Blog Master G

Today was my first day at work as a married man. Jen and I are still coming down from our wedding high. I think we’ll be in this state of wedding hangover for quite some time. Even though the wedding and honeymoon are now behind us, our house is a mess, we’re still opening gifts (and tracking them on our spreadsheet), and I haven’t even attempted to begin replying to the nearly 300 personal emails that have built up in my inbox. Empty boxes, bubblewrap, tissue and packing paper, and laundry are all scattered about. I’m just glad I can get to my bed to sleep.

Everything is still sort of spinning, in a way.

The dogs came home from Planet Canine today. Happy picked fights just about every day, I learned. He doesn’t know what size he is, she tells me. He grabbed mouthfuls of fur from dogs of all sizes and chased them behind the igloo, she says.

My fingernails need trimming, but the clipper is nowhere to be found. Probably buried under my dirty bathing suit from Hawaii. Somewhere.

Hundreds of pictures to go through still. Need to get 6 rolls of negatives scanned. Only have 2 of the official rolls on disc so far. Need to create a “Best of the Wedding Photos” album. Or something like that.

Bills to pay. Good thing we dropped off the rent during those 3 hours of waking time that we were here on July 28 before flying to Hawaii.

Honeymoon pictures, too. Gotta put together another Hawaii photo site at some point (this is the last one).

Also trying not to think too much about all those little details about the wedding that coulda been, shoulda been. Those little things that only Jen and I noticed or think about. We could dwell all day on those things. Have to keep reminding ourselves what an incredible, wonderful day it was. And that the good far outweighs the minor annoyances. But such is human nature — to dwell on the unchangeable that might have been different, that which has taken its place in time and cannot be undone. There’s so much good in the world. Why do we think about the little things that aren’t exactly the way we want them to be?

Enough of that.

The future is bright. I’m excited. There’s so much to look forward to. The day-to-day stuff won’t change much now that we’re married. We’ve already been living together for so long anyway. Now we just have the legal advantages and a piece of paper. And those nice, shiny, antique (1920s) platinum bands on our fingers.

We pay too much for rent. I’m psyched to buy a place of our own. To invest in real estate. The next big challenge.

Two more weddings in the next two months. This time as guests. This month and next. One in Southern California, the other in New York.

The order in this post vaguely resembles my current state of mind.

From the plane on the way to New York:

From my notebook…

It’s Saturday, our last full day in Paradise. As expected, this week went by all too fast. Yesterday we spent at the beach adjacent to our hotel, snorkeling among brilliantly-colored tropical fish and even an actual sea turtle, the highlight of the day. So graceful and magnificent, the sea turtle paddled along under the water, occasionally rising to the surface for air. We spent the rest of the day reading on the beach. My belly got a bit burnt. After a rather upsetting dinner during which one of the few negative memories from the wedding was resurfaced, we watched the sun set while laying together in a hammock.

No real plans for today. It’s still pretty early — 7:30 or so. Jen’s on the phone downstairs and I’m sitting on the lanai. Just a couple more days until it’s back to reality.

From my notebook…

Here I sit on a 7th-floor balcony overlooking the Pacific on the Kona coast of the Big Island of Hawai’i. It’s Day 1 of our Honeymoon and already a wonderful, unforgettable trip. The sound of the ocean waves endlessly crashing on this tropical paradise — so loud and definite. The air so warm and magical. Three thousand miles from home — the Mainland as they call it here. The 5-hour flight this morning seemed quite fast. So here I sit with my new wife, my beautiful Jen. Probably the luckiest guy alive. Sometimes I just need to stop and remember that. So what if half the wedding footage is gone? The service was perfect and I married an incredible bride. The memory July 26 and this week will last forever.

Jen and I are now married. Husband and wife. Mr. and Mrs. Gabe. It’s quite an overwhelmingly exciting feeling and one I’m not quite sure I’m ready to put in words just yet. But I wanted to write something.

Yesterday was one of the best, happiest, and most nerve-racking days of my life. Everything was just perfect. My bride was stunningly beautiful. The flowers were bright and gorgeous. The weather was just right. The friends and the family came in force with smiles I’ll never forget. It’s all a bit too much even to digest. It will probably take some time.

We just saw the official photos that cousin Cyd took for us. They’re incredible. I can’t wait to order larger prints. Our favorite one is one that Cyd took just moments after we had left the Chapel. It wasn’t planned. We’re standing against the stone of the Chapel. That photo isn’t yet in digital form, but it will be.

To see so many people come from far and wide and to be celebrity for a day (and night) is a pretty unreal feeling. It really made us feel special knowing that so many people care enough about us to have come to celebrate the Big Day.

I was so nervous the morning of the wedding that I felt queasy up until the service began. I was a nervous wreck. But standing there with my beautiful bride was amazing, a feeling I’ll never forget. It didn’t really cross my mind that there were 150 people in the pews behind us. My reading went really well. And once the service was over, I felt great. On top of the world. After the receiving line we headed down to the Jaguar limo with the red carpet and bottle of champagne on ice that sat waiting for us. That was such a great feeling.

More than a year’s worth of hard work and planning paid off. Everything went off without a hitch. Jen did an excellent job.

The one thing that’s been bothering me today that I’m sure I’ll get over is that I discovered this morning that the end of the service was accidentally recorded over at the reception. We have a lot of footage of the reception and the first part of the service itself (including Jen coming down the aisle), but we don’t have our exchanging of rings and vows on tape. I’m disappointed that something went wrong, but we’ll always have the memories (and tons of great photos), and that’s what counts. We’re not really video people anyway and probably wouldn’t watch the video too often. We didn’t want a professional videographer, so that’s the risk we took.

