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Wedding Countdown

I find that it has become harder and harder to keep up with my blog postings.  But I have made it a point to do it to give me a record of the events of my life from a first hand experience.

I have been busier than my norm lately.  New Year’s was spent at Adam and Christina’s.  My other free time has been spent with Karyn, doing wedding preparations, and working on my side stuff.

There is much more to planning a wedding than I realized at first.  Every little thing is so planned and thought out.  It is ridiculous.  Flowers, DJ, limo, table settings, food, dresses, tuxes, invitations, and more.  It seems like every single day is something else that we have to do or plan.  I’m ready to be married.

It’s about 88 days until I’m married. I realized the other day that I will be 27 when I get married.  I told Karyn this.  Naturally, she teased me, as she will only be 26 when we get married.  It is definitely older than I thought I would be when I got married.  I guess I was just waiting for the right one.

The next few months are really going to fly by.  It was 3 months ago when we got engaged, and it’s about 3 months until we get married.  The last few months have flown by and I think it will even fly by faster now that we’re on the homestretch.

I just can’t wait to be married.

Christmas 2009

The Christmas weekend has just wrapped up.  This is the end of my first of many Christmas’s with Karyn.  Christmas was on a Friday this year.  Christmas Eve was my immediate family in the morning at the Maisenhelder’s in Chesterfield, then back to Fairview to recharge and get ready.  Then, we went to Karyn’s extended family Christmas Eve night.  After that, we went to 11pm church.  Got to bed pretty late after that for the annual sleepover at the Browns.  Christmas day morning we did gifts at the Brown immediate family.  This was immediately followed by my extended family.  It was about 2 solid long days of family commitments.  It was a lot of fun - but it was also just a lot.  We were both really exhausted by the end of Christmas night.

Saturday (the day after Christmas) we layed low all day, watched movies, and napped.  We did go to a party that night that a friend of Karyn’s was having.

Today was another pretty busy day.  Breakfast at McDonald’s, church, then lunch with my parents.  After that, we headed to Bonnie’s to settle some dress stuff for the bridesmaids and look at invitation stuff.  Then we went to Men’s warehouse to pick out the tuxes.  We have really done well with all the planning.

This is another short week with New Year’s on Friday.  I do have 4 work days this week. We’re going to try to get together with Darren and Lisa.  Maybe even Brian and his new fiance and Nick.  Brian never replies to emails, so I’m not holding my breath on seeing him. It’s been kind of hard to see them recently.  Mostly because Lisa is a high school dance team coach and it turns out that that is a pretty time consuming position.

It’s looking like we’re going to be going to Adam and Christina’s (Karyn’s eldest brother and wife) on New Years Eve.  We were wanting to get out of the house, but not do anything crazy.  Drink a few beers, have some good food, stay inside.  We’re not much for going out anymore.  I think we’re just getting older.

Engaged before the Light Party

I guess I haven’t posted in awhile again.

It seemed like a good time to post because my life has been going through a big change.  Two weeks ago I proposed to Karyn — and she said yes.  So, I’m officially engaged.  She is my fiance.

I’ve known for awhile that she was the one. It all happened pretty fast.  I mentioned one night if she wanted to look at rings. She said sure.  The next night we looked at rings and I got hers.  In the course of about 24 hours we went to talking about looking at rings to having bought a ring. A couple weeks later I proposed.  We went to the Stl Art Museum.  When we were about to leave, I said I had to go the the bathroom.  I put the ring in my pocket and headed back to her.  I told her I wanted to look out by the big statue overlooking Art Hill.  We went out there, I started talking.  Before I knew it, I was on one knee.  She thought I was messing with her because I had been teasing her for awhile about when it would be.  She even said “is this really happening?”.  Very cute.  When she saw the ring, she knew I was serious.  I asked, she said yes.

Everything since then has just been a big whirlwind of telling people and planning.  A lot more goes into planning a wedding than I realized.

