Building a computer: Un Puten, Puten Deux!

I actually kept a New Years resolution. For three years. In 2005, with a newbishly tricked out water cooled computer, I made a resolution not to buy any new components for my computer. For 12 months. 365 days. 8760 hours. 525,000 minutes...you get the point. Oddly enough I made it a year, and renewed for 2 more. Three full years without any major upgrades. (I got sick of the high maintenance water cooling setup and switched back to a regular air cooled system.) For any gamers who have wandered onto this site, you can relate to this eternity of time with an unchanged gaming rig. Needless to say, my computer is respectable by most standards, but a dinosaur in the competitive gaming world.

The time has (finally) come to build another computer. Instead of the usual process of building a computer: (Drool over product reviews for a few weeks, order parts, wait next to front door until parts arrive, build computer, play games until you develop bed sores on your hamstrings or seizures force you to crush your mouse.), I thought I would do a blog of our build.

Shannon makes quite the lovely assistant for something like this, but to the contrary, I will be the assistant, and Shannon will be the builder of said puter. She is excited to try her hand to build her lil Frankenstein! Masta become studennnn, Studennnn become masssta. :: Insert loud gong ::

Our puter-building adventure will be split up into a few posts:

Part I: Research & Development: Falling in love all over again
Part II: Nesting: What un-pregnant men do while waiting for their parts to arrive.
Part III: The build: Rise of Un Puten, Puten Deux!

Stay tuned!

John

Sundance in the snow

The Honeymoon: After the wonderful wedding we jetted off to a faraway destination known only as "Utah". Yes, some of you may be rathered surprised that either John or I would spend time vacationing in a state we aren't particularly that fond of in the first place. However, we were determined to spend our honeymoon in a cabin in the mountains in the snow. And Vail was a tinge out of our price range. Enter: Sundance, UT. Our arrival brought even more snow and thinking ahead we rented a 4x4 to take us on our adventure. And what an adventure it was!

This is where minor snafu #6 comes into play - the last and final snafu of our wedding. As you may or may not know, I've spent years staying at various hotels, using various hotel soaps, and never EVER had a problem. However, as coincidence has it, the Hilton in STL has a particlar reaction to me and my skin. And sadly before I realized this I managed to soap up my entire self.....thoroughly for that matter. My realization only came after I awoke the next morning to red splotches and immense heat radiating from every pore. If anyone has ever experienced a full body rash, I'm sure you'd agree when I say I would not wish this on my worst enemy! It leaves your legs doing the "jimmy leg" (on an already cramped flight to UT), and taking every brain cell in my head to calm my nerves for the entire 2 hours. Luckily for me I have a wonderful brother-in-law named Kendall that is a physician and doesn't mind waking every hour on the hour to instruct us on how I can obtain temporary peace. When we arrive in UT, John and I stock up on every medication in the book, lather it on, only for seconds of momentary peace before the pain returns. Warm baths, Cortizone, Benadryl, antibiotics, holding very still, all of these did nothing. I even resorted to wrapping myself tightly in towels, extra shirts, etc just to keep my skin from vibrating on the car ride around Utah. Luckily I was freed from my pain around the exact same time we returned from our honeymoon in Utah. I learned quickly that John was a wonderful caretaker and quite patient with me during my fits of craziness. Just as I already knew, I married a wonderful husband. Despite the incessant pain we did manage to see some fun sights on our trip. Below are the pics...

Eating at the highly recommended "Tree Room" at Sundance. Food was pricey but delicious. No Robert Redford sighting though. This is actually a live tree growing through the restaurant. We even scored free desserts after it took forever to bring them to us.

Here we are at the Joseph Smith Memorial building. We bribed a 12 year old girl to take our photo. She did surprisingly well I thought.

Here is our make-shift freezer/refrigerator. As it turns out our luxurious cabin doesn't supply us with such necessities. We find this out after we went on our shopping spree of groceries that require refrigeration. Our creative ingenious actually made for nice, chilled, refreshing sodas. It was even entertaining shoveling them out. What isn't shown in this picture are the cartons of ice cream, and frozen pizza.

The Wedding Day

Well now that we've joined the "blog world", I've decided to catch everyone up on our latest happenings. Dating all the way back to December 15th 2007 - The day my name changed from "Bell" to "Hufford".

