You may have noticed a new feature on the side bar here at Sixthman.org - A Wedding Counter! This will hopefully help us keep a little idea of how many people we're planning on feeding come 8/02, and give you an idea of how crazy we really are.

I mean, come on... who in their right minds invites 224 people and only expects 150? It's madness!

The counter may stay or go, depending on Management's mood. ;-)

Tonight was a new low for me and home cookin'. It was a two course meal, but I use the term 'meal' lightly.

I know what you're thinking, but you're way off. Think even lower... lower...

... try chicken nuggets and a PB&J sandwitch.

I know, I know... I shoulda just ordered a pizza.

104 stamps, envelopes, and sticks later, all of our babies are on their way to the few... the proud... the invitees.

Over the next few months I expect a slew of little green postcards to arrive in my mailbox. I'm sure by the time this thing is over the post lady will think that either A) I'm planning a wedding, or B) I really really really like mail!

March on, little guys... march on!

I think Richard Roeper is stalking me.

No, really. In the past month I've seen him at least four times, each while in the elevator. Usually I'm going down and just happen to catch the same elevator he's coming down on from the 60th floor. Today I actually caught the same elevator from the Lobby.

Now, you might be thinking: That can't be him! You mean to tell us that the same guy who sits next to Roger Ebert on that movie show lives in your building and you've had brushes with greatness on four different occasions?! How can we even be SURE that it's even the same dude?

Because I asked the Doorman, and the Doorman always knows. ;-)

Tuesday I was in training. The class ended around 2pm, and I could either have gone back to work or gone home. Not being completely stuipd, I high-tailed it back home. Once back, I grabbed a couple of books and my sunglasses and headed for a small pavillion below the John Hancock Tower to do some outdoor reading. After about 45 minutes the cold and wind were a little too much, so I decided to waltz in to a small cafe and spent some quality time with a coffee and tiramisu. Deeee-lectible!

Abby made it to Chicago just fine last night. I'm sure she'll talk about the most interesting moments of her drive from Florida in her own LiveJournal sometime soon, but damned if that girl doesn't get into the weirdest situations (i.e. the graveyard picnic).

I will definitely need to sleep in at least once this weekend. Six hours of sleep every night, I've found, is not enough for me. Yesterday morning's drive to work solidified that for me when I realized that I was zoning out while driving through downtown. A punch of the accelerator fixed that real quick. ;-)

There's not much else to blog about, really. My week is pretty boring by blogging standards. I'm gonna go shower and get ready for work.. and that time don't lie. It is the butt crack of dawn.

It's a nice day with temps in the 70's. The outdoors is calling me, so I throw a pair of old sandals into a backpack, strap my rollerblades on, and head outdoors for a little exercise.

As you know from yesterday's post, I had to go to the Paper Source. I don't think they'd allow me to just roll in on my skates, hence the sandals. The story behind these sandals is a semi-interesting one, though. I've had them since high school, and they've been on nearly every summer vacation I've been on - Hawaii, Mexico, Israel, and of course California. Usually whenever a beach is involved I have these things. I don't think they even fit me anymore.

Anyway, I got to the store and pull them out of the backpack. As I'm taking one of my blades off and reaching down for a sandal to put on, I notice a small pile of sand that fell out of one of the cracks of the sandal. It made me very happy, and cemented a small smirk on my face that I still have an hour later.

Today's a good day. :-)

Three hours later, my car is so clean I could eat off of it. I even got comps from the security guard making rounds through the parking structure. Damn, it looks good!

I called Abby, and Abby called me. She made it to Montgomery, AL, but she aparently got yelled at by some crazy lady in a graveyard while trying to have a picnic somewhere in Georgia. If you want the rest of the story, I'm sure she'd be more than happy to fill you in later. All I have to say is "Southern Hospitality" ain't lookin' so hospitable in her eyes right now.

At this point I feel like I should insert a sound byte of some Alabamer hawking a big loogie into a spitoon. *DING*

Tomorrow (today, technically) I'll be addressing over fifty envelopes. I'll be printing most of them, thank goodness, but I've decided to hand-write some of them using my mad calligraphy skillz I learned in a course I took through the Paper Source. Advanced Warning - I probably won't be able to move my wrist come Monday.

It looks like it's going to be a wonderfully sunny weekend in Chicago, and it being mid-Spring and all, it can only mean one thing - Time to detail the car!

