Journal

more trouble with the law...

So earlier this week, I headed over to Josh's after work and we took his new Ford Mustang GT for a spin.

So it does sound more mean then my little engine, and it gets up and goes.

I did forget one thing, though...it is rear wheel drive, and there are things you can do in a rear wheel car that are very very hard to do in a front wheel drive car.

Needless to say, while I was going around a corner (with the traction control off), I pushed down on the gas, fish tailed a bit, lot of squeeling of the tires.

I got up to the speed limit and stayed there (being that I have 2 tickets in the last year, a 3rd one would be bad). So we're halfway down down the block, ready to turn back towards Josh's (in a round about sense), and this state trooper shows up out of no where. First he shows up beside me, and then he turns his lights on. He was in a trooperized Dodge Charger.

In my last pull over, I turned into a parking lot to not block traffic, and he was pissed about that and made me came back out to the street, so I immediately pulled over...and the trooper proceeded to pass us by pull up into someone's driveway, turn around and wave me down to the driveway.

So we went down there, and he proceded to chastise me for 15 or 20 minutes...

But No ticket. No written warning.

Whew.

I then drove ourselves carefully home.

However, one of the first things I said when he left was, "Dude, that guy has a hemi". I couldn't help it.

5 Years Ago...

I was driving down to work (still lived in Ames, was working in Des Moines), Listening to Mancow. They were talking bout a plane hitting the first tower, and initially I had thought it was a joke, cause sometimes they would do they, where they'd tell you a joke or that they'd pretend to do something, only later to tell you it was real.

Then the second plane hit, while I was driving on I35 just passing Ankeny. The way they expressed it, It was really good acting, or real. So I scan around to other radio stations and Nobody, and I mean NOBODY was live, everything was prerecorded.

So I got to work and went up to my office and checked the news sites. I barely got to CNN or other news sites, but was able to get confirmation that it was real.

My boss shows up, I tell him, he doesn't believe me.

The Executive Board was supposed to all come into Des Moines for a big meeting and we were going to present their new site to them. So we were putting the finishing touches on it. The board meeting ended up getting cancelled, since a lot of people weren't able to fly in for it.

I remember the news sites being inaccessible and reading Slashdot to get the latest news.

After we got done, we walked over to my boss's house (he lived right next to IMMC at the time). And I spent large portions of the day smoking (still smoked back then) and watching the news and seeing things happen over and over.

I left work early...well...I left my boss's house, headed home.

And then proceeded to wait in line for about 2 hours to fill up my gas tank.

I remember feeling very stunned.

Stuff and Things (mostly wedding)

Wedding things to do:


  1. Call Places to make sure everything is paid for/All good

    • Bakery

    • West Des Moines Parks Department (Reception)

    • Candle Lit Way

    • Photographer

    • Tuxedoes

    • Cop

    • Reverend

    • PA people



  2. Make final Catering decisions

    • Tell caterer that we want smaller portions but more of each (so you don't need to feel guilty trying more then one thing)

    • Make red wine decision

    • Tell caterer about gift table dressing

    • Give final count for caterer



  3. Rehearsal Dinner

    • Meet with Coordinator on Thursday at 11:30 AM

    • Make menu choices

    • Give them count for rehearsal dinner (check with people for count of who's coming)



  4. Put mail on hold

  5. Sign Shannon up for Insurance (starting 10/1)

  6. Get Courtie setup with wireless access for her laptop and key to house (she's baby sitting the house)

  7. Airport Shuttle/Taxi RSVP?

  8. Bring Cell phone charger home this Friday

  9. Find out when Family/etc are getting up here (and what tasks we can give to them)

  10. Get Cash for cop.

  11. Board kitties on Friday 9/22

  12. Figure out when to get Proctor's Audi A6 (and if we need to trade a car for it) and when to get it washed and waxed.

  13. Burn CDs For wedding (pre, during, after)

  14. get iPod setup for music

  15. Get PA system (or get Brandon to get it)

  16. other stuff?

