Well, Tom brought up the pig flu from his travels around teh US and Canada. Yes, Canada. He can get back in the country which means he got to see his kids. I heard it was a fun trip which included hockey, haircuts, family guy jokes and swine flu vaccines for the boys. I am hoping my swine flu vaccine has taken effect but it’s close. I had it on a Thursday and he got home on Tuesday swearing he had the pig flu. This is teh second time I have ignored him and his fevers. I never hear the end of it… anyway.

I was a nice wife today and made him Sprinkles dark chocolate cupcakes with mint chocolate frosting. There has been a lot of baking going on around here. Pumpkin chocolate muffins which were realllly good. I can’t say I am a pumpkin fan but I really liked these. I have made brownies and cookies also. Given Toms flu, we are going to stay out of the general public and have thanksgiving with just us. I have quite the menu planned… 14 pound turkey, rolls, green beans, cornbread if I am nice, mashed potatoes… well the usual. I am going to buy some pies from Seattle Pie Company for dessert. It should be good.

We are going to have the kids for Christmas. We have planned a surprise trip to Disneyland which I can’t wait for. We are going to spend 4 days at Disneyland and then a couple days in San Diego. I hope the weather is lovely….

I finally bought a new computer since my Macbook pro is getting old. I went for the 27″ imac quad core. It’ll be on Wednesday. Yay for four day weekends and new computers…

Originally published at Nina's Exhilarating Life. You can comment here or there.

We get keys on Monday! We have had several problem along the way like appraisal was less than sale price and the lender had the wrong loan amount that made it all the way to escrow. But hopefully everything is behind us. We are closing about a week and half late but better late than never I guess.

We are planning on moving as soon as there is an opening with the moving company. We are beyond excited. I think about two weeks ago I realized that I can’t stand living in this small space with a cat and a husband. I want my own desk and room to sprawl out. I want my own bathroom! The cat wants better hiding places from Tom.

The kids will be here for Christmas so we have to get their room ready. I will also need to buy a new TV for the living room (at least 55 inch LCD of some sort). Tom wants furniture for the roof top deck. The whole place needs blinds! Oh and Tom wants to get a cat condo!

The fridge got installed last week and it looks fantastic. I am in love with it. I love the drawers on the bottom so hopefully nothing will get lost in it. The washer/dryer will get installed in a week.

In the funny but not so funny step kids file… Tommy apparently told his baseball coach to fuck off for not letting him play. He’s learning early.

Originally published at Nina's Exhilarating Life. You can comment here or there.

Well, we have been married for a whole week and we haven’t killed each other yet. Anyway, the day after the wedding we took the kids up to Hurricane Ridge because Tom wanted to show them some mountains.

A very nervous Tom (I think the kids hands hurt after this little hike up!):

Check out Jenny GG ’s blog for our wedding pictures:

http://www.jennygg.com/2009/07/i-see-weddings-nina-tom-on-the-south-lake-union-trolley.html

Originally published at Nina's Exhilarating Life. You can comment here or there.

So, we bought a (town)house. I don’t suggest buying a house when getting married. It has been insane trying to keep up with all the paperwork. I think we are finally caught up thanks to a few days off and well… getting married.

Anyway, here are a few pictures of the inside. It’s a townhouse with three units and ours is in the middle. It’s located in Magnolia.

The kids *loved* the house. They ran around yelling for about 30 minutes straight. I think they took their fathers ‘office’ for their room too.

So…. cross your fingers the rest of the process goes smoothly. Appraisal is tomorrow!

Originally published at Nina's Exhilarating Life. You can comment here or there.

Well, I am all married and it went fantastic! Did you see us on KOMO TV or King TV?

More pictures to come….

Originally published at Nina's Exhilarating Life. You can comment here or there.

In two weeks, I’ll be an old married hag instead of a old single hag like right now. I am excited!

In other news…. I did the swimming part of a triathlon today. It was fun! They are doing it again in September if anyone is interested. They also have a kids triathlon which is super cute.

John Curley was there too… does it get ANY better than John Curley? I think not… I wish I would have gotten a better picture but I didn’t want to bother him!

Originally published at Nina's Exhilarating Life. You can comment here or there.

I am pretty sure that I am completely converted over to RAW + Manual only. This weekend, I reallllllly wanted to be lazy and use an automatic mode on my camera but it ended up frustrating me more than anything. I think my pictures are much better when I have completely control of the light. I just need to get faster so I can capture the action shoots a little better. I did pre-plan the lighting yesterday which did help. Even if I was off a little, I can do post processing editing pretty easy… yay RAW.

I do need to work on getting things better in focus. As an example, click for a larger version:

I would rather his face be in focus instead the window rail. If I take AF off, I can’t see clear enough to see if it’s in focus. I can zoom in on the image on the LCD screen but not that close.

Any suggestions? I know I can change the focus point but not fast enough to capture the moment.

I also wish I knew more about lightroom and photoshop. I did purchase a couple books and think that’ll help. I just need to find time to go through them more. Well, it might help if I find a reason to use the tools more.

Originally published at Nina's Exhilarating Life. You can comment here or there.

We headed out to Northwest Trek early this morning so that we could catch the first tram of the morning. Apparently, that is the best time of the day because its food time! We had an amazing view of the animals. Tom was sure it was going to suck but he said he even enjoyed it. Here are a few shots, full set here:

This is seriously the cutest owl ever.

The guy I am marrying in 19 days.

It took me a couple days but I did enjoy photographing the day. It is a very long day though… especially when your almost husband wants you to take him to the airport at 4am. My wrist hurt the next day from holding the camera too! Anyway, here are a few more of my favorites:

MOH leading to the bride to her groom

At the alter

I loved the hand on her back.
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Here are a few of my favorites from the day:

Grandma, do you have a belly button too??

Our lovely photographer sent us a DVD of all our engagement pictures. The full set is located here or on flickr.

This is Tom’s fav -

Totally exciting!

In other news, I volunteered to do photography for a wedding on Whidbey Island next weekend. Sounds like a prefect reason to pick up a flash and a new lens. I didn’t get them frmo B & H though! Anyway, I have a week to mess with it and hope it goes well.

Originally published at Nina's Exhilarating Life. You can comment here or there.

There are people having sex with the windows opened in the condo building. We can hear very loud moaning of a happy girl. There is also a smell of illegal substances.

And I thought just old people lived here….

Originally published at Nina's Exhilarating Life. You can comment here or there.

Our engagement pictures came in early this morning. I think this is my fav but it’s hard to find just one….

The rest of them are located at Jenny GG’s website.

Originally published at Nina's Exhilarating Life. You can comment here or there.

Tom likes planes…. so we took my 70-300mm to the airport on Monday and took some sunset pictures. Here are a few of my favs:

I think Blair has convinced me that my next lens should be a 28-135mm. It looks pretty sweet! Maybe in a couple weeks I can mess around with it instead.

Oh, engagement pictures went well. Hopefully I’ll post some in a couple weeks.

Originally published at Nina's Exhilarating Life. You can comment here or there.

Since Tom has never experienced beautiful Leavenworth, we decided to head that way today with a short stop at the Reptile Zoo. Here are a few of my favorites:

Look mama, two heads!

Full set is here

Originally published at Nina's Exhilarating Life. You can comment here or there.

One jeep with two kids drving, one really tall kid next to it, two short parents? and three ducks following the jeep.

Originally published at Nina's Exhilarating Life. You can comment here or there.

Today is Norwegian Constitution Day so we headed out to Ballards very own Syttende Mai Parade. Here are a few of my favorite pictures:

We have our Engagement pictures next week. This will include my hair and makeup trial for the wedding. I have no idea about makeup other than it’ll be some fancy airbrush makeup. I do know I want crazy long lashes though! I have a bird cage veil and my very talented mother has made me a sparkly headband also. I am thinking about something like this for my hair:

Anyway, I am not a fan of having my pictures taken. I am always the one behind the camera and I like it that way.

I can’t wait for Tom to get back tomorrow… I AM BORED!

Originally published at Nina's Exhilarating Life. You can comment here or there.

I picked up the new car today at University VW. I seriously hate buying cars. No matter how nice and honest the sales people are, you still feel like you got screwed. Just a couple things that went wrong: They said there were no black TDI’s with Navigation in WA or Oregon. This turned out to be false. There was at least one in Oregon but I didn’t find out until after. When we signed the papers, it said 35 miles but when we picked it up there were over 300 miles. I didn’t notice until I was a block away and knew they won’t care anyway. I could bitch and moan but to be honest, they aren’t going to do anything about either. So instead, I’ll bitch here in a passive aggressive way.

I also checked the tax credit we get because its a green car. 1,300 dollars! Not bad…. so where can you get B5/B10 or 100% Diesel around here?

Here are a couple pictures:

More here.

I just to test out my theory I am going to talk about playboy radio and see if the “guy that runs it” comments again. I imagine he’s not spending his time reading blogs and that it’s some silly bot.

Originally published at Nina's Exhilarating Life. You can comment here or there.

We had our Christmas party last night which was reschedule to May due to the snow storm. It was at the Aquarium which is prime photo taking time. I love the nifty fifty also. I just need to win the lotto so I can buy more lenses. I’d need to start buying lotto tickets though. Anyway, JELLY FISH!

Tom and I have our first joint debt. We purchased a 2009 Jetta TDI. I really wanted the navigation system for it and Tom really wanted Black. So, the navigation system is being installed this week. Hopefully, we can pick it up in a week. In the mean time, the dealer gave me a new Jetta to drive. It’s fun and new. Plus it has Playboy radio. Can life get better?

Anyway, I am getting use to not having a clutch. I totally miss the clutch though. The Jetta has a DSG transmission and you can’t even hear/feel it shift gears. It’s also a 6 speed and does have ability to ’shift’ without a clutch. It’s kind of fun but not quite the same.

Stand by for pictures in a week or so. Anyone wanna place bets on the mileage before it needs to go in the shop?

Originally published at Nina's Exhilarating Life. You can comment here or there.

I am totally digging all the swine flu drama. Right now in Washington State there are 25 probable cases. It looks there have been six new cases reported and I think the key is to ban children:

King County health officials provided this description of the six new people believed to have swine flu: a 7-year-old boy from Auburn; a 12-year-old girl from Lake Forest Park; a 15-year-old boy from Kent; and, from Seattle, a 12-year-old boy, a 14-year-old girl and an 80-year-old woman.

I don’t think I have ever gotten the flu so I might finally have a shot at this one! Yay!

Originally published at Nina's Exhilarating Life. You can comment here or there.

I currently have a crap car that I like because well… if shit happens to it then it just gives it more character. The major problem with it is that it’s stick shift and Tom refuses to learn to drive it. As part of this ‘marriage’, we were thinking about purchasing a new car which he could drive.

I really want a clean diesel (or bio-diesel) car which means there are only a couple options. Mercedes, Jeep, Subaru (rumors) and VW. Mercedes is out of the question due to the starting price of 50K. Jeep is eh… no thanks. Subaru’s are just rumors and everyone in Seattle has an outback. So that leaves us with VW…. I priced one out on the internets and asked for a quote on it. I received email 5 days ago saying they would get back to me. Still nothing…. Are car deals not hurting from the economy? I would guess not. I’ll give them a couple more days and then I’ll nag them.

Tom thinks VW has a file on me and it says IGNORE IF CONTACTED. A reminder to those that are confused:

In other news, Tom is back east for about two weeks. I mean, he’ll be in Seattle for two days in the middle but that doesn’t really count. Nothing like 5am airport drop offs on Tuesdays. Sigh.

He has amazing timing. I want to unload all the wedding crap I don’t want to deal with to him.. so he leaves. Smart man.

Originally published at Nina's Exhilarating Life. You can comment here or there.

I took Tom and my new camera to Carkeek Park. It was lovely outside! Anyway, here are a couple of my favs from the day. I shot them in RAW and tried (tried!) to edit them in lightroom.

About a month ago I started noticing some weird clicking in my 17″ Mac Book Pro. It sounded like the hard drive so I started looking at replacements. I noticed that 320Gb laptop drives were *really* cheap. I called apple to find out my options and let them know that I wanted to upgrade to the 320Gb drive.

They said since it was under warranty they would replace the drive for free at the local genius bar. I asked if I could do that with the 320Gb drive and they said yes. I went ahead and ordered the drive from NewEgg. When it finally arrived, I made an appointment at the genius bar to have it installed.

I arrived on time and was taken to the bar. I handed him my drive to have it installed and he said right away that they don’t install third party drives. I informed him that I was told by Apple Care that they could replace my drive with a 320Gb drive at the genius bar. He didn’t believe me but when he pulled up the ticket… it did indeed say that. He then showed it to a couple coworkers and his boss who all said “wow, he shouldn’t have said that. We don’t do that!”

So anyway, the manager (or should I say LEAD) came over and refuses to install the drive. Fine, you won’t install it. I asked if I could pay for a larger apple drive because it’s stupid to install another 100Gb drive at this point. He said no, they can ONLY install parity to what the laptop had originally (important detail for later).

I said fine, then how much would it cost for me to have this drive installed at a Mac authorized repair place. He called and said it would be 90 dollars. I told him that I would like a store credit to offset the cost of the install. After all, I had already paid for the drive and was out 90 bucks. I wanted the install to NOT void my warranty or I would have done it myself. He refused. He said I know they told you incorrect information but that isn’t our problem.

He repeated over and over that the Apple Care phone support isn’t part of Apple. I said, yes it is. He said well, they are outsourced. I said well, that was a decision Apple made but none the less, it’s still part of apple and you should honor what they said.

Anyway, at that point he went in the back to discuss giving me a credit with his manager. By the time he came out, he had changed his mind and said that the ticket did NOT say they would install it. I informed him again that FOUR people all said it did INCLUDING him. He said there was no way he was going to give me “cash” (bullshit, I asked for a credit which would be tax write off anyway).

This went on for 30 minutes. They knew they were wrong. The manager came out and said it was ‘confusing’ but he didn’t see it my way. I said well your four other employees saw it my way which of course he had nothing to say.

At that point, some dude behind the counter looked up to see if they even had the replacement hard drive in stock. It turns out the 100Gb drive was EOL and they only had a 200Gb drive there. What happened to parity? Uh right… anyway. I of course went for the 200Gb drive. After wasting probably 200+ dollars in employees salaries (Go me!). It would been much cheaper for Apple to just have given me the fucking store credit instead of spending 30 WHOLE FUCKING MINUTES arguing with me.

I won’t even get into the whole point about how Apple gets to keep the drive with our data on it and we have to sign something about breach of data being ok.

I should have stuck it out with dell, they provided insanely awesome support.

Originally published at Nina's Exhilarating Life. You can comment here or there.

Him: What is this stuff on the top of the blueberry muffins?
Me: It’s a sugar, butter, flour crumble. Yummy!
Him: But I wanted blueberry muffins like my mother use to make me. *sad boy face*

Originally published at Nina's Exhilarating Life. You can comment here or there.

I keep having dreams that have my photographer in them. In the last one, she decided to go to Spokane on the day of the wedding and her flight landed 30 minutes before the wedding. Who knows whats up with my dreams but anyway…

I failed at jury duty. I was asked what I felt when I walked in and knew the lawsuit had to do with a car accident. I said I wanted to know if the other person was hurt because they weren’t in the court room. Of the 40 or so in the room, only three seemed to care about the well being of another person. Most of them thought lawsuits were stupid. Some of them even said Asians couldn’t drive. Kind of nuts. I am not sure those are my peers but oh well.

Originally published at Nina's Exhilarating Life. You can comment here or there.

