For those who missed it: I’m married now, folks! I’ve been married now for roughly .26% of my life. I think. It feels like longer. :)

The wedding went off without a hitch, other than the hitching part. It was pretty, people had fun, and Abraham Lincoln graced us with a Presidential toast. All in all, it was a night to remember.

And the honeymoon! Oh, the honeymoon. I’d take another one of those any day of the week. (And we have another one coming up in February, but that’s beside the point) The drive was long, and vaguely scary though parts of southern Mississippi, but the honeymoon itself was awesome! The condo was even prettier than the photos led on, and I can’t begin to describe how giddy I felt as I went into the ocean for the first time. Full. Of. Awesome. We ate tons of great food, read on the beach, swam whenever we got too warm, and generally had a fantastic time. We were sad to leave, but at least there were piles of presents waiting for us when we got back.

And let me tell you: I know the ~real~ reason everybody gets married: the booty! (No, not that booty – well, okay, maybe that booty too) We have all sorts of new stuff, and all of it is cool. We haven’t even had a chance to use all of the gift cards or cash that were given us, either, so we’re going to have more presents to come. It’s like Christmas in October! Although by the time we’re done spending all our wedding cash, it’ll probably be Christmas in December. Which is less novel. But still fun.

So that’s the wedding bit. Otherwise, we’re keeping mad busy, somehow. We were very excited to have the wedding out of the way so that we could finally slow down and relax, but it seems like every week, our evenings fill right up. We had Tuesday and Thursday nights of this week free to chill at home, but otherwise our social calendar was/is full (and some of those nights have multiple events). And next week is half-full already, too. So the moral of this story is, if you want to make sure we’re somewhere on a specific date, it couldn’t hurt to warn us about it a couple of weeks out. :)

Also, we’re at 9 days until the Des Moines Half-Marathon (October 18th), where I will try to run 21K (13.1 miles) consecutively. Amanda’s injuries have kept her out of training for most of the last month, which means she probably won’t be running this time. Which is rather heartbreaking (for both of us, really) but the good news is there will be other opportunities. For example, we’re both signed up to run the Susan G. Komen 5K (3.1 mile) on October 24th. And after that, we’re planning to train next spring for the Dam to Dam on June 5th, which is a 20K (12.4 mile) run.

We are officially T-minus 9 days and counting from the wedding. And believe you me: we’re counting.

We turned in a final-and-offical head count to the caterer today. There were a few people that simply never RSVP’d, even after repeated phone calls… so we’re assuming they’re not coming. I’m seriously considering tipping the two security guards we’ll have to act as bouncers and enforce the guest list. And I promise from this day forth to never again be “that guy” and put off RSVPing until the very last moment: it fried my nerves, and I can only imagine it’d do something similar to others.

99% of the work is done, though there’s still a few things that had to be put off until the last moment to handle. Flowers, for instance: while 9 days is a very short period of time in human years, that’s a lifetime in flower years, so we can’t pick up flowers until the day before. And our tuxedos aren’t in yet, which is of course causing me no end of literal nightmares. I haven’t had a full night’s uninterrupted sleep in at least a month.

But! The big day will be here before long. In fact, I’ll be done and married roughly 221 hours from now. Wow. No more counting in hours for a while.

The real fun comes afterwards, though. The day after the wedding, Amanda and I are taking off for a week-long honeymoon in Gulf Shores, which is here on a map. We’ve rented a condo right on the beach and plan to spend our days laying next to the ocean thinking about not much of anything at all, eating whenever we think of it, drinking whenever we’re not eating, and reading whenever we’re not too drunk. The photo above was taken from our balcony. It’s going to rock, people.

Non-wedding related stuff:

• We’ve been training for a half-marathon for a while now. It’s going decently well, though Amanda hurt her ankle last week and is thus taking this week off. We run October 18th. 13.1 miles.
• The basement is mostly demolished. Redoing it is going to take longer than expected. We’re now hoping to have it finished before the end of the year, but that’s debatable at this point.
• I got a violin for my birthday! I’m learning to play. Slowly. As in, the learning goes slowly, and I cannot play quickly. By this time next week, I’m hoping to have figured out “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” No promises, though. Rumor has it I have one or two other things going on.

In no particular order, either!

Bike! I got one, just this last Sunday. It’s my first new bike since I was a middle schooler, I think. I also haven’t ridden a bike more than once or twice since I was a preteen, until now. As a result, I decided not to spend a huge amount on the bike. I got one from Target – this one, in fact. It’s a hybrid, which means that it’s somewhere between a mountain bike and a road bike. Which means that I can ride on rougher trails without a problem, but still get the greater speed associated with a road bike. I’ve only been on one longer ride so far, but it was fun. And since next week is Bike to Work Week (hence the new ride), I’ll get plenty of practice all too soon. I’ll be riding a good 15-20 miles a day next week.

Volleyball! A few friends and I have formed a sand volleyball team for this Spring/Summer. I’ve never really played volleyball aside from a few very casual games, but I think it’s something I’ll enjoy even if I don’t excel. We’re playing seven games over the next seven weeks, with our first game being next Tuesday evening. Our team’s name is “To Kill a Blocking Nerd,” which I find awesomely hilarious (friend Tyson came up with the name).

Grass! Amanda and I hired a lawn service this year with the hope of making some real headway on our backyard (aka the dirt pit). They’ve fertilized, aerated and seeded our backyard, and they’ll continue to do some fertilization and week control as the year progresses. It really wasn’t as pricy as I would have expected – I think we’re getting the whole year-long deal for around $300. So far, I’m seeing grass sprouting in some pretty dead areas, so I’m excited about that. Unfortunately, the creeping charley also seemed to appreciate the fertilizer, and it’s gaining some major headway on the other side of the yard. I think I’m going to have to treat it before the new grass is fully grown, or I may not have any grass left when it’s done.

Basement! Very soon, Amanda and I are going to take the plunge back into DIY home improvement and start redoing the finished half of the basement. Essentially, we’re going to start over. First up, we’re going to tear up the carpeting and bleach/seal the concrete to make it more moisture resistant and try to remove the 40+ years of pet smells down there. Then we’re going to tear out the ceiling (and possibly the walls). Next, we’re going to redo the overhead lighting and close up a poorly placed intake vent (it’s adjacent to an output vent, creating a closed loop). Then we’re going to put up drywall on the ceiling and walls and texture everything. Once that’s done, we get to paint everything a nice bright shade of something. And finally, we’re going to lay down a new floor – probably a laminate hardwood. Just typing all that stuff exhausted me.

Wedding! We are four months and five days from the big moment we’ve all been waiting for. All the really big things are in place, so we’re down to the annoying details. We spent a long while last night working on the guest list, and we’re going to spend even more time on it. The problem we’re running into is: Amanda’s family is massive and her parents are pretty adamant about having everyone there, but we have limited seating at our wedding location (180 absolute max, 150 realistically – but we can fit more inside at the reception). So once we get all her extended family seated, and my much smaller close family seated (sorry third cousins), we have ~very~ little room for any of our friends. This frustrates me, because (no offense to anyone) I’d rather have a close friend attend our wedding than some second-great-aunt that I’ve never met and Amanda hasn’t seen in 15 years, assuming I had to choose between the two. So we’re working on a multi-tiered system currently – family and very close friends (mostly those in the wedding) will attend the wedding and everything else. Others will be invited to the dinner and the reception. And still others will be invited to attend the post-dinner reception and drink/dance the night away. It’s not an ideal system, but it’s the only one we’ve figured out so far that doesn’t violate fire and safety codes or put us several thousand dollars over budget.

Computer! My home PC started dying last month – randomly turning off and then not turning back on for hours at a time. So I decided it was time to upgrade my system. After all, I’d been using the same system since before grad school, which means it was at least 5 years old. So I did a bunch of research and bought a bunch of parts. The motherboard I purchased was dead on arrival, so I had to send it back and delay the building process, but the second one worked like a champ. For those who speak geek, I’m running an Intel E8400 3GHZ dual-core processor (overclocked to 3.6GHZ per core), a GeForce 9800 GTX+ w/ 512MB DDR3, 4GB DDR2-1066 RAM, and a 1TB hard drive. I also finished off my system with a new 23” monitor that runs at a lovely 1920×1080 resolution (yay for 1080p!). It’s lovely, quiet, very fast, and more energy efficient than my last system. Overall I’m extremely happy with it. :)

Enough for now! We have a very important super-secret company-wide meeting here in a few minutes, so I’m going to wrap this up. Hopefully the meeting doesn’t involve everyone being fired. Or at least not me being fired. That would stink too.

Update post-meeting: Yay economy. The company is having to drop our 401(k) matches and is instituting a company-wide pay cut (variable dependent on pay bracket) in order to stay afloat. This is the point when Amanda and I working at the same company isn’t as cool as it was before, as we’re both taking a pay cut on the same day. Positive: we both still have jobs.

Let me know what you think about this style o’ communication, if you don’t mind. I’d be interested to hear what people think. It actually takes longer to post this way… but it’s more fun, too. Perhaps thats a worthwhile trade-off. That’s for you, the viewer, to decide.

So, where to start up again? Well, I’ll just catch you up as things cross my mind. This is going to be a little stream-of-consciousness, to warn.

Amanda and I have the major details of the wedding nailed down. We have a date (September 12, 2009), a venue (Jester Park Lodge), a caterer (Christiani’s), our groomsmen (Eric Gookin, Justin Ladwig, Tom Wurzinger) and bridesmaids (Sara Reimer, Anne Janotta, Lindsay Reinert), and as of last night we also have a DJ (Sound Extremes) and an officiate (Rod Glazebrook). And weekend from next, Amanda’s brother Tom is coming into town and we’re going to go check out tuxes. Eric, if you’d like to come too, you’re more than welcome.

