A change is in the air...

Brent Says: I would never believe that I would be typing, "I am so happy to report that it was cool and drizzly all weekend," but yet it was and I AM! We were so fortunate to get relief from the heat, though in a most unexpected fashion ~ Damp, humid, drizzly, and mild. It felt like Oregon again, complete with the misty rain that never seems to fall but just hangs in the air. This used to drive me NUTS when I wore glasses!

On Saturday, Kat and I went our separate ways, with both of us working pretty diligently on wedding stuff. For me, the free ride is over as far as wedding plans go. I've got lists and charts and to-do's galore for the stuff I'm in charge of, which is only a fraction of what she has been managing with an incredible degree of grace and aplomb. So Saturday night, I went over to a manager from work's house in nearby Poway to play Poker. Check out what I saw on the way when I stopped to buy a coke at a little country gas station:



Sorry for the blurry photo - I didn't want to be too obvious and tried to get a drive-by as I left, but that is a Ferarri Testarosa... It was the picture of irony just before I took this, with the Ferarri right next to an old beater pickup - That's Poway...

Anyways, the game was fun. They were all beginners, and I play every couple of weeks, so it was a little bit of a slaughter at first before I realized that this was one of those, "Everybody plays" kinda games where you are not supposed to be super-aggressive. I backed off to make sure that I still had friends and / or a functioning key card at the office on Monday.

On Sunday, Kat and I went to Church, then up to the mall for some future-household shopping, and had lunch at this great little Mexican place called Hacienda de Vega in Escondido.

Kat, ever photogenic, in front of the restaurant

In the afternoon, we caught up with Bryan and April, friends of mine from my old church, who were having some folks over for a casual game night. We couldn't stay long, but Kat did have enough time to make a new friend:

Kat with Kassie

We closed the day with church again in the evening (Yes, we go twice on Sundays... I tell people that when you are as bad during the week as I am, you really NEED at least two services!)

All in all, a great Lord's day and great weekend. 4-weeks, 1-month to go until our day! Can't hardly wait!!!

Kathryn... You thought you knew her?

And she thought I wouldn't even notice this email? It's blog-worthy for sure! My personal favorites are her willingness to bungee jump for life-saving purposes only ~ (Bungee Rescue Squad) and her answer to the "listening to right now?" question that generally refers to music and she answers something about squeeky shrink wrap...

How could you NOT love this woman? Anyways, enjoy!

Getting to know Kathryn

1. FIRST NAME? Kathryn

2. WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE? My great-grandmother Kathryn Stanley.

3. LAST CRY? Maybe a week ago? Far too long. When I'm most sensitive to the world, I cry every other day or so. I know, it's odd.

4. YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING? I wish I dotted my i's and j's, and it looks a little scribbly like a boy's, but it's ok.

5. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCH MEAT? Roast beef.

6. KIDS? I'm only a proud aunt and future fairy godmother or whatever it's called. :)

7. IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU? Sure.

8. DO YOU HAVE A JOURNAL? Not right now, though I wish I did--so much going on to record!

9. DO YOU USE SARCASM A LOT? Everything in moderation.

10. DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS? Yes.

11. WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP? Probably not unless someone's life were at stake.

12. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CEREAL? Kashi GoLean.

13. DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF? No.

14. DO YOU THINK YOU ARE STRONG? Not in my own strength, no. But God is definitely gracious in the strength-giving department.

15. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ICE CREAM FLAVOR? Golden Spoon's peanut butter cup.

15. SHOE SIZE? 9.

18. WHAT IS THE LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOURSELF? Feelings of inadequacy and frequent inability to be content with the present.

19. WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST? My family. Everyone from Centenary, too many to name. Also my three closest high school friends.

20. DO YOU WANT EVERYONE TO SEND THIS BACK TO YOU? I'd love it, if you have the time.

21. WHAT COLOR PANTS AND SHOES ARE YOU WEARING? Medium denim jeans and black casual sandals.

22. LAST THING YOU ATE? Oatmeal.

23. WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW? The annoying sounds of shrink wrap and packing tape in the lab next door, which is moving.

24. IF YOU WERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE? Pine green. Or a half blue, half green--my favorite combo.

