Second Anniversary

Misha and I celebrated our second anniversary today. We've actually been together for almost 6 years now. Sometimes it's hard to believe.

We celebrated by feeding Connor dinner, playing some Addams Family pinball and eating the dinner I made (New York Strip steaks, mashed potatoes and veggies) while watching an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent on the TiVo.

We're going to wait for the weekend to get out and really celebrate. Labor day weekend was spent doing things around the house and besides... EVERYONE's out and about Labor Day weekend, so we'd rather wait until attractions and restaurants have calmed down.

It's been an amazing and wonderful 2 years... here's to many, many more.

Cheers!

All Good Things...

One of our favorite things to do when we lived in California was to go to Las Vegas. And one of my favorite things to to at Vegas was to ride on Star Trek: The Experience at the Las Vegas Hilton.

I've been a fan of The Experience since it first opened and enjoyed it immensely. The practical effects were second to none. I mean, c'mon: they completely redress an entire room as you're standing in it (with the lights off) in about 20 seconds. And not only is the room different, it's seemingly inconceivably bigger based on the dimensions where you know you just were moments ago. I was lucky enough to take the "backstage tour" when they started offering it and got to see the workings of that effect with the lights on and it's still breathtaking.

The highlight for any Next Generation fan was a stop on a reproduction of the bridge of the Enterprise-D. (And if you're a TNG fan, you'll recognize the title of this post and its relevance.) As a special treat, the facility also hosted weddings on the bridge, something that was always a secret dream. (Ok, not so secret if you know my love of Star Trek.) I know my wife would never go for our actual wedding on the bridge, but she'd agreed it might be fun to do one day to renew our vows. Have I mentioned lately how much I love my wife?

But, alas, all is for naught, for The Powers That Be have decided that after 11 years, The Experience will be serving it's last patron on September 1, 2008. I can't believe it, and yet somehow I can see that it was inevitable. The Experience sits in a large section of the hotel and is attached to a Space-themed casino (complete with a mock-urinalysis when you used the men's room urinals) that was largely vacant most days. And the price of The Experience kept going up. And they gutted one half of the attraction to build an updated Borg 4-D adventure that was pretty cool but not nearly as groundbreaking as the original Next Generation ride (which was still there thankfully). Heck, they even Borged-out one of the fancy new Monorail cars to try to advertise the ride and get more traffic.

A lot of time and effort and money went into keeping that place running and there was apparently not enough to show for it so the hotel's owners decided that they could make more money with that space (no pun intended) if they got rid of The Experience and put something else there.

I'm sure we'll be back in Las Vegas one day soon. I hope whatever they decide to replace The Experience with is worth it. And a small part of me hopes they're able to save the sets and I'll still be able to renew my vows on the bridge of the Enterprise-D with my beautiful wife and some guy presiding who looks vaguely like Patrick Stewart.

Hey, a guy can dream...

Go west young man.

We just got back from Los Angeles and a faster-than-it-should-have-been tour of family and friends. In hindsight, we wish we'd had a few extra days to spend, but given that this was our first trip out of Charlotte since Connor was born, we wanted to be as non-disruptive as possible to his routine.

We flew out on Thursday and Connor was great on the flight. He had a few moments, but his ears didn't seem to bother him and he slept for most of the flight (props to my wife for holding him both times and allowing all the blood to drain from her arms so he wouldn't wake up.) At one point a woman suggested that we let him run around the cabin a bit to calm him down during one of his little fits. Yeah... lady... he ain't even crawling yet... Must be all that hair.

We landed in LA, rented a car, swung through Carl's Jr. for a Western Bacon Cheeseburger (Hardee's doesn't sell them out here despite being Carl's Jr. in alsmost every other conceivable way), drove to San Diego, checked into our hotel and had dinner with some friends at a Mongolian place we used to frequent. Yup, we're crazy, but it was fun and it proved to be better than trying to go to dinner with them on Friday night.

Friday we swung past our respective previous offices. We started the day at my wife's company's San Diego office where she had been working before we moved and she said hello to all the people still there and got to meet several new employees who only know her as a voice on the phone. In the afternoon we dropped in at Sharp HealthCare to visit my ex-teammates at Central Materiel Management. (Yes, "materiel" is spelled correctly, look it up.) A lot has changed there, but a lot has stayed the same. All in all a rather surreal event. We closed the day with dinner at Souplantation (which our friend Don astutely dubbed "Everything but the meal") because the nearest Souplantation in NC is almost 3 hours away (and fresh corn on your salad is not worth the price of gas to get it.)

