Too much rain

So over the past few weeks there has been a lot of rain, much more than I would prefer since it makes bike rides unlikely (and I only have a few more weeks that I can ride!) Michelle and I went into NYC to see the play "After Miss Julie" which was an interesting show with Johnny Lee Miller and Siena Miller, definitely made you think, but it was amazing to hear so many people say that they did not like it afterward in the restroom!

We wandered around town after that, including searching for a new winter jacket for me at Century 21, and afterward we looked at a map to see where the Southstreet Seaport was, and Michelle commented that maybe we shouldn't be close to the curb. Good advice, we just needed to take it...An ambulance drove by full speed (no lights on, so TOTALLY unnecessary), and sent up a huge spray of water, soaking my legs, back, and even hitting Michelle's mouth. #$@#%

Then it was dinner with our friend Han from Korea, who was in town interviewing new candidates (insert different word here) for my old group ;) It was great to see him, and have a great meal at Dos Caminos. Love the guac that they make!

59 boxes

Yup, 59 of them arrived on Monday, which meant approximately 2 days of trying to find a way to put everything into a 1 bedroom apartment. For a few things, when I saw how well some of my pens and pencils had been wrapped, I realized that maybe 59 boxes was too much. Somehow it all fits currently, even though the storage unit is packed to the gills. I will say that the move has been one of the most painless moves i could have imagined, but that should be the case if you are paying someone else to do it, right?

Debating closet space

So I remember being worried about how I was going to move back from Korea after having approximately 6 closets there to Michelle and I sharing three now. According to my cousin's husband, this never changes. You can have 12 closets in the house, and the man will have 2 of them, but there will still be a debate if he should have that many...I need to get rid of some stuff I think ;)

Snow in mid-October?!?

What a CRAZY weekend, after a delay on our drive to Boston due to the heat no longer working in Michelle's car, we headed to Boston for about 24 hours. And on the way back, BOY were we happy we had the heat fixed, as we drove in the snow for about 2 hours!

One of the other highlights included going to Kickass Cupcakes (where our wedding cupcakes were, a treat that I never had due to the craziness of the day, and likely the guests REALLY liking them!) The owner was really sweet and offered us any cupcakes we wanted for free!

Finally, we got into the Halloween spirit by carving a pumpkin at my cousin's house, in the shape of a pirate's face. It was crazy, she had a whole "pumpkin carving set" with different sized knives. It came out really cool, and I think Michelle and I need to look into having one down here!

Kilts: the day i lost faith in dry cleaning

So my kilt got a bit of wearing a couple of weekends ago, and i decided maybe i should dry clean it (out of fear of moths that lost me at least one sweater and a jacket). The places in Chatham were going to charge me $15 and then $18.75 for dry cleaning a skirt. After coming from Korea, where EVERYTHING cost $3, I wasn't sitting well with either of these prices, especially after I looked inside the kilt and it is machine washable. Now I like that shirts cost less than $2 to launder and starch, but seriously, the mark-up on the actual dry cleaning is sick (although given that neither places had a grasp on English very well, they knew the fundamentals of business...Just won't be a business I will regularly be going to...) I digress, and happy to launder my kilt at home so i can have plenty more wearings!!

The little things at a wedding

They say that no one knows the things that don't go as planned at a wedding. And that is amazingly true. My favorite moment was the realization as Michelle and I were walking back up the aisle after the ceremony, and I realized I had not told my brother about the music for post-ceremony. Thankfully the bagpiper my dad had gotten decided to start playing then. Whew...

It was an amazing day all told though, with so many friends and family, great weather, and so many cool events. We had a fireworks display that would rival any medium-sized town in the US, my nephew's rap performance, my uncle playing piano, and an armadillo cake thanks to Michelle's co-worker's extraordinary talents!

What happened with the pagoda

Wow is all I can say on this one. For every delay that could have happened. First I lose weeks by trying to negotiate price (nothing doing, not even my soon to be mother-in-law calling!) Then the vendor takes his time actually building it. Then when we finally get it on the ship (a ship we were likely to miss), the ship is delayed leaving China and misses its connection in Korea (of all places, it had to connect through Korea?)

Finally the pagoda is almost there and it is flagged in customs, which means another 2-5 days (unclear how many exactly). It turned out to only be 2 days, but we could not pick it up until Friday, which was 8 days before the wedding. So we were going to have approximately 5 days to build it.

My father and I drive down there (which was an exceedingly long day for him, since the goal was to be there by 9 am). We get there, only to find we don't have the right papers (our shipper's fault), and when we do, we move back to find not one 10 cubic meter box, but 6, and the largest was significantly larger than our pickup truck. Uhmmm....

The guys in the warehouse are helping us call shippers, and we manage to find one that will deliver by the following day. We drive off with the three smallest boxes, and prayed that it would literally arrive the next day.

When we unpacked everything, we discovered not ceramic tiles (which is what we thought we had ordered), but fiberglass. And fiberglass everything. With no instructions of course. So I was out helping my dad and his two workers, including using the sawzall to cut off pieces to make it fit, and the backhoe to lift the heavier pieces up to the roof. It was finished the morning of the wedding.

(and yes, it looks amazing, but WOW what a trip to get it there!)