Three Days In One

So, I've been a little behind - of sorts, by not actually saying anything these past few days.

Simply put, Wednesday I had a reoccurrence of the overall cold / cough irritation that meant I was off from work being sick. Feeling better on Thursday, I was in work once more, and that evening after work I was at the pub with people from work. I think there was a reason - someone may be leaving at some point soon - but I wasn't really sure.

Today I had a meeting in the morning at a different location, and this afternoon is my time off in lieu from last Friday's release. Hence why I am typing this from the comfort of my home midway through the afternoon instead of being at work!

This weekend I must focus on ensuring all the details Chrissi needs for her visa application by way of supporting documentation, and ensure that this is all duly forwarded to her by way of post so that she can use it. Besides that, I have a backlog of ironing and other typical tasks to procrastinate on!

Illness Paradox

Today the persistent cold that has been dogging me for a few days - and that I thought I had beaten at the end of last week - sprung up once more. I spent a large part of the day blowing my nose and grumbling to myself under my breath.

The paradox refers to whether it's right to go into work in these circumstances. As I'm ill, being far less productive and probably infecting everyone else around me, it makes sense not to go in - recover for a day, and go in well and ready the next day. However, if you do that with the 'excuse' of a cold - then it doesn't sound too convincing.

You have to go in for a day - and then having proved how unproductive you are at work and how liable you are to infect everyone, you're then able to be off ill the next day once you're better once you've infected everyone and it's too late!

Effort

Maybe it's football that's the catalyst. When I come back from football, I end up eating, showering, coming onto the computer relaxed and then feeling the need to blog! Today was the first time I had played in three weeks, due to holiday and returning from holiday jetlagged. Surprisingly, it was not a terrible performance considering this - some enthusiastic running around, a few good tackles, one decent goal and a cleen sheet for my stint in goal, even if I don't think I had a shot to save. A rare high, in fact!

Weekly Tales

Far from the daily or near daily blog that this is advertised as, for the last little while it is a weekly event that is only posted on a Sunday - this being the third consecutive post in this fashion.

What has been happening inbetween, you may ask? Well, many things. I have had a busy week at work, and mostly adapted back to home life without too much interruption from jet lag. I have been awake earlier than usual and to bed a little earlier too, but that is now mostly balanced out - much better than usual too!

It's probably about time to look back and start providing more wedding details, pictures and the like. For those of you who haven't seen them on facebook, we look a little like this:



Official photos have not come back yet, although I have discovered that in America they are not familiar with the term 'photies' which is a shame. Besides photos, the other detail we are expecting to come back to us from the wedding is the actual marriage license!

Once this is in place, Chrissi can start the process of applying for a spouse visa. We have been looking into this already at least to establish just how someone goes about it, and the answer is that it seems convoluted and complex.

See you next week?

Return Summary

Well, I've not blogged for a week after a very impressive run through September and the early part of October - however, as this week I was on honeymoon I hope you can forgive this lapse.

Since the last blog I posted I have gotten married - all of which went down very successfully, without any major issues. There are pictures but not official ones yet, and in some of those I may look acceptably presentable - I'm not really sure yet! The unofficial pictures, those taken by individuals, can also be viewed here - there was this fantastic thing provided of a photo booth for people to take photos of themselves, with accessories also. Some people got a little carried away!

I'm now back on the UK having arrived back this morning and pondering the inevitable chaos this will have on my sleep schedule - as usual I didn't sleep at all on the overnight flight and have a full day to navigate without causing utter confusion to my sleep routines!

Big Morning

As final preparations go on around me, I've got a decent portion of time to myself as it takes less effort to make me quite so beautiful - or it takes so much effort that people have decided to pass on this!

Everything should pretty much be in place, which is convenient considering that we leave for the venue in about an hour. I still need to get properly dressed - having not wanted to sit in something or render myself unable to do things by being properly dressed too early. However, that is all that I can think of on my to-do list.

So we should be all good to go, I would think!

Countdown

At the moment I am reminded that it is a little under 22 hours until Chrissi and I are married. There doesn't seem to be much left to organise in this time, although I do still need to iron my shirt. That is about the sum total of everything that needs to be done for my part - to my knowledge!

Last night Carisa, who is officiating the ceremony tomorrow, kindly sent us a preview of what she will be saying. In an effort not to steal her thunder, I will keep quiet as to what is going to be said, but it suffices to say that it is awesome and very much suited to us!

Now I have to go off and coordinate family again.

Evening Blogging

This is actually the first blog I have written since being in the US that has been written so late that I've actually had to fix the time - the 8 hour time difference means that it's hard to get them in the right day quite so easily otherwise!

Today more of my family arrived - my cousin and his girlfriend, and also my aunt and uncle. This is now my entire half of the wedding guest list sorted - besides a couple who we both know who I am try to claim as mutual guests! We went down to San Diego with most of my family, and had a nice walk around on the waterfront, Seaport Village and Balboa Park. Similar to my blog on the subject four years ago, I did not meet Ron Burgundy either.

