A Tale of Rings and a Healing Finger: An Anniversary Blogpost

I don't even know if this is blogworthy story, but I'm due for an update, so here goes.

Two months ago today I was married to my lovely wife. We had previously carefully picked out our wedding bands and even had them engraved , and the very nice salesman at the shop insisted that we get mine a half-size smaller than we had decided, since my finger would surely shrink in the winter months. I learned quickly, however, that we should have gone with the half-size bigger (you wouldn't really think a half a size makes that much difference, but oh how it does). My finger was rapidly swelling and at times the ring wouldn't even fit on or off of it without much pain and extreme difficulty. I was pretty sure your wedding band shouldn't put your finger in a state of perpetual throbbing and pain, but I thought it might just be the California humidity or getting used to a new ring or something. After a while I just quit trying to remove it altogether, which very quickly started to cause a band of raw, white, pinched skin at the base of my ring finger. The ring store and online research suggested I give it a couple months, since winter was coming, but I decided in the end that I would rather have it be a little loose for half the year than unbearably tight for the opposite half. Luckily the ring shop provides care for the life of the ring, and while Tungsten, evidently the hardest of all metals, cannot be resized (which is a shame, because Julie and I are both a little sentimental about these sorts of things and I wanted to keep hold of my original wedding band), they were willing to replace it (and they had better, since it was their idea to get a ring that was too small for my finger), and I quite insisted they foot any bill for the engraving too (even though we didn't originally have it engraved at that location...). They were nice enough to provide this little loaner in the interim so I looked like a married man still:


I'll spare you all the details of the following two days weeks that it took to provide my replacement, and suffice it to say that I called once, sometimes twice every day as suggested, only to find that it had been engraved crooked at least three times, and then the $100,000 machine was broken and needed to be fixed, and then when it finally arrived, believe it or not, they had misspelled the engraving. I mean... isn't that something you double- and triple-check the spelling for? Several days later, a ten-minute job was finally finished and I am now wearing the wedding band we picked out, but in the size that was meant for my finger. I'm a happy man, and my finger is healing nicely.

Happy anniversary, baby! Kuv hlub koj!

A Message to the Technology Generation

This post has been a long time coming. The idea started last fall when I used to run every day past a certain Mexican fast food restaurant that proudly displayed window decals detailing their latest marketing campaign: "WHY PAY MORE!" Isn't this a question?... Can't you get the point of urgency and excitement across with color, style and font, and still manage to punctuate properly?...

Also, not long ago, a friend told me to stop using big words (like "intuitive"?...) because, as he said, "it makes u sound dumb"... Seriously? I'm the one who sounds dumb?...

So, maybe it's because we as a generation communicate much more online than we used to, but I have noticed a worrying trend in overall literacy. As many of you know, I'm the worst kind of grammar snob, and have at times appointed myself the local (and/or facebook) grammar police. I'm positive this is rather maddening to almost everyone (except those like me who are anal about this and appreciate being informed that they made an embarrassing mistake before many more notice), but sometimes I just can't help myself. (Some may cite this as inconsistency of style, considering my appreciation for abbreviations or, as I like to call them, abbreves, some favorites of which are "OMG," "WTH," and "tradish," etc., but there is a time and place for these, and I think their use is appropriate as long as they are used knowingly and purposely.) I'm not exactly sure when or how this trait developed, but I think it gets more pronounced as time goes by.* My constant notice of this is especially frustrating as my grammar senses have become heightened working in a publishing company. When I design and proof-read ads, I am mortified when I see sloppy errors finding their way to print. Do you know how many people these things have to get past before they're approved?? Are we just that uneducated about punctuation, grammar, capitalization and basic sentence structure? My high school English teacher would have their heads, that's for sure. It's especially infuriating when it comes from an otherwise professional establishment. Here are a few of the more vexing trends I've noticed lately.

