Jeff Billimek’s Journal

I only worked a half-day today. Jen and I had some business to take care of at the Cobb county courthouse so I left early.

As soon as I got home, Jen was pretty much ready to go. She got a lot done while I was at work this morning. We left my place and drove up to Windy Hill. We had lunch at Umezono, a sushi place. Jen and I sat in our own little booth. She had some sushi and post stickers. I had a special eel roll and two pieces of salmon. It was quite delicious - I only wish it wasn’t as expensive as I could have eaten more sushi.

After lunch Jen and I drove up to the Marietta Square area and got a good parking space. We walked over to the probate courthouse and into the license division. We had to fill out a form in order to get a marriage license. The form seemed pretty standard except that it asked us what our relation was to each other. I guess they have a problem with people getting married to their cousins and sisters.

Once we finished that we drove up to Jen’s parent’s house to drop off some things and get the key to the clubhouse for the party tomorrow night. Jen, her mother, and I drove over to the office to get the key. Before returning to her parent’s house, the three of us stopped at a furniture store. I’m in the market for a decent wooden writing desk to use in the study to put the computer on. We didn’t find anything that piqued our interest.

Back at Jen’s parents house we met Katie and all of us had dinner together. We stayed fairly late before heading back home.

We were up so late last night that Jen and I slept in pretty late this morning. It felt nice to wake up without an alarm.

Jen and I had cereal for breakfast and worked on wedding favors together. I thought she did a terrific job with the design and implementation of the favors and think that the guests will like them very much.

Jen made plans to hang out with Kristen for a while today and left. While she was gone, I spent some time playing World of Warcraft. I’m very pleased that they seemed to have resolved most of the server problems. I haven’t seen a queue to log into my server for a long time and lag issues are pretty much gone now. Blizzard really did deliver and got things fixed much quicker than I thought they would.

I got my toon up to level 20 which was really fun. Craig (who is around level 30 or so) hooked me up mightily with my first-ever ‘blue’ item, a rare dagger, as well as a newer, better off-hand uncommon (green) dagger, and various other items. I feel really lucky to get pimped-out by Craig who always seems to collect various goodies.

Craig offered to adventure with me in a difficult area. With the help of his beefy paladin, we would have done well. However I had been playing a while and was expecting Jen to come home soon so I declined and logged off. Hopefully next time we both play we can hit the deadmines - where I have _FOUR_ elite quests to complete.

Jen didn’t come home for a while actually. I spent some time pouring over some game forums and tried to decide on a ‘build strategy’ to use for my character. I think I’m going to go with a variation of the common 30/21 assassination/combat build. It was fun playing with the talent calculator to figure out what talents to take.

Jen came home around 7 or 8pm. She stopped at the store to get groceries. We made dinner together. I had a crown & coke (for the first time in a long time!) and Jen had some white wine. We had salad, veggie burgers, and our favorite butternut squash soup. We had a great dinner together.

Before she came home, I lit all of the candles around the house (we have a lot), so it looked very cheery and romantic. The dreary, rainy, cold weather outside added to the mood. It was a nice evening together.

Yesterday Carole told me that I could work from home today in light of the weekend work. I wasn’t one to argue with that - especially since Jen would be home too.

I had a lot of work to do today. We have a major undertaking for the current release in that we will be adding columns & tables to the database which is pretty time-consuming because some of the tables have hundreds of millions of rows.

The application work can’t really start until after the migration is complete. The DBAs started their work at midnight this morning and are expected to be working non-stop until sometime on Sunday afternoon.

I worked with Kumar from the DAS group to check on the feasibility of ‘activating’ the new code early while the database is down. He researched this and determined that it should not be a problem. Given this, I immediately began working on the activation. It’s a lot of work and I was pretty busy all day long. Half of the work is just getting everything prepped to begin the installs.

Fortunately I’ve done this so often that I can practically do it with my eyes closed. I launched through the staging process and then activated all of the services.

Earlier on in the morning Jen left to go meet the caterer at the reception hall. This took a long time so she couldn’t come back before heading to her bachelorette party.

This was fine because I was so engrossed in my work anyway. I got a call from Alan who wanted to see if I was interested in hanging out with him (since Lisa is tied up with the party too). I had to decline because I was still in the middle of doing work and would be busy with it for the near while. I felt bad though because I left Alan hanging.

I ended up working pretty late getting everything done but at least I won’t have to spend that time on Sunday.

After I finished up the work I logged off work and into World of Warcraft. Craig was online and we adventured together. Once again he hooked me up big-time.

We went through the deadmines instance and did the whole thing rather quickly. I got 3 or 4 elite quests completed due to that. In addition I got some sweet rare armor from the end guy.

Next, he took me over to redridge and helped me complete all of those quests. After that we went over to darkshore and he got me started there. Without his help I would have been forced to find a group to do these with and that would have been incredibly time-consuming.

I made it up to level 23 with all of this which was super cool.

I went to bed pretty late but Jen wasn’t home yet. A little while after I went to bed, Jen came home from her party. Kristen actually drove her home as she was a little tipsy. She told me a little bit about it and it sounds like she had a great time.

Jen woke up before me again this morning. When I got up she was downstairs making breakfast. It smelled really great. She was frying up some of that delicious maple-syrup flavored bacon. We had toast, bacon, and eggs. Jen only had one piece of bacon; I had all of the rest.

I was paged this morning around 9am to join a conference call. Originally I thought it was a scheduled status call but instead it turned out to be a much smaller audience of mostly managers. We discussed the status of the DB2 work and decided that we would have to wait until around 6pm before it would be done.

Jen and I did some more wedding-related planning work around the house. She also took it upon herself to get the guest room cleaned up and did a fantastic job with it. She also hung up a lot of pictures, so now things look a lot nicer.

Dad called and we chatted for a while. He was in a great mood and seemed excited about the upcoming wedding. We finalized his plans and I confirmed his tuxedo measurements.

I had another conference call at 2pm that was just an update. We didn’t have much more info and were still planning on getting together with everyone at 6pm.

Jen and I drove up to her house to pick up her car. We also loaded the last of her stuff which included a tall bookshelf, a very heavy desk, and her computer. I’m not sure what we’re going to do with her computer. We both have laptops and I have a P4 2.4GHz 1GB RAM WinXP desktop downstairs (complete with a new 19″ LCD monitor) as well as a P3-800 (512MB RAM) gentoo linux server. Perhaps we will set up her computer in the guest room upstairs. Jen suggested we set it up so her and I can play LAN games together - sounds like fun!

I had to rush because I didn’t want to be late for my conference call. I left with my car full of stuff and Jen remained behind. Lynne gave us a special voucher for Galleons in which we get something like 40% off all purchases during a three-hour window from 6pm-9pm. Jen planned on going there to check it out.

When I got home I jumped on the conference call. I used my cell phone and Bluetooth wireless headset to work on the call. It sure is nice to have my hands free to type. Fortunately I did a lot of prep work on Friday which ended up saving us about three-four hours today. As it was, the call went on until about 10pm. There were a few snags but eventually all of the application-related work was done so Carole let me go. I found out afterwards that they had some issues with a database extract and the call continued until 2am.

Within about thirty minutes of the call my stupid Bluetooth wireless headset (fully-charged) stopped working. This was incredibly frustrating. I switched over to my cordless phone with the corded headset. The call lasted so long that the cordless phone battery died and I switched back to the cell phone and Bluetooth headset. This time the headset worked much better. It still is very frustrating that it doesn’t behave consistently. This is accentuated when I am in the car and can’t easily screw around with it.

Jen ended up staying out late. After shopping she had some drinks with Lynne and they caught up on stuff. I called Jen and asked her to pick up some fast food on the way home.

