A Perry Wedding

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Josh and Megan got married last night! Crazy stuff. It's very weird to see a buddy I've known for over twenty years being all grown up and married and stuff. Especially knowing my own marriage is only two short months away. Joshy asked me to be one of his Best Men, which I was thrilled to be and got to deliver one of, count 'em, 6 speeches by the bridal party. Her sister, his sister, her best friend, her brother, his cousin, and then me. Save the best for last I guess. Essentially I said this; though I can't remember exactly due to nervousness and a being a little bit drunk.
As I've been the best of friends with Josh for over twenty years, this speech will be more about him than his bride. Sorry Megan, but we all know everything else this day has been about you, as it should be, so you can bear with me for a couple of minutes.
While Josh, and I for that matter, may have a tendency to be a bit longwinded, when Josh gets to the point it can be counted on to have significance. He weighs his decisions carefully and doesn't rush into anything, except this wedding. Being Josh's close friend I felt obligated to assure myself of his reasons for this marriage and his commitment to it. When Josh told me of his intention to become engaged to Megan, I asked him a very simple question, "Is this the woman you want to spend the rest of your life with?" and I'm happy to say his immediate and confident response was, "Yes, without a second thought in my mind, Megan is the woman for me."
Having heard him tell me about 25 times in the few short months since they started their courtship that "something was different" about Megan, I was completely assured that he was moving forward with an intelligent and Godly purpose and simply told him, "I couldn't be more happy for you!"
And truly, I couldn't be. Living with Josh has given me the opportunity to observe firsthand how they've grown in their relationship and how they are learning to accommodate each other in everything. Megan has shown herself to be a wonderfully caring and compassionate person, almost to a fault at times, and Josh has slowly adjusted his life to fit around her. I told Josh at his man shower that his job from this point forward is to make Megan happy. That doesn't mean to give her everything she wants as soon as she wants it but simply to have thoughtful consideration towards her in everything he does and always find a way to do things that takes her feelings into account.
I love you both very much, and am so thankful to be able to be a part of this day with you. Congratulations to you both! To Megan and Joshua Perry!

More Wedding Fun!

Brad Lewis and Amy Worgull got married on Saturday, the second of about ten different couples I know getting married this calendar year. It was a blast, I got a little drunk, did a little dancing, ate a lot of food, and had some delicious pie for dessert! They seemed very much in love and full of joy to be wed. Three cheers for them. As a side note, my date is now only 90 days away. Very exciting for both Alyssa and myself.

Also I was finally able to go on my first bike ride of the season, first since November actually, a nice little 25 mile jaunt from my house out to the summit of Palomares Canyon and back. It was just as much fun as I'd recalled, and competing against both my fellow riders and myself was a blast.

Bachelors!!!!!

Josh's Bachelor Party was this weekend. And that's all I'm gonna say about that.

Easy Rider Was No Easy Ride

It has been quite a while since Alyssa and I last got a movie done from our Top 100 list. She had already seen Easy Rider and was hesitant to watch it again. After seeing it for myself, I can see why.
It was definitely interesting. There was a whole lot of social/political commentary going on throughout the movie, and a lot of attention paid to the very prevalent in 1969 culture clash, of old-timey American values and free loving drug abusing "hippies".
The music was incredible, starting off with back to back Steppenwolf; "The Pusher" and "Born to be Wild" and also featured some Hendrix, The Band and other classics.
While I'd like to think that my cinematic tastes have begun to rub-off on Alyssa, I fear that hers are also beginning to rub-off on me. Before we met her definition of a good movie was one that made her happy at the end and mine was one that made me think. This movie most assuredly encouraged thought, but to call it a happy ending would, in my humble opinion, be completely missing the point.
Overall, I'm glad to have watched it and am even more thrilled to cross one more title off of our list!

More Carmel

Most of my recent Carmel posts have been centered around the work we've been doing there, mainly because every time we go down there it is to work. My last trip included a day of roughing in plumbing drains, vents and water pipe for the new master bathroom. It went pretty well. Not too hard of a day's work all in all. The contractor has finished the exterior of the addition and added the nice new copper gutters with rain chains in place of downspouts. Because of the natural viscosity of water it trickles down the chains and looks a little bit nicer, I think, than regular downspouts.

Honeymoon Plans

Notre Dame

Alyssa and I have finally decided on where we are going for our honeymoon! Our wedding is exactly four months from today and (literally) getting closer every day. haha.

I'm super excited to take Alyssa to Paris for the first time. I've been lucky enough to have gone a few times before, but seeing this beautiful city again will be wonderful through the eyes of a newbie. I think Paris is the perfect place to take my bride to be. She's a history major who speaks french and is Catholic. How much better could it be. Rome will be next of course but definitely not this trip. I had to plead with her to get two weeks in Paris! We've reserved a cute studio apartment literally a block away from my favorite restaurant in Paris, Chez Janou. I figure we'll have dinner there at least five times over the course of our two weeks. I'm hoping to make a trip up to Belgium for the Tour de France on July 5th, but we'll see if it works out.

