A BRUSH WITH A CELEBRITY

As the intro indicates, Sarah and I had the privilege (?) of meeting Dr. Laura Schlessinger (website) at an FM107 sales event during the Minnesota State Fair.  Basically, since D.L. was in town doing some "face time" on the air at FM107, the sales rep had some of his clients come down for a meet-and-greet with her.

She arrived in fashion reminiscent of Donald Trump's entrance in any Apprentice episode. Being followed by a security guard and her personal bodyguard, she entered the tent without a word, her head held up high and a sense that this was her 900th time doing such an event.

She gathered everyone around her for a little Q&A time. Unfortunately, it was windy and there was no microphone, so it seemed like a pretty casual get together, with people just staring at her as the center of attention.  Quite honestly, if they were like me, they stared not because she was a celeb, but because we were desperately trying to figure out if this was the same woman portrayed on the back of her books.

The questions were weak, because no one really knew what to ask. A few people ventured in with some, but they were quickly answered by the guru.  After only a few minutes, she called that time to a close and went to stand behind the book signing table. From her perch, she feverishly began dishing out her books at an alarming rate. Wanting to at least have asked Dr. Laura a question in person, Sarah and I nervously approached the table.  Knowing that each book was costing the sales department a lot of money, we immediately made it clear that we worked for FM107 and that we couldn't accept a book. That being said, we then asked her what advice she had for a young couple getting married in a month.

With a flick of her wrist she skillfully slid open a book, signed the inside cover and pushed it towards Sarah. "This is my marital advice.  Read it."  Well. I guess we got a free book.

We got our picture taken with her, grabbed the video above and thanked her for her time. Our experience with Dr. Laura was truly memorable.

As an addendum to the above section, I have to add this:  while we were waiting for D.L. to arrive, I made my way across the State Fair grounds to one of the stages to catch the very tail end of Vancouver's own Sarah McLachlan. Here we see her with KS95 on-air personalities playing a game called "Will it Float". She's about to find out whether a corn dog will sink or float. 

And no, I'm not going to tell you if they do. You'll have to conduct that experiment on your own.

Well. Let me be honest with you. Even though there was an entire month before the wedding (since the last update) I can recall very little of what went on.

...and because of that, we'll simply move on.

WEDDING PLANS

Now that everything is said and done, the wedding planning feels like a distant memory, which is probably all the better. As with any wedding, trying to get everything set and ready to go for the big day is an arduous task.

Wow. I've been staring at my laptop for a while and can't really think of anything significant in this section either. It's an interesting thing how the human mind can work - we spend all this time thinking and stressing over something and then once it's over, it all becomes unclear.  Normally,. I'd probably find that rather disconcerting, but since the wedding went so well, I'm not going to lose sleep over not remembering the stressful part :)

PS: Stressful, but fun.

THE BACHELOR WEEK

This is the section you've all been waiting for. Sorry, Dr. Laura, but you're gonna have to move over.

The wedding, for Sarah and I, was nothing short of amazing. For months you plan every little detail and worry that it all works as intended. Our biggest hope was that on the day we could simply let go and enjoy ourselves.

Well, that's exactly what happened.

The most ironic part was that no matter how much planning we could have done, it wouldn't have worked without a gathering of such amazing friends and families.  If anything, our wedding not only showed us our love for each other, but just how blessed we are to be loved by so many wonderful people.

Speaking of which: daBoyz. Wow. Talk about an adventure.

For those of you who don't already know, a week before the wedding, some of those Vancouverites (Craig, Pouria, Shawn and Mike Rob) flew into town for a quiet, relaxing week; one filled with healthy eating and lots of sleep.

Oh, shoot. I suppose I forgot to mention that Dave was there, too. ;)

Upon their arrival, with gear and passengers squished into a van, they unloaded their stuff and the apartment immediately turned into a war zone, and it would stay that way for days to come.

It's actually difficult for me to justify that week before the wedding with my few petty words, because it was such a blast. Sarah and I were incredibly honored to have visitors from Vancouver in town (and Texas and Detroit). For me, I was touched that so many people came down. What's more amazing was that even though there was 7 months in between, it only felt like a few days. Once together, it was just like the good ol' days.

Some highlights:

• A seemingly endless number of visits to MOA (Mall of America(s) )

• Ali G

• The 2.5 hour walk to MOA from here by Craig, Dave and their fearless cartographer, Mike Rob

• Bissell getting into "the zone" with a TiVo

• Riding the giant, metallic Trojan horse

• Studying the effects of Pouria in a long-distance, international relationship :)

• Having everyone come to my work and be a part of Upper Room

• Touring Hubbard Broadcasting with our ID badges

• Avoiding the dark, abandoned-looking Mexican Restaurant

• Barreling at breakneck speeds around a twisty-turning Go Kart race track! Yuh!

