I have such a good man.

To my darling husband, Jim:

Happy Anniversary! I love you!

This is a post from Nicki Faulk’s Birthplace of the Process of Illogical Logic

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Jim and I ate a few bites and saved a small chunk for Jessie to try. We snapped off a few shots:

So score one for Wal-Mart, their cakes freeze well.

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I think we did OK.

To my darling husband, Jim:

Happy Anniversary! I love you!

This is a post from Nicki Faulk’s Birthplace of the Process of Illogical Logic

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My and Jim’s one year anniversary is a week from today, and with that our trip and travel deals less time to concentrate on this. I had originally set a week from today as my “go live by” date. With any luck, I’ll be done in the next couple of days, so I may move it over sooner.

Anywho, I just wanted to post a note of warning … if you see the site down or something’s looking “off”, it’s just me futsing around at the controls!

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Looking back, I don’t even remember HOW I initially found Soldiers’ Angels. This would have been 2, maybe 3, years ago. Things were hectic in my life — but then again, things are always busy. After the wedding, I had some time off from everything to think about what I was doing with my life. I thought to myself, “I have a great family. I have a great job. We lead a pretty simple life, but … ”

Part of me felt as if I wasn’t doing enough — I was missing something. Sure, I did a little charity work here and there, but nothing that felt really meaningful to me. I never felt needed, or as if I truly belonged to a particular cause.

You know, you hear it all the time from various inspirational stories printed online or emailed around via chain letters and such — “one person can make a difference.” I can honestly say that I never FULLY believed that until I joined Soldiers’ Angels. I can honestly say that this is the most rewarding and humbling experience. I’m constantly wow’ed by the awesome men and women in our military that I’ve spoken to and corresponded with over the past year.

I’d like to share a few examples that I have run across only recently:

A thank you from my first adopted soldier:

“I just wanted to say thank you so much for mailing me the letters they mean a lot to us over here. We all look forward to the mail that any Soldiers Angel send us. It is always nice to receive a caring work from home.”

“Mail, believe it or not, is the biggest part of our day; at home we make no time to go look at the mail box, but here we make nothing but time to go and see what we got.”

Comments from another grateful soldier:

“I just want to thank you in your support. It means a lot to the Army and a lot to me as well to know that there are people who support what we do. I think the biggest request would have to be phone cards. Other than that, the simple things are the greatest things such as Hygiene products, snacks, and moral support. Again, I thank you.”

An email from Anthony:

“Hey this is Anthony, the soldier you once wrote. I just wanted to let you know I stumbled upon the letter you sent me and reading it over made me rethink why I enlisted. Again I just wanted to say thank you for taking your time to write.”

A quote from a soldier who received some TLC:

“This Soldiers’ Angel thing is crazy and cool at the same time. We just got mail today again and I got 26 Angels that sent me cards and packages. It was almost overwhelming, but it kept me busy most of the morning. One of my sergeants was trying to screen my letters for inappropriate stuff but I know he was just looking for the single females that live near his home town. He was cracking me up this morning … everyone wants to be my friend now because I have enough candy and hygiene products to make a small army really clean and have no teeth! LOL But it’s nice, I think my mouth was like four different colors yesterday from all the candy I was eating.”

Another hero tells us:

“Thank you for everything you do for us. It is so great to get something from the US, no matter what it is.”

Our heroes aren’t the only ones affected. When I received my first “thank you” from one of my adoptees, I cried. Nothing hits closer to home than true, honest appreciation. I have always admired the brave men and women in our military and wholly appreciate their efforts with all of my heart. It never once dawned on me that someone may appreciate my efforts (however small I thought they were!).

I know I am not the only one. Take this post from PeggyV just before Mother’s Day:

“One of my adoptees is a hero who has been silent since I adopted him in September 2007. Each letter is a struggle since I know nothing about him. Imagine my surprise this week when I received free mail from Iraq and it was Zach! The letter only contained the following, “Happy Mother’s Day. I know you don’t have kids, but you have been like a Mom to me this past year.”

