I haven’t posted here in a long time…and this really isn’t a post yet…just a small observation.

I just re-took a politics quiz that I took in September 2006 (since the election is coming up) and it’s interesting to see the result.  I’ve moved slightly away from the conservative side, and slightly away from statists.  This poll puts me right smack dab in the middle of the grid.  Maybe that’s why I’m having a hard time deciding who to vote for in the presidental race. 

UPDATE:  Click here to see my original poll results! 

Your result for The Politics Test…

Centrist

A centrist believes in moderate government intervention in both personal and economic matters. They tend to be somewhat ambiguous, as they may have the oppurtunity to pick the side of any group surrounding them on any given issue. They generally believe in a moderate social safety net and what they consider to be a balanced stance on personal liberty. Centrists tend to emphasize compromise and cooperation between partisan groups.Take The Politics Test at HelloQuizzy

It finally happened!  I’m married!  Nicole and I have set up a website where you can keep tabs on the new Barnard family.  The website URL is http://www.rnbarnard.com.  I’ll continue blogging here at nitecrawler.net, although it’ll probably be as frequently as I have been lately.  Maybe after life calms down and we enter into a normal married routine I’ll be blogging more frequently.  We are working on a “trip report” for our honeymoon that will be available on the rnbarnard.com website fairly soon.

I’d blog more right now about the wedding, but I’m at work, so I probably shouldn’t.  In brief, it was awesome!  We had such a great time and it was so cool to see everyone there.  I only wish I had more time to visit with you all.  We’ll just have to set up times to hang out now to make up for it.

I know that there are some people who read my blog who did not actually get an invite to the wedding…I’m sorry about that.  We maxed out the capacity of the reception site way before we thought we would.  That is to say, there were a lot of more people that we wanted to invite, but we were just not allowed to fit any more people into the room.  The invitation list was probably the hardest part of planning the wedding.  Hopefully you won’t hold it against me and we can find a time in the near future to visit and catch up.

Thanks to everyone who helped make Nicole and my wedding so successful and memorable!

And let me just say…Italy is an awesome country to go visit.  I highly recommend it.  Check out our website in about a week to see the full details that we wrote up about it.

Wow, I haven’t done a blog post in 50 days.  Which means that 50 days from TODAY I get married!  Nicole and I have been crazy busy working on wedding stuff like invitations, decorations, flowers, and all that fun stuff.  It’s coming along quite nicely though, and we’re both still extremely excited about it and not feeling overly stressed about it.

In other (but similar) news, my project at work has entered crunch time.  It’s getting hard to balance everything that I need to get done at work, at home, and for the wedding, and then still have free time.  But so far things are working out alright.

Nicole and I have started watching a new TV show called New Ampsterdam that we find pretty fun.  It’s one of those shows about a detective (John Ampsterdam) who solves murders.  The twist is that he can live forever (until he finds his one true love).  He has lived in New York since before it was New York.  He changes jobs every 10 years or so and has had many wives and families (remember, he’s trying to find his true love.  I guess he’s had a lot of close-but-not-quites).  It’s a pretty fun show…definitely not the best one out there, but still pretty entertaining.

Oh, my laptop died a while ago!  That’s the 2nd HP/Compaq that’s bitten the dust for me.  They seem to live for an average of 2 years from my experience.  So I got a new laptop.  It’s a…brace yourself…Mac!  That’s right, I bought a Macbook Pro.  And I love it!  It’s so great!  I can’t believe it took me this long to make the switch over.  It’s a solid machine with great hardware.  It’s not bulky or heavy.  And Mac OS X is just leaps and bounds better than Windows XP and Vista.

Just 100 days left until Nicole and I get married! The wedding preparations are coming along pretty smoothly so far. Most of the big stuff has been taken care of or we at least have a good handle on. We’ve got a photographer, the venue, lodging for out-of-town guests, and Nicole’s wedding dress. We’re meeting with the caterer this coming weekend and we’ve talked with a few florists. The invitations have been started and we should be getting most of the rest of the paper needed for them this weekend.

This has been a great process to go through so far, and we’re having a blast with each other picking things out and planning the various things that we want to do for the ceremony and reception. I’m sure these next 100 days will go fast as we continue preparing for the biggest day of our lives.

Thank you to everybody who has helped out so far (especially our parents)! Without all your support and help this could have been a much more difficult process.