8/24/12- Getting Ready

Here is a recap of the wedding day, all PRE wedding ceremony.

I've already told you in my post about the bridesmaids that my day started with a dance party in the basement where we all slept the night before.

The dance party was followed by a big, amazing breakfast prepared by my parents. Thanks mom and dad!

YUM

 My dad made us some mimosas and I popped my first bottle champagne! (With a little help from Emily.)

Cheers!

 During breakfast, a dozen roses were delivered from my groom-to-be. :)

We then spent the entire day rotating in and out of the bathroom and kitchen having our hair and make up done by some lovely friends who spent the day helping us get ready.

Throughout the day there was a lot of laughter, a lot of noise, non-stop chatter, some tears shed by almost everyone- some happy, some sad, but hey- that's life! There was an impromptu (and not very good) concert given to the entire house when Emily sat down at our piano and started playing Billy Joel songs, then Les Miserables songs and then some Aladdin songs. Emily is actually an amazing piano player but Lauren and I sang and I think we kinda ruined her beautiful playing.

There was a lot of "Oh my gosh you look so pretty" said to and by everyone multiple times. There was a Jimmy John's order placed and a lot of discussion about the quality of their tomatoes.

Then there was a rush. Chuck's sisters showed up with the flower girls, the party bus showed up to take us to the church, the girls were all making last minute adjustments to their dresses and it suddenly seemed like chaos. Once we got on the party bus with the flower girls, everything felt calmer. The little girls were amazed at the bus and once we figured out how to work the iPod connection, we were rocking out to some "Call Me Maybe" and having a blast.

Once we got to the church, I put my dress and shoes on. Emily put my garter on for me even though I easily could have put it on myself. But it was more fun that way. Then there were pictures, my sudden starvation moment when I wanted to eat everything I could get my hands on, a MOH run to the basement to steal food from the groomsmen lounging area, flower girl invasion of our prep room when we spent 10 minutes trying to keep them from eating candy in their white dresses, and then all of a sudden someone said, "5 minutes until we line up!" and then I suddenly had to pee. (Which, with the help of 3 bridesmaids holding my dress, proved to be pretty easy!)

Best group of bridesmaids ever!

The flower posse.

So I'm not 100% sure what Chuck did all day before the wedding. I talked to him on the phone that day a couple of times and texted a little, but we haven't had a chance to really talk about what he did all day. What I do know is he went to the Seelbach to drop our overnight bags and his car for later that night. I also know he went to Hooters with all of the guys, including groomsmen, dads, brothers-in-law, uncles, cousins, and any other guy they could round up to go with them. I think after that they may have gone straight to the church and just hung out until it was time to get ready. I'll have to ask him for more details and share any exciting stories or happenings I find out. 

Here are two pictures of Chuck before the wedding.

 

It was the best day ever and the wedding hadn't even happened yet!

 

My Bridesmaids

Growing up I never really had a lot of close girlfriends. I had several friends, but only a few I had consistent sleepovers with, only a few I considered my best friends. And I've been extremely lucky to stay close with a few of those girls into my adult life.

My oldest friend, Allison, and I met before I can even remember. Our moms were church friends and I don't know the exact age we were when we met but I've never not known Allison. In kindergarten, I instantly connected with a girl named Lauren, who sadly moved back to Minnesota with her family after 3rd grade.  Through letters and phone calls and occasional visits, Lauren and I stayed close as kids even though we were living in separate states. Once Facebook and text messaging were invented, well, it became even easier to stay close. My friend Emily and I went to the same middle school but didn't become friends until we were in band together my freshman (her sophomore) year of high school. Elizabeth and I also met freshman year. She and Allison were in the clarinet section together at band camp and Allison invited her to eat lunch with our group of friends because she came from a different middle school and didn't know anyone. I think we were inseparable from that day forward. And then I have my sisters- Laura who I've known since birth because she's 3 years older than me, and my little sis Sami who I've known since HER birth which I remember like it was yesterday.

