Wedding!

We've been back for almost a full 24 hours now and I am still exhausted from this weekend.  It was a great weekend, though, and it was nice to be busy with so many fun things to do and people to see.  Despite gorging myself on food at both the rehearsal dinner and reception (mmmm....barbecue....), I was down three pounds in my weigh in for The Biggest Loser today, so overall I'm down a whole pound!

The wedding was absolutely beautiful.  Hannah was a GORGEOUS bride and she and Daniel are so in love.  They are definitely the most loving and affectionate couple I've ever known.  Besides Jacob and I of course:

I'm super happy for them and I'm so excited to officially  have Hannah as a sister.  I don't necessarily like a lot of people (pretend to be surprised), but I love Hannah and I'm so happy she and Daniel are together.  God definitely made them for each other.  Equally exciting is that Andy and Oscar officially have two new cousins, Copper and Kira!

The reception was really fun, and even though I could feel myself sinking into a coma towards the end, I had an incredible time.  It was definitely the who's-who of Trinity, so it was fun to hob nob with the big Trinity families.  After a few Shiners, I'm pretty sure Jacob was rambling on to our old Government teacher about who knows what, and discussed the highlight of his young life--winning the Geography Bee in 8th grade--with our history teacher.  Everyone seemed to be having an awesome time, and there was a TON of dancing all night.  Most of the people who were dancing actually knew what they were doing, so I decided not to make a fool of myself and get out there.

 I'll save my moves for the privacy of my own car, thank you very much.

While we were home, we spent most of our time with Jacob's family.  At one point, his youngest sister Emily (shoutout!) mentioned the blog, and was able to make a shortcut on her iTouch, so my blog is basically an app for her.  She categorizes her apps and my blog was one of two listed under "Humor", accompanied solely by her Fart Studio app.  Honestly, it's humbling to think that I could even be put in the same category as an app that exists only to make the sound of wet farts.  It's like being nominated for an Oscar in the same category as Meryl Streep--you know you'll never win, but you can't believe you're even peers. So thank you Emily.  For thinking of me as a distant second to fart sounds.

Coming home yesterday was a total buzzkill.  Neither Jacob nor I wanted to come home to the cold, and I was just not in the mood to travel.  We've only lived here six months and I've already reached the level of hating to fly that I acquired over the two(ish) years in Findlay.  On the first flight I got progressively more nauseous, and by the time our plane landed, I thought I was going to barf everywhere.  I would've been fine, except we were on a huge plane so it took 45 minutes for us to even be able to get up and get off the plane.  Once I stepped off and got some fresh air, it was fine, but it was a close call.  We hustled to our gate for our connecting flight to Bismarck, only to find out that our flight had been delayed about 45 minutes.  It was annoying, but it gave me a chance to brush up on my Denver Airport conspiracy theories.  My brother informed me of the oddities of the airport, and since I love a good conspiracy, I am now obsessed.  It's pretty interesting stuff.  I know it can all be explained, but it's still worth a read.  Once we were finally able to get on the plane, the pilot announced that one of the latches for the tray table was broken, and according to federal regulations had to be properly secured, so they had to get a mechanic on board.  His exact words were "Hopefully the mechanic will have a spare latch he can just switch out, otherwise we'll just go to plan B, which is just taping it."  Seems to me that if you KNOW you have tape and you're already delayed, just go ahead and tape it, rather than fiddle with trying to find a spare part and then having to fix it, right?  To me that makes the most sense.  Of course everyone else on the plane was thinking the same thing and within seconds of the announcement I heard one guy go "I'll give him this bubble gum right out of my mouth if he wants it!"  That got entirely too many laughs for my taste, and then for some reason, the guy right beside Jacob (a different guy, mind you) turns to us and goes "I've got some gum, if he just wants to use that!"  SURELY YOU CAN'T BE SERIOUS.  Somebody JUST used that joke, guy.  This is a plane with 30 people on it.  We all heard the joke once.  Never do that again.  Fifteen minutes later, the latch was fixed (or taped), and we were on our way.  Despite our snidey flight attendant who didn't give me ice with my apple juice (who DOESN'T like it room temperature?), it was a pretty good flight.  We made it back to Bismarck, super hungry, but surprisingly still in good spirits despite the long day of traveling.  Jacob waited at the baggage carousel while I borrowed his jacket (my coat was packed in our checked bag) and ran outside to scrape the ice & snow off the car and drive it around to pick him up.  I knew I was a dead duck (trademark Quinn) when I was in the vicinity of my car, holding down my alarm button and nothing was happening.  Sure enough, minutes later, I came upon my car, battery totally dead.  I ran back inside to talk to Jacob and figure out what we were going to do, only to discover him standing with one other guy, watching the baggage carousel as one lonely bag continued to spin its way around.  The look on Jacob's face (and the absence of our luggage) informed me that the night took another turn and I think that's approximately when the tears started.  Thankfully I was found a good Samaritan working at the Enterprise counter who was willing to help me.  Motivated either by pity, or fear of my mascara stained face, he was able to drive us to my car in a nice warm vehicle (it was in the teens and I had no coat), and Jacob got the car jumped no problem.  Our baggage showed up this morning, so I really can't complain, but it was a VERY rough ending to a great weekend.

Today before I left for work I was given the task of shoveling the driveway.  Not an easy task when the driveway is wide enough for three cars.  It wouldn't have been so bad except that it had been four days worth of accumulated snow that was melting and refreezing, so it was SO ICY.  If I was Johnny Weir, I could have easily done a full routine on this driveway.

I completely lost track of time and after two hours, I realized I was running late for work.  I ran inside to take a quick shower and realized how much of a workout the shoveling had been.  Even though it was only 20 something degrees, I had sweat through my shirt, sweatshirt and THROUGH MY COAT.  I had to peel my clothes off.  It was so disgusting.  I can honestly say I have never sweat that much in my entire life.  Not even standing in the student section during a 4 hour long football game in August.  Gross.  Even right now, about 10 hours later, I'm doing the laundry, and I just put in a load that had the shirt I was wearing.  It's like it's been soaking in a tub all day, that's how wet it was.  I'm sure I was using more effort that necessary to shovel, but it was so hard.  At one point the old man across the street from me was watching me while he was smoking.  He yelled that he didn't think my technique would work, and then proceeded to do the exact same thing on his driveway.


When I got to work today, there were 50+ emails waiting for me from ONE COWORKER ALONE.  Good grief.  It was a little overwhelming because I hadn't even been there 5 minutes and someone told me I had to go to a staff meeting in about 20 minutes.  I'm sure the meeting covered many things that were sitting unread in my inbox, but there was no way to get to all that before the 1 1/2 hour meeting.  I'm starting to realize that the people I work with are actually relying on me to take a huge portion of the workload off them.  I mean, yeah, that's what I was hired to do, but I'd really rather sit around and not be trusted with anything.  I want to have the style of Tom Haverford, but the responsibilities of Jerry Gergich.