Saturday, April 30, 2011

help - wedding stuff

Nun Robin und ich sind stark damit beschaeftigt unser Hochzeit zu planen und es sind so viele Sachen zu erledigen. Wir wissen gar nicht so richtig wo wir denn anfangen sollen.

  • wo bekommt man einen Anzug her in meiner Groesse?
  • wo plazieren wir denn alle. Es sind ja nun knapp 40 Leute gefunden?
  • brauchen wir Stuehle und wenn ja wie viele?
  • was muss alles rein in so ein Eheversprechen?
  • wie schafft man es die Zeromonie in 2 Sprachen abzuhalten.?
  • wann gibt es Sekt?
  • wo geht man danach essen und was kann man machen damit alle das Essen moegen? Italienisch?
  • wo gehen wir am naechsten morgen zum Brunchen und wer wir eingeladen?
  • was passiert nach dem Essen?
  • wie laeuft das mit Hochzeitsgeschenken ab. Schicken wir den Gaesten einen Karte mit einem Link zu unserer Amazon Registry?
  • ist Wein und Bier genug fuer das Essen, oder sind harte Getraenke notwendig?
  • sind Geschenke von uns and die Gaeste benoetigt?
  • wo bekommt Robin ihr Kleid her?
  • wie macht man den Brautjungfern klar das sie sich um Robin kuemmern muessen und ihr bei der Kleiderwahl helfen soll, aber nicht reinreden sollen?
  • brauchen wir Verlobungsphotos?
  • wo bekommen wir die Lizenz her und wann machen wir das Ueberhaupt
  • und es gibt sicher 200 punkte die ich gerade vergesse...

Normallerweise sollte ich ja auf meine eigenen Erfahrungen zurueckgreifen koennen von vergangenen Hochzeiten. Aber ich war hier bei 5 verschiedenen in den letzten 7 Jahren und jede war anders und kann nicht wirklich verglichen werden.


san diego - Wedding of Kaely and Jake - The rehearsal


after a 'nice' and 'fun' 8h drive from Davis to Carlsbad/San Diego we arrived at the Wedding location of Robins dear friends Kaely and Jake. Which we are planning to attend this sunday. But today it was time of the Reharsal of the Wedding, or in other words. The practice and training.

And I honestly have to say. Do people have to practice everything? Does everything has to become a play?

I mean I understand that you need to have a rough idea where everybody is going to be and which roles everybody has. But there should be a limit to everything and some things should be just natural.

Also I assume you should roughly know when to walk down the aisle.


Guess we have to sit down again and plan a bit more how our wedding is supposed to work and specially where we put all the guests at our rather small venue.

Well at least it gave me some moments to take some pictures and 'hunt' some ducklings on the property.
three little ducklings

Unrelated it gives me also the chance to secretly snap some more pictures of my fiance, when she is not looking for once. Well judging by the smile she saw me after all.


Wednesday, April 27, 2011

quibids.com addicted


recently I discovered the quibids.com service. Which is a different form of ebay and trying to use this system to get some nice deals on several gift cards to make some money and ease the shopping pain.
Like always it comes with a steep learning phase, but I'm making progress. Currently I'm 10$ up after an initial investment of 87$.

I still need to work on my strategie, but I'm starting to getting the hang of it. The best part is. I can just use the gift cards to pay for grocery and clothing and don't have to bother with craigslist to sell the stuff I don't need or desire again.

breakdown of the experiment after 2 days:

Rangefinder: 125$ (177$ value)
Toaster: 0.12$ (49$ value)
Gift Card: 0.31 (25$ value)
Memory Card: 0.74$ (44$ value)

property: 125.17$ paid
value: 295$ worth
bids: 147$ paid

total saving: ~23$

lesson: competition for high priced toys is to high. Stick to giftcards, they are much better return of investments. Well I wanted a rangefinder for the range since a while. So I will try next month todo better and not get carried away.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Pastrami Sandwhiches

ever since I tried pastrami my first time I wanted todo it myself. But it's so much work todo it right. First you have to bure the meat (brisket) for 2-3 days, than you have to smoke it for 3-5h and last but not least you are supposed to let it rest for 24-48h and than steam it.

Well I took a short cut and bought cured meat and smoked it and didn't let it rest...

And was rewarded with wonderful tasty, but a touch salty pastrami Sandwhiches, which had this amazingly purple/reddish meat

Let's see how they taste cold, tomorrow after a night in the frigde. Maybe I steam them afterall and make sandwiches for our trip to San Diego?

taken from here since I didn't had the camera handy

Monday, April 25, 2011

Back from Palm Springs,

before we drove to Palm Springs, Robin and I managed to stop by at her mums and afterwar in corona, where she grew up and went to school.

