It took some time to plan, but last Saturday we finally had our event! We ended up going with EPIC Roasthouse on the Embarcadero as the venue, as we’d been there several times ourselves and the location right next to the Bay Bridge made for a beautiful view during the day and at night. We scheduled the event to begin at 6PM so our guests could enjoy the bay in the sun and also as the evening wore on could see the Bay Lights display on the bridge. We also did a quick once through of our wedding photos and had a few books of photos printed up to place on the tables so people could see some of our wedding photos.

From my perspective, evening went beautifully. I was able to meet some more of MJ’s colleagues and it was great to see some of my friends I hadn’t seen in a while (particularly with this crazy year, wedding + new job has caused quite the busy schedule!). My cousin who lives here in San Francisco was also able to join us, which was a nice treat since he couldn’t make it to the wedding either.

I was curious as to whether the food for an event would be on par with what we got in the restaurant, but it absolutely was. We had a limited menu that we selected for the event that people were able to order from (plus a vegetarian option). We also ended up staying about an hour past the end time for the event when they stopped serving just to catch up with people.

And with the end of the event, we wrapped up our final formal celebration of our wedding. Huge thanks again to all our friends and family who were able to join us. Now to finish those thank you cards and get our wedding photos online!

More photos from the event here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pleia2/sets/72157635129113141/

Our first visit was to the ruins of Ek’ Balam. This was a really cool site, with multiple structures to climb, including the huge main temple. It wasn’t until I climbed to the top that I fully appreciated how hot it was out (and that I hadn’t brought enough water!).

More photos from Ek’ Balam

I was pretty tired after wandering around those ruins in the heat, so I was delighted when our tour guide was able to find Cenote Hubiku, just north of Valladolid where we were spending the night. A cenote is a “a deep natural pit, or sinkhole, characteristic of Mexico, resulting from the collapse of limestone bedrock that exposes groundwater underneat” (wikipedia). There are thousands in the Yucatan and many that are equipped for people to swim in. Cenote Hubiku had a small admission fee and full, modern facilities for changing before swimming. We caught them at the tail end of their day, but got a good 20 minutes of swimming in the beautiful, cool cenote before being on our way. It was the perfect thing for post ruin exploration.

Photos from Cenote Hubiku.

For dinner we went to Taberna de los Frailes for a delicious dinner that included a grilled watermelon with cheese appetizer (which I wouldn’t have ordered, but the waiter recommended it). We retired for the night at Casa Hamaca Guesthouse which was a cute little inn in the heart of Valladolid. Even better, the proprietor Denis Larsen is a northeast US expat who was exceptionally welcoming and helpful the next morning as we enjoyed banana pancakes and chatted about everything from our shared love of Google Docs for collaboration to tips for the rest of our stay in the Yucatan.

We then spent the day exploring the beautiful city of Valladolid. We visited the small San Roque Museum and then spent some time walking around the main square. From there we did some shopping and I picked up a couple of the traditional embroidered blouses that Valladolid is famous for. We also got a couple of brimmed hats for further ruin exploration. Mid-day we met up with Angel who took us to the Convent of San Bernardino de Siena and Cenote Zaci – a cenote right in town! We didn’t swim but it was nice to visit.

Photos from Valladolid

Come late afternoon it was time to start driving toward Mérida to check in to Hacienda Xcanatun boutique hotel for the night. This former hacienda was one of the many in the region that used to be a sisal (fiber) plantation. This was my favorite hotel. The rooms were sprawling and while modernized, still held an architectural feel and basic layout similarities to what I’d expect from and old hacienda. We had dinner at their famous on-site restaurant of the same name.

Photos from Hacienda Xcanatun

The next day was Uxmal! Plus a couple other sites on the Puuc Route. Uxmal was a major city and so touring the ruins takes several hours. We managed to see most of it and had a lot of fun climbing around several of their major structures (only the largest and a few minor sites had climbing prohibited). This site really rivals Chichen Itza in how big and amazing the ruins are, definitely one of my favorites.

More photos from Uxmal

Next on our list to visit for the day was Kabah. Most amazing about this place was its famous “Palace of the Masks” which was a whole building covered on one side with ornate faces of stone. You’re allowed to climb up to and around the palace, making this probably my favorite small site we visited.

More photos from Kabah

The last ruin site we visited was Sayil where we just visited the Palace of Sayil (the site was very spread out, with buildings up to 1 mile apart). Like so many of these palaces, it was an impressive and imposing sight! No climbing up the structure allowed though.

Photos from Sayil

Our final new site of the day was the Ecomuseo del Cacao. Our first hint that this place wasn’t quite up to par with the rest of our day was the clue from Angel that, while a traditional Mayan thing, cacao doesn’t actually grow naturally in the Yucatan because it’s not humid enough. The museum had it’s moments but was a bit too polished and cheesy. It was nice visiting the grove of artificially maintained cocoa trees and the hot chocolate tasting at the end was probably worth the entrance fee.

Photos from Ecomuseo del Cacao

From there we headed back to Uxmal for a sound and light show. I hadn’t read great things about it online, so I was prepped for something really cheesy, but I admit having really enjoyed it. The main track being broadcast is in Spanish, but you can rent headphones in several languages so you can hear the stories going along with the show that paint a picture of what it may have been like in the height of civilization there. It was also then that I noticed how beautifully clear the sky was out there, you could see so many stars.

That night we checked into Hacienda Temozon. It was a beautiful property, advertisements for it are quick to tell you that Bill Clinton stayed there once and the only owned by a major American company. The rooms were large, but it turns out perhaps not the right place to stay during ant season. Staying true to some of the age of the place, it didn’t have glass on the windows so everything was quite open-air and the doors covering the windows didn’t seal (you could put your finger through some of the gaps). I did enjoy a wonderful Mexican omelette in the morning.

Photos from Hacienda Temozon

Angel picked us up in the late morning and, knowing our interest in cenotes, decided to take us to a less touristy one that he knew of, Cenote Kankirixché. It wasn’t a fancy, staffed cenote like the previous ones we’d been to, we had to change in the van and then it was just a hole in the ground and a somewhat questionable wooden staircase taking you down to the water. It was beautiful and refreshing though!

More photos from Cenote Kankirixché

From there we were off to the city of Mérida! First stop was to check in to the stunningly modern Rosas and Xocolate boutique hotel before heading across the street to the Anthropology and History Museum. The museum is located in the former Canton Palace and while all in Spanish the exhibits mostly spoke for themselves. My favorite exhibits were one of one of the earlier expeditions to the Yucatan where many of the Puuc sites we explored, seeing photos from those sites before they were uncovered and restored was really cool. They also had a local embroidery exhibit upstairs which, seeing them in context, made me really happy about my beautiful blouse purchases in Valladolid.

Then it was off to the Grande Plaza district of Merida where we had lunch at Amaro. We did some shopping and were able to visit the Casa de los Montejo and the Palacio de Gobierno with it’s captivating murals by Fernando Castro Pacheco. We enjoyed dinner back at the hotel and in all a relaxing night.

Photos from Mérida

Unfortuantely the adventures had to come to an end at some point, our last day was spent visiting the famous Chichen Itza.

Chichen Itza is a huge settlement and we spent over 3 hours exploring it. It was more crowded than any of the other sites we went to, but the benefit of going in the hottest part of the year is that it wasn’t overwhelming with people at all. One of the interesting things about it though was while it’s expensive for tourists to enter (up to 5 times as much as other sites), the whole inside was filled with vendors! Angel told us it was because it used to be privately owned and they owner brought in all these vendors, and when it was transferred to more government run thing they kept the vendors. At first it was a little off-putting to have so many vendors throughout the archaeological site, but I came to realize that these vendors were selling on-topic keepsakes that tourists (including myself) were interested in buying, and technically these people are descendants of the Mayans who built this city – this is theirs. It also brought a liveliness to the site that was lacking at the other sites, I appreciated them by the time we were wrapping up our day there. And what a day. You couldn’t climb any of the ruins but it’s probably for the best, even just walking among these giants in the heat was enough to tire me out considerably.

More photos from Chichen Itza

We spent our last night in Mexico in Cancun so we’d have easy access to the airport the following morning. MJ picked a hotel on the beach where we could have a romantic private cabana dinner. Perfect wrap up to our honeymoon :)

We then spent a much-needed week relaxing.

We had a stunning view from our room.

Hours to spend relaxing on the beach, or in one of their several pools where they brought us all the food and beverages we wanted.

Plus, chocolate strawberries.

I read my way through several books that I’d been wanting to read but never could find time for. Pretty much the only decision we needed to make all week was which of the top notch restaurants they had on site for each meal. I quite enjoyed room service for breakfast.

