My blog has moved

Ok, so if you're here reading this you already know that my blog has moved. I was noting that lots of people's blogger pages have cool stuff that I don't have and can't get by using my own server. So, somewhat grudgingly, I've moved my blog to blogspot. There's still some kinks I'll have to work out regarding formating and so forth, but I think it'll be worth it to have all the fun new features.

In other news, my sister is out of the hospital and feeling pretty well, but my dad has decided to stop chemo because it's making him feel too sick to be worth it. Hopefully he'll feel better soon.

Weekend of little action

So Friday night my friends held a birthday party for me (it's not particularly near my birthday) because they felt bad that they'd missed it before. And it was awesome! We ate lots, we played games, we talked, we enjoyed the ambiance of twinkle lights, and we went to bed way late. Saturday morning I got a call from my mom saying my sister was in the hospital with a kidney stone (! poor girl!!) and they were keeping her under close watch because of her being pregnant. And she was in a lot of pain but delighted because in the ultrasound to diagnose the kidney stone the discovered that she's having a boy! Yay! (They're keeping her overnight tonight though but they think the stone broke up and passed. Lucky really, after what the internet has to say about kidney stones - especially during pregnancy.)

And... that was pretty much the last excitement of the weekend. We watched lots of movies, I knitted a bunch, we read, we slept lots, we took the cat on a walk. It finally rained here, which is great, because it's been feeling weird that everything is so parched. Late winter/early spring is supposed to be monsoon season. Right now I'm sitting at the kitchen table watching Chris write thank you notes for wedding gifts. Still no word from the police about our car. We're starting to discuss replacements though, which, I'm reluctant to admit, is kinda fun. Also, the paperwork arrived yesterday for Chris and I to join our bank accounts, which means I pretty much have to figure out what I'm going to do about a name change. I'm leaning towards just taking his name on the end of mine. Then tell work people my old name and all new people my new name and let people who already know me choose between. Too wishy-washy? I'm not sure...

Missing car?!

So, uh, Chris drove the Honda to Tahoe on Sunday and when he came back he left it parked on the roof of the parking garage with the skis inside. He went to go get the skis this evening and the car was gone. I'm very freaked out about this but he's totally unphased. ("It's gone. It's not like I can do anything about it. Why get freaked out?") We have a couple of theories.

1) Someone in the condo complex had it towed. Chris makes a point of parking it in the same spot every time he parks it and we really don't drive it often, so possibly the busy bodies who live around here complained that it was abandoned and had it towed off. Except we called the number on the signs around the garage that say they'll tow unauthorized parkers and it was the police department and they know nothing about it.

2) It was stolen. Since the police knew nothing about our car being towed they're pretty sure it was stolen and are coming to take a statement tonight. But why??? Why steal our beater Honda? Why not just steal the skis? But even so, why steal the skis? It's not like they'll be easy to offload or anything.

Aaaaa! I don't like this!

Wedding slideshow and Fears

I just posted online the photos from the slideshow that Chris and I played at our wedding reception. I loved many of the photos, but perhaps in particular the one below. Chris certainly recognizes this emotion in me, if not this exact facial expression. This particular one is "tired and hungry." Heh.
I was also interested in a question that a friend posted on her blog which was asking readers to list five things they're afraid of. I came up with the following:
cancer
something bad happening to Chris
getting sick somewhere I can't get help
swimming in deep water you can see a long ways down through
dying before I'm ready

Wedding Carrying On

People have asked if there was anything exciting that happened at the wedding. Mostly it went absolutely flawlessly and I had the greatest time. We had previously taken bets on which wedding attendee was most likely to get drunk and embarass him or herself, but I don't think anyone did anything particularly embarassing even. But here's some of the highlights of what might have counted as carrying-on.

• My friend Connie was proposed to by her boyfriend Chris while they were hiking in the Smokies the day before the wedding. Yay!
  
• A couple of guests were held up at gunpoint (!) in their home in Florida while packing to leave for the wedding. Everyone is fine and actually relatively little of value was stolen. (Not really a wedding happening, but it was quite shocking anyway).
  
• Part way through the reception the fire alarm went off because something in the kitchen was burning. We were instructed not to evacuate though and all was well.
  
• I read the picture frame mat thing that people signed at the wedding and a couple of people must have been quite drunk when composing their message to us, because we have "Happiness is awesome!", "S---- and I are crying tears of awesome!", and, cryptically, "Lyapunov stability."
  
• On our way out the door of the reception (at like 12:30) we noticed a guest had hijacked the AV setup and was preparing to play "It's hard out here for a pimp."
  
• We got to our room to find someone had stolen a key and broken in and decorated with twinkle lights and hershey's kisses and champagne and strawberries. So fun!
  
• A few guests continued their carrying on well past the reception and were asked by the hotel if they couldn't find some place else to party because not all guests at the hotel were in such a celebratory mood. One of these guests was rumored to have been found laying on the sidewalk outside later. Nice.
  

Wedding photos are now online on the photographer's website. The password is my last name with a capitol first letter.

Which reminds me, many people have asked me if I'm changing my name. The problem is that I want to continue to publish and have people at work call me by my old name while having everyone else call me socially by Chris's name. So should I legally change my name? Right now I'm taking the lazy route. I have not done anything or made any plans to do anything. They introduced me as Mrs. Hislastname at the wedding though, which was fun.

The Powder Skiing Song

(to the tune of "Killing me softly")

I heard there was a good run
I heard it had some style
And so I went to see it
and live in awe for awhile.
And there it was, a big bowl
With powder to my thigh

(Chorus:)
Throwing me down the hill headfirst
Prying the skis off my feet
Filling my pants up with soft snow
Filling my pants up
With soft snow
Prying the skis off
Of my feet
Filling my pants up.... with soft snow.