25. FAVORITE SMELLS? Old books, thanksgiving dinner, fresh laundry.

26. WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO ON THE PHONE? Heidi, yesterday, to say I was running 5 minutes late because I had to get gas before dance class.

27 THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE YOU ARE ATTRACTED TO? Intelligence without arrogance.

28. DO YOU LIKE THE PERSON WHO SENT THIS TO YOU? Like? I LOVE Danika!

29. FAVORITE DRINK? coffee, and now diet coke.

30. FAVORITE SPORT? baseball, rowing.

31. EYE COLOR? green, sometimes yellowish.

32. HAT SIZE? No clue.

33. DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS? No.

34. FAVORITE FOOD? Fish tacos, PB&J, New York strip steak.

35. SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDING? Happy Endings.

36. LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED AT THE MOVIE THEATER? Pride and Prejudice.

37. WHAT COLOR SHIRT ARE YOU WEARING? button down with small cheerful flowers.

38. SUMMER OR WINTER? summer, before it gets hot and humid.

39. HUGS OR KISSES? Both.

40. FAVORITE DESSERT? Mom's chocolate cake.

41. WHO IS MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND? Hmm, I hope everyone!

42. LEAST LIKELY TO RESPOND? Brent--this just won't make his to-do list (if he even gets to reading it.)

43. WHAT BOOKS ARE YOU READING? Just finished reading "A Sweetness to the Soul" by Jane Kirkpatrick and now "John Adams" by David McCullough.

44. WHAT'S ON YOUR MOUSE PAD? beautiful microscopy images of cells from "Nature Cell Biology".

45. WHAT DID YOU WATCH LAST NIGHT ON TV? Didn't have it on.

46. FAVORITE SOUNDS? crickets at night (I miss that), voices of friends, choral music.

47. ROLLING STONES OR BEATLES? Beatles.

48. THE FURTHEST YOU'VE BEEN FROM HOME? Belgium.

49. WHAT'S YOUR SPECIAL TALENT? swimming with my head above water.

50. WHERE WERE YOU BORN? Plano, Texas.

51. WHO SENT THIS TO YOU? My dear friend and former roommate, Danika. She is wonderful, and I miss her!

Dinner with Big Dave and Little Lisa

We got together for what was labelled during the evening as a "double-date" with Dave and Lisa on Friday. Dave owns the house I live in, and Lisa recently moved out here from Florida.

Lisa is a teacher, and moved out with an amazing amount of educational materials. They have it all loaded into our garage in a cubic-closest packed arrangement for optimal density. These folks need to get sponsored by the Container Store or something!



We did the old Pat and Oscars 20$ for 60,000 calories worth of food dealio, and they brought the nice WeightWatchers icecream and watermelon (To balance out the breadsticks, ya see?)

Plus we shot some hoops in our backyard court, and took a nice stroll around the block to a park that I had never even known existed!


Best find of the day! This is the ride of one of the people on a nearby street! I have GOT to get a ride someday in the stretch Hum-o. Now THAT'S classy! Its enough to make me reconsider our ride for the wedding... (Convertible is the plan right now~)

A week in a post

Brent says:

OK - So life is getting kind hectic these days ~ I keep finding myself sitting down to my computer at 11:30 at night and saying, "Oh well, I'll update the Blog tomorrow..." but then all of a sudden I'm like, "Dang, a week just went by. I'm such an idiot! GOSH!"


So anyways, its time for a recap! Monday was toastmasters - This is such a fun activity for me! Check out our new club page. We did a pot-luck to kick off the new term... I'm on a bit of a hiatus with them for now through the wedding. My goal next year is to win my way up through the regional speech contest, which is held in Hawaii!

Tuesday was a counseling session with Nate, our associate pastor, who is marrying us. Relatively tame topic about roles of husband and wives in marriage. Next time is finances and sex... They always save the best for last!

Wednesday was free for me. Thursday we had a dance lesson in PB. Hot, humid, muggy... I haven't seen this many sweaty people trying to dance since Purdue Grand Prix ~ We were dying afterwards!

