This is me… mildly censored

Sitting in my living room just now, I’m showered and well rested and fed, my bags are packed and my dress is hanging in the guest room of my house. All of David’s clothes are hung up neatly in one of my our closests.

Rachel just asked me, “are you all ready?”

My reply, “I’m all ready, but not at all ready.”

It’s a paradox, all the music and the meal, and the flowers and the plans are all finished and hours away from a first and last use.

But I am just beginning something. I am about to start a new life. And I’m not ready. I’m ready in all the ways I can be, but there are just somethings you can’t prepare for. I’m jumping off a cliff. The cliff that leads me to wifedom.

But I’m excited, and I love him so much.

So here goes everything… I’m going to be a scoggan.

I immediately loaded Wikipedia links and Facebook links to my home screen. I added some music, and bookmarked some YouTube videos.  Holy Freaking Cow. I fell in love, the phone was so intuitive. All my text messaging shows up in different colored speech bubbles!! Visual Voicemail is literally amazing. I cannot even describe it. Soooo awesome.

Google Maps is by far the application that has completely changed how I live. I am never lost or more accurately I’m lost but not panicked. I just hit current location and drop a pin at my parking spots around the city and I can always find my way back to my car. Sweet. Really big tourist help. Huge. Help.

Also being able to find out any trivial information where ever I am. I was about to slip some mail in the drop box this morning and I quickly checked USPS.com to see when the rate change went into affect, and quickly withdrew my hand from the opening. That would have been tragic.

Planning a wedding? Never been easier with an iPhone, just Google Map search for your vendor and add them into you contacts. Heaven, i tell you heaven.

And with the Mobile Me software coming out this summer, my life will be even easier.

So yeah, and now they are cheaper, what the heck is everyone waiting for? Get out there. Get one.

June has been a crazy insane month

It has been the best of times and the worst of times.

But I think I should recap this last thirty days in pictures.

 

Here is a series I call “praying” in a prayer room

 

 

These are some shots from trip to Chicago

 

This is series of pictures from an Eddie James trip

 

 

 

And finally pictures of how the teen summer camp at IHOP affects me.

My jeep filled to the gills with gummy candy and and ring pops. God help us all.

 

The only thing that comforts me…

Well, this too.

Okay so I had been contemplating a PDA for a while. I needed a phone where I could get email and schedule meetings on the fly. I am THAT important. Not really, but while I would cherish the serenity of being out of the office I also feared returning to my inbox. It was causing anxiety and I was constantly missing meetings, I just couldn’t keep it all in my head anymore.

But even with all that I figured I could wait a bit to buy a PDA. And then one week before the most enormous, stressful, insane, exhilarating event of my entire work calendar onething I found myself frantically looking for my cell phone in my room. I slapped my forehead and starting spewing expletives took a deep breathe and ran downstairs, and fished my really very functional and fabulous phone out of my washing machine. DOH.

Thankfully, as I was still not ready to commit to PDA living, I keep a back up phone, I switched out sim cards (gotta love those things) and went on my way. This back up phone was truly crappy, truly. But I needed to do some serious research before I ventured into PDA world.

The obvious choice for me was an iPhone, wildly popular and highly praised, most bugs had been worked out, and I was already an At&T customer.

One hesitation remained, I use a PC, I use outlook, I have never owned a Mac. My PC user status is realistically not changing, it’s a work thing, it’s just not practical for me.

Scouring the internet I tried to figure out if an iPhone would work with clunky PC technology.  Differing reports everywhere, some people declaring total integration failure, Apple claiming complete compatibility.

I decided, knowing no PC users personally who were on the iPhone, that it was worth trying. With a bit of fear, I trekked to the Apple store and bought one. Threw caution to the wind, the Crackberry simply would not suffice when it came to my PDA needs.

I had been entering all my phone contacts into Outlook for a month in hope that I would choose the iPhone. I plugged my gorgeous new phone into my laptop, using the ubiquitous Apple USB jack (i heart apple), and few clicks later I was on my new phone. All my contacts were perfectly loaded, my entire Outlook calendar was now in my phone. Whew.

Next morning I marched into the IT office and they worked their magic and poof… email, my work outlook email, in my phone. In truth this took a bit of finagling, not fully bug proof, but it was successfully working in less than an hour.

And just like that love blossomed, I cannot go back to my “other” non-iPhone life. I have burned the bridges, I’ve moved on, I’ve moved up, I’m living the future here people.

Part two: Living la iPhone Loco will be a more official review, with all the pros and the few cons of iPhone ownership, from a PC users perspective.

I have vellum in my possession people. VELLUM.

And David and I are bickering about ampersand styles. AMPERSAND.

It’s official, I’ve sipped the wedding kool aid.

I’m different, I’m like Kermit the frog different. I’m a unique little snowflake. I  have noticed this throughout my life.

Once in high school we had two days of ball aptitude testing to determine what I was supposed to do with the rest of my life. Umm, yeah and the winner was…. eyeroll  i mean drum roll…. FUNERAL DIRECTOR. Two days of intense aptitude testing and I was “made to be” a FUNERAL DIRECTOR or the runner up was RACE CAR DRIVER. Actually throw those two in a blender and you have my job at IHOP. At any rate this test had a portion where the proctor would read out a word and we had to write the word that first came to our minds. The more that your answers matched “standard” replies the higher your score would be. I barely registered on the graph, like there was a dot where there should have been a line shooting out. My teacher initially thought it was a glitch, but alas no, I just think “outside” the box.

