Speed bump

We were moving full steam ahead with the wedding planning... and wouldn't you know it, we hit a little speed bump. Is there anything that just goes smoothly? Doubt it.

Anyway, turns out our hotel we are getting married at is no longer going to be part of Starwood, so it is losing it's "Westin" name as of June 30, 2009. I freaked out immediately at this, because I had no idea what that would mean for the hotel and our wedding. Was it closing? Who's taking over? Will it still have those Heavenly Beds? : )

I also heard a rumor that the casino was closing! My mom would be so disappointed!

Well, I researched a little and emailed the hotel to find out what the story was. I guess the ownership is not really changing. The majority owner is some company from Hong Kong who also owns the airport and the port on Grand Bahama Island. And it sounds like the staff is staying the same. According to the hotel, the casino is only closing for about a month and will re-open way before my wedding. Hope so!

One good thing is that we still get points on our Starwood account for having our wedding there, because we signed our contract before June 30th. Which, with that prior complaint and subsequent upgrade to Gold status, should give us quite a lot of points to use for future hotel stays... possibly our honeymoon, if we figure out where we want to go.

So, as of now, everything is still a "go"... I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we don't have any more surprises! But I'm not holding my breath.

Like Bambi on Ice

That's how I looked right before I took a big spill on my short walk to the bus stop this morning. I did a little goofy dance with arms flailing about and then splat... wipeout! Some guy stopped and asked if I was ok. Yep, just a little embarassed, that's all.

In case you don't know this already, I am a klutz. : )

Shamrock Shuffle

This morning I was supposed to run the Shamrock Shuffle 8K race. But, this is what it looked like when I woke up...



About 20 degrees out with 30 mph winds and snow falling. No way am I going to spend an hour plus outside running 5 miles in slush!

Instead, I worked out inside and stayed warm and dry.

Afterwards, Matt and I met up with Erin and Ross for brunch at Flat Top Grill... so good!

Oops

Saturday, Matt and I drove to Indiana for Lauren's baby shower. About a half hour into the trip, Matt turns to me and says "What time is it in Indiana?" My stomach sank, because I had planned out the morning... leave at 8am, drive 2 hours to West Lafayette, get to Lauren's sister-in-law's place in plenty of time for the 10am start of the shower. I hate being late to things. After a quick call to Lauren, we confirmed that Indiana is actually an hour ahead of us... just awesome. Instead of an hour and half until the shower started, it was only half hour. So, of course, I showed up an hour late. I am a shmuck!

The shower was nice, lots of great food and Lauren got a lot of nice gifts from everyone. I didn't realize how many cool things they have these days for babies! How did our parents ever get along without these things??? ; )

Response received

I already heard back from the complaint I filed... of course, they apologized and said they were forwarding my email to the hotel manager for further action. I don't really care what happens beyond this point. Ideally, her boss will find out and tell her to get her "head out of her butt" (a phrase my high school basketball coach used countless times, but it seems appropriate here as well).

As an apology, they bumped up my Starwood Hotel rewards account to Gold level instead of the basic level. We are now supposed to get automatic free room upgrades at check-in whenever we stay at a Starwood Hotel, we get more points per dollar spent, we get a free newspaper, etc... I guess it's something.

Funny thing is that the hotel we ended up picking for our wedding is another Starwood Hotel. So, I guess "they" (the conglomerate of Starwood Hotels) really didn't lose our business after all. It kind of moved from one hotel chain to another. Oh well, I'll still take the Gold upgrade. : )

Complaint submitted

Today, I submitted a complaint about our MIA wedding planner for the original hotel we wanted to get married at. I had Matt do a "consulting review" before I hit submit to make sure it sounded ok. We'll see if anything comes of the complaint.

To be continued...

Weekend update

We had a great weekend!

Matt got to watch lots of basketball on Friday and had a few (too many) jaeger-bombs. It's always quite a fun show to see the results of Matt + hard alcohol. Surprisingly, he was not feeling that bad on Saturday morning.