Saturday is my 2nd annual Christmas light party.  This year  I’ve named it Christmas Lightorama (christmaslightorama.com).  I think a lot of people thought I would propose on that day with all the friends and family over.  But I thought it’d be better for it to be just the two of us when it happened.  I have about 50 people that said they would attend.  I know not everyone will show up, but still it should be a good turnout.  We have all been hella cleaning to get ready for it.  It turns out that I normally don’t clean that well because Karyn and my Mom both thought it was pretty dirty.  A few minutes ago I just got done taking the video.  It took a few takes because cars kept driving by.  And I’m not 100% sure it worked right because the battery was almost dead.  But, I think it did.  I’ll edit it together tomorrow and know for sure.

So just think.  Right now, I am someone’s fiance and someone is my fiance.  Pretty awesome.

The New Lady

It’s odd that it seems like no matter how hard I try, I can never seem to get in more than 1 post a month.  I always have the intention of doing it, then I always forget or something else comes up.

Karyn and I are doing really well.  We spend a good deal of time together.  I’ve gotten to know her and her rather large family pretty well.  We went camping a couple weeks ago.  That was a lot of fun, with the exception of some of the rain.  Got to know her brothers and their wives/girlfriends better. We went to the St. Louis Wine festival last Saturday.  That was pretty sweet.  I don’t know much about wine and honestly don’t care for it all that much, but I leared that there are some wines that are more decent than others.  Some are really gross, some aren’t that bad. After we went to the Boathouse for dinner.  That was my first time there.

We’ve been staying in this week more.  Relaxing and just enjoying the simple things in life. Looks like we’re pumpkin picking on Saturday and then gutting it and cooking up some seeds, which I enjoy quite a bit. We were talking about going to FrightFest at Six Flags on Saturday night, but it looks like we’d be the only 2.  I was hoping to get a group together, but no one else seems interested. I’m not sure anymore if we’re going to go or not.  I think Karyn was just kind of humoring me because I wanted to go.  We’ll talk more about it tomorrow.

My Christmas light work is on full swing.  I’m running kind of late on my schedule because I’ve been kind of otherwise engaged. I wanted to have all the building done by October. Here it is, Oct 8, and it’s not done yet.  I’m going to take off a day next week to help catch up.  I should be in full force sequencing by now, but I haven’t even started.

Preparing For Christmas

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately working on my Christmas Light Display.  Most of it has been working out the details on the new things I’m pioneering this year.  These are things that no one else has.  I have a feeling there will be others next year.  But I think I’ll go down as the first.

I’ve realized that Karyn in pretty good for me.  I’ve noticed I work harder on a lot of things since we’ve been together.  I keep my house cleaner, I run harder, I work harder on my own stuff.  I think those are the best kind of girlfriends - the kind that make you better.

I’m going camping in a couple weeks.  This is with Karyn and her siblings and their families.  I haven’t been camping in a few years.  I’m looking forward to it as I always have a lof of fun when I go.  And, I haven’t been camping with a girl in quite some time, so that should help a lot, too.

New Girlfriend

I’ll be the first to admit it - I haven’t been in a relationship in awhile.  But, now I am.  I’m with a girl named Karyn (yes, that is how it is spelled).  She’s the sister of a friend of mine.

It’s different from what I’m used to, but in good ways.  It’s really nice having a girlfriend again.  I’d say she’s probably the most fun out of any girl I’ve dated.  She’s pretty great.  And, I have a hard time believing it myself, but she thinks I’m pretty great, too.

Fast Changes

Sometimes things change…fast.

In my last post, I talked about a new girl I was talking to.  Well, in the course of 3 days, I managed somhow to have 1 girl enter the picture and 2 girls leave the picture.  Unfortunately, they all overlap.  So they were all out.

I had my guard up on one of them because I knew that I was probably safely in the friend zone.  But, before she told me that, I had to bring her to meet some of my friends.  Chris and Anne had their basement remodeling party.  I invited her and she said yes.  She met everyone.  Fairly uneventful.  I knew from the start that this girl, call her BP for short, was not right for me.  Warning, what I’m going to say will sound shallow.  The only the I really ever liked about her was her body.  She has that bangin compact body that I am a big fan of.  Anyway, her and the other girl, call her SW, are out.  SW started dating someone else, and BP notified me I was in the friend zone, as I already knew I was.

I’ve also been spending a lot of time on the side projects lately.  I’ve spent most of my free time over the last 5 days working on the new blog directory. I had to learn some cool stuff for website thumbnailing along the way.  Pretty cool.  I’m also now working on the new affiliate program.  I see a lot of potential on the blog directory.  It gives some somewhere to push ads, and a captive ideal audience to sell ads to.  I don’t honestly know what to expect from the affiliate program.  Maybe it’ll help a lot, maybe not at all.  But, like many of the divisions, it didn’t cost anything to do it, so if it works, it’s worth it.  If not, no harm done.

RIP The King of Pop

The day of my dinner with SW (a few weeks ago), Michael Jackson died.  I think the news media has done more than enough coverage of his death, so I don’t need to go into that. But, I must state that he is by far the best performer of our lifetimes.  His talent was unparalleled. I wonder why the greater the talent the greater the personal demons people battle.

On another note, the whole family and I went to Holiday World over July 4th.  I do like it more than Six Flags.  Of course, they could use more roller coasters. But the free soda is pretty good.

Privacy Lock

One of the things that I think you have to be very careful about posting things online.

Once it is online, you can never take it back.  You have litte control over who sees it and once it is out there it it can run rampant.

This, combined with the fact that I’m somewhat of a private person, makes me very hesitant to put anything besides objective facts online.  Sure, I talk about trips, events, things in the news.  But, I am careful not to ever put anything on the internet that I am not ok with everyone (literally) in the world reading.  I leave out details, I water stuff down, I say things in very ambiguous terms.

Maybe I’m a little paranoid.  I know that there’s not that much in my life that I keep from people.  My life is really pretty boring.  But with Facebook being as big as it is, I’ve had to be more careful.  Before, it was just this blog (going strong since June 2004 - over 5 years), but now everyone’s on facebook.  Family, friends, work people.  It’s become pretty commonplace for bosses to look you up on Facebook or MySpace as part of the hiring practice to see what they will find.  So I make it a point to be extremely careful what I put online.

So, to follow my same trait, here’s an update.  I’ve started working on a new girl.  I’ve known her for awhile, and we have been friends for around 6 months.  We’ve started talking a lot more recently.  We have tentative plans to go out on a date.  I’ve decided that no matter what happens with this girl, when everything is said and done, I am going to be able to walk away with my head held high knowing that I gave it everything I had.  I can’t control the future, but I can control how I will be able to deal with how hard I tried.  I guess if she reads this (which is a possible, but very remote), she’ll know that this post is referring to her.  But I think I’ve been ambiguous enough about this that short of her reading this, no one besides me would know.

Nonstop Rain

It seems like almost every day for the last couple weeks it has rained.  It’s starting to get a little old.  It’s raining as I type this.

I mentioned in the last post that I was opening myself to younger girls again.  I haven’t exactly changed my mind, but I’m considering it.  I think I’m starting to see that I am quite a bit different than a 19 year old.

Memorial Day weekend was really fun.  We played softball.  I play softball about once every 3 years, so I was due.  After that we just ate and drank pretty much all night.  I also learned the next day that there are tons of cops in Mt. Carmel.  A disturbingly high amount of cops.

That Friday we had the Shriner’s parade with the band.  It was a TON of work and a lot of fun.  We tried some new stuff with the lights.  Some worked well, some didn’t.  After that I started feeling a little burnout.  I haven’t had to do much with the band that last couple weeks and that has seemed to help.  I’m thinking that I’d like to retire a lot of songs next year and start new.  I’m getting tired of a lot of them.  Hopefully some new songs will help.

Friday I saw Rascal Flatts.  They were really good.  Darius Rucker opened up for them and he was surprisingly good.  He even did his famous Hootie songs.  I counted at least 8 guitars for Joe Don.  Almost every song.