It's been a while, and while I'll have to look much harder to find a more fun fact than the biological explaination of the tequila shot, I have some tidbits from my studies here and there. 

#1: Gaston from Beauty and the Beast should have been a 6'5" bald crazy man with flaky skin who was constantly nauseated and anorexic. There exists an essential "B Vitamin" called Biotin that is essential for many important metabolic enzymes. There exists a rare condition in which a person can be deficient in the enzyme biotin. It's such a widespread vitamin that deficiency is rarely caused by a lack of intake, but rather is caused by something more unusual. Egg whites. Lots and lots of egg whites. Egg whites contain a protein called Avidin which "avidly" and irreversibly binds biotin causing it to be inactive. 

In the movie, Gaston boasts in his song "When I was a lad, I ate four dozen eggs every morning to help me get large. And now that I'm grown I eat five dozen eggs so I'm roughly the size of a barge!" Close Gaston, but not quite. Assuming he makes it past the age of 16 without a heart attack from the vast amount of cholesterol consumed, the adult gaston would look something like this:

gaston before   gaston after (Notice: baldness, "crazy eyes"- dementia, perioral rash, anorexia, nausea/vomiting) all symptoms of Biotin deficiency. Ain't science fun?

#2: The origin of the Brittish word "Limey", as in "did you see those limey buggas?"  Back in the day, the Brittish had a pretty awesome navy. In the navy, Scurvy was a big problem. Scurvy is a disease that attacks collagen synthesis with symptoms of... well, just think about what your typical pirate might look like: bad, rotting teeth, scars, open wounds (defective wound healing), ect. This is caused by a deficiency of Vitamin C which is found in citrus fruits, such as lemons, oranges, and yes... limes. The navy would carry around large quantities of limes and such and eat them frequently to prevent scurvy. They ate them so frequently that when referring to sailors, they started to use the word "limey". Knowledge is power!

So, to understand the context of this story, we've got to go back in time to a drive back to California from Colorado after a Christmas trip.  Well, right when we cross the Nevada-California border on I-15, well California has a nice little welcome home gift for us.

Brake lights.  Traffic.  Bumper to bumper.  Yep, this is Southern California.

So we're sitting there moving along at roughly zero miles per hour when I remember a gift that Tiffany gave me.  A radio controlled monster truck that's sitting in the trunk.  So I get out of the car, get my toy car and it plays in real traffic for awhile, going up and down the shoulder, and - sometimes - merging into real traffic between two non-moving cars.  Good fun.

And then, without warning, traffic starts to move again.  Not fast.  Maybe 15 mph or so.  But faster than the little radio-controlled car can go.  So we start to leave it behind.  I have to jump out of the car to snatch it up.  Tiffany lets me out as traffic slows again.  I run back about 50 yards to pick up the car and as I'm running back toward Tiffany, traffic speeds up again.  Instead of waiting for me, Tiffany goes with traffic and starts leaving me behind.

I run in a panic.  And catch up.  I have to jump into a moving car with Tiffany looking back at me telling me to hurry!...

So that's the first time Tiffany tried to abandon me.  Fast forward to three days after the wedding.  We're in the Fort Lauderdale Airport laid over from Dulles and heading to Saint Thomas.

The wedding was literally the wedding of my dreams. It was absolutely perfect. Pictures and more to follow. We had a suite at the Hilton that was oceanview. When we walked up to our suite, it was HUGE with a bathroom (with 2 showers), a master bedroom, living room dining room and bar. The bar had a chilled bottle of champagne and 6 tuxedo designed milk and white chocolate covered strawberries (oh my goodness delicous). There was a CD in the cd player which had all the love songs played at our wedding including our song. On the balcony there were two lounge chairs overlooking the beach and the moonlit ocean. After another 20 minutes of using one of my hairpins to rig me out of  my dress (and into something decent first...) we had a great night. The perfect end to a perfect night. The next day, however, was a different story. 

Everyone told me that seeing Tiffany walk down the aisle would be a very powerful experience, and one that I would remember for forever.  Ha! I thought.  It's just Tiffany - who I've known and dated for years - in a different dress.  How emotional and powerful can that possibly be?  Besides, I'm not really an emotional person.

So, to live up to expectations, I actually practiced my surprised, awed, happy look in the mirror so as not to disappoint.  This was especially important, since at least one person - Tiffany's bridesmaid's mom and Annie's best friend Stephanie - told me that they just watched the groom while the bride walked down the aisle.  In any case, I knew people would watch me for my reaction so I had to be convincing.

But practicing faces in front of the mirror turned out to be unecessary.