• Knowing that our small, one bedroom apartment was enough to accommodate up to a total of 9 guys at once.

• Knowing that our neighbors are either incredibly hard of hearing or that they're completely accomodating to having 9 guys living next door at once.

• Dinner at the Sickenger's

• NOTE: Dave's anti-Seal shirt would not constitute a highlight

There's more, but I can't think of them at the moment. When you do, send them my way so that we have a complete collection.

THE WEDDING DAY

A blessing. That's all I really need to say. Really.

One of the biggest concerns Sarah and I had before the big day was whether or not we would be able to enjoy it all. It's a difficult thing to plan something for so long and then to just let go, but that's what we were (thankfully) able to do.

I can't speak for Sarah, so I'll let her do that in her section (which, by the way, paints a better picture than what I'm about to do), but my day went like this:

The guy-den awoke early, but not too early. We began getting ready, taking showers, preparing our Sunday best clothing and trying hard to get to Perkins on time so that we weren't late for getting to church.

Loading 9 guys in a 7-seater van was relatively easy, due to Connor volunteering to sit in the back... as in the way back. Trunk-like.

Once at Perkins, I had the privilege of enjoying my very own birthday muffin. Yes, birthday.  As I was waiting for my breakfast to arrive, 3 of the waiting staff approached our table and began a chorus of "Happy Birthday". Always wanting to join in on restaurant celebrations, I looked around to see who they were signing to, only to find out it was me.  Robin, who was seated next to me, had devilish grin on his face and I knew immediately what had happened.

Not wanting to ruin the party for all patrons in Perkins, I merely smiled and "looked embarrassed", waiting patiently to dig into my free food.

Of course, in the end, Robin cursed himself for always giving other people free food with the "birthday" trick, but I sure did enjoy my apple cinnamon muffin.

After Perkins, it was straight to the church where the groomsmen and I were locked up in the youth room in the depths of Normandale Church. That was great because it was a large room with couches, easy access to the bathroom and a whiteboard. The whiteboard played an important part in the pre-wedding hours. Since Richard was unable to attend the rehearsal, Dave was able to draw out a game plan, complete with arrows and almost-to-scale drawing representations.

While this was going on, we found out that Richard's tux did not include the right style of tie. We were supposed to have bow ties, but since his tux was ordered at another location, they did not update his order with the changes I had called in. Not only that, but they also sent along the wrong shirt.  Pouria began calling around to see if we could get things corrected. Although they didn't have what we were looking for, they did have 2 others types of bow ties that matched the color.

Travis, co-executive usher, headed off to grab their stock while we continued to prep for the ceremony.  While the whiteboard-strategy raged on, I found myself mindlessly opening my laptop.

While the picture immediately gives the impression that I couldn't live without my nerdery, the truth remained that I was honestly studying my vows so that I wouldn't screw them up.... I still stumbled on them. I knew I should have taken my laptop with me into the sanctuary. I could have easily hidden it in Sarah's dress.

Back to the ties. The ties arrived quickly but, unfortunately, they were a little too different from the rest of the pack. We eventually switched with Mr. G and all had the same ties. With a little pin-work on Pouria's part, we were able to get it to sit properly on Richard's shirt so well that no one was the wiser.... until I wrote about it in this update. Way to ruin the surprise, McQuade.

Now that I've spent 8 paragraphs talking about Richard's trivial tie incident, I have little energy left to write in detail about the actual ceremony.  Like I said earlier in this section, Sarah and I had a wonderful time that day. The memories are wonderful so rather than me trying to describe it, I'll simply let you enjoy the photos.

Robin was kind enough to host all our wedding photos on his site. Thanks Robin-zor! Sorry it took so long to get those pics posted.

(hosting courtesy of Robin)

THE CONTINUOUS UNPACKING PROCESS

My dad and Serena braved a trek halfway across the country to bring the rest of my belongings here. Since they arrived while the guys were here, there was little chance that all that stuff would fit along with the 9 guys living here. Thankfully, the UHaul rental came with 1 month free storage. And get this; the storage place was actually walking distance from here. How cool is that?

Here's a picture of the apartment when the guys first arrived:

Now, here's a shot of the truck on it's journey here, plus once it arrived:

Here's the trusty UHaul in the safety of the storage locker building.

