Foremost, I got married.

Married? Yup, married! October 4 is a day that will live in infamy.

Marilynn and I went to Gatlinburg (the Disney-wannabe of Tennessee) to tie the knot. We didn't tell anybody because we wanted a stress-free wedding. From license to arrangements to the ceremony taking place was just shy of 24 hours, which was relaxing and fun. The rest of our time there was vacation and honeymoon. Of course, if you can consider sitting on the sofa of our chalet eating microwave food and watching TV on our wedding night a "honeymoon," but we're good (or is that lame?) like that.

Still, I'm glad that my monkey girl and I are official now. It's been a long time coming, and I love her a lot!

As a funny, I wear a size fourteen ring, so getting platinum was out due to expense and Marilynn is allergic to gold. Therefore, we ended up getting titanium rings. (They're pretty snazzy, I think, and really light! I feel bad that they weren't that expensive, but I feel better knowing it's cheap to get it remade or replaced if I damage mine. I'm really dangerous to things I wear, just ask my clothes or watch... or work pager, or glasses, or...) Anyway, when we took the clothes we rented for the ceremony back, the lady at the shop saw my ring and said, "oh my! That's a wedding bracelet, not a wedding ring!"

Of course, our wedding/honeymoon/vacation was almost ruined by Hurricane Rita. That Wednesday night they were saying it was a category 5 poised to hit Galveston and go up the west side, and we tore up the house finding the things we had to take with us and pack up the car, thinking that not much would be left once we came back. We then tried to evacuate.

After twenty hours and thirty-five miles (yes, we did a total of about 1.75 miles per hour), we ended up in The Woodlands. At that point, with a failing car battery, the likelihood that we wouldn't see any gas ahead of us on the freeway even if it started moving, the cats being lethargic from heat and sun and the real possibility of having to ride out the storm in the car on the highway, we decided to give up and stayed with a friend of my father's for the night and then went on to stay with family between Houston and San Antonio, away from the danger zone. The storm ended up going up Sabine Pass, so we were safe and our home fared well. This time.

This has cut it with me. I need to start doing a few things. I need to find a way to keep all my data handy in one pile (like, a nice NAS system with RAID) so I can just unplug and leave with it in an emergency. I need to start looking into moving off the coast, and yes, sixty to seventy miles from the coast is still "on the coast" when you're staring down a major hurricane, at least as far as rain and wind damage is concerned; I just don't know where we'd end up, though. Most of all, I need to figure out what to do with my web assets. My websites and email was down for four days. I really ought to get this stuff in a data center somewhere.

Finally, today I just learned that I got promoted in my yearly review. On top of a good raise, I got a new title to Lead Application Programmer/Analyst. What does it mean? Not a whole lot, really. It doesn't mean an office with a window (or an office, period) or any added responsibility or duties. We did talk about me going on to become the lead for my team, and perhaps in the future some doors may open in management or an architecture role, but we left it there for the time being. I guess this is a good thing, but... what about getting out of Houston?

Sigh. Like I said in my last entry, it's the velvet handcuffs.

restlessmind