We got to meet baby Samantha Bell Reuter on Saturday... she's such a beautiful baby! Congrats to Andy and Michelle! We stopped in the hospital for a visit and grabbed lunch with Andy.

Afterwards, I started on the major project of moving out of Erin's and into Matt's place. Matt and I have a lot of stuff! Matt is kind of a pac-rat... and I really am not. I can toss stuff out pretty easily, which I think will come in handy in the next month. It will be interesting to see how everything fits together. And by interesting, I mean no fun at all. My goal is to have everything moved in before the middle of May.

On Saturday night, we met up with Erin and Ross for dinner at The Beer Bistro (love that place!) and more basketball.

Sunday, we relaxed, ran a few errands and went bowling. I won "date night" this week... but not by too much. Our team played Matt's team in the weekly match-up. We won the first game, but stunk it up pretty bad the next two games.

New closets

CA Closets fixed up the closets in Matt's place so we have twice as much space now! It's awesome! : )

2nd Bedroom - Before


2nd Bedroom - After


Master Bedroom - Before


Master Bedroom - After (it's hard to see this closet because it turns to the right, but trust me... it's great!

St. Patty's Day... continued

I realized I had some more pics on my camera from Saturday two weeks ago... more St. Patrick's Day fun. Enjoy! : )

Cheers!


Brett and me... what is up with my smile???


Ahhhhhhh... cute!


Typical Matt... the boy loves his picture taken!

Tennis - week 3

This week we used REAL tennis balls... how exciting, right??? : )

Week 1 - we started off with these big foam tennis balls


Week 2 - we moved up a step to these smushable "transition" tennis balls


Week 3 - we finally graduated to real tennis balls


Apparently, we are going to get evaluated at tennis next time and they give us our official tennis rating based on our 4 week class. Awesome. I know I've gotten a little bit better, but I'm not really what you would call ratable yet. : )

We have a wedding planner!

Now that we have a place to get married, we have officially been assigned a wedding planner, Stephanie. Let's just hope this one does a better job than Tina (our former wedding planner that pulled the disappearing act on us!) We were holding off on sending in our formal complaint about Tina until we knew we had everything taken care of with this new place. Our new hotel is a sister property of the hotel Tina works for, so I had this horrible dream that she would somehow get assigned to our wedding after all... and then I'd just cry.

Speaking of dreams, I have been having the craziest dreams about the wedding reception we're having in Chicago. In one dream, I am running around and can't find the room where the reception is being held in and I miss the whole thing! I keep walking into other parties and don't recognize anyone. On a side note, one room had Beatles impersonators... I have NO IDEA where that came from! I finally run into my mom after the party and she tells me how much fun she had. I also wasn't even wearing my wedding dress. I was dressed in black pants and a white shirt. How weird is that! In another one, it was the same thing, but I was trying to find somewhere to change into my wedding dress and I kept riding on escalators (kind of like the ones at Macy's) and I could never find the right floor that the reception was on. I was all upset because I never saw Matt or the DJ all night. Not sure why I cared so much about the DJ, but whatever. Needless to say, definitely not a restful sleep!

Pinch me

I completely forgot to wear green today. I realized it as I was walking to the bus and everyone else around me had green on. Oops.

I have green eyes... does that count???

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!!

St. Patty's Day

Today is the un-official St. Pat's Day holiday and of course, that must be celebrated! We got up early and headed to the Reuters for a green breakfast. Matt and the guys had a few Irish Car Bombs... I stayed away from those things. DANGER!

The makings for an Irish Car Bomb (or the makings for a disaster... you decide!)


Round one!


Cheers!


Another one already??? : )


One for the road!


I had to ditch the party early to come back and be at the condo while the CA Closets people fix up the closets so all of Matt and my clothes fit in nicely.

Right now, I am listening to a lot of drilling and noise being made in the closets. I haven't peeked yet to see how it's going, but there is only one dude doing the job and it's taking a while. I hope he gets done soon, so I can go out and join everyone for some more St. Patty's Day festivities. By the time I get there, I'm afraid I will be WAY BEHIND!!!