I am having problems finding flowers that I love. I think we have decided on red Gerber daisies with black centers but I am at a loss otherwise. I decided to check out about 10+ books on weddings from the library. They are insanely heavy and today I dropped one on my toe. I have never had so much pain coming from a toe before. It is currently turning black and blue.

In other news, we are all registered. We ordered Tom’s wedding band this last weekend. We had our cake testing and agreed on the flavor (chocolate with baileys chocolate filling). The reception deposit was paid. We picked out table cloths and napkins. We have the reception layout, three tables and one for the cake. We have a commissioner to marry us. I bought two pairs of shoes, cute ones and comfortable ones. I bought spanx! We ordered personalized M&Ms.

Things we need to do : Order invites, finalize flowers, find something for Tom and the boys to wear

Originally published at Nina's Exhilarating Life. You can comment here or there.

I finally booked a bunch of stuff for the wedding. We have a ceremony location, reception location, hotel room for before/after wedding, photographer, website and a cake. I am going to the dress place on Saturday so that’ll be another check off the list.

Next on the list is finalize guest list, flowers, hair/makeup, and Tom’s + boys outfits. Oh, and I need to convince my brother to marry us.

Originally published at Nina's Exhilarating Life. You can comment here or there.

Chicago wins again…. you charter the L train: http://www.transitchicago.com/news_initiatives/chartertrain.aspx

How freakin cool is that? I wonder if the SLUT will rent one. I want to get married on the SLUT!

Originally published at Nina's Exhilarating Life. You can comment here or there.

I love everything you have done so far except for one thing….

For the love of all things good… DO NOT DELAY THE DTV SWITCH.

We have all suffered through the constant ads on TV for MONTHS. We can’t watch the news without hearing about DTV. If people are too stupid to figure it out then they aren’t going to figure it out by June either.

Please, think about our sanity.

Originally published at Nina's Exhilarating Life. You can comment here or there.

Plan B is sponsoring tonight’s 17 and counting show on TLC. I am highly amused by that.

Originally published at Nina's Exhilarating Life. You can comment here or there.

So Tom came home today to find the cat locked in the bedroom. Her litter box is in the bathroom so this was a problem. Lucky, she held it like a good girl. Anyway, Tom says I shouldn’t expect the cleaning people to take care of the cat. I say they should at least make sure the cat isn’t locked in a room before they close the door. I have called and complained about them closing the bathroom door and them bugging her littler box. I guess I wasn’t clear about making sure the cat wasn’t locked in a random room.

Am I expecting too much that they not lock the cat in the bedroom?

Tom is going down to the Dominican Republican in a couple weeks. But… I am not jealous of the sunny weather. Noooooo, not at all.

Originally published at Nina's Exhilarating Life. You can comment here or there.

He did good.

Originally published at Nina's Exhilarating Life. You can comment here or there.

I guess we won’t be buying the domain name. Some beat us to it - http://ninaandtom.com/.

Originally published at Nina's Exhilarating Life. You can comment here or there.

There is no doubt in my mind that the cat uses me for heat and food. Damn cat.

Originally published at Nina's Exhilarating Life. You can comment here or there.

I have cabin fever. But I have baked - chocolate cookies with candy cane kisses, chocolate chip cookies with macadamia nuts, chocolate mint crinkles, chocolate mint fudge and peanut butter covered in chocolate buckeyes.

The question remains though… who is going to eat this? I planned to bring it to work but uh I don’t think we will be doing that. Oh well, I want to make peanut butter cookies with chocolate kisses next.

Originally published at Nina's Exhilarating Life. You can comment here or there.

And the lights just flickered! Ack! BLOG FAST AND THEN RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!

Originally published at Nina's Exhilarating Life. You can comment here or there.

I have not lost power in my condo ever. Not once. It will be interesting to see if that happens today. I highly doubt it. I mean if we can have the big Hanukkah Eve Wind Storm of 2008 and not lose power…. we should be ok.

Anyway, Tom and I are off to Sip and Ship. Gotta mail the kids some gifts.

Originally published at Nina's Exhilarating Life. You can comment here or there.