Wedding Bells, Come and Gone

Yes, ladies and gentlemen! Believe your eyes! (I wouldn't trust your ears, though, because hearing all the things my lovely wife talks about, all kinds of things can go wrong with those). The wedding and honeymoon are now over, the major craziness has passed, and I can once again post to this site. For what it's worth, I sincerely apologize for dropping the posts during the pre-wedding days, but doing so (along with numerous other things) really gave us the time to plan things well and relatively stress-free. And that, my friends, was the greatest gift we could have asked for.

So where do I begin? An awful lot has happened in the last two months, but the first big accomplishment was one from work: my project team and I won the 2004 Discovery Award! This is the largest team award given at UG each year, and a huge honor (not to mention financial windfall!). We received the award on February 10 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and it was probably the greatest moment of my career thus far. I also had the privilege of working with what felt like the world's greatest teammates, which made everything more fun. :)

Moving right along, and some of you may not know this (hehe), Kelly and I got married two Saturdays ago! We absolutely had the time of our lives at the wedding and reception. I can't thank all of you enough for being a part of it and making the day so terrific for us. We had 105 out of 105 people attend the reception (as tied in to the RSVP's), which was astounding! We danced, laughed, ate, posed, drank, danced some more, and finally drove off to the cheers of everyone...suffice it to say that we enjoyed everything. We truly love you all.

From there it was a brief stay at the Doubletree Hotel in Durham, and then an international flight to Jamaica! The experience was definitely one that I will never forget. After arriving at the airport and being herded through fourteen different Customs lines (and Kelly picked the slowest one three straight times...hehe), we finally made it out into the 85 degree sunshine and waited for a shuttle bus to take us to the Sandals resort. When it arrived, it had seats with clear plastic covers and just about the world's happiest guy driving it...he took us through an hour and fifteen minutes of the Jamaican countryside, blowing his horn all the way (apparently it's a friendly thing in Jamaica--are you listening, Manhattan?). The roads are very thin, with no dividing lines, and everyone drives down the middle until veering to the side just before hitting oncoming traffic. It wasn't a boring drive.

The resort itself was beautiful when we arrived. It had only opened a month earlier, however, so due to some growing pains everything had not been finished yet. This was a little disheartening until they told us that everyone was receiving three free nights at any Sandals through 2006, and like the true sell-outs we are there was only happiness after that! I will be posting pictures very soon, but we had a very good time just relaxing, enjoying the beach, rubbing coconut oils on local pygmies, and playing shuffleboard at dusk.

Oh, wait...the pygmies thing was another trip. I'm sorry.

At any rate, Kelly and I ate delicious food and lounged by the pool for a whole week, enjoying our new married life. We laughed at the 60-year-old men getting hammered at 11:00 a.m. by the French pool. We watched American Idol to give us a sense of home. I wore the same collared shirt to dinner five times because they changed the dress code a week before we came without telling us. We sat amongst the scores of pampered white people, being doted on by an all-black staff (in truth, this bothered me quite a bit, but at least the jobs there are really good ones for local folks). I got sunburned quite a bit after spending an entire day in the shade by the pool. I ate some bad fish and didn't feel so well for 48 hours...damn you, Grey Snapper! I got the most, well, dizzy I've ever been in my life off of unlimited glasses of good chardonnay. Kelly was hit on several times by one of the local workers at the pool. She also got asked if she was Russian (had to be the short haircut). I bought Pepto Bismol at the gift shop for $8.00. We knocked each other over repeatedly on an aqua trampoline (set about 50 feet out in the ocean). We ate at seven different restaurants. We ran out of clean clothes and recycled them with great joy. We walked forever to get one from end of the place to the other (see site map). Overall, it was definitely a fun trip. :)

So now it's back home, and married life is here! We still have so many things to get through, such as photos, gifts, thank you notes, cleaning up the apartment, exercising, a ton of school work for Kelly (the girl is crazy, I tell you), and all sorts of things. It's good to be back, though.

Well, I just want to finish this post by reiterating my most heartfelt thanks to everyone that participated in the wedding and everything that surrounded it...we are so grateful for all of it. I also promise to resume posting to this site from now on, and hope to provide you with some entertaining reading once in a while!

I may miss some S's and E's on the keyboard when typing, however, as this wedding ring is really weighing things down. Some day, far down the road, I may actually get used to it.