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The Sibling Post Trifecta

Been a month since my last post and much has happened in that time period. Since The Blarg and MRI both updated I’ll finish things off with a sort of sibling blog hat trick if you will.

First off I left my position with the consulting firm I had been with for the past year. My last day was July 6th and I’m taking a month off before starting up at LA County with their Web group. I’m really looking forward to the change, hopefully the work will be more challenging and rewarding. The benefits are excellent and you can’t beat a 2.5 mile commute (I was doing 25 miles each way to Diamond Bar and my gas bill was approaching $180 a month).

Wedding stuff: 4 days and counting and nearly everything is done. Taking time off helped since I was free during the day to do whatever needed to be done. Took some late engagement pictures last week and got those printed up (thank you Richard!), printed up place cards, table numbers, programs and made favors.

Our new place: With my sister, MRI, moving to San Diego they needed to rent out their condo. With Sarah and I getting married we needed a place to rent. To say the least there wasn’t much debate about what we should do. Sarah is already moved into the condo and we’re getting settled in. We have the 2 most important things already: a bed and a HDTV.

Previously mentioned HDTV: My new toy is a 42″ Panasonic Plasma and I’m loving it. We’ve been watching TV on my 20″ LCD for about a year and I was ready for something really nice. Cashed in credit card rewards and got a free HD-DVD player (would have had to spend $100 on a player with HDMI anyways) and I’ve got the receiver already. OTA HDTV and DVDs look gorgeous. Pics of the setup will definitely be posted once I receive my speakers.

Honeymoon: I just need to do some last minute confirmations but everything is booked and we are picking a few things we want to do. I just kind of want to explore and take a bunch of pictures. Kauai and Maui here we come.

Photography experiments: My goal is to come back from Hawaii with a bunch of awesome pics to print and fill our large empty walls with. One of these pics I want to be a nice big panorama and to facilitate that I’m taking a tripod and new gadget to make sure it is perfect.

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That’s where the Panosaurus comes in. It positions the camera in the portrait position and you calibrate it to rotate around the nodal point of the lens so things line up properly as you rotate the camera. I’m thinking a 360 view from the top of Waimea Canyon would be pretty sweet. And here’s a quick test I did of my bedroom (12 pics stitched together with a manual exposure, I only have 2 light bulbs in so one side of the room is darker):

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On a side note I think it is pretty interesting that you’re possessions can really demonstrate what type of person you are. Some interesting observations about myself/room (I’ll work left to right):

  • Homemade rear speaker stand made from metal bookshelf end spray painted white and screwed to wall.
  • Box with water bottle wrapped in paper with line and nail in front, Panosaurus calibration equipment.
  • Phone which hasn’t actually been plugged in for several months for some reason.
  • Numerous pictures of soon to be wife.
  • Cluttered desk
  • Bookshelf. Normally top shelf dedicated to SNES game collection and other video games. Next shelf dedicated to miscellaneous literature: Greek mythology, WWII and Vietnam books, fantasy and sci fi. Next shelf would be almost completely dedicated to a mostly complete Star Wars book collection. Next 2 shelves are filled with math and programming books. Wow that all just screams nerd.
  • Boxes in living room ready to be moved out.
  • Boxes in bedroom ready to be filled.
  • Wardrobe consisting mostly of t-shirts, that might have to change soon.

That might be it until after the Honeymoon since the next 4 days are going to be pretty busy with Rehearsal dinner and getting all the last minute things ready. In the meantime stick it to the RIAA man and download Prince’s new free album.

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Time to get active

I graduated high school after playing volleyball for 6 years and was in pretty good shape, then it went downhill from there. During college I was only sporadically physically active and the large amount of walking I did at CSULB certainly helped. I put on 40 pounds in that 4 years so I was doing better than the “Freshman 50”. So today I decided to get back into things and went jog/walking for 40 minutes and rode an exercise bike for 15 minutes. I figure it is about time and having a job that keeps me in front of the computer for most of the day makes it even more important. So let’s hope my quasi-New Year’s resolution sticks and I can lose some weight and tone up for my honeymoon and just life in general.

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We’re In Business

As most of you know (if you don’t read down two posts) Sarah and I got engaged last weekend and we haven’t been wasting any time with the planning. This weekend we spent Saturday afternoon visiting several sites to get a feel for what we might want. We had done a pretty good amount of research throughout the week and made a list of several places that looked promising and were in our price range.

Turns out we only had to visit 3 places before we were ready to decide where to get married. We visited the Lindley-Scott House in Azusa, the Old Ranch Country Club in Seal Beach and the Meadowlark Country Club in Huntington Beach. Right off the bat we liked the Lindley-Scott House and by the time we left I had pretty much made up my mind. Old Ranch was appealing but I just don’t dig the “country club” feel. Meadowlark was out of the question as soon as we walked into the banquet room (a little small and very hotel-ish). We spent the rest of Saturday and most of Sunday debating between Lindley-Scott and Old Ranch, trying to weigh the pros and cons of each.

Since we have been together for over 5 years there aren’t any reasons for a long engagement and were looking at this summer. We figured we were a little behind the curve in terms of booking but it turned out there weren’t any Saturdays open at either places and Sundays were even a little scarce. That took most of the trouble out of choosing a date. Fridays were eventually ruled out because of the inconvenience to our guests having to leave work early and battle Friday traffic and a Sunday gives us more time to enjoy the day.

So as of this afternoon we are having our ceremony and reception at the Lindley-Scott House on July 22 at 4:30pm. Ceremony will be outside in the shade and reception will be inside the “Carriage House”. Woohoo! One big thing down and now just smaller stuff to take care of.

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Looks like I’m getting married

Sarah and I have been dating for over 5 years and I’ve been working full-time for the past 6 months so I decided that it was time for us to begin to take the next step in our lives together so I popped the big question Saturday night and she said yes of course. So in short here’s how it happened:

She had been watching me like a hawk and was waiting for me to go buy the ring so I knew I had to be quick about it. I called up her dad Saturday a little before 11am, asked his permission and his help in going down to the jewelry district to a jeweler their family goes. He parked his car at the police station and I picked him up to avoid any suspicion. Went downtown, bought the ring and headed back home to continue “getting my oil changed and putting a new stereo in my truck”. Getting my oil changed was a lie but I did but a new stereo in my truck. Back in town by 12:30pm.

2:00pm rolls around and jeweler calls, diamond has been set and the ring is sized and ready to go. Head down to downtown again with my dad this time, pick it up and back by 3:30pm. At this point Sarah thinks I’ve gotten my oil changed and am now just working on my truck and is a little bitter that another Saturday has gone by without me going to get a ring. So she is clueless at this point that I have in my possession her engagement ring.

That night we were scheduled to go to separate holiday parties, Job’s Daughters for her and little get together at the Clutterham’s for me. This also worked out because when 10:45pm rolled around I had an excuse to come by and see her and go for a little drive to talk and show off my new stereo.

I pick her up and start driving towards the Embassy Suites (our first kiss was in the parking lot of the Embassy Suites) and parked. At this point she has a suspicion that something is up but her belief that I have no ring misleads her and keeps the element of surprise in my favor. I ask if I should put in a CD and begin to reach into my center console. As I do this I tell her that I love her and want to spend the rest of my life with her. I then bring out the open ring box from the center console and ask if she would marry me. I got an immediate yes followed by hugs and kisses and to my surprise took well over a minute to actually look down at the ring.

I was forced into proposing in this spontaneous manner because trying to do anything else (my actions were under extreme scrutiny) would have completely ruined the surprise and I can’t think of another way I would have rather done it.

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My happy new fiance

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I have to figure out why I get squinty eyes when I smile

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3 stone princess cut setting in white gold

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Latest Life Distractions

Took a little blog hiatus but here’s a rundown of what has been going on with me

  • Work – Sometimes it is good, sometimes it is awful, sometimes I’m just there for the money
  • Residence – Turns out Tim H needed a roommate and I am able/ready to move out of my parents house, so I am tentively moving the first week of December into the house complex were Mike and Allison live off of Alameda/Paramount
  • Church – Been spending a little more time on sound to hopefully reduce my time obligations on Sundays. Tim and I have got a team of new trainees going to help run things on a weekly basis and I’d be in more of a supervisor role
  • Programming – My WordPress plugins have been steadily growing in popularity which means more people ask for support (check em out over on the right if you have no idea what I’m talking about). I need to overhaul the plugins to get ready for the upcoming WP 2.1 release. I also have ideas for several more plugins and a whole other website I want to start.
  • Gaming – I’ve been playing some PC games in my spare time, the Wii looks tempting but I’ll probably wait till after Christmas before making a decision on it.
  • Reading – I’m on book 3 of the Dune series and I’m loving it. It isn’t your typical “Star Wars” sci-fi and has a lot of great philosophical/political/religious aspects to it. I’m also waiting for the 5th book of the Storm of Fire and Ice series to be released.

Guess that is it for now.