While I waited for Jen I hopped over to xbox-scene.org to check for a mouse & keyboard adapter for the xbox. I want to play FPS games using a mouse & keyboard instead of the unwieldy xbox controller. Coincidentally they featured a review for such a device on the front page. I checked it out and it was exactly what I was looking for. The only problem is that some company in Asia sells it and the shipping time is something crazy like a month unless I spend a huge amount in shipping to go with FedEx.

I decided to check eBay and say a couple of auctions ending within minutes - what great luck! I put down a modest bid and waited. When there were about 3 seconds left someone else bidded over me and I lost the auction! The same thing happened to the other two auctions. That was pretty frustrating. I’ll wait until later to get the adapter.

Today was super crazy at work. I worked on a production RFC pretty much all day long starting around 6:45am before I left for work. Today we worked on five servers and tomorrow we will do three more.

I called up the Maple Leaf Inn B&B to see about extending our honeymoon stay from two nights to four nights. It’s pretty painful because the room costs $260/night. I asked the guy if he could work anything out for us and he agreed to knock off $30/night from each of the nights so that will save us some money.

Craig was originally going to be leaving San Antonio to drive up here around 4am CST this morning. He opted to sleep in and come later, so instead of arriving late tonight he will arrive tomorrow afternoon.

Just before Jen got home I got dinner ready so she would have something to eat when she got home. I made sandwiches. We opened a bottle of Malbac wine and worked on Christmas presents together.

I was pretty wound up about all of the stuff that needs to be taken care of. We still have Christmas shopping to do as well as work relating to music at the reception and getting the HD and laptop set up to play the music. Jen and I need to decide on play lists and a song for our first dance. It’s all getting so overwhelming.

After dinner I drove over to Mom’s house to pick up some baby pictures she dug up for me. I scanned them into Photoshop and emailed them to Jen to use for a presentation.

I was pretty tired today. I think it had to do with me staying up late last night and working on the study.

I went into work a little later than usual today. I had a really productive meeting with Sue & others to go over the pending changes to Exchange Valuation. After the meeting I stopped at Wendy’s to get a sandwich and fries for lunch.

I left work around 1:45pm and drove to the airport. I parked in the short-term lot and made my way to the ‘T’ terminal. I was able to get through security by flashing my badge.

Scott’s flight was scheduled to arrive at gate T-12, so I went over there just as people were deplaning. I only had to wait a few minutes before Scott came through the gate.

He seemed happy to be greeted at the gate. We picked up his luggage and made plans to meet up with Katie in downtown where she works. Scott has some cool luggage. His large case for checked baggage is a hard plastic case by a company called Pelican. Apparently it is virtually indestructible and watertight. It has a handle and rollers too.

Traffic was a little thick (for a Thursday afternoon) but we followed Katie’s directions and I dropped Scott off with Katie at a building she works at downtown.

I went home after that and called Craig. I was under the impression that there had been definite plans for a bachelor party but I found out from Craig that he had not yet informed everyone when & where we were supposed to meet. He mentioned something about meeting to see a movie at 7pm. That was in three hours.

I was a bit perturbed that some initial plans were made but nothing was ever firmed up. Craig told me that he had a list of people to contact but had not done so yet to let them know when & where. Craig did make reservations for dinner and The Cheetah but I don’t think he ever let anyone know. I got the list of people from him and took over the coordination. I frantically found a place to catch a movie and sent out an email.

As expected I got some responses back telling me that they would not be able to make it after all because they never heard anything and assumed we weren’t doing anything.

In the end, five of us ended up going out instead of the originally-planned ten or fourteen.

We went to Phipps to watch Blade: Tinity at 7:15pm. Afterwards we went to Eclipse Di Luna for a bite to eat. That was pretty nice. It’s a great tappas place and we all had several different dishes to share. We also had two pitchers of Mojitos.

After eating we drove over to a gentleman’s club called The Cheetah. I already had a lot to drink at eclipse di luna but we got a ‘party’ room which allows for free drinks an entire hour so the guys were giving me drinks. I slowed down considerably but it was already too much.

They ordered several lap dances for me but honestly I can’t really remember them because I had too much to drink. It call came crashing down when my body decided that I had too many toxins in my body from all the alcohol and I got sick and threw up. Mostly all over myself.