• Missing or misplaced apostrophes: Okay, everyone, listen up. Contractions are words that are mashed together, such as "can't" (cannot), "don't" (do not), "shouldn't" (should not), "it's" (it is), "I'm" (I am), "you're" (you are) and "we're" (we are) and in these, an apostrophe is necessary, and indicates omission of letters. This is especially important when omitting letters makes the word mean something entirely different (such as the difference between "we're" and "were"). Apostrophes also indicate possession, such as "Drew's blog" or "the internet generation's illiteracy." (Exceptions include "hers," "his" or "its.") For the record, pluralizing a word NEVER EVER EVER requires an apostrophe. Ever.
• Substituting numbers or letters for a full word: The worst thing about this juvenile practice is that you're usually saving yourself the trouble of typing one or two whole additional letters. Are we really that lazy? Can we really not bother to type "your" instead of "ur"? Or "to" instead of "2"? Or "you" instead of "u"? Or "for" instead of "4"? Or "why" instead of "y"?? It just makes you look like a ten-year-old. Then again, I wonder if I would prefer to see "Ur awesome" rather than "Your awesome"... You can see the dilemma. Maybe this kind of practice was acceptable in days of telegrams and such, when brevity was key. Now it's just careless.
  
• Writing excessively in all caps: I admit there is a time and place for going all caps lock on everyone (see two points above), but those times are few and far between.
• Mixing up homonyms: This doesn't happen quite as often as some others, but includes writing "too" instead of "to" (or vice versa), or "then" instead of "than," "loose" instead of "lose" or any mixture of "they're," "there" and "their," etc.
  
• Misspelling words: Enough said. This one is more common, though, and probably more understandable. Some words are harder to spell, and don't come intuitively.
  
• Misused punctuation: Commas, question marks and exclamation points are all very handy, and each has a very specific purpose.
• I instead of me: "My girlfriend and me went to this new restaurant," or "Email Julie or I for more information." This is irritating to no end. I think a lot of times people think using "I" is always correct, and they think they sound intelligent, but it's not always the case. There's a very simple way to determine when which term should be used. Just remove the other party and see how you would say the sentence. Take the above examples. Would anyone say "Me went to this new restaurant" or "Email I for more information?" No way! The opposite, however, is entirely correct.
  
• The spilling of all of the above into real life situations: I read a sign at the gym that informed us all that the Pilates class had been changed, and now takes place "Friday's at 8:00." I see some grapes at the store that were .99¢/lb. (That's less than one cent! What a bargain!) I spy a marquee for a store that stated their product was "4 SALE!" I receive a note from a friend that said, "Your so funny!" (My what is so funny?) I proofread a paper that said, "This is definitely a better option then the other one." I receive an order at work that read, "This is her photo, plz use our's." Someone writes me an email and says, "I was so glad to receive you're email, I just knew I had to respond to your's right away!" Look around, you'll see infractions, major and minor, all over.
  

And yes, I believe this applies even to casual internet conversation, online chat and text messages. I know people are often writing quickly or casually, but it takes just as long (if not shorter) to try to write things properly most of the time. It might require a tad more brainwork, but who couldn't stand to fire a few more neurons than usual? If anyone notices a typo in anything I write, I guarantee it is unintentional, and by all means, feel free to point it out to me. Am I being unreasonable? Do I expect too much? Some might think so, but I disagree. There's just no excuse for an adult in these days of mass produced literature and continuous communication to lack in these very basic skills. I do admit a tiny bit more ignorance in this department would make my life a little more relaxing, but it would also make it a lot less interesting.

This passion could go all the way back to when I used to participate in grade school spelling bees. But now, what have we become?? Curse you, Spell Check and Grammatik! And curse you further, MySpace, Twitter and facebook! You have made us lazy and ambivalent!

P.S. It also bugs me when people write with alternating upper case and lower case letters ("OmG, tHiS bLoG iS sOoOoO cUtE!"). But that's not really a grammar thing. Just sayin'.

* Looking back, my dad was always correcting our grammar growing up, and my mom was a very thorough proofreader of school papers, and also I, like most of us, possess a certain inclination to at least some OCD tendencies. So probably all three of these factors contributed to this part of my person.

I Run Faster than Classical Composers

A couple weeks ago we (me, Julie, Melody, Jonny, Cami, Allison) ran Pleasant Grove's Beat Beethoven 5K, all proceeds going to fund the Pleasant Grove Arts Council, which you should all know is a worthy cause as far as I'm concerned. The race begins with the famous first strains of Beethoven's 5th Symphony, and the idea is to finish the race before the piece is finished (roughly 32.5 minutes). We were pleased to report that each and every one of us beat Beethoven, and were thusly awarded with a commemorative button. It was a really nice course, slightly different from the Strawberry Days one, and it was a nice, cool September morning. Julie and I were afraid we had missed it the weekend previous when we were in Missouri, but as it happens, the timing worked out perfectly after all. There was even a dude there dressed as Beethoven bringing up the rear with the golf cart playing the music. Next year I hope they figure out a way to have the music audible throughout the course, and not just with the cart or at the finish line. We all ended up with pretty good times (21:41 for me, just under 7-minute miles, thiiiis close to being in the top three for my age group, and thiiiis close to being in the top ten overall!)