John and Heidi with us after class

We've mastered Foxtrot... Are reasonably proficient at East Coast Swing, and have a loose hold on Cha-Cha. Salsa is in the nascent stage, but my freestyle warmup still wallows in an appalling level of un-funkiness. I keep trying though!

There's your week in review! No muss, no fuss!

OK... Mercy... We give up!!!

Somebody turn down the furnace, already!


Thermometer at my house

Temps are leaping into the triple digits out here in paradise. Yes, you say from Wichita, Kansas, its 110 where I live!!! But you sit in your air-conditioned house while I swelter with only fans and the night air to cool me down!

Somehow I know that Al Gore arranged this nationwide heatwave as part of his "Inconvenient" promotion... Its a double whammy of motivating people to chill out in the theatre while scaring the be-jeebers about global warming! Nicely played, Al, nicely played!

A Big Ol' Recap of the Last Week

Brent Says: OK! I promise! I will not let this blog slide into the memory of that which I once did but have lost the motivation to do any longer, like violin, kiteboarding, and regular flossing! The blog WILL survive ~ You just may suffer through some extended bouts of "summarizing" as life these days tends to be rather hectic.

"Full, but good," is how I describe these days of wedding preparation and planning. Kat especially has gotten incredibly good at mastering tons of details. This is going to be one heck of a well-organized shin-dig, I tell you what!

Anyways, heres a recap of what's gone down.

Last weekend we went to the San Diego Symphony Pops at the Embarcadero. Its this outdoor pavillion on a peninsula in the Harbor. Beautiful setting for sunsets and fireworks afterwards.



I'd love to show you more, but they confiscated my camera on the way in. Musicians are apparently all have a mortal fear of being photographed without their expressed written consent, so no more fun shots to share!

We are finally taking advantage of living just a few miles away from Torrey Pines State Beach. On this past Saturday we had a picnic within the reserve (We learned that picnics + rangers = :-( ) and then hiked down to the ocean. It still boggles my mind that I live here!

Surfers at Torrey Pines Beach

This week, we had our good friends Gord and Liz over for tennis and dinner. The dinner that Kat made was spectacular!



Tennis? Pretty much a brand new sport for both Kat and I. But we did well - We're at least approach "Old Person Tennis" where they purposely TRY to hit it TO each other, rather than to get it by the other. Gord's a great teacher, and we made some progress for sure.


Yum! Let's eat!

The rest of the week had its fair share of adventures. Dance class, Golf Lessons, service projects,... Sometimes I feel like one of those over-zealous parents who pushes their kids to do everything... except I'm the kid too! But God is good, life is interesting, and you really can't count on more than that!

Ciao~

Looks official, eh?

Wednesday, July 12

We got down to the San Diego County Clerk's office bright and early at 8 am today to fight get our marriage license. They warned us to prepare for a crushing sea of humanity trying to perform all sorts of civic functions, and to arrive early... There were like 20 people working in this nice office and then just us. Maybe some of these folks ought to transfer over to the DMV???

Anyways, the long-haired clerk named Jeremy got us all processed easy as you please, and gave us some interesting reading materials about the risk of genetic problems due to intermarriage. That may be normal policy... though I wouldn't have ruled it out that he was trying to tell us something: On multiple occasions we have been mistaken for siblings; I mean once would be an anomaly ~ We're talking a pattern here! I really don't know what that means, like whether we need to be more "couply" or if that would make it worse: "Oh gross, that guy's making out with his sister!"

Any ideas?

Anyways, here's the big "signing of the receipt for marriage license" - Quite a step in deed!

An unexpected visit from a very good friend

Tuesday, July 12

Last week, Jerry, a close family friend emailed me to let me know that he would be in San Diego for the funeral of an older relative. We were able to have him over to Kat's place for a little California cookout.

We had just enough time to zip over to the Torrey Pines State Beach to catch the tail end of the sunset.


Brent and Jerry at Torrey Pines

I am quite proud to say that it takes less than 10 minutes to get over to the beach... I'm a lot less proud to say that this is, I believe, the first time we jetted over for a sunset there!

*sigh* - Someday I am going to live in a flat, sunbaked mid- or south- western town, and I am going to say to myself, "Now why didn't I go to the beach every single day I was in California!?!"

So hopefully this was the first of many such beautiful beachfront sunsets for us!!!