After that everything became a blur. Craig took me home. Jen was still up (I think it was around 1:45am) and she helped take care of me too. I vomited some more and took some tums and advil and had some water and then went to bed.

I really don’t enjoy drinking that much.

Today is a very big day because today I’m getting married.

Jen and I woke up around 5:30am and she took a shower. To save time I didn’t as I would be able to when I got dressed for the wedding.

It was very cold outside and we drove over to Einstein’s Bagel Co. near my old apartment. We got a dozen bagels and a big container of Coffee to take to the reception hall for everyone to have while they help out this morning. We also stopped next-door at CVS to get three bags of ice for the ice chest.

From there we drove to the reception hall. Jen’s parents were already there unloading some things from their car. We unloaded my car too and then began work inside.

Scott and Katie arrived a little and so did a couple of others to help out. We all got everything unloaded from the cars and worked to get all of the chairs unpacked from the storage room as well as to set up the head table. I worked with Scott to get the stereo set up along with the laptop and external HD containing the music.

We had a lot of work to do and it seemed a little overwhelming. Jen and Katie left at 8:30am to go to their hair appointment. The rest of us remained behind and waited for the delivery guy to bring the ten 60″ round tables. While we waited we put the chair covers and bows on the chairs.

I got a little stressed doing all of this because time was running out and there seemed like a lot to do still. Eventually the delivery guy came. He was a nice Russian-looking guy and was pretty helpful.

As we started to set up the tables I grew worried that we would not have enough room to fit all ten tables in the dining hall. The 12′x12′ dance floor took up valuable floor real estate. We worked with the delivery guy to get things arranged and he did a great job with helping re-arrange the dance floor. Craig arrived and helped out too.

More and more people left. Finally around 11am I couldn’t wait any longer and had to leave too. There was only one or two people left helping and they had a lot of work to do still with getting the tables et up with table cloths, plates, dishes, centerpieces, and things like that. I felt horrible leaving so much work but I couldn’t help it. Jen and I spoke on the phone earlier and she said that her Mom and Aunt were on their way to help too. Still, I was terribly nervous about the state of things but was powerless to do any more at this point.

Craig and I drove in my car back to my place. I took a quick shower and got dressed in my Tuxedo. Craig got dressed downstairs too. We planned on stopping by the Tux place but simply ran out of time.

Craig and I drove over to the log cabin chapel. A few people were already there. Jen was downstairs in the bridal suite place getting ready. The photographer wasn’t there yet but I anticipated his arrival any time now.

(Jen getting ready)

More people showed up. Aunt Loretta and Aunt Barbie came early and I had an opportunity to visit with them. I was really glad that they could make it out.

After this point, things get a little blurry because so much happened so quickly.

Many more guests arrived and got seated. Carl, the photographer, arrived too. I was very pleasantly surprised to see that he had an assistant with him. He never mentioned that on the phone. His assistant carried around a reflector-type flash device with two wireless flashes connected to it. This gives us some great side lightning. He wanted to take some pre-wedding photos but had to start with Jen because Scott wasn’t there yet and Jen’s Mom wasn’t there either with the flowers.

I paced around nervously while I waited for Scott and Jen’s mom to arrive. They did finally arrive and we got our boutonnières on and Carl (the photographer) took lots of posed pictures of me and the groomsmen.

Eventually it was nearly time to start. The judge (Joan Van Bloom) arrived and went over a few details with me before we got started. I had her payment and tip with Larry (in an envelope that Jen made last night) and he gave it to her.

Pretty much everyone was seated except for our mothers and grandmothers (the groomsmen were going to seat them).

We all got lined up at the entranceway and everyone sitting in the chapel turned around to look at us. Judge Van Bloom waited for the music to change to be her cue to walk up to the front. I waited for her to get all the way to the front before I headed down too. It was pretty surreal to see everyone looking at me as I walked down the aisle towards the alter where the judge was.