I’m keeping pretty busy work-wise. Last Friday I launched a redesign of a big website for August Home – WoodsmithShop.com. It didn’t launch until 11pm on Friday, which meant (in case you’re bad at math) that I was working pretty late hours to get this out the door on time. And then that weekend, I turned around and spent a good many hours working on a couple of freelance development projects (Ant’s Eye View and Connected By Distance) and then wrote a fairly long article for CSS Newbie. On top of that I’m also currently teaching my continuing education web development course – though today, I’m stuck emailing the lady in charge and letting her know this will be the last time I teach the course this year. I’ve simply too many plans, goals, and obligations to keep up.

Last week Iowa experienced a wicked cold snap, resulting in one of the coldest nights on record. Therefore, our furnace died the day before and couldn’t be replaced until the day after. I spent a good 36 hours tending the fire in our wood-burning stove every 90 minutes or so to ensure that our pipes (and selves) didn’t freeze in the -20F weather, and came out of the ordeal sleep deprived and smelling of smoked meat. But! We also came out with a new furnace and water heater (cause it was old and dying too), so it wasn’t all bad. The good news is, we didn’t have to buy on credit, as we had savings. The bad news is, I wiped out my part of the wedding savings. But we will persevere, seeing no alternative. Oh, and the kind people at City Wide were very nice and gave us a good price. I’d recommend them.

CSS Newbie is still tottering along. It got a redesign and was relaunched on December 1st – ten months to the day from when I first officially launched the site. It’s still not quite as profitable a venture as I’d like to see it become, but I have ideas in that regard. Which is part of why I’ve decided not to teach the web class for a while – that time could be put into developing CSS Newbie into something… more.

Amanda and I are no longer trying to sell our house. In fact, we only tried for six weeks before giving it up as a bad job for the short term. And now that we’ve just invested beaucoup funds into the infrastructure, we’ll probably be more encouraged to stick around for a bit longer. We’ll have to see what the future brings, I guess.

And otherwise? Well, that depends on how much detail you want. Here’s some: we bought a new chair for the den, we have a room we call the den now, my niece is now four and my god daughter is one, with help from dad and friend Ben I managed to wall mount my downstairs TV, I’m working on my first mix-tape in a decade, I’m rereading an Ayn Rand book (Atlas Shrugged) given to me by Danielle many years ago, I’m actively looking for freelance web work, and we’re having a Super Bowl party at our place.

That should do.

* Note: I haven’t had worse.

Life is pretty busy over on this side of the computer monitor. Amanda and I are still trying to sell our house, though it’s not going as well as we had hoped. I think we’re going to have to drop the price of the house a touch in order to get the sort of traffic we need to get it sold. This here economic crisis thingy isn’t doing us any favors, I can tell you. Part of our problem, I’m guessing, is that our home is well-suited for first-time buyers, older buyers on a fixed income, and young families — and those are the exact people that are going to have a hard time getting approved for a loan right now. Luckily, Amanda and I have really good credit, and we’ve already been pre-approved at several banks. But we have to sell this place before we can move. Anyone looking for a solid lil’ house in a quiet neighborhood?

I’m also currently teaching my web class again through Des Moines Public Schools, which means my Tuesday and Thursday evenings are filled from now (well, starting two weeks ago) through mid-November. The class is going really well this time around; students are asking lots of questions, which means we’re falling behind, but it also means they’re interested in what I’m teaching. And that makes up for any scheduling hassles it might cause. I was planning on this being the last time I taught this class, but I’m enjoying it enough this go around that I might sign on for another tour of duty.

CSSnewbie still helps to keep me busy when I’m not otherwise occupied. And I’m happy to report that I’m inching ever closer to being able to give the site a complete facelift, which I’ve been itching to do since around late February of this year. My designer friend Jeremy had some free time (or at least made some free time) for me, so we’re hashing out a new design now. He and I are also throwing ideas back and forth for a web-based business I might start up on the side that has me pretty excited.

Other than that, I have a group-type meeting (Des Moines Web Geeks) every other Monday evening, an exercise class after work on Wednesdays, and social stuff most weekends (Amanda and I were in Minnesota for a wedding two weekends ago, and we had engagements Friday, Satuday, and Sunday nights this last weekend). So what I’m saying is, if you would like to catch up with me in person, you might want to somehow be associated with one of those things mentioned above. Or schedule several days in advance: I already have tentative social plans for this coming Wednesday, Sunday, and Monday evenings, and a possibility for a Saturday evening thing, but Friday is currently free as far as my calendar knows. Call now! Operators are standing by.

Oh, and one last thing: today is the Two Year Anniversary of me buying my house! :) And since I won’t be around tonight (see above), Amanda and I celebrated last night. We made pulled pork burritos with slow-cooked onions and green peppers, refried beans, Spanish rice, and salsa verde. We also topped off the meal with a ~fantastic~ bottle of Bordeaux we brought back with us from Paris. And I have to say: it was the best Mexican-American-French fusion we’ve EVER made.

Okay, I’m finally ready to make the big announcement. Sorry about the delay, folks: it was a combination of a lack of spare time and a desire to wait until I had something definitive to report. But here she is:

Amanda and I are selling our house and moving downtown! At least, that’s the goal. And we’re making good progress on our goal.

As of yesterday, our house is officially on the market. We’re listed through Burnett Realty, who has been great to work with so far (our realtor, Marce Peters, fairly rocks). We spent all of Labor Day weekend cleaning, repairing, and de-cluttering the house to get it ready for its big public debut. And frankly, I think the house looks pretty nice right now. In fact, if we weren’t already moving, I would like to live there. :)

So, if you know of anyone looking for a good, solid house in a great neighborhood, send them our way!

Of course, Amanda and I are not so bold as to put our house on the market without at least an idea as to where we would like to move next. Instead, we came at this problem from the opposite direction: we decided where to move prior to deciding to sell our house. Two nights ago (the same night our house went on the market), we officially put an offer down on a brownstone at Midtown Heights (their website has lots of info and pictures, so check it out). Specifically, we’ve made an offer on 2110 High Street. If you drive by, it’s the caramel colored one next to the red one. :)

And I’m very excited to say that, as of this morning, our offer has been accepted contingent on the sale of our house! What that means is this: Hubbell (the builders) have accepted our offer, and they’ll generally stop showing 2110 to prospective buyers. Of course, if someone else comes along with a better offer in the meantime, they can still accept that offer over ours. But if our house sells before that happens, we already have somewhere new to live. :)

So since I’m sure there are people curious, here are a few reasons why we’ve decided to move to Midtown Heights:

• We’re generally urban people. We spend most of our time in the downtown area: we work here, we play here, and many of our friends live here.
• Midtown Heights is smack dab in the middle of all that. It’s a two block walk to work, six or so blocks to the library, eight or so blocks to our favorite restaurants and bars on Ingersoll, and only a mile and a half bike ride (or walk, really) to the Court Avenue district. As such, we’ll be able to sell off one of our cars, thus reducing both our monthly debt load and our carbon footprint simultaneously.
• It’s a relatively affordable way to move downtown. Many of the other condos we looked at were more expensive. And those that were less expensive just aren’t what we were looking for.
• We think there’s a decent chance that the brownstone will retain its value, and possibly even grow in value. It’s in a good location that’s only going to improve – there’s several million dollars worth of commercial construction going in across the street, the city is expanding the sidewalks all along Ingersoll to make it more pedestrian-centric, and it’s right next door to the very chic Sherman Hill neighborhood.

So that’s that. And now you have our big news. Again, if you know of anyone looking for a house, send them our way!

So, lesser-news! Tomorrow, starting at around 1:45pm, an era will be ending. For me. I’m getting my hair cut.

Now, this isn’t the first time I’ve grown my hair out long, only to chop it off again. So I can’t guarantee I won’t be tempted in the future to start letting it get long. But for the short-term, at least, I will be a (proud?) member of the short-hairs club – a hippy no longer (at least in appearance).

Why, you ask? I dunno… time for a change? And since I was planning to have it short for the wedding, and I don’t want to traumatize myself the week before (any more than I will regardless), this is as good a time as any. And if it turns out that my hair looks terrible short these days – or, gods forbid, I’m going bald on top or something – I have a whole year to figure out what to do before it’s truly important.

So tomorrow afternoon I’m heading to Marc Stephens and telling them to do their best. I’m bringing a photo of Patrick Dempsey with me. Because his facial features are somewhat similar to mine, his hair looks like it would behave similarly (waves and whatnots), and he has an awesome ‘do. So that’s a good place to start. :)

Wish me luck! I’ll let you know how it goes.

And sure… in today’s modern World of the Future, most people are never further than an email or instant message away. But emailing someone isn’t the same as talking to them, of being able to hear their voice from across the thousands of miles that separate you. Unfortunately, calling overseas (or at least calling over the seas surrounding the US… maybe other seas are different) can get really expensive, really fast.

At that point, phone cards start to become a truly viable alternative. I’ve always been annoyed by phone cards in the past – it was yet another thing to lug around in my wallet. But phone cards purchased from GetMeCallingCards.com are different. Their system is entirely online. You buy the cards online, then redeem them just by calling their toll-free number (which I’d just add to my cell’s phone book), entering your pin, and dialing the number you want to connect to. They take care of the rest. And better yet, their online system makes it a cinch to find low calling rates by comparing dozens of phone card providers to find the best price.

