Irked

I'm feeling a little ranty today. I think part of it is that we are under major proposal deadline pressure at work. I worked this past weekend and I've been staying late at work every night. In the meantime, I haven't been getting enough sleep and my Google Reader got so out of control that I finally gave in and marked all as read. And it's ALREADY starting to get out of control again. I had a sore throat yesterday and I am seriously hoping that it's sleep deprivation and not a virus that's making it happen.

So, five little things that are bugging me today:

1. Why do people always crowd in front of doors as soon as they open? It drives me NUTS when people start to get on the bus without letting people get off first, and the same thing with elevators. Just pause for a second and look where you're going instead of charging blindly into a crowd of people. And on a related note, look behind you when you walk through a door! If someone is behind you, you don't have to stop and let them go ahead of you, but you could at least avoid shutting the door in their face. I just saw this happen to a woman with a stroller. A guy went through a door ahead of her and didn't even look to notice the door HITTING THE STROLLER as it closed behind him. COME ON.

2. I have recently been totally craving all sorts of unhealthy food. Specifically, I want greasy Chinese (egg rolls! And fried rice! And crab Rangoon!), cake with tons of icing, and a huge bag of Cool Ranch Doritos. These items don't really mesh with the whole Weight Watchers thing. Sometimes I miss the carefree days when I didn't pay much attention to what I ate and I didn't have the first clue how many calories were in all the unhealthy food I liked.

3. I didn't watch the NBA draft lottery yesterday, but I saw that once again the worst team in the league did not get the first pick. As always, commentators seem shocked by this. It's driving me a little bit nuts. Yes, the odds are stacked for the worst team in the league to win, but only insofar as they are more likely than any other one team to win. This does not mean that they are objectively likely to win.

Say there's 10 teams, and everyone gets one entry in the lottery except the worst team in the league, which gets two entries. Now, if you have to guess which team will win, you should pick the one with two entries because they're twice as likely as any other team to win. This is true. However, their overall chance of winning is still only two out of eleven. It is much more likely that any of the other nine teams will win instead. I know that most people aren't math people, and really I'm not a math person either, but it bothers me that NBA commentators, the ones who are supposed to understand how the draft lottery works, don't get it. Every year, the worst team in the league doesn't win! And every year, the sportscasters are shocked! Come ON.

4. The down side to not paying utilities is that we don't have total control over our heat. When the system is on, we can control the temperature, but when it's off, that's it. During the first spate of springlike weather last month, our building turned off the heating for the season, and it's been off ever since. Unfortunately, we've had more 40-degree nights than 75-degree days since then, and it is FREEZING in our apartment. We added an extra blanket to our bed and getting out of the shower has become almost unconstitutionally torturous. Consistent spring weather, where ARE you? Soon it's going to be SUMMER and if it gets all hot and humid without first giving us our fair share of sunny, breezy days, I am going to be PISSED.

5. I have to get to work. AUGH.

So, what's irking you these days?

On home ownership

Ever since Torsten and I started seriously managing our finances, we've been thinking about the idea of owning a home. This seems to be the logical next step in the whole muddle of marriage and kids and all that Future with a Capital F stuff. And we fully plan to buy a house at some point in the next couple of years. We divide our savings between a down payment and our retirement funds. Every now and then one of us admires the beautiful houses in the real estate section of the paper, and tries not to cry upon catching a glimpse of the prices.

The current mortgage and housing crisis doesn't deter me from the idea of buying a house. It seems that with depressed prices, now would be a good time to buy--but only if we're willing to hold onto the house we buy for a few years at the very least. I think what this burst housing bubble has done is hurt the concept of a starter home--a little house that you'd live in for a couple of years, maybe through the first baby, and then leave behind as you became more financially stable and your family grew.

But now that housing prices aren't going steadily up and up, and it's getting harder to sell, the idea of buying a small house and then flipping it when you're ready to upgrade doesn't seem so feasible. Which means that if we were to buy a house, we would truly have to be willing to stay in it for awhile, an undetermined amount of time.

Our lives are in so much flux that it's kind of hard to think about what our housing needs will be five or even more years from now. In five years we could have two kids and be thinking about school districts and second bedrooms and big yards for the dog and a swing set. Which means that if that's what we want five years from now, it should be what we're looking for in a house at the moment. But that's not what we can afford at the moment. At least not in DC. If we want to move to, say, Idaho, we'd be set. But we don't.

Also? I know that everyone says that home ownership is the holy grail, and I know it means you have equity and all of that good stuff. But I LIKE renting. I like that we pay a fixed amount every month, and there are never any unexpected costs. I like that we don't pay utilities, and that if the dishwasher breaks or the tub gets clogged, all I have to do is call the front desk and someone will come by to fix it without us even needing to be home. I like that if we receive a package that needs to be signed for in the middle of the day, neither of us has to stay home from work because the package room will sign for it. I like that the building has a gym right in it, and the security that comes from having a 24-hour front desk monitor and a security guard, and how cheap renter's insurance is. I like that we don't have to mow the lawn and that if we ever want to move, we can do so without worrying about having to pay two mortgages until our old place sells.