To say the least we are both very ready to be wed. It's been over a year engaged already and it's time to get this show on the road. The picture above is from my last time in France.

Tahoe Trip + Cave Rock

Went up to Tahoe for the 19th? annual Martin Luther King Jr. weekend with the Palomares Elementary crew this past weekend. It was a total blast as always. We stay in a nice little cabin about 5 minutes from stateline and spend our days and nights drinking and gambling and playing board games and cards and hiking and sledding and dicing and drinking. (I've just been informed I've set a new blog record for most ands in one sentence.) Anyway during a break in the snow storm on Sunday, Josh, Megan or Megosh as I like to call them, my brother Brian and myself took a drive and then a hike to the top of Cave Rock. It was a fearsome show of nature's strength. The wind felt like it would blow us off the top and was actually causing the snow to fall upwards around the rock it was blowing so hard. Here's the video with my Christmas present from my folks, a new Mino HD Flip Camera!

Lot o' Stuff

Let's see... went to Palo Alto with Alyssa a while back to get lunch and cupcakes. Sprinkles cupcakes has these high quality fancy shmancy cupcakes that have a ton of frosting.

My brother took me to the Sharks game with some 6th row tickets that were awesome.

And we rode a holiday train in Sunol.

That about sums up the last couple weeks.

A Night at the Opera

Alyssa and I finally got to the Marx Bro's movie A Night at the Opera. All it took was a long holiday weekend for us to run out of excuses to avoid it. The best thing I can say about it is that Alyssa would (and did) rather wash dishes than watch it. Oh well, it was another of the hundred down. I think this will be firmly ensconced in least favorite position for now.

Wedding Fun Part Deux!

One nice view from our room.

Alyssa and I went to Union Square to begin the bulk of our registering at the Macy's there. Since we were in the city I figured we should go out to a nice dinner and stay at the Westin St. Francis and make it one helluva day. It was awesome. We went to dinner at Fleur de Lys a fine cuisine spot owned and operated by Top Chef Masters contestant Hubert Keller. The food was incredible, Monsieur Keller was a humble and gracious host and the hotel was great.
This is my dessert, the Fleurburger with banana milkshake and fennel ice cream fries.

Oh yeah, the registering was fun too.

Wedding Fun!

The registering has begun! Alyssa and I went to Target the other day and did our first bit of registering for wedding presents. We had such a nice time we've decided to go to Macy's at Union Square to register for the dishes she wants as well as all the other stuff. What do you register for anyway? In addition to whatever kitchen crap we go for we're also interested in one year's worth of netflix if anyone is interested in buying it for us and all sorts of other weird stuff as well. I registered for a PS3 at Target, just in case.

Camera Is Back!

Nicest part about my new iphone? Always having a camera with me. I went down to Carmel last weekend to help install a new door at my parent's home there. My dad and I cut out the wall to fit the new door in while my brother removed the existing flue pipe for the water heater and furnace. I also removed a couple of windows that were in the part of the house that the addition is tying into. (My parents didn't want windows looking into their new master suite from other parts of the house I guess).

On Sunday I went to my Aunt Kathy's for my Grandma Pat's surprise 81st birthday party. She was suitably surprised and was thrilled to have her family together. We played a round of Grandma themed Pictionary, including places she and my Grandpa had met and dated, previous jobs she held, and some of her passions, including gardening and Sunday school teaching.

I took most of today off because of the horrible weather, this is a picture I took while driving across the San Rafael bridge at seven this morning. Safe , I know!

New Phone!

If I haven't returned your phone call or text messages for the last few weeks it probably wasn't personal; my phone just didn't work anymore. So I got an iphone. It's great. I love it. I had no idea how wonderful it was and considering I went from never having a phone anywhere near the capabilities of your standard smart phone to this I'm pretty much blown away. It's only a little bit more than my current phone plan too. I'm really freaking jazzed right now.

The Haps.

I'm feeling blah, blah about the blahg right now. It seems more effort than it is really worth to continually coming up with witticism after witticism. However, some cool stuff has recently happened so I felt like updating. Alyssa had her 23rd Birthday (Yay Alyssa!) we went to the concours d'elegance in Pebble Beach and I finished the job I've been on for the past four and a half months at Stanford. The concours was fun, it was a beautiful day in Carmel and the cars were gorgeous. Jerry Seinfeld, Jay Leno, Arnold Schwarzenegger? and some other celebs were there making it seem very posh. We went out for drinks to celebrate Alyssa's birthday last Saturday at Easy 925, a club in Danville. Everybody wanted to buy her a drink, thankfully she didn't overdo it. We've finally decided on a cake maker for the wedding, which makes one less thing left. Other than that, same old same old.

CFW Throws a No-Hitter!

Alyssa's little bro Christopher threw a no-hitter Saturday morning in a little league tournament. In four innings (the other team got mercy ruled) he struck out 9 had one walk and didn't allow a hit. He also walked, had an RBI double and a single while scoring two runs. In an earlier game he got beaned, thankfully on his non-throwing arm, and scored a couple of runs as well. He was pretty stoked.