Anne is back in the states now (yay!), but it’s still very cool to know that if I ever need to call Amsterdam, I can do so for as low as 2.2 cents per minute. Friendships are maintainable at 2.2 cents per minute. :)

First up, I have a dentist appointment tomorrow that I’m a little nervous about. I haven’t been to a dentist since I left southern Iowa, nine plus years ago. Now, it’s not like I’ve been neglecting my teeth entirely: I brush my teeth 2-3 times a day, and even floss and use mouthwash on (okay, rare) occasion. So it shouldn’t be too terrible of an experience. My gums will bleed when the dentist pokes at them, and I’ll be scolded for not flossing more, and then hopefully they’ll give me a toothbrush and send me on my way. I’m pretty sure I have a cavity, though, so we’ll have to see how that goes.

And before I can go to the dentist, I have to fill out an absurd health history form. It has the following responses to all questions: yes, no, or don’t know. And then they ask a bunch of questions that can’t really be answered yes/no.

“Is your mouth dry?” Umm… do you mean right now? Because I had a glass of water a few minutes ago, so that would be no… but I didn’t remember to drink anything until after noon yesterday, so it was pretty dry then.

“Does food or floss catch between your teeth?” Like, every time? No. And not every tooth, either, for that matter. But sometimes, and on some teeth, food and/or floss catches.

“Are you in good health?” Wow. I don’t know… that’s sort of what I was hoping you would tell me at the end of my check-up. You know, if it’s up for me to determine, maybe I’ll just drop my dental insurance and figure out this stuff on my own.

And speaking of dental insurance, that’s another thorn in the ol’ side just now. It’s time to renew our insurance at work, so I’ve gotta determine if I want to make any adjustments to my coverage. I’m thinking about dropping to the lower insurance with the higher deductable, considering my high level of (self-diagnosed) health and low use of doctoral facilities. If I go to the doctor twice next year, and don’t end up chopping an arm off or anything, I could save around $400/year by switching to the cheaper plan. And since preventative care is completely free under either plan, I’d probably not have a reason to go to the doctor at all.

Otherwise, I’m going to keep my dental insurance (and start using it for what it gets me). And then I just need to decide if I want vision insurance. It’d cost me around $110/year to add it, and I do need a new pair of lenses for my glasses (after 7 years, mine are getting pretty scratched up), but would it be cheaper to go it on my own, or get the insurance? I don’t really know.

That’s all for now. I have a big important update I’ll probably share tomorrow, so that’s something to look forward to. :)

We got lost taking the subway from Evanston into downtown Chicago. Between the stop names on the Internet maps not matching the stop names announced on the trains themselves (and ~those~ not matching the names on the subway walls), and our not realizing that some stops were combination subway and elevated rail (causing us to wander for minutes looking for connecting trains), it took us over two hours to get into the city from where we were staying. It might have been faster to overnight in Davenport!

Then we ended up getting caught in a blizzard our second night in the city, but we didn’t let that slow us down much. We still explored the area around our hotel, getting totally lost (again) in the process. However, we found a ~fantastic~ sushi restaurant that normally required reservations, but they had an opening due to the storm, so we got in right away. And then we walked back through the blizzard to our hotel, where the bartender gave us a couple of free drinks that were tasty and strong.

My only real regret is that we didn’t get to see enough of the city. But hey, that just means we have an excuse to go back, right? This time, though, I think I’ll check out the Chicago tour deals at Trusted Tours & Attractions before we leave. They’ve got some pretty great prices on tour packages that make sure you get the most of your time in the city. They have some pretty cool online travel guides, too. And best yet, they have a deal going where you can win a $150 Magellan’s gift certificate just for signing up for their newsletter.

Sadly, Trusted Tours says there’s no Madame Tussauds wax museum in Chicago. I guess the fauxlebrities will have to wait until we visit New York.

I was doing decently, too. For the first couple of weeks, at least. I managed to lose around 9 of the total 17 pounds I was shooting to lose in the first 2 ½ weeks. After that, though, things started to go south.

Problem one was that I started my diet too late in the season. By the time my diet really got into full swing this year, it was competing with family reunions, barbecues, my birthday, and the Iowa State Fair… all of which fairly require the consumption of mass quantities.

Problem two was different. About a week into my diet, I decided I also wanted to start gaining muscle. Saying I want to gain muscle is often like saying I want to grow wings, in that they usually both have the same success rate. So to make this go-round different, I set myself up a couple of challenges.

Challenge one is to complete the Hundred Pushup Challenge. I’m halfway through week 2 at the moment… I managed to eek out 67 pushups Wednesday night, albeit in several sets. But already I’m starting to notice a difference in my arms and chest, and that has me encouraged.

Challenge two is to have a strong abdominal section. I’ve tried this before, and always grow disheartened, because due to extreme weight loss in the past resulting in excess skin, it doesn’t really matter how much I work out my abs – they’re always going to look soft. But I’ve decided to get around this by considering this time more of a lifestyle change than an exercise regimen with a specific goal. To that end, I now do crunches and other ab exercises every morning before I shower. I’m two weeks in, and am starting to feel stronger (though I doubt it’s noticeable).

Challenge three is just to jog more often. I jogged a lot last summer, but I gave it up over the winter months, and didn’t start getting back into it again until recently. Happily, I’m now back up to right around where I was this time last year: I can run a 5K route in right around 30 minutes, or at just over 6 MPH. Now I just need to decide which I’d rather work on: greater speed, or greater distance. Both have a certain appeal. And regardless of which I choose, I want to run at least 7 or so miles every week. This week I’ve managed around 5.7 miles, so I’ve got at least another 2.5 mile jog to go.

And the result of all this muscle-building balderdash? My weight loss had slowed down dramatically (and sometimes reverses). Long-term, having muscle is good for weight loss, because muscle burns calories. However, short-term, muscle is heavier than fat, so as I’m building muscle I’m also gaining weight. So I’ve put away the weight loss dashboard for now: it would only be discouraging to watch my weight plateau while I work so hard at something. Instead, I’m just going to do my best to eat healthily, exercise regularly, and we’ll see what happens.

There are only a few companies that I can find that will consolidate private student loans, but if I could do so, I think it’d save me a fair chunk of change. I currently have several tens of thousands of dollars sitting in loans with an interest rate of 8.4%. Even if I were just able to shave off a percentage point or so, that would save me a little money every month, and cut years off the term of the loan.

Of course, before I do to much work, I should probably check out my credit score. I haven’t bothered to check in a few years, but I can about guarantee that if my credit is poor enough to require Bad Credit Personal Loans instead of the regular sort, I’m not going to be able to get the APR I want.

Has anyone else out there consolidated private student loans? Mind you, I’m not talking about the federally backed sort — I have a few of those, and they’re consolidated at a ridiculously low 2.5%. But if you’ve managed to consolidate private student loans, in a non-sketchy way (read: I don’t want to refinance my house to do it), I’d love to hear about it!

In fact, I really ended up with more of a birth-week than a birthday. The festivities started on Sunday evening, with an impromptu boat ride on Saylorville with Klay, Megan, and Amanda on Klay’s boat (lovingly named “Ethyl,” unintentionally named by Yours Truly). We’d spent the day moving friend Sara from her apartment at 3KG (3000 Grand) to her new loft in the East Village. After that we were severely overheated, so the boat ride was a welcome cool-down. We even swam off the back of the boat for a while, which was divine. Afterwards, we headed to Appare for sake and teppanyaki. It was delicious.

Tuesday night, the four of us headed out on the lake again, as Megan and Klay were both going to be out of town for my birthday party proper, and they wanted to celebrate. This time we brought our food with us, and ate dinner on the lake. It was gorgeous watching the sun set over the lake, from the lake.

On Wednesday (day of birth), Amanda and I went out to dinner. We went to Appare again, but this time we stayed on the sushi side of the restaurant. We spent a couple of hours at our table enjoying sushi and martinis, and chatting about anything and everything that came to mind. It was very enjoyable. Amanda got me an iPod Shuffle and a gift certificate to iTunes, so I could listen to tunes while I jogged. It was an awesome gift, and also a hilarious one: that combo is exactly what I got her for her birthday three months ago. :)

Friday night was the night of my birthday party proper. We started the evening at The Lift, a martini bar on 4th street north of Court Avenue. Later in the night we migrated slightly south to the Royal Mile (a British pub), and ended up upstairs at the Red Monk (a Belgian bar). A good number of friends came out for the partying… over a dozen in all, I’d wager. Visitors included: Amanda, Justin, Tigon and Ben Woline, Jason, Daniel and Abbie Shipton, Hannah and Tono, Sara, Lindsay Reinert, Lindsay Rees, Nick, Adam Pirillo, Joe, Lisa, and Tae. And possible one or two others that I’ve forgotten. Amanda and I took a cab home, and I managed to go the entire night without losing anything I’d ingested, and I woke up entirely hangover-free. It was a good start to my 27th year. :)

Saturday night, a bunch of us got back together and headed to the Iowa State Fair for an evening out. I managed to eat both a foot-long corn dog AND a 5-pound turkey leg. Although, after having done so, I questioned my wisdom a bit. :) It was a nice, relaxing evening, and a great way to wrap up my birth-week.

At that point, you really start to realize how much of your income goes into paying off debts you already have. Now, like I’ve mentioned before, what I have is generally considered “good” debt. I have a mortgage, and a car payment, and student loan payments. And that’s really about it: I pay off my credit card every month these days, and I don’t have any personal loans floating around anywhere, and I don’t owe any shady creditors a single cent. However, that’s still a lot of debt. Just those three debts alone add up to over four times my gross annual salary… or monthly payments totaling around 75% of my total net income.

