Brian-Foley.net

We just returned from a quick vacation in San Francisco. We went there for the Dida-berger & Horn-aleusky Wedding, which was a lot of fun. The flight was long, and I have to say, I don’t think I’ll fly on Frontier again. For the flight there, we had horrible seats (last row, next to the bathroom), and we hit some crazy turbulence. Coming home our original flight was canceled so we only had one flight back, at 6:00am, so we had to leave really early.

Mandie and I flew out Wednesday evening with her parents. We arrived in San Francisco really late, after checking in at the Handerly Hotel in Union Square, we crashed, since it was about 3AM our time.

When we finally woke Thursday, we had a chance to meet up with Mandie’s brother Louis, who took us around to run some errands, and to show us his kitchen and bath design business, la Dimora Design. In the afternoon, we joined Matt and went out for lunch. They had made reservations for us at Yank Sing for Deem Sum, which was fantastic. Later on, we went to the market and got some steaks and fish to cookout and just visit for the evening.

Seven stories of shopping!

On Friday after breakfast we went and did some shopping. Mandie is in love with the seven story Macy’s (that’s ALL womens clothing)! In the afternoon, we met up with Mandie’s other brother, Kris, and his wife Robin, her cousin Fran, and our niece Addison (who just turned 1!). We went out to lunch and then hung out afterwards, driving around sightseeing and shopping.

Cupcakes!

Saturday we all met up for breakfast, and then walked around shopping afterwards. The wedding was later that afternoon. We all met up on Treasure Island, where we had a chance to watch the Blue Angels air show. I took some video with my iPhone, you can watch here on qik.com, and the photos are here. Right after the air show was the wedding ceremony. The “secret” Las Vegas performer was Bud E. Luv. He performed the ceremony and later did a Las Vegas style show for us. We had a delicious buffet with steak and salmon as the main dishes, and for dessert, CUPCAKES! The photos are here.

Overall we had a really great time. We love hanging out with family, and wish we could spend more time on the west coast with Louis and Matt. It’s a trip we’ll have to do again sometime soon!

Welcome back!

I finally got around to uploading our photos from the cruise we recently took. It’s taken me a little longer than I was hoping to get them posted as I have a boatload (heh, no pun intended) of digital photos that needed to be sorted and organized in iPhoto. I’m hoping in the future it should be quicker for me to get photos from the camera to the web, especially with the new Eye-fi wireless memory card (Thanks ma!). Click here to see the cruise photos on smugmug.

Casey and Michelle's Wedding

Yikes! It’s been a few weeks since my trip up to Rochester, NY. Another year, and another wedding. I think this will be the last one for awhile. I won’t know what to do with myself next Sept/Oct. Any how I’ve posted all the photos in the gallery. It was a very nice wedding, held outdoors at the Burgundy Basin Inn. The reception was also right there, where they had an excellent dinner buffet setup.

Something else I discovered, in a most unpleasant way…My driver’s license is revoked in the state of NY. So we were heading home from my brother’s bachelor party, It was just myself and my step dad, Jim. I was driving as Jim had a few more drinks than me. I was less than a mile from my parent’s house when I noticed a cop sitting on the opposite side of the road. This is an area that I’m very familiar with, and I know the police there are dicks. Well, I was guilty of tapping my brakes, which to them makes me a suspect of anything. Of course he pulls out, follows me few a few seconds and puts his lights on. So I decided to pull into a shopping plaza that was only about 100 yards up the road, instead of stopping in the middle of the road, there was no shoulder at the spot where he signaled me, and it was only a two lane road. When the cop gets out, I decide to do everything the way they say you should to not piss off the office, I shut the car off, put my hands on the steering wheel and tried to be very polite and respectful. He walks up and lays into me about not stopping the instant he put his signal on. I tried to explain in a calm, cool manner that I didn’t think there was any harm in pulling into the plaza to get out of the way of traffic (not that there was any at 2am). It didn’t matter to him. So he asks for license and registration. I asked him for permission to reach for my wallet, to get my license, while Jim was shuffling through the glove box for the registration. He takes the information back to his car, while we sat for about 3 minutes before at least two more police cars came up on us with there lights shining. You’d think that we were some escaped convicts or something with that many police. I guess the doughnut shop was closed. When the officer returned, he asked me if I knew that my license was suspended. I told him no. He explained to me that it was suspended in 1993 for lack of insurance. Well, I moved to Florida in 1993. Nobody ever told me that when you move to another state and get registered in that state, that you have to return the license plates back to the state of NY, or else they expect you to have NY State auto insurance. Anyhow, the officer told us that I could not drive, I thought it might help our situation if I explained that I was the designated driver and we were less than 2 minutes from our house. That didn’t matter to him, he said unless someone comes to get us, we’re going to have to have him take us home. Well, since it was about 2am, and my mom’s car was in the shop, and the officer wouldn’t let us walk home, we had no choice but to have him take us home. It was a bad experience, I didn’t enjoy that one bit. Oh, and tot top it off, the officer said that in order for me to resolve this issue, I would need to pay a fine of $4/day from the time my insurance lapsed. Well that’s about $19000. No thanks, I’ll just hire a limo each time I go to NY state.

Smokin!

It’s been quite awhile since I last posted anything. Between work, my brother’s wedding, and our wedding coming up, I’ve been too busy to post. A couple weeks ago we flew to Rochester, NY for my brother’s wedding. Since I was one of the groomsman, I got to wear the rental tux! We just purchased a video camera, so the digital camera didn’t get used all that much, which is fine, as everyone else now has digital cameras. So maybe we’ll get to see some of the pictures from everyone elses cameras. I still need to figure out how to transfer the video to the computer to edit and make something nice out of it. We wanted to get it for our wedding coming up here in November.

While at the wedding I managed to reinjure what I just found out is a torn meniscus in my knee. I’m trying to schedule an MRI now for the doctor to look at before he operates on it. We are trying to get it done ASAP so that I can heal before our wedding and honeymoon.

Grilled Pizza Gone Wrong

This Memorial Day we decided to stay at home and relax a bit. We attempted to cook pizza on the grill. The first time we did this it came out pretty well. This time, well…Something terrible happened to the dough when we tried to flip it over. Mandie went to the store and bought french bread pizzas instead.