These are my girls. Choosing bridesmaids was extremely easy for me and I was so glad they agreed to be in my wedding. These girls did so much for me leading up to the wedding and on the wedding day. They helped plan and set up for a wedding shower and a bachelorette party, my sister made our save the dates and programs, my other sister helped me make decisions and set up appointments for me... For the most part, these girls acted as my army. But what they really did for me that I appreciated the most were the things I don't think they realized they were doing: just being themselves.  From Lauren texting me non-stop the week before the wedding, getting me excited about everything, to Emily yelling profanities on our deck the morning of the wedding after I popped champagne for our mimosas, to Elizabeth crying when a dozen red roses were delivered to me the morning of the wedding from Chuck, to Allison paying close attention to details and making sure my dress got on the bus to the church, to Laura making phone calls to vendors the day before the wedding to make sure they were all ready to go while she was getting a pedicure, to Sami getting SO excited when I reminded her she would get to sign our marriage license. I could name 100 more little things like this that I took a mental note of which just goes to show how amazing these girls all are.

The night of the rehearsal dinner, all 6 of the bridesmaids spent the night in my parents' basement with me. It was the sleepover of all sleepovers. Mattresses sprawled out across the room, pillows and blankets everywhere. I fell asleep laughing and listening to my friends tell hilarious stories that can never be shared outside of the 7 of us. It was perfect. The morning of the wedding, we all woke up and slowly started chatting about the day. Lauren was sleeping with me on the futon and hadn't said a word yet, when all of a sudden she starts playing Party Rock on her phone. Without questioning it, we all just started dancing while still lying down and singing. She played several more songs including some old school NSYNC and we stayed there in the dark singing for probably 20 minutes. It was the perfect way to start off the perfect day.

I know everyone says they have the best friends and family in the world, but I really, REALLY do.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

Every year, my parents always make us watch the movie Planes, Trains, and Automobiles around Thanksgiving. It's one of the few actual Thanksgiving movies I know of and though some years I complain about watching it, I really do love it.  I am not a huge movie-quoting person, but I do quote this movie quite a bit.

It's a great movie with a lot of great moments, but the main plot is this (the Wikipedia plot synopsis): "The film stars Steve Martin as Neal Page, a high-strung advertising executive, who meets Del Griffith, played by John Candy, an eternally sunny, overly talkative, well-meaning, but accident-prone shower curtain ring salesman who seems to live in a world governed by a different set of rules. They share a three-day odyssey of misadventures trying to get Neal home to Chicago from New York City in time for Thanksgiving dinner."  I won't ruin the movie for anyone who wants to see it, but the important part of this and the part that relates to what I'm about to share, is that they spend 3 days taking every type of transportation there is just to get home, when they were only supposed to catch a simple flight.

Well, my friends, last weekend, Chuck and I had our own Planes, Trains and Automobiles experience, except I think we were both playing the role of Steve Martin. If only I had the personality to treat the experience the way John Candy does in the movie.

Here is the story of our attempt to get home from Boston.

Friday, August 17
Chuck and I catch a train and then a bus to get to the airport.
About 20 minutes before we're supposed to board,  I post a picture of me and Chuck and say something about how we are the happiest people in the airport. Little did I know...
Flight delay. But the attendant working the booth chooses not to tell us that our flight is delayed and pretends everything is normal.
We board 30 minutes later than the time we were supposed to depart.
Once flying (after sitting on the runway forever) we think maybe we'll still make our connection in DC. But no, there is bad weather so we have to fly a longer route to miss the weather.
We arrive 10 minutes after our connecting flight was scheduled to depart. Since the plane we are on is tiny, we actually get off the plane on steps and are out on the ground outside the airport. And of course it's raining.
Inside, we frantically search for an employee once we see for sure our connecting flight is gone. We find one and Chuck asks him "Sir, can you help us?" to which the man responds "Mmmm I don't think so" and shakes his head no before he even knows what we need help with. Once he sees the look on my face he says he will help us.
Man tells us we missed the only flight to Louisville from DC for the whole day and sends us to Customer Service.
We wait in line FOR.EV.ER.  Lady tries to put us up in a hotel telling us we can leave at 6 am and get home by 1 on Saturday. We say no.
Lady books us on a flight to Indy where we will rent a car and drive 2 hours home to avoid spending the night anywhere but our own beds.
Flight leaves for Indy on time and actually arrives early. We are momentarily happy.
I wait for luggage while Chuck reserves our rental car. No luggage.
Wait in line at baggage claim office FOR.EV.ER.  Man tells us luggage is still in DC and may get to us tomorrow, maybe Sunday. I tell him it needs to get to us tomorrow. He says it won't be that bad if it comes Sunday morning. I say "Actually, what wouldn't be bad is if our luggage was here RIGHT NOW."

After an hour in the baggage claim office I declare to Chuck that I hate all people everywhere.
We finally get in our rental car and drive home with no luggage.
Arrive in Louisville at 2:30 a.m. and go straight to Walgreens to buy toothpaste and contact solution and look forward to wearing the same clothes and underwear the next day that we just wore all day long while traveling.

The flights back to Boston on Sunday the 26th were a little better but ALMOST turned out to be disastrous as well. Upon arriving at the ticket counter to get our boarding passes in Louisville, we were told our tickets for the flight to Newark had somehow been cancelled, but that we were still booked on the flight from Newark to Boston. WHAT? Lucky for us the flight was not full so they were able to re-book us on the same flight.  So that was a relief. That flight left on time but was not too fun considering ice from the outside of the plane was apparently seeping in and melting right on me for the entire hour and 45 minute flight. Not kidding. When we told the flight attending water was dripping on me she said "It's ok" and gave me some paper towels. Also not kidding.

So our flying experiences were not much fun coming home or going back, but the good news is that we made it and we were able to have a good and fun week despite all the screw ups by an airline (coughUnitedcough) I will never fly again and will never recommend to anyone.  And not just because of the flight delays, because those happen to all airlines, but because of the lack of customer service by every single employee we encountered.

Like I said: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Literally.

I'm now going to share a video clip with you from the movie, but I have to warn you: put your headphones in to watch this and make sure no kids or around or anything. Steve Martin drops a lot of F bombs. But it's probably the funniest scene in the movie and it pretty much describes how Chuck and I felt at the airport in Indy when we found out our luggage had not made it. (Please note, we personally did not drop any F bombs or yell at anyone in any airport all week, though sometimes we really felt like it.) Watch this and then go rent the movie so you can see the whole thing. It's a classic. But make sure you have Kleenex handy- it's a tearjerker.

Week After Wedding

Well, our wedding has come and gone.  It's really hard for me to believe it's already over. The week was filled with fun, stress, dinners, sleepovers, lunches, drinks, errands, good news, bad news, and so much more- all leading up to Friday the 24th when we celebrated our 10 year anniversary with a wedding more perfect than we ever could have imagined possible.

After the whirlwind weekend, we ended up back in Boston late Sunday night so Chuck could be ready for MBA orientation at 8 am Monday and I could be back at work at 8:30 am. It was extremely hard to leave home and all of our family and friends again after such an amazing week, but the bright side is that we're here together, and we're MARRIED. Wow. Still can't really believe it. 

I have so many different blog posts I want to write about different things that happened throughout the week, including one whole post on JUST the wedding day (if I can fit it all in one post) so I will be posting over the next couple of weeks, and posting probably often. Sorry in advance if my blog update Facebook statuses clog up your newsfeed.. But there were just so many good things that happened, I could never fit it all into one post, or at least not one that anyone would read. 

So, that's all for now. Much more coming very soon...

Finals week

If you want to know what finals week looks like for MIT LGOs in the summer, this picture says it all.

This was Monday night. Not pictured: the ibuprofen and water sitting next to him, a clock showing that it was only 8:45 pm when this picture was taken, and furniture- because we have none right now, remember?

We moved again, kind of

I've figured out the secret to moving. Don't do it yourself. Don't hire movers. Don't ask just anybody you know to help you. No, the secret to moving is this: Ask a few MBA/MS (or as I think MIT calls it, SM?) students who are right in the middle of their finals week to help you. I promise you, you'll be moved out of one place and in to the next so fast you won't even know what just happened.

We started moving stuff around 3:15 into the 14 foot UHAUL we rented and, I kid you not, around 5:30 we were finished moving everything into the studio apartment and discussing where we should eat dinner. Chuck said when he went in to return the truck the guy working said "Whoa! You're back already!?" I think we may have just made moving history. I wish every move could be just like this one.

Chuck's awesome summer LGO team members were our moving helpers. There were 5 of them and then the 2 of us. And they were the best movers, not just because they are engineers and business people who are naturally just good at things like organizing a truck full of stuff and being efficient, but they are in the midst of finals week. They are so busy they're barely sleeping right now.  I'm sure they all had a million other things to be doing other than helping us move, so when helping, they wanted to get it done as fast as possible. It was perfect!

This has me thinking now about starting a moving business that only employs very busy grad students as movers and promises highly efficient and fast moves to our customers. Also, the grad students are paid in free pizza and beer instead of money. Hmmm... I think I'm on to something here....

So we have to be out of Eastgate by 9 am this Friday, but we can't get into our new apartment until we get back from Kentucky.  Luckily for us, there is an empty studio apartment in the same building as our new apartment where we moved all of the stuff yesterday to store it while we're gone. So we are sleeping at Eastgate on an air mattress until Friday, while all of our things sit in "storage" until we get back.  Here is what we currently have in our apartment with us: air mattress, pillows, a fan, two lamps, suitcases already packed and ready to go home, bathroom essentials and the ingredients for chocolate milk.  Oh and some crackers. Friday cannot come soon enough.

I wanted to post some pictures of the moving process but it happened so fast I didn't even have time to snap any pictures. But here are a couple I took before the move.

Our progress as of Sunday afternoon. The TV was the last thing we packed. :)

After I had already packed the silverware all away at the bottom of a large box and taped it all up, we found this lone fork still in the sink. I was not about to unpack the box the rest of the silverware was in, so this fork ended up in a random box and will be a fun surprise when we're unpacking in a couple of weeks.

Here's a video taken by Yannai, one of Chuck's teammates and one of our movers, while we were driving the truck from Eastgate to the new place. Two of the bikers you see on the road were two other teammates/movers. I'm pretty sure the guys on bike got to the apartment before we did with the truck. Thanks for the video, Yannai!

Grad School Widow

I am a grad school widow.

Here is what a typical weekday has been like for us all summer.

Chuck wakes up, takes a shower, and leaves for class before I even get out of bed. Once he's gone, I shower and quickly get ready in just enough time to walk the 1 minute across the parking lot to work.

I work 8:30-5. Chuck has classes and meetings all day at various times. His class schedule is different every day so honestly I don't even know what he's doing most days, I just know he's busy.

I get home at 5:01. Depending on the day and the workload, Chuck comes home any time between 5 pm and 1 am.

Here are some things I do while I'm alone from 5 pm -? depending on my mood, the weather and my boredom level on that particular day: Wash dishes, make dinner, put dishes away, check Facebook and Twitter, pin things on Pinterest, watch TV, go for a run, walk to the mall, go to the grocery, do laundry, do wedding planning things, watch movies, read a book, look out the window and take pictures of cool clouds, call friends and/or family, skype with friends/family, clean the apartment, hang out with other SOs who are also grad school widows, search the internet for things I want to go do in Boston on the weekends, bake muffins.

I've been making a lot of muffins since we moved here. When we move to our new apartment and we have a real and normal size oven with numbers on the dials and I don't have to use our toaster oven as our oven anymore, I have a feeling my baking is going to get out of control. I love to bake. In high school I used to make cakes all the time for no reason except that I liked to bake. And cake is good.

Chuck and I mainly spend our fun time together on the weekends now. Though some weeknights if Chuck doesn't have a lot to do, we do get a chance to do fun things together, like go to karaoke with his classmates, go out to dinner, or watch some Friends on DVD. Sometimes if he has reading homework, he'll sit on the couch with me and read while I watch TV. We aren't talking a whole lot and he's not watching TV, but it makes it feel like we're hanging out.

Sometimes when Chuck is in the apartment doing homework while I'm just hanging out, he'll try to make me do some of his homework with him. He tries to make me watch videos he has to watch (I've watched a couple, including a Japanese movie that was all in subtitles) and he tries to make me read things (I've only been talked into reading one article so far and I didn't even finish it.)

I can't say I'm super surprised that Chuck is this busy. I mean, he's at MIT, working on TWO masters degrees at the same time.  And he's really intense, so I know he's doing everything 100% which also does not surprise me or anyone else who knows Chuck at all.  

It's ok. The limited fun time just makes us appreciate the weekends more and gives me a lot of time to try out recipes I found on Pinterest.

Y'all are all gonna want some of my cupcakes and casseroles when we're done with these 2 years here.

Here are a couple of pictures to illustrate the difference in our lives right now.

Chuck's life right now:

 I came home the other day to an empty apartment and found this. Desk covered in papers. Floor- also covered in papers.

My life right now:

 Chillin by the Charles River.

I'm obsessed with cool cloud pictures, if you haven't already noticed from past blog posts or my Instagram feed. I used to want to be a weather girl. Side story, totally unrelated to Boston or grad school: In high school one of my friends asked me at school one day- "Rachel, did I see you running down your street yesterday afternoon with a camera in your hand?" To which I replied, "Yes. Yes you did. I was running to get a better view of some cool clouds over my neighborhood...."  Cool cloud pictures and I go way back.

New Hampshire

Chuck and I went to New Hampshire last weekend with some of his classmates and their SOs. The trip was very last minute so to say we "winged it" would be a slight understatement. Chuck and I don't have a car as you know, so that morning we got in a car with another LGO and SO, not knowing where we were headed or what we were really doing, just that we were going to New Hampshire. Due to a small misunderstanding about the location of our final destination, we spent a LOT of time riding in the car. But that's ok, because we got to see a lot of a state we've never been to before.

Here is what I learned about New Hampshire from this trip:
- It is very green.
- You can see a lot of the state in one day!
- There are a lot of gravel roads.
- They have neon orange lizards.
- The names of roads and places there are fun to say. Pawtuckaway. Piscataquog. Hooksett.
- Their Target stores look just like the Target stores everywhere else.
- It takes less than 30 minutes to get to the New Hampshire state border from Boston.

Did you know the population of New Hampshire is only about 1.3 million people? I think that may be smaller than the population of Metro Louisville. I believe it though. I mean, look at these pictures. I don't see any signs of human life, do you?

These were taken from the top of a firetower we hiked to.

To give you a little background on the other pictures I'm about to share, apparently it's a very popular thing for MIT students to spell out MIT with their bodies in cool or different locations around the world. I googled to find some cool images of people doing this and found the following: (I don't know any of these people by the way so I hope they don't mind being featured on a stranger's blog).

 MIT at Fenway Park

 MIT at a concert in Vienna

MIT at Stonehenge

So the four LGO students on our hike had us take these glorious pictures:

 I think I like the one where they are lying down better. Mainly because it was really funny to watch them get situated like this and also because I like the detail of having the water bottle act as the dot on the "I". 

Spelling MIT in New Hampshire is just as cool as spelling it at Stonehenge, right? I think so.