In choosing my dress, when I came out of the dressing room, my mom and Kevin agreed, it was THE one. The only problem my mom had with it was that the dress itself didn't have a long train and it was one of my mom's wishes that I have a long train. We compromised. I kept the dress and got a beautiful veil with that was (semi)cathedral in length. In other words, it was very long. Not a big deal though, I could walk with it and all, and sitting was no problem. The problem is when my mom suggested we dance our first dance with the veil so the pictures would be pretty, so I kept it on after the ceremony. Before we went to the reception hall, we went to the beach with the photographer to take some pretty pictures. Again with the veil. Another thing is that at this point, I was STARVING and I don't do well when I'm hungry. I'm a cranky girl without my food. And the dress was digging into me when I bent over. 

Since it was windy at the beach, my veil started blowing every which way, which would've been a nice picture except we were walking into the wind so the way it was blowing was perpetually into my face. Jed being the helpyMchelperton that he is tried to hold the end of the veil for me as we walked but forgot at times and would walk away, yanking my head back with the veil. This went on for quite some time. I was starving, my head hurt and the veil was getting on my last nerve. But it was time for our first dance. So, we get onto the dance floor and begin to dance to our song "Fools rush in" by Elvis and everything else melted away... until our first turn we both almost slip on my veil. We continue to dance, kicking the veil as we turn! Finally I gave up and just picked up the damn thing and everything else was history. I finally got to take off the veil. It had served its purpose and served well.

The wedding started at 5:30.  I got to the church on time, at around 3:00.  Could have waited another half hour of course, which would have given me time to drop the rental car off at the Hilton and catch a ride back to the church so the car would be ready for us the next day (this will be important for reasons I'll explain in another post).  But alas, I was one of the very first ones at the church.

I set up the video camera on the tripod behind the alter and then - really just paced around.  Tiffany got into the building a lot earlier than I realized, but she was confined to the bridal room while I was free to roam.

As my groomsmen began to arrive, we all staged our preparation out of the choir room, adjacent to the alter at the front of the church.  Behind two doors - like an airlock - was a room with a piano, a bunch of brass instruments and some chairs.

Strangely, I wasn't nervous.  I was pretty relaxed.  Dante... well, he was nervous.  Very nervous.   Kept pacing.  Had to walk around a lot.  It was kinda funny, but he's known Tiffany for years and is very much like a big brother.

About 30 minutes before the cerimony, people started arriving and the church started filling up.  Which meant no venturing out.  Maselli came through with a small bottle of Patrón tequilla.  Now the discerning tequilla connoisseur will know that this is not your run-of-the-mill instant hangover Jose tequilla.  This stuff is smooth.  We used some paper cups and everyone did a shot.

After a few minutes, everyone but Chris had to leave to go usher.  Wish I could say something really cool happened.  But it didn't.  We just sort of sat there and waited.  La, di, da.

The tuxes were set to be perfect.  I mean, it's just a penguin suit, right?  You don't even buy them; you can just rent them, and we went with Men's Warehouse.

Simple basic idea here.  Three types of tuxes, all with some variation of pin striping on the vests and ties.  Fathers wear black vests with black stripes (different shades of black).  Groomsmen get dark gray and light gray pin stripes.  Pretty pimp, actually, and very 1920's gangster.  And then I get a cream-colored vest with light pin stripes.

Obviously, it's important that me - the groom - stands out from the other tux-wearing people.  I mean if the bride ends up crying and can't see properly, how's she going to know which one is me???

So it was kind of a problem when two groomsmen - Jon and Dante - showed up with my tux vests!

As Jed said, the rehearsal dinner was beautiful and a great preliminary for the upcoming festivities. It was such a great time that when my mom and Kevin and I got back home that night, we just fell asleep. I woke up the next morning refreshed and ready for hair and makeup.  I felt a bit like a movie star. It turned out perfectly, but it was so hot outside that I literally had to powder my face ever three or four minutes so I wouldnt be a reflector in all of the wedding pictures. If you know me, I'm not one to powder my nose all that often. Actually, I don't wear any face makeup. We slipped me into my dress and Kevin did the buttons. My dress was beautiful but there were some drawbacks. For example, these buttons I speak of, there were 18 million of them and they required some sort of special device to button. We improvised with a safety pin. It probably took 15-20 minutes just for the back buttons. Also, the dress had internal boning, which was great because I didn't have to "suck it in" so to speak, but it was also painful when I bent over because the boning went into my stomach and I couldnt breath. So whenever I had to bend at the waist, I held my breath. It wasn't uncomfortable outside of that. So then we were up and running. Our photographer came and took pictures of all the family (my dad and Jo his wife had arrived by that time). Then my dad and I went in the limosine and it was off to the church. 

The Thank You notes are done.

Written.

Enveloped.

Stamped.

Now just need to mail them!  Tiffany did way more than I did - she also had more guests at the wedding.  But she also did some of mine.  Which is good because mine tended to be a bit more... to the point (sort of like me!).  Check your mailboxes!

(Tiffany here, check out the stamps on your envelopes! I just love them!)

There weren't police, but there could have been.

