I tried to get a blog post written here a few days ago, but I had to restart my computer, and while I though I had saved the draft post I had written, it appears to have disappeared. Whoops! So here’s a quick update of what’s transpired in the past little while.

• Our stuff arrived! Earlier this week, a truck pulled up at our place and delivered a pile of boxes that we had shipped from Canada. Some things we were missing a lot were our box of board games, the kitchen knives we got as wedding presents, and my computer. We haven’t really gotten unpacked yet, but that should happen in the next few weeks.
• Last Saturday, we attended an end-of-the-world themed party. Aaron and Christine threw a really great party at their place. The original theme was based on the LHC warming up to create mini black holes, but it seems it was mistimed for that purpose as the LHC ran into trouble last week delaying the end of the world.
• Darse and Xan are moving, so Diane and I have been helping them a bit with the move. Truth be told, Diane’s been much more helpful than I. All I did was help Darse with a couple of large heavy items.
• Work has been progressing well. I’m slowly getting more comfortable with parts of the codebase, although it’s going to take awhile to get fully immersed. It’s been fun so far, and quite a challenge, but I feel it’s been pretty rewarding and I’m pretty excited about a couple of the coming projects I’ve got to work on.
• The weather here has been gorgeous the past few days. Lots of clear sky and sunshine. It’s starting to cool off at nights though — down to 5 degrees celcius or so at nights.

That’s all I can think of for now. It feels like we’ve been busier than that.

I hope everyone back home is doing well!

Morgan

That’s right, Diane and I had a safe, if slightly stressful, trip over here. Let me tell you the story of our day(s).

The goaway party was fantastic. Despite the fact that I didn’t get the word out very well (sorry to the people who I didn’t let know about it … I really was too distracted to make sure everyone knew about it), we had more than 60 people show up for it. I’m sure glad the weather held out so that we had enough room for people to hang out. Anyways, it was great fun, and I hope everyone had a good time. I sure did!

After the go-away party, Diane and I returned to the Condo to get ourselves in a better packed state. We got there at about 1:45am, and packed until well after 3:30am before falling into bed exhausted — but we were up again early the next morning to continue packing and cleaning up our place. We then went out to Dim Sum with our parents which was a nice way to spend our last brunch in Edmonton. After that, we went back to the Condo and met up with Megan. The four of us — Megan, Mom, Diane, and I spent a couple hours working on making the condo cleaner and tying up the loose ends. We, and in particular my mom and Megan worked a miracle of a job in there — with the condo almost back in a liveable state. Which is good since Megan will want to live there soon enough.

We then trekked out to get my dad and we got a ride out to the airport where we bid farewell to my parents and Megan there. And we were off on our grand adventure!

After waiting for an hour or so, we boarded our Air Canada 767. It was a pretty nice aircraft, and we were quickly glad to find out that we had the first row of economy class seats — which meant we had tons of leg room! Sweeeet! Not only that, the airplane must’ve been newer than the last two air canada flights we’d taken between Edmonton and London because each seat had its own tv screen. We happily were able to watch our choice of several movies. I love those things.

The flight itself was pretty standard. They fed us, I watched the movies Fool’s Gold and Flawless, and also managed to get 2 hours of sleep or so! That’s like a record for me on these long haul flights!

We arrived in Dublin, and found out that we had to go through UK customs to get our bags and then take an outside route to terminal 1 to get on our aer lingus flight. Turns out this is because air canada and aer lingus don’t have a baggage agreement. Boourns. So our layover time quickly became panic time when we had to wait for our luggage, run to terminal 1, check our luggage, and then run to the boarding gate. Thankfully, the aer lingus people graciously let us check our bags (despite being overweight) and told us to run to the gate. So we did, and got there only to find out the plane was just in its initial boarding call. Whew! So I was pretty tired and stressed out, but we got on the plane and made it to Dublin.

Dublin was beautiful today. It was +21 degrees celcius, and wonderfully sunny. From the airport, we caught a shuttle bus called aircoach for €7 each that took us within a couple blocks of our temporary apartments. When we arrived, we were just in time to get our keys before the office closed at 5:00pm. Whew! Not only that, but Darse pulled up in his car before we even had a chance to go up and see our place! So him and Xan helped us find our apartment suite and got us all setup there. We caught up for a bit and then went out to see Dundrum Mall which is a huge shopping mall here in Dublin. We had dinner at a grill type restaurant — Diane and I were too tired to really make a strong decision on a restaurant so we kinda floated until we found a place that looked decent.

