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?

Secession

I got this the other day and it was too funny. Funny because I live in a blue state, come from numerous red states, and am very appreciative of why living in a blue one feels so good!

Dear Red States:

We've decided we're leaving. We intend to form our own country, and we're taking the other Blue States with us. In case you aren't aware, that includes California , Hawaii , Oregon , Washington , Minnesota , Wisconsin , Michigan , Illinois and all the Northeast. It may even include Florida and Ohio , they are seriously considering it. We've given them until Nov. 4th to decide. We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation, and especially to the people of the new country. Since we're dropping the middle states we're calling it United America, or simply the U.A.
To sum up briefly: You get Texas , Oklahoma and all the slave states. We get stem cell research and the best beaches. We get the Statue of Liberty. You get Dollywood. You can take Ted Nugent. We're keeping Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel. You get WorldCom. We get Intel and Microsoft. You get Ole' Miss. We get Harvard and 85 percent of America 's venture capital and entrepreneurs. You get Alabama . We get two-thirds of the tax revenue, you get to make the red states pay their fair share.
Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian Coalition's, we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch of single moms, and the highest concentration of pregnant unwed teenagers. Please be aware that the U.A. will be pro-choice and anti-war, and we're going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals. They have kids they're apparently willing to send to their deaths for no purpose, and they don't care if you don't show pictures of their children's caskets coming home. We do wish you success in Iraq, and hope that the WMDs eventually turn up, really we do, but we're not willing to spend our resources in Bush/McCain's Quagmire. We'd rather spend it on taking care of sick people, and educating our children.
With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80 percent of the country's fresh water, more than 90 percent of the pineapple and lettuce, 92 percent of the nation's fresh fruit, 95 percent of America's quality wines, 90 percent of all cheese, 90 percent of the high tech industry, most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools plus Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT. With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88 percent of all obese Americans (and their projected health care costs), 92 percent of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100 percent of the tornadoes, 90 percent of the hurricanes, 99 percent of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100 percent of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia. We get Hollywood and Yosemite , thank you.
Additionally, 38 percent of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62 percent believe life is sacred unless we're discussing the war, the death penalty or gun laws, 44 percent say that evolution is only a theory, 53 percent that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61 percent of you crazy Redies believe you are people with higher morals then we Blues..

Peace out,Blue States

The Big Apple

On hearing of my grandmother's passing, I immediately bought some tickets back east for the Pirate and I and instead of the Grand Canyon we decided to spend a few days in The Big Apple. We spent the first few days in Connecticut and the family got introduced to the Pirate. From talking to the Pirate and my folks it seemed everyone was equally enchanted with the other. Being back east is always great! The people just seem less subdued by life and are definitely more quick to know. If they had big mountains I'd be living there right now! Course knowing about the ice in New Hampshire and Vermont is always intriguing.

Well after a few days we went down to New York and we stayed right downtown, 2 blocks from Times Square. We checked out all the big sites: Central Park, the Met, the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, Times Square, Wall St., the World Trade Center and of course Ground Zero. Ground Zero was infamously impressive. It was really tough when walking through the visitor center to keep the tears back. What a horrific tragedy. I remember exactly when I heard about it. Fortunately, it's an amusing story, that I feel horribly guilty about now. I had just started my first second semester of graduate school and my biophysics class had just started with Dr. Climatologist. He opened the class by saying, "I understand that having class today may be hard for some of you and I won't mind if any of you feel the need to leave." I knew the Dr. fairly well so I said something dumb like, "What's the deal man, eat something bad last night and you don't want to share your gas?" Well, maybe not that dumb, but something close maybe. He asked, "Haven't you heard?" "Heard what," I replied. Then I got the scoop. I think we had class, but I'm doubting anyone rememberd anything that was said. I honestly don't remember anything after being told except spending the rest of the day in the Student Union building watching the news. I really thought I'd moved on, but going to ground zero was really tough. Fortunately, I had the Pirate, and she makes everything in my world easier to deal with. We finished up our trip to New York and came back to Denver for a real busy last few days. It would've been awesome had she stayed longer, but I'm going to Belgium for New Years to hang out for three weeks. The Pirate says Belgium is boring. My reply is that, how can some place famous for so much beer be boring?. She shrugs. Instead we're going to spend most of the three weeks in Italy. The plan is Venice, Rome, Pompei, Florence, Piza, and Cinque Terra. We'll also spend a few days in Paris, one in Chamonix, France and one in Switzerland: Zurich being the most likely city. Lots of driving, but at least we'll have a lot of freedom to do whatever. I like a pretty loose schedule when I travel, so we'll hit as many as we can. Well, this has certainly helped me escape my election anxiety. Now I'll have to go home and find another way to divert myself for the next few hours. Peace.

Loved one lost

Sadly, on the morning of our last day in South Dakota I got an email from the Hobstar letting me know, through a real round about way, that I needed to call my folks. My mother had told me my grandmother was in the hospital before I went on the trip, so I kind of knew it was something related to her. What I didn't expect though was that she'd passed away. She was great! She'd always been my favorite. She always seemed fair and ready to laugh. I will always remember her laugh. I didn't get to see her as often as I would've liked, or any of the Morris family for that matter, but I'm happy to have shared the time with her I did. Here's he obituary:

Olive A. Morris of Waterford, died on Sept. 27, 2008, at Lawrence and Memorial Hospital.
She was born on April 20, 1927, in Mass., and was the daughter of John and Elizabeth Burns Broderick.
She was the widow of William G. Morris whom she married on Nov. 16, 1947, in Rockland, Mass.
Mrs. Morris resided in Pembroke, Mass., until she moved to Waterford in 1968. She lived at Twin Haven in Waterford since 1985. She was a member of the Garden Bowling League and of the Senior Citizens Pinochle Club.
She is survived by her children, Jean Linard and her husband, Ed of Rupert, Idaho, David Morris and his wife, Janet of Niantic and Daniel Morris of Waterford; her grandchildren, Ben and Josh Linard and Jacob and Patrick Morris.
In addition to her husband, she was also predeceased by her son, William K. Morris.

I love you Grammy.

Back in the saddle

Ok, so it's been a long time since I've updated this thing. Good reasons, I promise! I'm too excited to work today so thought I'd catch up on the old blogging. Since September I've vacationed in 6 states and have planned a trip to visit 5 countries. At the end of September, the Pirate came to visit for 3 weeks. We immediately drove up to the Black Hills in South Dakota. What a wonderful place! A true hidden gem in all that nothingness in the middle of the country. Rushmore was really impressive. I didn't know anything about the logic behind the sculpture before I went. Basically, the four presidents (Washington, FD Roosevelt, Jefferson, and Lincoln, incidentally) were chose because they embody the best of what Americans have, are, and can do. I like the feeling of those guys watching over me and of trying to live up to what they were to our country. They're with me all the time now. We also went to Devils Tower, which I've wanted to see since I first watched Close Encounters of the Third Kind! It was totally cool, and I can't wait to go back and climb to the top. We went to the Badlands which was awesome too! Totally crazy geomorphology going on. I'll get some pics up, but they're pretty impressive. We also went to Custer State Park and drove through the Needles, which also beckoned me to do a little climbing. The coolest part of the South Dakota trip could've been the last morning and going to watch the buffalo round-up. Once a year, the state park herds all the buffalo in the park to give them immunizations. Luckily, that once a year was the day we were there. If you mentally blocked out all the trucks you could almost get a sense of what it would've been like back in the day. Truly a great experience. So great that the people behind us had travelled all the way from Australia just for the Round-Up. Pretty cool!