Christmas, Day Two

Posted on by Jordan

Christmas day in Kearney started with roughly twenty people all digging into their stockings. It wasn’t as chaotic as it might sound, but still somewhat intense for the first thing out of bed.

Technically breakfast started before stockings I guess, and then continued after… I don’t know where to throw this in, so its going here…

Food over the entire trip was amazing. There were so many sweets around it was overwhelming, and they were all really good. Heather again earned my undying respect by resisting it all, and not even complaining about not being able to eat sweets during Christmas.

In the back ground of the morning was the challenge of cycling 20+ people through 2 showers and 3 bathrooms. Everyone gets along really well or I suppose things could get uncomfortable. Somehow everyone got ready in time, and by mid morning we were all assembled to start the formal process of opening gifts.

I don’t think too many families approach Christmas gift opening as a “one person at a time, one gift at a time” occasion, but its tradition, and I have to say I am fairly attached to all the Christmas traditions. We always open gifts in order of age, and this was the monument where it finally hit me that Heather is a little younger than my sister. The gift opening process took a while, but as always, was a lot of fun with everyone there. I somehow managed to surprise Heather by giving her an ice scraper, despite her having specifically asked me for it, and only it.

After we finished with gifts, we had the traditional Christmas dinner, fitting everyone into one big room downstairs. Throughout all of this it was really fun for me to see Heather get a chance to interact with my extended family. I really enjoy spending time with them, and wanted Heather to feel at home… I think that process started at least 🙂

After dinner we had a few hours of downtime (or maybe I am forgetting something already). Then it was off to the church to meet with the extended-extended family. My mom’s cousins etc, I don’t know what the proper term for them is. We had a few more hours to hang out and talk to people, then more food, then more gifts! Once we finished cleaning up the church, we headed back to the house.

I think we probably could have fit a little more into Christmas day, it didn’t seem that busy to me at the time, but writing it all down we did a lot. At any rate, that covers the high point of day two.

-Jordan

Our First Joint Christmas… Pt 1

Posted on by Jordan

Heather and I did Christmas together this year. The first of what I expect will be every Christmas going forward together.

It started off kind of rushed as Heather had to work Christmas eve, managing to get off work around 2:00pm. I got off about noon, leaving me roughly two hours to finish my Christmas shopping. That part of my day was somewhat complicated by the fact that I forgot my wallet at home, so I couldn’t stop anywhere and grab something on the way home.

I managed to procure a fancy ice scraper for Heather and get it wrapped before she got home. Once she got to the apartment, we both had to hurry and get everything packed up and get out the door as we were hoping to make it in time to go to the Christmas eve church service with my grandparents. Somewhere in there, we decided to drive my Escape instead of the Civic, mostly because it would be better in bad weather conditions if we got surprised. Heather and pack differently, but we managed to get everything loaded and be on the road exactly when we had planned to, and without getting into a fight 🙂

Approximately three hours later we arrived in Kearney with just enough time to eat and change clothes before church. Somewhere along here is really the first time I think I internalized the fact that it really was Christmas eve. Once we got to Church I had the rather embarrassing realization that I really don’t know the standard Christmas carols all that well. In theory I know all the verses, but basically every one was the same process:

  1. I think “I don’t even need to look at the words for this one”
  2. Half way through Verse two I can’t remember any of the words
  3. Verse three hits and I realize I didn’t even know it existed

Mix in the fact that I have a hard time reading a hymnal someone else is holding and you end up with kind of a jarring experience.

Excepting Musical follies, it was a really nice way to kick off Christmas, followed up with spending a little time with extended family before bed.

-Jordan

Baby Sitting

Posted on by Jordan

The Christmas time crunch has hit with full force, and I didn’t get a post up yesterday… Had plans of putting up a few today to make up for it, but its just not going to happen…

anyway, to get to the point of this: what Heather and I did over the weekend. Besides a few wedding related tasks, Heather and I did some Babysitting for her cousins.

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It was remarkably easy, mostly because we were tasked with watching the most laid back child in the world. I can’t really think of too much to say about it really, other than it was something out of the ordinary for us to do.