Sadly, in my case, the fine folks over at Freedom Debt Relief can’t really help me out. I have the wrong kind of debt – the “secured” kind, meaning the kind that is backed by collateral.

But if you happen to have a large sum of unsecured debt (credit cards, loans without collateral, etc), they might be able to help you out. They’re a debt negotiation service – basically, they work on your behalf with creditors to get them to lower the amount you owe. The premise is, getting some money back is far better in the creditor’s eyes as getting no money back, so they’re willing to negotiate to that end. And Freedom Debt Relief can often reduce your debts by 50% and consolidate them into a single payment.

Sure, you could do the same negotiations with your creditors yourself. Just like you could probably rebuild your own transmission or build your own house. But at some point, it just makes more sense to go to the experts and let them save you from all of the lost time, gray hair, and possible pitfalls along the way.

So here’s the plan: I’m going to try to start posting several times per week. Most posts probably won’t be the uber-long catch-you-up novellas for which I’m so infamous. Instead, most posts will be short, sweet, and to some sort of a point or another.

Oh, and there will be quite a few more sponsored posts again to go with the increased posting frequency. I know those aren’t anyone’s favorite or anything, but here’s the deal: everything I make online gets routed into my PayPal account. And I have declared my PayPal account to be one of my two wedding savings accounts (I also have a savings account with ING, cause they have a pretty good rate of return, especially compared to the stock market these days). So each time I write a sponsored post and make a few bucks, that money ends up going towards the wedding. Pretty cool plan, eh?

So, look forward to hearing more from me more frequently again. And I’ll look forward to hearing more from you-all in return!

We have a date/location for the wedding.
Our wedding will be on Saturday, September 12, 2009 at Jester Park Lodge, which is a very pretty, rustic lodge on the western shore of Saylorville Lake. Our plan is to get married and have the reception in the same location, thus cutting down on commute times and whatnot. Plus, that way we can get to drinking straightaway, which is pretty important. Anyway… save the date. And if any of you already have pressing commitments 13+ months from now, well, that’ll actually probably work in our favor. Amanda has just informed me that she has over 100 aunts, uncles, and first cousins in her family, and we’re really trying to keep the number of people at the wedding/reception to around 150 people. So I think that means that I get to invite half a dozen friends, my parents, and probably my grandparents. ;)

I have an iPhone.
Probably not as cool as my wedding news, but still pretty fun nonetheless. I’ve been craving an iPhone for a while now, and needed a new phone regardless, but I couldn’t really justify the cost. But when the new 2nd-gen iPhones came out, I scored an old 1st-gen model off of someone who needed the latest and greatest. So I got an iPhone, and at a really great price. Score.

Friend Anne is back in the States.
Admittedly, this one didn’t happen under the best of circumstances (but that’s none of your business, thank you very much!), but my friend Anne is back in the United States. She’d been living in Amsterdam since around the 1st of the year, and while that worked out great when we were visiting Europe this spring (free room and an excuse to visit A-Dam), it sucked not having her around more often. So now she’s back in the good ol’ U-S-of-A. Of course, she’s living in Minnesota for the time being, but it’s a start. And Amanda and I are going to see her this weekend (we were already heading north for a camping trip with her family this weekend), and I think I have her convinced to come down for the state fair, as well.

My dad is out of the hospital.
This is another one of those “silver lining” things that I’ve been so fond of as late. My dad is out of the hospital, which is pretty great news. Of course, that meant that he had to be in the hospital first, but I’ll take what I can get. He’d come down with MRSA, which is an antibiotic-resistant staph infection, and it was spreading through his body. But it seems to be under control now, at least to the point where he can leave the hospital after a 3-day stint, and I’m choosing to see that is good news. :)

I ate barbequed or grilled things for seven meals between the 1st and 5th of July. Yay Summer, I guess. If you do the math, that means I was eating grill-food for far more than 50% of my non-breakfast meals during that span (and I did manage to avoid BBQ breakfasts).

On July 1, August Home celebrated its 30th anniversary. As a result, I got to hear a bit of the history of the company, and it sort of cracks me up. Our CEO left Meredith on June 30, 1978, and on July 1st he decided he still liked eating and whatnot, so he’d better figure out something new to do. Yadda yadda yadda, now I have a job too.

On July 3, the UPS guy delivered a very awesome, very large present from myself (and Amanda), to myself (and Amanda). We’re now the proud owners of Rock Band, which is a ton of fun.

Hannah and Tono also came over for dinner, drinks, and some Rock Band action on the evening of the 3rd. We had brats (one of my many grilled meals) and ate out on the back porch, which was great until the mosquitoes figured out where we were.