“Wow, let’s all remember that the silence may be hard sometimes, but they really do need us. His few words are priceless to me.”

There are so many more stories like the ones I just posted. Perhaps you have one you’d like to share? Feel free to post to the Soldiers’ Angels forums, or if you’d prefer, the comments form below. I’d love to hear them.

(cross-posted to Bama Angels)

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So far, for her assignments, she’s written about karate and cartoons — two subjects she knows very well. LOL! Her assignment this week has been to write a description 5 paragraph essay. She was showing it to me last night — she wrote about dogs. She mentioned that her teacher encouraged her to write about something else (as the majority of the class wrote about animals!), and she was stumped and out of ideas.

I named off several things that she knows well: her various video games (UT!!), Harry Potter, Webkinz (too much like animals she said), Neopets, … she rejected them all and I was running out of ideas. Looking over across the den, we have a box of wedding stuff waiting to go into storage. I suggest writing about her part in the wedding. No dice. My next suggestion: How about the honeymoon?

“Huh?” LOL, she gave me a puzzled look that made me laugh, “You know, Disney World?”

Her face lit up like the 4th of July. Eureka! I hit gold. :mrgreen:

She scrapped the paper she had previously written and started at once writing a new one. She let me read it just before bedtime last night and she wrote more about the hotel cafeteria and pool than the Disney World park itself. LOL!

Good thing we went there instead of the royal caribbean cruise I had been eying, hehe.

So my little budding writer was all happy and giddy when I left for work this morning. She was still talking about the paper she wrote last night and can’t wait for her teacher to read it.

That’s my girl! :cool:

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Oh well, hopefully something will come along soon. I figure, if anything, it’s warmer now and I can take up walking and running at the civic center again. That’s free. Free is good.

I want to lose a little weight, not much, but close enough to my pre-wedding weight. I can really tell a difference with the amount I’ve gained back and the lack of consistent exercise/activity … I ache more and generally don’t feel as well as I did. (and it doesn’t help that my meds make me want to eat EVERYTHING in sight!)

The other day when Jim and I stopped by Wal-mart, I stopped to look at a hoodia display. I haven’t seen a whole lot about this particular supplement, but I do know several people who swear by it. Part of me (the logical part) tells me that I need to talk to my doctor and see about getting something that she recommends, but another part of me wonders if it really works and maybe I should try it …

Of course, every time I bring up my weight with my doctor, she tells me that I don’t need to lose any.

This is a post from Nicki Faulk’s Birthplace of the Process of Illogical Logic

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Ok, after fighting it for at least a year (maybe two?), I’ve fully widgetized my theme. It wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected, but then again, once I figured out how to re-write things in the functions.php I started zooming right along!

I’ve been playing with a few widgets here and there. I found a Twitter one that works ‘ok’ … but I’m a bit annoyed because I had to tweak its code in order to get it to display the way I wanted. I haven’t been able to find a recent comments widget that I like (yet), so I guess I’ll keep looking for that.

I updated the WP Plugins in Use list on the Links page. Looking at it prior to updating, I hadn’t realized how many plugins I had deleted until seeing that list. I think I got it down to about half of what it was before.

I’m already working on another plugin for WordPress … this time it’s an XHTML 1.0 Strict friendly alternative to target="_blank" for opening links in new windows (many thanks to Mark @ Weblog Tools for the idea and code to get me started!). Hopefully I’ll have that done soon.

Married Life

Something that a lot of people have asked me lately … “How’s married life?”

I didn’t think it would be much different, and mostly it’s not. Sure, I have a new name, a different tax filing status, and small legal changes here or there, but I didn’t think it would be too different. In a way it’s not, but there are times when I find myself marveling at having to call Jim my ‘husband.’ Not ‘boyfriend’ or ‘fiance,’ ‘HUSBAND.’

