A puzzling weekend

Last weekend was very relaxed. I decided to tackle a puzzle that had been staring Betsey and I in the face for quite a while. At the beginning I decided to take a picture of the puzzle after every hour of work on it. Twenty one pictures later, the puzzle was complete. As you look through the pictures, you see that some hours were more productive than others. Those are the hours where Betsey helped.



Besides being puzzled all weekend, we were also entertained. We went to see Wall-E to escape the heat on Sunday. That movie is great and well worth spending matinée prices on. I find it hard to imagine any movie is worth seeing at full price anymore. We finished the evening with Sushi and then returned to work on the puzzle. Despite the post title, it took more than just the weekend to complete.

Betsey got leied by my groomsman

Dan came back from Hawaii and brought with him gifts aplenty. For Betsey he brought a lei, which was incredibly well received. Look at the smile on this girl.



Dan brought me a cool manly necklace, some carmacs (caramel and macadamia chocolates), and a dolphin shaped bottle opener. Truly I'm lucky to have such a true and generous friend.

Let's do the time warp again!

Where the heck did June go? It went. A number of events conspired to keep the blog from being updated by taking my time and leaving me just too tired whenever I was home. Here they are, chronologically.

5/21 Wii Fit is released
Early Wednesday morning, my friend and coworker held to a promise to take me to Costco (from work) to buy a Wii Fit on it's first available day (excluding New York). He held this promise even though he had obtained one earlier somehow and had no personal interest in going to Costco.

The Wii Fit is initially addictive. There are a great variety of exercises that come included. These exercises include yoga and strength training as well as fun activities like heading soccer balls and snowboarding. I imagine it can continue to be addictive; however, the same events that kept us from updating the blog have kept us from continuing our daily regimen. It's been over a week since I stepped on that cool little balance board now. I miss it. I think I'll try to start up again this Monday.

5/26 Memorial Day
This last memorial day we started early and kept it going all weekend. Beer flowed like wine? Well there was plenty of it consumed to say the least.

On the day, SciFi channel ran an Enterprise marathon that kept us glued to the television, but somehow we managed to invite our neighbor Nate over, and he spent a couple hours enjoying food, drink, and nerdy TV with us.

5/31 Falcon 15K Relay
For the days immediately following Memorial Day, I trained my but off for the Falcon 15K Relay. It was the fastest 5K I ever ran and our team did really well. My personal results were not kept because I was a part of Team Awesome (comprised of Dan, Thomas, and myself). However, I can tell you that I averaged about 7:40 minute miles. My personal best. It was a proud day.

My Birthday
As I took some well deserved time off from everything after the relay, my birthday crashed into my work week. It was a great day. Early on I received warm wished from dear friends Susan, Jim, and Anne via email. Then I received a package of yummy cookies and treats at work from my beloved. Chris was kind enough to take a picture. When I arrived home, I found a bikini birthday cake waiting for me, which I was allowed to eat after I had delicious pork chops for dinner.





Shoes Prank (the next day)
After being out for the evening, Betsey and I arrived home the next day to find that our neighbors were having a get together. How would we know this? Were they loud? No. Our neighbors (well these ones) are model neighbors. We knew this because there was an accumulation of shoes in the stair well the likes of which were hard to imagine. How many people can you cram into one of these apartments?

As I opened our door and walked in, I nearly tripped over a box of items intended for the good will, including several pairs of shoes Betsey had decided she no longer needed. If ever a light bulb should have materialized over my head and become illuminated, that was the moment. I looked at Betsey with the spirit of Pan glinting in my eyes and said, "What if, when everyone goes home tonight, there's an extra pair of shoes?"



Such an innocent prank that had the opportunity to cause so much confusion. It had to be done.

Of course, our perfectly wonderful neighbors neatly set the shoes out next to their door when there was nobody to claim them. The next morning, when they were gone, we reclaimed the shoes to deliver to the Good Will. We hope they tell a tale to their friends of the mysterious shoes that appeared and disappeared, but we may never know what they thought of our little prank.

Andy Visits (that weekend)
Andy came down to visit that weekend. It was his last visit to Corvallis as an unmarried man. Nate, Brian, Brent, and I met up with Andy for dinner at Woodstock's and an evening of video games and board games. It also marked the last meeting with Brian, as he happily found gainful employment in the Portland area.

