I recently finished archiving a number of journal posts from my old LiveJournal account here on Musings For A Darkened Room.  Before I began seriously blogging I updated friends and family using the free services of LiveJournal.  At the time my blogging efforts were nothing more than journaling my daily life.  I would typically post about the ins and outs of my daily routine and only on the slight occasion did I post anything outside of that.  HOWEVER, I came across a few of those occasional posts which I wanted to share with some of my newer readers.  Most of them still hold some social value, or I just really enjoyed writing.

Understand obviously that many of these posts were written 3-4 years ago and my writing skills were not nearly at the level they are now, though I’m not saying they are exactly up to par just yet.  Hopefully these entries will pique your interest and bring back some life into these old forgotten posts. Enjoy!

Write It Just Like That, But Not Really – A post about school censorship and how we are striking down creativity and self exploration at a critical time in adolescent lives.  How can teens discover who they are if they aren’t allowed to be themselves?  Especially in this case where a student is told to write an assignment in a certain style and then gets severely punished for doing just that.

For My Fellow Pagan Bloggers – Have You Found Jesus? – A funny story that I shared from a Yahoo! Group that I belonged to at the time.  It tells of a woman who had been preached to by multiple people about religion in a single day and how she calmly, but comically responded to the last person.

God’s Politics – My response to a change made to the Kevin & Bean morning show which airs weekday mornings on Los Angeles based radio station 106.7 KROQ.  The changes which stemmed from a strongly right wing political environment were in my opinion unwarranted and ultimately show how the Christian values of politics and society have struck fear into corporations and the media.

The Story of Father Time – A funny anecdote about an experience I had with an elderly gentleman in a Carl’s Jr. restaurant who was convinced that only his Timex had the correct time.

Christianity, Striking Fear Into the Naive and Gullible For Centuries… – I repost a ridiculous list of warning signs that a church by the name of St. Mary’s Catholic Church provided parents with as an aid in determining if their teen was turning goth.  Sadly a large portion of the things listed are pretty normal behavior for a teenager.  A couple of my favorites are, “Insists on spending time with friends while unaccompanied by an adult.” and “Watches cable television or any other corrupted media sources.”

Wedding Invitations & Save the Date Cards – The last and only truly personal post in the group.  This post showed scans of both the Save the Date Card and Wedding Invitations that Misty and I hand made for our wedding using scrapbooking materials.  It was perhaps the most tedious task of my life, but it made our wedding related mailers one of a kind.

I have added a significant number of older posts dating all the way back to August of 2003.  Most of them again are just personal journals that I kept, many of which were related to my early days of dating Misty up until the point in which we were married.  I doubt there is anything of real interest outside of what I provided above unless you want to get a glimpse into my life a few years back.

I moved nearly everything that was hosted on LiveJournal over, however the account still exists and there are still a number of posts with either surveys and tests or just posts that I felt were too general and irrelevant to bring over to Musings.  If you’re interested you can still read the rest at A Day In the Dark

So it finally came. On October 23 Misty and I were wed. It was one of the greatest moments in my life. Everything went as we had hoped, and our only regret was that the reception wasn’t longer. I woke up early that Saturday in order to prepare for the day. As I finished getting ready, my best man Rick showed up with lunch. We feasted on Carl’s Jr. before leaving for the wedding. We arrived at the mansion around two, and we all looked dashing in our tuxes as we waited for the photographer. We started photos a bit early allowing us to get a little bit ahead in case people showed up late. Rick was in touch with Misty the whole time so that the two of us wouldn’t run into one another. We had one close call when Misty was pulling in to the mansion and I was walking back to the Pavillion, but neither of us saw one another. After pictures myself and the groomsmen head over the the Pavillion to help set up for the reception. My parents had hauled the centerpieces and candles for the tables and they needed to be unloaded. After helping with the reception we head back to the gazebo to start greeting the guests. Finally 3:20 rolled around it was ten minutes until show time. I took my place on the mansion porch as Rick and his brother escorted our mothers and grandmothers. Once they were all seated the groomsmen joined me on the porch and we waited for our queue to walk.

We received our ok and we followed the pastor to the gazebo. I turned and watched as Misty’s brother and her niece walked down the aisle as the ring bearer and flower girl. The two of them walked down the aisle like pros and neither of them wandered on their way to the front. Misty’s sisters then followed and each of them looked amazing. Then time froze as the pianist began playing the theme for the bride. I then looked to see Misty and her father walking down the aisle. Misty was in tears before even making it down the aisle. She looked so beautiful in her dress and I was in awe when I saw her. When she reached the front with her father the ceremony began. It went exactly as planned, we had asked the pastor not to use God in the ceremony and he respected our choice and didn’t. Misty cried the entire ceremony as I kept my composure and fought off my tears.