Now, I'm sure that some of you know my habits when it comes to my car. The primary one is that I keep it cleaner than my own apartment. I don't have the standard newspapers, McDonald's bags and other assorted crap littering the back seat. I also keep my trunk virtually empty (except for the golf clubs this time of year).

This would probably lead you to wonder why I'd want to try and make my car look even cleaner than usual. It's already clean now. It may need a car wash every month or three, but why go through all the trouble?

I find it somewhat relaxing, actually, to wash, wax, Armor-All, Windex, and take care of my car once or twice a year. It sounds like a lot of work (and it is), but there's really no more satisfying feeling than to drive your nice and shiny car around after you've spent three hours taking care of it. I literally live in that thing with my commute, so I might as well try to enjoy it.

Oh... and that's not a type-o. I can and do spend 3 hours detailing my car. Just ask Janine and she'll tell you it's true.

No, your eyes don't deceive you. We're officially nuts.

Truthfully, we searched high and low for apartment complexes in the area, and we didn't find anything we really liked. There was one that was okay, but it just didn't fit in with what we wanted. With Janine living in a condo-style apartment with its own garage and me in a high-rise in downtown Chicago, we'd basically spoiled ourselves out of the apartment market in the area.

It actually took Janine about 90 minutes to begin to accept the idea of buying a townhome, and I'll admit that I was the one who planted the seed. A few weeks ago I started looking at mortgage rates just for the hell of it. Next thing I know I'm using a free calculator to guestimate how much we could afford.

The idea of buying had been in my head since then, but the flower bloomed once we drove by a townhome community with a "Open House" sign at the corner. After walking through, and the 90-minute digestion mentioned earlier, it dawned on us that we might be able to pull it off.

Some of you might also remember that we are still in the middle of planning a small party in early August. Now we want to add a little more fuel to the flame and take a crack at real estate. I think this is the official description of "nuts"...

...but then again, when we're so close to nuts already, it isn't a very far walk.

A little advice from a cabbie Accordion City (a.k.a. Toronto). I especially like rule number 4.

So it's occurred to me in the past that I use smiley faces a little too often. I'll be typing up an email, and I'll include a ;-) at the end of a paragraph once I've concluded a joke or funny comment.

Then I'll go on to the next paragraph, and at the end of that one I make another funny comment or joke that I also feel requires a ;-) to emphasize the comment.

Now the dilemma. I usually don't like to have two ;-)'s following consecutive paragraphs, so it comes down to a decision: Which ;-) do I get rid of? It's as if I have to kill a joke to preserve the reputation of the email before all of my words and feelings become a mish-mash of emoticons and the text looks more like a 14 year old girl's AOL IM conversation with a "16/F/Los Angeles" who is actually a "34/M/My Mom's Basement."

I like that last scentence so much, I think I'll have to end that thought there. :-)

This week has flown by. I know it's Thursday, but it feels like it should be Friday. Don't ask... this is just how my mind and internal calenday work.

This weekend will include a blitzkrieg of wedding-related hoo-hah. The primary activity will be the making of the invitations, and I'm sure that by the end of the weekend we'll have had our share of cutting, hole punching, and complaining about how these pages don't line up with those. I'm almost afraid it's going to get to a point where we're not going to want to mail these out... I mean, we created all of these invitations by hand! At least we're giving them RSVP cards so they can write back to us.

I've been at work for far too long. I'm gonna go home, have a beer, and wait for Janine to complete her cross-state journey. TTFN!

So this weekend Janine and I spent the better portion of 36 hours inside of a Catholic Retreat doing our required marriage counseling. It was a long two days, a hell of a lot of writing, some talking, and a little reflecting. I won't go into details about it except to say that it was a very productive weekend, probably a little more than I was anticipating. I think the rest of the story is between us.

But now I'm back home, trying to kill my TiVo's backlog and laundry at the same time. So far the dryer is being a pain, I've killed all the Simpsons and I'm not in the mood for ER. Good thing I got to watch Lewis Black on last week's Conan.

Fossils. I win.

On another note, you know you're on top of things when it takes less than 10 minutes to balance your checkbook, and everything works out right down to the pennies.

Did you ever have one of those days where you felt like you needed to blog, but couldn't. Where you tried to start three different times, but nothing sounded right.

Welcome to my day. Have a fruit roll up!