After dinner we wandered a bit more, but found that most places had closed up shop by 8:00 on a Sunday. Oh well, Diane and I will have more than enough time to explore the immediate vicinity shops and services.

So now we’re back to our place, and Diane has already gone to bed. She didn’t get as much sleep as me on the plane, so she was pretty tired. I’m going to follow suit pretty quickly here. I hope that someday I’ll get around to posting pictures, but no promises on it being anytime real soon. We’ll have to see.

Morgan

Lots of stuff to do, but I will post blog entries covering the remainder of our trip in the next few days. I also hope to getting around to posting pictures from the wedding and from our trip, but that might have to wait until after we’re in Ireland. There’s an awful lot of stuff to do before we leave next Saturday!

Morgan

– note: this post was written while aboard the cruise ship on the 17th of July and posted on the 19th of July after arriving back –

Well, Diane and I are now waiting for debarkation from the ship. It’s awfully early — 7:30 in the morning, and we’ve been up since 6 so that we could have breakfast. I don’t have much else to do, so I figured I’d get caught up with the blog posting.

I left off before the second musical show called “Spin”. This time around, the show was themed around a wheel with different destinations on it. After each song, they spun the wheel to get a new destination and they’d do a song around that theme. There was quite a few places they did, most of which were in the United States. We arrived a bit late, but caught songs themed around Texas, New York, New Orleans, Puerto Rico and a few others that I can’t remember. It was pretty fun actually.

After the show, we headed off to dinner. By this point we’d started to get to know our dinner partners John and Dawnyelle. Our dinner conversation was pretty fun, and we had a pretty good time. There was escargo on the menu, which is something I’ve never tried. John mentioned that they were there, and then it became something we had to try. So the four of us split an order of escargo. It was sure buttery and garlicy … and you really couldn’t taste what the snail tasted like. It kind of had a texture similar to calimari, which I suppose makes sense. So, one thing off the list of things to try! For a main course, both Diane and I had some battered fish and shrimp. It was fairly tasty, although some of our other dinners were better.

After dinner, rather than going to see the “R-rated” hypnosis show, we decided to just head to bed. The next day would be our Ensenada excursion, so we didn’t want to stay up too late for a show that maybe wasn’t that exciting. I imagine if he standup guy was back, we might’ve stayed up for him.

We slept in a little more than we had when we hit Cabo, but that’s partly because our excursion didn’t leave until 10:45. This time, we went to have breakfast at Tiffany’s (that’s what the buffet restaurant is called) and then got off the ship well in advance of our tour. It was a nice day though, so we wandered around the little market, and sat in the shade for a little while before heading off on our tour.

The tour we had signed up for was a kayaking trip — the first leg of which was a one hour bus ride to the site. The main tourist attraction in Ensenada is a natural blowhole called El Bufadora. This formation is a place where air pressure builds up in a natural pocket and every few seconds the blowhole sprays water up high into the air. Our kayaking would bring us within a few metres away fromwhere the water exits.

The bus ride was fairly nice. Our tour guide was very excited and talked almost all the way there. She told us about the city of Ensenada, about the state we were in, and about Mexico. She gave us shopping and bargaining advice. She did a pretty good job, and her English was really quite good so it was pretty informative.

After getting off the bus, we got a quick lesson in kayaking from a friendly guy named Carlos. From there, we walked a little ways down to the beach where a bunch of two-man kayaks were sitting. One by one, the kayak tour guides pushed each boat into the water where we paddled out a little ways. The water was beautifully clear, so we could see quite a ways down. The biggest feature in the water was by far the large kelp forests — our kayaking took us through several patches of the stuff. It’s pretty crazy how large these plants must be. We couldn’t see the bottom of the ocean anywhere, but the kelp grows on the bottom and extends their branches to the top of the water and they extend across the water for quite a ways. A pretty incredible sight.

On the way out to the blowhole we spotted several dolphins. It’s pretty cool to see them swimming along not really all that far away. The trip to the blowhole was pretty short, but we sat in the water for awhile to watch it. I risked bringing my little camera along so I took it out and took several photos and videos of the blowhole in action. It was pretty neat to see it from our vantage point, and I’m pretty sure that’s the best way to see it. The vantage point from land really wasn’t nearly as good since you don’t get to see the bottom of the spray.