See, when you get any large group of Links - my family - together from all over the country - say, Arizona, Washington, Massechusettes, Michigan, Illinois, Montana - you'd better own the lakehouse or have some super-thick soundproofing.  We didn't.

The plan was for Tiffany and I to separate the night before the wedding not to see each other until the infamous aisle march.  Tiffany went with her mom to Placentia and I went to the Huntington Beach comforts suites.  It was a hotel that the family picked primarily for the presence of a "meeting room" which was converted into a Link-family "hospitality room" complete with a "Congratulations Jed and Tiffany" banner, coolers full of budweiser and a 1.5 liter bottle of Jack Daniels.

Still waiting on Wedding Day photos...

Photo gallery from the day after our wedding - the Gift Opening Party.

Photo gallery from the Honeymoon in Saint Thomas and the Virgin Islands.

ENJOY!

Details are in the works, I'll post more here when I know more.  Basically its a chance for all our Cali peeps who didn' t make it out to DC for our respective parties to throw down with us before we tie the knot.

Please leave a message here, call or email either one of us, or contact us through MySpace to get more deets.

***UPDATE***

On Easter Weekend, we all went camping down in Virginia.  Chris was the primary planner for the trip, finding the camping ground and booking it.  Tiffany was really excited since she'd never gone camping before.

Before we could go camping we needed some camping gear.  What little gear either of us had was either still in California or in Montana, so we went to this great store called The Great Outdoors.  The store is like a theme park; there are shooting games, giant fish tanks, a climbing wall... you get the picture.  Anyway, we were good little consumers.  We bought a tent, two sleeping bags, some ground padding, a fishing pole with a beginners' tacklebox and some tackle.  Wierd thing, I've fished almost exclusively in Montana where I know what I'm fishing for and what bait works.  Out here, it's a mystery.  So we stuck to bread and butter with a few Mepps and my childhood favorite the Daredevil.

Worth noting here, that Tiffany had never been camping before.  She'd never slept in a tent.  Never fished.  Never caught a fish.

Now, I have to start off by saying that Jed and I live a very very good life. We live in a nice apartment, have good jobs that we love, have each other, great families, ect. Now, mind you, it's not that we don't have bad luck also, but rather than being spread out, they come in little spurts. For example, the It Could Have Been Worse trip. Today was another one of those days. You know those days where you probably shouldn't have gotten out of bed. I'm overexaggerating a bit, but I'll let you decide for yourself.

So, we wrote down all the confirmed guests on cards to set up the seating charts (not sure why we don't let you all sit wherever you want, but Tiffany says, "it's a wedding" - whatever that means).

So, we got to the very end and realized we hadn't made a card for us.  So I wrote "Jed and Tiffany Link" on a card (Tiffany was glad I didn't write Jed +1).

Tiffany looked at it for a minute and then she started happy-crying.  We're getting married!!

Any bets on whether she'll cry during the cerimony?

(Be sure to read Tiffany's comment)

Date night last night, and Tiffany and I got to wondering.  Why is it that women dig Olive Garden so much?  It occured to us that you almost never see a crew of guys eating at the O.G..  There's almost always a woman there and - odds are - she's the one who wanted to go to O.G.

Mention Olive Garden and women swoon.  So what is the gender appeal of the O.G.?

The waitress said it was because "when you're here you're familiy" and I guess that means women like families?  Personally, I think she was buying the company line a bit too much...

So, a few weeks back I used my tax refund to buy myself a new toy. Really, it's a toy for both me and Tiffany since it will be used to record the beginning of our life together as man and wife (Tiffany, of course, is less willing to accept that this is for both of us, as most things we buy that have a battery are really for me).

Readers of this site will know that I'm a photography buff. Until now, I've been using an adequate point-and-shoot Sony Cybershot digital camera that I bought in 2002. It's a good camera, and having used it for a long time, I'd learned tricks to control shutter speed to a very limited degree. But I think I've graduated to a new level of photography so I upgraded to an entry-level SLR Camera.

There were really two options to consider here. My sister has a Canon Digital Rebel, which I'd played around with and loved. The other option was the Nikon D50. I went with the D50 because it's Nikon's lowest-end camera (whereas the Digital Rebel is at the top of Canon's food chain). My reasoning was that Nikon had more to gain from producing a high-end product (brand loyalty graduates to better cameras in the future).

So I bought myself a Nikon D50.

That's right. That is a stereoscopic lens. In lay speak, it takes 3-D pictures. Left eye, right eye.

In a previous life I dabbled pretty heavily in stereoscopy. I learned how to make anaglyphs (red-blue 3-D pictures) in photoshop.

So here's the plan. We're going to take some 3-D pictures at the wedding and on the honeymoon. We'll slap them in custom made Photo Book, put some anaglyph glasses in an envelope on the inside cover and have 3-D memories forever!

For some reason, I'm much more excited about this than Tiffany is...