Next, Craig, Larry, and Scott seated our mothers and then stood in a line next to me. Following them Matthew the ring bearer came down the aisle. He had our rings on a pillow which Larry removed from the pillow and held for later.

After that Lynne came down followed by Lisa and then Katie. They all stood on the other side. Jessica (the flower girl) came down next. She had a basket of rose petals and threw them on the ground as she walked.

Finally I saw Jen’s Dad and Jen appear in the doorway at the end of the chapel. Jen looked so beautiful in her dress (which I had never seen before). It was a really emotional moment for me to see Jen in her wedding dress.

The music changed to the wedding march song and Jen and her Dad came down the aisle. Part of the time I was thinking about trying to remember which hand I was supposed to extend to Jen when her Dad handed me her hand.

When Jen and her Dad came up to me, the Judge said something about ‘Who gives this bride away?’ and he declared that he did and put her hand in my hand. I don’t remember if I used the correct hand but it worked out fine.

Jen and I held hands while the judge did her thing. She said all of the stuff about marriage and love and had us exchange our vows. Katie read a short poem about love and then the judge continued the ceremony. When I came time for us to exchange vows, I remember saying ‘I do’ in a loud voice with conviction but as I repeated the other parts my voice was a bit hoarse probable from being a bit choked up.

We then got to the point about giving our rings to each other. Larry handed me her ring first and I put in on her hand as I said some more stuff. Then Jen did the same with my ring.

It was all so surreal to be in a wedding ceremony for myself. I had a hard time believing that it was actually happening. I think that is part of the reason I have a hard time recalling all of the details. Some more things were said and then we got to kiss each other. After that the judge had us face everyone and presented “Mr. & Mrs. Billimek”. Everyone clapped.

We walked down the aisle and out of the chapel to the traditional after-ceremony wedding music. It was a beautiful sunny day outside and felt about 58 degrees. We couldn’t have had better weather for this time of year.

Jen and I stood outside the doors and received everyone as they came out and congratulated us. That was a fun part of the ceremony because we got to see everyone face-to-face.

After everyone came outside of the chapel the photographer gathered the wedding party & family to head back inside for photos.

We spent the next thirty minutes doing several different combinations of people for posed photos. He did a great job and seemed to know exactly what to do and paid attention to little details. I’m pretty happy we went with him instead of someone cheaper who doesn’t have a lot of wedding experience.

Finally we all departed and left for the reception. Craig pulled my explorer around for Jen and me to get in back. I helped Jen in (again some more posed photographs) and then we were off. Craig then drove us to the reception.

When we arrived at the reception hall (Marietta Garden Center) everyone else was already there. It was packed full of people milling around. The caterer (Mrs. Greenwood) had everything set up for appetizers and drinks. The main dining hall looked excellent. I was worried that there would be problems after I left.

Jegan was also there. As soon as I saw him I realized that I didn’t see him at the church. I think he was running late and came straight to the reception although Jen recalls seeing him at the chapel after the ceremony.

I introduced Mom & Mom-Mom to my coworkers. It was pretty embarrassing because she told them all how she’s read about them in my journal. It was then that I think Carole brought up the girl who was fired because she had a weblog. I wonder if that was a hint?! Later I also introduced Dad to my co-workers.

For about an hour we all milled around and had appetizers and mingled. The photographer did some more group shots of us outside in front of the house. He also did some candid shots of Jen and I walking to the gazebo.

Eventually we all sat down in the dining-hall. I noticed that Brian and Alex were gone. They came without their wives and I suspect they left early to minimize problems with their wives who were stuck at home taking care of their kids.

We had a couple of no-shows so Jen told the photographer and his assistant that they were welcomed to stay for dinner because we had some extra places.

After everyone got seated the wait staff poured everyone glasses of iced sweet tea. Jen and I wanted some more wine so I walked over to the bar and got two bottles of the red wine that Larry shipped out. I took a bottle over to Larry for him to share at his table and took the other bottle back to the head table.