Funny story, we actually looked into setting up a Souplantation franchise here in Charlotte with the equity from our place in San Diego, but all of their restaurants are owned and operated by the company so all we could do was send them e-mail begging them to consider opening one locally.

Saturday we drove up to visit Misha's Grandma and Uncle in Burbank. It was great to see them, especially since we weren't able to fly out to attend her 90th birthday party. Afterwards we went to her mom's house where her mom had hired a professional photographer to take pictures of Connor in a 150 year old Christening gown that Misha had been photographed in as a baby. They even used the same chair (though it has been reupholstered since Misha's photos.) The pic was one that Larrian's been eager to get since before we got pregnant, so we couldn't refuse her. Other poses were taken with Connor in his diaper and a cute outfit. The final pictures came out great, though the photographer's a bit on the pricey side so we're not sure how many we'll end up purchasing.

Sunday we drove up to my parent's house but stopped by Eden Memorial Park to visit the graves of my Aunt Bernice and Uncle George. Aunt Bernice passed away last April, right after we arrived in Charlotte and we weren't able to fly home for the funeral. She was an amazing lady, full of more life than most people I know, and with more energy than the average 25 year old. It was a great loss and since we were back in town and had the opportunity to visit her grave, I didn't want to pass it up.

Later that morning, we got to my parents house which was in the final stages of preparation for Connor's naming ceremony. A Jewish boy is usually given his Hebrew name at his Bris, but since we had him circumcised at the hospital and didn't have a formal bris, we wanted to have a get-together at my parents to give him his name and introduce him to friends and family who hadn't had a chance to meet him yet.

We gave Connor the Hebrew name "Chaim Zohar". "Chaim" means "Life" and "Zohar" means "Light" or "Brilliance". We felt this was a fitting name as he is the brilliant light in our lives. "Chaim" is also the masculine form of "Chaya" which was my grandmother Irene's Hebrew name and whom Connor's middle name "Raine" memorializes. The ceremony was very nice (albeit a bit sweaty since it was outside during a heatwave) and was conducted by Rabbi Don Singer who also married us back in 2006 so it was nice to have him also conduct this ceremony. A real Circle of Life moment. It was also great to see family and friends, though the afternoon went quickly and I would have liked to have been able to spend more time with everyone.

Then, Monday, we packed it all in and flew home. Another rather uneventful flight (except during taxiing to the runway when the turned off the air and Connor went nuts) and we got home late thanks to a delay in LA, but it was good to be home. A mixed feeling somewhat because it would have been good to spend more time at each our destinations. We were so rushed at times that I'm getting tired again just writing about this trip, but we managed to get it all in and then some, so all-in-all a smashing success.

First Anniversary

Ask me how hard it is to believe that it's already been a year. Go on, ask.

Really, really hard. Really.

Add to this the fact that in that year we've sold a house, moved across the country, changed jobs and become pregnant and you begin to realize just how fast the year has flown by.

That said, it was nice to have a three-day weekend to celebrate.

That said, we didn't get to do much celebrating because my wife was recovering from kidney stones.

That said, we did do some low-key celebrating. I cooked up some New York Strip steaks with rice and veggies. No champagne (pregnant) though we'll be sure to break open a bottle at some point and drink down some bubbly.

My mother-in-law sent us our cake, which has been taking up a bit of space in her freezer for the past year. We defrosted it and had a slice. It wasn't bad, though it wasn't as good as I remembered it was a year ago. It was almost like a year in the freezer had taken a bit of the taste out of it. Beyond that, the thought of eating something a year old was a bit... eww.




My folks sent us a clock, which is the contemporary gift for a first anniversary. Traditionally, the gift was paper. Not sure how that evolved. Not just any clock though, it was a clock that my Dad and I restored years ago and which was in my old room at their house. It's a gorgeous clock with brass accents and weights and one I've always liked for its beauty and sentimental value so it was a treat to see it emerge as we opened their package.

So over the next year we plan to take it muuuuch slower. With the exception of buying a house, giving birth and learning how to be parents. Yeah, so much for that "slow" plan, eh?

