[Note: I made a kick ass playlist for cleaning which means that I'll probably do that song quote thing I do for the titles of the next few blog posts. Play along in the comments if you can guess the song in the title.]
If someone had told me at Sara & TJ’s wedding on September 5, 2009 that I would be starting my own wedding registry up exactly one year later, I would have laughed at them. But that’s exactly what I did today. Jay and I went to a store (sorry, we didn’t finish scanning everything we wanted so I’m not going to say which store yet!) today to start our wedding registry and damn, it’s a tedious process that involves way too much thinking haha. I did finally update our wedding website, though. I announced our wedding party, which you can find here: http://jayandcoll.com/wedding-party/. I’m going to be doing a lot more updating to it over the next few days and going to try to do it regularly.
I started working out again this weekend, which so far doesn’t really feel very productive lol but I’ll get back into it. I wish that weekends and holiday weekends lasted longer because I could use more than 3 days off from work now that I’ve gotten into being super productive. In addition to working out and starting our registry, I did more research on finding a wedding band - more on that saga later - and cleaned the entire kitchen last night. Anyway, tonight, I wanted to start on the bathroom, but I bought a shoe rack for the back of my door today and that was going to be my project instead. Annoyingly, my closet door is smaller than a normal sized door and the freaking thing wouldn’t close right once I put shoes on it. I was frustrated beyond belief and took the whole thing apart and am going to just return it and go back to messy closet. Needless to say, I wasn’t in the mood for any more home grunt work after that and decided to start updating the wedding website instead. I’ll just clean everything else while Jay is at work tomorrow. I’m hoping I also get some time to read my book by the pool, too. Last few weekends of fun in the sun are upon us
On a random note, I was watching old Apple keynotes with Jay before and I have to say that Steve Jobs is an excellent speaker. I didn’t really get bored once. It was fascinating to watch the announcement for the original iPod from back in like 2001 or whatever it was. I must say, I enjoyed it.
Another random note. I realized this weekend that I really miss podcasting. My old roommate Amanda (of Metrobuzz’s Rooftop Sessions) had floated around the idea of us doing a podcast a few months ago and my friend Sara and I have joked around about doing a female version of the Married Man Show because Sara is super entertaining and gives great advice in general. Ah, well.
Final random note. Jay’s been watching the first half of Season 1 of Glee and this show was WAY better the first half. I hope that Season 2 is more like the first half of 1. I’d really hate to see Glee go the route of Nip/Tuck post Season 3 because that would make me really sad.
…because I already bought my pass for San Diego Comic Con 2011:
Now I just have to keep my fingers crossed, stay healthy, & not take any more days off other than the wedding so I can even have a chance to be able to go next year. But woo-hoo!
Jay and I got iPads on Friday!! Thanks to the very generous Jim for sending them to us as wedding presents. We truly cannot thank you enough, Jim. This was truly one of the nicest, sweetest, and most awesome things that anyone has ever done for us. Thank you, you totally rock dude!
The reason I’m finally now making this post now, on Sunday night, is because I’ve been completely distracted by trying to figure out the iPad. It’s awesome, by the way. It should come as no surprise to anyone that Jay’s had his iPad set up planned since it was announced that they existed, haha. I’m fairly certain that within 20 minutes of opening them, Jay had his completely set up. I downloaded a bunch of apps, but I really need some suggestions on which apps I should try out. Definitely leave me your recommendations in the comments section if you feel like it! Right now, I have the iBooks, the Kindle, Solitaire, FreeCell, Weather Channel, Netflix, USA Today, Jumbo Calculator, Craigslist Pro, a really cool one called Color Splash, ABC Player, Betty Crocker Cookbook, GTalk, Wikipanion, Huffington Post, Twitterrific, and Pandora. So basically, I have a rundown of all of the top apps that appear on the main page of the Apple Apps Store, lol.
I feel as though this is a callback to when I first got my iPod for Christmas 2005 and I spent January 2006 discovering PODCASTS! We all know how that little discovery ended up. This is cool, it’s like I’m exploring new territory all over again. Again, suggestions welcome
Of course, it wouldn’t be a blog post by yours truly if I didn’t have a zillion cheesy pictures documenting everything. So here goes:
As Jay pulls out the card, Zoe eyes her newest potential addition to the box-fort Jay made her.
His and hers, yo.
YAY!