Jen did a great job with the seating arrangements. We had a head table with the wedding party (except that we had Dad instead of Larry who was sitting at another table with Amy) and ten round tables. At each of the other tables Jen did a great job of seating people who would be interested in talking with each other and hopefully would make them more comfortable. At one of the tables only James and Casey remained because Alex and Brain left (and didn’t bring their wives) so they joined another table.

At various points someone would tap their fork to a glass and everyone else would follow suit until most of the room was full of the sound of metal clinking against glass. Apparently it is a tradition for the bride and groom to kiss whenever guests do that. Jen and I kissed a lot this evening.

Mrs. Greenwood and her staff served the head table and a few other tables (with parents and family). The food was great. We had a traditional Christmas feast which consisted of ham, turkey, green beans ala mode, salad, dressing, cranberry sauce, and mashed potatoes.

Eventually everyone had food and we all ate. I engaged Dad in conversation (he was sitting to my left) as well as my bride, Jennifer, sitting to my right. Craig and Lynne were sitting next to each other and talked a long time. Lynne asked me about my co-worker James. She thought he was cute and wanted to know if he was seeing anyone. I explained that he ’sort of’ was and promised to introduce them. Later on in the evening I think my cousin John asked me about Lynne.

After a while Jen and I made our rounds and tried to talk with as many guests as possible. John came over to our table and we talked with him. I had a chance to talk with Jen’s aunt Pat. She was very pleasant to talk with and I was happy to finally meet her.

The photographer took a few more pictures of Jen and I cutting the cake. Once he was done with that I gave him an envelope with his tip. He seemed surprised to get a tip - I wonder if we weren’t supposed to tip him? He told me that he would have the CDs full of the RAW files of all the pictures he took within a couple of days. Because we’ll be out of town on our honeymoon, we’ll have to get them after Christmas.

People began to mill about some more and some started to leave. My co-workers (Carole, her husband Bob, Casey, Jegan, Jegan’s wife, and James) were about to leave and they wanted to meet Larry because I’ve talked about him so much. I introduced them to Larry and just like Mom he mentioned that he’s read all about them in my weblog.

After they let I realized that I never told everyone about the wedding favors. I asked Brad to stop the music and I thanked everyone for coming out and reminded them all to pick up a wedding favor from the tree we have set up by the front door.

It was pretty tough trying to talk with everyone because there were so many people and not enough time. It was also very humbling to have so many people come out to honor Jen and me at our wedding. Moments like this make me feel very good because of all those who care about me and Jen.

By the time some more people left, we started dancing. Actually the first dance was done by Jen and me. We picked a song off of the OC soundtrack (volume 2). We never got around to finishing our instructional dancing DVD so our dancing wasn’t all that good - we sort of just shuffled around.

Next I danced with Mom and then more people joined in. When we finished dancing I extracted myself from the dance floor and visited with some more people.

As the evening wore on, the dancing turned to more upbeat dance-type music. Lisa and Alan really cut up the dance floor and seemed to be enjoying themselves.

Eventually it came time for Jen and me to depart. By the time we left there weren’t a lot of people left. Some people already started to clean up. These were mostly people on Jen’s side of the family.

As we exited the building Mom an Amy blew bubbles at us. Jen made a large basket full of bells and bubbles with ribbons for guests to use when we departed. It was sort of a letdown that only two got used. At least we have a lot of extras to pass on to someone else to use.

I was also somewhat surprised that no one raised a toast during the reception. I guess no one thought about it.

When we made it to my car, we saw that Craig had decorated it with the white she polish stuff. He wrote things like ‘Just Married’, ‘Jen’, ‘Jeff’, etc. Inside our car was a bag with a note on top that read ‘Do not open until you get inside your hotel room.’ Amy and Larry put that in there for us.

Originally we decided to stay at my house tonight but others convinced us to stay at a hotel tonight instead. Mom and Jim were gracious enough to get us a hotel room at the Renaissance Waverly hotel near the galleria.