Bald for the kids

Every year, my company participates in the St. Baldrick's charity. People raise money and then shave their heads in solidarity with all the kids who have cancer and are bald due to chemo. We have a big happy hour at work where the head shaving happens. During the happy hour, people also bid extra money to get crazy designs put into people's hair for fun and to raise more money. And people start bidding on the heads of others who didn't really plan on shaving their heads, but end up doing it. Always a fun time.

This year a girl shaved her head!


This guy got the Canadian maple leaf shaved in his head, so he sat there holding the Canadian flag the whole time so the stylist had something to go off of!


This guy wasn't expecting to shave his head, but everyone ponied up $1,000, so he did... and part of the deal was that Shannon got to shave his head!


This guy got a mohawk with a T on one side of his head and P on the other side (for Towers Perrin, my company)


Dan (he was in the NL with me) added some color in honor of St. Patty's Day to his hair before getting his triple mohawk!


There was A LOT of hair on the floor afterwards!


Afterwards, we all went for happy hour at the Cactus for a few drinks with all the shavees.

Then, Matt and I went to Blue Agave for dinner!

New curtains... part one

On Friday, we had the first part of our new curtains installed. We love them (thanks mom!) We can't wait to see what the finished product will look like. We have to get the cornice resized, so that piece will be added a little bit later.

But, here's what we've got so far (notice the matching pillows on the couch!)


To be continued...

Reason #1,057 that I hate cab drivers

As I was driving today, I got in the right lane of Wacker to make a right turn onto Madison. Anyway, there was a long line of cars waiting to turn right. As is typical, there is always some schmuck (usually a cab) that tries to drive all the way up in the left lane until the intersection and then cut off the first person in the right lane and turn right in front of them. Today, as I was getting close to the front of the right lane, of course, some schmucky cab driver tried to cut me off... he nearly hit my car! My car is old and I do not care if it gets a little dinged up, so I never stop for these ya-hoos anyway. If they want to do that to someone who drives a brand new BMW, then they might have a chance of making the turn. The funniest part is that a car behind me must have let him in eventually and he caught up with me on the street... he drove up right next to me, slowed down and gave me the dirtiest look ever. I looked at him and started laughing... dude, you almost HIT ME with your ILLEGAL turn and you give ME a dirty look?!?!? Wow.

We have a place to get married!

We signed a contract today with a hotel in the Bahamas, so it's official! Yay! : )

Got a new phone... part 2

As I mentioned, the new phone I got in November is already kaput. Well, it still works, but the sliding mechanism on the slide-out keyboard doesn't work and the top half of the phone is about to slide completely off. Not ideal, to say the least.

I called the warranty center for AT&T and found out there is an advisory for the phone I bought saying that this is a common problem, so they allowed me to return it and get another one.

Yesterday, the new phone came in the mail and I did the whole switcheroo and sent back my crappy defective phone. They are going to look it over to make sure the damage isn't from dousing it in water, dropping it, throwing it across the room, etc... and then the process is complete. I haven't done any of those things to the phone, so I'm hoping they realize that it's just a crappy phone. If I had my choice, I'd probably get a different one this time, but that's not part of the warranty.

2:38pm

That is the time that I was finally able to start working today. Ridiculous! I have been waiting since I got into the office today to regain access to my clients. The company did a SOX audit and removed people from clients that they thought were not supposed to have access. Apparently, they totally screwed up this process because a lot of people in my group no longer have access to projects they are working on. Just awesome! My group is kind of a special projects only team and we get access to clients on a by-project basis, so we aren't technically on the official team lists, but we are on the access lists. I don't know why it took SOOOOO freaking long to fix this, but I am glad I finally can do some work. Geesh!

Lotsa wine!

We did a mini-wine tour on Saturday night. Ross and Erin came over for snacks, dinner and quite a few glasses of wine. We went through about 5 bottles and all were really good.



We played Wii Yahtzee... Matt was the big champ, as usual. I think he knows some way to rig this game. I bet if I played with his "Jabba" character, I'd win all the time, too! Ok, probably not.

We also played Connect Four... I actually won against Ross and Erin at this game, but Matt killed me, as usual. I need to practice and remember some of those old strategies I used as a kid.

