Another Marriage Milestone Passes Sans Four Figure Expense
I'm amazed at the expense that some folks get themselves into when it comes to the whole wedding thing. How easily numbers can be run up from something resembling reasonable to astronomical in a few days of frenzied selections and burning NEED to get things crossed off the lists.

Oh the lists, the thirty pages of things to do, the interminable lists of tasks, small, large and huge.

Saturday saw another big one crossed off the big list. Second only to the reception hall that was locked down a week or so ago.
P found her dress.

Oh yeah. Just like that. Not perfect but perfect enough (though I'm still a little confused why it had to be found now with just under 3 months to go before the wedding but those questions didn't go over all that well). She found a place in San Francisco that had it in stock and we could have had it shipped down to Santa Cruz but since San Francisco is only an hour or so away, we drove up on Saturday morning.

Once we found our way to the shop (Yahoo's directions were just a little squirrelly but can't held too much to task as SF has more one way streets and detours than most any other cities on the planet). But it was nice, the drive up was beautiful though San Jose was a flipping sauna. I cannot believe that people pay more to live in San Jose than in Santa Cruz where we've got the beach and far more temperate weather! Living in San Jose's gotta be like living in an oven that's permanently set somewhere between warm and roast. The heat emanating up from the concrete is amazing, normally the radiation of heat is about a foot or so but in San Jose its closer to three feet. Glad the Jetta's got cloth or velour seats as the vinyl would have been a serious drag to be continually peeling our skin off of.

The shop was a very small place with high ceilings and girl who was far too nice for someone who had to come in on her day off to help us out. I was banished to the outside which was fine with me as I've been addicted (truly, I played close to 16 hours in the last two days) to a game on my Clie right now. Its good fun and its only going to get worse when this arrives this week.

Which reminds me, I'm due for a write up of the Clie. Especially since I had to a chance to compare it to the new crop of even more powerful handhelds. Did you know the new one can not only snap pics but can also shoot low-res video as well? I didn't. It can also be a voice recorder for memos and can even be used as a wireless portal if you've got an 802.11b network in place. Or if you like to go to McDonald's or Starbucks (though I think you've gotta be on T-Mobile for Starfucks).

Anyway, P tries on the dress, chats with the nice girl and we're done. In and out and done in under 15 minutes. Which gives us a little time to spend in the city. We had to choose a spot to get to for some lunch before heading back down to home again. I've always wanted to go to Momo's, which is right next to PacBell Park, the home of my SF Giants. Its an upscale spot to see and be seen. And since P's mom was unknowingly treating us to lunch we posted up for a table out on the patio. The hostess let us know that they'd lost power a few minutes before so all we could do was get drinks.

I'd heard some of the waitstaff mentioning how good their mojitos were so we got a couple of them and spent more time planning wedding stuff, details, lists and more lists. For those folks that haven't been to San Francisco and those that haven't been in a long time. Its a very windy city, so much so that, if you're in the shade, its easy to get chilly and the big iced rum/mint and lime drinks weren't helping to warm us up. Four fully geared up firemen went in the front door of the restaurant and a few minutes later we had power restored.

But we'd taken a chill and decided to pay up and roll out.

I'd figured that the mojitos weren't going to be cheap but I was still taken a bit aback when the bill came for the two of them. How's nine bucks a pop sound? Yeah. Sounds like a high profit margin cocktail to me. For $9 they should have been another 50% as large. But whatever, it was still nice to kick it outside the ballpark.

And P could not stop saying how relieved and pleased she was that this big, big step was taken and out of the way. Another major crossing off of the lists. And I've gotta start figuring out what I'm going to wear and where I'm going to get it from. Oh boy! And the fact that the dress didn't cost a thousand bucks is pretty cool as I've always had a really hard time understanding the mentality of spending $5K on a dress that will, in all likelihood, be worn once. How does that work? What's the thought process behind wasting so much coin? P's happy with what she's got and we didn't spend an arm and a leg at all. I don't think I'm supposed to say exactly how much it cost but let's put it this way, it was alot closer to double digits than to quadruple digits.

But I've also got a half dozen new posts percolating right now and wish I'd been able to sit down and write them all out when they hit me but I took my notes and will hopefully be able to capture the posts again when I do get a little time to write them out.