When Jen and I got up to the room we saw a vase full of fresh flowers, a beautiful silver ice bucket with a bottle of champagne, two champagne glasses, a load of French bread, some fresh cheese, a box of godivia chocolates, and a card.

The card was really nice and Jen started to cry because of all the nice things everyone has done for us - especially the hotel room. It was almost overwhelming to see all that was done for us - especially the beautiful hotel room.

We woke up around 5:30am and got ready for our trip. We were mostly packed so it didn’t take long. I was pretty tired but was very happy we didn’t have to get up even earlier for the 6:30am flight.

Jen and I headed out and drove down to the airport. On her suggestion we parked at a lot called ‘The Parking Spot‘. She wasn’t too excited about the idea of taking the hotel shuttle bus so we opted to pay to park instead.

Everything went quite smoothly. The shuttle bus was quick and despite the terminal being super crowded we got checked in super quick - even checking our bags.

When we got to our gate (A18) I was happy to see that the standby list was relatively short and we were high on the list. Even better was that the flight still had around 45 empty seats so unless something changed, we would make the flight. I was expecting trouble with the flight but fortunately everything turned out quite nicely.

(Our plane before boarding - at sunrise)

Jen and I got a couple of bagels from a nearby restaurant in the terminal and ate them while we waited for the flight to board. The flight was uneventful. I worked on my laptop while Jen wrote thank-you cards.

We arrived in Boston and got our bags from baggage caracal number four. Once we got our bags we hopped on the Avis shuttle bus and they dropped us off at our car. I rented a ‘premium’ car which was a white four-door Buick with XM satellite radio.

We checked the map and headed out. We had to take the $3 toll tunnel from the island to the mainland and then hopped on I-93 North. The drive was expected to be about three hours long.

It was snowing and bitter cold outside. I had some big trouble with the windshield getting iced over and had to keep using the sprayer to keep it clear. Eventually I finally realized that the window defroster needed to be set to a higher fan speed and that cleared it up.

We were getting hungry so we stopped at Burger King to have a quick lunch. Jen had the veggie burger and I had a whopper with cheese and bacon.

Along the way we encountered an accident somewhere close to the border to New Hampshire on I93. Traffic was backed up and basically stopped for nearly an hour. This made the drive much longer than planned and extremely frustrating.

Finally we reached Barnard, VT. I had some trouble finding the Maple Leaf Inn B&B so I stopped at the Barnard general store to ask for directions. It turns out that the B&B was very close by. We drove down a long driveway to a beautiful-looking large house which was the Maple Leaf Inn.

(The cozy Maple Leaf Inn)

Jen and I went inside and met the innkeepers, Gary and Janet. They were very nice and showed us around. Our room looked great. Gary then informed us that Larry called them up and took care of our lodging payment. Four nights at $260/night is really expensive and I can’t believe that Larry did that for us! He told Gary to make sure that we go out for a fancy dinner at least one night. I wanted to call Larry to thank him but Jen and I don’t get any cell phone service out here.

In our room we had a personalized card on one of the nightstands thanking us for choosing the Maple Leaf Inn. They also left another card with a cute ornament for us on the bed.

We unloaded the car and unpacked. Gary and Janet had a book of restaurant menus downstairs in the sitting room that Jen and I looked through to decide on dinner. A place called ‘Max’s Tavern‘ caught our eye but it was closed on Monday’s. Instead we chose another place in Woodstock called ‘Bentleys‘.

Gary and Janet set out a cart with hot apple cider and some treats. Jen and I had some cider and cookies while we looked through the book of menus.

We drove into Woodstock and it was dark outside (it gets dark very early around here). Woodstock looks really nice at night because they have a lot of Christmas lights up which makes the little town square look very nice.

All of the parking is metered so we fed the meter to last about two hours and went to Bentleys. It was quite a charming restaurant and in the main bar area they had many ornaments hanging down from the ceiling which gave it a really cool look.

Jen and I were seated at a table in the back corner of the restaurant. We each had a glass of wine and a terrific dinner together. Jen had soup and salad. She let me try some of her salad and it was wonderful. I had a bacon-wrapped sirloin steak which was also excellent. I let Jen have most of my mashed potatoes.