Updates - Round 2

So after most weddings, there's

The Honeymoon
My sister and her husband had had a novel idea: take 1 week to travel and 1 week to relax at home and unwind. We had decided this would be a great idea for us to do as well, except as we started planning it out, we wanted to squeeze a few more fun things into the 2 weeks and pretty soon, we were pretty much booked solid with no "unwind" time left over except for the final Sunday.

Our adventures began in Hawaii on the island of Kauai. We'd both been there a year earlier for a friend's wedding and we both really enjoyed ourselves and had a lot of fun so we decided to go back. We spent a week at the Sheraton in Poipu and over the course of the week we did all the touristy stuff: champagne sunset cruise, scuba diving, horseback riding, movie location tour (including the Jurassic Park Gate location below - please ignore the datestamp), innertubing down the plantation irrigation ditches and hiking through the rainforest. We also took some time to relax and tour the island. It was a good thing we left when we did at the end of the week; a few more days and we would have probably stayed.

Back on the mainland, we embarked on the second leg of our honeymoon: Vegas, baby! We both have a love for Las Vegas and we stayed at Treasure Island - sorry... The "TI" - in a very nice suite with a jacuzzi tub and the works. They sent a bottle of a really tasty champagne up to the room, which was very nice. I wonder how many times I can get away with saying that I'm there on my honeymoon? One of my coworker's brothers is a pit boss in the high limit room at The Mirage, so he got us fantastic seats for Ka (the Cirque show at the MGM). Fantastic, not free, but you can't complain when you're 12th row center (you don't want to be any closer or you won't be able to take in everything that's going on).

On our way back to San Diego, we stopped in Anaheim to spend 2 days at Disneyland. We stayed at the Paradise Pier hotel which is a bit of a hike to the park, but not terrible considering all the rest of the walking you're going to be doing during the day. The hotel greeted us with balloons and an autographed photo of Mickey and Mini wishing us congratulations on our wedding. We thought this was really cool, but then when we got back to the room at the end of the first day, the staff had turned down our bed and covered it in rose petals arranged in threes to form "Mickey ears".

Someone spent a lot of time on that, I'm sure. There were also petals on the floor from the door to the bed, chocolates on the bed, Mickey Ear Rice Krispy treats on the desk and a note wishing us a magical night.

That last bit was a little weird, knowing that the staff knew what we'd be up to that night as honeymooners (watching a movie and passing out... what were you thinking, eh?), but the gesture was certainly appreciated.

All-in-all a ton of fun and a fantastic trip the likes of which we probably won't be able to do again anytime soon.

I say ketchup, you say catsup

Alright, catch-up time.

For anyone following my gomberg.com homepage, my last update was in December, 2005. I know: I stink at updates. I was writing at that time to report that I had just asked my girlfriend of 3 years to marry me and that she had accepted.

So what's been going on in the past 18 months? Well... I'm going to do some major posting here to bring you up to speed. 1 Topic each post so that we can break things down a bit into more digestible chunks.

Ew. Sorry, proceeding....

Wedding
We waited a good month to let the reality of the engagement sink in before even thinking about the wedding plans. This was both good and bad, because those of you who have been through this blissful and insane period in your lives will know that locations and vendors book up fast, sometimes a year in advance. What it did do was allow us to thank all of the well-wishers and advice-givers in relative peace and comfort without feeling like we needed to rush into everything and end up with someone else's idea of a great wedding.

The first step was location hunting and after several weekends we decided upon The Victorian in Santa Monica. There was some parental hesitation because it could only seat 180 (150 comfortably and even then a little cramped) but we had fallen for this place so we eventually moved forward with everyone's blessing. The date we had picked was September 2nd and Vendors were all wrapped by the end of March. Or was it May?

The big day arrived quickly and was everything we hoped it would be. My wife and I had the time of our lives and hoped that our guests did as well. We certainly received a number of compliments over how well everything turned out and how much fun people had. We had really wanted to imbue the night with a bit of our own quirky selves and so we had a few personalized surprises such as the dinner music being songs from movie soundtracks; everything from Pirates of the Caribbean to "Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life" in Monty Python's Life of Brian.

The wedding really turned out to be a full weekend affair thanks to a Friday night rehearsal dinner and Sunday brunch thrown by my parents. Coupled with the "big day" (props given generously to my Mother-in-Law), it was truly a whirlwind weekend for my wife and I, made even more special by the friends and family who shared it with us (both personally and vicariously). Thank you.