Getting closer...

Sunday, July 9th

The brain trust is fierce at work at Old Poway Park, the site of our reception!




Kat and Virgina, scoping out the appetizer situation

By "brain trust" this clearly means that I have enough of a brain to trust that Kat and her sidekicks have all the capability they need to pull of a stunning wedding, right? *Grin* - Leaves me with time to take fun pictures while they get down into the details!




Fountain in Old Poway Park

It is truly amazing to watch Kat work on this wedding. She parses out jobs for me and everyone else, but all along has the vision for what the day will be like. I am SO impressed. The full-color PPT schematic of the wedding and reception site has to be the highlight for me so far... I will have to somehow figure out a way to get that on the blog.. It is SO choice!

Things are moving along well. Sept 3 is right around the corner!!!

The absolute best thing to make your day...

Is a picture of a Pug with an enormously oversized tongue!

(Kathryn is dog-sitting for such a fine animal)

El Fin

Brent Says: Kat and I have had a nice time reconnecting this weekend. It seemed like for the last couple of weeks that we've been "missing" each other somehow, so its been great to have some quality time to focus on each other.

On Friday evening we went down to the Night Zoo. I LOVE doing this ~ It's such a nice, low-pressure thing to do. We took a ride on the skyfari

And then a stroll through the giraffes, hoofed beasts, big kats, and of course, the zebras. The zebras had a little somethin' extra planned for the Friday Night Zoo, if you know what I mean -


On Saturday we went to a Catholic Mass in Latin in the morning. Not that we are Catholic or understand Latin, mind you, but all the same, it was a cool experience. I love the haunting melodies. I could recommend a slightly easier bulletin than the "choose your own adventure" format that they use, but hey, we were guests so we can't complain.

Marriage counseling workbook and errands followed.

If you know us, you know this is SO us!

We went separate ways on Saturday evening. Kat to have some friends from her old church over, and me to drag my buddy (and soon to be groomsman) Hank up to Lake Poway for some hiking.

The miracle of San Diego is that this is RIGHT outside the city limits

Wish you were all here!!!

When it just seems a BIT too ironic???

Actual sign seen in San Diego

Brent's Sierra Hiking Trip

Brent Says: With Kat scurrying off for Arkansas to hang out with mom and dad over the 4th, I was able to take a "guilt-free" hiking trip up to the Sierras with some buddies.

We got started on Friday afternoon with a chaotic departure... Wildfires shutting down freeways, a whole container of vaseline liquified and dumped into my pack, and we packed more stuff than I EVER thought possible into a rented Grand Prix.


Serop and Rey at departure

But after rolling into Motel 6 -Fresno at 1 am, and stepping around the 4 police cruisers and the paramedic who were actively quelling a fight, we got some rest and then headed to Florence Lakes in Sierra National Forest for a short hike to get warmed-up.


Wild Mountain Azaleas - Worth the stop by the side of the 1-lane road


Florence Lakes - View at start of hike

We camped in the Sierra National Forest that night, and then did our biggest hike the next day. Kaiser Peak, in the Sierra National Forest, is a solid 10,320 mountain. Its about a 11 mile hike, with 3K feet of elevation gain/loss. The best part was the snow field on top. We took ice axes and got to "play" in the snow. The guys taught me a lot about winter hiking safety and stuff.


Brent and Paul near top of Kaiser Peak

Last day was Mineral King, down in the Sequioa National Park. Its a GREAT little mountain hideaway. Sparse crowds, pretty remote, and with a lot of neat history from the families who have "grandfathered" cabins in the park.


View of Sawtooth Peak in Mineral King

Not too many photos of me conquering the hill. So sad- About 1 mile in, my goof-genes kicked in and I crashed my knee down on a rock and had to limp back to camp for ice and ibuprofin. So I missed a good hike, but know that this is a place to go back to.

All in all- A lot of fun, but I was DEFINITELY happy to get back to San Diego and celebrate the 4th with Kat.

If you don't have a view of the water...

Build one



I have to admire the ingenuity of this house I saw in Pacific Beach. Clever upstairs patio peaked them over their neighbors to get that coveted ocean view. Must have been an engineer living there!