After the tour guides took anyone who wanted to closer to the blowhole, we started paddling back to the beach. On the way back, Diane and I spotted a seal! It was awfully cute. On our way back, we’d see it several times coming up for air, but we never managed to get a photo of it. We got surprisingly close to it, actually — and every time he came up we paddled a little closer. I wonder if it thought we were stalking it.

The tour guides helped us get up on the beach from our kayaks and we walked back to the bus to wash off the sand and dry off a bit. The bus tour guide was very excited to take us to the market leading towards the blowhole — so even though it wasn’t officially part of our tour, we got an extra hour to wander through the market. It was quite interesting … the people there were quite eager to sell us stuff. At times they were quite pushy. In preparation for our kayaking, Diane and I forgot to pack some money with us, so we actually couldn’t buy anything. It was kind of amusing being hassled into someone’s store to look at their stained glass, but not having money to purchase anything. Of course, the guy there didn’t know that … but we did. Some of the stuff on sale was pretty odd. There were several drug stores down the stretch selling all kinds of spam-subject drugs like viagra and cialis. One guy went so far as to touch my arm and say something along the lines of “you could go all-night baby”. I was a little creeped out to say the least. Makes a good story though.

We wandered through the market for a little ways, taking some free samples of churros, and homemade bread. It helped us last until we got back to the ship. We got back to the bus well before our 3:00 meetup time, and waited around for the rest of our tour people to come back from the market. There was a group of four that were late, and we came very close to leaving them behind but thankfully they got back just in time. The bus ride back was kind of relaxing and I had a very quick nap.

Arriving back at the ship, we cleaned up and then wandered around the ship for a bit. There was supposed to be ball room dance music playing in one of the lounges, but when we showed up there was nobody there. I guess nobody showed up, so they stopped (or never started?). So we hung around for a little bit. Diane had a nap, before we went off to dinner. Our last dinner with John and Dawnyelle was fun. We exchanged pictures and email addresses. Maybe they’ll come visit us in Ireland some day. I had veal parmigiani for dinner, and Diane had the salmon. Both were pretty tasty. We chatted for awhile after dinner and then wandered back to our room where we stayed for a little while before the 10:30 show that evening. The neat thing about the last show was they had been doing auditions at karaoke for some well known artists like Garth Brooks, Brittany Spears, Madonna, Elton John, Elvis, Ricky Martin, etc. The best ones were picked and they put on a show where these people got to get up on stage dressed up like the artists they were impersonating. It was actually pretty fun. The guy who did Garth Brooks sounded almost exactly like him which was pretty awesome. The rest of them ranged in quality a bit, and some definately looked a bit nervous which is totally understandable. It was a neat idea that worked pretty well I think.

After the show was over, Diane and I went off to collapse. In order to get up in time for breakfast, we had to get up pretty early so we set an early wakeup call at 6am. It came too fast, but both of us woke up pretty quickly. We showered, packed ourselves up, and moved out of our room in pretty short order and made it to breakfast a little before 7:00. Breakfast was rather nice — we went for the dining room where we got full service. It didn’t take too long for us to get our croissants, eggs benedict, fruit juice, and coffee. It was pretty tasty, but by the time we were finished and sat around for a bit, it was only 7:45.

So now we’re sitting in one of the lounges waiting for our debarkation number to be called. They’ve gone through numbers 1-9 so far, and we’re number 16. Once we get called we can head off the ship and head to the airport where we’ll wait until 3:20 to leave San Diego. It’s gonna be a bit of a long day methinks. Still, it’s a bit hard to believe our honeymoon is almost over. In some ways it’d be nice to stick around a bit longer, but it’ll be nice to be back home too.

Morgan

– note: this post was written while aboard the cruise ship on the 13th of July and posted on the 19th of July after arriving back –

Diane and I are on a cruise ship waiting for the captain’s reception and formal dinner. This is the 2nd night of our honeymoon cruise, and I’ve disconnected myself from the interwebs for the duration of the trip. While internet is available, I don’t really like paying the premium for it at this point so I’ll just check email when I get home.