I'm not exactly sure why it looks like I'm doing some kind of mixture of deer-in-the-headlights and Blue Steel in this picture, but whatev.

Eat it, Ludwig!

Hero Worship to the Extreme

There are so many, many things wrong with this picture:



Seriously, people would never, EVER have praised previous presidents in recent years in this sickening manner, least of all the most recent president. So gross. The man has hardly even been in office for half a year, and he has performed most unimpressively so far. What is there even to praise? His (half) skin color? It is interesting though that everyone else is stating his middle name so prominently when that used to be an argument against Republicans.

So this kind of crap is allowed to go on while recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance is forbidden? Ick.

Open Letter to the Weather

Dear 64 degrees,

I love you.

Regards,

Drew

Moste Disappointed

It's been a little while... Of course, the thing that gets me to blog again is TV...

Last night was a big night of season premieres. While I can safely say I was quite satisfied with Survivor Samoa, The Office has really let me down. I think I laughed a total of one time, and even then it was half-hearted. Alas, has the greatest comedy on TV jumped the shark?? Say it's not so! Everyone was out of character, the whole thing was uncomfortable and awkward the entire time, and they've been pushing Michael and Dwight's characters way too far lately, even for Michael and Dwight. *sigh* I'm holding out for improvement as the season goes on, but allow me to register my disappointment.

Oh, The Office! What has happened to you??

A Glorious Honeymoon

At the risk of getting too gooey, I'm going to just post a few fun honeymoon pictures as well, and just suffice it to say that I'm so wonderfully in love with my wife. We had a great time in southern California for six days, and I'll provide my report in bulleted fashion as in the previous post. (FYI, Julie has also posted on the honeymoon, which can be read here, and as before, I plan on uploading many more pictures on facebook, so check out more of them there if you're interested.)

• We stayed the first night in Little America in Salt Lake City until catching our Sunday morning flight to LAX. The hotel provided a lovely set of newlywed surprises including chocolate-covered strawberries, a bottle of bubbly, and a souvenir key engraved with our names and the date of our wedding. The room consisted of a king-sized bed, a killer view of downtown SLC, a living area with a big desk (and complimentary wireless internet), a plush sofa and a dining area, a mounted plasma-screen TV, a an iPod compatible clock radio (both of which we didn't even touch) and a really nice jacuzzi tub with glass doors. It was such an awesome hotel, maybe the nicest I've ever stayed in, and we would have loved another night there to check out the pool and other amenities, but Delta called...

• We flew into LA on Sunday morning, picked up our car at what might be the most ghetto rental establishment in California, and drove to Long Beach.

While waiting to go to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, we did a little sight seeing on the nearby pier, had some dinner and watched Julie & Julia at the local Cinemark. The aquarium was fun, and had lots of fish. I overcame my fear and touched sharks. They were itty, but they could still probably have eaten at least two of my digits at once.

Later we checked into our moste excellente suite in the Anaheim Residence Inn Maingate, which also came with a delightful newlywed bundle, including a bottle of wine (we felt bad they went to the trouble, but they can use it for the next lucky couple I guess), and some Disneyland newlywed paraphernalia. It had a full kitchen and a living room.

• On Monday we had an open day (I made sure not to overplan--the last thing I wanted was an unrelaxing honeymoon), so we went to Huntington Beach and enjoyed the freezing cold ocean. Julie initially seemed hesitant to visit the beach ("What do you really DO there?...") but in the end the sand and the surf won her over and she was the one who wanted to dive in and swim out to the slightly deeper water.

I like to call this picture "Mission: Accomplished."

Later that night we dressed up and went to Downtown Disney for a little shopping and dinner at the Rainforest Cafe (WOW, the ribs there...).


(No, we didn't fork out the cash for these novelty hats that we would most likely never wear again. Luckily we were able to take perfectly suitable photos, and have the memories regardless.)

