Perspective

I recently found some old friends on Facebook. Well, I found my old friend's little sister and father on Facebook. I haven't seen this old friend since I was a senior in highschool. This is the friend who I met at the tender age of 11, in 6th grade. I have to admit, we got in a ton of trouble together, but being her friend definitely had an impact on how my life turned out and who I am today.

She was like my sister in a way. We shared the fact that I'm Asian and she's half. We loved that about each other. We almost pretended to be sisters to strangers in fact. I spent countless hours at her house, staying up late, sneaking out, smoking cigarettes. Joy riding in our friend Jesse's minivan. So many memories. She unfortunately, due to many things, dropped out of school and ended up in a foster home. We lost track of each other shortly after that....until one random day. I was a senior in high school, I hadn't seen her in probably 2-3 years. She stopped over my house and was showing off her beautiful baby girl who she had named Deana. She looked great being a new mom, but it was very different for me. I was still a kid, partying like there was no tomorrow, had new friends....it was very different to see her as a mom and living her new lifestyle. I had no idea where she was living, who the baby-daddy was or anything about her new life.

A few months later (maybe more than a few) I stopped at her parents house to see her with her now almost-one-year-old daughter. And she was pregnant with #2. Again, she looked great, her family seemed put together again. All seemed well. We went to the park with her baby and spent the time catching up and spending time together. That was the last time I ever saw her.

I recently found her younger sister on Facebook and immediately sent her a message asking about my friend. I was told they are both now living in Hawaii (awesome!) and that my friend now had 3 kids. There were only a few pictures posted, and they weren't great, but from what I can tell, my friend looks amazing and look like she hasn't changed in all these years.

Then I found her father on Facebook as well and found some blogs he's posted over the years. This is where I got emotional. He writes in his blogs about his oldest daughter (my friend) who is serving in Iraq. Turns out my friend decided to get her life in better order and joined the United States Army. She's has served two tours in Iraq (while leaving her two babies behind ---#3 came later). I can't imagine what it would be like to leave your babies behind while you go fight on the front lines. My friend, my sister. She's only 5'2" and maybe 105lbs. Maybe. She was always a fighter and I always knew she'd end up on top. To find out all of this happened while I was going to college, getting a job, moving home, buying a house...to know that she was on the front lines fighting for MY freedom. Ugh. My heart just filled with love, emotion, everything I could imagine. I NEVER thought I'd feel this way. Maybe it's because I had this bond with this one person....and just never thought she'd go through this.

I haven't yet made contact with her personally, just a few messages back and forth to her dad and sister. I gave my phone number so I'm really, really, hoping she'll call. She also just recently bought a motorcycle and has been riding it a lot....HOW FREAKIN COOL. I can't wait to get on the phone with this girl and actually talk to her. I want to hear from her what life's been like. I want to know if she's still on active duty or if she's done with the Army. I want to know what it's like to have 3 kids. I want to know if/when she'll be coming home so I can try to meet up with her. I have this flood of emotion and I'm not sure how to handle it. I'm shocked at my reaction to finding all of this out. I keep obsessively checking my Facebook account, hoping I get a new message from someone in her life.

Time for E-pics!

It's finally time! We booked our photographer a while back and at that time, it was just starting to become fall/winter here, so Steve and I decided to wait until Spring to have our engagement pictures done.

I contacted my photographer www.johnlarkinphotography.com and got a date on the calendar. Saturday, May 23 at 4pm. That will give us plenty of natural light since we'll be outdoors. I haven't quite decided on a location just yet....there is this cute little park that Steve and I take the dogs to that's right down the street from our house. It's got a long, straight trail, with tons of trees towering overhead. I think it'll be super cute there. Then I'm not sure of a second location. I was thinking maybe at the other park, near the canal. We'll see. I'll have to drive around and see what's out there. This is so exciting! It's going to start feeling real soon, now that we're able to actually DO stuff for the wedding.

We're down to less than 14 months now. Ok, I know it's still SO FAR AWAY....but seeing that we've been engaged for 9 months already and that went by pretty fast....I'm really hoping the next 14 months go by fast too! I think once summer really hits, time will just FLY by. At least I hope so!

a couple more wedding items to cross off the list!

Steve was home this weekend so I of course wanted to pack it full with activites and errands and such. I had set up a couple of appointments for Saturday afternoon to check out a couple of hotels near our reception site. I always knew I wanted the Woodcliff to be one of our options, but wasn't sure on the second one. We went and looked at the Woodcliff first, and loved it right away. The staff were wonderful, the place was amazing. It's a full service hotel, so there's a spa, golfcourse, awesome restaurant etc. They offer a shuttle service for our guests, which is pretty awesome, so no one has to worry about driving after they've been drinking. We got the contract, so all we have to do is sign it and send it back. Luckily for us, we don't have to pay anything, just sign the contract and the place is ours. We booked 10 room for Friday night, May 28 and 15 rooms for Saturday night the 29th.