Honeymoon

This is the view from our room at Kicking Horse, where we stayed the last week. This is actually sunrise on the first morning we were there. I went to bed at 7pm that night and got up at 8:30 am, just in time to see sunrise. We were so far north! There won't be many photos - we skied, we slept, we ate. Sun was up from about 8:30 to 4:30 (just in time for the lifts to run). It snowed 4 feet while we were there and I kinda learned to ski powder. I also spent a long time cursing powder and even wrote a song about skiing powder. (If you ask real nice maybe I'll put it in the blog.)

The skiers at Kicking Horse were pretty much the best I've ever seen. I'm no slouch and I was definitely in the bottom 10% of skiers on that hill. Blue runs there were kinda like blacks in Tahoe. I did manage to make it down a few of the easier black diamonds, but even Chris wouldn't ski some of the black diamonds because they looked too scary. (Also because he was afraid each might be the one a guy on the gondola told us locals call "Suckers Go Right" because it looks like you should go right at this one point and if you do you have to drop off a cliff to get outta there.)

We ate some good food there. One restaurant had these sweet potato fries that we must have ordered 4 or 5 times. We'd sit around in the pub eating fries and watching extreme ski movies. (Warren Miller man. It's amazing that guy is still alive.) We never made it to the restaurant at the top of the mountain - it's normally only open Friday through Sunday. We made a reservation for Saturday but then the restaurant was closed because they couldn't run the gondola because of high winds. We heard rumor later that diners on Friday night had to be evacuated by snow mobile because the gondola wouldn't run. We both thought we missed an amazing opportunity - the amazing food and a snowmobile ride!

The hotel we stayed at was awesome too. At first we were worried because there's these signs everywhere that say "No skis or ski boots in the rooms." We thought, well, how lame. Where will we keep our stuff? In the parking garage or something? But then they showed us to the locker room that has these huge lockers and an entire wall full of boot warmer/driers. In the morning we'd get up at 8:30, pull on ski clothes, go downstairs and put on our warm dry boots, then walk right out the door and the 20 steps to the gondola. It was so easy and nice!

Yesterday morning when we woke up there we weren't sure we'd ever get out. All roads out of Golden were closed due to avalanches. Eventually they cleared the roads and we made it back to Calgary and onto our plane.

In other news, wedding photos are posted on our photographer's webpage. The password is my last name, with the capital first letter.

I'm Married!!!

A week went by in a whirl of craziness and I came out on the other side happily hitched. The 29th a lot of girls were in town and we had a kind of bachelorette party - first fondue with the bridesmaids, and then hanging out with girls in town. Chris went to a sports bar to meet up with his friends - I reserved the pool tables for him and they put a signs on the tables that said "Reserved for Teresa." These signs promptly ended up taped to Chris, who reports that never have so many women (and men?!) introduced themselves to him as Teresa.

Saturday we had the rehearsal at the church, followed by lunch at Tomato Head (yum!) and I went home to try to relax and watch the inspirational My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Relaxing was not something that was easy for a number of days there. I'd lay in bed at night, exhausted, thinking about a million things that had to be done or just that were going to happen. I was just too excited and nervous to sleep. Saturday evening was the rehearsal dinner that Cece planned, which was really fun and tasty! The best man finally made it into town from Denver, which had been snowed in for a couple of days. (Again.) After dinner we went to the hotel and hung out with friends who were around.

Sunday morning I met all the girls at the hair salon, where we got our fabulous dos. I went back to the house and had my make up done by the Mary Kay lady (who, days earlier, had convinced me that I needed just unbelievable amounts of make up, which my amazing mother in law bought for me). I should mention that staying at my house were my sister and her husband, my parents, Chris and I, and my mother and father-in-law. Now, with some families this would be a horrible recipe for disaster, but I thought our families were similar enough that they would get along well. Luckily I was right and our mothers especially seemed to get on famously. It was nice that they had a chance to meet each other and spend some time together.

Lets see, I went to the church at 3pm (in the rain) and got dressed with the bridesmaids in the basement of the church. Then things really start to blur... I walked down the aisle and answered the priest when I was supposed to and kneeled when I was supposed to. Interestingly this is one of the most religious wedding ceremonies I've ever been to. I guess that's appropriate since Chris is one of the most religious people I know. (Which, is, you know, not that religious, but I don't actually know too many people who go to church as often as he does.) I managed not to laugh during the vows (I was afraid I might, since I do laugh when I'm nervous sometimes) and then we took a lot of pictures. I just know there's going to be a ton of photos with me rolling my eyes or making some other face. I just can't be serious that long about anything and instead of just smiling I would have to stick out my tongue or something.

We went to the hotel after the ceremony and managed to escape the photographer for awhile to go to our hotel room and just collapse for a little while. We went down to the reception hall, were announced, had a good dinner while watching a slide show of us as kids (I'll post that before too long), listened to fun toasts, cut cake and ate some incredible cookies (yay Ham n Goodys!), and then spent the rest of the night dancing like crazy to all my favorite music and playing wedding games that Jill & Wolfgang ran. I just can't do justice to how fun it all was. I couldn't hardly walk the next day because I'd been dancing for so long that evening. Even Chris's grandparents who hadn't danced in years had to get up and shake a leg. Almost all of my favorite people were there (though if they weren't on the dance floor I didn't really spend a lot of time with them).

Anyway, lots of photos will follow I'm sure and more stories and stuff as I think about it. This is just the basic outline. We leave tomorrow morning for Kicking Horse. I'll try to post while I'm there if there's Wi-Fi, but no promises. Cross your fingers for me that they clear the avalanches off of Interstate 1 through Alberta so that we can get to our hotel tomorrow!