Following the ceremony we took what felt like a thousand pictures before heading to the reception where we were greeted with a great applause and an ocean of smiles. The reception started with a beautiful yet witty toast from Rick. This went great except for the fact that the servers looked over a handfull of people when it came to the champaign so many were left out of the toast. We then dined on a delicious feast of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, and a dinner salad. Misty and I had a hell of a time eating since almost everyone wanted to come talk to us while we were eating, but about thirty minutes later we finished. All the other ritual reception rites went on in a fast paced order following dinner. The first dance, the father/daughter and mother/son dance, cake cutting, boquet/garter toss, etc. By the time all of these flew by there wasn’t much time left for us to enjoy the reception and enjoying our guests. The DJ didn’t do too bad, we were a little upset that he played some rap towards the end when we asked him specifically not to play rap. Not to mention he only played a small portion of the songs we requested even though he said before the reception he got about 90% of the songs we wanted. At the end of the night we head back to the mansion loft where we spent the night.

The next morning we head home to open our gifts with plans to leave for the honeymoon just after. Sadly it didn’t work out that way and we wound up leaving for the honeymoon the following day since we got to a late start on Sunday. We arrived in Groveland, CA around 11 pm Monday night after getting lost and taking a long detour through Yosemite National Park. We stayed the week at a lovely bed and breakfast just outside of Yosemite. Sadly due to inclimate weather we didn’t get a chance to spend more than a day in the park due to snow. Tuesday we spent in a small town named Jamestown where we did some antiquing. The next day we head over to Sonora to pick up a few things from the local wal-mart and to buy chains before heading back in to Jamestown to check out a few of the shops that were closed the day before. We ate that night at the Iron Door Saloon, which is the oldest continuously operated drinking establishment in California. It has been around since 1852 and is world famous. That night I had my first Buffalo burger. It was really good. Bufallo meat has a sweeter flavor than beef.

Thursday morning arrived and we woke up early so we could visit Yosemite. Of course after we bought chains the day before the chain restriction was lifted. Oh well…We enjoyed all of the beautiful sights before heading back to the Inn. We left Friday morning and stopped at Solvang on the way home. The whole trip was beautiful and relaxing. The only downfall was that I got sick when we got home and have been home sick from work for the last two days.

I’ll post pictures later this week hopefully…

Well today is the big day. In just five and a half hours I will be married. The nervousness finally hit me yesterday and I had trouble getting to sleep last night. Alas I finally fell asleep around 12:30 or so. The bachelor party was last Saturday. It was a lot of fun. We started out the night at Hooters so the younger ones in my wedding party could enjoy the festivities. Afterward we head back to the hotel room we were staying at in Fullerton. After hanging out for a bit we did some bar hopping and enjoyed a few drinks. Most of which were bought by my friends :smiles:. I ran into a friend of mine that I used to work with at one of the bars. The sad part was, I was so faded I didn’t realize it was him at first. He started talking to me and I played along with it but still wasn’t sure if it was him. I think it was a mix of the booze and the dark lighting. We ended the night back at the hotel room where Rick finally got to drink since he was DD. Sadly everyone else was too faded to enjoy it with him.

Oh yeah, did I mention that the girls showed up with a surprise gift bag for us? The bachelorette crew showed up and sent up a bag containing sperm candy, open condoms, a vibrator, and penis suckers. Let the gay fun begin!

Last night was my first night this week I wasn’t stressed. Everything was done, no one was nagging me, and I got to spend time with some of my closest friends. Rick picked me up at about seven and after I gave my parents, Rick, and his brother their gifts for being in the wedding and helping we head out for the night. We picked up Joe after stopping at Best Buy and head out to Riverside for the Mission Inn Ghost Walk. It was really really lame, but at least the money went to help kids in the local ballet. The stories are allegedly true, however the people telling them were either horrible story tellers or kids with horrible reading skills. It made it kinda difficult to follow. I think the first and last stories were perhaps the best, solely because the reader did a good job. The only other exciting part of the night was that at the end of the tour you walk through a store called DragonMarsh. I only got to briefly look at the items they had, but I noticed they had a huge selection of witchy things and a wall full of herbs. I was really excited by this and I think on the 30th I am going to take Misty down there so we can see some more stuff. If you want to check it out their website is www.dragonmarsh.com

Well I am off to finish my bowl of chicken corn chowder. The next time I post in here it will be about the honeymoon in Yosemite. We leave tomorrow.