So yesterday was our first cruise day. We hung out in our hotel room in the morning for a little while and had breakfast before checking out right before noon and wandering over to the dock where the Elation was sitting there waiting to be boarded. After a surprisingly smooth check-in process, we boarded the ship and the first thing we did was pursue food. Our room wasn’t going to be ready for another 45 minutes or so, so we needed to pass some time which we did by finding a table in Tiffany’s restaurant.

There was a lot of people there for lunch, so we just kind of hung out and took food from the short lineup areas which included a fruit and salad bar and the 24 hour soft ice cream bar. That was pretty fun. After relaxing a bit, we went down to check out our cozy little room. It’s nothing particularly special, but it’s certainly comfortable. There’s even a fake window with curtains to make it look like a hotel room (I’m not sure it’s really all that necessary).

After stowing our carry on luggage in our room, we wandered out to explore the ship a little. This is our first cruise so we needed to check out how the ship was organized and what it had to offer. I don’t know how the Elation compares to other ships, but it has a pretty wide array of rooms and conveniences. The cabins are down low, with our cabin on the Upper Deck (3rd floor from the bottom of the passenger cabins, with one above ours). On the Empress Deck, there’s a bar in the middle in a wide open room where you can see all the floors higher than it. A couple floors up is the promenade deck which is the only floor where you can walk from one length of the ship to the other without going through cabin areas. Most of the action goes on either on the promenade deck or up or down one floor. The restaurants are one floor below on the Atlantic deck, and the pool and buffet (with the 24 hour pizza and ice cream bar) one floor up on the Lido deck.

We found out most of the information by joining a whirlwind tour starting at 2:45. After the tour, we had a few moments before joining the people for the mandatory safety drill. That was a whole lot of boring-ness, but I imagine it’s a good idea so people know what to do if something goes wrong. Not that that’s high on the expectation list.

We were supposed to leave at 4:00, but we didn’t quite get going right away. Eventually though, we did set off and Diane and I watched the depart on the top deck at the rear of the ship with a good view of the rock/blues band that played for us while we set off. We watched the ship negotiate the bay outside San Diego and after a little while we were cruising down the west coast.

After awhile we returned to our room to get unpacked and do a bit of laundry so we could make it through the remaining days with enough clean clothes. We have the late dinner session at 8:15, so there was lots of time to fit in laundry and we basically relaxed for awhile while waiting for the clothes to be ready.

We headed up for dinner a little early and found our assigned table. There was a nice couple already seated when we got in so we chatted a bit. Another couple came by not too much later and they basically took over the conversation. Actually, it was the woman who took over the conversation. She chatted, loudly, throughout just about the entire dinner which wasn’t all that pleasant. My poor right ear :(.

Dinner was actually pretty good. I got Fried shrimp for an appetizer and pan-seared fish (Starts with a T, white fish) for my main course. It was quite tasty! Diane got portobello mushroom for an appetizer and steak for her main course. The steak was okay, but it was no Alberta beef. Dessert was also pretty good. Diane got some cheesecake, and I got some sort of black forest concoction. Both were pretty good, although I think Diane won with the better dessert this go around.

Immediately after dinner there was a welcome aboard show, so we went there after a quick stop at the Piano Bar. In that room there literally is a piano bar – a bar with a bunch of keys on it. Diane and I both enjoyed that a lot.

The welcome show was interesting. There was some rather high energy dancing, and singing, and then a comedian came on. He wasn’t too shabby — he got a few laughs out of us, though we’ve seen better. Tonight he’s going to do an R-rated show … we’ll see how that goes.

After the welcome show, we came back to our cabin to collapse and get a bit of rest before the next full day at sea.

This morning we woke up and went to have a little bit of breakfast from the buffet. I started out with a slice of pizza, and then a bowl of fruit from the buffet. Next, we consulted our list of stuff to do and ended up going to the shore excursion talk. We got some tips on what to expect on the excursions and some descriptions of some of the excursions. We’d already chosen ours, so we just went to listen and see if there was any good advice for us to check out.

After that we ended up heading to the dining room for lunch. I didn’t realize that we’d have a formal dining option for lunch, but it turns out there was, and I’m glad we checked that out. It was rather good! I had some more pan seared fish (a different one this time), with some california rolls for an appetizer and creme caramel for dessert. Mmm, tasty. Although the california rolls were strangely sweet.