And in the aftermath, a lonely kitty searches for something to play in, knowing she’s going to be ignored for the next two days…
Wow, so this afternoon was absolutely crazy! First the LOST Finale Party tickets went up on eBay at 1pm EDT. I always knew that they would sell out and I predicted all along that they’d be sold out by Sunday, March 28. Well, the orchestra seats sold out within 15 minutes and by 2:23pm EDT, they were completely sold out. And to think that Jay didn’t even think they’d sell out at all. Ha, I told you so babe
Jay’s biggest fear when we found out that Global Cash Card wasn’t going to be allowed to charge for the tickets (they wanted to use the money from ticket sales towards paying the HUGE cost for the venue) was that everyone would get 4 tickets even if they only needed one and then people who really wanted to go wouldn’t get any. Then he was really nervous that the scalper’s would come out. This has been something that has worried him since they got the final details on Tuesday night. Within 15 minutes of tickets selling out, there was already one for sale on eBay for $10, which the seller claimed was “the price that was paid for them through Ticketmaster.” Boston saw the post too and we were irate. Jay was upset because all anyone involved in planning this wants is for everyone to get together as the amazing community LOST is and watch the final episode together.
I’ve put together a post on YuBlog.org where hopefully anyone who has some extra tickets will be able to contact those on there who were unable to get any. If you are reading this and have any extra tickets or need one, please go there. I know that some people are upset at Jay and Jack for making the tickets free, but I just want to clear the record for good and say that the did not “make them” free. The plan was to charge for tickets and then use some of that money towards paying the cost to rent the venue and the rest of the money to donate. The venue did not want GCC to sell the tickets at all because of some legal issues about showing the episode & charging money for entry. So they made it free because they are aware of the other expenses that people are paying to get there.
So right before I discovered that tickets were sold out, I was on the phone…with the priest who is going to marry us in NY! We have an official wedding date, yayyyy!!! We made a super lame-dork video for our wedding website to announce it but SPOILER ALERT it’s April 29, 2011.
My parents went to look at a receptional hall a few weeks ago and they sent a follow-up thank you card to their house, addressed to us…well, almost addressed to us.
The card itself also addressed these two names. Yeah…Is Teremiah even a name?!
I feel ‘meh’ and people on Twitter keep saying they agree with me so let’s all commiserate together and therefore make ourselves feel better. I’ll go first:
Wedding planning blows and there’s way too much drama surrounding finding a place and setting a date and whether or not I can actually invite more than 3 damn friends.
Everyone’s probably seen this already but in case you didn’t, our wedding website is ready for viewing. So check out www.jayandcoll.com (the winner of the poll) and book mark it because we’re going to try to update it as frequently as possible.
We still have to update the “Photos” section and once we have more, we’ll add to the “Wedding Party” and the “Registry” sections.
Outtake: This photo is one that we were going to put on the top banner but it didn’t make the cut. It’s from Hawaii on Friday night, which I still need to tell the story of:
So we were going to use ewedding.com to create a website for our wedding but then Jay got some grand ideas of creating a real site where we could not only update with posts and all that fun stuff, but put in media, like brief podcasts and vidcasts. Then we could also use it for beyond.
We wanted to use www.jayandcolleen.com but someone already has it so now we’ve got to choose and since we can’t decide, I figured I’d ask for some friendly advice in the form of a poll. Here are the choices:
We’re going to create it ASAP, so let us know and then we’ll let you know!
Okay so I guess the Hawaii saga is going to be put on hold for a day since there’s obviously been some new developments in life over the last 22 hours.
So I’m leaving for London to go visit my sister Christie on Friday, Feb 12. I’m going with my parents and other sister Katelyn and we’re leaving from JFK Airport. This has been planned for a while. Back in the beginning of December, I bought my tickets on Southwest Airlines to fly out tonight, Thurs Feb 11 at 7:10pm from RDU & arrive on Long Island. Why did I plan to get in a day early? My mom had read in the Farmer’s Almanac that there was going to be a big storm this week & she was afraid that my flight from Raleigh would be canceled if I left on Friday and I’d miss the JFK flight. After some arguing & ticket-paying-negotiations, I agreed to leave tonight.
You may know that my birthday was on Monday, Feb. 8. Jay had to go to school that night and he has class all day long on Tuesdays (8am-4:45pm), so I knew that I’d have somewhat of a lonely birthday. He’s trying to get some music history classes that he took applied to his regular history classes and because my mom teaches at a college, I had asked her how he should go about applying to do that. She had advised us on some tips & that was that. I talked to my mom around 9:15pm on Monday night. I was talking to Jay around 11pm-ish that night over gchat and he mentioned he called my mom to thank her for helping him. He said this was around 9:00pm.
At this point, I’m a bit suspicious because I said goodnight to my parents 15 minutes after said phone call and no one said a word to me. I question Jay & his story is the same. Then I Blackberry message Kate. She basically tells me to turn the crazy off for the last hour of my birthday & go to bed. The next morning, she BBM’s me before 7am to tell me, “Mom didn’t say anything to you because she assumed you were in the room when he called.” “BULLSHIT!” I thought. “I talked to mom at 6pm AND 9:15pm and both times she knew that I was home alone with Zoe all night!” But that was at like 7:15am & when I went to put my key in my car door at around 7:50am yesterday morning, I had a premonition. I got in the car & that was that.
So we were going to go to Ruth Chris Steakhouse for Birth-entines’ Day. Since there’s only a week between my birthday & Valentines’ Day, we combine the holidays and call it that. It’s kinda like the kid born on Christmas Eve who shares their birthday presents with their Christmas presents ;). I kept questioning Jay on how expensive that place was and I’m going to miss a full week of work this month, so my paycheck would be lower and maybe we should just wait, blah blah blah blah blah. He kept saying “no, no, no”. However, I was talking to a co-worker yesterday & all of a sudden, I decided that I wanted Italian food. I asked Jay if we could switch from Ruth Chris to Carrabbas because I really just wanted Italian. He agreed over text, but in the car on the way there, he was all weird & pissy about how I had changed restaurants. I got annoyed and said “It’s MY birthday and if I want pasta, I’m eating pasta!”
On the way to the restaurant, we got word that my flight for 7:10pm tonight was canceled because I had a layover in Baltimore and well…Baltimore has some issues with some snow at the moment. Since we were in the car, I called my parents to ask them to change my flight. After a lot of trying, it turns out that the only flight I could get on left at 1:15pm & got in to Islip, NY at 9:55pm, with a layover in Tampa, Florida. I was *not* happy because I couldn’t miss an additional half day at work. In short, I was freaking out. Jack & Cyndi (Jay’s parents) ended up randomly being at the same restaurant as us, which was kinda funny lol.
Ohhh, time to board. Brb!
Okay back & it’s like an hour later, even though you guys don’t know that. Continuing, I was on the phone with my parents for quite some time during dinner, as they were trying to find me a flight. After about 30 minutes, it became clear that the 1:15pm flight was my only option. I resisted A LOT. I was panicking about leaving work 5.5 hours earlier than planned & not having packed yet, etc. al. Eventually I had no choice but to agree to get onto this fight. So I very reluctantly told my father that I’d do it.
At this point, Jay seems super annoyed. I think that it is just because we’ve been sitting at the table for 40 minutes and only just ordered appetizers. I felt reasonably guilty about being on the phone for so long & freaking out in public Little did I know…
We end up having a really nice dinner :) I was so distraught that I ate an ENTIRE loaf of bread by myself, then completely cleared my plate of lobster raviolis AND had 3 glasses of wine. Sadly, the 2,500 calorie meal cancels out the 3 glasses of wine lol.
So we get back home and I make a quick phone call to my parents to confirm with my mom that the random shit I’m literally throwing at my suitcase (not in or on, just at) is going to suffice for the cold London temperature. A few minutes later, Jay goes to me, “You look like you need a beer. Do you want me to get a beer?” At this point, my first thought is, “Wine AND beer?! It totally MUST be Birth-entines’ Day!”
So he hands me a beer and I put it down on the coffee table in front of the couch. Then he gets down on one knee and says something very sweet that you’ll have to ask him to repeat and pulls out a ring!!! As he got down on one knee and pulled out the box, I subconsciously knew what was going on but at first I thought he was just kidding and it was going to be a bracelet or something. Then I saw it and was completely speechless and I think I said something along the lines of, “For REAL?!?!?!“ But I didn’t cry!! I choked up & sobbed for a minute but I was too busy processing it all and nodding and everything all at once
I called my parents, who had Kate call me on Skype so they could video chat & see the ring. Then we called Christie in London and my grandparents and my aunt and basically everyone. Jay called his families & I called mine. Then we agreed that Jay could have the first Facebook announcement and I would do Twitter (even though by “first” we meant “45 seconds before the other person” lol).
So yeah, good times!! My ring is GORGEOUS. Funny story: I totally forgot that over the summer, Jay, Clif & I had been eating and then walking around Southpoint Mall in Durham for a change of pace. We all ended up in a Helzberg Jewelers in there, looking at all the jewelry, including engagement rings, that they had to offer. So I totally forgot about that when he asked me this morning over the phone, “Did he get you the ’sparkly’ ring?” I laughed SO hard. I was shocked that Clif remembered that day before I even did and that he even remembered which ring it was. Color me impressed
No date will be set until after I get back from London, although it’s going to be at least a year out in order to give friends & family who have to travel plenty of time to plan ahead to get there. It’s going to be in NY though and sometime in a month that is NOT cold because anyone who has ever met me knows that I despise the cold with a passion.
That’s all I’ve got for now and I’m SO EXCITED! So now I have to finish up my Hawaii story, tell all my London stories AND yak about wedding plans! YAY!!! It’s so nice to have things to look forward to!!
Oh, fine. Here is what Jay said to me and honestly, I only know it because he sent it to me.
“The first time I met you I knew you were special. After only a couple days of dating I knew I loved you and a couple months after I knew I wanted to be with you forever. Colleen will you marry me?”
