John Cade

You know - or maybe you don’t - I don’t call Meredith by ‘Mere’ very often.  I’ve always loved her name and though Mere is much easier to say and fits her personality, for some reason I can’t bring myself to do it.

However, there always comes a time for change.  And that time is now.  All thanks to my little friend known as Twitter and his limits on username length.

Ever since Meredith and I met, one of the things I have loved most about her is her one liners.  No matter the subject, mood, time of day, or setting - she always has a way of putting things into her own words.  I’ve always wanted to keep a log of her quotes, but have never gotten around to it - until now.  Twitter seems to be the perfect tool for this.  No matter where we are, I no longer have to worry about having a pen and paper in hand to capture the things that she says.  I can simply text it to Twitter!  The added bonus is - you guys can join in the fun too!  Though Twitter doesn’t allow me enough space to explain the context of her quotes, they are pretty easy to figure out most of the time.

Alas, I present to you, twitter.com/meresoneliners.

I viewed Amazon.com at 1:30pm on 6/6/08, and it was down.  As a side note, Twitter was down at the same time.  But that’s nothing new.  This is big news.

My last post about Bonnaroo was very brief, so I thought I would share a couple of details about the design contest.  Anyone with an account on bonnaroo.com could enter by creating a design and uploading it to their personal profile.  The process was extremely easy for the designers and it allowed all bonnaroo.com users to rate each design, save them as favorites, or leave a comments on them.  In all the judges selected designs by five people.  Each design will be on Bonnaroo merchandise, available for purchase at the festival, and hopefully online at a later date as well.  The design contest was a great way to get Bonnaroo 2008 attendees invovled and encourage creativity.  This is actually one of my goals at LifeWay, so it was great to have this sort of user experience on the Bonnaroo website.

The prize for winning is two free tickets for the festival.  Because the tickets are free to us, and Meredith works for Creative Artists Agency (which got us BOTH in for free last year), we have had about 20 requests from people either to take them off of our hands at no cost or to purchase them from us.  We are not sure if Meredith will be getting a free pass from work or not this year, so we have not made any promises to anyone about whether or not the tickets will be available.  Thanks to those of you who sent a nice congrats rather than simply asking for a free ticket.  Your intentions and sincerity have been noted :).

Some of the artists I plan on seeing are Death Cab for Cute, My Morning Jacket, Pearl Jam, The Raconteurs, Ben Folds, OAR, De Novo Dahl, and Steel Train.  I will also peek in on the New Orleans Superjam with Johnny Vidacovich.  He is one of the greatest drummers from New Orleans and it would be a mistake pass it up.  I really haven’t had time to plan out my entire schedule, but I’m sure there will be others I will want to see as well.

The winners were officially announced on the Bonnaroo website yesterday - here is a screenshot!  Or view the live page.

You know - I don’t usually offer my opinion on something when it really bothers me. I’ll share it with those that are really close to me, but I don’t like causing drama. I’m a drama diffuser. Drama is obnoxious, but it happens. And I don’t want to support the cause. Therefore, I often keep my ill-willed thoughts and feelings close to home. Sometimes it’s because I know it’s not right of me to feel the way I do, and other times it’s because speaking up isn’t worth the backlash it will garner from the people around me.

However, there is something that does really bother me. And it bothers me enough for me to tell you. It’s when people are extremely passive aggressive. We all act this way from time to time - but it’s when it becomes consistent that it bothers me most. It’s comparable to using Facebook to ‘be friends’. You’re not really friends just because you know one another on Facebook. Being passive aggressive is extremely similar in that just because you left a rude note about not leaving the toilet seat down for the ladies, it doesn’t mean you are communicating. It just means you left a rude note. Come talk to me and we’ll hash it out. That seems like the mature thing to do.

Oddly, I have no real reason for writing this post at this time (if I did, wouldn’t THAT  be passive aggressive?) - other than that I came across passiveaggressivenotes.com. It’s hilarious. It’s a collection of images of passive aggressive notes that people have written, and it includes commentary for each post. Just another useless, yet entertaining website to keep you busy, and an excuse for me to rant and be negative because I dont’ get those feelings out often enough.

On May17 at 4 p.m., I became a married man.

Meredith Herrmann (now CADE!) and I were married at St. George’s Episcopal Church in Belle Meade, an extremely nice area of Nashville, Tennessee. Episcopal weddings (and services, for that matter) are rich in tradition, and therefore are a bit longer than most weddings. However, with tradition comes meaningful rituals. And with meaningful rituals comes a side of faith that many of us protestants never get to be a part of - at least not in the same way. Liturgical services have much history and reasoning behind what takes place during them, and you can learn a great deal from talking to a priest (in my case, Meredith’s father) about them. Ever since I started dating Meredith, my faith has been challenged and incredibly strengthened as a result of finding new ways to worship God. It sounds odd in today’s average church; ‘reverting’ to old ways to learn new things. But it’s something that many of them should try.

The reception was at War Memorial Plaza on 6th Street in downtown Nashville. The venue was perfect; elegant and relaxing. Just big enough for a medium sized wedding like ours.

I’ve mentioned Meredith several times on my blog before, but I haven’t really gone into detail about what makes her so unique to me. It all starts with how…right she is. All of the time. SERIOUSLY! The whole ‘better half’ thing is TRUE. See guys, right now, you’re just the worst half (unless you aren’t meant to be married, of course) and have nothing to redeem yourself. For those of you that are meant to be married, calling your wife the ‘better’ half is an understatement. Because, as guys, we know we aren’t good to begin with. So it’s not just relative. She is great; you are not. Ha… But in all seriousness, Meredith is the cutest, most supportive, loving, beautiful, God loving woman I’ve ever met. There’s no one else like her! She compliments my procrastinating, naive way of life like no one else could. And that’s not a joke.

Getting married is fun. But the process of getting married is hard work! And I don’t mean planning a wedding, though that is extremely difficult as well. I’m more or less referring to the details behind, say, moving in together. I didn’t realize I would have to stand behind the sink for nearly an hour to wash all of the new dishes, silverware, coffee and tea potts, cutting boards and steak knives that we received as gifts. But I did. Cutting the cabinet liners to be a perfect fit for the dishes to sit on was tedious as well. I think you get the point. There’s a million details you don’t think about. That’s part of the fun though…the surprises of what it takes to get settled. Our house is still cluttered with empty boxes, out of place decorations, and makeshift furniture. It’ll be weeks before this place starts to look like a home. But ‘nesting’, as they call it, is one of the most fun aspects about getting married - at least to this point - 9 days in.

As with any relationship, part of getting married is taking on some baggage that your partner may have. Most people say baggage in the symbolic sense; in my case, however, I’m referring to the 8 huge plastic bins that are filled with every memory possible from the time she was born until we got married. I mean really - won’t you just remember the important stuff? That’s one of the things that makes Meredith so great though. She is very sentimental. It gives me quite a tough job (providing her with opportunities to be sentimental). But in reality you can never collect too many things that ‘take you back’. Nostalgia is a beautiful thing. And it’s something we’ll never be short on.

We went to Banff, Alberta and Calgary, Alberta (Canada, for those of you who are geographically challenged) for our honeymoon. We didn’t want to do the beach thing. Our take on it was that the beach is always an option on some level; splurging to go to the Canadian Rockies for 7 days is not! Fortunately we paid for all of it in cash, even after staying at the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel. I’m pretty proud of us for that. There are plenty of financial obligations that need our attention, and creating another one was not on our list of fun things to do.

Thanks to everyone who came to the wedding and/or reception. It was a great time! I hope everyone got acclimated to the New Orleans second line - it went off without a hitch, and was one of my favorite parts of the night. We are also extremely thankful for all of the prayers, time, encouragement, and gifts that were given to us.

Well, I’m off to curl up with my wife in bed and get a little rest before going back to work tomorrow.