• Early the next morning we went to the famous esplanade and joined the crowds lining up to enter the Happiest Place on Earth.

Shame on you for touching that golden apple when it clearly warns not to touch it!
Then you had to suffer the punishment of spooky thunder noises!

It had only been almost three months since we had visited previously, but it seemed like it had been forever. We were able to see all our favorite attractions and eat at the Blue Bayou (despite them having no openings for the whole day), where we were served a special newlywed dessert.

Honestly, we're never going to Disneyland again without deciding on something to celebrate and obtaining the appropriate buttons. It's so much fun to get the congratulations and occasional surprise special treatment from Cast Members and fellow guests. We hit a sort of wall in the afternoon and headed back to the hotel for a couple hours (it was so deluxe to be staying 10-15 minutes away from the entrance to the parks) after which we came back to see California Adventure in the evening, and then Disneyland again at night.

Of course, why did I never think of making the C into a G?

Fantasmic is back and still super cool, but the new, much-hyped Maleficent dragon was not yet in operation. Maybe next time!

• The next day we woke up later than planned to head back for Day 2 at Disneyland.

Both days were really fun, but by mid-afternoon we realized that we probably never want to visit in mid- to late-August again. You can still get a lot done, and if you avoid the 12-3 pm time period, it doesn't get TOO hot or crowded, but that's a key bit of information I have gleaned (which gleaning I expected) from this trip. On this day we were also ever so fortunate enough to eat at the ultra-elite and super-secret Club 33. I had never been there, and learned right away that they are serious about their dress code (don't you dare show up with flip-flops, regardless of the overall effect and quality of your ensemble. You can wear the tackiest of tourist apparel and cut-off shorts as long as you have closed-toe shoes). It was worth the trek to the hotel and back in mid-day, though, when we spent a couple of the hottest and most crowded hours of the day in an out-of-the-way, lavishly furnished restaurant discretely located above New Orleans Square. There wasn't any particular newlywed bonus here, but the chateaubriand was delicious, and the salad and dessert bars were quite remarkable. We only regret that we didn't enjoy more of the crab claws and lobster tails.
We rounded out the day by watching the new fireworks show, complete with not only flying Tinker Bell, but flying Dumbo. It was awesome. But so crowded. So we altered our plans of hitting a few more select attractions during the Fantasmic lull and headed home. We were even ushered backstage with the post-fireworks crowd. It was like a flashback to winter 2002, being backstage again. It was also a much quicker, but much less scenic, path down Main Street, USA. We bid a fond farewell to Disneyland, vowing to go back again soon as can be.

• The next day was another delightfully unplanned day, which was spent enjoying the awesome hotel breakfast buffet, watching TV, and resting our feet from the previous two days. I had one more surprise for Julie, and informed her we had to check out because we were staying somewhere else for our last night. I didn't tell her where yet, but we packed up and did a little shopping (where our rental car was backed into by some other out-of-towners, but we were luckily at no fault, so the insurance should cover it completely) until we were able to check in at the famous Disneyland Hotel. It's always been a dream of mine to stay there, and what better time than your honeymoon?

The theming and atmosphere was expectedly magical, and despite a few hiccups (random people trying to enter our room without knock or invitation), maintenance pestering us a couple times, unwarranted phone call charges), it was a really nice place. The room was really fun and the pool was heated and Peter Pan-themed. We went to Surfside Beach at sunset, where we found a nearly deserted shore of rough sand, tall crashing waves and even a dead pelican, washed up on the beach.

The waves really liked Julie.

Which way to the beach? THAT way!

It was really nice, but turned a little chilly as darkness set in, so we headed back and found some dinner (after an unsuccessful walk through Downtown Disney, we settled for the local favorite Jack-in-the-Box).

• The next morning we packed up our stuff, took a few last pictures, bought a few last souvenirs, and headed back down to L.A. The traffic was horrendous, but we spent an hour or two at a nearby art museum, after which we turned in the car and headed to the airport. A couple of hours later, we were back in the land of mountains and 90 degree heat (it was soooo nice in CA, go figure). Although the post-vacation fatigue, the L.A. traffic, the trouble with the rental car and the desire to start living life with The Wife made me really glad to see the Beehive State again, we were both already wishing we could go back.

And there you have it. Probably more information than you ever wanted! But I hope you enjoyed it. Three weeks later I'm even more in love. Married life rocks.