Besides the overwhelming feeling of confusion (see yesterday's "what are my family doing here with me" bemusement), the weirdest moment was on the return trip. Rachel, Chrissi and I came back to hers briefly so she could pick up some of Chrissi's older books. Rachel in Chrissi's room made absolutely no sense!

This will be ramped up tenfold when all my family are here!

Inverted Tourism

So as mentioned in yesterday's blog, my family began their arrival yesterday - Dad, Gill and Rachel flew in. This vanguard will be bolstered by reinforcements arriving tomorrow.

Overall it was a very weird experience - I was waiting with Chrissi at the airport for them to arrive, and couldn't shake the nagging feeling that it was the wrong way round. Waiting with Chrissi for others is not something we've done before! Waiting for Chrissi, or going to an airport to take a flight back home - all of this is something that I am familiar with or have been expecting.

The same was true when in the evening, after having collected them and delivered them to their hotel, we had a wander around Downtown Disney and grabbed a meal too. Having been there several times before myself, it was unusual to have my family there. I felt very much like I was the host as much as Chrissi, and not the visitor. In addition to this, I had the overall feeling that this was wrong and that I shouldn't have my family here, it didn't make any sense!

I'm sure this will continue when other family arrive tomorrow, but as that is not immediate family that should be not quite so bizarre, I would think!

Early Start

This morning I was - quite surprisingly - up at 5:15am. I was among those puzzled and a little impressed at this fact!

The reason for my early rising was that Chrissi and I went to the gym for an early morning swim. By getting there at 5:30am, we would be back by 6:30am and then able to shower, be ready for the day before the showers become claimed by everyone else in the family!

Today my family start to arrive, so in six-seven hours we'll be headed to the airport to pick up Dad, Gill and Rachel. Their arrival is going to fit nicely into the middle of the rush hour by the time they are out, so that should also neatly tidy up any necessary plans for this evening too!

Organisation and Coordination

Besides spending most of yesterday laughing with much amusement at the confused reaction that Californians have to rain, I've been doing a lot of coordination. But first the rain thing - it was barely spitting, if that, and wet enough for the ground to be a little wet too. Later in the day there was some proper rain. The amount that people went on, you'd think it had been a week-long torrential deluge. I think this says more about the California weather than anything else!

So the organising part - yesterday Chrissi and I had to go down and officially get our marriage license, which was done with a minimum of fuss. This was the only real uncertainty in the whole process, so to have it done without any issues - just a confirmation of IDs and affirmation that the details were correct - was pleasing!

Besides this I have been mostly trying to help coordinate my family, who start to arrive tomorrow but others also arrive later in the week. This involves who is landing where and when, who will be meeting them and other such details. So far it all seems rather straightforward, which is hopeful!

Quintuple Century

I'm going to detour away from my pre-marriage account to instead share the surprising and borderline impressive fact that this blog marks my 500th post!

This is both utterly surprising and a little bit impressive. I would have been very surprised that my idle hobby started at the tail end of 2005 would still be being posted nearly five years later, let alone that I would have accumulated half a millenium of posts. The odd one has even been worth reading.

A Day Late

Well, I am about a day late in posting this as I have now been in America for approximately 24 hours as I post this. I would have said something yesterday but for the fact that I spent most of the day either doing nothing or sleeping! In case anyone only checks my status from my blogs, I thought it only fair to post that I am indeed alive and well and landed safely.

Eventually I went to sleep at 7pm, woke up at 1am and went back to sleep again not long after for another 6 hours or so. It's not too surprising that I was in need of sleep as I had been up since 6am UK time - or 10pm the night before California time! Add to that only about two hours of sleep (drinking diet cokes takes its toll once more) and I was a little tired by the end of the day!

Since then I've been trying to coordinate anything necessary for this week, which is very little so instead I've been trying to just find out exactly when each part of my family flies in, and work out what happens then.

In an amusing aside, I was listening to the radio on the plane on the way over, and in classic film-style cliche, the song playing as we came into land was Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA. This is so tragically set up it feels like it came straight out of a film. I only hope that the rock station has its playlist organised so that when I land back in the UK in a fortnight's time, it's then playing The Clash's London Calling to keep the cliche balance.

Night Before

So while it is technically the early morning of October 2nd, it is still in my mind the late evening of October 1st, which means that it is tomorrow and not today that I fly out to America. I suppose this makes this the last night in the UK as an unmarried man, but I hadn't really thought of that until later in the blog and then came back up to the top to add this in.

My flight is in a little over nine and a half hours time, which means that it is a mere six hours before I need to be up again - it's currently just after half midnight. I completed all my packing yesterday, and in the morning I will just need to collect my toiletries, standard pocket items, get showered and dressed and head to the airport.

While it is possible that I may randomly find the time to post in the morning, perhaps from the airport, it's likely my next blog will be from the United States. I'll talk to you all then.