For us, the weekend started on Friday, and we began it by working. We set aside the day for putting carpet in the Buick. Lizziey's dad bought carpet for it sometime in the 90s, so it was definitely time for it to finally be fitted to the car.

The first step was to drive the car about 10 miles to my cousin's upholstery shop where we would then take the seats out, fit the carpet, and put the seats back in. Seems easy enough.

The seats came out just fine. Surprisingly, the bolts weren't too rusted and everything unbolted or unscrewed just like it should. I've worked on much newer cars at that shop that were much more deteriorated. Once the seats were out, we had to clean up the floor and get everything ready for the carpets.

Even knowing that it's an old American full-size car, the interior is surprisingly large. 

I don't have any pictures of the interior with the fitted carpets, but they're a light color and the job turned out well. It wasn't quite as simple as we had originally planned though. The carpets seemed to be for a slightly different model (manual instead of auto), but maybe not. Either way, we had to cut them a bit and add a clever seam to make them fit. Good thing my cousin is an upholsterer, or that job wouldn't have gone nearly so smooth!

The next day, we took the car around town to do some wedding planning with my best man in tow. 

We went to the wedding location to check out some of the barn's details and make sure things were going to work out okay with the number of people we have invited and to help us plan. I also wanted to make sure the Buick would make it up the hill alright, and it did great. That soft suspension even ironed out most of the bumps on the way up the grassy slope.

Then we went downtown to look at options for vests and ties for the groomsmen. That took significantly less time that I had imagined since we basically walked in, looked at a book with the colors, and got the prices, and then left. Maybe next time we'll place the order, but they said they can get the attire in pretty quickly and didn't seem at all bothered by the 39 day deadline.

The following day, Lizziey and I went shopping for our wedding bands. I didn't really expect to buy one right away, much less walk out of the store with one in hand, but that's what happened. I had gone in to check out some interesting Damascus steel rings. The jewelers seemed to be pushing the tungsten rings quite a bit too. I looked them over, but found that I just didn't care for them much. I ended up getting a plain yellow gold band, just like my father and grandfather had. I always liked how you could see the signs of wear, little scratches on the surface. 

It's been a long time; I wonder if many of you even remember me. Not that it really matters. I haven't posted for over two and a half years, and I haven't posted anything I would deem worthwhile for much longer. When I logged in today, my Home page cheerily announced that it had been 2,684 days since I joined Xanga. Time flies. Xanga is one of those strange places on the Internet where I feel like I'm venturing into the past, and it's weird to consider that my old circle of friends on here, and myself, have not been frozen in time.

So hello to you all again. It feels weird to be on here and look at my old posts. I've grown up a lot since those days. I'm in my early 20s, just finished the last of my college coursework, and am engaged to be married to a girl I've known for roughly a decade. Her name is Lizziey. My major was Computer Graphics Technology, and my degree (though I haven't officially completed the last requirement) will be from Purdue University's School of Engineering and Technology. 

I've always been passionate about cars. When I was a boy, I had my Hot Wheels and "Big Jake" Power Wheels to play with, and when I was just a bit older (6 or 7), my grandpa and dad fixed up his old go-kart with a 5 horsepower Briggs & Stratton engine and gave it to me. I grew away from it a bit as a pre-teen and teen, but my interest was reignited when I got my first car.

It was a series of disastrous problems, one after the other. First the engine died, then the transmission. Both were replaced. Then I got a little overzealous on a rain-soaked curve and my car decided to get a little too friendly with some trees. That too was repaired. That same car would continue to nag me with problem after problem for the next 6 years to the current day. Now it has almost 200,000 miles, a secondhand engine and transmission (the latter of which has since been rebuilt), and a clunk in the suspension. 

Almost two years ago, I bought a '91 Audi 90 Quattro 20V. It has a sweet sounding 2.3L 5 cylinder engine, a 5-speed manual, and mechanical all-wheel-drive. But it fared no better than my beloved Grand Prix in terms of reliability. In the 20 months I've owned it, I think I've put fewer than 1500 miles on it. In fact, it's currently sitting in my apartment complex's parking lot with the throttle body and everything up to it removed, waiting for new parts. Eventually, it will run again.

My newest interest though is my fiancée's family's 1952 Buick Super. It's a great old car, and her dad has been gracious enough to let me drive it pretty much as often as I'd like. I only say pretty much, because truth be told, I'd probably have it as a daily driver if I could. There's just something about it. I don't really care about the fact that everyone notices you when you're behind the wheel; it's more about how the car itself makes me feel. That smooth straight-8 engine, the pillow-soft suspension, the antique AM radio that has to warm up every time you turn it on, it all adds up to an experience that modern cars simply can't replicate no matter how they surpass it technically.

The car itself is in semi-rough, but original condition. Original paint, wheels, interior. Pretty much all of it. The paint is chipping and pretty faded, but it's held together fairly well. It has been in Lizziey's family since 1954 when her great-grandmother (her dad's grandmother) bought it barely used. Even now, it only has just over 40,000 original miles on it. We'll hopefully be using it as our wedding car this fall. The only real detail left to work out with it is how to keep her wedding dress clean. The interior isn't awful, but it's a little dirty and missing the carpet. Hopefully we can figure something out with that. The odd spot of old grease and oil on some of the surfaces bother me too, so those will all have to be inspected to ensure they're completely spotless, or at least that they'll leave her dress spotless.

Getting back to catching up on life, I'm not sure what I want to do now that I'm done with college. I currently work on my campus in a tech customer service position and I resent it. I don't hate it, because it does provide me with money and it's easy work. But it's menial work filled with digital paperwork and pointless meetings and formalities. The idea of becoming an entrepreneur has intrigued me lately. I imagine an ideal life of driving a classic car, perhaps the Buick, on a daily basis to my job in an old but up-and-coming part of the city. I'd like my design office to be located in an old storefront with a large plate glass window, wooden door and window frames, and turn-of-the-century style sign painting on the glass with a nice awning across the front. I don't know why I'd need a location like that, but I feel like it would be nice to be involved in a community like that and feel like a part of the local businesses. Maybe I could find a reason to have a setup like that someday.

So that's life. Maybe now that we've caught up, we can start seeing each other a bit more often.