Get Married!

Jess and Eli got married! and the wedding was pretty great. I would post pictures, but I didn't take any so instead I'll just post links to Angie's blog. She took lots of pictures and gives a pretty great summary.



Pre-Wedding



Those bouquets were crazy, and heavy, and amazing. It was my job to arrange them so that the bead sphere looked as nice and uniform as possible. It was ridiculous and tedious, but bizarrely enough Jess's dad ended up taking over for me. I think he just felt like Finally! something he could help with.



Those bug sprayer things Tim's got worked surprisingly well. I didn't feel any mosquito bites until about 10:30... 6 hours after he sprayed... just like the cans said.



After the bouquets were done Marissa and I played with the left over art supplies (aka wire, beads and hot glue). This is the awesome hot air balloon I made. I was pretty impressed that I could hot glue the balloon without it popping.


The Wedding

The Wedding itself was short, due to a bit of rain. I think it worked though. It was raining lightly so Jess and Eli didn't get wet, just the rest of us. And unfortunately I think I'm on the wedding video running up the aisle with an umbrella for Jess's parents. oh well. The best part about rain at a wedding is the rainbow afterward.






I really like the way the lights turned out. And Angie was definitely wrong about Tim just doing what he was told because it was his idea to drape them that way at the front. Which I think looks pretty cool. And the lights probably wouldn't have gotten done without his help. At the very least I may have killed Eli's uncle and that would have put a damper on the whole day.
When Tim got there I was happy to have someone else around who was useful and creative in a non-artsy sort of way. If that makes sense. Because that's what I am. And I don't mean to imply everyone else there wasn't useful or creative. It's just the difference between having to explain what your doing step by step to someone and being able to tell them the general plan and have them not only get it, but be able to make suggestions.
Hopefully I didn't just put my foot too deeply into my mouth.



And while we're on the subject, when did I become the useful friend? Not that I have a problem with it, I just realized lately that I'm the go to for anything practical. Like, algebra quesitons, lighting, furniture assembly.... just curious.

Like I said before, Angie's got lot's of great pictures, so you should really go look at the rest of them there. After the wedding we had to take everything down and return it to the Laug's in Carol Stream. While Angie and I did this, Tim was in charge of going out to buy beer. He didn't succeed, but he got points for picking up some grape soda instead. The three of us went back to the hotel and flipped channels before fianlly settling on the leaving the spanish channel up and watching YouTube videos on Angie's laptop.



Nice and relaxing after lots of wedding craziness.



The next day we went to Arby's for lunch and then caravanned back to Iowa. We had to stop at the Dekalb Oasis so I could get new velcro strips for my IPASS and Tim could get gas and Angie could get coffee. Right before we hit I-80 Angie took some random exit... and I never did find out why or where she went..... Angie?

Add an extra day to the week

So I really do mean to blog more often. Except I never seem to find the time during the week. And then the weekend comes and all I want to do is sleep and watch ridiculous movies.

It was bothering me that I had this kick ass schedule where I start at 1 pm on my "monday" and get off work by 1 on my "friday" and yet I was still always tired. Then I figured it out. What makes this schedule so great is that it gives me a three day weekend. Which means I'm working 50 hours in 4 days. Yea no wonder I'm tired. Maybe if I wasn't so tired I would have figured this one out sooner....

So today will be catch upday. I plan on blogging about all the things I should have been blogging about over the past..... oh goodness, the last 2 weeks? Have I mentioned that I've started saying goodness gracious? What am I? My grandma? Where did this come from?

Learn

I really do intend to post about the wedding an my mini-vacation but I find it hard to make the time during my work week. So have no fear, more posts are coming.... but for now....

You need to watch this.
Just when I'm getting comfertable with the idea of a TJ's career, statistics starts sucking me back in. Maybe I can just make statistics my hobby... would that be weird?

Listen here

This is Jonathan Coulton's website. I know nothing about him except he makes some pretty awesome cover songs and also does some funny original work. And if there's one thing you ought to know about me, it's that I love a good cover song. So far my favorites are his cover of Baby got back and his original Skullcrusher Mountain.


Ok so this just keeps getting better and better because Coulton did a song about curling! That's right, my favorite Olympic sport.....Curling! (ok for some reason this link reroutes so just copy and paste http://www.jonathancoulton.com/mp3/Curl.mp3 if you'd like to hear it.)

AND he's apparently friends with John Hodgman, writer and co-star of those awesome new apple ads. (He's the PC) And apparently there was some sort of incident involving cat sitting that has led up to the creation of a mudslinging Flash cartoon

I love the internet some days

Learn something new everyday

Today's life lesson: Don't eat chips and salsa while watching a gory movie*


*The story: It's a rainy afternoon here in the HP, I have the day off, and there are 3 netflix movies sitting on my bedroom floor. I head to the kitchen, collecting a soda, a bowl of chips and a jar of salsa. I set up the first movie, Doom**, because it's one I have to watch while it's light out. I settle into the recliner, hit play and then someone loses an arm. I look away from the screen, I look at my snack. Now I want to puke.

**The backstory: No it's not a typo I watched the movie Doom. See but I also played the game Doom. Back in the day when we'd ride our bikes to the internet cafe place and pay 5 an hour to play games against each other over the internet. We played Doom and Quake and all sorts of fun stuff. And then we'd go next door to Bucky's ice cream shop and I'd win free ice cream by beating the owner in cribbage or chess. And then we'd grab one of those nerf soccer balls and move all the tables off to one side and play indoor 2 on 2. Wow, that was a great summer.

Welcome back indeed!

Vacation

Hopefully this is me showing off my amazing soccer skillz not my dance moves.



Water skiing was cut short when the weather changed and a storm blew through. Those guys out there decided to stay in the water even though lightning was striking the lake...



We took the boat into town to watch fireworks and the sunset was amazing!

Do Lunch

I had my first "lunch meeting" today. As in, hey let's meet and discuss all of this over lunch that the company is paying for. My boss Kevin owed me lunch for completing this ginormous evil paperwork project that no one else was willing to touch with a 10 foot pole and radioactive gear. I'd give you more detail but you probably don't actually care. So anyway, we covered all the work related stuff we had to and then just chatted about what I think my future is with TJ's. It was very enlightening. The big things I took away from our talk, the things I'll have to think lots about...

1) Am I going to stay with TJ's long term?
2) If so, do I want to someday Captain my own store? (he thinks if I want it enough, I could be a first mate inside 2 years)
c) Am I set on moving to Milwaukee?

The whole Milwaukee move is actually something I've thought about a lot lately. The new Minnesota store is doing ridiculously well, and the expectation is that MKE will be good, but probably not quite the same. And Milwaukee will never have more than 3, 4 stores max. That's a small pool. We're opening in the southeast next year and that's going to be a huge growth area. Atlanta into the Carolinas and then Florida. Oh goodness gracious will we do well in Florida.

So where do I want to be? Am I really open to moving anywhere? Even if that means florida? MKE would be easy... and safe...

I guess the biggest problem I have at this point is reconciling my dislike of big city life with the fact that stores will always be in cities, usually big ones and their suburbs. Not someplace like Iowa.

I have a new nickname at work... Little One. At first I didn't think it would stick, like so many of the previous ones. It actually works in two ways.

a) There are two Alex's at the store and I'm the younger/smaller one
b) I'm the newest full timer so I'll take this over rookie

and to be honest I kind of like this one. I don't mind responding to pages for Little One.

PS thanks Angie for the pictures of Chicago I used earlier