We swung on over to The Brookwood Inn, which is right down the street (convenient!) and checked that out too. It was stunning inside. They are in the middle of renovating the whole place, so that's good! The guest rooms were good too, very nice. We got a chance to check out the bridal suite, it wasn't as nice as I thought...but it was still nice.

We wanted to check out the bridal suites for both, since we know at the end of the night, neither one of us would want to go back to our house. So we were hoping to book the 1200 square foot bridal suite at the Woodcliff and have our entire bridal party come back to our room so the party wouldn't just end.

here is the suite, only it's not renovated yet...it'll be gorgeous when it's done!!! Do you see the spiral staircase??? OMG! I'm so exited!

Also, we got our honeymoon costs from the travel agent over the weekend. It's a little more than we wanted to spend, so we went back and told our travel agent that we'll just stick to two islands instead of three. We originally wanted to go to Bora Bora, Moorea and Manihi. Spending about 3-4 nights on each. And we wanted to have guaranteed overwater bungalows. That was about $3,000 MORE than our allocated budget, so we went back and decided that we would be just as happy spending 5 nights in Moorea and 4 nights in Bora Bora. That was just about in our price range....only it doesn't include food or any excursions. I guess the food there is incredibly expensive ($50ea for breakfast, $75ea for lunch, $150ea for dinner!) YIKES! We're hoping to find some options that include ONE meal. We'll see where that shakes out.

This is the overwater bungalow at the resort we're staying at, the Intercontinental Thalasso

Another view of the bedroom. The bed faces out into the ocean!

The bathroom

The private deck off our room

Poor Steve....again!

Seriously? Did this really happen? Tuesday, Steve's bike somehow got tipped over and had significant damage to the right side. I get a phone call yesterday around lunch time and it's Steve saying "you won't believe what just happened" - My first thought was "please don't tell me your car is messed up" and he says "YUP - THAT'S EXACTLY RIGHT" - OMG really? His buddy was backing out and apparently hit his car and someone else's.

Steve will need a new bumper and fender. Awesome. Can this week get any better?

Tonight we're heading over to Cycle Stop to go order the parts he needs for the bike. It'll be about a week before the parts get here and then Steve will have to put it all together.

What a way to start a season eh?

Poor Steve

Yesterday was the first day this year that Steve got his motorcycle out on the road. It's been stored in our basement for the last 6 months. He's been babying it, cleaning it, put new steel brake lines on it, etc. He just couldn't wait until it was nice enough out to bust it out and go for a spin.

He called two of his buddies over to help bring this bike upstairs. I'm sure you're all wondering how the hell did he get it inside the house and down the basement stairs??? Well folks, to keep this short, he built a ramp, complete with traction with little bumps along the way to be nailed to our basement steps. He then got someone to come over and help him slowly get the bike down the steps. Luckily for us, our basement stairs are almost directly across from our garage door that leads into the house. It was very simple actually!

So last night he goes for a quick spin and since today is so nice out, he decided to take it to work. He parks the bike where he normally parks his car, in a "lot" out back, near the back door of the shop. He goes out to smoke a cigarette, enjoys how nice his bike looks, goes back inside to work. His friend runs in about 5 minutes later and tells him that the bike is laying out the ground. On the right side. The RIGHT side? How the hell did it fall on the right side? For those of you who don't know how you park a bike, the kickstand is on the left and you turn the handlebars to the left as well, to lock it in place. Wind couldn't have made this thing fall. It wouldn't just topple over on it's own. Steve thinks someone wanted to sit on it or something and it fell over when that person didn't know how to get off it. Or someone just pushed it over. Either way, with no collision on the bike, it's likely going to cost us $2,000 to get all the parts to fix it. Great. Fucking AWESOME.

So tonight, we're heading to Cycle Stop to buy the parts we need to fix it. Luckily, it's only cosmetic. Luckily, he wasn't on the bike when it fell over. Luckily no one is hurt and it's only money. I know, sounds weird to say "it's only money" but in reality, if something can be fixed with money, I'm not that worried about it. We have our health, we have our jobs, money is just that. Money. We'd rather buy parts from the actual dealer, so that if something were to happen to those parts, we'd be backed up. If we were to buy them off an Ebay seller for instance, once we pay, it's our deal. No guarantees.

Poor guy. First day out on the bike and this is what happens. And he wasn't even around when it happened!

busy busy week!

This week has been insane for me. My co-workers (along with my supervisor) were in town from Minnesota for our annual State of the Agency off site meeting. They were in town from Tuesday until last night. It's our jobs to make sure they have entertainment, dinner, etc while they are in town.

