Sunday - Interrupted

Just about the time I got into the habit of updating and taking notes on our days, we arrived in the very beautiful and very remote town of Gualala and realized I'd left my laptop power cable in San Jose. So now, we're back in Sacramento and the laptop cable has been replaced, and I can get back to business. Just pretend you're reading this six days ago and everything will be right in the world.



I know, I know, I'm skipping the day that was the point of the exercise. But I haven't got any pictures of my own from the wedding (I very carefully did NOT bring my cell phone with me to any of the wedding stuff on Saturday) and it seems more cruel to write about it without pictures than just save it for a later date. So, let's skip ahead to the rest of the festivities.

Sunday was our last day with our out of town friends, and we did our best to make the most of it. We got up early to drive Jim and Jeff to the airport, and once people noticed our door was open there was no going back to bed. We visited with my family as they packed up and made their way out, and after breakfast we got together with Kaylee and Allan and headed to the Computer History Museum. I had been there before, but I was shocked at the huge expansions and improvements they have made in the years between my visits. It's a really cool place, if you're the right kind of geek!

Giant, room-sized computer made by IBM in the 70s

And its control panel, which is original but no longer hooked up to the machine.

They had one of Google's self-driving cars! It was fascinating to see the technology 

that powers and steers them.

Rob with the Babbage Engine, a brilliant machine that inspired a totally unreadable book.

View inside a huge supercomputer.

Napier's Bones, a really clever calculation aid. I kind of want a tiny one to carry around with me. 

We got stuck in the video game room (AKA Memory Lane) for a pretty long time. 

After that, we went to Psycho Doughnuts and stocked up on sugar for the long drive up to Gualala. 

It's the only bakery I've ever been to that offered padded cell accomodations. 

We all gathered up and had dinner, then Meredith and Amanda headed off to New York and Kaylee and Allan went back to Minneapolis. We're all out of weddings to attend now, so next time we all get together somewhere it'll be purely for the fun of it! 

Back It Up

We've been having such a wonderful time, we haven't taken a moment to update you all on what we've been up to! I'm taking advantage of some interstitial quiet moments to back track through our fantastic weekend before I start forgetting the details. So, Friday! 

Friday was our first full day with most of our wedding party in tow, and they very kindly followed me down memory lane to Santa Cruz and Capitola. Growing up I spent every summer in Sacramento with my family, and we always made a trip to Aptos to boogie board, ride the roller coasters, eat too much ice cream, and work on our fabulous Scandinavian Tans (that's a deep, rich, red hue for those of you who actually produce melanin and don't have to fret about such things). I very much wanted to take my almost-husband and my best friends to my favorite places and show off the part of the country that feels like home to me despite never having taken up permanent residence here. We collected our intrepid photographer Brie - who made her first solo flight for the occasion - and headed for the coast as soon as we finished up our marriage license paperwork at the Santa Clara courthouse. First stop was the Santa Cruz wharf, where we all ate fresh-caught fish until we felt like the fat lazy sea lions lounging under the pier. 

After lunch, we all wanted to experience the gorgeous Boardwalk, but the early time of year and the massive quantities of food we'd just consumed made us leery of the roller coasters so we opted for the arcade and a round of mini golf. The guys beat the holy snot out of the girls, but Kaylee brought in the best score over all and her husband Allan hit a final hole-in-one and won a free round. We're all pretty terrible at mini golf, but we had a great time trying to get away with score-fudging (cheating is such a strong word...) and lying down to shoot pool when the balls got stuck in unfortunate places. 

Lizzy, Kaylee, and Meredith, making trouble in a whole new state

Brie! This poor girl got straight off the plane and into our car. The rest of us got a night to sleep off the jet lag, but she just powered through!

Allan, Jeff, Kaylee, and the back of Meredith's head, trying to navigate the obstacles in the black light room on the golf course. I can't overstate how terrible we all are at this game, or how much of a blast we had being terrible together. 

Kaylee won the award for Most Creative Shot with this one. Some of those obstacles are just mean!