If that’s the worst thing to go wrong — and something inevitably does at just about every wedding — then I’d say we did just fine. The service and reception were incredible and I wouldn’t have changed a thing.

I really like the new ring on my finger and that Jen and I are now married. It’s going to take some getting used to.

Tomorrow it’s back home to San Francisco for a night, then off to Hawaii (the Big Island) through Sunday. I’m looking forward to the lava flows and mai tais on the beach.

The wedding week has begun. The Big Day is this Saturday, which is hard to believe that the time has finally come. After more than a year of planning (too long), Jen and I are finally here in upstate New York. We’re at her parents’ place in Kinderhook now; we arrived here a couple days ago — Saturday night. We’ve been taking it easy the past couple days…had breakfast yesterday with Karen and Joti, then went up to Colonie (Albany) with Tracy and Christine yesterday afternoon. I bought some funky new Mountain Creek sandals. I like them.

My little bro is on a plane right now on his way back from a 3-week trip to Europe. Lucky bastard. He flies into JFK tonight and is taking the train to Poughkeepsie, where Jen and I plan to pick him up later this evening. Then we’ll all stay here in Kinderhook another two nights, then head down to Poughkeepsie again on Wednesday to check into the hotel.

Wednesday night is also when my parents and the wedding party arrives. We’ll all be in Poughkeepsie through Sunday, the day after the wedding. Thursday our immediate families are having dinner at Beekman Arms in Rhinebeck, which should be fun. Then Friday, of course, is the rehearsal and the dinner. Which leaves Saturday…

Then we’re off to Hawaii next week. Woohoo!

Postings may be sparse or sporadic in the coming weeks, but I’m going to try to write when I can. I won’t have a computer in Poughkeepsie, so Wednesday through Saturday there most likely will not be any entries here.

Stay tuned…I’ll be a married man before I know it.

On an unrelated note, I’ve decided to return my new camera cell phone and drop out of the focus group. The AT&T service is just horrible. There’s zero service here in upstate New York, and I haven’t been at all happy with the service quality. I plan to return the phone on Monday, August 4, when I’m back at work. (Not that I want to think at all about work or being back right now, but that will be cutting it quite close to my 30-day return window.) Too bad my activation fee isn’t refundable, but at least I can cancel before it’s too late. A cell phone should be a phone first. If it can’t do that, then why bother?)

Over and out.

These are my new eyeglasses. I picked them up yesterday. They are cool. I really like them. They make better use of lens space than do my old glasses. They’re not as vertically skinny as the old Brooks Brothers, which is good because my downward lens coverage is improved (for reading, etc.). And they’re not as horizontally wide, which is also good, since it makes them feel more solid. They sit closer to my face, too, which makes them sort of feel like goggles, but in a good way. Other than all that, they are very similar in color and design to my old glasses.

Most importantly, the prescription in the left lens is weaker than before since my eyes have gotten better. And I really like it so far. I really do feel like I can see better with the weaker prescription since my left eye is having to work a bit harder, which takes some strain off my (better) right eye.

One annoying thing that I’m sure I’ll get used to is that because my head is so big, the arms don’t really have much extra space to loop back over my ears, so it’s a bit tight back there. And hurts a bit. I’ve been playing with bending the arms this way and that, but don’t want to mess anything up.

Don’t you feel better knowing the intimate details behind my new glasses? Significant for me since these are the glasses that I’ll be wearing in my wedding photos that we’ll be looking at for the rest of our lives. And that future generations will also see. I wonder how out of style they’ll be 30 years from now…

Jen and I aren’t the only ones facing the reality of wedding debt.

SFGate via NY Times: “The survey, from the Conde Nast Bridal Infobank, a research service for Conde Nast-owned wedding magazines, also found that the average wedding now costs $22,000, representing more than five months’ worth of wages for a middle-income family, according to data from the Census Bureau.”

I’m not too worried about it, though. I’m used to debt. Of course, that’s not necessarily a good thing. But I don’t dwell on it. I know how to manage it and have never had to go a credit counseling service. And, despite recent fraudulent activity, my credit report is still excellent. (In fact, Jen and I both have credit scores in the top tier, which has a range of 720-850. Funny how the FICO score almost reads like an SAT score, huh?)

I’m now reminded of this piece I wrote for the Poughkeepsie Journal on October 19, 1998.

Gabe and Jen show off newly-acquired New York state marriage license outside the Kinderhook Town Hall on Thursday, July 3, 2003:

Four weeks ago today Jen and I took our first group dance lesson at the Pick School of Ballroom Dance. We signed up for the beginners’ package: Four group lessons (waltz and rumba) and three private lessons. Tonight is the final group lesson; we’re skipping it because we’re just too run down and stressed out with other wedding stuff (and have so little time to get anything done this week). We skipped the second group lesson, too.

The good news, however, is that we’re learning the foxtrot in our private classes and the impossible is happening: I’m actually getting the hang of it. You see, as anyone who has seen me dance can attest, I can’t dance. I suck. I can’t hear the beat and I always lose count. So what ends up happening is the typical white boy shake-about, which isn’t a pretty sight.

But I’m crossing my fingers and am hoping that come July 26, I’ll be able to relax and actually foxtrot with success for our first dance. If not aiming to achieve this for myself, I want to do it for Jen; I know it’s important to her.

(Pictured above are the steps for the waltz, which I also pretty much have down. It’s the rumba that throws me off the most. Waltz and rumba are in 3; the foxtrot is in 6.)