Bride and Groom's first dance? Hokey Pokey.

We woke up on the day of Carter and Tary's wedding in Carmel refreshed and ready to finally relax after being lost the entire previous day. We met up with the Rice crew and decided to go to Katy's for breakfast. This was a place suggested by both Carter and our hotel. It must be good, right? (Foreshadow: It was)

Katy's Place specializes in breakfast. They had about a dozen different varieties of my favorite breakfast treat, Egg's Benedict. (Because I now consider myself a Texan) I never thought there were enough non-vegans in California to support such a menu. Of course, now that I think of it, they probably did have a vegan "Egg's Benedict" option made with spinach and uncooked tofu covered in olive oil. Disgusting? Sure. But at least that chicken is happy that it's infertile egg rotted in a corner instead of filling your tummy and making you go "yummy".

And, of course, we found the greatest painting anyone has ever seen.For our afternoon activity, Erica, Josh, Merri Su, and I drove the 17-mile drive near the coast that is inhabbited by the Pebble Beach Golf Links. We took full advantage of the rented convertible and took some wonderful pictures along the way. I think my favorite was a small tide pool we discoverred abot 200 feet from the road. I'll let the pictures say the rest.

LOOK OUT! The Loch Ness monster has found the Pacific!
And finally, there was the wedding. The ceremony took place on a deck overlooking the ocean. It was one of the most beautiful weddings we've ever seen. Apparently, Carter and Tary had originally considerred this location before deciding on having the wedding in the heart of Big Sur. When the fires hit a week before the wedding, they asked if there was any availability. Lucky for all of us, the Red Cross had the venue booked. But they were too busy because, apparently, there was a fire nearby.

The wedding was beautiful. The party was great. (Open bar, dude!) The food was wonderful. And, most importantly, the people were some of our favorite people. The weekend ended well and you would never know that all the events were planned at the last minute unless someone told you. Thank you, Carter and Tary. We love you guys. However, as much as you want to deny it, I know your first dance together as a married couple was to the Hokey Pokey. Just embrace it, already. Your kids will love that story!

And now, for something completely different.

As a Michigander I must say....

HAHAHAHA! ROFLMAOBBQ!

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/07/23/detroit.mayor.ap/index.html

I can't help but to say that this is still better than everything from the Coleman Young era. Do you still live near Detroit?!? Get out. NOW! Do you know who runs that place? Even when the mayor was competent (Dennis Archer), was it worth while? That's what I thought.

Happy Anniversary to Us!

One year ago today, we said our vows, escaped a downpour, partied with friends and family, and all in all had a great time as we committed to spending the rest of our lives together. Thanks for an amazing and wonderful year! Happy anniversary to us!

P.S. The cake is the only wedding-related photo I have with me at the moment. Maybe I'll post more later...

Proud to be an American

This country has problems. But so does every other country. What makes this country better than most is that we admit our faults and constantly work, as a group, to fix things. I think the American people have learned a lot over the past decade. We've seen economic highs and lows. We've seen peace and war. We've witnessed an attack on American soil, something we will never forget.

This country became independent by winning a war that was fought in an extremely unconventional manner. We won because we were willing to do whatever it took to surprise and strike fear into our enemy. The American rebels adopted tactics that were considered unfair and savage at the time. But we had to fight that way. That was the only way to win. And we knew we had something worth fighting for, our freedom. Freedom to have different opinions from those that are in power. Freedom to control our own government. Freedom to have faith in whatever we choose.

Next time you are upset at someone because they have an opinion that is different than yours, try to remember what this country was founded upon. Many men and women lost their lives fighting for our freedom of opinion. It would be a shame if we forgot how important that freedom was when it comes to harmless things like religion, sexual preference, or the color of someone's skin.

I have never been in the military, but I would be willing to risk my life for this country if I felt it was necessary. I don't have to wear an American flag on my lapel to prove my love for this country. All you have to do is ask. I think that goes for almost all Americans.

Oh, and blowing shit up on July 4th, well that's just what makes America awesome. Despite a bad economy and gasoline prices quadrupling in the past 3 years, we still buy shit like this:

Why is the owner of the Alamo Drafthouse holding a phallic recreational explosive? Well, that's because it is awesome and we will soon make it go boom. I love this country! And now for a picture of me and our soon to be married friends, Josh and Erica. Yay USA!

How to get lost in Carmel

My wife and I are now experts on how to get lost in Carmel. I don't mean "lost" in the romantic way that tourism boards and advertisers use. We didn't fall in love with the place and forget where we were. We had maps. We had Google. We had TomTom. We asked people for directions. They all failed us at least once last weekend.

We were in Carmel for Carter and Tary's wedding. Their wedding was originally going to be in the middle Big Sur, but that was on fire. All the resorts in Big Sur had to evacuate earlier in the week due to approaching wildfires that were started by a freak lightning storm. Fortunately, a new venue in Carmel was quickly booked and wedding went off without a hitch (except for the bride and groom who were, in fact, hitched).

Merri Su and I booked a beautiful room in the Pine Inn. Now all we had to do was find it. I used Google to find the address of the hotel and when we got to our rental car I punched the address into our TomTom and followed it all the way to a hotel. While it looked like a beautiful, quaint hotel, it was not the Pine Inn. I was very confused.

We decided to go in and figure out if maybe the name of the inn was changed recently or something. "Is this the... Pine Inn?"

"Umm... No, sir. This is..." I could immediately tell that the woman behind the desk was almost as confused as I was.

"OK, I can read. I realize the sign said something else. I'm just very confused because this is where our nav system brought us." I immediately thought of all those stories I read about trucks getting stuck in back roads because the driver blindly followed his or her nav system down a road that isn't even wide enough for a motorcycle. I always thought those drivers were such morons. I was now one of those morons. In the end, we found out that the address Google gives for the Pine Inn is wrong, so it wasn't entirely my fault, just mostly.

We got directions to the Pine Inn and a map from the helpful woman at what turned out to be the wrong hotel. Merri Su tried navigating us there using the map but when she told me to turn into the ocean, I knew something was not right. She then studied the map. "Oh what the hell! The top of this map points East, not North. Who does that?" Apparently the tourism board of Carmel does that. (Oh, and I do that all the time too by accident. Don't ever ask me to draw you a map unless you're looking for a brain teaser.)

Once we found the hotel it was time for a new adventure. Unfortunately, we were not feeling adventurous. We decided to get ourselves lost trying to find the rehearsal dinner that we were already late for. We knew approximately where the hotel was, but not what exit to take. We tried to find it ourselves but failed. It was time to give TomTom another try. We found the hotel in TomTom's list of nearby points of interest so we thought we were home free. TomTom brought is right to the hotel. Well, not really. It brought us to the point on the freeway right outside the hotel. For the rest of the weekend, TomTom was dead to Merri Su.

A few phone calls later we figured out the correct exit and found the hotel. Now, if only we knew where the dinner was at the hotel. I can now tell you that my wife and I know where every banquet area is in the Hyatt Regency Monterey. Everyone that worked at the hotel kept pointing us in different directions. It took a guest at the hotel who recognized our frustration to help us. It so hapenned that he noticed a rehearsal dinner earlier and pointed us to the right place.

I swear that the rest of our vacation was wonderful and we both had an absolute blast. We stopped using maps. We stopped using TomTom (after all, he was now dead to Merri Su). We stopped asking strangers for directions. The only trusted source for directions the rest of the weekend was our friends. I'll try to post about the fun parts of our trip soon. Here's a teaser: