Lots of beer

This barrell will take one person drinking a beer an hour 137 years to empty. My question. Where is the worlds largest pretzel to help wash it down?

Beer please

GeoTagged, [N38.63312, E90.20997]

So we finnaly hit up the americain institution known as the budweiser plant. Yup the king of beers or so they claim.

The Mantis that takes Saint Louis

GeoTagged, [N38.63223, E90.21501]

My friend is back and is rampaging through the city. Obviously he's grown. There must be an epidemic going on. No one is safe.

Seriously though this picture was taken from the 8th floor confrence room of my work. How she managed to climb 8 floors is a mystery.

Maybe she is trying to catch a bird.

I'm not a taxicab you know?

GeoTagged, [N38.64109, E90.25272]

So what kind of fare do you charge a praying mantis anyway. I found this baby riding my trunk and tailfin this morning when I got to work. It scared rhe crap out of me walking up my trunk yo observe from the higher perch She wasn't to happy to have her picture taken. But I figured it's the least shecould do for me since I gave her a free ride. Atleast she didn't get too mad and bite my head off. It's not a bug you see everday. I hope she knows her way home.

Mmmmm Cake

Today we tasted cakes and tried to narrow down flavors. I won't ruin the surprise by telling you what the finalists were, but I don't think our wedding guests will be disappointed.

We also narrowed down our favorite designs. Aesthically speaking, there are some butt ugly cakes out there. Ours will not be one of them.

Wedding Venue

So we visited the wedding venue today. Being a place that we have never visited but already forked out a lot of money to, it was a cause of a little stress for both Kim and I. Having only seen subpar pictures that were on their website we were a bit worried. However after our visit we can see that the place will work out great. It was a nice quaint little venue with lots of picturesque elements and a casual but elegant atmosphere. Exactly what we were wanting.

It is on Lake Whyle with nice gazebo we will probably use for the ceremony. It had a nice dance floor and a reception area. It was nice to find a place that handled the wedding venue the reception venue handles the catering and even supplies the cake (though we have to go to the designated bakery and taste test some samples later this week).

The place is a bed and breakfast, and we ended up renting he 5 rooms that the place has for the night of the wedding to accommodate out of town guests. The rooms are a mixture of Victorian and Cape Cod style and look quite nice.

Final Destination Unknown...

GeoTagged, [N35.21164, E80.83554]

Ok so we made it to Charlotte just fine, and after a short nap we are on the road again. This time for Greenville to hang with friends BBQ and hit up the pool. The accomidations on this trip seem to be bit less than my last. No Caviar or Grey Poupon. And the driving reminds me of the proverbial bat on it's way out of hell.

Ohh God our eyes

GeoTagged, [N36.01051, E83.83373]

The sun rises over Knoxville and blinds us both. After a quick pee break at one of those shady gas stations were the restrooms are on the outside and suppose to be locked but of course the locks are busted and the restroom trashed we are back on the road. I have relanquished driving duties for I be quite sleepy. Ashville is the next big city on route so we got some fun mountain driving ahead of us ohh joy.

Metropolis

Interesting to note there are two metropolis' between st Louis and Charlotte. One has a giant Superman statue. A tall man would hit just below the man of steel's...

Here is the OTHER city's Superman. Heeyyyy...he looks kind of familiar!

On the road agian

After five minutes on the road we have already entered our second state. That's not saying much when you live right next to the Mississippi River.

Ten minutes down the road and I had to have classic road trip food... The Ubiquitous Golden Arches.

Restart the blog

Well I got an iPhone for my birthday from Kim. Not that I cared to join the not very exclusive club, but I just needed a new phone, and it is frankly the cheapest smart phone out there right now. So here I am trying this blogging app on my iPhone. Now only if I can figure out how to add pictures I will add one I took on the phone while at work....

Well so far I can't post pictures via the phone but I can add them in later from my PC.. so here is that snazzy picture of me I was talking about.

Valentine’s Day Proposal

We had an eventful Valentine’s Day this year. I proposed to Kim. She thankfully said yes. We had a romantic evening to ourselves with flowers and chocolate covered strawberries and the like, it was a nice time and an ideal time to pop the question. I had been holding on to the ring for awhile waiting for the time to be right. I guess I am a romantic at heart in that regard. But I think the wait was well worth it.

One thing that I had not been expecting was all of the thousands of questions from the people we have told. Do you honestly think in less than 24 hours later we are already going to have a date chosen? Maybe people expect us to be prepared more, but everyone that knows me must know I am a bit of a procrastinator. Right now we are thinking over a 2010 wedding somewhere between March and May. Things are really up in the air in our life right now to try to pull something together sooner. We don’t expect to be in Saint Louis come a year from now so we probably won’t have it here. To save on traveling for all we are thinking Charlotte(which is our target destination for living as well by then.. but who knows)

Just two days later now and I have already seen a lot of dress choices, talked about venues, indoor or outdoor, catering, photographer, who to include in the wedding party and the like. Mind you no actual definite plans are being made I think we are just feeling out each other’s likes and dislikes. However the instant dive in caught me a bit by surprise.
But everything is good we are happy. I hope everyone else had a great valentine’s weekend as well.

Snow Days

So we just started getting a lot of Snow in Saint Louis. It is interesting. It is the first time I have had to deal with this type of weather as a working citizen. The roads seem to get plowed once in the morning and once before 5pm and then ignored. The car is easy to deal with if it is just snow, since that wipes right off, it is the sleet and freezing rain that can be annoying. We did have an ice storm a couple weeks ago, and I admit I did slide a small bit at an intersection, but nothing serious. The snow is still fun though. We did go out into a little bit tonight to play around. Might try to make a snowman tomarrow.