Groomsmen- An Introduction

Over the next few weeks I am going to give a rundown of my groomsmen, how I know them and maybe a story or two about them. My goal: so that everyone who reads this blog knows my buddies as well as I do. Piece of cake.

In the meantime, you can check out our website for the rundown of groomsmen and bridesmaids.

Wedding Rings for guys

I'm freaked out that I'm going to lose my wedding ring. There I said it. Anna says that doesn't actually make her mad. What makes her MAD is that I lose things that are important to me ALL THE TIME (or drop them in the toilet by accident).

Ipod- dropped in toilet
Swiss army watch- left in a bag that we gave to goodwill (luckily Anna saw it before giving it away). I had misplaced it for 4 months.
New Ipod- lost for a week, found under the seat of my car.

Maybe we should be looking at the positives of the above...I, or someone else, has always found what I've lost.

So as we begin this search for the male ring, I've been instant that we don't buy an expensive one. I understand that the ring is a symbol of our love and our marriage and I shouldn't lose it. I do understand that. But let's be realistic here: I am 27 years old and have never been good at keeping up with things. I've never worn a ring for more then a week (when rings were cool for guys back in the late 90's...at least I thought they were cool).

So I don't want to buy a $500 ring. I want to by a $50 ring. This pisses my mom off. This pisses my sister off. My brother just laughs and shakes his head at me.

I'm not trying to offend them women out there, although I know I am good at that. I just want them to be realistic, and maybe that's too much to ask?

Off to the Big Apple

Anna and I will be meeting my parents and my brother in New York City tonight for an early Quarles Christmas. We'll be at Madison Square Garden watching the Duke Blue Devils take on the Pittsburgh Panthers Thursday night. We're also heading to The Comedy Cellar late Thursday night to see Dave Attell (hopefully) and others. This will be Anna's first NYC comedy club experience, we'll try to get pictures.

Engagement Party

Over Thanksgiving weekend, a group of my parent's friends threw us a Pig Pickin' in Durham and it was more then we could have asked for. We had a great mix of people and had tons of fun eating a pig and drinking some good local beer called Red Oak.

Anna and I also received tons of unexpected gifts, which is never a bad thing. Just look at the surprise on Anna's face!!!

Check your Mail!!!

Save the dates have been mailed out, so start checking your mail daily to see if you made the cut.

Seriously, though, if you don't get them in a few days, definitely let us know.

November Wedding Happenings

Holy Crap, I haven't posted on this thing in forever. Since my last post, here's what's been going on (get ready, a lot has gone on).

1. Anna has a new job working in Butner, NC in the adolescent unit of John Umstead Hospital. She started today.

2. I started a new job, still at Eurosport, but now as a Regional Manager. I now manage people, not soccer club business. Totally different.

3. We received our "Save the Dates" and now need to mail them out.

4. We visited my parents out in Kansas City and drove my brothers car 17 hours back to Durham, because...

5. Anna's car was in the shop for 3 weeks due to an "Oil sludge" issue. I wouldn't recommend bringing up this incident with Anna unless you really want to get on her bad side.

6. Anna had her first ever alcoholic drink on an airplane!

7. Duke football is now 1-8 and I'm offically asking for Ted Roof to be fired. So much so that I'm thinking of buying www.firetedroof.com. It's only $50.00 and I think it's worth it.

8. We had our 2nd cake tasting, this time at Edible Art in Raleigh. The cake was amazing and we're definitely going with them.

9. I ate Fois Gras for the 1st time (and liked it).

10. I ate Scallops for the 2nd time (and liked it).

11. I ate Elk for the first time (and liked it a lot).

12. We drove back from Kansas City with 48 beers and 6 bottles of wine. My cousin Sara called us modern day bootleggers.

This Just In...Bridesmaids have been announced

Anna has notified and posted beautiful pictures of all her bridesmaids on our Official Wedding Website.

For those of you anxiously awaiting the groomsmen, that list should be up shortly.

I was thinking about announcing like they announce the NCAA tourney...Not actually telling the guys first and having them check back day after day seeing if some embarrassing picture had been posted on the blog or the site, but Anna said that would be pretty inappropriate. So I'll tell them first and then post it. Not exactly as much fun, but what can you do?

Ming Blue (Johnson Hyundai Commercial)

They've released another batch of Badger car commercials and although I don't think they are as funny as the Wiggle Room one, they are still really creative. Check out Grady's ears (yes the badger has a name) when he is trying to say the word "ming". Hilarious.

On a side note, one of my loyal readers brought to my attention that when you google "badger wiggle room", my blog comes up #1 ahead of youtube! My blog is going world-wide.

If you haven't seen these commercials yet, I implore you to click on this link and enjoy...

Then come back and tell us what Badger commercial is your favorite.

Oh, and I'm going to be a badger for Halloween so don't think of stealing my idea.

$234.85...

Several weekends ago I cam home from a weekend up in Washington DC to find the below receipt on my bedside table (You can click on the picture to make it larger).
For those of you two lazy to click on the picture, I can summarize what items are on this receipt in one hyphenated word: MAKE-UP!!!! That's it! two-hundred and thirty-five dollars and eighty-five cents of MAKE-UP!!!

I'm not angry. Really I'm not, but I was trying to think back on something I spent $234.85 on...My "man purchase" of a flat-screen television definitely cost more then that, but that was more a purchase for everyone. I even bought a suit recently, but that didn't even cost $234.85 (It was a $600 suit that I got for under $200 thank you very much).

Am I overreacting here? Do women really spend $200-plus dollars on make up?

Wedding Rule #1

Neither Anna nor I are as active as we want to be, but both of us do play in separate soccer leagues during the fall and spring. For those of you who don't like, play or watch soccer, it's more of a "contact" sport then it gets credit for in mainstream American media...and because of this after a game, you can really come out bruised and broken.

(Those of you who have played soccer with Anna probably know where this is going).

Anna bruises like a freakin' peach and because of this we have implemented:

WEDDING RULE #1
Soccer will not be played for 1 month leading up to the wedding to avoid bruises on the arms legs and face.

The face part was added to the rule today because of a little elbow I took while playing on Thursday night. The bruise is really coming in nicely 36 hours after the incident. If it gets any worse, I'll definitely update the picture, but I wanted to capture proof of my semi black eye. Could you imagine if Anna or I had a freakin' black eye on our wedding day?!? Our mothers wouldn't be crying tears of joy, that's for sure.

I'm really hoping the black eye becomes more pronounced.

I Think I just had an idea...

Yup, I did.

So I went up to our beautiful capital this weekend and got to meet up with one of my fraternity brothers who is also engaged and planning to wed in May. After a few beers at the baseball game, I mentioned to him that it might be cool to have someone else post their thoughts on the blog.

Without hesitation, he accepted and I now have my 1st guest blogger.

Now I ask my loyal readers to be accepting of my 5'5" Jewish fraternity brother.

I'm off to our Capital

Loyal Readers:

I will be out of town until Sunday, visiting my second favorite city in the US, Washington DC.


I'm in desperate need of a little vacation from work so I'm getting out of here around noon today, heading to the Phillys-Nats baseball game tonight and plan to watch football and futbol (which means soccer to all you southerners) all weekend with my buddy Bennett (Check out his food blog that he does with his GF and others).

Maybe Anna will grace this blog with her presence in my absence and share some thoughts on being a bride...

The Streak is Over- Duke Football

Those of you who have suffered through the long, hot fall days watching Duke football lose 22 straight games...I share this moment of glory with you. To all of those who have tailgated with me, sat on the back of by Jeep, drank beer, played Cornhole, drank more beer (or Whiskey), this post is dedicated to you.

If you haven't heard yet, Duke beat Northwestern 20-14 on Saturday night despite not scoring in the 2nd half and almost getting jobbed by the referees.

Duke's head coach, Ted Roof, has just begun teaching the stiff arm
in his fourth year of coaching. In previous games, Duke players,
when touched would just go down, kind of like flag football.
However, when on defense, other teams wouldn't play
by the same rules.

The game was on the Big 10 network, which is luckily available on DirecTV. So I was able to head over to a buddy's house from work and catch the entire thing. Apparently there are a few pictures of me right before Duke won the game, which show me in different states of shock/hysteria/glee and prayer. If I get my hands on those, I'll post them here.

