Rinsefirst

There are 10 days until the wedding. 10 days until I’m Mr. Justin Gehring. 10 days until I move out most likely for good. 10 days until I become responsible for not one, but two lives.

So on a deep level here (as deep as I get that is), what does this all really mean?

I have no clue.

Despite all my logic, all my planning, all my knowledge, all my experiences, all my observations. I have to admit, I’m scared shitless when it comes to the possibility of outcomes that could happen as a result of this one event. But that’s just it….

I’m doing this because despite all the possibilities, one thing holds true. That I want her to be a part of all of them. I want her to be there when JR makes it’s first million. I want her to be there when my first child is born. I want her to be the one that pushes me to be better. I want her to be the one that actually gets past my logic sometimes. I want her to figure out what’s bothering me. And most importantly, I want her happiness to come before mine (as much as is possible with me).

So why am I writing this? Is it to calm myself down? Is it be a sappy romantic?

Nope.

It’s non of these.

I’m writing this because sometime in the future, I will be fighting with Amber. I will be more frustrated than I ever have before. I may even ask myself, “why in the world did I marry this girl.” And when that happens, I tend to look to my past… And just maybe, I will look back to the posts surrounding my wedding day, and maybe that will be enough to remind me that it’s not the fight that’s happening that matters. All that matters is that she’s the one you want to fight with (so go make up already, your probably wrong anyway!)

I had a pretty great night this evening.

After a rather long day of getting the Bridge’s televisions setup at church, Amber met up with me and we decided to go out to dinner, hitting one of my favorite places to get Pizza, the Green Mill. From there, we came back to my house and began talking about wedding stuff.

In passing at some point, I mentioned that I wouldn’t mind heading up to Walmart around midnight to pick up Smash Brothers for the Wii (it came out this morning). That very quickly lead to, why don’t we go to Walmart and register then. So Amber and I left about 10:15, and spent the next hour and a half registering for our wedding. At around 11:45, I got in line (yes, there was a line of about 35 people, they had about 48 copies of the game, so everyone got one, but still… not bad for a game release that you could have pre-ordered. )

I picked it up, came home, and I smashed for about 30 minutes before calling it a night. All in all a great evening, both in time spent with my future wife, as well as in just plain non-work related fun.

Me after getting home with Smash Bros the night of it’s release.

I’m now two days back on my Blogging to the money posts… I apologize… It will probably be another 2 days before I get back to it.

This week has been one of those weeks where it was just event after event of things that I had to do… Life doesn’t slow down, and either do I.

Today, it was a funeral. Amber’s cousin of 27 years (Mike), died of a heart attack last Saturday. The wake and funeral were today, and my poorly dress self was there to support Amber for the day. I didn’t know Mike all that well, but from what I heard, me and him would have gotten along great.

I thought of a few things tonight as well:

• If I die young, it just isn’t as cool for other people… It has never really bothered me, but it just wouldn’t be as cool I like to think it would be
• That we can all do a little better to support one another.
• That kids are very innocent, but can be very very smart.
• That I don’t want my funeral in a funeral home unless it absolutely has to be.

That’s all I can write at the moment… I have work to do… Perhaps more later (or perhaps I will just edit this post).

I thought as we approached the end of this campaign, that I should make one more post with photos. These are from the last Christmas Party of the year. The last party we had took play on January 4th in the evening. It’s a party we have every year with friends from the old neighborhood. This year, Marty, Leslie, and David couldn’t join us, but we managed to all have fun without them. It’s amazing how old we have all gotten. I remember thinking at the party that most of us now are starting major careers, moving out permanently… Where as in my mind, it feels just like yesterday that we were playing Sim City on the Super NES.Without any further ado about this years party (which contained even more Guitar Hero 3), here are the photos:

Can you tell as I am getting towards then end of this month long campaign that I am getting dangerously low on things to talk about as far as my Christmas is concerned? In any case…

From Amber’s mother, I got a camera battery for my new camera:

Now many of you are probably thinking… That’s such a rather pointless thing to post about… I mean, really? What’s next Justin? Are you going to be posting about the memory card accessory you got as well?

Well before you go on that very rant thinking that Rinsefirst has lost all hope… There is a story behind this gift as well that makes it worth sharing.

Because of the weird calendar this year, my many Christmas parties were spread out over the course of 2 weeks. Amber’s immediate family came first (22nd), followed by Nebraska Christmas (23rd and 24th), then my immediate family on the 28th, followed by my mom’s side on the 29th, and Amber’s mom’s side the 30th.

What’s makes this gift amazing in so many ways is that I got my camera on the 28th from my parents (see my last post). I got the battery 2 days later on the 30th from Amber’s mom. Amber’s mom did not know I would be getting a camera for Christmas, and yes, she had slightly procrastinated my Christmas shopping. But thanks to Amber’s wonderful ability to relay messages about my mood at any given moment, she managed to tell her mom exactly what I wanted most after the 28th… Something I couldn’t even have possibly put on my list.

That said I thought it was one of the best efforts of the year in trying to make my Christmas special… And for that, I am very thankful.

One of the things I got from Amber’s parents was a Wii Points Card:

These “gift” card like objects provide Wii owner’s to purchase games on the Wii’s Virtual console. So far, I have used it to purchase Bubble Bobble and Super Mario Bros. 3, two classic NES games that for me are just fun to pick up and play from time to time (without having to hook up my NES). I’m hoping to save the remaining points for Goldeneye whenever that is released ;-).

I was surprised at how few Wii Points cards I got. Given the prevalence of gift card buying this day in age, I kind of expected to get a large number of these. In fact, I kind of expected to get a large number of gift cards like I do every year… But for the first time (and to my great delight), I got very few gift cards, and most of them were for food (which is always a good way to go with me because it forces me to get out of the house and do something with Amber).

In any case, if you need one more reason to purchase a Wii, let it be the virtual console… Especially if you never got the chance to play any of the classic Nintendo games when they were around the first time.