The 4th of July rocked in all manner of rocking. Amanda and I woke up and headed straight down for a bit of Rock Band fun, then got ready for the day. Then we met up with a bunch of friends (Hannah, Tono, Megan, Klay, Sara, Julie) and had a free grilled lunch courtesy of Meredith. And then we headed to the fantastic and huge 80/35 concert and had a fantastic time. We managed to see four bands in action: Public Property (a local band), Ingrid Michaelson (really funny), Andrew Bird (so good, I nearly cried), and The Flaming Lips (pictured above, rocking). It was, all told, and incredible experience. After the concert, we headed downtown for drinks and got to bed way too late.

We got up way too early on July 5th and drove north to Minneapolis to attend the wedding of Amanda’s friend Nicole. Originally, I was a little miffed to be spending my Independence Day weekend at a wedding for a girl I’d only met once before, but I ended up having a good time, and Amanda and I took lots of mental notes for our own wedding and reception plans. I discovered that I really like Black Russians, and it’s become my new cocktail hour drink of choice.

We got back into town late on the 6th. Grandma and Grandpa drove Miles back up for us (they’ve had him nearly every other weekend ever since we got back from Europe!). They also brought us Arby’s, which was pretty nice, since all I’d had to eat so far that day was cookies and gummi bears. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

The 7th and 8th were pretty low-key (which we needed at that point). On the 9th, we toured a reception hall that we liked a lot. The only negative, really, was that it’s a ways out of town, and we were originally hoping to have our reception in the downtown area somewhere. But the place is very pretty, so we may have to compromise on that one.

On the 10th we went to a Tweetup, which is a gathering of your friendly neighborhood Twitter friends. We only stayed out for a few hours, but we had a really good time, and met several new people. We also got to hear a live poetry reading, which I hadn’t done since college.

Ahh, the 11th… how’d it get to be Friday again already? We went out to Friday Fest with new couple-friends Tigon and Ben. We ended up having enough to drink that it seemed perfectly logical to ~keep~ drinking after the Fest bit ended, so we headed downtown to El Bait Shop. Ben is a huge fan of beer, but he’d never been to the Shop to witness their 160 Taps of Glory, so we figured we should remedy that. And after that, we headed back to our place for a little Rock Band action. On the way home, we stopped by a liquor store for even more drinks, and Ben bought a bottle of Iowa-made Templeton Rye. I gave it a try, and discovered that it’s easily my favorite whiskey, so I think we’ll be getting a bottle soon as well.

We were pretty lazy for most of the day during the 12th except a run to the Woodsmith Store for supplies, but that evening we headed to Lindsay Rees’s place for her third annual July barbeque. It was my third year in attendance, which made me the only true veteran there aside from Lindsay herself. We had drinks (well, I did – Amanda was driving, so she mostly behaved herself) and chatted, listened to music, played cards… all the fun mid-July barbeque stuff.

And then on the 13th we got up decently early, moved all our furniture out of the bedroom, and painted that bad boy. It ended up taking all day, because we were painting using three different colors (the ceiling is one color, the three walls another, and an accent wall a third), but I think it came out looking really great. Of course, the paint was still drying when it was time for bed, so we ended up sleeping on the futon in the basement last night. Tonight, we’ll pull off all the tape, put everything back in the room, and snap some pictures. So expect a post covering our handiwork in the near future.

And as for this week… it’s looking more sane and sedate. Which is good. Our only big plan so far is we’re going to a midnight showing of The Dark Knight with a bunch of Twitter friends on Thursday night (technically 12:01am Friday morning). And as a result, Amanda and I are going to take Friday off from work to have a nice, relaxing day to ourselves. Unless something really cool comes our way, of course. :)

Nor did it help that I caught myself a case of strep throat last week, and had to spend a couple of days at home. Well, a couple of half-days. I couldn’t afford to take full days off with as much as I had to get done, so I just quarantined my cube and talked to people at a distance. I wasn’t the most productive guy those days – web development is hard with a 102+ fever – but it was certainly better than had I stayed in bed all day.

Point being, I’m really starting to look forward to this coming weekend. I could use a break. Amanda and I will be heading down to Kansas City for the weekend, visiting friends and family. It should be a good time. And that of course means that Miles will be spending the weekend with the grandparents, which I get the impression that he loves and they tolerate surprisingly well, so it all works out.

In case you hadn’t noticed yet, I’ve posted a few of our eurotrip photos on Flickr. So far I only have Paris posted, but I’ll work on getting Amsterdam up there in the next week or so.

But then I realized that I didn’t have a ton of time to develop the website. And I didn’t have access to a huge cache of high-quality Halloween Costumes. And I didn’t really know the first thing about developing my own product-based merchant solution.

So in the end I gave up on the idea. I probably still own ghoulwear.com (I haven’t checked in a while), but I’m not doing anything with it. And so ended my dream of supplying myself with fantastic costumes at wholesaler prices. Instead, I turn to other online retailers such as InCostume.com for all of my costume needs.