Unfortunately, lunch made us miss the Bar Mixology session. Whoops. But we did go on to a wine tasting seminar which was rather cool. We tried 5 different types of wines. Two whites, a white zinfandel, and two reds. I learned a little bit, but still have a lot to learn about wine.

We hung out for a bit before heading to high tea back at the piano bar. We got some tea and several little tea snacks. Lots of little tasty things including cucumber sandwiches, smoked salmon on toast, and a bunch of sweets. After tea, we went up and played some win, lose, or draw — pretty much pictionary. Our team won. Both Diane and I contributed a bunch to our cause by stealing a point from the other team with “Jockey”, and drawing birdhouse (me), walking the dog (diane), and sandcastles (also diane). That was pretty fun.

So now it’s just about time for the captain’s reception and I need to change into my formal clothes (just a nice shirt and pants). It’s been a fun couple days and we’re both excited to hit Cabo San Lucas in the morning to do our zipline and rapelling session. It should be lots of fun!

Morgan

Alright, so we’re settled into a hotel in San Diego so I figure I’ll get myself caught up on our latest couple of days.

After sleeping in, Diane and I joined the rest of the group for the buffet for a second straight day (note to self … gotta eat a bit healthier here!). We ate our fill and then formulated a plan for the day. There was a few things on our list of things to go do, so we perused it and ended up heading to the south end of the strip to check out some of the hotels down there. We stopped at New York, New York to ride the rollercoaster which was a lot of fun. Not only did it have a loop in it, it had a weird twist upside down and turn which was something I haven’t experienced. It was pretty wild.

After getting off the ride, we wandered down towards Mandalay Bay having heard about an aquarium there. On the way there we walked through Excalibur (medieval themed casino — a big castle), Luxor (a big pyramid and egyptian themed casino), and then on to Mandalay Bay. There was indeed an aquarium, but it cost a bit more than most of us wanted to pay. Kevin and Johnny went in though and the rest of us headed back to the hotel to look into show tickets for that night.

With our flamingo hotel rooms we got 2 for 1 show ticket coupons. Of the shows we were allowed to use the coupon for, the improv one looked the most appealing so we went to go see that. It was a fun show, although for the first bit I was underwhelmed by the performances. Then a third guy came on and totally took off with it. He did a real good job playing off the audience and made the show worth it. I was glad about that since we payed like $10 for our drinks. Maybe I should’ve asked how much the drinks were there before I ordered one.

After the show we wandered back for some $1 margaritas at the casino next to the flamingo. Those were surprisingly good! After that, the other guys were planning on heading out to some nightclubs, but Diane and I decided to head to bed since we needed to get up early to catch our plane the next day.

The next morning we got up at 6:00, packed ourselves up and headed to the airport. We got a bit of a scare when we got there to check in. The guy told us we’d better run for it or we might not make our plane. We had less than 45 minutes to departure, but we didn’t have any trouble getting to the plane on time to board.

We had a really silly flight to San Diego through Salt Lake City. That’s right. You can draw a line from Salt Lake City through Vegas to San Diego! So we had two short flights to get to San Diego, but it wasn’t too bad. We touched down into San Diego around noon. My first impression of San Diego? Blessedly cool! After 40+ degree heat in Vegas, we descended into a beautifully cool 24 degrees or so.

We caught a cab to our hotel which was a short cab ride from the airport. After settling in, we wandered down the bay to check out some of the places we could see. There was a fair amount of touristy things to see down there and the area is really quite pretty. So we wandered around for awhile, had some dinner and then went back to our hotel to crash since we were rather tired.

So I’m about to head for bed, but I wanted to get caught up here so I could post one post about the zoo tomorrow when we get back, and then hop on the cruise ship on Saturday!

Morgan

Yesterday morning we got up having got a bit more sleep. After stumbling out of bed and getting ready we wandered down to the expo hall to get things setup. Everything got going basically without a hitch and the matches got under way basically on schedule.

Polaris had some tough luck this match. To my eye, it looked a lot like the player downstairs was very aggressive and he won a lot of money in his huge upswing. On the other side of the cards, the human played more defensively and managed to lose less than Polaris in that downswing. The frustrating thing about that is that because the styles differ so much, there is just more noise. By more noise I mean more luck. If the cards had been reversed so that the lucky cards were upstairs and the unlucky cards were downstairs, Polaris could very well have won the match!