This was such a big deal that it actually made ESPN, check the last series of the game here.

Honeymoon Destination...Done and Done

Anna and I finalized our honeymoon this week and we're ridiculously excited about the 11 days we're going to spend in St. Lucia. We're flying out the Monday (May 5th) after our wedding
and returning on Friday, May 16th. We thought about extended it a few days longer but decided having a weekend at home to unwind before going back to the real world would be a good idea.

Anna and I are both pretty well traveled (thanks to all the great places our parents have taken us) as well as the program called "study abroad" (although not much studying actually takes place). Because of this, we both wanted to experience something a bit different then the cookie cutter honeymoon, not that there's anything wrong with a resort with a swim up bar (Not to rub it in, but the picture linked to the swim up bar is the hotel my parents and I are staying at in Maui this November...I know, I'm rubbing it in.

If you're saying to yourself, "Where are they staying again?", then click here to read my first post on our prospective honeymoon destination and then we'll all be on the same page.

We are going to stay at the Emerald Villa for a total of 8 nights sandwiched around 3 nights on our own private sailboat with our very own captain, where we will be sailing to Martinique, which is around 6 hours northeast of St. Lucia.

It's a done deal and anyone who's looking for a vacation spot, I'd definitely check out all the options on St Lucia.

Badger Wiggle Room (Johnson Automotive Commercial)

I watch a lot of TV, and for the most part, I don't watch commercials. However, there is a local commercial for Johnson Automotive Group that features a badger as a salesmen. I swear, everytime it comes on, I crack up. Anna insisted that I post a few of the videos on the blog so you guys could check them out. I think there are a total of 5 of them, but this one is my favorite. Just go to www.youtube.com and enter "Badger Commercial".

A "Man" Purchase...

After over a year of talking about it (which is my way of rationalizing a $1300 purchase), I took the plunge and bought a 40 inch television just in time for football season!


With all this wedding talk I felt like I really needed to go out and "do something for myself" and I'm pretty damn happy with my purchase. From Saturday afternoon until Monday night, I watched 5 1/2 football games ( I couldn't make it through the entire 2nd half of the Arizona/San Fran football game that started at 10:30 pm).

Anna, however, has not enjoyed watching football as much as Joe and I have. Be that this is our first fall in the same town since 3 years ago (since Anna was in Pittsburgh), it's taking a little getting used to on her part (and I guess I should probably compromise and instead of watching 5 games, maybe just 2 or 3).

Anyway, The TV is amazing, best purchase of the year.

My Boy Graydon got Hitched!

For my loyal readers...I apologize for being away for so long. I've just recovered from a helluva wedding weekend in New York City for the "Impossible Body", Geoff Graydon who as I type this, is on a plane to Italy for two weeks with his Bride Suzy.

Anna and I were fortunate enough to spend a long weekend with some of my really good friends from college, eat some amazing food and see the Yankees beat the lowly Tampa Bay Devil Rays at the historic Yankees Stadium.

From Right to left: Sal, Jonathan, Joe, Geoff, me, Cooper, Dave, Chris

Since Anna and I haven't set the menu for either the Rehearsal Dinner or the Reception, we were very much obsessed with the food and the specialty drinks at the reception. First off, the amount of food served over the course of the day was enormous. They started with a raw bar, including oysters and shrimp in conjunction with a buffet style meal including lamb, pastrami, ravioli, fish, chicken, grits (yes GRITS in New York). That wasn't all...as we were eating this, there were servers coming around with all sorts of finger food, too many to even start to list here. Needless to say, it gave us tons of ideas for our own appetizers.

Now most would think, "that's it". However, very few of you know Geoff Graydon, let alone his love for food. The group of around 120 was then escorted upstairs to the actual reception, where we had an open bar and a 4 course sit down dinner.

I wasn't kidding when I said we had a lot of food.

Roll Call...

Anna seems to think that people other then the MOG read this blog...We're both interested in who those people are. So, right below this post is a place to leave a "comment". If you would be so kind, let us know you're out there stalking us. Really, it's what we want.