I must preface this course of events with the fact that "something always goes wrong" on the wedding day right?? This was a saying I was familiar with - I just didn't realize exactly how familiar I would become with it afterwards or how many "wrongs" would be "going" on our big day.

Minor snag #1: I absently misplaced my "poofy wedding skirt thingy" with all the tule reception decorations and headed to STL without it. I experienced a fairly mild panic attack while my sweet mother made a few calls as we headed down I-70. Thank heavens for brother-in-laws named Kyle who sneakily re-entered the locked chapel and found it. After promising me many times that he'd bring it with him to STL I was quite relieved. After all something always goes wrong on the big day right? I told myself that if this was the "wrong" then all was well....or so I thought.

Minor snag #2: We (along with family from far and wide) narrowly escaped a minor (ok major) snow blizzard as we arrived at our hotel the night before the big day. Sigh of relief. However, we awoke to quite a bit of white the next morning. Luckily the STL Temple was only four miles away and John had a 4x4 truck to take us there. I spent the four mile drive getting bummed about the dark sky and snow downpour. How would we ever even SEE ourselves in our wedding pictures?

Minor snag #3: Wedding pictures....they actually turned out great. The snow added quite a bit of beauty to them. You can hardly tell any of us were freezing to death - especially me as I was in slippers and a short sleeve dress. I was determined to have great pictures so I pushed the pain aside, saved my shivering for the break in photog clicks, and anxiously awaited for the group photos so I could get some extra body heat. After about an hour of doing this, disaster struck. Family had left and John and I were taking some shots on our own. After a few, I mentioned to John that I had a wave of nausea, and scrambled for a seat inside the temple foyer. Immediately I had five family members at my aid offering me anything from Dr. Pepper, crackers, Sunny D, and honeybuns to regain my strength. What I needed more than any of that was a toilet. Realizing I didn't have time to make it back to the dressing room, I hiked up my skirt, ran through the lobby, and into the restroom with my loving mother trailing behind me. Yes folks, I puked on my wedding day. No worries, not due to nerves, due to lack of breakfast and long hours in the bitter cold with no insulation. (PS...My mother is a saint, and a heckuva personal assistant!)

Minor snag #4: On to the reception in Columbia (minus a few family members due to ugly roads). As some of you may know, I'm a silent worrier. I spent the two hour drive to Columbia wondering if anyone would brave the elements to come to our reception. The weather had gotten much nastier as the day wore on. Thankfully I have many friends who adore me and came to see us at the reception. It was a fairly decent turn out amidst a record snow fall. Everyone even got sent home with a goody bag of leftover reception food.

Minor snag #5: After our reception, John and I ventured right back to STL so we could catch an early flight to Utah the next morning. After such a long day with the wedding events, we spent 4 hours on a drive that normally takes 2, due to the whole entire freeway being snowed under. We spent half of that drive following 4 snowplows at a 15 mph pace. What a wonderful ending to an already exhausting day.

So.....something always goes wrong right? Well I learned that phrase does not necessarily insinuate that the "something" is in singular form. Especially when it came to our honeymoon in Utah but alas you must read the next post to hear all about that! I predict I'll have many people offering their sympathies soon.

Honestly, despite all the minor hiccups along the way, we had a wonderful wedding and the snow actually made for GREAT pictures. If anything, it makes for great story-telling. It was still the best day of my life because I married my wonderful husband. He is truly an answer to my many prayers.

The Beginning of an Era

Well I finally buckled down and did it. After spending the majority of my time reading everyone else's blogspots I finally decided to create one of our own. So here it is. These things are sooo addicting! Hopefully it is just as enjoyable to read as everyone else's even though there are just two of us and no kids yet. After all, it's a great way to keep a journal while keeping in touch with everyone.

So, for those who aren't aware....John and I just reached our 3 month anniversary this past March 15th. My little sister is good about reminding us of such momentous occasions since she and her husband got married exactly six months prior to John and I. Saves us lots of trouble in calculating and such....perhaps I planned it that way? Hmmm.....perhaps. ;-) I have plenty more to share about John and I but that will have to come at a later date. Stay tuned....

Anyway, invite us to your blogs all family and friends out there. If you promise to read about our boring lives we promise to read about yours! Deal?