It’s hard to explain … but it’s cool. Things are good. Money’s tight, but at least we’ve finally paid off the last of the wedding debts. It’s good. We’ve bought furniture. We’re looking forward to maybe going back to Disney World for our anniversary. We’re looking forward to buying a house.

It’s nice. :cool:

Of course I’m still getting wedding advertisements and bridal magazines. Part of me misses that craziness — but then I remind myself of how neurotic the whole thing made me. Heck, we’re still getting brochures from various places all up and down the east coast (from back when we were still shopping for honeymoon spots). The place that runs Branson condos is still sending me stuff once a month, LOL.

I think I’ll call this weekend and let them down easy.

This is a post from Nicki Faulk’s Birthplace of the Process of Illogical Logic

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It took him all day to realize it, but he remembered.

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My last Twitter (prior to this post) pretty much summed up my day:

I hate hate HATE hsbc auto, I swear this company employs the most moronic imbeciles on the face of this planet.

Over the past 3 months, I have tried to get my name and contact information corrected on my account with HSBC. They have had our email addresses and phone numbers wrong ever since we bought Jim’s car. I put off correcting that information because I knew I’d have to get my name changed after the wedding.

November: I called and requested the procedure for getting my name and other account information corrected. I was told to mail in a copy of our marriage license and an outline of what I wanted changed, and sign and date it, and a confirmation letter would be sent to me when the account is updated. So I did. A month later, nothing updated in my account, no letter from HSBC. So I called, and was told that they must not have received my letter. So I sent another with another copy of our marriage license, even included a screenshot and highlighted the information that I wanted changed. I waited another month, heard nothing, account still not updated.

I called in just after the new year. I was told that “something was received” but there were no changes to the account and the CSR couldn’t tell what had been sent in. I explained my frustration, and was transfered to the clerical department. I was then asked to fax in a copy of the letter that I had already sent in TWICE and wait another week to check back on my account.

So a week ago, I faxed it in. I checked my account this morning and my name was finally changed, but NOTHING else had been touched. At this point, I was beyond aggravated. I called HSBC Customer Service. I explained why I was calling and quickly summed up my previous efforts to get my account updated. The first person I spoke with was not helpful in any way. She told me that my account had previously been updated, I asked why the updates were not reflected in my account online. She said she didn’t know. I also asked why I didn’t receive a confirmation letter stating that my account had been updated. She told me that they don’t do that. When I asked to speak to a supervisor next, she wanted to know why I wanted to speak to her supervisor.

Why the hell do you think?

I told her that I had a grievance and wanted to speak with someone who could help me. It wasn’t my intention to complain about her, but that didn’t stop her from putting me on hold and transferring me back to their AUTOMATED MENU SYSTEM. I was furious. I called back, and got her again. When I told her that I was still waiting to speak with a supervisor, she hung up on me.

At this point, I was livid. It was bad enough I had to keep calling back, and each time I had to hunt through their automated menu system to find an option that would get me through to a real person — they removed their “speak to a customer service agent” option some time ago. I have not spoken to a CSR that actually SPOKE ENGLISH in over a year. On top of that, that pinhead was not only being non-helpful in the worst way, she was PISSING ME OFF!

I called back again and finally got through to a CSR. I explained who I was and why I was calling and that I needed to speak with a supervisor. I finally get through to a supervisor and of course his English is broken. I explained why I was calling and the trouble I had been having trying to get my account updated. I think I frustrated him as much as I was frustrated by the previous CSR because I had a hard time understanding him and kept having to ask him to repeat himself.

In the end, he agreed to get a letter out to me confirming the account updates. I’ll tell you this much, I will not ever again use them as a financing institution. I get letters all the time from them for things like auto insurance promos, offers for home insurance quotes, and so on. They won’t get any more of my business — as soon as we’re able, I’ll be re-financing with someone else.

