alison and eric

there was a "plan" for this day.

that plan was chucked before our breakfast was delivered to our suite at 800am. woo?

the plan was for alison and i to go out to the airport with alison's dad in a car. alison, her dad, my mother and grandfather would drive back into the loop to go the hotel and my father, brother and myself would take the el back in. we liked this plan because they were coming in at "non rush hour" and it would be a relatively simple drive. plus, alison would be able to spend time with her dad, my mom and my grandfather and i would be able to point out new construction and such to my father and brother.

my folks were flying in to o'hare at 1000am, but when they arrived at the airport in syracuse, their flight had been cancelled. i could go into a great amount of airline related detail -- things related to codeshares and stuff -- but let's just leave it as their flight was cancelled. so instead of flying SYR to ORD, direct, and getting in at 1000am central... they flew from SYR to LGA (yes, that is the wrong direction...) waited a few hours and then hopped a plane from LGA to ORD that got them in around 345pm central.

after catching some much needed rest after our air travel fun and excitement, it was time to work through some further details for the upcoming weekend. and, um, enjoy ourselves!

alison and her mom headed out to have her hair cut and styled. when i saw her later, my initial reaction will continue to be my opinion: WOW!!! it looks absolutely FANTASTIC! seriously amazing!! she cut almost 6 inches off and it is styled with beautiful waves and curls. it is seriously a WOW!

i headed out to costco, dominick's and sam's with alison's dad and aunt to get the rest of the stuff we needed for the rehearsal dinner. it was pretty cool driving around -- almost relaxing! we dropped off the stuff at barb and gene's -- thank you gene and ted for being there RIGHT as we drove up!

tom and i continued on to toons -- where alison and pam were after the hair excitement. we spent some time at the bar, just chillin' with their awesome bloody marys, the yankees game in HD and a cool guy at the end of the bar who works for accenture.

after going back to pam's to grab our stuff, tom drove us on the scenic route into the loop and to our hotel. it was cool to go down lakeshore drive -- as we had done quite a while back when we first started the wedding planning -- and then up the "mag mile" on our way to the monaco.

alison and i checked in to our MAD PHAT SUITE at the monaco. i cannot say enough about the room. it is a two room corner suite with huge windows giving us views down wacker, the river and back down wabash as well. huge plasma tv in the living room, an amazing comfortable -- and large -- bed and a jacuzzi tub in the bathroom! now THIS is livin'!!

we spent some time with the coordinator from the hotel and finalized the details regarding the ceremony, some martinis we are adding to the cocktail hour, the table seating plan and all the "little things".

josh and kat arrived near 830pm and we headed over to mccormick and schmick's for dinner. it was AWESOME! josh and i sampled MANY raw oysters and got through several bottles of really good wine (nice choices, josh!) before heading back to our suite for some more wine and great conversation! we gave josh and kat some previews of our cocktail hour and reception tunez, got through some yellow tail and a bottle of wine that josh brought (that they had at their wedding) and we just chilled out. it was very cool! we REALLY want to THANK josh and kat for dinner last night. youse guys ROCK!

we arrived in chicago on wednesday night.

sounds simple enough, right?

well... we had a car pick us up at our place at 215pm to get to LGA for a 400pm flight. we arrived at the airport at 245pm only to find that... our flight was delayed! ugh.

i was in my full sabres gear as wednesday evening was the opening night of the nhl season. we scheduled that flight to get us to chi-town before the beginning of the game. the game was scheduled to start at 717pm. our delayed flight? scheduled to leave at 717pm. we sat at the bar in the marine terminal as we gathered info on the delay. there was wind - big wind - in the, um, "windy city". eventually, our flight was cancelled. yes, cancelled. so we re-booked on the next flight -- which was scheduled for 832pm. i was excited to be able to catch a bit of the sabres game on the tvs that were at the bar. except that... the tvs were out of order! i hooked in to the wgr 550 feed on my laptop and listened to the first two periods...

when we got on the plane -- at 900pm -- the game was tied at 2-2. we then proceeded to sit on the tarmack until 1030pm and arrived in chicago at 1230am or so... the sabres DID win. in a shootout. 3-2. woo!

amount of time spent in the airport, on the tarmack or in the air: 11 hours.

this is craziness. hours and hours and hours trying to add/subtract literally tenths of an inch. printing and re-printing with both of us standing there like overcaffeinated birdwatchers encouraging the paper to come out and, then, the inevitable "dammit!" when we did not see what we wanted.

"shift the top margin". "shift the label width".

friggin' postcards.

there is way too much math involved with this. i swear to god -- we looked for a slide rule at one point.