The unpacking process, even now, is not complete. It's a long process I'm finding. Little boxes of stuff that sit for a while because, frankly, we don't need it. Once we returned for the honeymoon I began slowly carting a few boxes from storage and finding a home for them in the apartment. Now, my mom will probably be really happy to hear this because probably about 1/3 of the stuff I unpacked went into the garbage or giveaway.  My dad is probably not happy to hear that because so much work went into carting that crap here. The moral of the story?  You'd be surprised just how much stuff we can live without, so before you pack up and move to another country, do your family and friends a favor and chuck most of it beforehand.

Here's what the apartment looked like after the wedding, after the guys worked hard at cleaning it up, after we made a mess of it:

Along with the stuff I didn't need, we also had a number of gift wrappings and cardboard boxes that quickly and continually piled up. One day, we ended up carting it all down to the garbage, filling the small elevator. Here's the proof.

Out of control, isn't it?

FINDING A HOME FOR NEMO

The fish tank is up and operational, thanks to Sarah's hard work.  This is actually Sarah's hobby, one that I know very little about, so I'll let her explain how it all went:

The other life-changing event, almost as big as the wedding, is the addition of our giganto salt water aquarium!!  It’s a 46-gallon beast with a bow front and current home to two little fish named Grimace and Chuunka-Chuunka. It’s been up and running for two weeks now and we can finally start adding some more fish now that the chemical balance is in place. Michael and I picked out the fish, plants and castle together – it looks very Lord Of The Rings-y.

I was solely responsible for placing the plants in the tank.

Besides writing this huge MN Update we also got haircuts together today and I finally cut off all the hair I was growing out for the wedding. It was my first haircut in 8 months and I got about 8 inches off. It’s pretty short and going to take a little getting-used-to but I needed a change and Michael says he likes it. So, yay! (Michael looks very handsome in his new cut too, by the way. What a stud!)

OUR MARRIAGE/HOLLYWOOD DEBUT

Ok. So a few months ago we decided at Upper Room to do a 4 week series on the Song of Solomon. Pretty much right away I got this idea for a promotional video that would be very different from what we've usually done, and also very funny (at least I thought). As my mind began turning the scope of the project kept getting larger and larger. Thankfully, there was a lot of notice to get it done. Unfortunately, with the wedding in weeks before, there just wasn't time to get it done. Fortunately, though, after the wedding there was a week in which to try to pull it off.

The problem was: I couldn't pull it off. There was just no way. I got kind of bummed out because it was something that I really wanted to do, but with the small amount of time left it just didn't seem feasible. I conferred with my wife who was very positive about getting it done. The project was scaled back from taking place in an actual restaurant to just being shot by Sarah and I in our very own apartment. Even that had problems, because there just wasn't room and it didn't feel like a restaurant.

The video was to be shown in Sunday, Oct 31 (yes, Halloween). It was Thursday and I was going to throw in the towel because there was no way it would get done.

But the work that's done at the Upper Room isn't our work. It's God's (thankfully) and He always comes through in one way or another. In this case, it was Sarah and Mike Burrows. Both of them said they wanted to be involved and help out, which encouraged me enough to bring my idea to reality.

After dinner on Thursday, Sarah and I went over to where Mike works at the Minnesota School of Business. He teaches classes in Video Editing, etc and their facility has a studio with a few props that we were able to use. Plus, with the lighting gear and boom mic, it made our job a lot easier.

So, we did it.

4 hours later, we finished filming our simple little film. And, boy, was it a success. People loved it and are still talking about it. It felt good for all of us to be able to pull this off and actually complete it. Thanks Mike and Sarah for all your help! What a sweet team.

So, if you're curious and want to see it, check it out here:

Song of Solomon Promo (be patient while it loads...)

What's more, after showing our video for the second time, Sarah and I got mentioned in sermon by Kurt.

MARRIED TO A NERD

As Sarah is quickly finding out, the surprises to being married to a nerd never seem to end. It's rather unbelievable, but we've already been married a month. While pretty much any married couple would laugh at such a comment, it's rather a mental-milestone for us. Married for a month. What a wonderful thing to celebrate...

...and what a better way to celebrate with than the long-anticipated release of Halo 2, the biggest video game in recent history. That's right. Ashamedly, I write to you this very sentence only hours away from the Halo 2 Midnight Madness; an opportunity for me to get my copy of the game (hopefully) the minute it arrives. Now, let's be honest here - this was not my original intent. I was originally going to pick it up after work on Tuesday, but when I heard of the opportunity for me to join the ranks of other Minneapolis nerds and we geekily awaited the arrival of this game, I figured: "Why not?"

For those who are familiar with the epic event, you'll know that at time of reading, the game has been out for a while. What kind of effect did it have? Well, first of all, there was the adventure of waiting in the Mall of America for the doors to EB to open at midnight, then the 60 minute wait just to get to the counter. Then the 20 minutes to get into the car and drive home (quickly, but safe, of course). Then you simply can't go to bed right away. Heaven's no! That's followed by staying up until 2:30am when your eyes are parched dry from lack of blinking. Then, a few days later, it's getting together with friends and staying up until 4:30am Saturday morning.

That's what I call cool!  (EDITORIAL NOTE: It's cool now, but down-right idiotic when I was floundering around Saturday and Sunday due to exhaustion. All is well now, though.)

LICENSE TO RENT

Seing as I've been in this city for a while, I figured it was about time to get a driver's license. Besides - I can't get a Blockbuster card without one.

Several weeks ago, I asked Stefan (my co-worker) what was entailed in getting an MN DL. He laughed and told me he had just tried to get one a few days prior and failed. He was still driving with his Wisconsin license, but was fairly cheesed at the test thrown at him. Questions like:

1. You are ____ times more likely to die by not wearing your seatbelt.

    a. 2

    b. 3

    c. 4

    d. 5

2. When passing another vehicle, you should be able to see how far in front of you?

    a. 500 feet

    b. 800 feet

    c. 900 feet

    d. 1000 feet

[ANSWERS: 1 - C, 2 - can't remember... I was never asked it, thankfully, because what on earth is a 'foot'?]

So, you can see that I got a little worried. I whipped out my little MN driving Ed book and began to underline any stats or sentences with numbers in them. After a very short time of doing this, it became a little mind-numbing and overwhelming. Was it 800 feet for passing? Was it 30 inches from the curb or the stop sign?

Eventually, I just gave up and decided to go for it. Taking the test was free, so it didn't matter if I failed.

The test was all done by computer (duh.) in a small area of the office building. There were 16 terminals crammed in the space where 6 comfortably seated computers would be. You could feel the tension in the room as we all hunched over our computers, some of us laughing at the insanity of some of the questions.  It was fairly difficult, that's for sure. Had I not been driving for so many years, I would have easily failed, but I did pass.

Now was the crucial decision-making time of the license picture. I was actually fairly bitter about being stressed over their silly test plus had the added distate of them cutting the corner of my out-of-country license (something they do to MN licenses to void them). The good part was that I got to keep my BC one.

Anyways, I thought I'd have some fun with this one. The lady setup the machine to take my picture then turned her back on me, so I got myself an "ode-to-Dave-Boyle" photo. Hardcore, fo sho.

Weeks before the wedding, Sarah discovered that President Bush was going to be in town the weekend of our ceremony. So, being the courteous citizen that she is, she invited the President of the United States of America to our wedding.

For those that were there, you know full well that George W. was not able to attend. Although we're a little bitter about that, it is pretty cool that we received some mail from the White House. Yes, it's true. They sent us a card in response, signed by Mr. President and his Wife.

NOTE: It's very safe to assume that they spent a trillion dollars on a machine that signs such cards as these, because it's impossible to tell if it was actually done by a machine.  I knew we should have registered for one of those!

Thank goodness he got re-elected, or else this card would be worth squat!

Just for some random fun, here's a scan of an article in a local paper. It goes into detail of the new Emergency Response Vehicle (BearCat - Ballistic Engineered Armored Response Counter Attack Truck)  that Edina will be getting this winter. Wow. How cool. And just in time, too, because this place is a little out of control, what with all the rich folk here.

SOME WEDDING-WEEK PHOTOS

Here are some photos taken before and during the wedding!

Trip 1 of 83 to the Mall of America.		Taken Sunday morning after the wedding. Dave looks tired. He worked hard at the Reception.
daBoyz are back in town.		Dave leaping over Wobin.
I figured Serena would want a goofy picture of me...		What has Dave done to my fiancee?
The racing squad.		Dave and Mike ride triumphantly on to Troy.
Biggest. Doughnut. Ever.		I finally got a new pair of shoes. Abtar, if you're reading this: aren't you proud?
One things for sure: Sarah and I have fun friends!		Ow!
A few last minute touchups... only to be kissed off yet again. :)		Awwwwwwwww......
JURB!
The McQuade Family.		The Grimsby Family.
The Princess Bride		The Handsome Groom?