Obviously we couldn't just drive there without taking a picture of her old home.



Once this was done we continued to Palm Springs and there are not two many pictures to show for. For some reason we both where completely happy with 2 Tasks.

sitting at the pool reading and relaxing. I even managed to finally finished the Novel, Gone with the Wind.


And to relax on the patio and read a bit more, while enjoying drinks and eating tasty food.

But last, but not least here are some palms :)

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Planning

Right now robin and I are both rather busy with planning our wedding and so there certain things to be taken care off.

First off we were driving from davis to sf to look at different venues and decided to book lloyds lake after long discussion since it gives us the flexibility to host a wedding for 5 people or up to the silly amount of 100 people.



Now this also means that we need a place for the reception and so we were looking at the first restaurant, called 'Suppenkueche'

After being there for 5 minutes it was obvious that this place is way to rowdy and loud, but a perfect place for a bachelors party. After all they have all my favorite beers there.

So we shall return to san Francisco in two weeks to look at some more restaurants. But we will most likely go with Italian food, since everybody likes it and we both love it.

But now it's time for a week of relaxing in palm springs.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Friday, April 15, 2011

The future of us

A week ago on a beautiful sunny friday afternoon I decided to ask my girlfriend a certain question, which was rather scary and wonderful at the same time.

Would you like to be my wife and spend the rest of my life with me?








Obviously you can't just ask this question. As a modern human being you have to make this event rather special. So I was thinking what I could do and decided to recreate our first date and hire some people to help me out with this.

So how exactly did this go?

Robin called me around 4 pm to let me know that she is going to be at my place around 5pm and that she needs a nap, since she is not feeling too well. So I told her just to come over and take a quick nap. 30 minutes later I woke her up to make sure she wa doing better and since I wanted to grab a coffee downtown and enjoy this sunny day for a nice walk down the arboretum.

So after we had our coffee I mentioned I'm getting a touch cold in my shorts and would like to walk a bit to warm up. So I basically rushed her our of the coffee shop to the car to drive to the arboretum.

So while we were walking slightly chaotically back and forth I steered robin to this little picnic table, which has some stuff on it. She kept wondering why we were going there. Doesn't he notice that people setup a nice picnic?






I mean there a even roses laying around!







And while she was turning around to ask me what we're doing here, I was already being busy on my knee and asking her to spend the rest of her life with me.
A minute of shaking and nodding later she finally said yes and we enjoyed a rather nice and fancy picnic together.

So how did this picnic get there?

Well my friend John and his fiancé set it all up for us and step by at my place, while Robin was sleeping, to pickup the picnic basket and wine.

Oh and here is an impromptu snapshot of my lovely fiancé.






In our kitchen. We still have to find someone to take our official engagement pictures.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Davis - arboretum

Sunday, April 10, 2011

San Francisco

well after Robin mentioned that she never has been on the golden gate bridge before and really want's to see it we decided to drive there for a day and enjoy the nice weather.

So we first went to Treasure Island, since you have such a nice low angled view of San Francisco

random boat in front of the Bay bridge

The Bay Bridge, from the Treasure Island

I really like the tiny ships below the bay bridge 
And drove from there into San Francisco, to look a bit around and walk around the Fisherman Wharfs.
typical shot for Robin, I always have to find soem reflections
After we successfully crossed the Golden Bridge in heavy Traffic we continued to Fort Baker, up in the hills
it was a touch windy at Fort Baker
and taking the classical Golden Gate and San Francisco Post Card shot

and last, but not least the Golden Gate
I even managed to grab a clam chowder at the same restaurant and location I had my first clam chowder ever, when I arrived in SF 7 years ago.

Friday, April 08, 2011

gravlax - again

well after I made gravlax a couple of months ago and ate so much of it that I couldn't see or smell it anymore I decided to buy some today at the nugget.

Needless to say, my homemade lax was so much better. It's doesn't even compare and the store bought one just tastes bland and boring.

Tuesday, April 05, 2011

Time for some German food

This evening I decided to have a look at robins school and it's quite nice the way she set everything up and very colorful.
It was also nice to see her patiently explaining things to parents and students, so I guess she won't run away from me.... I really hope I'm easier to deal with than a couple of nine year old.

Well for dinner I decided to make a common dish when I was a kid. So what could this be?

Cauliflower with sauce hollandaise, parsley potatos and tiny steaks.





And the iPad camera is terrible...

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:H St,Sacramento,United States