So our team was a bit disheartened at the loss. It means we’re 1-2-1 going into the last two matches. If we can get a win today we’d still have a shot in the last match to win the whole thing. I truly hope we don’t get unlucky.

After the session was over I wandered the expo a bit and also went off to check out the world series of poker (wsop) which is being played in Vegas while we are here. There is a *huge* room full of poker tables, and it was pretty incredible to me what it’s like. There’s a huge number of people playing poker, or watching from the side. You wouldn’t think about poker as a loud game, but with so many tables, the roar of chips clattering together is actually quite substantial.

After checking out the feature table for a bit, Dave and I wandered back to the expo which was wrapping up right away. So we packed up and headed to dinner — back to the Rub BBQ place! I’m hoping we get a chance to try a bunch of different restaurants, but this was a good decision because it meant we didn’t have to wait in line with a huge group of people. In a few days the number of people we hang out with will drop down to a more reasonable number which will making getting into some restaurants a lot easier.

After dinner, our group split up into two groups. One group of us went off to play poker, while the other went to go check out some July 4 festivities. You’ll have to have Diane tell you about the July 4 festivities — I went to go play poker.

The tables in the Rio are a bit weird, but I think I’ll save most of the poker talk for my other blog when I get the chance. For the time being, I’ll just say that I didn’t fell all that uncomfortable, but I also feel like I got a bit lucky to be up $180 at the end of the session. It’s kind of fun though to sit around a poker table and chat with some people about what’s going on in Vegas.

Vegas is … interesting. It’s so over the top, it’s crazy. I don’t really fully understand it, but every time I’ve looked around there’s more stuff that makes me say “woah”, or “wow”. I’ll have to post about that later I guess since I’m running out of time before heading back down to the expo this morning. The only thing I really don’t like though is the smoke. Every morning I wake up with a bit of a sore throat because of the smoke I inhaled the day before. :\ I’m glad the expo floor has smoking disallowed.

I’m not sure what the plan is for tonight, but I feel like seeing a bit of Vegas. I hear we are planning on seeing a Cirque du Solei show tomorrow. I believe it’s the water one, but I’m not totally sure. We’ll see if there’s still tickets today I think.

I hope things are going well in E-town!

Morgan

It’s been an awfully long time since I wrote a blog. Diane and I have been terribly busy trying to get ourselves organized. In the three weeks since the wedding, we’ve gone to visit my grandparents in Rimbey, moved Diane’s stuff out of her old apartment, and handled all kinds of little details concerning moving to Ireland.

I’m writing this on the plane on the way to Las Vegas. My research group is taking our computer program, Polaris, down to the World Series of Poker Expo. We’re going to pit it against several top-notch poker professionals in an attempt to show how strong our program really is. The competition runs July 3-6th at the Rio hotel and casino if you just happen to be in the area ;-). If not, you can follow our progress on the match website here.

After the competition, it’s relaxing time for us. Diane and I and a few of the members of the poker research group are going to stick around in Vegas for a few days. On the 10th, Diane and I split from the rest of the group to start our honeymoon. We’re headed to San Diego from Vegas via Salt Lake City. After that silly looking flight we’ll spend a day or two there and then board our cruise ship bound for Baja Mexico.

We’re quite excited about the whole thing! It’ll be good to get a break. We’ve been putting in some pretty long days in the past few weeks between work and moving Diane’s stuff, and trying to organize what we need for Ireland. We’re quite looking forward to getting some R&R time.

Before we get on the cruise ship, I’ll try and make sure to have some relatively frequent updates to the blog. No promises, but I’m gonna try!

We just got into our room so I posted this and now I’m going to go pursue food.

Morgan

It’s been a couple days, but I’m still amazed at how generous people were with the gifts they bestowed upon us. It took us over an hour to open all the gifts and note down who gave us what. I’m really hoping we got everything right! It’s been a fairly hectic few days since the wedding, but as soon as the photographer gets us our photos, we’ll get to work on preparing thank you cards for all the gifts everyone gave us. We feel incredibly blessed, and more than a tad spoiled!

So here’s a general thank you, to be followed with a more specific thank you in the hopefully very near future!

Morgan

Yesterday came and went in a big crazy-fun blur. I’m still trying to settle myself down and let the fact that I’ve been married to the most wonderful woman I can imagine sink in. I don’t really have time at this moment to talk my way through the whole day, but before I forget them, I just want to jot down some quick highlights from the big day from my perspective, and also thank the people who volunteeered for various tasks and who all did a fantastic job.