More photos from our stay: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pleia2/sets/72157633490351996/

We did end up making one excursion during the week, and that was to Rio Secreto, a nearby series of underground caves and waterways. I wasn’t sure what to expect since it was quite close to such a touristy area (tourist trap?) but my expectations were surpassed in all ways. We were geared up with water shoes (we opted to buy new ones for $10/pair), helmets and wet suits and we had a great tour guide, but it was far from a risk-free, polished tourist experience. We got a real feel for the natural caves and we had an amazing time swimming through some of the pools we were taken through in our 3 hour tour through 600+ meters of cave.

A photographer came along with to take photos and we paid the charge to download them all royalty-free, I uploaded several of them here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pleia2/sets/72157633479166189/

Alas, the luxurious stay had to come to and end at some point. The following Tuesday we packed up… but not to end our honeymoon! Instead we repacked to spend the next 5 days traveling through the Yucatán visiting Mayan ruins and modern Yucatán cities! But that’s for the next post…

The day began gathering with mothers, my aunt and the bridesmaids in the bridal suite of the Joseph Ambler Inn where we and most of our out of town guests stayed. Inn Manager Keenan Christiansen and Brian Cottman really made us feel welcome throughout our stay and during all the planning.

My maid of honor, Danita Fries, took care of morning makeup and hair preparations, bringing in Daneene Jensen and her team to take care of hair and makeup for all of us. Not being a makeup person, I wasn’t thrilled about the idea of wearing it, but Daneene made me feel comfortable and was great about keeping the makeup light and the look very natural. MJ’s Best Woman even stopped by with refreshments in the late morning so we wouldn’t be without lunch.

We met with our photographer, Melissa Morelli, at 1PM to begin taking photos at the inn. She was the photographer MJ hired for our engagement and a few months back she also did my head shots. We were really happy to have her join us in Pennsylvania for the wedding.

After photos at the inn, we took a small bus chartered by 1st Class Transportation over to the wedding venue, Talamore Country Club.

The weather was beautiful, which was quite fortunate as the wedding was outdoors and Melissa was able to take some great pictures throughout the venue before the ceremony.

Everything began the signing of the Ketubah we selected by Amy Fagan of 20th Century Illuminations and the Badeken.

Then, the ceremony! We went back and forth about having a videographer for our wedding and decided to go with one from the Mixed Media Productions, the firm our DJ, Mike Robertson, runs. In retrospect I’m glad we decided to have one, the photos are great but I was so overwhelmed (happy! excited! nervous!) that I can’t say I actually remember that much of the ceremony :)

It all went very smoothly. My mother and grandfather walked me down the aisle. We were honored to have Rabbi Elliot Holin work with us on the ceremony and finally to officiate.

We also held our reception at Talamore, starting with a cocktail hour in the garden room (this room was also backup for ceremony had it rained). Then dinner in their main ballroom which was decked out with the amazing flower centerpieces by Moles Flowers.

The rest of the reception was also pretty traditional, short speeches from family and friends, a first dance and cake! We selected a multi-flavor cake from Bredenbecks and I made sure to have a bit of each ;)

And in addition to being able to talk to many of our guests, we even danced a bit! It was an amazing night.

Afterwards we had a bit of an after party back at the Inn, giving us time to kick back and relax for a couple hours with some of our guests.

In all, things went as perfect as I could have imagined thanks to MJ’s attention to detail throughout the process along with some great vendors who were able to work with us on requests.

We’ll be updating our website in the coming weeks with tons more photos and other details of our wedding weekend which included family and wedding party dinners.

On Tuesday we’re flying to the Yucatan Peninsula to spend 7 days on a beach, and then another 5 days exploring Mayan ruins all over the peninsula. It occured to us while planning for the honeymoon that over the past few years we’ve certainly been doing a lot of traveling, but actual vacations have been few and we both really needed some time away. Regardless of internet access, I’ll be keeping my activities far away from anything Ubuntu or OpenStack, as much as I may be tempted to check in and help out. I really need to take this step back and relax so I can come back refreshed and eager to continue to help taking over the world with my fellow open source colleauges. Must not feel guilty about my inbox getting out of control, it’s as it should be on vacation.

Along with my Nintendo 3DS and games and a pile of science+nature magazines, I brought some books with me Medusa’s Gaze and Vampire’s Bite: The Science of Monsters by Matt Kaplan and Frankenstein’s Cat: Cuddling Up to Biotech’s Brave New Beasts by Emily Anthes. It didn’t occur to me until buying Anthes’ book that this will mean quite the creature-filled reading list! I also picked up a couple fiction paperbacks to zone out to on the beach.

