The look of the ceremony

I'm not sure if I already blogged about this, but we met with the UU pastor a couple of weeks ago and decided to hire him to perform our wedding ceremony.

When we met, he asked how we wanted our ceremony to "look". I took this literally and started describing how it would be outside, blah blah blah. I soon came to realize he meant the format of the ceremony. DOH!

At any rate, we just went through a bunch of stuff and preliminarily, we have our readings and wording (vows etc) picked out.

Other than the little tiff we got into because Mr. P doesn't see the point of readings (I kind of agree, but I'm not spending all this time and energy on a 5 minute ceremony by golly!), it was a lot of fun and I'm super excited about it.

Anyway, my sister just reminded me I'm not working on my thesis, so I shall go.

All about registries

Several months ago I wanted nothing to do with wedding registries. I've been on my own for a while now and there's nothing I don't have that I absolutely need. I had no interest in registering anywhere.

Then with talking to Mr. P, we decided to register at one "real" store and then create an alternative gift registry online where people sign up to give us gifts of recipes, a donation to the organization of our choosing, reused items, etc.

We chose Bed Bath & Beyond as the "real" store and surprisingly, I had a pretty good time finding things to put on the registry.

Then came the family input. :oP Apparently, one store and the alternative registry are not enough. It irks me that they don't seem to understand why we only registered at one store--not only because we don't need anything really, but also because it's so wasteful! I'd be perfectly content getting a cake stand from someone who already has several--plus, it means so much more. The thought seems to be that we need to give our guests multiple options to buy gifts. My thought is if they can't find a B3, guests can send money, a gift from a different store of their choosing, something from their home, or nothing at all and we'd be perfectly content.

But, instead of standing up for myself, I decided to appease the fam and now we're registered at Target as well. I have a sinking feeling our alternative gift registry will be lost amidst the large chain stores and that makes me very sad.

As Daniela says, you have to pick your battles, and that's what I did. :o(

Day 10 complete!

I have officially completed 10 days of the 30 Day Shred. I'm now out of the achy soreness and into the painful soreness where it feels like the muscles in my legs are going to pop. That's the only way I know how to describe it. I have also discovered that my left arm is a major weakling. My right arm harbors intense feelings of disgust towards it for holding it back from reaching its goals. I should start training like that guy in that horrible movie Lady in the Water.

There are three levels on this dvd and the idea is that you do each level for 10 days...hence, the 30 day shred. I've decided to not workout on the weekends (thanks Mere) and do each level for 20 days, working up to the "advanced version" of each level after the first 10 days. Make sense? In effect, it will take me a full month to do each level. Wow...I've managed to take a 1 month shred and stretch it to 3.

Even 10 days into the first level, it's still causing me trouble. To start, the first circuit kills me. 3 minutes of strength = pushups, squats with arm presses, pushups, squats with arm presses. Way too much for my arms...I'm still doing the puny girly pushups but I have advanced to actually doing the arm presses (with squats) for the entire time and with 5 pound weights. When I first started, I couldn't do the presses with the weights. I'm hoping to do regular pushups in the next two weeks. From there you do 2 minutes cardio = jumping jacks, pretend jump rope, jumping jacks, pretend jump rope. Easy, right? WRONG! After doing the pushups and squats, I can barely get through the cardio. :oP It annoys me to no end.

Circuit two is fine and I can now kick my butt when doing the butt kicks. *haha* But then in circuit three, part of the strength is side lunges with shoulder raises. AAGH! Again with the arms. I still can't do this one. The way you're supposed to do it raise both arms in front of you while lunging to the side. I can only do one arm at this point. I start off doing both, but then resort to just one. :oP

I shouldn't be so hard on myself...I do see improvements, I just thought I would see a bigger difference in my upper body strength than what I'm currently seeing.

I'm dreading the next two weeks and the advanced version. :o/

Party pooper

I feel like I haven't posted anything in a while and I need to come up with something to write about. But everything I come up with is a complaint about something and I've decided to spare my readers from my grumpiness.

See you when I can come up with something a little more cheery! :oD

The Wedding (not mine)

Two of my friends got married yesterday and I need to watch out for the following things:

--Make sure the preacher speaks up or is miked.
--Don't disappear from the wedding festivities for long periods of time.
--Make a timeline and stick to that timeline.
--Make sure people don't get belligerent.
--Make sure inappropriate public displays of affection are kept to a minimum. No, kept to zero. None. Nada. I'm not having it.

I think that was about it.

I'll need to designate someone to keep on top of the last two items.

Graduation

These pictures aren't that great, but here they are for your viewing pleasure anyway.