This is a post from Nicki Faulk’s Birthplace of the Process of Illogical Logic

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1. You can properly pronounce Arab, Cahaba, Opelika, Sylacauga, Oneonta, Eufaula, and Wedowee.
2. You think people who complain about the heat in their states are sissies.
3. A tornado warning siren is your signal to go out in the yard and look for a funnel.
4. You know that the true value of a parking space is not determined by the distance to the door, but by the availability of shade.
5. Stores don’t have bags or shopping carts, they have sacks and buggies.
6. You’ve seen people wear bib overalls at funerals.
7. You think everyone from a bigger city has an accent.
8. You measure distance in minutes. (It’s about 5 minutes down the road)
9. You go to the lake because you think it is like going to the ocean.
10. You listen to the weather forecast before picking out an outfit.
11. You know cowpies are not made of beef.
12. Someone you know has used a football schedule to plan their wedding date.
13. You have known someone who has a belt buckle bigger than your fist.
14. You aren’t surprised to find movie rental, ammunition, beer, and bait all in the same store.
15. A Mercedes Benz isn’t a status symbol. A Ford F-350 4×4 Extended Bed Crew Cab dually is.
16. You know everything goes better with Ranch Dressing, or Ketchup.
17. You learned how to shoot a gun before you learned how to multiply.
18. You actually get these jokes and are “fixin’” to send them to your friends.
19. You have used your heater and air-conditioner in the same day.

    Finally: You are 100% Alabamian if you have ever had this conversation:

20. “You wanna coke?” “Yeah.” “What kind?” “Dr Pepper.”

One of my coworkers sent me this. I’m guilty of a few of these … particularly #12.

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Vendors and Services We Used

Online Wedding Planner / Organizer: The Knot — The Knot offered a great online organizer service that allowed me to track and keep up with events associated to the wedding and the wedding planning process. They offer a ton of services, but what I found most useful was the adjustable checklist and portable guest/gift registry. I used the guest list to generate mailing labels for addressing the invitations, and the same for using the gift registry for generating mailing labels for thank you notes. I can honestly say that using The Knot’s services made my job a little easier. Wedding planning is hard work, but their website’s services helped me keep my chaos organized.

Wedding Dress: My Sister’s Closet — Someone on eBay referred me to her online store. My dress was new, never altered, and came at a very reasonable price. She shipped quickly and the dress was packaged very well.

Flower Girl Dress: Ducklings & Daffodils — Also a gem found on eBay, she shipped quickly and everything was packaged very well. Description was slightly inaccurate, but she was pretty quick to fix a mix-up, and overall I am pleased with the dress.

Wedding Location: The Birmingham Botanical Gardens — We were blessed with beautiful weather, and despite the drought all summer, the gardens were still as beautiful as ever. We paid a deposit of $100 for one hour in the Japanese Gardens. We also had the option of an hour rehearsal in the Japanese Gardens which would have had to been scheduled prior to the wedding (we ended up not needing it). The reservation also provided that we could setup as early as 30 minutes before the wedding. The gardens staff also allowed us to use their back gate so our guests would not have to walk from the visitor’s entrance at the main gate. (this has to be requested prior to the event!) All in all, we had a VERY lovely ceremony and I highly recommend the Birmingham Botanical Gardens to anyone who is looking for a wedding location.

Reception Location: Marriott Fairfield Inn & Suites — Unfortunately the reception room at the gardens was already booked for our date, so we held our ceremony here. This worked out in our favor for several reasons: 1. we needed a backup location in case of rain (the gardens’ rain shelter only holds 15-20 people); 2. we were able to start setting up the day before the wedding and did not have to rush; 3. we rented a suite in the hotel that was large enough for me, my entourage, and several others to get ready and do other wedding-related things the day before and day of the wedding; 4. the reception hall we rented was plenty large enough to hold everyone and several more, and was only right down the hall from our room so we could scurry back and forth getting things packed up during and after the reception. The Marriott staff were accommodating in every way possible and were a huge help in making our reception go as smoothly as possible. They went above and beyond when it came to customer service and we will definitely be using them again!

