina's mother tried desperately to explain that the wedding wasn't until May.

Phew. I hate Belks now. But not to leave you all hanging, we found all the towels at the manufacturers website and all is well for the moment. :)

2004-01-29T22:02:00.000-05:00

"A lot happened today," said Tina exhaustedly. (oohh, can you tell I used to play Mad Libs?)

Tina went to go have her wedding gown fitted today. What she discovered is that it needs NO alterations. Let me repeat, as it appears to be relatively important that Tina, our resident "short girl", has had clothing purchased which requires NO further modification to fit her body. I can't even start to tell you how excited she was when she called to tell me. (Now, at the time, I was trying to cut Allie's fur... and the clippers were jamming up... and I wasn't really interested in whether her clothing fit - which was a HUGE mistake on my part to not even APPEAR interested. Note to other potential grooms - when your bride-to-be calls you to tell you that she had a wedding gown fitting... regardless of the outcome, ACT INTERESTED.)

She also picked out a veil, found out that one of the four pairs of shoes she purchased work perfectly with the dress... and saw her folks, all in her lunch hour. Phew.

Her cousin also e-mailed to let her know that she's got her second wedding shower scheduled for April. Tina's excited. :) Then when she got home, she discovered that the printer had delivered the wedding envelopes (which means that *I* now get to work doing the caligraphy). All in all, a hugely eventful wedding-planning day.

Now if I could only find a way to get the computer to do the addressing instead of me doing it by hand...

2004-01-27T00:01:00.000-05:00

We added three or four addresses to the wedding invitation database today.

What more do you expect from us stuck in an icestorm?

2004-01-24T23:08:00.000-05:00

We did absolutely NOTHING wedding related today.

No, that's not quite true. We got one more invitation address from a relative. But that didn't really mean we DID anything to get that address other than check e-mail.

I had another house showing today, too. Supposedly someone else might put an offer on the house, too. But who knows. I'm not holding my breath - but my new realtor is pretty good - so if she thinks one's coming, I'll believe her (at least for a little while).

Seriously though, that's all that happened today. Pretty uneventful, actually. Maybe something exciting will happen tomorrow. I'm going to go find out...

2004-01-23T23:27:00.000-05:00

Tina and I had a REALLY productive wedding-related day today (she even took the day off to do it all, too)!

We started the morning off by adding in data into our wedding database (where we're tracking all of you, your names for the invitations, etc). From there, we visited with our realtor for selling our homes (in case you're interested, go to our agent's webpage . We happen to be her two listings at the moment (lest you think she's inexperienced because we're the only two listed, she has more than just us as clients, she was just on a break until recently). Anyways, go buy our homes.

Then we went to Chair & Equipment Rentals where we arranged for our tables, chairs and linens for the reception. It's going to be really nice - and yet again, each place we go tells us that we're the most efficient clients they've ever had (I think it's just 'cuz we're probably the most organized AND opinionated clients they've ever had, too). In any event, we were in and out in under and hour!

So we had plenty of time to go to the tux shop to arrange for the guys' clothing. Sorry, I'm not going to spoil the surprise and tell you the style and all that jazz. It looks good, however. ;)

After that was an ice cream break! We got so much accomplished, we felt we deserved it!

Squeezing in time for exercise and a grocery trip, we're now one day closer to the actual event (1 day shy of 4 months and counting, actually).

Oh, and thanks to everyone visiting the website... we're getting a LOT of visitors and we appreciate your time! If you have already viewed the site, check the Attendants page again... we now have a photo of Chris (and Allie). Only my father has yet to get himself on here. Sigh...

2004-01-20T21:18:00.000-05:00

The website is up, more than just Tina and immediate family are starting to look at it. Besides not having my dad's photo on line, if you spot an error, please let me know!

So now we're doing detail work on the wedding planning. Next up: Wedding Invitations. If you know you're getting one, please let me know how you want your invite addressed. Yep, I'm doing them myself, by hand, in caligraphy. Impressed? Yeah, me too! We even ordered them with a "rush" so that I have extra time to work on them.

Tina's excited today because she ordered her shoes and then found out that her dress arrived a few weeks ahead of schedule! Woo hoo! Now we just have to keep the dress folks holding long enough for the shoes to arrive. Oh, and Tina's got to realize that if the dress store burns to the ground, there's just nothing we can do about it as we're not buying a really large safe-deposit box to store the dress in until the big day.

Honeymoon plans continue as expected. We know where we want to go, we're just trying to figure out how long we can afford to stay there. Contributions to the fund can be made via paypal by clicking the button below. ;)

OK. Time for bed. Talk to you soon!

ps. Clicking the Make A Donation button REALLY WILL work... but we are in no way suggesting that you actually do it!

2004-01-02T22:25:00.000-05:00

Wedding planning is going as well as it can with work, family and other issues always imposing their will on our time and attention.

We have a place for the wedding and the reception. We have an officiant and we're now working on finding a honeymoon spot. Any thoughts?