Less than 48 hours to go... I am excited, and nervous, and a little scared. Last night I had a great deal of nightmares - none about the baby, but nightmares nonetheless.

We had a pool party, of all things, last night. I didn't have to do much of anything, but I was still overwhelmed with the amount of people in the house. I went to bed early. One thing Jon did for me was to ask a young woman who is just learning to skydive to stay at the house and clean up in the morning.

Good God, Kristina! I don't think he meant 'clean the oil off the garage floor'! She did EVERYTHING! Kristina is from Lithuania and was an Au Pair for a while. She's nice and very calm. Jon and I are thinking about hiring her occasionally to help w/ Brenden. The nice thing is we can exchange her help for skydives.

So anyway, my house is CLEANER than it was last night. Can't beat that with a shovel.

I kept meaning to comment on this and it's about high time again: Congratulations many times over to Helly and Alan! They are now engaged, and that is so cool!

They both commented on how they met each other in Helly's blog: Here is Helly's story, and here is Alan's story. Alan is one of my oldest friends (along with Mark and Nancy); friends I've had since college. Only Hector and Victor, and Vasquez, have I known as long. Anyways I am sooo happy for Alan. And Helly, of course; one of these days I will get to meet her.

And I'm going to make a totally unsolicited suggestion for them: since I doubt Helly will ever convince Alan that a beach in the Caribbean is in no way the same thing as a beach in Florida or Georgia (different planets! Completely!), plus the cost might be prohibitive, I would like to suggest to them to get hitched in the Smokey Mountains, Tennessee.

Bear with me, guys! First off, befor Jon and I got out from under a mountain of debt we vacationed up there several times near Pigeon Forge. I also went up there for a friends wedding (I think it was in Townsend). Yes, it's the Redneck Riviera; that's part of it's charm!

There's a ton of things to do up there for one thing - from skiing to skeetball to shopping for cheapass tee-shirts. Plus, I always got a strange X-Files vibe from around there. I think it was caused by all the Ripley's Believe it or Not poop in Gatlinburg. Plus there's the kewl shark-infested aquarium and the spiffiest haunted house I've ever been in. But what I liked the most was the wedding I attended. It was low-key yet tasteful (in a Tennessee way) and PROFESSIONAL wedding. It was one of those Chapel O' Love deals, but for one affordable price, you could get a well-designed and well-run wedding that could be as traditional as you like. Everything ran like clockwork. I was truly impressed by the people who ran everything. Considering how nightmarish most weddings are, I really approve of forking over a wad of cash to these people and saying "do it".

All three times I was there we rented a house. Except for one that had a really shitty fireplace (gas logs BEHIND GLASS with a frickin' timer!!!!!) our experiences were good. Oh, back to that fireplace. I could pull my underwear down and stick my behind on the glass and maybe it would feel warm. The owners could have splurged on a bigger tv set and just stuck a video tape of a fire in and the effect would have been the same!

So just my suggestion to you both: if you want to plan a wedding/honeymoon not too far away with a minimum of fuss, think about Tennessee. If Jon and I hadn't done the Skydiving thing I'm sure we would have set it up there. Everything can make fun of rednecks all they want. There are some things they get right!