Honeymoon Destination Update

I received the following message from our trustworthy St. Lucia contact:

Hi Jackson,

"Thank you for your mail. No worries, no serious damages in St. Lucia. Even though there was no power on the island for a little bit more than 24 hours, that was only a safety measure induced by the authorities. The Lucian Government confirmed yesterday morning that everything was back to normal in St. Lucia. We even had our resident manager Andre driving all the way North of St. Lucia, where Dean got the closest to the island and everything was as if nothing had ever happened. The beach in Rodney was intact and people were enjoying the water."

So we're now making sure this is what we want to do for the honeymoon...I have this semi-obsession with Europe, which makes me second guess going to a Caribbean island for 11 days when we could be exploring Switzerland, Greece or England...

What are your thoughts...

Wedding Cakes

Breaking News!

Wedding Cake tasting is FREE!!! I recommend that you go to your nearest bakery with your significant other and arrange a cake tasting session, whether you're getting married or not!

Miss Very Very Good Girl scheduled a 2 pm appointment this past Sunday at Mad Hatter's Cafe and Bake Shop, where we were to partake in our first wedding cake tasting. Well, after a 45 minute wait (they didn't have us on their "schedule"), the cake guy finally showed up and gave us tons to sample. We just got the basics, such as yellow and chocolate cake, chocolate icing, buttercream icing (I didn't know what this was until Sunday) and then all kinds of flavored icings. They do some funking looking cakes, which are probably not our taste, but cool nonetheless.

Honeymoon Destination on Hold

Luckily, I haven't put a deposit on our St. Lucia honeymoon destination because as of today, it's getting rocked by Hurricane Dean. Hopefully all will be O.K., but I think we're going to take the "wait and see" approach:

St. Lucia is somewhere under that gigantic white spot...

Honeymoon Part Deux

If you haven't read my first installment of "The Honeymoon" (Click), check it out.This is the ONE thing I'm in charge of and by golly, I'm not going to mess it up. I'm still sticking with my original plan of a 10/11 day honeymoon including 7/8 nights in a villa and 3 nights on a sailboat. I was a bit worried for a few weeks because I didn't think this was actually going to work out, but last night I think I struck gold in one of my 1000 Google searches. Has anyone ever been to St. Lucia Island down in the Caribbean? It's a very small island (around 24 miles long by 15 miles wide) with clear water, mountains, volcano's and the required rain forest.

We will (hopefully) be staying at the Emerald Hill Villa, which has some views that are pretty ridiculous. It's an open-air house with a full kitchen, private pool, living room, etc. We plan to stay in the room for 3 nights, followed by a 3 or 4 night sail boat cruise around St. Lucia as well as Martinique, which is around a 6 hour sail from St. Lucia. The picture to the left is from the deck overlooking Marigot Bay. Once we get it completely finalized, we'll definitely let everyone know. Until then, I'll leave you with a view from the pool.

Things I want but can't Register for...

There are two particular items, that much to my surprise, were not available on Macy's or Crate & Barrel's registry site: A Cornhole set and a portable Beirut table. These are both drinking games that I am very passionate about. The one catch for the Beirut table is that its foldable (not a word) and portable, so that it isn't sitting out in the dining room. This is and "Anna Rule" that I happen to agree with.

Below is SportsBizPro's official unofficial Registry list:

1. Cornhole Set with corn bags- The below picture is of Anna and I enjoying this great game:


2. Portable Beirut Table- Below is a picture of the glorious game being played in the basement of my Animal House-Like fraternity basement at our 5 year college reunion:

Update: Mike Rosen is in the process of building a portable beer pong table. Pictures will follow!
Update #2: The beer pong table is finished and we've played our first games on it. Mike and Pika beat Anna and I in a 3 game series...2-0. A rough start for the home side.

Disclaimer: I have the right to add to this list at any time.

Announcing We have not Registered

It's apparently "in bad taste" for the wedding couple to announce that they've registered for wedding gifts. Well, I think that's a bunch of crap, but to "play by the rules" (sort of), I won't announce that we've registered Macy's or Crate and Barrel.

Whoops.

Rocco and his Weight Watchers

Several people have sent me emails saying that they do not believe the picture in Doggie Weight Watchers is in fact Rocco. I have been asked to provide other pictures of Rocco including him with a tennis ball, since he is a bit OCD when it comes to chewing them. What my readers want (all 3 of them), my readers get.

Rocco planning his attack on how to best eat the tennis ball (Yes he eats tennis balls)

Rocco coming back from his new favorite form of exercise...swimming.

Rocco's mission: Stealing a tennis ball from a neighbor's black lab

I received a call from Rocco's vet today, who left me a message full of excitement that Rocco has lost so much weight. The good news for Rocco is that he gets to eat more now. We are off Operation Weight Loss and now starting Operation Weight Maintain.

I hope this squashes any rumors of me trading in Rocco for a skinnier dog.

What about me??

MOB( Jean Hall) and MOG (Anne Quarles) have been copying Anna and I on a flurry of emails over the last week that have been oh so complimentary of the bride to be. It's like they're having a contest on who can say the nicest thing about Anna, with each "one upping" the other. Enough Already!

Below are exerts of an ongoing email chain, which Anna and I are copied on:

MOG starts us off:
"I can't tell you how happy Darryl and I are. We adore Anna and she makes Jeb so happy."

Followed by a little zinger against yours truly:
"Jeb always asked if I left my intelligence at the hospital [where she works] and turned it off when I go to the driveway."

It's go time now and MOB throws in her 2 cents:
"Today we ordered The Dress!! I may :) be a bit biased, but Anna looks spectacular in it. It looks like the dress was made just for her."

MOG concurs, then remarks:
"Anna is so beautiful I can only imagine how she must look in that gorgeous dress."

That's all I've got so far. Note that I do not disagree with anything said above. It's just that the Groom would like a little love thrown his way as well. I mean look at this face...

The Wedding Dress!!

Rumor has it that Anna has purchased her wedding dress...Apparently the groom is not allowed to see said dress, so I can only imagine what it looks like. Or, I can sneak a peak on her camera and find a picture! It's her "dream" dress:


In all seriousness, I haven't seen the dress and don't plan to break into her gmail account to peak.

On a different topic, as the groom, I'm feeling a bit left out. I know this is the "bride's day" and all, but give a guy a break. Have no idea what I'm talking about? No worries, because I am currently compiling evidence (quotes) from recent emails written by both the MOB (Jean Hall) and MOG (Anne Quarles). This evidence will show the obvious "lovefest" for Anna, with very little mention of myself. Look forward to that sometime this week.

Doggie Weight Watchers

When my brother and I drove Rocco from Kansas City to Durham on Thanksgiving Day 2006, my college dog weighed in at an impressive 123 lbs. Thanks to the plethora of table scraps available from Darryl and the lawlessness that presides when there are 4 dogs, 2 cats and 3 humans living under one roof, Rocco was able to eat pretty much anything he wanted to for 3 years and topped out at 148 lbs around a year ago. We once witnessed him consume an entire cheese tray in 5 seconds flat. One second it was there, the next it was gone. Over New Year's we went on a trip to the beach. He struggled walking on the beach, going up the two flights of stairs and he wanted nothing to do with the water, which is pretty hard to comprehend considering most Golden's LOVE the water. We knew he was fat, but at that point we realized just how unhappy he was. In the below picture, we took it RIGHT before the wave hit him from behind, forcing him to jump up and run away.



Anna and I made it our 2007 goal to get Rocco back at a respectable weight, and we're happy to say that was accomplished this weekend. On Saturday morning, I took Rocco for his monthly weigh in and in only 6 months, Rocco has lost 60 lbs, with his most recent weight being 88 lbs. To be honest, he's pretty much a new dog. On sunday he went swimming in the ocean. Even better and a lot funnier, he jumped off a boat for the first time, fully submerging himself in the ocean.

Below is our perfectly thin Golden Retriever.

The Original Blog

Don't forget to check out my older posts at our Wedding website. The whole honeymoon location is still very much up in the air. We got the pricing on Belize and it's a bit over our budget (and by a bit I mean a lot). So we're going back to the drawing board and are accepting recommendations at this time. I've heard St. Johns, St. Lucia...anyone?

An attempt at a real blog

So I was messing around online and found www.blogspot.com that allows you to register your own blog. I thought, this is exactly what I need. I'm going to try and figure this thing out so that my "blogging" is a bit more user friendly. It's going to be touch and go for a while, hopefully I won't be come frustrated or disinterested in this endeavor.