Oh..and we also took in our MacBook for the random shutdown issue. Not dreadfully happy, but, the support that I received was remarkably pleasant and quick too (I think I was on hold for maybe 2 minutes this morning). So to decrease the total turn around time, I took it into the Apple Store. Hopefully we'll have it back in a week or less.

Today I figured out that I need a better backup solution. It took 6 hours to back up a bunch of data of which, most of it hadn't changed (95% of the pictures were already there, 95% of the MP3s already there). So the search continues. Maybe the backup thing that comes with the next version of OSX will be the solution, but I don't know if I can wait that long.

We saw Chris and Holly's new town home (congrats!) Chris, Holly, Holly's Dad and Chris's parents were all there painting and putting in new light fixtures (which I liked). It's actually a nice layout and design, with nice things in there. the only thing I saw as a drawback was the front hall (which is shaped oddly and very small).

Bushtarion

So I've been playing Bushtarion, which is an web based strategy game.

This was introuduced to me by Chris.

I think that the game is seriously flawed, yet still fun. The attack ranges are too wide, there are things that should be counted in the valuation (how the ranges are determined), that aren't. There doesn't seem to be bonuses for defending (which usually has advantages). I find parts of that to be obnoxious, and yet, I still play. So it is a whole lot of fun, even with the flaws.

I can see how the game makes money, the top of a tech tree you have to spend actual money to get the "blueprints", you can also spend actual money to buy game cash or what not. It's certainly a way to make money.

The reset the world every once in a while, to start the slates new.

The rest of the 4 day weekend (for me)

So Friday night when Shannon got home from work, we headed down to Chef's Kitchen to do some wine tasting for the wedding. We had a wonderful meal of their chicken lasagna (which is great, if you've never had it, you must), and I tried oh...5 or 6 wines..or 7...2 whites and 4 reds. We selected the white (one which Shannon said was not bad, which is pretty good as far as she goes). And we'll go back another night to select the red.

We came home and watched a movie.

Saturday we we're going to join Dave and Pat in going to the Ren-Fair, but being that it was $13 a person and we were maybe going to get and hour or two, before it started raining, we decided to not go.

We went to pick up a few things at Target (laundry and etc). And then went over to Homemakers to look around and get a few ideas as to what we want to do for the house (or wherever we end up moving to). We came up with a few agreements, but a lot of conflicting ideas as to what we wanted to do (thinking about the family room downstairs). We mainly disagreed on the entertainment center (I want something more glass and shiny metal or black metal, she wants more wood). We did easily agree on the type of chairs that would go around the dining room table. And we even found a couch that is kinda neat.

After we got bored, we headed over to Audio Visual Logic (in Urbandale) and I showed Shannon what I would like to get to put in our entertainment center. Starting with a new receiver and going on with a set of B&W speakers and HDTV of some sort. This, of course, is over the long term. We are not going to go severely in debt for the sake of entertainment.

Afterwards, we headed home.

Sunday, we did some more wedding stuff. We worked up an idea of the menu for the rehearsal dinner, we'll setup a meeting with them in the coming week. We also headed out to get pictures of my grandparents (we had them, but they were far to big). So we headed over to Hy-Vee Drug to make a copy on their Kodak station...apparently it was broken. So we headed over to target, where theirs also seemed to be broken, but no, it just needed new ink and paper. Which they were changing. The girl in line in front of me was printing off a whole lot of digital images, which took a while, but eventually I was able to copy both pictures (though the one of my Dad's parents didn't fully fit on the scanner).

Shannon went off to find some tea light candleholders, she didn't find any that she liked.

We got them copied and they turned out pretty good, and considering that they were only about $2 per picture.

In our search for tea lights and holders for them, we headed over to Bed Bath and Beyond, and where Shannon found ones that she liked, she didn't like the color.

So we headed over to Jordan Creek Town Center to go to Yankee Candle. We finally found ones that she liked and some pink tea lights to go in them.

We then did some grocery shopping and headed home.

One more day off. Ahhh...This'll take me down to enough so that by the time I take off the big chunk of time for the wedding, I can still earn 3.79 more hours of PTO before the large chunks of wedding time come off. Which is good, since the time off for the wedding will put me under 400 hours in my bank.

Anyways...it rained this weekend. And after Jimmy and crew came back to reseal the skylight, it is looking like it's fixed. We had a nice rain last night, and the ceiling in the bathroom over the tub was bone dry.

Now they can come and fix the ceiling, so it doesn't look like crap up there.

That Irish Shoppe, you should shop there

So from time to time, I can be forgetful; Friday was one of those days.

So I mowed the lawn Friday (taking time off to avoid my PTO bank max), and after getting cleaned up, I decided to take a nap.... or more realistically, a nap decided to take me. I woke up remembering that I had told Shannon that I would go get gifts for Isaac (attending our guest book) and Ben (because I'm being supportive of his choices, his gift that we bought wouldn't work).

So I headed down to That Irish Shoppe

So I went in there, and was having trouble finding something for him (Ben's gift was pretty easy). First off, I got there about 3 minutes before they closed, and they kept the store open for me (well not just me, they also had someone coming to pick up wedding gifts). Second, while she was wrapping up the gift for Ben, since we were having trouble on what to get a young teenager, she sent me down the street to another store (not in any way related to them) where the other store helped me find something for Isaac (which is neat). I headed back, paid for Ben's gift, and headed home.

And this is where the really good service comes in.

I left my wallet at the store. I've never done that before (one time a store didn't give my credit card back to me on accident, which I then cancelled). But I think I was playing with my wallet, set it down to sign the receipt, and then just didn't pick it up. So since I had ordered things (special order) a few times over this past year, She called me. Told me that I had left it at the store. And not only was she willing to put it in the safe for me to pick up tomorrow, she was willing to meet me to give it back to me at a place in between the store and my house.

I turned my car around, and headed to the Des Moines Art Center. And shortly afterwards, my wallet was returned to me, all safe and sound. I can't tell you how much it means to me.

We are going to be buying things from there for a long time.

Tuxedos, check

So we went to finalize the tuxedo stuff. Pay the bill and all that. It was pretty easy. Got the stuff for Shannon's Dad and Nephew setup for pick up in CR, like her mom wanted.

Dropped Shannon's ring off to get bound together and cleaned.

Ate some dinner.

I dropped shannon off at home and then headed to work.

I had to move the applicant data from the old server to the new one, went pretty smoothly.

Things are on there way and rolling on smoothly.

Asked and Courtie, who accepted (Thanks!) to baby sit our house while we are gone.

I'm taking tomorrow off (along with labor day), to avoid my PTO max (I'm less then 10 hours away from max, where I start losing time). This should take me to the wedding PTO and put me at a much more reasonable around the 400 range...

Whew...I didn't have to go...

So Saturday night, Shannon went off to a candle party and bought a few things (I'm still a little shocked at how much money she spent, but I'm over it now). And while she was doing that I headed out with Josh and Lindsay to see Snakes on a Plane. This was my second time seeing it, and Josh and Lindsay's first. It's still was fun, even the second time around.

Afterwards we headed over to the Nest (which had a band playing) so we headed over to the bar where Josh's Mom works and chatted for a bit. After my one beer and a bit of time, I headed home.

Sunday, Shannon had a Bridal Shower (and I left). It was thrown by Jen (thanks Jen!) and apparently went pretty well. We got some nice things (Thanks everybody!).

I left a little before it started, and headed to see Beerfest, with Brandon and Val. It's another Broken Lizard film and I enjoyed it. It certainly wasn't a great film, but funny in an immature joke sort of way (which is their target).

Afterwards, Brandon and Val headed off to go run errands and I headed home, but when I got there, there were still a bunch of people there, so I decided to go grocery shopping. When I got done, I came home (and people were still there) but I put the groceries away. It appears as if they were about done anyways.

I had some things prepared to feed Shannon's mom and sister and my mom (who came up for the bridal shower, but they decided to just head home...so instead I'm letting the pork marinade another day (in apple cider, cinnamon, honey, pepper, and kosher salt). And I'll make it tonight...It's vaguely based on a recipe I read a bit ago...I hope it turns out. We ended up having brats instead.

We finally bought a bag for our macbook, and it should be coming soon (shipped today).