I was up early trying to get a paper done and thought it would be a better use of my time to get a post up. I'll finish where I left off on the last post with the wedding recap. When I'd stopped everyone had showed up at the town hall and we were trying to get upstairs. My soon-to-be wife had a gorgeous dress by the way. I don't know if I mentioned that before, but damn! She was smokin! In any case I don't think I'd been to a wedding when the bride had to walk up and down stairs. It's exactly as inconvenient as you'd expect it to be. She's quick on the uptake though and made it up with no glitches. The room is maybe 15' X 30' and at one end is a big table with two office chairs and there's maybe 30 folding chairs filling the rest of the room. We're guided to the two padded chairs and asked to sit. But wait! now we stand again and meet the marriage official, the town official and the official translator who're running the show. It's a small world in Belgium and the marriage official used to be one of the Pirate's teacher's when she was in her early teens. Everyone piles into the room and we get down to business. I say business with purpose because that's exactly how it rolled out. None of this, "in sickness and in health" stuff. It was all a bunch of regulations saying that we couldn't stop each other from seeking employment and we should support each other if wanting a new job. Assets gained by one are considered the assets of each. Honestly, I was a bit to giddy to really pay attention. I spent most of the time trading glances with my pretty pirate. I did glance back a couple times because directly in front of us was the marriage and town official, speaking in French. At the far left of the table was the translator so I had to look at him. It was pretty funny because all the Francophiles looked directly at the officials and the English speakers all looked at the translator. The rough part was the translator wasn't great. The marriage official, the teacher, she was on the ball though and she started to do the English and hers was much better. The translator wasn't offended at all and actually seemed a bit relieved. We get to the "I do's" and we'd practiced a bit so when it was my turn I stuck out my chest and almost shouted, "je le veut" Ah yeah, I spoke in French and was very proud. Everyone laughed. How cool is it that I got people to laugh at my wedding. I'd been to a lot of weddings it seems and don't remember any of them where everyone laughed at once. The pirate she's as cool as can be and sweetly says, "I do". We do the rings and voila. well not quite. Now the paperwork. They passed across the table some documents which we both signed and then had our witnesses sign. Then finally they let me kiss my baby and it was done. Before we got up though the wedding official told a cute story about the Pirate and she always knew what she wanted and usually always got it. The teacher then wanted to make sure my wife had stopped smoking! Too funny! I calmly reassured here such was the case. This lady was brazen. It was then demanded of me that I come back to the August festival (starting up this weekend) and that I speak perfect French when I come. Bon, mon Francais n'et pas bien, alors je n'ai alle pas. (I think that's what you'd say, if not exactly what you'd write) The next thing was she said her position afforded her the ability to be the first person to give me a kiss. She strided around the table, grabbed me (I'm stiff as a board and just a little freaked out), and she gave me a nice, grandmotherly kiss on the cheek. Pheww! That would've been weird. At this point everyone's standing, congratulating, snapping pictures, and trying to funnel out. Just as we walk out a band strikes up. A big parade band. Was this a surprise? They're not really looking at us or playing anything I've heard at a wedding before. A quick visual survey of the group indicates I'm not the only person a little taken off.
Seems I'm out of time this morning. I guess I'll finish the story with another post at an unforseen time. The paper calls.

Quick hits
Wes Anderson I think is done making good movies. I sat through Steve Sissou and was happy that it was over. Last night I watched the Darjeeling Limited and it was atrocious. This flick gets one star on the Netflix rating.
Since the last post I've also watched "Watchmen" and was almost equally disappointed. I'll give it three stars because it didn't totally suck and the message was at least a good one.
Watched the new "Witchmountain" flick and would recommend sticking with the old one. Harry Potter was spot on and I'll look forward to the other two when they come out. Watched "Step Brothers" again and it's not Talladega Nights, but it's funny. Boats'n'ho's, Boats'n'ho's...

Hitched

Welp, the deed is done, I got flashy ring on my finger and a pretty girl on my arm. It's been 47 days since we tied the knot and being married is just like they say. My apologies for the lack of invitations. We wanted a small ceremony and the list of people I knew who had the time, the money and the passport to go was short. They do things a bit different in Belgium. None of that I can't see the bride till she's got her feet on the aisle stuff. Here's how it went down: I got up that morning and went over to my parents hotel where I was to stay until things started going. My party consisted of two couples who used to be great friends in the good ol'triathlon days. They came over to the hotel just before game time and we each piled into our cars and drove over to the Pirate's house. Once there I'm supposed to go and wait at the door, my mom is supposed to give me away and her dad her, 'Supposed' being the operative word. Her dad was the principle photographer so he was snapping away. I waited as long as I could, but when I saw her in the dress... I just had to be next to her. Too beautiful. We milled about taking photos with all the combinations of folks: parents, cousins, friends, families, parties, engish speakers, everything we could thing of. Then we all got back into the cars and my car lead out. The rest of the cars followed with my pretty Pirate in the last car. We were told we'd have the entire parking area to ourselves, but alas another wedding party at the church next door assumed it was reserved for them. We got out and quickly stood in a spot so my Pirate would be close to the door. When she finally rolled up, we got out, met all the folks running the show and went up to say our words. I'll finish the story the next time I'm online.

