This will have to be brief as Alli and I are practically out the door to the honeymoon. (I'll post this on MySpace once they fix their login problems.) First and foremost THANK YOU to EVERYONE for making our wedding SO fantastic. We love all our friends from all walks of our lives (home, college, work, family) and I think that having you all in one place helped us to realize that no matter where we are, we are damn good at choosing fun, energetic and caring friends. Thank you all so much for making this the most fun wedding that I've ever been to, and I'm not just saying that because I was the groom.
And the wedding scrapbook/guestbook turned out HILARIOUS. You'll have to come visit us to check it out! (We're a "family" now!)
Speaking of photos, I know you all took tons of great ones. Email them our way at matthewd@gmail.com . We love you all and thanks for making our wedding the greatest night of our lives!!! posted by MAtt D. at 5:50 PM
Thursday, March 09, 2006
I love element 17
Think back to your glory days. High school, college, whatever they were - there was one thing that made you feel alive, that made you feel like you were whole, complete - that one thing that made the rest of the world go away. This sounds cheesy the way I'm describing it, but really, it's so true, isn't it? Maybe it's walking out on the soccer field, the smell of grass and mud hitting your nose, the feeling of the shinguards strapped to your legs, the tensing in your legs right before the whistle blows... or maybe it's the stage where you stand with your closest friends and the music hits and while it was work while you were practicing, now the motions come completely naturally and together, as a troupe you move in sync. I could go on, but odds are, not that many people even bother reading my crap.
I recently got a membership to 24 Hour Fitness Sport. It costs a little extra, but I wanted the Sport membership because Sport gyms have a... say it with me... lap pool. Now, joining a gym is one of the last things I really had any interest in. I HATE gyms. I'm not a big guy. I'm not a particularly brawny guy. And I find lifting weights to be really boring. So, when I actually do decide to use the weights, and I saunter past all the machines, grab the freeweights, and lay on the bench to do my flys and presses with the 25 pounders right next to both a) the GINORMOUS dudebro powercurling the 375 pounders and b) the soccer mom using the exact same weight as me, it's a little humbling. I hate being humbled.
But the pool! Ah the pool... who uses the pool at gyms? Old people with joint problems. When I swim there, I pass everyone. It's a real self esteem booster, if you don't take into account the fact that the guy in the lane next to me has ear hair older than me. It's great. I never have to share a lane, either. I went out and bought all the swimming accoutrements like a pull buoy and a kickboard, and I can just see it when people come in and see my pile of stuff at the end of the lane - that look that says, "aw crap, this guy's really serious about this stuff. I do NOT want to swim with him." Not only are they good for me, but they keep me isolated from the old people!
On top of the health benefits, there are all the psychic benefits as well. The smell of chlorine that soaks into my skin. The ragged, frizzed feeling of my hair. The red circles around my eyes from the goggles. That all-over, total body exhaustion that comes from a good swim. It's probably one of the greatest feelings of nostalgia ever.
we bought our wedding bands on saturday. check it, homies:
Tungsten with a bronze gold band running through it. Untraditional, and yet, not lame looking. Plus Tungsten will never scratch or dull. This ring will be around forever....
Just like our love! ::fart noise:: ::blatantly steals from Aaron::
Don'tcha wish your relationship is perfect like mine?
Don'tcha? Well, because I'm kinda PW'ed and I actually like these pics a lot, here are the photos from our engagement session, which included a professional photgrapher snapping us from all angles while we acted "natural."
In this first pic, Alli was carrying her shoes and purse in her hand. She said it would have been perfect if not for that, so I used my mad photoshop skillz. What what!
Nothing like straddling and uncomfortable rock to say "romance." Also... take no notice of my neck fat.
I can't believe he got this one! This is totally candid. I mean, we were just frolicking in the surf fully clothed at sunset as usual, and our photog just happened to catch us! What a crazy coincedence!
Ora le guey! Que onda? Chu lookin' at my heina, guey? Es muy bonita, no? If che were a beer, che'd be la heina mas fina.
You know, this photo was originally HUGE before I resized it... it was a whole lotta face. But I realized something. I have gorgeous eyes and Alli is a very lucky woman to have a stud like me around.
Okay, I have no snarky remarks for this one... it's... yeah. I dig it.
And this last one is one that Alli will hate me putting up... so here it goes. This is a real candid moment. This is a common, everyday moment in our relationship, regardless of the setting. If you ever wondered what it was like to be Matt and Alli (which you probably didn't) this photo says it. Seriously. Although, again, ignore the neck fat.
If anyone was wondering, these photos were taken on Coronado Island, out behind the Hotel Del Coronado by Greg Bluffin of Got the Shot photography, our wedding photgraphers.
hey say it's the little things that make life worth living. They also say the devil's in the details. Here's a short, whiny list of little things that have been bothering me lately.
- Starbucks must have it in their training manual to completely disregard the phrase "room for cream." Every time, every store I go in I ask for the same thing, and when they hand it back to me there's not enough room for me to spit in the cup without it overflowing. I could hand it back to them to pour some off, but then they pour too much, or I could dump a little of it in the trash, but that just seems rude to make them haul a big, gross, coffee filled trashbag. As a former trashbag hauler, I have some sympathy there. But it's gotten to the point where I have to hold my arms out to the sides like I'm telling them about a trout I caught or I'm pretending to be Jesus.
