Magic Bus--I Want It, I Waant It

University of Michigan is using Google maps and (I imagine) GPS to show in real time the location of their campus buses. When I first heard about it, I was like, "Wha?" But take a look and see the little game-piece looking buses move along their routes on the Google map of campus.

Wedding Guilt

I’ve been feeling like such a bad friend lately. I’ve been so busy I haven’t had a chance to correspond with hardly anyone (family included)—not even my bridesmaids. This is compounded by the fact that the little correspondence I have had seems to revolve around me either 1. asking for information related to the wedding, or 2. asking for help related to the wedding. I feel particularly bad about not keeping up with Becky and C, whose boy, Avery, is due in a little over 2 months. But what with having multiple appointments each week for various wedding meetings (cake, photographer), Easter, getting over being sick, and various errands that need to get done (it’s not like Ceilidh, Neko, and Octavius can drive over to Meijers to pick up dinner themselves) I don’t think I’ve had a free evening since Mark’s birthday (ah, those blissful four days of nothing but fun, relaxation, movies, and good food).

With only 4½ months left until the wedding, let’s take stock of how we’re coming:

1. Wedding dress. Done. It’s sitting at the store waiting for me to pick it up, which I haven’t been able to do yet because of all the other things we’ve been doing. It’s sad that errands kept me away from my dress. I’ve been DYING to try it on again, and have been waiting patiently for four months. Hopefully I’ll be able to do a run and grab either tomorrow or Sunday.

2. Mark’s Tux. Done. Sort of. We went with Steve and Tony so they could get their tuxes, and Mark was going to change his vest color, but the guy working was totally unfriendly and we ended up leaving and forgetting to have him make the change. (By the way, the boys decided to rent zoot suits so they could be Mark’s posse.)

3. Cake. (Relatively) Done. We have booked Zingerman’s for our wedding cake, which at this point we plan on being a nice, chocolate, two-layer cake. The baker we met with, Kim, is very cool and creative, and was brainstorming all sorts of great ideas. We even got a handwritten postcard from one of the co-owners afterwards letting us know we should contact her if we had any further questions. Kudos to Zingerman’s. Then, so everyone else can also have cake, we were thinking about getting 6-inch cakes on every table. Bonus: they would be part of the centerpiece, and they would encourage my extended family and Mark’s extended family to mingle!

4. Photographer. ALMOST done. We have an appointment with one person tonight and then one person next Tuesday, and then we plan on making our decision. The first person we met with we really liked, but he was just a bit more expensive than I felt comfortable with. The second person we weren’t so keen on. We’ll see how these next two go. In any case, I hope we’ll have this matter settled within the next two weeks.

5. Florist. Next on the list. We don’t plan on doing too many flowers—most likely just the bouquets, boutonnieres, and perhaps two arrangements for the wedding ceremony. I’ve looked at a lot of arrangements and hope to incorporate my signature red color into the flower arrangements.

6. Music. Yes and No. Yes, we’ve booked our reception musicians (ourselves: iPod wedding). No, we haven’t worked on a playlist. I think I’ve added about an hour’s worth of music so far, so either there won’t be much dancing, or we’ll all be doing the hustle for four hours. The problem is not so much a lack of music, but a lack of organizing and selecting music for the playlist. In addition, Mark and I don’t have a song for our first dance. I’m not sure what we’re going to choose, but I did like a coworker’s story about how they chose their first dance song: they got drunk at a bar and heard “Truly, Madly, Deeply” come on the radio (hate the song, but love the story!).

7. Transportation. I’ll be lucky if this gets done. My dad said he’d have my mother’s Mustang ready in time for the wedding so we could use it, but he has yet to work on it so far this year.

8. Hotel Accommodations. A complete disaster at this point. Trying to explain the whole story would make my fingers bleed from typing so much.

9. Honeymoon. We’d LIKE to take a honeymoon…

Some of the big things are done and no longer a concern. And, as Mark keeps reminding me, if nothing else, we have our clothes, the location, and food, so there’s nothing keeping us from getting married. There’s tons of other stuff that I’d like to do (like make some scrapbook pages of both Mark and I to put out at the reception), but I don’t know how much I’ll actually get done in the next 4½ months. Wish us luck, and know that we are thinking of you all, even if we aren’t calling or writing as often as we’d like!

The Power of Locomotion

Mark has been running a lot lately, and badgering and cajoling me into being his cohort. (OK, not so much with the badgering and cajoling, because I've been wanting to exercise as well, and now that Mark has his super cool heart rate watch, we can go outside anywhere and still know our running stats.)

But I've been really wanting to get back into bike riding. When we lived in Jackson way back when, we used to ride our bikes everywhere (it's a small town, so we could ride about a mile or two to the Kroger's and Blockbuster on Saturday and take home dinner and a movie :), and I've been really wanting to get into that groove again. Plus, Ann Arbor has a lot of bike clubs and activities, and it'd be fun to do something like the morning ride to Dexter and have brunch (just one of the various rides that the club organizes).

So today, in an effort to get in bike shape, I rode my bike to work (approximately 5 miles, according to Google maps). It took me between 45 minutes to an hour, which I felt was pretty good considering it was my first attempt, and I had no idea how hard it would be (turns out Ann Arbor is really hilly), or how fast I would be able to go. And even though the ride was not exactly scenic (I rode along a busy rode because it was slightly more downhill, and there was a sidewalk to ride on), it was so cool to know that my getting to work was completely under my control--I was in charge of my own locomotion. Granted, it was some slow locomotion, so I'm going to have to work on that. But I'm excited and looking forward to riding to work a couple times every week this coming summer!

In the meanwhile, today I'm having Mark pick me up because my legs are SORE!