Inside Darren

Well, my loyal readers, it’s been a crazy month. Not only have I quit my meter reading job, enrolled in a Masters program at Brock University and moved to a new city, but I’ve also gone and got married. That’s a big deal.

It’s also the reason why I haven’t posted on this blog for exactly one month. Every time I’ve thought about writing a post, I’ve always had other things vie for my attention instead. Stuff like, say, organizing the new apartment in St. Catharines (a task that I feel will never be fully accomplished), trying to understand the complex workings of the female psyche (which I’m better equipped to do now that I have access to a female 24/7), attempting to get Larissa’s computer and mine properly networked through this freakin’ wireless router we have, or having sexual relations with my wife.

Yes, it’s been a month of adventure; of unimaginable heights, and unforeseen struggles. A month of taking household nudity to a whole new level. A month of learning new skills and abilities, some of which are:

How to assemble Ikea furniture when your handyman skills are on par with an autistic monkey.

How to effectively deal with ants in your living room when you live on the third floor of an apartment building.

How to answer the question of which birth control method will adequately meet our needs.

How to deal with the loss of your wedding “first dance” CD 30 minutes before it needs to be played.

How to say “Whatever you want is fine, dear” when the choosing of a futon cover threatens the tranquility of your first 2 weeks of marriage.

How to use Skype.

Now, I know what all of you are waiting to hear about: The Wedding. There is a whole lot that I could write about it, but I’m not going to at the moment. Why, you ask? First, because I still have a heck of a lot of things to do right now, and this would be a very long post if I were to give you all the wedding details. Second, most of you who read my blog regularly were at my wedding, so I’d only be giving you info that you already know. And third, I know that most of you hate reading and only like looking at pictures anyway, so that’s what I’m going to give you.

I have a slideshow of wedding pictures available at flikr.com, which you can access directly by clicking here. These are not our professional photos, but a small selection of pictures taken by friends and family.

If you want to see some more photos that I don’t have posted, you can check them out on Larissa’s blog. If you want some actual wedding and honeymoon details, you can check out this post. If you want some info on our post-wedding financial situation, you can read about it here.

Many more posts are soon to come! Put this blog back on your daily reading list! The world has changed, and the first chapter in the book of Darren and Larissa Conley has begun!

We did another photo shoot with Chuck yesterday. The goal was to find some nice pictures to use for wedding favours, but we took some for fun as well. It was a damp, cold Good Friday, but we ventured out around downtown Hamilton and I believe we got some good shots.

Larissa’s sister Leona is visiting for the weekend, so she joined us as well. Chuck was more than happy to take some nice shots of her too. I think the only thing that would have made him happier was if Larissa and Leona had asked him to paint their toenails.

Here are some of the photos:

It’s about time somebody got creative with bags. I only wish I had thought of some of these ideas myself. No matter - Rachel Peters and I are going to take the greeting card industry by storm one day. I also have some amazing ideas for fortune cookies.

In the meantime, enjoy these pictures of cool bag designs, and feel free to click on any image to see it larger:

So, my dad turned 60 last weekend. When one of your parents turns 60, you start saying to yourself “Wow, my parents are getting old”. Which inevitably leads to the thought “Wow, I’m getting old”. Which in turn leads to the thought “Why haven’t I started investing in RRSPs?”

As I sign that I am, indeed, getting older, I just took a good 10 seconds trying to remember if you’re supposed to put a space between the end of the last word in a sentence and the punctuation mark. I better get these pictures posted before I completely lose it.

We threw my dad a surprise party (which, incidentally, surprised the 60-year-old crap out of him), and as part of the entertainment, my brother and I scanned a whole smack-load of old photographs and put together an electronic slideshow of sorts. We added some captions to a few of the pictures, and I thought I’d share some of my favourites with you, my loyal readers:
I can’t tell you how much I laughed at my own joke when I made up this caption. From what I understand, this picture was taken at a New Year’s party when my dad was in his early 20s. He’s the one on the right, dressed up as a baby. At first we thought that he mistook this event for a costume party, but my mom informed me that this group of friends just took turns dressing up as the New Year’s baby each year. I can’t say that I’m upset that this tradition has been discontinued.
I think my brother came up with the caption for this picture. I have a great-uncle with a cattle farm in Manitoba, and each of us took turns milking a cow while we were there. Well, everyone but me. Because that’s a little gross, you gotta admit. You can’t name any other animal that you would readily grab and squeeze its teet, can you? Didn’t think so.

In conclusion, let me leave you with one last photo of my father, this time from the late 70s. Although it’s nowhere near as flattering a photo as the one of me and my mother in this post, I think it captures the spirit of that particular day with honesty and, dare I say, a measure of self-confidence. It takes a big man to pose with his baby son (yes, that’ s me) wearing only tight shorts and a belt. And my dad is definitely a big man.

This picture is by far my favourite photo of me and my mother. I have no idea who took it, where we were, or even exactly how old I am. I look to be about a year old, which would date this picture to somewhere in 1976.

The hair, the outfit(s), the lighting, the expressions on our faces - beautiful. I look like the son of a movie star. Who would have guessed that the young child in this photo would one day be a meter-reading linguist who graduated seventh in his class from Bible College.

Dare to dream, my friends.

This was me, back in 1996-ish, about 10 years ago. It’s hard to imagine that the well-groomed, clean-cut, ethnic-looking man that many of you know me as today used to sport these curly-locks of rebellion. At the time, growing my hair long seemed like the right thing to do. Now, I have to wonder, “What was I thinking?!”

Sometimes I dream that I still have long hair. Usually I’m very happy to wake up and find that it is, indeed, short. In case you were wondering, the decision to cut it (sometime in 1998) came when I realized that every long-haired male I saw on the street conveyed a general impression of “street vagrant”, and while I’m sure that there are some very nice vagrants out there, they were not a social group that I was aiming to be classified with at the time.

Larissa has been teasing me about wanting to cut her hair short sometime after we get married. Maybe I can gain some leverage in the argument to keep her hair long by warning her that I could always make a return to my own long-haired days sometime in the future…

You may not know this, but my friend Chuck is the official photographer of Larissa and I, as well as the provider of any picture that appears on this page, except for the ones I stole using Google’s image search.

This past weekend, Chuck took some amazing pictures of Larissa and I while we were enjoying the perfect Fall weather.

Updated! You can now view a slideshow of all of the wonderful photos in this set by clicking here. Feel free to leave me all kinds of comments about how beautiful my girlfriend is!