as the title of this post states, im a married melo!

And here is the photographic proof.

From Our Wedding

We “ran” off to Las Vegas with our family and friends, and I recommend it to anyone who doesn’t care about centerpieces or bridesmaids dresses. We got a wedding package from a chapel, they coordinated everything, it was so simple and stress-free. It was wonderful and exactly what we wanted. I’m still Melo, just with Smith added to the end.
We flew straight from Las Vegas to Playa del Carmen and had a very lovely honeymoon. It sprinkled off and on, so I didn’t to take many photos, boo. We’ll just have to go back!

I recently had an extremely frustrating experience with Citibank. I have a business credit card with them for my web design business, and had set up auto-bill pay back in November. The issue I’m about to describe is still unresolved, but it got me thinking about the state of customer service.

The issue started with auto-bill pay. When I set it up, their website said that it may take a billing cycle to go into effect, which would be my December billing cycle. Okay, no problem. I got an email in the beginning of December stating that the auto-bill pay was set up and ready to go. My bill was due a few weeks later, so I assumed (big mistake) that the bill would be paid because the email said that it would.

The day after the December bill was due, I got a phone call from Citibank because my bill had not been paid. I found this extremely alarming because,

1. I had a 0% introductory rate that would default to 25.99% if I did not pay my bill on time
2. I have very good credit that I don’t want tarnished
3. Auto-bill pay was set up, wtf!

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I’ve switched my blog from blogger to wordpress. Its easier to customize and I’d like to get as much of my identity as I can on my host account, rather than scattered across the interwebs. I don’t plan on deleting my blogger account, so if you have anything bookmarked, it should be fine. It’ll just have the old template. Also, there are a few bugs from the import from blogger to wordpress, but nothing too serious. If anything looks weird, thats probably why. The blogspot url will continue to point to this blog, as well as melo-online.com.

We lost Cassidy this summer at the very old dog age of nearly 15 years. That left us with one dog, Penny, who was feeling pretty lonely without Cass and the house seemed pretty empty. So in came Charlie, our new puppy. He’s been a great pup with lots of personality, and he keeps Penny pretty busy. She’s his favorite chew toy.

I recently re-designed my design portfolio, check it out! melo-design.com I’m working on getting a steady stream of freelance work, and so far so good. In the next couple of months I’ll be updating it frequently with new projects I’m in the process of wrapping up.

In addition to that, I created a web-business card, melissalorenzen.com which I’m pretty proud of. I was inspired by the new trend in online business cards and gave it a go.

I’m hoping my lack of updates is slightly made up for by the twitter feed I’ve attached to the page. Silly links that I would originally have posted on here I’ve been sending to twitter.

Yesterday I turned 29. I feel a little weird about this age. I really enjoyed 28. It was my “golden” year and it was a great year. I moved in with Josh, got engaged, did some traveling, all in all I had a great time. And now I’m not 28 anymore. Its not that I’m pessimistic about being 29, I’m sure it will be another great year. Despite my resistance to planning details, I’m starting to get jazzed up about wedding planning. I’ll be doing a lot of that in my 29th year. There’s even a little part of me that would rather get married in the spring, rather than in the fall so I can be married when I’m 29, rather than 30.

29 is the age women jokingly say they are when they don’t want to give their real age. I’m hoping it’s because 29 was so great, not that being older than 29 is such a drag. I have many friends in their 30s who are having a fantastic time, so I’m not that worried about it, but still. Whats the big deal about being 29?

I went to Florida a couple weeks ago and came back engaged :) I’ll try to post the photos from my trip soon, I had a lot of fun photographing pelicans and surfacing dolphins.

I’ve never been the kinda girl who dreamed of her wedding since she was born, so actually planning this wedding may be more difficult than for normal women.. I’m excited about the being-married part, just not the planning and organizing part. I don’t care for the logistics or fine details. I woke up in a panic this morning to the realization that we’ll need centerpieces for the tables, and I have no idea what “my colors” should be. so how on earth could I create centerpieces without “my colors”? and the wedding isn’t for at least another year. i’m starting to understand the appeal of eloping to vegas.

I SHOOK HIS HAND!!! He walked off his bus, walked right to me and shook my hand first! It was amazing. He said ‘Its so great to meet you’ and I said ‘Its my pleasure!’ I said real words, a real sentence! I was so convinced Id say something completely garbled and idiotic.

He went to an IU event, came back by us to leave and shook my hand again! I got two handshakes! It was so amazing and surreal to see him, he is so friendly and warm in person, truely, this will be a day I’ll never forget.

See the rest of the photos in my picasaweb album

the flowery background was fun, but i got finicky and wanted to change the layout a little more. I may make a couple more changes, little details, but hopefully this will satisfy me for a while.

patience appreciated. bring on the spring. btw – if you’re using an old browser that doesn’t support .png, this update wont look so good. Upgrade already!
Internet Explorer 7
Firefox 2
There – now you have no excuse!