Jeff Billimek’s Journal

It was dark and rainy out this morning which made it hard to wake up. Jen and I got into a little fight over stupid things this morning so that wasn’t very fun.

I didn’t want the drive into work to end because I’m listening to Dan Brown’s ‘Deception Point‘ and it is getting very good. His books in particular are fun to listen to in the car because of the constant gripping cliffhangers that keep you want to go further.

I was fairly busy at work today. I left for lunch earlier than normal and drove up to Jen’s office which is up by GA400 and 285. For about a month now I’ve kept the secret about Jen’s coworkers throwing a surprise wedding shower for her. They requested that I attend too. Jen’s boss requested that I send her some of Jen’s baby pictures. I worked with Jen’s dad to procure the photos.

When I arrived at Jen’s office, one of her coworkers ushered me into a dark conference room to hide me because Jen wasn’t supposed to know that I was there. About ten minutes later they retrieved me and brought me into another packed conference room.

They sat me next to Jen who was blindfolded and told her that she had a special guest. She had to ask them yes/no questions about her special guest and then guess who it is. She guessed correctly.

A lot of Jen’s coworkers showed up for the event which was cool. I only recognized her boss, Viktoria, because I met her before. They were all very excited about the whole process and there were a lot of gifts for us to open.

About a week ago, Jen’s boss emailed me a set of questions to answer (like what is my mother’s maiden name, the name of my first pet, etc). So they played a game where Jen had to answer all of those questions. She must eat a piece of bubble gum for every answer she gets wrong. Fortunately for her she only got two wrong. It probably helped that some of the questions were repeats from a similar game that Katie gave us at the other shower a couple of weeks ago.

They provided lunch & snacks and had a game where all of her coworkers had to make a toilet-paper veil for Jen. They also did a fun crayon-drawing of stick figures of Jen & I. It was great fun.

Another things they did which was really cool is that they had a special DVD made with Jen’s baby pictures as well as dozens of photos combed from my website of Jen & I. It was presented in an animated photo-album type format. Apparently one of the guys used a piece of software to create it that they also use for funerals. One of the things they offer is to make a special DVD with music and photos of the deceased person’s life. They had fun making this one because it was something happy instead of sad.

Watching the video I realized that Jen and I had traveled to a lot of places since the beginning of this year. I was glad that we had so many photos. Once again my website proved to be a vehicle for good instead of evil.

Jen’s coworkers gave us a lot of cool gifts. Many of them were fun ornaments, but we also got some of the things we registered for. Jen and I filled up a large cart with everything and took it downstairs to my car.

I drove back to work and brought along some cookies to share with my peers.

Things went pretty well this afternoon. Veena has made a lot of progress on the DTMI migration and Sameer had a nicely-working prototype of his replay generator, so things are good.

I had a meeting with Sue across the street to go over some Exchange Valuation requirements. The meeting was scheduled for 1.5 hours and ended up taking 2.5 hours. Despite being a long meeting, we got a lot accomplished and uncovered some potential problems with the existing system that she is going to research.

It was getting late and the rain finally cleared up. As the sun was setting, the clearing clouds yielded a nice sunset, which I took a photo of using my 50mm lens:

I left work around 6:30pm and got home a little before Jen. She got dinner ready and I called up the photographer. We worked out a deal where he will take the photos for four hours and give me all of the ‘negatives’ (in the form of 20D RAW files). This is a great solution for me because it will give me the ability to post-process what I want and how I want.

Jen and I had veggie burgers and grilled potatoes for dinner. Jen put salsa in the cooked potatoes and they were excellent.

After dinner we watched a special DVD I ordered which teaches wedding dancing. We practiced for a while and got pretty good at moving together. It was pretty fun and the video is instructional.

I gave Jen a massage and we went to bed early. It was a really nice evening together.