One of my teachers at that same school came up to me during the last part of my senior year and pulled me aside and said, “I was thinking about you the other day and I realized how difficult it must be for you here, you are so different and you think so differently, it must be alienating.” I think I shrugged and smiled, but as I walked away I let it sink in and I felt myself sigh, it had been painful, it had been awkward, I did feel alone.

Okay so fast forward, I’m getting married, and let’s just sidetrack here. Oh my gosh I am so ridiculously in love, it is vomitous. David is the best gift in my life, there is no way I ever thought I would ever be with someone so good, so cute, so smart, and so funny. I totally scored. And he thinks I’m AMAZING. AHHHHHH, it’s almost too much, most days I feel like I’m going to explode. What I can say is that Jesus must love me, if he brought David into my life. Jesus really loves me.

Okay so yeah, that’s only one part of getting married, being in love. The other part is treacherous, pay no mind to those bridal magazine or cable reality tv series. It is hard mind numbing work, and there is almost NO place for non-conformity. What do you mean you don’t like wearing white? You don’t have specific wedding colors? You aren’t wearing high heels with the dress? You don’t want to wear a veil? You don’t want to get married with 150 people watching you? You have a tattoo motif on the invitations?!?!?

I have seen so many “consultants” (in various fields) heads twist around their necks eye bulging at my matter of fact responses. You don’t even want to know what happened when I mentioned I was thinking about wearing a black dress. Their brains literally liquefied and ran out their ears, which was fine because they clearly couldn’t process the words-that-were-coming- O-U-T O-F M-Y M-O-U-T-H.

EEEEK. I feel like a total freak in half of these appointments, and I now preface all answers to their questions “please don’t laugh”.

I do have a base line of sanity, every once and while when I find myself orbiting in tulle and shades of satin, I return to the baseline. The baseline is all the things I really care about, sort of like my wedding mission statement. This is just my statement, I love going to weddings (and I have like 8 to attend this summer) and I love seeing how each Bride comes alive in the details that mean the most to them. I pass no judgement on any of that. This is just what matters to me…

I care about the life long promise I am making.

I care about expressing my love in a unique and vulnerable way.

I want my wedding day to be small, intimate, vulnerable, I want to feel like the best version of myself, completely comfortable with who I am and how I look, I want to recognize myself in the mirror. I want to wear a dress that doesn’t make me look like a round snowball. I want to wear converse. I want to have a head clear of stress and anxiety. I just want to focus on my feelings and my commitments. I want to take a mental picture every minute and remember the smell, the feel, and the taste.

And then, a month later, I want to throw fabulously fun party with all the people I love and celebrate the gift David and I have been given in each other.

At the end of the day, I will stray from my mission statement, I think that’s inevitable in this crazy culture, but I won’t stray far. I value being unique, I think that’s what make weddings truly special.

 

 

Oh and I found a dress (pretty traditional but looks fabulous) and it’s white and I LOVE it. And these people totally rock and completely rolled with my total insanity. I love them, they feel like family to me. I wouldn’t go anywhere else. I kid you not, I came to them a total mess, and I left on cloud nine.

Last week, Amanda Jean got me and Charleen tickets to see Jon Bon Jovi, that’s right people, the Jovi.

Late one night last winter over a year ago, we were having an ice ice party at the house of Love. During one particular night we were playing Trivial Pursuit Pop Culture Edition and watching the Jovi live in concert on TV. During certain songs you could find us arms up the arms singing along at the top “shot through the heart, but your too late, you give love a bad name” or “wanted, on a steel horse I ride, wanted, dead or alive.”

So all three of us went last week, and it was amazing. I love live music so standing up, dancing and and singing at the top of my lungs is soooo much fun. I nearly lost my voice from all the screaming.

But since this band is older than I am, there was another show, all the fifty year old women with terrible blonde dye jobs, teased hair and really short jean skirts (throw in too much alcohol and insert tiny amounts of vomit into mouth).

 

Here are some pictures from the show.

 

 

 

 

 

Below is a separate picture of my new housemate and myself…

 

Matching blue sweatshirts, people, that’s hot.

Days 4-7 of vacation were filled with Vomit, Vitamin Water, and Cheese its… but in opposite order.

More to come about my iphone, a wedding, and a downright crazy life.

I love the ocean, love, love, love. Yesterday David and I trekked to the glorious Stinson Beach, which is located right behind a gorgeous mountainous forest. Stunning is pretty much all that can be said about the place. Here are the pics of the day

This is a picture on the way to the beach…

Ahhh, nothing like waves crashing on sand.

This is directly opposite the lovely ocean.

David, climbing like a crazy person. There are these huge rocks on one end of the coastline. Meet Mr. Spidermonkey.

Camera malfunction that turned out pretty cool

Sweet Lord, that’s gorgeous

Kristen huddled over iPhone, technology meets nature

Picture of David taking pictures

Yum… ocean and rocks…

What’s this you ask? Not a beach? This is the other brilliant part of California.

Amen.

oh wait, you thought I forgot? Um no here it is…

Kerns… never leave home without it.

Day two brings us to Six Flag Marine World or Discovery Cove or Fascination Village or Overpriced Carnal Entertainment or whatever you want to call it.

But I do love roller coasters and big animals so it was a great and exhausting day.

   

This is me taking a picture of David taking a picture. This will be a theme of our vacation.

David carrying the camera on his belt. At least there wasn’t a batman fanny pack.

 

We interrupt this abysmal blog post for a paid advertisement…

Kerns… “Nectar in a Can” YUM.

 

I’m thinking David is going to post some more meaningful shots, so you’ll have to head that way for substance, but you do that anyway, right?