Crazy Stories
Seriously, some crazy shiz has been happening to me in the last few months.
First, when we went to go get our joint checking account, I was informed that the debit card in my possession wasn’t valid. (I’d figured it out earlier that morning, when it wouldn’t work at the CVS next door to the bank.) Why would it work? Because I had requested a new card on June 6th. Ummm no I didn’t.
Then I get this letter in the mail from a collections agency. Due to my nonpayment of a parking ticket in the city of Providence, Rhode Island, I now owed them $75. Guess who hadn’t been in Rhode Island in like a year? And definitely not at 3:04pm on Monday, June 6, which was my first day back from the wedding/honeymoon. I called and was informed that the description and license plate matched my car. If I wanted to dispute it, I’d have to go down to Providence and fight it in front of a judge. After gathering some phone records from work (trying to prove that myself and my car were in Massachusetts at the time of the ticket), Matt and I headed down there last week to fight it. It took us about 3.5 hours, $5 to park, and 1/3 of a tank of gas, but by gosh I got it dismissed. It’s the principle of the thing, ya know!
Anyway, my latest crazy story is wedding related. Specifically, wedding picture related. A week or so ago, my dad received a phone call from a woman in a different neighborhood of Cincinnati. She told him that her father had found these wedding pictures on the side of the road, and she believed that they belonged to someone related to my dad. My dad met the woman and confirmed that yes, this was in fact my wedding album. You know, the really nice expensive one from the photographer. We think that maybe someone stole the package off of a porch and after realizing that our wedding pictures had no monetary value, discarded it. My dad said that aside from some scuffs on the cover, the album was in pretty good condition. I immediately made a phone call to my photographer asking “WHAT THE HECK!?!” He then informed me that he had received our album the day before and it was sitting in his office in perfect condition. Perhaps, the album company didn’t receive a delivery confirmation and decided to send another one. What does this mean? We now have TWO super-duper fancy-schmancy albums! What a good Samaritan that lady was! She had used a picture of our wedding program from the album to track down my dad. Thank goodness my maiden name is rather unique!
So our super duper, fancy schmancy NON-SCUFFED album arrived today from Nathan Peel in perfect condition.
I guess now I really need to get on the ball with these recaps! I hope that you enjoyed my crazy stories!
NEW BLOG
So, I’ve been hard at work slowly working on building a new blog! Be sure to check it out! That is where my wedding recaps and all new blog posts will be. I will no longer be posting on this site.
CHECK IT OUT!!
PREVIEW PICTURES
Photographer, Nathan Peel, has put up a preview of the wedding pictures. Here’s one of my faves:
ENJOY!
Sadie, Sadie, Married Lady!
I cannot believe how smoothly the wedding went. Seriously, there were no serious hitches. It was a beautiful day and I’m officially Mrs. T!! (I pity the fool!)
Here are a few snapshots from the day that I’ve stolen from friends. I’ll be back with a few recaps and perhaps a few updates while I sit on the plane for 8 hours.
ENJOY!
What Have I Been Up To?
I’m getting married tomorrow! SAY WHAT!?!
Here’s what I’ve been up to for the past two weeks (or more):
I made these pins using Martha Stewart’s directions.
I attempted to whiten my teeth.
Can you tell?
My mom and I assigned seats for the guests using plates and post-its (which we then re-did earlier this week after learning that our set up wouldn’t work!):
Matt packed up the dog for her 11 day stay at day care.
I packed up my car (did I mention that I bought a new car!?!) and drove 14 hours from Boston to Cincinnati.
Then I’ve been much busier than I anticipated this past week! I would like to add some more posts for next week, but we shall see.
HAPPY DAY BEFORE WEDDING DAY!
(P.S. The weather is looking better.)
Weather
Well, we have 9 days left. SERIOUSLY! That means that we are officially in the 10 day forecast.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have looked.
Apparently we are bringing Boston weather down to Cincinnati. YUCK! Here’s hoping the weather people are WRONG!!! I should ask my bridesmaid, Brooke. She’s a meteorologist. She correctly predicted Hurricane Katrina and the tornadoes in Alabama.
