Parking Rules Do Not Apply

I'm going to give you a break from wedding blogs for a post to talk about something else.  I'd love to tell you it's something amazing and exciting, but it's not, it's parking.  Yes, parking.  Now as many of you know, I am a rule follower (well, most of the time, anyway;  people constantly tell me I need to break a few rules and they also say it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission).  So when I go somewhere, I generally park legally.  I did once get a parking ticket for being parked in a spot that was supposed to be vacated at 8:00 because I was still there at 9:00--oops!  I did however, pay my ticket in a timely fashion.  We have assigned spots where I live so not only do I always park in my driveway and have my better half park in his spot (soon to officially be his spot and not just my second spot :-)), I always make my visitors park in visitor parking (what a concept, huh?).  Sadly, not everyone else is as rule follower.  I've lost track of how many times someone other than my fiancé or me have parked in my second parking spot.  A couple of days ago, my fiancé went to the grocery store.  He came home and pulled over to the side of the road for approximately two minutes--with the car running--to unload the groceries.  In the time he did that, someone drove past him and parked in his spot.  ANNOYING!  So I kept staring out the window to see if the car would ever leave.  It did a few minutes later so I yelled my fiancé to go move his car.  (He had moved it to guest parking as there was no other place to go).  Well, in the approximately 5-10 minutes it took him to put  his shoes on, go to the guest spot, start his car, and drive to his real spot, SOMEONE ELSE parked in his spot. Thankfully, he got down there when the person was still in sight so she moved, but seriously, people, there is a guest spot within walking distance, why can't you have your guests park there?  It's not just around here.  I go to the gym 5-6 times a week (less if it's a crazy week, but you get the point).  With the exception of snowy Januaries when everyone is back at the gym and there are snowbanks taking up parking spots, there is usually PLENTY of parking.  It's not some tiny lot.  Well, several times in the past week or two, I have gone to the gym, parked (legally) seen plenty of spaces and yet there have been several cars that just decided to randomly park on a grassy area near the entrance.  I've seen people do this at the mall too and I just wonder, are people that lazy?  And how can you be that lazy and not be able to walk a few more feet if you are GOING TO THE GYM.  It can't be handicapped people because there are handicapped spaces free (speaking of which, I find it rude when non-handicapped people park in handicapped spaces and when people leave their shopping carriages in the middle of spaces instead of walking 5 more feet to the carriage corral).   I just don't get it.  So there's my parking rant.  We'll probably go back to wedding stuff tomorrow.  Have a good night!   

The Challenges Of Make Up

I think I may have mentioned on here before that I don't wear make up too often.  I'm sure I'd look better with it, but I'm lazy.  Getting up at 6:30 is early enough thank you, I am NOT getting up any earlier to put on make up.  I wear make up to work 11 times a year.  This year I wore it 12 times because of my work bridal shower. I will wear it if I'm going out some place nice in the evening or if I'm going to a wedding or party or whatever.  But on a typical day like today for example when I am not working and spending much of today cleaning and reading, there is no make up on this face.  So given my limited make up knowledge, I was NOT doing my own wedding make up.  After some research I found a place that was only slightly obnoxiously expensive as opposed to obnoxiously expensive as most other places were.  I went for my trial appointment last Friday and the woman was very nice.  I warned her that I do not wear a lot of make up and I am indecisive.  She was nice and patient, but my right eye would not stop watering.  My allergies were out of control--yet only in one eye, strange.  Anyway, despite my misbehaving eye she did what she could and assured me she would get waterproof make up for the wedding day--yes, please!  Because combine allergies with a girl who cries at everything and I'm going to need it!  Well, I had a few friends over that evening and they said the make up looked good, but by the end of the evening, my eye was watering up so much that I started to look like a raccoon.  A little later I morphed into a baseball player.  One of my friends asked if I was getting ready to try out for the Red Sox.  Bring on the waterproof! 

Wedding Planning: A Few Bumps Along the Road

They say when you plan a wedding, no matter how hard you try, something is going to go wrong.   In most instances people don't notice or it's something so small that the bride and groom notice, but no one else really does.  I guess the same goes for planning a wedding.  There will be problems, but in the end most of them have a way of working out.   So in tonight's blog I'd like to share a few of the problems we've had (besides trying to figure out the seating chart of course because most of my married friends have told me that's a pain so I'm going to just guess that is the norm, and actually
4-5--I've lost track, attempts later, it seems like we have a seating chart that will work). 

1.  Wedding Party Changes:  Quite a few months ago one of my bridesmaids had to excuse herself from the wedding because she is having a baby right around my wedding date.  Obviously, I was happy for her and understood.  She's still been a fabulous "honorary" bridesmaid and helped with my bachelorette party.  Since we had one more bridesmaid than groomsmen, I didn't worry about trying to find someone else to even things out.  But then two months ago one of my fiancé's groomsmen had to excuse himself from the wedding--he is not having a baby close to our wedding date ha ha.  My fiancé panicked a bit (shh don't tell him I told you that), but asked one of his friends if he would be willing to fill in.  His friend, Joe quickly said yes, and all was right with the wedding party again.  Joe was originally going to bring up the bread and wine at our wedding, but since we "promoted" him to groomsmen, it meant I got to ask my friend Natalie to do that instead.  She kindly said yes because she is awesome. 

2.  Flowers and Florists:  In May, we found out our florist's health wasn't good and he unfortunately had to excuse himself from doing our wedding flowers.  We understood and wished him good health, but I'll be honest I panicked a bit.  I hadn't really thought at all about flowers because he was taking care of everything.  It was someone we knew and that was going to be his wedding present to us.  I had sent him a few pictures--but truthfully, some of those pictures were stuff my friend Megan had found me (Megan rocks).  Our wedding package included centerpieces so it simply meant we would use their centerpieces and not get a credit for that so that part was easy enough, but I had NO clue on bouquets.  It also meant I now had 15-20 vases lying in my guest room that I didn't know what to do with because I wasn't sure another florist could use them.  Well, it turned out the florist who was doing our centerpieces, although not thrilled about it, was willing to use our vases--thank goodness because the 90 day return deadline had passed and I didn't know anyone in desperate need of 15-20 vases.  After a little digging around, it turned out one of my fiancé's groomsmen's girlfriend was  willing to do our flowers.  yay!  Thankfully, she has been very patient since I know so little about flowers. 

And finally (well for this post anyway)

3.  The Priest:  The priest who was supposed to marry us took a medical leave. No problem, the assistant priest can marry us.  On Monday I found out the assistant priest has been reassigned to another church.  No problem, the new priest will just marry us, right?  Right???  Well, when I was at church this weekend, I found out the new priest does not work on Fridays.  Did I mention my wedding is on a Friday night?!  I don't have a yay for this problem yet because it has not yet been resolved,  but I would think the church would find us someone, right???  We did pay them and sign a contract.  Perhaps God is trying to tell me something?   Do you think he's mad at me for all those weeks I did not go to church?

I'll keep you posted.  In the mean time you can look forward (or not) to blog posts on make up and my awesome friends.   :) 

Political Ads

I try not to mix politics and blogs, but this one is irritating me so I'm throwing it out there.  In the past two weeks, I have gotten the same ad approximately 6 times (maybe it was only 5, but either way, that's a lot of times to send the same ad).  It is some political group encouraging me to call Senator X and tell Senator X that Y is bad.  It also complains about the way Senator X voted for stuff in the past.  For the record, let me state that I am registered as undeclared (much to my father's dismay, I think he nearly had a heart attack, when I registered to vote and did not wish to declare a party), but I do try to vote in every election.  Anyway, these ads are in color and on heavy paper.  As someone who has had to print, copy, and distribute ads for my job, I know that heavy paper and colored ink are NOT cheap so if these people are sending me this ad 6 (or maybe only 5) times, I imagine they are doing the same thing to many others, right???  How much money are they spending?!  Couldn't they take all that money they are spending on repetitious ads and actually use the money to SOLVE SOME OF THE ISSUES they are so concerned about.  I googled them and they have something about prosperity on their website.  Is it very prosperous to send the same ad 5/6 times???  I think not, but what do I know!    So their ads go straight to my recycling bin, but now I'm thinking I could be creative with them.  I could give them to my neighbors for their fire place in the winter.  I could use them to catch dripping paint for painting projects.  I could bind them all into a book and then mail them back to the people that sent them.  What do you think?  Got any creative ideas for me?   

Another Wedding Blog: The Church Stuff

This blog is a little random and all over the place, but the underlying theme is church stuff.  So as you may remember, I'm getting married in a church.  My fiancé and I took that test back in March and we were quite nervous to get our results since he misunderstood some of the questions. Well, a little over a month after we took the test, we got our results and we didn't do so badly.  In fact the woman who went over the results with us was a sweetheart and found it kind of funny that Mike misunderstood the drug use question.  One less thing to worry about
We met with the church coordinator a few weeks after that and things went well, except that as we were leaving the church coordinator noticed I had a flat tire.  Trying to find someone to change a flat at 8:00 on a Wednesday night proved challenging, but not impossible.  We got it sorted out and I was able to successfully get to work the next day. 
And on a final church related note, we now have no idea who is marrying us.  The priest that was going to marry us switched churches.  The assistant priest was going to marry us, but he was just reassigned so hopefully, the new priest who started this past weekend (who we have not met) will marry us.  A part of me is wondering if I'm going to show up at the church for my wedding and all the guests will be there and there will be no priest.  Then what do we do?  Maybe there'll be a JP in the audience?  :-)

The Bachlorette Party

So a while back, I mentioned that my bachelorette party was coming up, but in typical me fashion, I got busy with life and never blogged about it.  Despite my nerves and my not wanting to wear a bathing suit, I had a wonderful weekend.  Three of us went up on a Friday night.  We had dinner near our hotel then hung out at the hotel for a little while before bed time.  The next morning it was off to Aqua Zumba, which turned out to be quite fun--despite having to wear a bathing suit in public (well, semi-public).  I didn't know anything about Aqua Zumba, but it's basically Zumba in the water.  I usually go to Zumba twice a week (though the past couple of weeks, I've only made it once a week, because I keep having appointments, meetings, etc. during one of the classes) so my maid of honor thought it would be a fun thing for me to do.  After that, it was back to the hotel, where one of my friends had brought/made enough food to feed a small army.  It was good!    We hung out for a bit then went on a boat ride.  I have to confess I was worried about the weather because when we got up that morning it was not pretty, but by the time we went on the boat, it was pretty nice out.  After the boat ride, it was back to the hotel for drinks and a game called The SoonlyWed Game.  In this game, a couple of my friends asked my fiancé some questions ahead of time and videotaped his answers.  I had to guess his answers.  There are different things you can do for right or wrong answers.  In my case, my maid of honor had made stickers that made her think of me (i.e. milk because I drink a lot of milk, ballet shoes because I do ballet, purple shoes because I like purple, etc.).  If I got a question wrong, I  had to wear a sticker all night.  If I were right, I had to give a sticker to someone.  Let's just say I had to wear quite a few stickers.  Some of my fiancé's answers were a little (okay a lot) off from what I though he'd say. My married friends assured me that in that game this was normal as they'd scored similar right/wrong answers when they'd played.  After the game and a little more hanging out, we went to dinner.  Then it was out for a few drinks.  All in all it was a fun night.  I'd post pics, but my camera battery died and I charged it and no luck.  I think it's time for a new battery so that's on this week's to do list. 

I'm Baaack

Hello Blog Readers,
   Are you still out there? Have you given up on me?  I'm still alive and well, just drastically slacking on the blog.  June is a BUSY month at work--at least the first few weeks so it's no surprise that I didn't blog then, but by the end of June when I have free time again you'd think I'd be back on here, right?  Well, I had every intention of doing so, but my computer had other ideas.  One night I went on my computer and the battery was low so I plugged it in to charge it and it didn't seem to be charging.  I tried to make sure everything was connected and noticed a wire seemed to be coming out so I put some electrical tape on it and it started charging.  A couple of minutes later, I heard a LOUD pop and saw a flash of light. Let's just say that was the end of my adapter.  It scared the you know what out of me.  I quickly (and nervously unplugged it).  I'm not sure if it was the wire I saw popping out or what that caused the noise and light, but then I was paranoid that there'd be a fire or something.  Could it have been sparks I saw?  Who knows.  But that meant no more computer use for a while.  Thank goodness for phones that connect to the internet.  I was going to get one at Staples, but I found one cheaper on Amazon so I ordered that.  I saved some nice $, but I had to wait a little while for it to come in hence the no blogging.  I do not like blogging on my phone. But anyway, I'm back now so you can expect some more wedding related posts and me being me probably something about food too.  Happy 4th!     

Thanksgiving in April

I meant to post this in April, but then life got in the way and it didn't happen.  Better late than never, I suppose, right?  We had a lot of snow this winter.  It took a long time for it to melt.  If you know me at all or if you've read some of my previous posts, you know I like to decorate for the holidays--not just Christmas, but Thanksgiving, Easter, Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, etc.  Anyway, I have a Thanksgiving turkey decoration that I put outside in early November.  Normally, I take it down in late November or early December.  This year, I guess I forgot to take it down.  It snowed, it snowed again, it snowed a lot.  Eventually, the snow melted, by sometime in April it was finally almost gone.  One day I got in my car to go to work and something caught my eye.  I wondered, what in the world is that?!  Let me remind you it was APRIL!  I walked over to the front of my house and there was the Thanksgiving turkey.  OOPS!  It's not uncommon for me to put my decorations away for various holidays and find a stray one left behind a couple of days later, but not over 4 months later.