n e n i e

God bless Drieg. Seriously.

I never give him as much credit as he deserves, but in all honesty I've been blessed with a truly incredibly brother. He's totally come through on this wedding stuff and in so doing has made my life much easier. In all honesty, the only thing left do to other than make a dance mix is the bachelor party and Drieg is totally taking care of that.

Brilliant. I love this guy.

Aside from that, last night was part one of Nena and my wedding retail therapy. See, at some point Nena realized that the only way she was going to get through the stress of the wedding and still be able to look at the pictures of her from said wedding was to go in for some serious spa work. With that in mind, she's spending Thursday before the wedding getting the works, yo. Facial, 30 min salt scrub, hottubbing, full body massage- like I said, serious work.

This put me at a crossroads. I COULD have gotten the same thing and done some sort of his and hers spa experience and I very nearly booked myself for a facial. . .until I came up with a better idea. Retail therapy.

I decided to treat myself to a DAS ÜBERBÜY shopping spree.

What did I get? What didn't I get?

Soundtrack- Oklahoma (cuz we drive through there enough we figure we should sing along.
Celia Cruz- Siempre Vivire (cuz she rules)
The Blind Boys of Alabama- Spirit of the Century
Modest Mouse- Good News for People Who Love Bad News
Counting Crows- Films About Ghosts
Kanye West- The College Dropout (I had it on mp3 already but it's so good, I had to pay for it)
Maria Mena- White Turns Blue
My Morning Jacket- It Still Moves
Dashboard Confessional- A Mark.A Mission.A Brand.A Scar (Spec. Ed.)
Los Lobos- The Ride

Yeah, I went a bit crazy. And that's not even counting the movies I picked up.
X2
Batman
Victory (Stallone, Pele, Max Von Sydow AND Michael Caine, how can you resist?)
The Program
Major League
Michael Jordan: To the Max

Hee hee, I loves me some media, yo.

Seriously, this is more than enough new music and movies to get me through the wedding in fine style, yo. Let Nena get her massage, I'll be sitting in my hotel room watching movies. All wedding attendees are more than welcome to hang out in my suite and chill, yo. . .well. . .yknow. . .yeah.

;)

Review requests? Yes, I know I still have the new Ozo and Wilco to write about. . .I've just been busy.

Posted by nenie at 01:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ugh, where the hell did my summer go?

Here we are 12 days from the wedding and 3 days until we leave for the wedding with a million things left to do. OK, so not really a million. And to be honest most of the things we have to do are just me wanting to not have unpacking to do when we get home from the wedding.

What's been going on? Right.

Two weekends ago we went up to Illinois for Gen. Belgrano's wedding. A good time, and a welcome respite in the storm for Nena and me. It was nice to spend a day or so enjoying ourselves in a place where we were not the center of attention. We just blended in and remembered to enjoy each other.

The wedding itself was also beautiful- a reminder that weddings are about the people being married and as such they should reflect the people being married, not the institution of marriage. Weddings should have significance for these two individuals being married- if other people get it or like it, that's nice too. At the end of the day though, these events should reflect life, not tradition.

I've been blessed to have been to so many weddings as of late where people only did things that meant something to them, not weddings where things were done because that's how they're done. I can only hope my wedding conveys as much.

Then, my parents were in town for almost a week. That was really cool. My dad and I got a shitton of work done on the house and my mother unpacked a bunch of stuff. Seriously, my parents' visit was a Godsend. Without them, the game would be significantly behind where it is now. And that's a great thing.

Friday- Corn and I rented a Uhaul to get our stuff out of our respective apartments and into our respective storage units. Considering we were moving the last weekend in July- we totally lucked out. Instead of 105 degree heat we had drizzle and temps in the 70s. It was beautiful. In 7 hours we managed to clear out two apartments and drop the contents off at four different locations. It was brilliant.

Now everything Nena and I own is in the garage. Which is rough because we need to clear out enough of the garage so that we can park 'Turo in there on Thursday morning. It's starting to get done, slowly but surely and I think we're going to have room to spare by the time Thursday morning rolls around. Then again, Nena says I'm way too optimistic about these things.

OK, that's what I've got for today. . .more soon.

Posted by nenie at 11:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Holy crap, check the countdown timer over there. Remember when that shit was at 370? Crazy.

Sorry for the radio silence, yo. I've been moving into the new place. . .yeah, big fun, yo.

Posted by nenie at 12:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Sorry for the relative radio silence as of late, but things have been hopping 'round here for the past few days.

Last Wednesday was a BIG day. Not only did it mark one month until my wedding, but Nena and I closed on our first house. It was a bit. . .intense. Closing is crazy, you sit there in this big room and sign shit for 40 minutes. They explain what you're signing as you go and then, after all that they show you the last piece of paper. Then they say,

"This says that if we forgot to have you sign something today, you have to come back and sign it later."

Wow, amazing. After all that signing, you have to sign saying you'll come back just in case they didn't have you sign something. Damn.

After closing we raced over to the new place and walked in. It was ours. . .we were in some serious debt now, but the place was ours. Then, the painters showed up. We were feeling bad because we'd hired someone to paint our ceilings and anything that'd require a ladder (like, yknow. . .our living room with its cathedral ceiling.) But Cody put it to us this way. "You pay someone to change your oil because while you have the skills to do it yourself, it saves you a bunch of time to pay someone else to do it. So you cut that corner." Cody's a wise, wise man.

The next few days are a blur. I moved a bunch of stuff out of storage and into our new garage and I prepped for the BIG painting party planned for Saturday. I do remember going to Ulli's going away party after work on Thursday and spending Friday with Das Nibblet masking the house for painting. Oh, and we accidentally met our neighbors on Friday night. The neighbors on our right (who we actually happen to know) were having folks over, so Nena and I took a break from painting prep to go. While there, we met the neighbors on our left. Yeah, everyone's really nice- we're totally going to like living here.

Saturday was hardcore. A lot of very wonderful friends showed up and helped us paint. With all their help we managed to do ALL the roller work in one day. We would have gotten the detail work done as well, had the AC not died. After looking at the ductwork, Fesser (who'd driven in to help from IL) and I came to the conclusion that the person that designed my house is an idiot- or they'd never designed anything in the midwest.

See- the air return is in the garage. So when it gets really hot (like, yknow, all of July) the return starts developing condensation on the outside. Normally, this wouldn't be a problem because the condensation would just evaporate. Only if you have high humidity (like, yknow, all of July) the condensation doesn't go anywhere and the AC unit just pees itself. Eventually, the water seeps into the house and you have a flood in the kitchen.

Brilliant.

We brainstormed a solution that would get the AC working by Sunday and buy us enough time for someone to come look at the thing Monday. (ie- leave the door to the duct room open all the time) Yknow, right now- Nena and I are really happy we picked up that home warranty. Cuz after our deductible, this is totally covered. Damn.

Sunday, we went back with Fesser to finish up the detail work. That went pretty quickly and this week's task is removing all the carpet and putting in tiles in the bathroom and carpet upstairs. Big fun, yo.

This month is going to kick our ass.

Posted by nenie at 02:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Well, that was a weekend I'd love to do again sometime soon. Only, I'm not really sure I'd want to do that again sometime soon.

Nena and I drove up to Chicago this weekend for a wedding. It was freakin' fabulous. Belle's college roommate got married on Sunday and there was nary a dry eye in the house. To be honest though, I've never known the happy couple to not be a couple so that changes my perspective on this whole wedding thing.

By the time Belle had managed to get her roommate and I in the same place at the same time, 5 years had passed since her initial mention of her fabulous roommate and she was already with the man she would marry this weekend.

This was one of those weddings I'm really pleased to be at, though. It's nice when good people find each other, yknow?

Getting there, however. . .

We left for Chicago at noon on Friday. I picked Nena up at work and we took off from there. The weather was absolutely terrible for driving. Torrential rains were with us on and off (mostly on) through Kansas and Missouri. By the time we got to Iowa we thought we'd seen enough of the rain. Yeah, we hadn't. We got hit a few more times in Iowa, but by the time I handed over the wheel to Nena it was finished.

We'd forgotten to bring change for the tolls in Illinois and that sucked. Then we stopped by to pick up the dinner my mother had ordered for the family at Lou Malnati's to find that Drieg had told them we'd be in half an hour after my mother and I had arranged for us to pick up the pizzas.

Yup, not pleased.

All of that was forgiven when we got home. Even though it was 10p when we finally sat down to eat, it was a great time. My whole family was around one table and my cousin 'Cena, who was in town from NY for the weekend, joined us. A truly amazing time that ended around 2a.

Saturday Nena got to meet my godfather and his wife. Again, an amazing time. They loved her, as we knew they would, and there was more family and togetherness and conversations that lasted way past everyone's bedtime. Which, yknow, not good when you have a wedding to be at by 10a.

The wedding was beautiful. And Nena and I danced until we could dance no more and slumped off home to get a few hours sleep before we left for Kansas.

The drive back . . .yeah. It all started when Nena left my CD case on the roof of the car when we were packing up at my parents' place. Yeah. We realized what she'd done twenty minutes later and by then it was too late. For those of you who know me well, you know how much that hurt. Thing is, Nena took this far worse than I did. I mean, they're only CDs. . .yes, I just said that.

On the advice of the weather channel we went through St. Louis rather than Des Moines and we managed to miss all the rain. Thanks to the earlier error all we had to listen to besides the radio was the new Ozo and the soundtrack to Avenue Q, which Drieg had given to us as a gift.

By and large, Nena isn't a fan of musical theater but she really dug this show about surviving your twenties. I have to agree with her. Sometimes the show gets really gratuitous, but the story itself is brilliant. To sum it up, what do you do with a B.A. in English?

We got home around 7:30p, made dinner, attempted to unpack and passed out.

We close on the new house tomorrow and we're painting this weekend, if anyone wants to come by and help.

It's been a long weekend, and this is going to be a really, really long month. I feel kinda like Lance Armstrong, yknow? This was just the prelude to a long race.

Posted by nenie at 12:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)