Highlights from the weekend:

• There was a lot of people at the rehearsal dinner that Diane’s parents put on for us. It was very welcoming.
• Food at the rehearsal dinner was beef or chicken burgers, with all the fixings. Salads and beans were also available in plenty. Dessert was a full out sundae and banana split bar. I was reminded of Marble Slab’s selection.
• In the middle of the rehearsal, my Grandpa says the line where anyone who might object to the marriage say something. A couple seconds later a huge crack of thunder goes over our heads. I look up at the ceiling and say… “Oh really?”.
• Several of the groomsmen stayed over at my place the night before the wedding. It was a whole lot better to spend it with some good friends. I think I would’ve had a whole lot more trouble getting to sleep if I was on my own all night building up the next day in my head. They helped keep me calm and relaxed (as much as possible anyways).
• Waiting in the church for the Bride and her bridesmaids to arrive was pretty fun. The guys hung out in a side room and it was a little surreal to be getting so many sneaky waves as the many people I knew passed by the room’s door.
• I’m not used to being the centre of attention.
• When the warning came in that the bride was there, I had to leave the groomsmen and wait by myself in the choir room. That wait was a bit more awkward since I didn’t really have anyone to talk to.
• Kepi fell over partway through the ceremony. Many jokes were made at his expense throughout the evening, but he was really good natured about it. I had no forewarning of it happening, but people later mentioned that he had gone pretty pale.
• My Grandpa, who performed the service for us, forgot to let me kiss my bride. In my confusion, I asked a little louder than I might’ve, and the whole congregation had a chuckle. Hey, that’s what I signed up for! ;-) We got our kiss in after the signing of the register.
• Despite our note at the bottom of the bulletin asking for a moment to reflect with each other in private immediately after the service, Rebecca (one of the bridesmaids) barged in to our room. We learned later that she hadn’t seen a bulletin. Whoops! It was okay though.
• The ceremony took roughly 35-40 minutes.
• The congregation exited the church, and hung around to see us leave the church and enter the limo. That was another surreal moment – once again I’m not used to all the attention.
• I’ve never been in a limo before. It was a bit tight for 10 people. It was fun, but I probably wouldn’t sign up for it again. It was nice to be able to see all the wedding party members between photoshoot locations.
• Jason Kasumovic, our photographer, was fantastic.
• Family formal photos were taken next to the St Albert Public Library.
• The weather couldn’t be better (thank you for not raining on us!).
• Other shooting locations included the Muttart Conservatory grounds and the Royal Alberta Museum grounds.
• Lunch was picked up from the Upper Crust Cafe. Absolutely wonderful sandwhiches. Two words: cheese bread.
• Good turnout at the reception. It was good to see so many friends/family there.
• The head table was a very tight fit.
• The food was excellent.
• First course: spinach salad with feta cheese, held in place by a long cucumber slice around it all.
• Main course: salmon and roast beef. The salmon was a bit overcooked I thought, but the beef was very tender and delicious.  We heard the salmon at the buffet was pretty good though, and we hope that was the case.
• Dessert: A wonderful strawberry shortcake in several layers. Absolutely delicious.
• Speeches: Short and sweet. Some touching words from everyone.
• Note to other people planning their wedding: don’t wing the bride/groom speech. Also, I actually wanted to say that we had planned big-O(wedding) — that’s a computer science joke.
• Second note: have someone organize the details of the reception and come up with a schedule. It’s very hard to organize and not be frantic at the same time when things don’t quite go smoothly. Let someone else trustworthy handle the details and sit back and enjoy.
• First dance: Diane and I were a bit rusty with our waltzing, and we had to avoid tripping on her dress. But eventually we got going.
• Rickroll: Yup, we pulled off a rickroll. I didn’t hear many comments about it though, so I wonder if people actually liked it. Obviously a bunch of people were very confused.
• Slideshow: Absolutely wonderful job by my sister who I kind of threw the job at her at way too late notice.
• Dancing: I’m glad people got some serious dancing in. It was good that it got some use.
• DJs: Dan was absolutely fantastic at the DJ booth. Props to Ryan and Brad too for helping, and Ryan for his adventures getting the equipment there and returned.
• It was a lot of fun to visit with a lot of the guests. I’m sorry if we didn’t get a chance to talk to you before you had to leave — I’m sure there’s a lot of you that didn’t get a chance to talk to us.
• Last dance: Danced to Norah Jones, Come Away with Me. There was less than 20 people left at that point, and we helped close out the joint. Not too bad I think.