Hopefully I will have time for some more verbose posts after the holidays 🙂

-Jordan

Wedding Planning Update

Posted on by Jordan

Saturday marked the five-week point in the big countdown. I thought I would mention a few things Heather and I got taken care of over the weekend.

First off we placed the Tux order. I have actually had all the measurements for  a week or so, but getting them all standardized and in one place took a while. Once I had that, I still had to find time to actually swing by the shop. Heather and I went on Saturday. It was probably a good thing Heather came though, because although we had sort of picked out tuxes, there was still some color selection to be done. The shop still didn’t impress me really, but considering this visit wasn’t paired with a car breakdown, I left with a much higher opinion than I had the first time.

The other significant item Heather and I knocked out was sending out the “please let us know if you can come to the rehearsal dinner, and if so what would you like to eat” e-mail. That should be simple enough, but running down e-mail addresses still took a while, not to mention actually picking what should go on the menu. That task can’t be 100% checked off the list I suppose because now we have to monitor our inbound e-mail and figure out if we have information from everyone.

I might be counting trivial things as newsworthy, but its still nice to feel like we are staying on top of things before they hit a crisis point.

-Jordan

Ice Storm!

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Omaha, got hit with an ice storm that slowly turned to snow last night.

By the time I got home from work, everything had a thin layer of ice on it, and the storm wasn’t showing any signs of letting up. It was really the kind of weather you stay at home and drink hot chocolate in. I didn’t have any hot chocolate though, so I went to the gym. Heather apparently also lacked hot beverages, and went to the gym in Blair. Getting home from the gym was a little exciting, but the advantage to driving when you shouldn’t is that there aren’t too many other cars on the road.

This morning, it only took roughly 25 minutes  to get enough ice off my Escape to consider it drivable. I think it would have been a lot longer, but when the engine runs that long it gets warm and makes a big difference in how hard it is to get the ice chipped off the windshield. I don’t know how my car was in the perfect place to get this effect, but the caked icy snow stuff was over two inches thick over my windshield and hood. I have never seen anything like it. Luckily it was really brittle, so it broke up fairly quickly, but I was still left with a conventional layer of ice covering the entire vehicle after that.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch… or I mean… In Blair, Heather was discovering her car wouldn’t traverse the farm roads at all. Local family members helped get her to work, but not until much later in the morning.

Hopefully we are getting all the nasty travel ending weather out of the way now… you only get one bad ice storm per winter right!? I can’t imagine another one come January, especially late January. 🙂

-Jordan

Holiday Activities!

Posted on by Jordan

Last night, Heather and I went to visit some friends, and decorate cookies. Its possibly the first ‘second annual’ thing Heather and I have ever done together.

I don’t know the exact date, but mid December last year, Heather invited me to her apartment and we decorated cookies with her roommates. It seems so long ago, I can’t quite believe only a year ago Heather and I were just getting to know one another.

Getting back to more recent events, we had a really enjoyable time doing cookies! Its always a joy to interact with a couple who really love one another. I am withholding names because I don’t know that everyone wants their name plastered on our website… The downside to interacting with a happily married couple is that they cannot help but remind us of the fact that we are not yet married. I wouldn’t say we were jealous, but it certainly made it seem harder to send Heather packing off to Blair at the end of the night.

Also, it is a week until Christmas! I don’t quite know how that happened, but perhaps I have been fixated on another fast approaching date…. Whatever the case, I realize I have to find time to actually wrap the pile of gifts I have managed to acquire, and run down a few more things before Wednesday. (and not necessarily in that order!)

-Jordan

Speaking of Winter

Posted on by Jordan

I mentioned the apartment being cold yesterday. It still is by the way, but what I wanted to post on today was the window situation.

back at the end of June, there was a major wind storm that knocked out power for most of Omaha for a few days. Some parts of town were without power for over a week. Lucky for Heather and I, she never lost power, and I only lost power for about a day. Heather’s apartment (now ‘our’) was however rather exposed to the wind. The storm did some impressive things to the building, such as tearing off siding and breaking two windows in the bedroom. They were double pane glass, so nothing to into the apartment, and functionally they were still windows. I took a picture of them the day after the storm:

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(well one of the windows anyway, you get the idea) As you can see from the picture, The window is very visibly broken. So visible we could see the broken window from almost a block away when we went out to look things over the next day after the storm.

Fast forward to November, and I move into the apartment. My first night sleeping there I could here a strange rattling sound coming from the windows. The next morning I peek behind the blinds, and there is still a pile of broken glass where the second pane should be! I have no idea how the repair team missed something so glaringly obvious, but nobody realized there was a broken window or two on the building after 4 months. I talked to the office later that week, and they didn’t doubt for a second how the window had been broken, or that it was broken. It took them over a week to actually get it fixed, but at least its fixed now!

The point of all this is just to say that I am happy the window is fixed now! I don’t know how much insulation value the double pane windows selected by the apartment actually provide, but it has to be better than the pile-o-broken-glass we had before.

-Jordan

Snow!

Posted on by Jordan

(If you really wanted to nit pic we had some dustings before, but they don’t count)

Today was the first snow of the year! I can’t say that I am really that excited about it, but its still kind of fun to see. It made the drive to work rather long and slow, but my fellow drivers were being cautious, and I won’t complain about that. It’s much preferable to the other alternative.

Also, it is still brutally cold, not quite the -4 we had yesterday, but today still saw negative temperatures. The thermostat in the apartment still says the temp is the same, but it feels colder. I think maybe there is just a bubble of warm air around the thermostat. On a recent trip to Blair I helped Heather figure out how to hook up the electric blanket her bed was equipped with. Right now I have to say I am somewhat jealous of her blanket, although I would settle for Heather staying with me in Omaha.

I guess it is kind of nice to have Heather in Blair on days like today, when driving conditions are questionable. She only has a few miles to get to work instead of 30ish. Sadly I can’t really think of anything else good about having her MILES away, but maybe the cold is inhibiting my creativity.

-Jordan

Cool Camera Hacks

Posted on by Jordan

I don’t know if I really understand photography well enough to really take advantage of this, but I just saw an article about a firmware override you can run on most Cannon cameras to get access to a *LOT* more information.

The article

I suppose this would all take more homework than I am willing to do right now, but I have always been fascinated by the potential in hardware beyond what the stock OS offered. I admit I didn’t read this in depth, but it seems like the entire thing is running in-memory, so you could play with it and not risk trashing the factory firmware.

The “if it messes up you bricked your widget” factor is what has prevented me from playing with any sort of aftermarket software mods for my phone, despite my burning hatred for the stock Verizon software.

Anyway, if somebody else tries this let me know how it works out! I hope to look at it more soon.

-Jordan

Tuxedos

Posted on by Jordan

I have not yet placed the order for Tuxedos for groomsmen yet, but I finally have info from everyone. Several of my guys took a while to get me their information, but really we still have tons of time for that.

I sat down today to type up the information everyone had given me onto a single document and made kind of an interesting discovery.

Well first let me back up, finding every one’s information turned out to be time consuming. In theory, I should have been able to grab it all really quickly, thanks to the fact that I had all the e-mails in gmail. I thought I had stared (gmail’s term for flagging) every e-mail that came in with tux info. Turns out I hadn’t remembered to do that. Well, no problem, gmail has really good search options I can just search for “tux” right? No because a few of the e-mails don’t actually say the word “tux” nor are they replies to an e-mail that does. So I figured I can just search for e-mail containing a term like “overarm” or “out seam” and get them all… Only several of the measurements were sent in as scanned images of the form the shop used, so there isn’t even any text to search for.

Eventually I found every one’s information, and started typing up my master sheet to hand off to the tux shop. That’s when I found out that apparently tux shops cannot agree in what order the measurements should come in. That may not seem shocking to you, but I had just figured that considering how long tux rentals have been around, they probably all used the exact same format for their measurements. They don’t… They don’t all use the same order for their measurements, and some of them don’t seem to use the same terminology. Beyond that a few places seem to have been more ambitious, giving 2-3 more dimensions than the other shops. It made it annoying when my goal had been to produce a listing of each guy with the exact same information after each.

roughly half the forms I was sent lacked shoe size. I guess the shops figured everyone knows their own shoe size, but interestingly enough, although I know these guys well enough to ask them to stand up with me in my wedding, I don’t know their shoe sizes. I guess I will be making a few phone calls over the weekend to wrap this process up 🙂

-Jordan