Cheryl & Chris's Wedding Blog
Friday, September 24, 2004
So far, so good. 3 out of our 4 wedding classes have been completed. One to go! I sort of have mixed feelings about these classes. I don't feel that they're particularly well done in some ways, but then again, given the time frame we're talking about, they're probably doing the best that they can. The first week was about Catholic view of marriage and sacramentality of marriage. The second week was about communication. Last night was about morality. I actually had high hopes for morality. As a cradle catholic, I know that "morality" is Catholic-speak for sex. But alas, nothing exciting there. Essentially the topics were "sex is good, contraceptives are bad, natural family planning is good, and infidelity is bad" So no real newsflashes there. On the positive side, the number of children in the NFP family this time was only 4 (as opposed to the 9 children people who were encouraging it two weeks ago) and then the man who emcees the courses only has two and they used NFP. MUCH better marketing this time. 2.5 hours gets to be a long stretch though, and Chris and I spend lots of time writing notes back and forth to each other. I will say that even though I haven't been wildly impressed about the level of teaching (Becky - they need your teaching skills!!!!), it has spawned some good discussions between Chris and I. So hence the up side of my mixed feelings. Overall, I still think this was worthwhile, I just wish they would make a few tweaks.
Tuesday, September 21, 2004
Great moments in Pittsburgh engineering: There's a bridge over one of the interstates that was losing pieces, and they apparently fell onto the highway. So, they strung up a net around the part that was disintegrating to catch those pieces. But wait! There's more! They then built a little table UNDER the bridge so that if the pieces do manage to fall out of the net, it won't hit the cars. What a relief, I'm sure that bridge is perfectly safe to drive over. Now flash forward a year to today. It appears that the City-County building in downtown Pittsburgh is losing pieces off one of it's balconies. The city is teetering on the verge of bankruptcy, and can't afford to fix it. But you know, that net worked so well last year....
I talked to the organist last night, and he's a super nice guy. I'm going to go to a wedding that he's doing in October, and then meet with him afterwards to finalize the music. Woohoo! So far everything we've gone for with the music has been instrumental, so probably no singers except for Br George McInnis who will be singing responsorial, and hopefully the Alleluia. (I've got to ask him about that). And the other big hooray is that I got a bunch of thank you cards yesterday, so I can get cracking on getting them into the mail. Woohooo!
Monday, September 20, 2004
Ohmigosh, I missed the major wedding story of the weekend - Britney got married! Thank heavens, what if she had gotten married on the same day as Chris and I, and in the same dress...as our mothers. Since they're going to bare their midriffs and all, it would probably be more Britney like. (Oh I can hear the rumors starting now!). Anyway, here's hoping that this one lasts longer than 55 hours.
Friday we got a visit from Ivan, the burly him-acane that ravaged Florida and Alabama. Even in the dregs of the storm, there was still a lot of power. Thankfully there was little wind, but Pittsburgh set a record for the most rainfall in a single day. In second place was a week earlier when Frances came through. As of 6PM Friday night, we had gotten over 5 inches of rain, and even though it has only rained two days this month, this is the second rainiest September on record. Fortunately, other than long commute times, we weren’t personally affected, but we’re still catching up with our friends to make sure they got through ok. There are lots of sad stories, and the usual dumb people + water = high comedy stories. People got out of their cars and moved barriers for closed off roads to drive into the floodwaters. Fortunately all of them were rescued, but I have very little sympathy for the loss of their cars.
And then…the rest of the weekend was sunny & beautiful.
Sunday we went to Erie for a time trial that Chris was in. That’s when we found out that Fred is really a surfer dude re-incarnated. The time trial is held on a peninsula that juts out into Lake Erie. Last time we took Fred to the beach, he was not happy about the way the water lapped at his toes when the waves came in. But this time he found a way around that problem – just dive in. Ah for a camera, and pictures of our boy up to his chest in water. I kept a close eye on him for the duration of his swims, so that the currents wouldn’t carry him out, but there were no problems whatsoever. I don’t want to mention any names, but I think a certain Fred dog is due for a bath!
Well of my mental goals for this weekend, we didn’t get the tux (again), I got half of the number of cards addressed that I was hoping for (doh!), and we’ve almost gotten our wedding ceremony planned out (pending okee dokees from all concerned!). So some things got done, just not as much as I was hoping. But it’s progress, so I’ll take it.
