Sun Moon Stars Girl )-(

Welcome to my little place to vent…

I would say you would have to be living in a hole if you haven’t at least heard that a large portion of Southern California is on fire. It’s hard to keep the numbers straight, but I think at least 20 fires are currently burning, which makes it even harder to keep track of how many acres are burned at each one, which ones have any containment at all, and what roads are closed.

Kris and I came home from a rallycross on Sunday, avoiding the fires along the I-15 in Cajon Pass and Devore, only to discover a fire in our own backyard. Ok, well not literally in our backyard, but there is a fire in Irvine. It is called the “Santiago Fire” so the best way to find current information on it is to search for that. Where it is burning is about 10-15 miles away, so we are not in any immediate danger. There have only been a handful of homes burned, and only a few minor injuries to firefighters from this fire. Basically I’m putting up this post so that anyone reading knows that we are okay even though there is a fire close by. Yes, the air smells all smoky - like someone’s got a campfire going (it even smells smoky in the lab), but it isn’t too overcast from the smoke. Yes, there is also occasionally ash blowing around, usually when the wind picks up, and there is *a bit* of it on the ground around our home and parking lot. Thankfully nothing around us is on fire.

After a very busy month, I finally have had some time to upload the rest of the photos into the Our Wedding album. Thanks to Ray (and Donel), Valerie (and Bill), Jerilyn (and Dave), and my Aunt Paula for these most recent additions. *Warning* - there’s a LOT of new pictures up there!

We still have over 700 photos from the professional photographers to go through and decide which ones are the best, and which ones we are actually going to post. I will send out an email when they’ve been posted. I’ve also got a few photos from our “Celebration of Marriage” which I will be uploading soon.

In the meantime: If anyone has any additional photos to add, please leave me a comment, and I’ll contact you so you can send them on over for us to post! Additionally, we’ve been working on our thank you notes, which we will hopefully be sending out in the next week or so!

And in my father’s case, there is apparently more than one. When we went to WRC Corona Rally Mexico a few years ago, we learned that my father is apparently the mayor of Guanajuanto because the mayor’s picture was in the Rally program, and he looks just like my dad. In addition to that gentleman, there is another one who is a microscope representative and he’s been coming through the lab for the past several months trying to give a demonstration of his company’s new (very cool) scope. Every time I’ve seen him, I had to do a double take, so today while he was setting up for the demo, I just told him about the resemblance. I loaded a picture of my dad and I from the wedding, and after taking a look, he actually agreed that he could see it too. We got into a cool discussion of family history, and realized we both had family from Germany (my dad’s side is German, hence my maiden name). I got my lab manager to come over to take a look too, and she asked me, “How did you do that?” because she thought I had photoshoped the picture! I had to explain that it was just such a close resemblance between the rep, and yes, that really was my dad with my on my wedding day. It was hilarious when she called a whole bunch of other people from my lab over to check it out.

Two totally unrelated things, but both are the most recent exciting things.

Last Saturday night Kris and I had our very first married couple dinner party. We fit the maximum number of guests (4) per square inch of comfort in our place, for a total of 6 people at the dinner table. I made full use of our Pfaltzgraff dishes, setting the table for a formal dinner.

Tangent warning: Although I have told many people in person, I do not recall telling the “Pfaltzgraff” story on here. How is it, you ask, that Kris and I could possibly have a set of Pfaltzgraff that was retired in 2001 (since we didn’t get together until mid-2003)? Are we crazy collectors that found a few pieces we liked and started buying them up? Well, Kris and I both had pieces of the Blue Isle set from previous relationships - yet we were the ones in those relationships who had picked out the pattern. When we started dating we were having dinner one night at Kris’s old bachelor pad, and I got the utensils and dishes ready. I was a little shocked when I had the realization that he had my Pfaltzgraff pattern, and exclaimed about it then. Kris did not believe me until he came over my place for dinner, and I showed him the Blue Isle plates I had. Somehow none of the pieces either one of us had were the same, and luckily once we got settled in here in CA, we were able to find some of the ones we were missing on ebay.

Back to my story of dinner…it was really cool having two new couplefriends - Amy and Erik (BBQ) and Diane and Eddie - over for dinner. We’re all into rally, which is great in itself, but we’re all also from the east coast. Even better, Erik and Eddie went to grad school (another common thing) at Princeton in NJ, and Eddie is a huge Rangers hockey fan, which is my favorite team. Eddie and I even have the same favorite player from back in the day. I got to burn some of my candles from the basket I received at my bridal shower (tall green ones for first time you have people over for dinner). After dinner we played a round of “Kill Dr. Lucky” followed by one of “Save Dr. Lucky.” Both were very entertaining, and it’s exciting to get new people involved in playing your favorite games.

Then Monday morning I had to go to the dentist. It was my first time going to get a cavity filled (yes, I’m probably going to sound like a huge baby here), but I also had to deal with getting them to change my name, as well as dealing with my new stupid insurance. The whole thing with the cavity - novocaine, drilling, etc. - went well and quite fast. The one thing I absolutely do not understand is why any dentist is still using the metal crap to fill cavities because it contains mercury! (Thank goodness for me my first cavity occurred as an informed adult!) Why in my right mind would I agree to intentionally put that in MY MOUTH, soooooo close to my brain??? Plus, to fill it with “the silver” they have to drill more of your tooth out! Call me crazy, but I’m going to pay the extra $50 out of pocket to NOT put that in my body.

Anyway, the dentist A) kept talking to the dental technician about going karting, and how much fun it is to flip over in one, which I can tell you is not really the kind of soothing thing you want to hear when you’re in that chair. He also B) kept asking me how I felt. I had no idea how it was supposed to feel - like is the amount of pain I felt usual? Was it too much? No clue, so I just shrugged my shoulders. The novocaine was a weird feeling, again my first time having the entire side of my face numb for half the day (note to self: do not try to clean ears while under influence of novocaine again…). When it finally wore off, I started having random “phantom” pain in my teeth. What was weird is that the tooth they actually drilled didn’t hurt. It didn’t hurt before the cavity was filled either. But I still have this one tooth that occasionally will roar up into a brief moment of agonizing pain. They didn’t drill anything else, and I was so freaked out I almost called the office back the next day. Luckily Kris helped calm me down, as did everyone else I talked to, and my teeth don’t really hurt anymore. Off to brush my teeth…

We’ve been busy and we will be busy so here’s an update of a few things that have been happening lately….

1) We FINALLY got our professional proofs of our wedding photos. They were posted online for us about a week ago, and we got the cds of the digital images last week. There’s over 700 photos to go through, so it’s going to take a while. The good news is that we have to full rights to the high resolution digital images, so we will be posting a bunch of those photos, and we’ll send info out so if anyone wants a high resolution image, we can send them out (instead of having to pay to get a photo from the company who took the photos). Please bear with us while we take our time to go through the photos. The good news is that we did pick the photo we want to be included in our thank you notes, and will soon be receiving those cards and photos so we can, at long last, send out our wedding gift thank yous!

2) Yes, I still have a WHOLE LOT of wedding pictures I got from Ray, Valerie, Jerilyn, and Aunt Paula that have not been posted to my gallery. Not only does it take time to go through all the professional photos, but we’ve been busy with other stuff too. They will eventually get posted! And I will certainly have a blog entry indicating that has been done when the time comes.

3) We’ve been super busy. We’re about to leave for our second trip to AZ in two weeks, this time for the 2007 Prescott Rally. Last week both Kris and I prepped for the event - he was down at the shop all week while I took care of the paperwork and organization. We both went down for a full day at the shop getting our hands dirty yesterday (I mostly took the old stickers off the car, yay, now my new name is on there!) Anyway, you can take a look at how we’re doing in the rally this weekend with our APRS tracking system.

4) Oh, yeah! I officially changed my name! You can now call me “Mrs. M.” I spent most of the week before our CA reception party by going to the Social Security office, the DMV (to change my name on my license, two car titles, and pay my registration), and the campus registrar. Kris and I spent two hours one night talking to Geico to change my name and combine our two policies into one - the really good news is that by doing that we saved almost $1000/year on our car insurance! The week afterwards (when I got my new social security card) I had to go to our payroll/HR person, talk to the heads of my own lab, and called and wrote letters to my retirement account companies, and the two other colleges I’ve attended. I also had to call all my credit card companies. I just started getting letters back this week that the name change has gone through. I got all my new credit cards and my new license (yay, another good picture!). I just realized I still have to update my high school transcript, and I’ve been putting off going to get my new UCI ID card and getting a new UCI net ID, which will change my email address and logon for anything computer/internet-related at UCI (there’s a whole bunch of things this will affect both at home and school/work, which is sort of why I am putting it off).

5) On Saturday, Kris and I went to a BBQ at a rally couplefriends’ new house (just married in March, house is rental property for the time being). It was sort of a housewarming thing, very fun. We got to see their wedding pictures; their wedding was super-informal and so different than ours, but really nice! Kris had a blast because Erik took him out in his Lotus and even let Kris drive. We were the second people to get there, but the last to leave…needless to say we’re in the process of making dinner party plans for mid-October.