6/14 Andy's Bachelor Party
A little later, we celebrated Andy's bachelorhood ending more properly in Portland. The day started at Bridgeport Brewery downtown, moved to the Ground Kontrol arcade. After overdosing on 90's video games and pinball machines, we filled up our cups and hit the links at McMenamins Edgefield. The course runs alongside a prison, which affords one the unique opportunity to lob a ball over razor wire and get several bounces on the tin roof of the prison. I imagine it's only more fun when the prisoners are out for their exercise. The night rounded out with drinking, video games, and poker at Kevin's house. He made an Alt Bier that was to die for. I finally had a chance to play Mario Kart for the Wii (very fun), and I took second in the poker tournament. When I left, Andy was near death on the couch, and I knew we had done right by him.

6/15 Father's Day
Nursing a headache, I was up early the next morning for Father's day. I drove out to Kimberley's apartment for the first time (lost myself for a bit), and wished Dad a happy day. It had entirely escaped me that I hadn't seen my family since before my birthday, so I received presents as well as Dad. The entire Catchpole gang then headed over to the Mathew's house to enjoy the fine weather provided for Lucy's graduation party. Everyone was merry and things just went great.

6/19 & 20 Andy's Rehearsal & Wedding
As one of Andy's groomsmen, I had the fortune of taking Thursday and Friday off to attend his rehearsal and wedding. Apparently, according to the planner, we were the greatest rehearsal party ever. We moved so smoothly through rehearsal that she felt almost unnecessary.

Rehearsal dinner was at the Stone Cliff Inn. A beautiful setting high up on the side of a (surprise) stone cliff overlooking a river. It was nice to get to know the wedding party better and make some new friends.

The next day, the wedding went even better than rehearsal. The pastor (priest/reverend/celebrant/my way of indicating I don't know) was a gentleman with a British accent and a great sense of humor. The officiating was just the right length and the food afterwards was delicious. There were so many friendly faces, I only wish there'd been more time to see everyone.

6/21 Amy Gino's Wedding
On the heels of one wedding, came another. Amy's wedding was the next day. Her wedding, too, was beautiful. A surprise for everyone was the horse drawn carriage that delivered the bride-to-be to the aisle and carried the newlyweds away at the end of the ceremony.

There were a lot of familiar faces from high school, and too many of them I couldn't remember the name to. It made me feel old and forgetful, but then I reminded myself that this wasn't even my class and I let it go.

The Ginos are like family to me and I was so honored that Amy invited me to her wedding. I have a few very precious memories from my time hanging out with Amy during high school forensics. The most dear is captured in a picture of a man dressed as a giant pancake in Eugene that still sits by my monitor. If you read this Amy, best wishes yet again for a happy and fulfilling marriage.

6/28 & 29 Wanted & Anniversary
We went and saw the last showing of wanted on Saturday night. We let in our Anniversary to the visual splendor of men and women dying, rats exploding, and a hard hitting soundtrack. Yes we do things in style.

The next morning we woke up late and opened cards. The first year being paper, that's all we bothered to get for each other. Simple and sweet, maybe all special days should be that way. Later that evening we had a nice dinner at Headwaters. We celebrated by eating Mediterranean and drinking rum punch to remind us of our honeymoon in Antigua. The atmosphere was laid back and just what we were looking for. The waiter, Bret, was great and when he figured out we were having an anniversary, he comped our dessert. He said, "next time call ahead and I'll put down a red table cloth to make it more romantic."

7/4 Independence Day
Which brings us to this weekend, which is no less busy than any of the others, but I've managed to post, destroying the validity of all my excuses.

We had dinner out with the Christiansens and the Browns Thursday evening. We walked downtown Friday morning and returned in the evening for the fireworks display. We returned to the waterfront again Saturday for the market and took our first trip to the local co-op. Today, we took our usual morning walk to the nearby coffee house where we read the paper and just relaxed. Betsey has read all day and I spent a good amount of time playing Mega Man ZX Advent (a birthday gift) before deciding I was going to blog.

Betsey's making chicken marsala tonight and we have some belated wedding gifts to purchase, but other than that, we're done for the weekend. Hope this posting finds everyone well.