The beach bums among us got our feet wet despite the cold, cold, COLD wind.

The Boardwalk! One of my very favorite places.

We went to Capitola at dinner time and coincidentally arrived in the middle of their monthly free art walk, but we were pretty focused on Beach and Bars by that point so it only got a cursory glance. Zelda's had some sketchy food reviews, but the drinks were fabulous! We got to watch a couple of very bold seagulls steal leftovers (and in one case, an entire packet of butter, foil and all) off of the busing table behind us. We braved the beach one more time, but not even the toughest among us would get their feet wet by the time the sun went down. 

Believe it or not, this is Rob BEFORE the drinks arrived. We may have been a little bit tired.

After we got back to our hotel we talked through the ceremony with our newly-arrived officiant and final party member, played a couple rounds of Cards Against Humanity, and crashed early to get ready for the big day! 

MARRIED!

It's official, we married!

Finally, an update

We got into San Francisco on Thursday after a long 5 hour non-stop flight from Indy.  The boys were very good for the whole flight and they didn't even flinch when we hit some mild turbulence in the middle of the flight.

SFO's runway out into the bay makes for a very disconcerting final approach.

  We landed around 10am local time, grabbed our Chrysler 300 rental, and headed to Pier 39 to meet Kaylee and Allan. We walked around Fisherman's Wharf for a while and ate some amazing sea food at Louie's.  It had a gorgeous view of the bay and the food had been caught that same day.  There is no way to have fresh fish like this in Indiana!

After dinner we walked to the awesome Musee Mechanique and looked at their huge display of classic arcade machines.  And not classic in the Pole Position sense, which they also did have, but more in the early 20th century style.  You can see some of the machines in our photo scroll.  Some were creepy, some were cool and some were just odd.  There is nothing like a 10 foot fat lady screeching out a haunting laugh to really cement the memory of that place.

Allan found a few arcade vignettes that were actual games!

This is the final surviving piece of a giant, 450,000 toothpick amusement park made by a former Hollywood set builder serving time in San Quentin. 

Barbershop quartet, or nightmare fuel? You be the judge. 

The weirdest thing about Laughing Sal is this isn't the only one. We found a second, giant, terrifying Laughing Sal in Santa Cruz.

After all that we finally headed into San Jose to check into our hotel, met up with Jeff, and headed to see the Winchester House for the first time!

Lizzy likes collecting photos of Rob and Jeff, but only if neither Rob nor Jeff knows she's taking them. 

After all the excitement of the day, the five of us bolted down some local Mexican fare for dinner, picked Meredith up at the airport, and passed out for the night. 

And we're there!

Just landed in beautiful San Francisco. Just a couple more days!

Getting closer

How crazy is it that we are now only slightly more than a week away from getting married? I honestly never thought I would ever get married again, but here I am. And do you know what? I have never been happier in my life. I always used to cringe at the phrase "I am marrying my best friend." It just felt so forced, so required, so...untrue when it came out of their mouths. I would always huff and say something to myself about it being no wonder they don't have any other friends, but now I understand it.

I have never felt this before, that feeling that you get to spend the rest of your life with someone who truly is the best part of you. A person who understands you in ways nobody else can, someone who truly loves you for who you are and not who they can make you be. I am immeasurably lucky to have found someone like Liz and I honestly cannot wait to say "I do."

18 Days and Counting

We're in the final stages of wedding prep, which means I'm running a frantic triage on my to-do list and trying to sort the vital tasks from the "if I magically come up with extra time" tasks. Today's was getting this blog set up so our friends and family who can't make the trip to San Jose will get to share a little bit of this weekend with us. 

If you're coming and you want to play along, abuse your Instagram account and use #mysteryhousewedding for any cool stuff you'd like to share. If you're coming and you don't use Instagram or the idea of typing out a hashtag makes your skin crawl, feel free to text or email one of us the pictures you want to share and we'll make them appear here. 

See you all in a couple of weeks!