Amazingly, I was not hungover today. : )

Bonus!

Today we got paid our bonuses! I just checked and it's been deposited and is all mine! Well, actually, it's going directly into the wedding account, so I guess it's mine and the future Mr. Duesterhaus' money! ; )

Speaking of weddings... today's wedding frustration/stress level is: HIGH. I never thought planning a destination wedding would be this complicated! Especially in this economy... hello hotels - people are not spending as much on frivolous stuff like traveling, don't you need the business?!? After ditching the first flake (well, actually she ditched us, but anyway), I thought we were on the right track with this new hotel, but things have grinded to a halt. Right now, we are working with the sales department. If your job is sales and you are trying to make a sale, you should be a little more responsive when the person you are selling to is ready to sign on the dotted line, but has a few questions first. Seems logical to me. Maybe not so much to our contact at the hotel. We sent her an email on Monday with 11 questions (ok, that's more than a few, but seriously, they were not hard questions considering it is her business to know the answers!) No response. I sent her another email yesterday. No response. I called and left her a message earlier today asking her to call me back. No response. Seriously, I am just about done with this crap. I have been working on planning this wedding since the middle of January and I feel like I am not much farther ahead than when I started. When is this supposed to get fun???

Ok, the venting is over. I'm very glad that it's Friday and the weekend is finally here! Hope everyone gets outside and enjoys the warmer weather! Bring your umbrella!

Tennis

Since I'm so terrible at tennis, Erin signed herself and me up for some tennis lessons through Midtown Tennis Club. We go to four hour-long sessions. Last night was the first session. We played with these fake mushy tennis balls... we didn't even hit one real ball the whole time. It made me feel like a pro, because those balls are so much easier to hit than the real things. : )

The instructor was a little strange and all over the place... he would tell us what we were supposed to do next and it never quite made sense. At one point, he finished an explanation of our next drill and said "go" and everyone just stood there looking at each other like Huh??? Is he speaking English???

Overall, it was a great workout and I had a fun time. Hopefully, I'll get good enough at tennis that I can actually play a full game!

Another perk of being enrolled in the class is that we get a one-month membership to Midtown Tennis Club. They have workout equipment, too, besides just a bunch of tennis courts. I don't know how much I'll use that considering we have a gym in Matt's building (that I don't use enough of as it is... why would I drive somewhere to workout???) But, who knows.

We are NOT the champions... again

The DeezNuts volleyball team lost in the second round of playoffs last night. Disappointing. We played two really tough games and lost each one by only 2 points. We almost won the second game... but, the other team was just a little bit better.

We cheers'd the season at the Purple Otter afterwards. Luckily, this time the food didn't take over an hour to get like last time. Of course, we were the only ones ordering food this time, so that probably helped!

Don't fall off your chair, but this is the third post in as many days! I'm trying to post something every day. But, seriously, my life is really not all that exciting, so I hope you aren't bored to tears.

Steak = good

Last night, Matt and I went to Smith & Wollensky's for dinner. Michelle had gone last week and said that S&W had extended their restaurant week special through this week, so we could still get the $32 prix fixe menu. Since I won at bowling, dinner was Matt's treat! Of course, when it was my treat, we went to the West End Bar and had their $10 pizza special. I'm not sure Matt likes how that worked out! : )

We both had the Wollensky salad, a steak and I had the chocolate cake for dessert and Matt had the cheesecake. We got a side of sauteed mushrooms, as well. When we got our bill, we laughed because we spent more on alcohol than we did on food. Geesh, it adds up fast.

So, on a totally random side note, I saw in the elevator today that Jillian from the Bachelor (the 3rd runner-up) is going to be the next Bachelorette. Interesting. Also, I saw that Jason was defending himself about how he dumped Melissa on national tv... he said it was part of his contract with ABC to make all aspects of the relationship public and he was forced to do it. Whatever.

Speaking of Jillians... since we were out so late for dinner last night, I didn't get to watch the Biggest Loser yet. So, I've been trying not to look at anyone's blogs, so I don't accidentally see what happened. I doubt I'll watch it tonight either because tonight is our volleyball playoffs!

