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.