My Trip To An Alternate Universe

Posted on by Jordan

I finally got around to notifying the DMV that I have a new address today. There is a location somewhat close to my workplace, so I went over my lunch hour, hoping to get a new drivers license without having to wait too long in line.

my first clue that something was horribly, horribly wrong was when I walked in and there was no line. I was literally stunned, I just stood there thinking maybe something was wrong and they were closed. A very friendly woman behind the counter asked what I needed to do. This was the second sign something was not right, because it clearly was the Douglass County Treasury / DMV office, but my first staff interaction wasn’t getting growled at for failing to comprehend a form, or for being in line for the wrong (unmarked) desk.

The lady behind the counter was both friendly and helpful, and the other people working in the back all seemed to share her demeanor. It was kind of strange to say the least. I even made a mistake filling out the form and they didn’t mind at all. I did get a little greif for being 85lbs lighter and having about 80% less hair than what my old license represented me as, but that was all rather good natured kidding.

At no time during this visit was I able to see any clear signs of a dimensional rift, but I think it is clear that I was in one. The entire transaction, from first walking up to the desk, to having my new drivers license (complete with updated voter registration and vehicle registration address updates) took under 10 minutes.

I suppose the downside is that the Nebraska government in our universe has no record of all this, but hopefully the ID I was issued will suffice for all the things a person needs a state-issued ID for.

-Jordan

YAY For Hats

Posted on by Jordan

Its December and I finally replaced the stocking hat I lost moving over to the new apartment a few days back.

this may sound dumb, but I have been amazed how much warmer I am with it. I think I wore a stocking hat last year when it got cold because it seemed like a good idea, and maybe even because my ears got cold. Those were the reasons I replaced my hat, but I also discovered that the 10 degree days we have been having don’t feel nearly as cold when I am wearing a hat.

your thinking “why is this worth sharing?” and really I have no answer to that. However the cold was killing me, I kept thinking this winter was going to be the end of me. It just felt like I couldn’t hold up to the weather as well as I expected to be able to. I thought maybe loosing 60+ pounds could have been part of it. Somehow being in better shape seemed like with better circulation and whatnot I should hold up better to the cold, even without the extra mass to dampen the cold.

As it turns out, a good hat is all it took. At some point I will break down and wear insulated gloves too, but not until the temperatures is at least single digits… Hopefully I can hold out for the negatives before resorting to that. You have to save some way of counter-escalating things 🙂

-Jordan

Christmas Themed Weekend

Posted on by Jordan

Ok, so mapping the theme to our entire weekend might be stretching it, but Heather and I went to a holiday themed show Saturday night.

We wanted to try and go to some sort of holiday production in Omaha, and settled on “A Christmas Carol.”

The Omaha Community Playhouse does “A Christmas Carol” every year, or has been doing it for years I should say. This selection worked well for us as we were trying to find something that avoided holiday parties etc, so being able to pick a date that was early in the month was ideal.

I am not really an expert on live performances, but in my opinion they did a really good job. I honestly wasn’t expecting them to sing, but the singing along with everything else was good enough you never stopped to question why they were doing it. Part of me really wants to know more about how they do the scenery work, there seem to have been some rather clever things going on as they moved set pieces in and out. I don’t suppose too many people express interest in that though.

I should mention that it was also the first time I had seen the story preformed by anything other than muppets. My memories of the muppet one are kind of hazy anyway, but I think I probably had an advantage going in with no idea what to expect. I was just able to watch it. I guess, I knew there were suppose to be 3 ghosts, and “Tiny Tim” plus a few other high points of the story in there somewhere.

In conclusion, if you were thinking about maybe going to see this show in Omaha sometime, I can recommend it! 🙂

-Jordan

The Only Thing Missing…

Posted on by Jordan

I know I talked about decorating the apartment last week, but I wanted to post a picture of our little tree, and a few words. First the picture:

The tree is about three feet tall, nothing too exciting really.

It does however, represent the first time in the eight years I have lived away from my parents house that there have been Christmas decorations in my apartment. I cannot tell you how much it starts to make the apartment feel really home-ish, and warmer somehow. At the same time, it only makes me wish Heather and I were married more. The (our) apartment is really starting to feel like home, and yet Heather isn’t here.

yes, it is very possible there will be 46 more days of “oh woes me” posts like today, sorry 🙂 It’s our blog, and Heather and I are really feeling sort of like little kids waiting for Santa… Not really sure we can survive the anticipation much longer, and sure we will explode if we aren’t careful.

Hopefully Christmas provides some distraction 🙂

-Jordan

50 Days!

Posted on by Jordan

The wedding is just 50 days away now!