- Whole Foods is a great store. I love it because it has all kinds of cool gourmet food I wouldn't be able to find anywhere else except Trader Joe's, or Henry's... but I still like Whole Foods better. Except for the people who shop there. Bunch of aging hippies so wrapped up in their organic food self image that NO ONE watches where they're going. I've been backed into, walked into, nearly ran over, bumped into, and all around molested by my fellow customers every time I go there for something.
- I realize that the above two posts, about Starbucks and Whole Foods make me look really yuppie-ish. I'm okay with that.
- I really miss swimming. I love running, but it's getting to the point where I have to ice my knees and shins every time I go out... but swimming. Well, that's a post in and of itself.
- It shouldn't bother me because they're just crazy teenage kids figuring out what they want in life, but there are WAY too many "scene" type kids with hair-in-the-face emo haircuts in my classes and at my school. Ooh, your jeans taper at the ankle? When did it become OK to start wearing the kind of jeans my mother wore when I was growing up? Hah, my mom was scene before scene was scene.... what?
- What's the deal with airplane food? posted by MAtt D. at 3:45 PM
Sunday, February 12, 2006
I think that by and large, people's major hobbies and interests are ruled by which of their five senses they favor. You know, people who are very auditory will probably have huge music collections and often condescend to people because they listen to stuff you haven't even heard of yet, more highly visual people might flock to art - photography, painting, etc. and more tactile people might lean toward sports or other bodily endeavors. Myself, I've always kinda been a gustatory person. Food man, I love it. I love to make it, I love to eat it, I love to watch TV about it. And I've always prided myself on being one of those people who will try anything (and like our musically-inclined snobs, treat those plain-food eaters with haughty disdain). But there's always been one food that I have steered clear from, one food that, I'll admit, I was terrified by. Sushi.
When other people talked about sushi and how good it was, I had to rationalize it as a defect in THEM, not me, because I'm a food guy. Raw fish? Gross. I worked at Sea World for a summer, and I can tell you, raw fish is what we served to the animals. (I realize there are a lot of arguements that invalidate this point, but when you rationalize things for yourself, you tend to ignore logic.) Well, anyway after having Alli be after me about sushi for a while, I finally sacked up and went for it. We went to a sushi bar in Hillcrest - the Gay/International Food district (don't ask me how that works out... I have no clue how the owners of the Afghani or Indian restaurants deal with all the evil homosexual infidels that constantly flow through their tables...) Anyway, the restaurant was tastefully named "Nami" and prominently featured a large wave on the sign above it (Short for "tsunami" which I wonder if that didn't have anything to do with how empty it was in there...)
Yeah, I liked it. Yes, it was very good. Hell, I even got pretty good with chopsticks, which I regard as the most ridiculous and retarded way to eat food. (But MAtt, it's elegant! it's artful! It's goddamn frustrating. Gimme my fork and stabby-stabby!) I was expecting slimy, fishy... grossness. Instead I got firm, smoky goodness. Couple of things though - I definitely liked the nigiri (raw fish stacked on top of a ball of rice) better than the rolls. Something about seaweed that just doesn't do it for me. In the long run, it was good, and pretty cheap. I'm also stoked that I picked up new knowledge along the way, because pert of my fear was not knowing how to order. Now I can walk into most sushi bars with an idea of what I'd like.
Yes, I really just wrote a blog this long about sushi. posted by MAtt D. at 10:28 AM
Sunday, January 15, 2006
So, I turned 24 today. At 1:37 AM this morning I have officially been on this earth for a full 24 years. Uh, not counting my gestation period, I suppose.
24 will be a big year for me, and my life will continue to progress toward one seeming more and more like that of an adult. In one year...
By the time I'm 25
Most obviously, I'll be a husband.
I'll be tenured (a big deal for teachers).
I'll have celebrated my younger brother's 21st birthday (he's so grown up!)
I'll have spent my first christmas entirely away from my family.
I'll have drug Alli through the Daugherty Dual-Thanksgiving.
My mom will most likely move out of Redlands.
Friends will graduate, will get jobs, will move on, and most likely, be even harder to keep in touch with.
You know, forget New Year's Resolutions. They don't mean anything because New Year's is a holiday, a celebration for everyone, and they're thought of because everyone is doing it. That's why they tend to be generic things like weight loss or being more organized (both of which were mine). But birthdays... ah, birthdays make you introspective. So I'm going to make a birthday resolution right now. I resolve to work harder to maintain those relationships that mean the most to me. I've gotten lazy because I live with Alli, don't have to work at that one, and for everyone else, I let the internet do my work for me... holy crap... I'm teaching Fahrenheit 451 to my 10th graders, and in it technology has made people lazy and impersonal... Fine, now it's more than a resolution, it's my duty to make sure this horrible, dystopic future never comes about!
Seriously, to all my friends, those who read this, and those who will never see it - Thanks for everything.
