Wedding pictures...

Hey folks, check out some of the pictures from our wedding down in St. Croix. Yes, it was a good time, no, make that great time for everyone (at least I think everyone had a great time). I know that this is the last thing many want to see, but hey, I had a beautiful bride, and a great time, and want to share that with some other folks, so sue me. So without further adieu, check out this truncated set of wedding pictures.

OK, I wanted to get some more on here, but Blogger is being uncooperative right now for some reason. Don't know why. Maybe Google doesn't like to work with Apple, or maybe they just need to fix this stuff, but I can't complain too much, since it's free, and they host my ramblings really. Anyway, check out the pictures, hope that you enjoy them. 

It's done...

Surrounded by our family, and a very few friends, we tied the knot yesterday. So I am now officially married. I'll have some pictures to put up here in a little while. We didn't have a photographer for most of the day, but my sisters who are picture taking fools it appears, took about 800-900 pictures between them, along with video, so we'll have those pictures for sure, add in the disposable camera thing, and everyone else who had a camera slung around their neck, we'll be fine with what our friends and family took of us yesterday. I have never been so photographed in my entire life, and I'm glad that I don't have to go through that all again (I hate having my picture taken).

Anyway, it was a beautiful day, and a beautiful ceremony. It was just a great day all around and now I'm married to the woman I love the most in the world. More later. Have to dash off to the post wedding brunch soon.

We're here...

Yes indeed, we arrived last night on the island of St. Croix, and so far, I can't tell you how nice it is to be on vacation first of all, and to be getting married most of all. I'm just putting out a little teaser picture here for starters. This is the view out of the window of the room that we're staying in. Enjoy...



There's more from where that came from, and will be posting some more later on down the road.

Back to work...

Yeah, I know it's Sunday. Yeah, I know it's the end of a long weekend. Yeah, I know I shouldn't be going into work today, and yet, I am. What the hell do I owe these people anyway? The short answer is, well, nothing. I shouldn't even do what I'm supposed to do, and just let them get flamed by one of our customers who is coming into the plant while I'm away on the wedding trip. That would be pretty sweet. But knowing my company like I do, I'm pretty certain that I would get blamed, solely blamed, for our lack of success with this particular customer, mostly because we have a ton of quality issues, and well, I'm a quality engineer. Like I can affect that much change. I'm just a peon really. No, really, I am. With the amount that most of the people who I work for listen to me, I'm even less than than.

And yet, here it is, Sunday morning, around 11AM, after being up most of the night (went to bed at 6AM after watching many bad movies a ruminating about a lot of things I won't write about here), and I'm getting ready to toss the work shoes on, grab my bag, and go. At least I got a decent breakfast sandwich of my own making, and I did get some blinds up on the side door of the house, so the day is not totally wasted. I have to do a ton of laundry before I can even start packing for the wedding, and well, I don't know really when I'm going to do that. Probably this evening, when I again, can't sleep. Oh, and the main reason I'm heading out to work today, I have another PT appointment tomorrow that I have to go to in the morning, so I'll miss part of the day anyway. Good times, really good times.

Anyway, I'm going to stop the complaining now, and hit the road. I hope that my iPod doesn't die on me again today. I ran out of battery juice yesterday, and that wasn't a pretty scene right there. The upside, is that, I can get a shit ton of work done when there is nobody there bothering me, the phone isn't ringing, and the boss isn't hovering (yes, he's a hoverer for sure). Time to hit the road, more later about this debacle that I call work.

The return...

OK, this is it. Yeah, this weekend I throw the old hat back into the racing ring. Yes, I'm going to pay some money, pin a number on my old jersey, and ride a race this weekend in Chapel Hill. This will be the first one since July of 2005. I actually feel sort of ready for it. I'm sure that those feelings will quickly be dashed once the actual racing starts and all, but I won't let that sway me. If it comes down to getting dropped off the back of the group racing around the Meadowmont neighborhood, so be it. I'll ride over to the car, re-fill some bottles, and have a nice ride home. I ain't gonna worry about it for the most part. Not the first race back. Worrying about that would just be plain old silly. Now, if I had been racing for a few months, and had some good results so far in the early season of 2007, I would worry. Not so much with this one. With this race, there are a couple of good sized hills out there on the course, but they are power hills. Meaning, you come into hill 1 with about 30 MPH of speed, and can move about halfway up said hill on pure momentum itself. Hill 2, well, you come into that one with a good head of steam as well, and then have to power through the middle and top of that bad boy, and then it's all downhill until turn 1. Flats after turn one, a technical turn 2, and then back up the hills again. Actually, I've never had a bad race on that course, even when racing the Pro-Am stuff a couple of years ago. So, we'll see what shakes loose. Even though bike racing is about winning, this time out, I'm thinking about finishing, and being happy with that for starters. Talking about old glory days, I almost won this race twice before, and cracked on the 2nd hill coming into the finish both times, but hey, I tried. Luckily for me, when I went into USA Cycling to renew the race license, for some reason, my upgrade never got plugged into the system, so they still had me as a category 3, so I won't have to go and beg Chips for a downgrade. According to USA Cycling, and my shiny new license, I'm already there. And just think, next season, I can get out there and race 35+. Now if we could only get Darden out there racing again.

The really bad thing about all of this riding that I've been doing lately though, is that I've developed bike lust again. Yes, it's true. I pine for the days of new carbon fiber and shiny titanium bits and pieces. Last year, when I wasn't riding, I was thinking that my old bike was a plenty fine machine. As I ride more this year, I look around and see lots of other bikes that I now want. Now (if the fiancé is reading this, don't kill me), if I didn't have to pay for a wedding this year, I'm pretty sure that I would have a new ride already. Alas, I do have to pay for a wedding, and that's really more important than a new bike at this point in time. I did finally get some new componentry though for the old frame. Yes, I've made the upgrade to 10 speed finally. A little Shimano Dura-Ace is going on there soon enough. Just have to find the time to take the old stuff off, and slap the new stuff on. It's not so much the installation of the parts, as it is the stringing of new cables and such. It's just a little time consuming is all. And I don't think that this is something I want to do say, Saturday afternoon, being that I'm racing on Sunday. But yeah, bike lust. I've got it bad. If there are those of you out there who want to get me something for my wedding though, a new Giant TCR Advanced would be nice (100mm stem please with 44cm center to center bars). Just in case. Or my Birthday is coming up. That would be a keen Birthday present. Now, I'm not going to hold my breath, but maybe if say, 30 or 40 of you pool your funds together, you could get it for me. Wait, then again, I don't believe that 30 or 40 people actually read my diatribes on here, so scratch that. Maybe the 4 or 5 of you that read this could pool your money together, but that might be cost prohibitive for you, but I'm worth it.

Work? WTF???

It has been almost 3 weeks since it was the last time that I set foot into work, and I'm better off for it. I took off from work on the 15th of December through some fancy footwork with my vacation schedule, and by sorting of fibbing to my boss a little bit. I didn't actually have 10 days left of vacation, but the days that I did have left, added into the days that I had from working those 90 hour weeks from July through October finally caught up with me. Leave work on 15-December-2006, and return on 2-January-2007. That's a good break right there, and frankly, one that I needed. The burnout factor on me was approaching scorched Earth policy (ala Sherman in the Civil War). The downside to being out for so long? Going back after being gone for that long. For example, I get to work today, log into the work e-mail, and what doth my eyes behold? 375 new and unread e-mails. Yeah, I said it, 375. I spent most of the morning getting over sticker shock, and then triaging the e-mail inbox. Here is the order that I went in. First, delete all work e-mail that didn't appear too important. You know, company wide notices, safety training schedule, network down notices, power is out notices, daily customer scorecards, and things like that. After I got through that stuff, I was left with about 365 e-mails. Next on the list, read all personal e-mail. Meaning, stuff from friends and family, and reply to that stuff appropriately. Yes, I know, it's work and I should be working on that, but go back a few sentences and read again that I have been out since the 15th of December, and I'm not really in a great mood to be working. I've got to ease back into this mess.

Now with personal e-mail out of the way, I can start going through the work e-mails and prioritizing things there. Let's see. Toyota Japan, nothing but issues there, we'll save that for tomorrow. In-house sweatshirt distribution... Why didn't I delete that one in the first round? To the trash bin with you my friend. Let's see what else here? Hmm, some e-mails I can write one word answers to (maybe up to 3 word answers as well), yes, let's hit those ones up first. The answers I wrote to these e-mails were as follows:

1. Yes.
2. No.
3. Yes (again).
4. Maybe.
5. Crap.
6. You're joking?
7. Trash those.
8. Scrap it.
9. I hate SDS (SDS is a sister company of ours that is constantly screwing us).
10. HAHAHAHA!

Use your imagination, and think about me going through about 50 e-mails with answers like you see above in 1-10. Like I said before, got to triage everything, and work as fast as possible here. Lunchtime was approaching.

I did get to walk around the production floor a bunch this morning, re-connecting with some of the people that I work with, you know, the more "blue collar" folks who I really do enjoy being around. Most of the folks that work up front with me, well, I could take or leave them (leave most of them), but for the most part, the folks on my lines out there on the production floor I admire a lot, and enjoy a lot.

I do wish that I could take another few weeks off from work, but alas, now, I'm looking down the barrel of almost 11 months with little or no vacation time, but this will be OK, because then I get to get married in December in St. Croix, and take a couple of weeks off there, go back to work for a week, and have another week off at the end of December 2007. I just have to keep moving towards that day with that in mind. Focus on the wedding, focus on the wedding.

I did find out something interesting about my wedding today though. It turns out that the wedding coordinator, named Misty Hyman (no porn star jokes please) is indeed an Olympic Gold Medalist. Yes, it's true. She won the 200m butterfly swimming event at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, which is pretty impressive I must say. And, a friend of mine that moved down to St. Croix lives right next door to her, and is trying to work out some deals for myself and the fiancee for when we do roll on down there for the wedding and all. It's good to have an "in" on the inside so to speak. So yeah, Misty, she went into her event as the complete underdog, she wasn't supposed to win at all. An Australian was supposed to be the end all be all in that event, but alas, the good old US of A took down Australia in that meet, and at that time. Check out this story about her win. Yeah, that's our wedding coordinator/planner, it's pretty sweet.

Anyway, it'll be back to work tomorrow to fit the remaining horde of e-mail remaining in my inbox. I can hardly wait, maybe I'll go back there this evening? Nah, on second thought, probably not.