(actually 49 if you use the count I have been using in the past… 49 days and 7 hours remaining right now….)

its still a long time, but starting to feel like its going to be here soon. I am also starting to think Heather and I might actually make it. She has been in Blair for over a month now, but we have managed to find reasons to make the drive one direction or the other pretty frequently.

Heather has a whole gambit of showers lined up, I don’t know for sure what I will be doing those weekends, but I am sure I will think of something. Did I mention I am playing WoW again? “leaving” only lasted like 48 days or so, but thus far I haven’t really gotten into it as much as before. Yeah, so back to the wedding countdown…

There is a *LOT* of stuff going on between now and the wedding. People have kind of made fun of us for having so much of the wedding planned months in advance. When you realize there aren’t any more open weekends between now and the wedding, it starts to seem pretty practical. As much as we have done, I still expect some frantic last minute things come January. At least for now we can feel like we are mostly ready and enjoy everything that is happening in December.

The other fun thing that has started happening is people are RSVPing, and just using the website more. Its exciting for me to see the increased activity, although perhaps I am too easily entertained.

-Jordan

Oil!

Posted on by Jordan

Sorry, this may not be the most interesting topic for today…

I just saw that oil closed below $45 a barrel today, its mind-blowing in a way. It was brushing $150 over the summer, and now look at it. Back a month and a half ago I thought to myself “its going to have to drop below $40 before it comes back up” but I didn’t say anything because I figured everyone would say I was crazy. Now it starts to look almost possible, although maybe the reasons its staying low aren’t that awesome. I know people, who should know better than to make hard predictions, who said things like “I guarantee oil will be above $100 / barrel by January.” I am probably too nice to beat them over the head with those words come January, but it doesn’t mean I haven’t thought about it.

Gas in Omaha, 89 octane with 10% ethanol is going for $1.57 a gallon right now too, in case you wondered.

check back tomorrow, maybe I will have something related to Heather and Jordan 🙂

-Jordan

Christmas Decorating

Posted on by Jordan

This post is a few days late in coming, but if you wondered what Heather and I did over the Thanksgiving holiday, the answer was “decorate for Christmas!”

(there is also the detail of Heather having to work Friday to earn an extra day off so we can actually go on a honeymoon, but we don’t talk about work here…)

On Thanksgiving day, we had a nice meal with just Heather’s parents and sister in Blair. Then that evening, more of the Gutschow family came out to the farm, and it was decided that the tree needed unpacked and setup. With a lot of people that job went remarkably fast. Without Gigi there, decorating kind of had to stop once the tree was out because nobody really knew where the rest of the decorations were, or how they should go if we found them.

Friday I was able to go to the Nebraska vs. Colorado game with Jim. The initial plan was for Heather to pick me up in Lincoln after the game, and we would proceed to Kearney to meet up with some of my family for some more Thanksgiving. Heather got off work earlier than expected, and I told her to just head out. My thinking was that the game would be mostly decided by the start of the fourth quarter. If you saw the game, you know that didn’t turn out to be the case… Anyway, I had a lot of fun at the game. I really love going to games at Memorial Stadium. I do feel pretty dumb for missing the end of that game, but hindsight is 20-20 I guess.

Saturday we helped unpack and assemble the Marlatt decorations, a rather large project. Fortunately there were a lot of cousins around to help out. The continued trend from Blair was that my grandparents weren’t home ether, leaving us to kind of guess sometimes on how decorations should go. I think we got most of it handled pretty well.

Sunday, after church we decided we hadn’t had enough decorating and headed to Target to get a few things for the apartment. They had a little three-foot tree and some properly sized decorations for fairly cheap, so now my(our) apartment has a little holiday feel to it. The only really sad thing about having decorations at my home is that Heather doesn’t live there yet. It makes things feel really “home-ish” but its still just me living there… I shouldn’t complain too much though, I get to see Heather quite a bit 🙂

-Jordan

Invites Mailed!

Posted on by Jordan

I had nothing to do with it, Pam (Heather’s mom) did all of the work to get the invites sent out. All the same I am really excited to know that has happened. For starters I think the invites look great. Pam hand-addressed all of the invites, and the ones I saw looked absolutely amazing. On top of that, we have a great picture included in the invite. I suppose it might be a little narcissistic to be sending people pictures of myself, but Heather is in there too, and I think the picture looks so cool 🙂

If all that weren’t enough, mailing out the invites basically means this website is “live”!!! Granted its been online for months now, but only a few people knew it existed. We will find out very soon if my PHP hack was good enough to handle the RSVP section, its more or less out of beta though… should be fine 🙂

I guess maybe I am excited about nothing, all the same its another milestone. This has the added benefit of starting the process of getting RSVP’s in, everyone says they aren’t too reliable, but still we can sort of see how many people to expect.

-Jordan