It just so happened that the Jersey Boys were performing, so our entire agency went to the show after our offsite meeting. It was amazing! I didn't really know what it was supposed to be about, until I read the program and realized it was about the Four Seasons and their journey to stardom. These songs bring back crazy memories for me. Big girls don't cry was one of my faves since one of my all time favorite movies is Dirty Dancing.

Thurday night we went to dinner and hung out on their last night in town and we kept it pretty low key. We all know that I'm not really into going out and drinking a lot and having a hangover and still having to come to work. No thanks. Not my cup of tea thankyouverymuch.

This weekend Steve and I are going to our friend Rich's new house. He just bought it and closed last week! We're bringing all types of food over and such to welcome him into his new home. So fun! Also on Saturday we have plans to go chat with the Tahiti specialist at the travel agency we met with a few weeks ago. I can't wait to hear all about it!

There aren't too many other updates to write about...dad and mom are in Thailand...dad is coming home on March 21 and mom not until April 9. Oh - Jennifer actually texted me and told me that dad's store (Rite Aid on Park Ave) is closing! WTF?! He's been at that store since it was Fay's, Eckerd, he's been there over 20 years! But being a pharmacist, he's lucky there's a shortage and he'll be able to get transferred to another store. Hell, he could even hop around and find the best opportunity. I know Wegmans offers a $5000 or something signing bonus. Pretty sweet. But it's just weird, to think that the last 2 years he works before he retires he has to be somewhere else. I never would have thought in a million years that his location would shut down. It's so sad. I remember going there as a little kid with my mom to pick up prescription or whatever. Insane to think he'll be somewhere else.

Well, other than that...not much else is going on...other than me and Steve waiting so impatiently for spring/summer to get here. The last few weeks of winter always just drag on and on and it gets so damn annoying. It'll be 50 one day, then 20 the next. I can't keep up. Just fucking change over already!

Travel agent

This past weekend, after the fun-filled activities were over and our out of town friends had left to go home, Steve and I decided to head over to the travel agency at our local mall to ask a few questions. I mean...it's never too early to start planning a vacation right?

We got there and it was surprisingly busy. We waited about 15 minutes before anyone could see us. We went into it knowing what exactly we were looking for. We know we want to go to Tahiti, and then island hop to Bora Bora, Moorea and then Manihi as our last stop.

We know we want to stay in the overwater bungalows at each of our stops. A lot of the resorts have regular rooms that are on the island, but Steve and I want to make sure we get to stay in one of those special huts (we have to book early to guarantee an overwater bungalow since there are so few of them). And not only do we have to specify that we want to stay in one of the huts, but we have to specify that we want all the amenities - I don't anticipate spending a ton of time in our room, but c'mon, we all know Steve and I. TV junkies. We need TV at night before going to bed. Having AC is important to us as well - it'll be an average of 85 degrees (the water temp is like 75 degrees!) so I know we'll get a little too warm if we didn't have AC.

While we were there, the lady we were talking with told us that she's really not the one we want to be speaking with. She's the Mexico expert, while her counterpart who was busy at the time, is a Tahiti expert. She's passing all our information to her and we're hoping to hear back from her sometime this week. Anyways, she pulled up some flight information, just to see where we'd be dollars wise and as it turns out, it's much cheaper than what I had found online! She pulled up information for this May too, so by booking early for next May, we should get even a better deal. It was about $500 less PER plane ticket! There are a few options too, we can get a direct flight out of JFK, which would be ideal - we can get tickets to NYC for pretty cheap around here. And a direct flight?! Awesome. The other option is to fly out of LAX. My mom has already said that we can use her mileage to get out there for free...but if we can manage it, we're hoping to book the direct flight from JFK.

We can't technically book anything until July of this year, but it's coming soon! We will be so excited to book something! What's nice about working with a travel agency is that even if we book super early, they always keep an eye ot for specials and discounts and we can get them applied to our trip. So we know we won't be paying MORE for anything...Another really cool thing is that instead of purchasing stuff from our bridal registry, people can call the travel agency and help pay for our trip! Steve and I have so much stuff already and have been living together for so long that we really don't need any household items. This is sweet.

Not only that, but the agency can pre plan and pre book our activities while we're there. We will seriously show up with our itinerary in hand and have everything already planned for us. Awesome. We won't need to worry about this, or that, or planning something last minute.

Annnnd. To book the entire trip? We just need to pay for our flights and a $150 deposit. The remaining amount is due 35 days from when we leave. We can drop in and pay off our balance whenever. This will be a HUGE help - we won't have to cough up ALL the money right away, but we can chip away at the balance as we go. Sweet!

I don' t know why I've never thought about a travel agency.