September 19, 2004

TODAY IS JOHN AND MICHELLE’S WEDDING!!

Congratulations to John and Michelle Nicklin who were married today, whoo-hoo!

Min and I had to sleep in a bit today to recover from all of the travel yesterday. The hotel room left something to be desired, the room was so so but the bed was pretty crappy. Instead of a real mattress, there is just a cheap foam pad thrown on top of the box spring so the bed is super soft and saggy. And it really didn’t breath so one tends to get really warm at night as well. Soft beds are terrible for my back and for my sleep apnea [sp]. We got up just in time for me to shower and then rush down to get our continental breakfast. It was okay until I drank the last of my milk after eating my cereal and noticed that there were some chunks in my milk. Then Min tried her milk and discovered that it had actually started to rot and that made her pretty ill. So breakfast was not a phenominal success. So we headed back up to the hotel room so that Min could get ready and I could get into my suit.

It was around 11:00 when we headed out to Clearwater Beach and Sand Key Park. We went to the Sheraton Sand Key and waiting for John to come down to the lobby to get us. That took about twenty minutes (21, actually!) Then Min went up to the hotel room to help the girls to get ready and John and I headed outside to the Tiki bar to relax for a while before we had to head out for the ceremony. It is in the mid 80’s today, sunny and humid. Sitting outside in black suits was definitely a little bit warm. We didn’t really start sweating but it was very tempting.

At 1:30, John and I started rounding people up to go down to the park. No one was really ready so we stopped by the Mainstay Tavern inside the resort for another drink before going back outside. After that we headed out to the cars with Dan, Min and Alli to meet up with the wedding coordinator, officiant and the photographer. We were meeting them down on the beach were it was incredibly hot and there was no shade. John did okay but I was sweating out of control. Once there is sun beating down on my head, I am generally finished. Min got the flowers and drove back to the resort to meet Michelle and Kit.

Everyone went out to the point to get ready for the ceremony. I brought my Nikon 5005 rig with me to take analogue pics, there were two digitals there so we didn’t need anymore of those. The photographer that was there only shot two rolls of film so it was good that I was there because I got at least three off. It is really hard to shoot against sand, though, so we will see if any of my pics turned out. My camera doesn’t let me change the ISO setting manually and I didn’t have time to do all of the calculations manually we the pics could easily end up all too dark.

After the wedding we went back to the resort and stayed all dressed up and hung out at the Tiki bar with Nicholle the bartender for the afternoon. We were at the tiki bar from 3:00 until 8:00. We took a brief break to run down to the beach and take pictures at sunset. The sun was beautiful going down over the gulf. I always forget how nice the sunsets are on the Gulf of Mexico, I have only ever spent a tiny bit of time on the gulf coast. I find it hard to remember that the US has so much gulf coastline, almost as much as we have on either ocean once you look at all of the coast that we have in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. That is a LONG way around.

We all had dinner at Rusty’s at the hotel. It was really not busy at all, only a few other tables in the whole place had anyone at them. Dinner was pretty good. I wasn’t very hungry, I haven’t been all weekend. Just too much going on I guess. Everyone wanted to get to bed early since we are all flying out tomorrow except for John and Michelle who are staying down for the conference in Orlando starting tomorrow. Dad and Allison are flying out at 6:30 so they are really going to be exhausted, Min and I at 10:00 and Kit at noon. Min and I collected our stuff at 11:00 and headed back out to the hotel. We are the only ones staying in Clearwater instead of Sand Key. So we have to drive but our trip to the airport in the morning will be a lot shorter and easier than everyone else’s.

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