It occurred to me while looking for books to bring that I hadn’t written lately about books I’ve been reading. Prompted by my study into Judaism this past year, I’ve been making an effort to understand religion in general more. My approach historically has been to find the “truth” in a very logical manner, which breaks down quickly when the topic is religion so I just left it alone. “I don’t really do religion” has been my response lately when asked about it. But in these past few years I’ve come to love and respect several religious people so trying to understand how and why the believe and participate has been an interesting path of study. In addition to reading various Jewsish commentaries on God, I picked up Religion for Atheists: A Non-believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion by Alain de Botton. It was a fascinating look into secular reasons why people build, sustain and maintain the traditions and beliefs in their communties. I did find that he touched upon pieces lacking in my own life, including having patterns of observance of special days and events throughtout the year which encourage reflection and thought on specific topics, something I’m really enjoying with my study into Judaism. I also read A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza’s Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age by Steven Nadler after learning about Spinoza’s “natural world” approach to God in our Intro to Judaism class. I’m no philosopher or religious historian, so having the ideas from the treatise broken down and summarized in modern English to regular people like me was essential to the work being accessible to me. It was an interesting read, putting some of our modern secularism in historical perspective. A friend of mine also told me about The Meaning of God in Modern Jewish Religion by Mordecai M. Kaplan, a co-founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, which I brought along with me on my trip for when I get into a more reflective, contemplative mood during our trip.

Beyond religion, while I was at the Southern California Linux Expo back in February someone mentioned the book Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell. I was skeptical, and understand that his work is a simplification of success, fortune and luck, but it was quite a humbling read. It’s easy to take a lot for granted and be overly proud of the accomplishments we’ve made through what feels like only our own hard work and talent. There’s so much more than that when you start drilling down into the stories behind many of the great capitalist success stories in our society, you have to have the opportunities before you can seize them and often this is out of our control. The person who recommended this book is involved with educating disadvantaged youths in southern California so he certainly has had a first hand view of the advantages some have over others from a very young age.

To shift to the other side of the pen for a moment, I was recently interviewed by a woman doing a story of fear of birds. She emailed me out of the blue and you never know how these things will turn out, but her article did end up getting published: Help! Those Things With Wings Are After Me! It’s funny reading this now, I feel so silly, but I can’t deny any of it. Chickens and vultures are little dinosaurs, it totally makes sense (then again, I’d totally pet a tiger given the chance, natural selection fail).

Now it’s time to pack up my netbook and get settled in here at the Inn. Our next several days are pretty packed with errands, family, rehearsal, dinners and more!

The weekend I went from Copenhagen to Philadelphia was an extremely long one. I left Copenhagen on a 6AM flight on Saturday, connecting with a 3 hour layover in Frankfurt (my 4th stop in Frankfurt during this month of travel, for those who are counting). MJ picked me up at the San Francisco International Airport when my flight came in Saturday at 2PM California time. We went home, swapped my suitcases and got him packed for the trip, stopped for some lunch and to do some tidying around the condo to prepare for the pet sitter. Around 9PM we caught a cab with all our luggage for our 11PM redeye flight to Philadelphia. Thankfully I managed to sleep for much of this flight, and when we got to Philadelphia we were able to get a nap as soon as we settled in before meeting up with some of MJ’s relatives.

The trip to Philadelphia this past week was almost exclusively family-based, and the first I’d had with MJ this month. We were in town to coordinate a move for one of his relatives and that left time for little else. While my other trips this month certainly weren’t vacations, this one was even less so with mornings starting around 6AM each day so we could be on site to coordinate with packers, movers, storage considerations and more. Nights were also late, returning back at our place of lodging (we stayed 3 different places) after 9PM each night.

We were able to carve out some time for some fun though. When driving through Mt Airy one afternoon we passed the Trolley Car Diner where I had to stop and take pictures of a very familiar form – a PCC street car!

Once the furniture part of the move was done, we had no where to sleep! So we made our way over to the Joseph Ambler Inn for a couple nights. Just a couple miles from the wedding venue, this is the inn where we’ll be staying during our wedding in April and have reserved a number of rooms for guests coming in from out of town. The visit gave us a nice opportunity to visit and check out the grounds, we hope to get a proper tour next time we’re in town as the one we had scheduled fell through due to scheduling issues. They had an amazing complimentary breakfast including pancakes and eggs and we were able to enjoy a great dinner one night while visiting with our friend Nita one evening.

