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.