Guess what!

Well judging by the increase in hits to the blog today I see that sending out an email to friends about my getting married reminded everyone to check this thing out more often. Of course you loyal readers are now in complete shock because I never mentioned anything of the sort here either.

But it's true, I got married on Friday (Nov. 24th) to Deirdre in New York City. We had thought of getting married a couple of months back and figured that since neither of us wants a big wedding and has the time or money to put into something like that why not just go off and get married on our own. Plus with both or families in different countries and friends spread across the continent it's just easier for everyone this way.

The funny thing is that it's not all that simple a thing to get married at the drop of a hat. Ok, maybe it is in Las Vegas, but I didn't feel like having an Elvis impersonator marry me. See in Pennsylvania there is a three day waiting period before you can get married (funny how that's almost like buying a gun). In New York the waiting period is only 24 hours, from this I can only assume that the average bender lasts 20 hours in New York, whereas it lasts over 2 days in Pennsylvania.

So in order to get the marriage license in time we left Pittsburgh very very early on Wednesday and drove through the morning to NYC. Which succeeded in us timing our arrival at the Lincoln tunnel with every other idiot who lives in New Jersey. After that long slow journey we had the added joy of trying to find parking near the NYC court house and federal buildings, there's a fun new challenge. Particularly since it seems NYC like to play cruel jokes, such as providing a convenient municipal parking lot, that only takes special cards, quarters or dollar coins (which I've never seen), as payment in a lot that costs $2.50/ 30 minutes to park in. In the end we parked in a garage nearby for about $30, and we got to have our luggage searched before we left the car as well!

The rest of it was rather easy. Well, finding a witness for our ceremony was a bit tricky but we manage to borrow one from one of the parties in front of us. The really funny part was how fast the whole thing was:

-Judge calls us and witness into small room and asks us to close the door behind us.
-Judge: If anyone here knows of any legal reason these two should not be wed speak now.
-Me (thinking to myself): Who's going to object? It's a closed room with a hand picked witness.
-Judge: Do you Christopher Robin take this woman to be your wife...(it was so short I forgot what the rest was because the next thing I knew I was saying "I do.")
-Judge repeats vows for Deirdre then tells us to exchange rings and kiss, and we are done in about minute and change.

We ended up being in NYC from Wednesday to Sunday and enjoyed our stay and some of the city. We ate too much and relaxed a lot and really really didn't want to have to come back to the real world. But here we are and I should be back to posting again, but it's likely to be rather randomly as I have two job interviews in SoCal in the next couple of weeks. Oh and here's a picture of us in Central Park just in case you want to feel like you were there (and have cataracts).