Entrance to series of buildings at Joseph Ambler Inn

On Saturday I was able to meet up with Nita, Crissi and MJ’s cousins Ariel and Lauren to go wedding dress shopping! I was pretty apprehensive about this, dresses aren’t my thing and in spite of looking at some dress pictures these past few months, I still was completely clueless when it comes to dress styles and had no idea what would look good on me. I spent the next 90 minutes trying on 7 dresses and selected the 2nd one I tried on. I love it, it sure made this Leia feel like a Disney princess! I bought a tiara to go along with it.

Saturday night it was dinner with family and then back to finish the remaining portions of the move. After 3 hours of sleep, we were on the road again by 6:30AM on Sunday doing some final storage runs and spent the rest of the day packing and finishing last minute errands.

Sun rising as we drove over the bridge to New Jersey on Sunday morning

We made it to the airport pretty late, but thankfully Hertz does a courtesy drop off at ticketing when you have a lot of luggage in a rental car and we’re both enrolled in TSA Pre which allowed us to sail through security without a line and with our shoes on. We were able to grab a couple hoagies to eat on the plane and board as soon as we got to the gate. The flight home was uneventful and I was relieved when all of our luggage joined us at the end.

Some more photos of the trip are available here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pleia2/sets/72157631991639918/

I’m now trying to get unpacked and do laundry, adjust to the time zone and get a handle on my to do list before returning to work on Wednesday. I anticipate it taking some time for me to get back into the swing of things but it’s great to be home!

I will admit to one venue though because it was an attraction and I took a bunch of pictures: Morris Arboretum hosts weddings. It’s an amazing place and would make for an absolutely stunning outdoor wedding, if it didn’t rain. We were able to walk around the arboretum until closing to get a feel for it and I took several photos (including some of alternate wedding sites), I’ve uploaded several here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pleia2/sets/72157629331826836/

We’ll probably pass on it due to a variety of factors (not the least of which is depending upon no rain on a day in April in Philadelphia is not a great thing). We have narrowed it down to, at most, 4 venue options. We’re now going to work with the potential officiant to figure out about dates and then work from there to decide on our final venue. I’m excited, nervous, and had my first wedding-related nightmare a few nights ago – about rights to our wedding photos. I’m exceptionally laid-back about all of this planning, but if there is one thing I’d go bridezilla about it would be photos. I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that we’ll be paying out of our nose to get full resolution digital copies and a non-commercial license that grants us the ability to print AND put the photos online ourselves. I wouldn’t be at all happy with just prints or with some digital photos on a website owned by the photographer that I can’t store securely myself.

This trip has uncovered dozens of other things we need to decide. The wedding is still over a year off but the venue selection is a major dependency and once we make that decision we’ll be able to move forward with many of the other decisions. We’re also dealing with not only planning remotely, but a wedding party that’s scattered all over the country. We’ll most likely be skipping the bridal shower entirely and be doing destination bachelor(|ette) parties (Hello Las Vegas!). Thankfully my maid of honor, Danita, has offered to help in any way she can with wedding planning stuff.

We were also able to catch up with some of our friends and MJ’s family while we were in town, but not nearly as many people as I always want to. I got to enjoy some of my favorite foods (Cheesesteaks! Soft pretzels! Rita’s! Dunkin’ Donuts! Hoagies!), this time I didn’t overdo it too much and I made it to the hotel gym twice. We’re planning on coming back at least twice before the wedding to take care of some things, do the catering tasting, get our marriage license…

We also went to the Giant Mysterious Dinosaurs exhibit at The Franklin Institute. I was excited when this exhibit came out but feared I wouldn’t get to see it. It happened to be the perfect thing to do to keep us awake after the redeye that put us in Philadelphia early Wednesday morning. I had a couple cups of coffee at a diner following the flight and being entertained by dinosaurs (Mamenchisaurus!) was enough to keep us awake until we were able to drive up and check in to our hotel in the afternoon.

It was a good trip. I will say, I adore San Francisco, but I am always sorry to go home after a visit to Philly. Next to Maine, the Philadelphia region is where I’ve spent the most years of my life and it’s where I finally found a great deal of strength and independence. Upon reflection, there were no doubts, and barely any discussion, when we decided that we’d go there for our wedding.