Total slacker

Matt called me out last night and told me I am the worst blogger ever. I guess I'm not really keeping up with the blog these days. It has been a week ago Saturday since the last time I wrote anything. Geesh, where does the time go?!?

So, here is the what I've been up to these days:

I saw a couple movies. Confessions of a Shopaholic --- was an over-the-top cheesy chick flick. I'm pretty sure most guys would not last sitting through it. : ) And He's Just Not That Into You --- cute movie, but as Erin says, it ended terribly for what the message of the movie was supposed to be. The message is that women tend to think their relationships are always the exception to the rule, but in reality we should be thinking we are the rule and stop fantasizing that things are always going to work out like a fairy tale in the end.

My volleyball team ended the regular season in 2nd place, which is an improvement from last season. This Wednesday is the second round of playoffs and the championship game... cross your fingers!!!

Matt and I set up appts for getting the closets done (yay!!!) and getting the new curtains installed (again, yay!!!). I can't wait to see how it all turns out. It will be awesome to have an organized closet! And some more decoration in the living room!

Last Friday, we went to see the Loyola v. UIC game. Good game, exciting at the end, but Loyola fell short. We got to sit on the floor seats right next to the court and the players. At one point, a player from the other team fell out of bounds and on top of me. Luckily, he was able to control himself enough that my chair didn't tip backwards (how embarassing would that have been?!?) I felt a little violated, but he apologized, so I let it slide! ; )

On Saturday, I went to a shower for Michelle at Wishbone. Lauren has a good write-up and some pics on her blog. I had my camera with me, but forgot to take pictures. I think little PBR is going to be decked out pretty nice with all the cute clothes and stuff everyone got her!

Saturday night, we ordered take-out and stayed inside where it was warm. We played Wii (Bowling, Yahtzee, Connect Four)... Matt won at everything!!! It was a banner night for him. He got 3 Yahtzees (2 in one game!) and I got zippo! As Matt always says when he loses (which is very rarely)... "the game cheats".

Besides that, we had a pretty relaxing weekend. Sunday, the snow was crazy! It was literally blowing straight sideways! I thought about taking a video, but did not. It cleared up for bowling on Sunday night. Matt and I have a running bet each week on who bowls better (we include handicaps, of course... otherwise Matt would win all the time!) The winner gets to choose the restaurant for date-night and the loser pays. So far, this bowling season I've been winning more and it's been awesome! Of course, Matt also is trying out a new hook ball, instead of throwing his straight ball. Once he gets that down, I predict I'll be losing a lot more.

Ugh, so my relatively new phone is broken already! Piece of crap! The top sliding part is almost totally unhinged from the rest of the phone. I'm pretty sure the phone will be completely unusable once that happens. Awesome. And of course, I did not get the insurance, so I will be forking over the cash to either fix it or get a new one. I may go back to a basic phone without the sliding keyboard.

I watched the Bachelor finale last night and the whole "after the rose" crap. I had read online a few days ago that this is what was predicted to happen... he picks Melissa and dumps her and picks Molly in the end. ABC apparently gave it away in the previews of him proposing, because you could see Melissa's pinky ring. Well, I didn't know he was going to dump Melissa on national television... that was kind of harsh. That whole "after the rose" thing seemed a little too set up to me and totally just for ratings. I can't believe Jason would drop one fiance' and then try to get back together with a different girl in a matter of minutes. Oh, and that scene with DeAnna coming back seemed scripted to me. I think she just wanted the free trip to New Zealand. : )

OH! Forgot to mention, I NEVER heard from the Bahamas Flake again, as if any of you are surprised. I am so amazed that she is still employed with her company. I need to find out how to place a complaint with her boss! ANYWAY, we have a new hotel and a new wedding planner and we actually are in negotiations on a contract! YAY!!! I am so excited that we are coming closer to having something set in stone. It will take a load of stress off me!

Ok, I think that covers it! Hopefully, it won't be over a week until I remember to post something again! : )