I just want to say that it was an amazing day, and this is just a sampling of what I was thinking about throughout the day. I want to also make sure to thank some of the important people who made the evening possible:

• The Parents. Thanks to both sets of parents, who took care of more details than I can imagine. They were extremely supportive of our desire to run the show our way for the most part, but they were also very helpful in making sure we had details we hadn’t thought of figured out. I don’t really want to know what all went in to making everything look so wonderful.
• My Grandparents. I am extremely fortunate to still have my wonderful grandparents around to not only see my wedding, but also play an important role. My Grandfather got a one day licence to wed us (he no longer has an active licence since he retired from ministry), and was very supportive in helping us find the right choices for the ceremony we eventually performed. My Grandmother is simply awesome :)
• The wedding party (and as a subset, both Diane’s and my siblings): They put up with our lengthy photoshoot, as well as the huge number of tasks that we put on them with little to no notice. Thank you so very much!
• Many thanks to our Ushers: Rhianne and Brendan.
• Thanks to Simone who arranged the beautiful cello quartet that played at the ceremony!
• Nolan played a couple of key roles: he videotaped the ceremony for us, and he provided the projector to play the slideshow on. Thank you very much for your help!
• A huge thank you goes to Ryan Falkenbe(rg), who endured quite a saga to get the audio equipment to the venue on time. Thankfully, his jeep didn’t lose a window! Ryan put up with a bunch of harrassment from me to get the audio equipment booked, and transported.
• Thank you to Paul Myroon who did a very good job displaying his MC talents.
• Thank you to Dan, Brad, and Ryan who were in and around the DJ booth for most of the night playing some great tunes. I understand Dan took over the show, so he deserves a great deal of the credit. But thanks to the other guys for stepping in as well!
• A big thank you the the group of people who helped setup the hall. Pam and Madeleine were two people who helped our mothers setup the hall. I sure hope I’m not missing people here, but we weren’t there to see that setup.
• Thanks to Jodie for pouring out the tea for our tea ceremony.
• Thanks to An, Jasmine and Crystal for watching the guestbook and the gift table.
• Thanks to Anita for setting up the key prank.
• Megan did a fantastic job with the slideshow too. We kind of threw it at her last minute and she did a fantastic job. She even managed to figure out a way to pace through the slides so that the end of Diane’s pictures happened at the end of the first song, and the slideshow ended right at the end of the 3rd song. She was at the laptop hitting the right arrow key to show the next slide.
• Jason, our photographer, spent 12 hours of his day following us around and posing us for some excellent shots. We’re really looking forward to seeing the results of his work!
• Our very pretty wedding cake was designed and created by Claudia Kalogirou, who brought the cake herself and arranged it and everything!
• Diane’s mom’s friend Marilyn drove up from Red Deer to help decorate and serve the rehearsal feast, Diane’s neighbour Jane-Anne made us a potato salad with radishes carved into flowers, and Diane’s Aunt Janet pitched in too despite feeling a little under the weather.
• And a very big thankyou to everyone that came to enjoy the ceremony and/or the reception. It was so good to see so many faces — some that I hadn’t seen in far too long. We are so happy that so many people were able and willing to come out and see us get married and to enjoy some food and dance with us. Thank you so very much.

I sincereley hope I haven’t forgetten anyone. At this point in time I’m pretty tired, but I wanted to make sure that this got out soon. There are just two last things I wanted to say before I ran off to go collapse.

1) Since you got this far, you deserve a reward. Jason has posted a sampling of the photos he took at the wedding. They are posted at his blog. Go there and enjoy! We’re incredibly happy with the results.

2) I just want to say that this blog will be sticking around for the long haul. We’re going to use it as a way to communicate how we’re doing while we’re in Ireland. Our experiences, our photos, and our thoughts will all be shared here for you to read. I hope that at least some people find this a useful way to learn about how we’re doing overseas. Feel free to comment liberally on the posts we make!

Thank you everyone! It was a wonderful day.

Morgan