Anyway, I have some other fun wedding projects to tell y’all about. I just need to find the time. Happy Thursday!
Chicago Bachelorette, Part 3
Oh hai! Sorry, crazy busy at work and umm, oh yeah, I’m getting married in 11 days!
So after we took our architecture tour of Chicago, we all returned to Amy’s loft to get ready to go out.
What night in Chicago doesn’t start out with Giordano’s?
Mmmm, cheesy deep dish Chicago pizza!
We all determined that sausage and peppers are the key to the perfect deep dish pizza.
Amy had decorated the apartment with pink and black.
The theme of the night was pink, black, and PROHIBITION! We all added prohibition style accessories.
We also opened some presents, so I added some accessories like a veil with, ummm, yeah, THOSE things, and a garter.
We spent most of the night at Howl at the Moon dueling piano bar. Jen had gone earlier and snagged a table, so we had an anchor for the night. Much debauchery and girly gossip ensued.
Also, I must show you our obsession with making the word “WOW” with our hands and mouths.
Jan went against the grain and made the word “MOO”.
There was also an incident at the piano bar involving people paying to have them play “Hail to the Victors”. (That is the Michigan fight song). I mean seriously, we are within two hours of Illinois, Notre Dame, and my alma mater, PURDUE! We had to remedy the situation. Amy, my Matron of Honor and Ohio State graduate, also got in on some “Hang On Sloopy” action.
It was not well received by Kelley (the Ole Miss grad) and Brooke (another Purdue alum).
We also spent some time admiring our muscles.
And Sarah was complimented on her dancing by the women at the table next to us.
Our final stop of the night was at a drag show. At this point, I’d had a few too many, and was deeply verbally disappointed in the drag show. They were just dressed up men lip-synching and not even dancing. BOO! Oh well. It was a great night and I had an amazing time. The best part was enjoying a night with all of my girls from all of the stages of my life and who thoroughly enjoyed each other’s company. The wedding will be even better!
Thanks, Ladies! (and thanks to Beckey for most of these pictures. I did not trust myself to have my camera with me.)
Chicago Bachelorette Part 2
Saturday, the day of the bachelorette party, actually started with a run. My Maid of Honor is currently training for a half marathon. She had to get in a four mile run. I decided to also bring running stuff and leave the house with her. She took off and I actually did a bunch of run/walks. My runs were about 5 minutes long, and the walks were about 3 minutes long. I actually went out for about 45 minutes and just loved running around the loop! It was so great!
Our activity for the afternoon was perfect for me and some of the attendees as structural engineers and architects: an architectural cruise of Chicago! It was an absolutely gorgeous day. Even the haze burned off during our cruise:
In case you don’t recognize that building, we started from Navy Pier.
Everyone had a great time:
There were a few fun sights along the way:
What is that? The Boeing Building (the one with the truss)? No! It’s the River Center! That’s the building where my old work was! Funny story, my friend’s husband now works in the building at a totally different company!
We also spotted a bunch of brides, grooms, and wedding parties!
I would highly recommend this tour to anyone. Especially if you are a structural engineer and have read books such as “Why Buildings Stand Up” or the sequel “Why Buildings Fall Down”. Seriously it tells you all about the structural system of buildings like the Sears Tower. Our guide was amazing! Sigh . . . I love Chicago.
Chicago Bachelorette, Part 1
Finally, I have the pictures to write up my Chicago Bachelorette party. It was AWESOME!! When my matron of honor, Amy, first suggested having my bachelorette in Chicago, I thought that it would be absolutely perfect. I lived in Chicago for two semesters while in college. I absolutely love this city! It is so clean and easy to get around and people are so friendly. Sigh . . . Matt won’t let me move to Chicago. Something about the cold and the snow . . .
Anyway, it also helps that my matron of honor currently lives in Chicago; two of my bridesmaids grew up in Chicago; another’s dad lives in Chicago; several friends live there; and the rest of my friends live in a close driving distance.
Friday night, I flew in around 7pm (at first I was mixed up, because I input my flight times in local times in Outlook, but they were given to me in Eastern time . . . yeah, I got in an hour earlier than I had thought I would). Kathleen, Sarah, and Beckey were waiting on me in the cell phone lot. Well, after waiting and listening to the radio for 40 minutes, Sarah’s car wouldn’t start. So I hung out in baggage claim while they called AAA. That is actually just a tip of the iceburg for the adventures that these three got into while driving from Cincinnati to Chicago. There was also an incident involving Kathleen putting her coins for the toll in the change slot. You know the slot that gives you change . . . yeah . . . my friends had fun!
After that whole mess, we finally made it to Amy’s apartment in the West Loop. Luckily for us, the West Loop is right next to Greek town. So we just walked a few blocks down and found some great food. Walking through Greek town was a bit nostaglic for me. I used to walk from my office to dance class at Hubbard Street right through Greek town. I loved seeing all of the buildings with the businesses written in Greek. Being Greek in college, and an Engineer, I would always try to see if I could make out what the word was saying. What do you think this is?
(I’ll give you a hint . . . )
Anyway, we started our meal with some flaming cheese:
I actually ordered vegetarian moussaka for my entrée. It was DELICIOUS!
Here’s a bunch of pictures of the rest of the food. Don’t ask me what it all was. Most of it was absolutely fabulous!
After we were sufficiently stuffed (and it was like midnight!), we returned to Amy’s loft. We went up to her roof deck to see the fabulous view of downtown Chicago.
Okay, so it was kind of foggy and night time. But it was still pretty awesome! The fog around the Sears Tower reminded me of when I lived downtown at Roosevelt University. The view from my window was the Sears Tower, but I often couldn’t see it due to the fog. Even though it was only a few blocks away. It was always so crazy to me!
So that is the first night.
Next up . . . what else would an engineer want to do in Chicago? (guesses?)
Boston Marathon 2011
Well, since I live in Boston, I knew that I should make it to the Marathon some day. This year, a friend of mine was running, so I figured this was a great year to do it. Turns out that I knew three people running it!
Since Matt has Patriot’s Day off (especially due to the fact that the Marathon goes down the street that his work is on and he actually couldn’t get to work), he picked me up at my office around 11 for a “long lunch”. We drove about 10 minutes down the road and a quick walk to Comm Ave, and we were there at mile 19.25 by 11:20am! My friend, Rachel, had given us an approximate time that she would be there (12:15ish) and I left a bit of a buffer. At Mile 19.25 we were at the beginning of a “Newton Hill” in the Heartbreak Hill area.
When we got to the Marathon, the runners were few and far between. We had missed the elite women, and would only see women runners ever 3-5 minutes. About 15 minutes after we got there, we see some trucks and police cars making their way down the course. It was the elite men!! I actually got a picture of the eventual winner, Geoffrey Mutai:
I swear that’s him! Zoom in!
He and the rest of the elite men went by pretty fast:
Next up, we were looking for a coworker of mine. Thank goodness for the online tracking so that we knew about when to expect him. Since I didn’t know what he was wearing, I just started taking a video.
Unfortunately, I got tired of holding the camera and turned it off. He ran by about 10 seconds later! But the video shows the atmosphere. It was so great! We liked it when people had on college shirts. I decided to take the “Bowl Game” approach and cheer for teams like Ohio State and such. Hey, these people were doing something that I couldn’t do. And what was the most prevalent Big Ten school? IOWA! Seriously.
Luckily, Rachel had told me what she was wearing, so I picked her out (she’s the girl in the yellow, #5882).
We then decided to wait and see if we could find my friend’s dad. And we were also trapped on the wrong side of the street. If you didn’t know, 20,000 is A LOT!
We enjoyed seeing the funny costumes, too.
We ended up not finding my friend’s dad. He probably ran by us and we missed him.
How did Rachel do? Rachel finished in 3:01:25!! SERIOUSLY! She was #117 for women! It just blows my mind that she can run that fast for that long.
It was a great day and a really neat experience. An absolutely gorgeous day for a run. Sunny and 55 with a slight tail wind. No wonder a new course record was set.
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