Miscellaneous Location / Meeting Room: Gardendale Civic Center — We used rooms at the Civic Center for several small and miscellaneous things related to the wedding. We met here with our pastor to cover the ceremony program as well as our consultation. We also used it to gather with friends and family to put together the wedding favors. The civic center staff have always been helpful and very accommodating. Their rooms are reasonably priced and book VERY quickly; so if you’re interested, give Linda Harris a call as soon as you have your event date/details!

Wedding Favors: Oriental Trading Company, The Paper Works Outlet, Elizabeth’s Treasures — My wedding favors comprised of large take-out boxes from Elizabeth’s Treasures; chopsticks, candy, magnets, and filler from Oriental Trading Company; wrapping materials by Paper Works Outlet. I had pleasant experiences with all three. The Paper Works Outlet is a local business (metro-area Birmingham), and was only a short drive from work or home. Their staff was very helpful in giving advice and ideas, as well as helping me look for anything I needed. I ordered online from both Oriental Trading Co. and Elizabeth’s Treasures; both shipped quickly and were quick to answer any questions I had.

Wedding Dress Alterations: Just Alterations (205-914-3081) — Located in the strip mall located beside the Gardendale Post Office, she was easy to work with and always very accommodating to my crazy schedule. She not only did a great job and worked quickly, she offered a lot of useful advice. I’m pleased to refer anyone I can to her, as I believe that no one else could’ve done a better job than she did with my dress!

Photography: His Hands Photography — I’ve never enjoyed having my picture taken until I met Samantha. She instantly put me at ease and I was able to enjoy the sessions and just have fun. Her husband used to work with my husband, and she was also referred by several people I know. She did both my bridal photos and wedding day photos. She’s also done a few sessions for my brother-in-law and his family as well as my mother-in-law. She does excellent work and works with you to meet any and all needs you may have. I highly recommend her services to anyone looking for a photographer for special events or for any photography needs in general!

DJ Services & MC: DJ Vez — Both my husband and I have worked with him in the past. Not only did he do a great job with the musical layout, he also helped keep the festivities rolling by making announcements and prompts when needed. We have enjoyed his company as well as his friendship and would recommend him to anyone in search of DJ’ing or music services.

Wedding Cake: Wal-mart — Yep, believe it or not, Wal-mart’s prices were very reasonable AND the cake was both lovely and delicious! The only thing they didn’t do that most everyone else did was deliver. That was no problem for us because the nearest Wal-mart was only a few minutes from the reception location. Wal-mart did a lovely job on decorating the cake and provided everything we needed to set it up as we desired. The price was the well within our budget and we even had filling added to the largest layer — our guests LOVED it!

Hair & Makeup: Merle Norman, Linda’s School of Beauty — Prior to the wedding, I had a makeover done at the local Merle Norman studio. Unfortunately they were not available to do my makeup early the morning of my wedding (they would not be open early enough for me to get it done), but they were very helpful in showing me how to do my makeup and what colors/tones to use to get the effect I wanted. Pretty much the same for my hair, Linda’s would not be open early enough for me to get mine done that day. However, I’d gained a lot of advice and tips previously and their staff (students) have always done a great job on my hair. I highly recommend both of these establishments to anyone looking for hair and/or makeup services!

Local Wedding Resources

These are various wedding-related resources that I ran across in the course of my research: Alabama Bridal Directories, Brides.com, Bama Bride, Alabama Bridal, Weddings Alabama, Alabama Wedding Magazine, Brides Club

Other

Eventective – This handy tool helped me refine my search for ceremony and reception sites. You can customize your searches based on location, need, size, etc. Not just for weddings either, you can use Eventective to look for event sites for just about any occasion. Using this site helped me narrow down my research to a select group of potential sites and provided just about all of the information I needed in order to evaluate whether or not I could use a particular company/site.

Also helpful: Frugal Bride, Cheap Wedding Ideas, Greater Birmingham Convention & Visitors Bureau, Shop for Weddings

This is a post from Nicki Faulk’s Birthplace of the Process of Illogical Logic

Copyright © Nicki Faulk · All Rights Reserved