Go Gators!

PIC-0024

It’s official; any progress that I made before the wedding not to bite my nails has been completely wiped out. Adrienne, Tom, Barbara and I spent Thursday night with the Seattle Gator Club watching the Gators defeat the Sooners 24-14 for the National Championship.

This marks the second National Title for the Gators in the past 3 years and the third in the history of the program. It also gave me a cheap excuse to wear a ridiculous amount of Gator apparel to work on Friday. I decided to go a little nuts wearing my Gator beads, visor, orange and blue sunglasses, and some other swag. It might be a bit much, but at least I’m not wearing jean shorts, right?

2008 in Review

With 2008 recently wrapped up, I’d like to spend a few moments looking back at the year:

Adrienne and I started 2008 on opposite sides of the country (our first New Years apart, awww). Adrienne was in Florida for Christmas Day with my family, but flew back to Seattle to spend Christmas with her family. I stayed in Florida to go to my friend Megan’s wedding on Jan. 4th.

Being religious fans of the TV show Arrested Development, we attended our friend Molly’s AD-themed costume party. I dressed as “The Surrogate” and Adrienne went as “MRF”. Costume parties are apparently a load of fun when they’re in the middle of January.

Later in January, my work flew me to the Bay Area to talk to a group of students from Stanford University about Utility Computing. This was my first work-related presentation out “in the real world” and it went really well; we had fantastic turn out the following week at our booth at the career fair.

In February, my parents threw Adrienne and I an engagement party at their house. The weather in Florida is fantastic in February, by the way. The party was highlighted by a Tom’s hysterical poem/rap/roast/blessing which he recited from memory.

February is also the Adrienne's Family's Month of Birthday Celebration with Tom, Barbara, and Adrienne all having birthdays in the month.

I flew to Chicago in April to meet my brother and his friends for a weekend to celebrate one last hoo-rah before his wedding. We went to a Cubs game at Wrigley Field and explored seemingly all of Chicago’s drinking establishments. April also marks the month when I started biking to work for 2008.

Jason had a fantastic wedding on May 2nd in Stuart, FL, his wife Lara’s home town. The ceremony was a short and sweet outdoor service; the weather was perfect and the party that followed was a blast!

In June, Adrienne and I had a series of photos taken here in Seattle. I haven’t yet put them all online, but as we get more wedding pictures I’ll put them up in that batch.

In July, Adrienne and I took the long route to Ashley, ND to visit my grandmother. The long route started with a flight to Florida for some wedding planning (hair styling, table linens, an engagement photo shoot). In an effort to visit a few states that Adrienne and I hadn’t been to before, we flew to Detroit, MI and then drove through OH, IN, IL (where we stopped to visit our friends Chris, Xiaoqi, and Debbie), WI (where we had lunch with my friend Haley), IA, MN (where we picked up Jason and Lara) and eventually made our way to Ashley, ND (we also took a side trip to SD for Adrienne). In our goal to get to all 50 states before we’re 30, I need AZ and AK; Adrienne and I both need HI (she’s been to the other 49 already).

At the end of July, Adrienne and I threw a “Andrew’s Birthday / Adrienne’s Housewarming” party at the condo. We grilled burgers and dogs, served a bunch of fantastic beer and had a bunch of folks over. It was the first “big” party we’ve thrown and I think it went really well.

In October, Adrienne, her parents, and I flew to Florida for Gator Homecoming. My parents, Jason and Lara, and Lois (Lara’s mother) were together for a weekend of Gator festivities including a classic Dickinson tailgate (breakfast before the game, dinner afterwards).

In November, my work flew me to New York to talk to students from Columbia University about how awesome my job is (which is a dangerous subject to have me present about, because I can talk/ramble for days on this topic). My friend Joe was presenting at Microsoft’s “Future of Web Design” conference in Midtown at the same time; it was cool to see each other outside of our home towns (and on somebody else’s dollar).

The year wrapped up nicely with a two week trip to Florida for our wedding!

In all, it was a long year with a lot of travel. For those of you who were counting, we flew to Florida 6 times over the year. I’m hoping that 2009 is just as much fun (and maybe involves a litte less cross-country flying).

We're Married!

Holy Cow! We did it!
To everybody who was able to make it, thank you so much for sharing our special day with us. We had a blast! For those of you that weren’t able to attend, we look forward to seeing you soon! Our fantastic photographers from Concept Photography have been kind enough to give us a sneak peak of a few of the pictures that they took: