Lost In This Moment

After many moons, my abandoned blog is abandoned no longer...and just in time for my 2007 year in review! 2007 was just as busy as it was memorable, barely finding anytime for rest between work and play.

So what was my most memorable moment of 2007? I would say that being in Dallas sitting in an outdoor hotel hot tub and watching my hair freeze in the middle of February was pretty memorable. So was going to WrestleMania 23 at Ford Field in Detroit and experiencing the greatest spectacle in sports entertainment with 80,102 other people. I’d also say that traveling down to Memphis and finding out what real barbecue tastes like was memorable. And I’ll never forget that July weekend in Wisconsin, being stuck behind a barricade with my friend Eric and asking him to be one of my groomsmen as a barrage of fast moving paintballs whirred all around us.

Closer to home, 2007 marked the addition of my two fuzzy cats, Domino earlier in the year and Turtle towards the end. I also ran my first official race, the Shamrock Shuffle. At work, I was the human band-aid and proved to myself and hopefully to others that I’m just as versatile and flexible as I am dependable and reliable.

These are all memorable moments, but when I look back at 2007, there’s one memory that sticks out just a little more than the others – and it’s NOT my wedding. Granted, my wedding was truly memorable and is definitely my biggest moment of 2007, but when I think of my most memorable moment, I don’t think of the day of the wedding; I think of the day after.

My most memorable moment of 2007 was the effort everyone gave in helping my friend Santy get to where he needed to be in order to catch his flight back home. I know that it probably wasn’t a big deal to everyone involved, but it was a big deal to me. That one moment reflected what Cathy and my wedding was all about – the coming together of two families - friends, relatives and strangers alike - as one. A day after doing a unity sand ceremony, it was good a feeling seeing what was said being applied. People on Cathy’s side and people on my side came together to help Santy in the unexpected rut he was in, not as friends, relatives or strangers, but as one united family.

Happy New Year!

E-Session Pictures

Check out a preview of our engagement pictures here! April is an awesome photographer who has a great eye for capturing the moment and a sixth sense for creativity. Highly recommended and wonderful to work with! Great work, April!

Alternate Beginnings

It’s 5 PM on a Friday and I’m on the train leaving work. It’s been a long time since I’ve left right at 5. And there’s lots of time before the 8:30 PM flight out to Washington. Yabba-dabba-...poo??? Awww, crap. The iced venti non-fat extra-caramel caramel macchiato that my friends at work got me is hitting a lot earlier than I had expected and it’s hitting hard. It must be from all that milk in the venti. Or maybe it’s the two extra espresso shots I’m not used to getting since I usually order grande’s. Either way I gotta go and I gotta go right now. I see Cathy in the parking lot with our bags and I can tell she’s confused when I tell her she needs to go back to the car. She can drive as crazy as me when she needs to so I’m squeezing those cheeks and holding it in for dear life. We get back home and I feel so much better. Back to the airport. Not good. I go again as soon as we get there. While I’m sitting in the stall, I look at my watch and realize that we’re starting to cut it close. I’ve never missed a flight before, and I didn’t want the reason for the first time to be because I had a case of the squirts. We check in baggage and get through security with just enough time for me to make one more pit stop before getting to the gate. I sit on the toilet and this time I feel relieved. Oh shit, where’s the toilet paper??? There’s a new unused roll that’s up in the dispenser and I can’t reach up there to get it started. And my plane is boarding! Ahhhhhh!

That is how my weekend started.

It's 11 PM on a Friday night and I'm stuck waiting in line at a car rental place after a long and cramped typical flight from Chicago to Seattle. The clueless customer at the counter makes it pretty obvious to the entire world that he's not from around there, yet he declines the handy navigation feature. Better watch out, Washington, a tourist is on the road so the streets are no longer safe. Not to worry though because after miraculously getting a rental, he comes back a few minutes later and asks if there are other cars available…smaller cars…a car he can actually drive. That’s right, he wanted to return the car he got because he didn’t know how to drive it…and it was an automatic! I’ve got to admit, there are lots of things I don’t know how to do (float, tread water, drive by a funeral home without shouting something inappropriate), but I would rather spill the beans and admit to getting a freaking pedicure before losing all manhood and telling everyone and my mother that I wasn’t able to figure out how to drive a car. I’m still waiting in line.

So that is how my weekend started.

It’s 3:30 AM on a Saturday and I’m in a rental minivan on the way to Anacortes. Between today and the day before I’ve slept a total of a whopping, get this, four hours. Kinda funny in a sleep-deprived sort of way that he who has the least amount of sleep is the one driving the six other people in the car who happen to be sleeping because our nice family-sized minivan has a DVD player in it and someone decided it would be a good idea to play Happy Feet. I really tried to give it a chance, but I had to stop playing the movie after hearing the lyrics, “Don't push me 'cuz I'm close to the edge, I'm trying not to lose my head.” Too late, I lost my head a long time ago.

And that is how my weekend started.

There are tons of movies that have alternate endings, but why aren’t there any with alternate beginnings?

Watching the sunrise at a picnic table in Anacortes at dawn:






Actual wedding location, 110 days from now: