robglazebrook.com

For those who missed it: I’m married now, folks! I’ve been married now for roughly .26% of my life. I think. It feels like longer. :)

The wedding went off without a hitch, other than the hitching part. It was pretty, people had fun, and Abraham Lincoln graced us with a Presidential toast. All in all, it was a night to remember.

And the honeymoon! Oh, the honeymoon. I’d take another one of those any day of the week. (And we have another one coming up in February, but that’s beside the point) The drive was long, and vaguely scary though parts of southern Mississippi, but the honeymoon itself was awesome! The condo was even prettier than the photos led on, and I can’t begin to describe how giddy I felt as I went into the ocean for the first time. Full. Of. Awesome. We ate tons of great food, read on the beach, swam whenever we got too warm, and generally had a fantastic time. We were sad to leave, but at least there were piles of presents waiting for us when we got back.

And let me tell you: I know the ~real~ reason everybody gets married: the booty! (No, not that booty – well, okay, maybe that booty too) We have all sorts of new stuff, and all of it is cool. We haven’t even had a chance to use all of the gift cards or cash that were given us, either, so we’re going to have more presents to come. It’s like Christmas in October! Although by the time we’re done spending all our wedding cash, it’ll probably be Christmas in December. Which is less novel. But still fun.

So that’s the wedding bit. Otherwise, we’re keeping mad busy, somehow. We were very excited to have the wedding out of the way so that we could finally slow down and relax, but it seems like every week, our evenings fill right up. We had Tuesday and Thursday nights of this week free to chill at home, but otherwise our social calendar was/is full (and some of those nights have multiple events). And next week is half-full already, too. So the moral of this story is, if you want to make sure we’re somewhere on a specific date, it couldn’t hurt to warn us about it a couple of weeks out. :)

Also, we’re at 9 days until the Des Moines Half-Marathon (October 18th), where I will try to run 21K (13.1 miles) consecutively. Amanda’s injuries have kept her out of training for most of the last month, which means she probably won’t be running this time. Which is rather heartbreaking (for both of us, really) but the good news is there will be other opportunities. For example, we’re both signed up to run the Susan G. Komen 5K (3.1 mile) on October 24th. And after that, we’re planning to train next spring for the Dam to Dam on June 5th, which is a 20K (12.4 mile) run.

Holy monkeys, people. Time, it certainly does fly.

We are officially T-minus 9 days and counting from the wedding. And believe you me: we’re counting.

We turned in a final-and-offical head count to the caterer today. There were a few people that simply never RSVP’d, even after repeated phone calls… so we’re assuming they’re not coming. I’m seriously considering tipping the two security guards we’ll have to act as bouncers and enforce the guest list. And I promise from this day forth to never again be “that guy” and put off RSVPing until the very last moment: it fried my nerves, and I can only imagine it’d do something similar to others.

99% of the work is done, though there’s still a few things that had to be put off until the last moment to handle. Flowers, for instance: while 9 days is a very short period of time in human years, that’s a lifetime in flower years, so we can’t pick up flowers until the day before. And our tuxedos aren’t in yet, which is of course causing me no end of literal nightmares. I haven’t had a full night’s uninterrupted sleep in at least a month.

But! The big day will be here before long. In fact, I’ll be done and married roughly 221 hours from now. Wow. No more counting in hours for a while.

The real fun comes afterwards, though. The day after the wedding, Amanda and I are taking off for a week-long honeymoon in Gulf Shores, which is here on a map. We’ve rented a condo right on the beach and plan to spend our days laying next to the ocean thinking about not much of anything at all, eating whenever we think of it, drinking whenever we’re not eating, and reading whenever we’re not too drunk. The photo above was taken from our balcony. It’s going to rock, people.

Non-wedding related stuff:

• We’ve been training for a half-marathon for a while now. It’s going decently well, though Amanda hurt her ankle last week and is thus taking this week off. We run October 18th. 13.1 miles.
• The basement is mostly demolished. Redoing it is going to take longer than expected. We’re now hoping to have it finished before the end of the year, but that’s debatable at this point.
• I got a violin for my birthday! I’m learning to play. Slowly. As in, the learning goes slowly, and I cannot play quickly. By this time next week, I’m hoping to have figured out “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” No promises, though. Rumor has it I have one or two other things going on.

Whoopsidaisy! Looks like early Spring went and got away from me. Time for a very slow lightning-round update on what’s new in RobbyLand!

In no particular order, either!

Bike! I got one, just this last Sunday. It’s my first new bike since I was a middle schooler, I think. I also haven’t ridden a bike more than once or twice since I was a preteen, until now. As a result, I decided not to spend a huge amount on the bike. I got one from Target – this one, in fact. It’s a hybrid, which means that it’s somewhere between a mountain bike and a road bike. Which means that I can ride on rougher trails without a problem, but still get the greater speed associated with a road bike. I’ve only been on one longer ride so far, but it was fun. And since next week is Bike to Work Week (hence the new ride), I’ll get plenty of practice all too soon. I’ll be riding a good 15-20 miles a day next week.

Volleyball! A few friends and I have formed a sand volleyball team for this Spring/Summer. I’ve never really played volleyball aside from a few very casual games, but I think it’s something I’ll enjoy even if I don’t excel. We’re playing seven games over the next seven weeks, with our first game being next Tuesday evening. Our team’s name is “To Kill a Blocking Nerd,” which I find awesomely hilarious (friend Tyson came up with the name).

Grass! Amanda and I hired a lawn service this year with the hope of making some real headway on our backyard (aka the dirt pit). They’ve fertilized, aerated and seeded our backyard, and they’ll continue to do some fertilization and week control as the year progresses. It really wasn’t as pricy as I would have expected – I think we’re getting the whole year-long deal for around $300. So far, I’m seeing grass sprouting in some pretty dead areas, so I’m excited about that. Unfortunately, the creeping charley also seemed to appreciate the fertilizer, and it’s gaining some major headway on the other side of the yard. I think I’m going to have to treat it before the new grass is fully grown, or I may not have any grass left when it’s done.

Basement! Very soon, Amanda and I are going to take the plunge back into DIY home improvement and start redoing the finished half of the basement. Essentially, we’re going to start over. First up, we’re going to tear up the carpeting and bleach/seal the concrete to make it more moisture resistant and try to remove the 40+ years of pet smells down there. Then we’re going to tear out the ceiling (and possibly the walls). Next, we’re going to redo the overhead lighting and close up a poorly placed intake vent (it’s adjacent to an output vent, creating a closed loop). Then we’re going to put up drywall on the ceiling and walls and texture everything. Once that’s done, we get to paint everything a nice bright shade of something. And finally, we’re going to lay down a new floor – probably a laminate hardwood. Just typing all that stuff exhausted me.

Wedding! We are four months and five days from the big moment we’ve all been waiting for. All the really big things are in place, so we’re down to the annoying details. We spent a long while last night working on the guest list, and we’re going to spend even more time on it. The problem we’re running into is: Amanda’s family is massive and her parents are pretty adamant about having everyone there, but we have limited seating at our wedding location (180 absolute max, 150 realistically – but we can fit more inside at the reception). So once we get all her extended family seated, and my much smaller close family seated (sorry third cousins), we have ~very~ little room for any of our friends. This frustrates me, because (no offense to anyone) I’d rather have a close friend attend our wedding than some second-great-aunt that I’ve never met and Amanda hasn’t seen in 15 years, assuming I had to choose between the two. So we’re working on a multi-tiered system currently – family and very close friends (mostly those in the wedding) will attend the wedding and everything else. Others will be invited to the dinner and the reception. And still others will be invited to attend the post-dinner reception and drink/dance the night away. It’s not an ideal system, but it’s the only one we’ve figured out so far that doesn’t violate fire and safety codes or put us several thousand dollars over budget.

Computer! My home PC started dying last month – randomly turning off and then not turning back on for hours at a time. So I decided it was time to upgrade my system. After all, I’d been using the same system since before grad school, which means it was at least 5 years old. So I did a bunch of research and bought a bunch of parts. The motherboard I purchased was dead on arrival, so I had to send it back and delay the building process, but the second one worked like a champ. For those who speak geek, I’m running an Intel E8400 3GHZ dual-core processor (overclocked to 3.6GHZ per core), a GeForce 9800 GTX+ w/ 512MB DDR3, 4GB DDR2-1066 RAM, and a 1TB hard drive. I also finished off my system with a new 23” monitor that runs at a lovely 1920×1080 resolution (yay for 1080p!). It’s lovely, quiet, very fast, and more energy efficient than my last system. Overall I’m extremely happy with it. :)

Enough for now! We have a very important super-secret company-wide meeting here in a few minutes, so I’m going to wrap this up. Hopefully the meeting doesn’t involve everyone being fired. Or at least not me being fired. That would stink too.

Update post-meeting: Yay economy. The company is having to drop our 401(k) matches and is instituting a company-wide pay cut (variable dependent on pay bracket) in order to stay afloat. This is the point when Amanda and I working at the same company isn’t as cool as it was before, as we’re both taking a pay cut on the same day. Positive: we both still have jobs.

I have a new video camera! And here’s the initial aftermath:

Let me know what you think about this style o’ communication, if you don’t mind. I’d be interested to hear what people think. It actually takes longer to post this way… but it’s more fun, too. Perhaps thats a worthwhile trade-off. That’s for you, the viewer, to decide.

Hey faithful readers! And you faithless ones, too, I guess. Nyah to you, as I’ve managed to post again, and it’s only taken me, what? Three months? I’ve had worse.*

So, where to start up again? Well, I’ll just catch you up as things cross my mind. This is going to be a little stream-of-consciousness, to warn.

Amanda and I have the major details of the wedding nailed down. We have a date (September 12, 2009), a venue (Jester Park Lodge), a caterer (Christiani’s), our groomsmen (Eric Gookin, Justin Ladwig, Tom Wurzinger) and bridesmaids (Sara Reimer, Anne Janotta, Lindsay Reinert), and as of last night we also have a DJ (Sound Extremes) and an officiate (Rod Glazebrook). And weekend from next, Amanda’s brother Tom is coming into town and we’re going to go check out tuxes. Eric, if you’d like to come too, you’re more than welcome.

I’m keeping pretty busy work-wise. Last Friday I launched a redesign of a big website for August Home – WoodsmithShop.com. It didn’t launch until 11pm on Friday, which meant (in case you’re bad at math) that I was working pretty late hours to get this out the door on time. And then that weekend, I turned around and spent a good many hours working on a couple of freelance development projects (Ant’s Eye View and Connected By Distance) and then wrote a fairly long article for CSS Newbie. On top of that I’m also currently teaching my continuing education web development course – though today, I’m stuck emailing the lady in charge and letting her know this will be the last time I teach the course this year. I’ve simply too many plans, goals, and obligations to keep up.

Last week Iowa experienced a wicked cold snap, resulting in one of the coldest nights on record. Therefore, our furnace died the day before and couldn’t be replaced until the day after. I spent a good 36 hours tending the fire in our wood-burning stove every 90 minutes or so to ensure that our pipes (and selves) didn’t freeze in the -20F weather, and came out of the ordeal sleep deprived and smelling of smoked meat. But! We also came out with a new furnace and water heater (cause it was old and dying too), so it wasn’t all bad. The good news is, we didn’t have to buy on credit, as we had savings. The bad news is, I wiped out my part of the wedding savings. But we will persevere, seeing no alternative. Oh, and the kind people at City Wide were very nice and gave us a good price. I’d recommend them.

CSS Newbie is still tottering along. It got a redesign and was relaunched on December 1st – ten months to the day from when I first officially launched the site. It’s still not quite as profitable a venture as I’d like to see it become, but I have ideas in that regard. Which is part of why I’ve decided not to teach the web class for a while – that time could be put into developing CSS Newbie into something… more.

Amanda and I are no longer trying to sell our house. In fact, we only tried for six weeks before giving it up as a bad job for the short term. And now that we’ve just invested beaucoup funds into the infrastructure, we’ll probably be more encouraged to stick around for a bit longer. We’ll have to see what the future brings, I guess.

And otherwise? Well, that depends on how much detail you want. Here’s some: we bought a new chair for the den, we have a room we call the den now, my niece is now four and my god daughter is one, with help from dad and friend Ben I managed to wall mount my downstairs TV, I’m working on my first mix-tape in a decade, I’m rereading an Ayn Rand book (Atlas Shrugged) given to me by Danielle many years ago, I’m actively looking for freelance web work, and we’re having a Super Bowl party at our place.

That should do.

* Note: I haven’t had worse.