After dinner we headed back to the inn. It was still quite cold outside and we were both looking forward to getting to our room and lighting a fire in the fireplace.

When we got back to the room they had turned down the sheets and put chocolates on the bed for us. They also brought up two wine glasses that we requested earlier (we packed two bottles of wine). Also sitting on a table near the window was a small bottle of champagne in a bucket of ice, two champagne glasses, and another card. The card wished us a happy honeymoon and offered congratulations on our wedding.

I opened the champagne and we toasted to our wonderful lives together. After we had some of the champagne and chocolates I lit the pre-set fire and in seconds it was ablaze in a roaring fire. Gary did a great job getting it all set up to burn quickly. I think the wood is also good for the job.

With the fire going I opened up a bottle of our Malbec wine and we toasted again. As we sipped on wine, Jen started to draw a bath in the large whirlpool bathtub in the bathroom (the bathroom has heated tiles on the floor).

I also called up the nearby sleigh ride operator and made an appointment for us tomorrow at noon.

We took a nice relaxing bath together and used on of our bath bombs which I brought along. It was indeed a very romantic and relaxing evening together and quite a way to kick off our honeymoon.

We woke up late again this morning and it felt great. We lazily got out of bed and went downstairs to our breakfast. Today we were served another tasty gourmet breakfast.

Jen and I made plans to go driving north along route 100 up to near Burlington. But first we went back up to the room. I gave Jen a back massage and then she took a nap for about an hour.

While Jen napped I worked on my laptop - updating previous journal entries. After she got up we dressed in winter clothes and packed up for our day on the road.

We drove north out of Barnard on route 12 until we hit route 100. I stopped a couple of times along the way to take pictures. I specifically remember a cool-looking barn off in the distance that I photographed with the 24-70mm L lens.

At one point we stopped at a little park called ‘Texas Falls’. The whole area was covered in thick snow and the stream & ‘falls’ were iced over except for a couple of spots. Jen and I spent some time here walking around and taking pictures.

(Texas falls)

(Jen looks so cute with that hat and scarf!)

It was funny to see a sign which illustrated that you cannot go swimming. This was funny because the only area to go swimming was iced over. There was a mile-long trail in the area but we decided to only go part-ways along the trail.

(no swimming for you!)

As we continued on our tour up route 100 we didn’t find too many places to stop for admiring the views. It was around lunchtime so we stopped in one small town and found a general store with a deli & bakery inside. It was a cute little town and the store was the same.

We both had a turkey sandwich on French bread. Jen had a cup of some sort of tomato-based soup while I had a cheese & bacon chowder soup. I really liked the soup. We both had some difficult eating our sandwiches because French bread is so thick and hard. I don’t know why some people prefer French bread for sandwiches.

As we left the small town we went through a cute covered bridge, twice. It was great fun. It started to rain a little bit and the drive wasn’t that scenic. We decided to head back down to our area and try snowmobiling.

We jumped on I89 and drove down to Woodstock and headed towards Killington. As we headed to the snowmobile place we decided to try that tomorrow instead and just head back to the B&B.

I turned the car around and drove us back to the B&B. Jen and I relaxed in the room before eventually getting ready for our 7pm dinner reservation. We had to put back on our nicer ‘airplane clothes’.

It took about thirty minutes to drive to Hemingway’s. When we got there it looked pretty deserted. Gary and Janet told us that it is one of the fanciest restaurants in all of Vermont.

When we got inside we were assaulted by some pretty atrocious décor. Jen described it best when she said that it looked as if it was stuck in the 80’s. The waiters all wore some strange western Christmas-themed vests.

Fortunately the food was much better. We looked at the menu and decided to try their special five-course dinner with wine sampler. It’s $100/person and we each get a five-course dinner and a sample of the matching wine for each course.

Because I’m writing this entry days later, I can’t remember all of the five courses but I do remember a f