Kris and I went out this evening to exchange, order, and purchase items from our Bed, Bath, and Beyond bridal registry. With the 20% or $5 off one item coupons plus our 10% completion coupon from the store we were able to fulfill most of the outstanding items. We just wanted to say “Thank you so much!” to everyone who gave us giftcards to BBB so we could have a fun trip shopping this evening.

There are a few remaining items on the BBB registry, but we also have a 10% off online coupon we can use, so we’ll wait to see if there’s anything else we find that we like or that we’re missing to use it. We still have a trip to Macy’s and one to Sears ahead of us, which we’re looking forward to!

Kris and I left midday Friday afternoon (after a frustrating hour’s long wait for my 6-month dental checkup) to visit our friends Brian and Vanessa in Phoenix, AZ. Yes, I know we just saw them LAST weekend, but Vanessa’s bridal shower and bachelorette party were scheduled for the 22nd. This was a great excuse to take them up on their offer to have us over their place since over the last few months they’ve stayed with us at least 3 different times. However, the week before was spent communicating with Brian because although the shower was supposed to be a surprise for Vanessa, we wanted to try to make our visit a surprise too.

Well, we found out halfway to AZ that Vanessa’s best friend had accidentally spilled the beans about me being able to attend the shower, which sort of gave away why her fiance` was suddenly all about cleaning his bathroom. At least it was a *little* bit of a surprise. We made really good time to their place in Chandler, and promptly headed out to have dinner at Chipotle`. Afterwards we stayed up WAY too late talking and playing both some old-school NES games (think RC Pro-AM, Mario 2 & 3, and Castlevania II), as well as their favorite PSX game - Puzzle Fighter (think Tetris plus Dr. Mario on CRACK). For bed, Kris and I busted out one of our registry gifts, our aerobed. With its handy auto-pump and carrying case, that was one gift we are happily surprised about.

On Saturday, Brian and Vanessa treated us to a breakfast/brunch of pancakes, eggs, bacon, orange juice, and milk. Yummy! Then we headed down to one of the pools in their apartment complex. Wow, the heat and sun were so intense I felt like I was burning the entire time the sun was on me, even with sunscreen. Luckily it was overcast part of the time we were out there (it even sprinkled a few raindrops). After we’d soaked up enough sun for the day, we all went back inside to shower off so Vanessa and I could get ready for her party.

The party was so much fun! It was held at the wedding center Shannon’s family runs, and that Vanessa had helped renovate. Shannon’s parents were both there too - her mom was a party guest and her dad was the bartender for the evening. It was so much fun meeting Vanessa’s mom too. At the shower part, we played the clothespin game (which I actually won!), a “matching” ice-breaker, and a “who knows the most about Vanessa” game - which I also won (and almost couldn’t believe!). There was TONS of good food - meat or veggie lasagna, chicken in cheesy wine sauce, pasta and a whole tomato sauce, green beans, and garlic bread - which I had both seconds and thirds of later on in the evening. When Vanessa opened her gifts, we played a version of bridal bingo where you fill in the gifts while I recorded what she said for her “Wedding Night Preview.” I think she got a kick of it that. And Vanessa even got a gift from her dad, which I thought was really sweet, especially because it was a screened in tent thing “for your rally events” and the next rally is their (and our) “home” event in Prescott, AZ.

After the shower portion came the bachelorette party. We played a hilarious version of “Vanessa” dirty Mad-Libs, as well as a race game to get the roll of toilet paper across the room onto a stick your designated team leader is holding - but both the stick and toilet paper have to be held between your knees. That was so silly, but we all really had fun (and I have to admit when I saw the toilet paper come out I thought for sure that we were going to make toilet paper dresses). After this, Shannon started acting all funny, and I knew it was because the real surprise for Vanessa were the stippers who had just arrived. That was (and this may actually surprise some of you) the least comfortable portion of the evening for me. Don’t get me wrong, I still had a great time at the party, but I’m just not all about some creepy guy I don’t know getting all-up-ons with me - or even about seeing strippers in general. At least Vanessa had a really good time (as did her mom, which made all of us laugh). Vanessa and I decided to head back to her place in the evening so I wouldn’t have to make the trip the next morning when Kris and I would be heading home, so we did that after packing all he presents in her car. Of course when we got back the boys were still wide awake so we stayed up late talking again.

On Sunday, Kris and I decided to stick around pretty late so we wouldn’t hit too much of the “heading back to LA from Vegas” traffic. We had lunch from our favorite Asian Diner - Pei Wei - before we packed up the Malibu and left for Cali. Unfortunately I made a bad decision and thought we could get gas about 10 miles after we ran out, and both Kris and I just realized the Malibu’s “low gas” signal is wonky, since it came on about five seconds before the car stalled to a stop. Luckily we were at an exit AND have AAA, but the cell phone reception was spotty and AAA couldn’t figure out if they should send someone from California or Arizona. So we were left waiting 10 miles in either direction from a gas station for two hours due to my poor judgment. At least we missed all the traffic from Vegas and got back to our apartment well before my anticipated time of midnight.

Thank you so much to Brian and Vanessa for a great time and for hosting us! Thanks also to Shannon for hosting such a fun party for Vanessa that I am so happy I was able to attend!

Thanks to Valerie, Ray, Jerilyn, and Aunt Paula, I have more photos than I know what to do with! I posted the remaining pictures to some of the older events, like my NJ Bridal Shower (thanks to Jerilyn and Aunt Paula!), and my Bachelorette Party/Girls Afternoon Out (thanks to Jerilyn and Valerie!). I believe those albums are now complete. With contributions from everyone listed, I added quite a few to the Rehearsal & Rehearsal Dinner album, and I have even more to add to the Our Wedding album! Remember to check the last uploads link for the latest additions to any and all albums (just in case you don’t want to click through all the older pictures).

Thanks to everyone who’s sent us photos! Please keep them coming! Since we still don’t have our professional photos, these contributions are the only way we can share our wedding day with everyone who couldn’t be with us on our special day.

This weekend Kris and I hosted a second reception here at UCI for all our west coast friends. Quite a few people joined us, from our rally friends, to our neighbors, and even some co-workers, and everyone brought great food to share. The hall we’re allowed to use (for free!) is actually quite nice, with a dining area with cushiony chairs, nice bathrooms, a fully equipped kitchen, and a living room complete with couches, big screen tv, and surround sound! We used some of the decorations leftover from my NJ shower (the hanging stars and blue star trays on the tables) to give the space a “party feel.” We created a “guest table” with more guest cards, our ceremony program, and a basket I made from the flowers and luggage tags that we decorated with new tags to commemorate September 15th. We also brought in the small album of pictures and placed it on the living room table (thanks once again to Susan Bethea for developing those pictures for us!), as well as our wedding DVD, and Kris’s laptop full of music.

Karen and Vince arrived early, so Karen could help me into my wedding dress. Since I had done my hair and makeup earlier in the day, we had to wait for another girl or two before I could get it over my head without smuding my makeup or pulling my hair out. Andrea, one of my neighborhood friends, came over a few minutes later, and we were ready to go when Vanessa and Brian, our friends from Arizona, arrived. I sent the boys upstairs to change (Kris had rented a tux for the day), just as Renee popped in the door. With four girls to help, the dress was easy to get on and laced up! (Kudos gals!) It was a hilarious sight as I hiked up my dress, walked out, and got into the car. I know some of our other neighbors must have wondered what the heck we were doing!

Most of our guests started arriving right away. I had forgotten who had RSVPed, so I was almost surprised when each one of them got there. Everyone was really generous with food, drinks, and more, and we all enjoyed stories and video from the wedding. In addition, we got to hear lots of other wedding stories, including Erik and Amy’s wedding back in March, Guido and Tara’s plans for their wedding in Maui in early October (they’re getting “Maui-ed!” - say it aloud for the full effect), and Brian and Vanessa’s plans for their wedding in early November! We had an awesome time, and even got to enjoy Brian and Vanessa’s company for the rest of the weekend.

Thanks again to everyone who was able to join us! And if you have pictures, please let us know!

Yay! Thanks to Aunt Linda and Valerie, who both sent us some fabulous picture to post in the last week.

Also, we got our wedding video in the mail yesterday! We got to watch some of it last night, and Kris and I are really happy with it! Even though it’s the “raw footage” the videography was really well done. We can’t wait to watch more of it tonight.

Some highlights:
I finally got to see everyone walk in.
I got to see “something” happening with the ring pillow in the background - I heard stories that our ring bearer put the fake rings on his finger and was spinning the pillow around with them. Then he got the rings stuck on his finger! If you’re looking, you can see Jerilyn trying to figure out what he is doing, and then trying to get him to stop. hehe!
Laura was totally “Johnny on the spot” with fixing the train on my dress - I didn’t see or feel her doing that during the ceremony.
I got to hear all the toasts again.
It was hilarious watching some parts in “double-time” mode because it made everyone sound like a chipmunk!