Quick hits since the wedding:
Dexter is an awesome show
Prison Break was surprisingly good as well
Rome, Season 1 was great, Season 2, not so much
Being this close to the Colorado Monument is pretty friggin sweet!

Hope folks are enjoying there summer!

I'm get'n hitched

So the Pirate captured me and I didn't want to be free anymore. She's been given full posting privileges; so be forewarned. We've done some great things the last few months. The coolest was definitely the trip to Europe mentioned in the previous post. After a brief hiatus she came back over the pond and made the move with me to Grand Junction. So entranced by the desert was she it was easy for me to convince her to stay ;-) Here are a few pics from one of our recent outings:

So, it's been a while since the last post. It's been a pretty busy last couple months between working all day, trying to plan a move to Grand Junction, and planning a trip to Europe. Over the next few weeks I'll hope to include the exciting bits, specifically what transpired in the old country. In the short term here's the scoop and the notes I took while over there. I flew out on the 30th of December to Brussels, Belgium where the Pirate picked me up. After a fun New Years we spent a day in Belgium before driving to Venice, Italy via Lucern, Switzerland. A few days in Venice was all we took and then we went to Rome via Assisi. We ended up in Rome a little longer than expected because someone or something decided they preferred the car with one broken window rather than a complete set of intact windows. Following the repairs we drove down to Sorrento, Italy and the next day we drove to Pompei, which is pretty friggin awesome. The next day we drove to Florence via Mt. Vesuvius and stayed at this really sweet 17th century palace in downtown Florence. After Florence we drove to Nice, France via Pisa, Italy. The plan was originally to visit Cinque Terra, but after our car troubles we were a little too uncomfortable with leaving the car unattended. We left Nice for Avignon, France and traveled through Monte-Carlo, Monaco and Marseille, France. The next day we drove to Paris via Millau. On the last day we made it back to Brussels and flew home on the 19th. Like I said I'll expand later and some of the 2000 odd photos, but for now just the notes:

Stucco is for lazy artists
European bathrooms; belgium, venice minimum surfaces to clean; they're thinking ahead.
Venice and the little streets
Hot chocolate
Not enough handouts
Hotel nerva, rome.
Hotel baserlator, lucern
Hotel orion, venice
Camera died venice, too bad
Assisi looked fantastic
Roman police all day, was it just the rain?
Bricks; bricks are friggin tough. The whole forum was brick faced with marble. Makes me really want to learn about masonry. It was crazy the way they just kept piling rocks and cement on top of each other.
No alarm clocks.
The coffee! Pages about the coffee!
When they say take everything out of the car, they mean everything!
Hotel antiche mura; standard american hotel room, amazing breakfast, great location and grounds
Pompei was the highlight so far,batteries died just at the start of rick's tour.
In sorrento get a scooter.
When the gas light turns on fill up; 1km I pushed, we coasted 10km, I maxed out at 20kph!
italy is very poor.
Naples truly looked horrible, pompei was trying (had the first public recycling bins).
Speed limits, staying in your lane, and stop signs. Yeah right
No truck passing signs and automated radar guns would be cool in the US
The hills; italy has them eveywhere! It's no wonder that they make good cyclists, the hills and the traffic.
Palazzo nicolini; amazing room, worst coffee, lame breakfast for the price, very nice staff, safe parking..
Florence; lots of bikes, scooters, natural gas buses.
Wicked sore from pushing the car.
Paintings for suckers; if a child can do it, it ain't nothing special.
Accademia; david and a bunch of religion.
am I in florence or the US?
Who pays for the restoration of historic churches? Does the church or city pay, do they share ?
Cardinal virtues; fortitude, prudence, justice, temperance; theological virtues; faith, hope, charity.
Pisa was awesome, could definitely live there.
Cinque terra looked gorgeous, I can only imagine what the coastal villages were like.
Monaco is a country! Who knew!
You can't drive to cinque terra,so go to Nice instead! The weather would've made it a letdown anyway. The drive through the area was beautiful though.
Good bread in france, bad coffee.
I don't like crème caramel
Didn't make dijon, went to monte carlo in monaco, had coffee (not bad) in marseille at Bar de la
Marine, which was made famous in the movie Marius (french)
spent the night in avignon cuz marseille was shady. Then onto paris, which meant no bruges.
Will need to go back to marseille.
Southern france is as gorgeous as they say.
going someplace without a plan is not good; nice, marseille, carcasonne, could be great if we had a plan
Oh, have a fucking map of where you're going. Or bring the internet next time!
Marseille was sad; it had great buildings that were really rundown. We had the highest temp though of 14.5 C. Oh and finally the smell of the sea.
Millau viaduct was awesome!
Highways were empty in france, was it because of the outrageous tolls, gas and car costs? In italy all the roads were always packed! Are the french more poor? It would be interesting to know the answer to this one.
I will never own a car in europe. Need to look into the tradeoffs between a scooter and a motorcycle.
Send laeti the pics
2 days in sorrento without seeing a mcdonald's
If you drive a gray fiat bravo you're a dork.
Citroen makes the ugliest cars i've ever seen, opal next. The audi s5 is a sexy beast of a car. who makes alfa romeo?