And from what I hear, buying a house basically makes you broke. Down payment, closing costs, fees, interest, a monthly mortgage payment--plus contractors, inspections, repairs, upgrades, furniture, decor... it just seems like the costs never end. So yeah, you have the house and the equity, but it's not like that actually leaves you with any more money, at least not until you've paid off your mortgage, which only happens if you live in the same house for 30 years.

Plus, DC has extremely tenant-friendly laws that include excellent rent control. I love that.

We do plan to buy, though, eventually. But not quite yet. We're still contributing to our down payment fund, and figuring out what we want to do, where and what we want to buy and can afford. But it's a big step--it means that we're not as free to move around, to pick up and go whenever we decide that we're looking for a change. I guess that's a part of the whole Settling Down thing that we're in the process of doing. It's kind of a weird feeling.

So am I crazy? Am I missing some huge benefit of home ownership that everyone knows about except me? What about you--do you rent or own? Which do you prefer?

Anniversaries EVERYWHERE

Isn't it supposed to be the man in the relationship who forgets anniversaries or doesn't think to celebrate them? And the woman who thinks anniversaries are important and complains about how the man doesn't take them seriously enough? And isn't that the real reason why people get their wedding dates engraved on their rings? So the man can always check to see when the anniversary is?

I mean, I know, gender stereotypes and whatnot, but that is SO not the case in our relationship. Last night Torsten was pointing out that soon (and by "soon" he meant "in about three months") it will be the one-year anniversary of our engagement. And then I tried to tell him that once we're married, all past anniversaries (dating, moving in together, engagement, etc.) are abandoned in favor of November 1, the Official Wedding Anniversary.

To be frank, I was feeling kind of RELIEVED about that. Having three anniversaries to celebrate is really just excessive, and also kind of a pain to remember. Throw in the fact that Torsten likes to celebrate the anniversary of us dating MONTHLY instead of YEARLY, and it seems like it's our anniversary more often than not. Luckily, he has toned down most of his celebratory practices from flowers and dinner out to a comment of, "Hey, it's our anniversary! Cool!"

Unless, of course, it's a significant anniversary, like a year or something. THEN we pull out all the stops. By which I mean, last year we went on a dinner cruise and this year we are thinking about going to a steakhouse, because we really want to go and are looking for an excuse to justify the expense.

ANYWAY. My damn point is, I presented to Torsten the idea that our wedding anniversary won't just be the next in a long line of anniversaries that we'll be celebrating for the rest of our lives, but instead an opportunity to wipe the anniversary slate clean and get rid of all those silly wannabe anniversaries in favor of the one big one. And he was totally, TOTALLY not on board with that. In fact, his face almost crumpled with the horror of the idea, to the point where I had to immediately back down so as not to cause permanent emotional damages.

So, it looks like much to Torsten's delight (and my chagrin), once we're married we will have anniversaries to celebrate in June, July, October, and November (plus on the 1st, 7th, 18th, and 28th of every month). Plus probably a couple others that I'm not thinking of at the moment that must be permanently etched on Torsten's brain. And I can't even IMAGINE how many little anniversaries we'll be celebrating by the time we've been married for forty years.

What about you? How many anniversaries do you celebrate with your significant other? What are they? Which one of you is more into the whole anniversary celebrating thing?

In other news: three weeks until our 20-month anniversary! I can't WAIT!

Mrs. Boss

Last night Torsten and I had dinner with a friend/coworker of his, a great and close friend who lives several states away from us and works remotely for Torsten's company and who is in town just for the weekend. It also happens that Torsten serves as the friend's supervisor at work, which from Torsten's perspective, and I hope his friend's perspective as well, has absolutely no effect on their friendship.

In fact, even though I know that Torsten supervises several people at work, I had never really thought about that or processed it before. And it totally didn't occur to me at all during the dinner last night that Torsten is his friend's supervisor. Until the end of the meal, when we were saying goodnight and Torsten said something to his friend about how he should feel free to sleep in and come to the office late the next day.

At that moment, and this has nothing to do with the friend at all, but it clicked in my mind that wow, Torsten is a boss. I adore my own boss, and feel really lucky to have such a great boss, and we do have fun chats about non-work-related things, but I couldn't see ever becoming such great friends with him the way that Torsten is with this guy. And I know that part of is that Torsten and his friend were friends before they worked together, and also that Torsten is not at all a "boss" kind of person, in that he doesn't really do the whole hierarchy thing, but still. He's in charge of telling other people when they can take time off and chasing after them to fill out their time sheets.

I realize that I'm very young, and that I've never supervised anyone, and that eventually one day I most likely will supervise someone, and that's totally fine. And I also have realized that by being engaged to be married, I am agreeing to become someone's wife, and that someone isn't just the guy I love and know intimately, but also someone's employee, someone's boss, someone's son.

But still. Somehow I just never thought of myself as the boss's wife. Especially at age 24. I know people complain about how their bosses are so much younger than them. Well, Torsten is 6 years older than me. So that makes me a particularly young boss's wife.

I think of "the boss's wife" as an older lady, possibly in pearls and a Chanel suit, or maybe in seersucker pants and sensible shoes and a full face of makeup. I think of her as not working, as spending her days on the boards of charities and keeping the house running and potentially looking after grandchildren. I think of her as appearing on her husband's arm at company events, smiling demurely as he smokes a cigar and demonstrates what a family man he is.

This is a complete generality. In actual fact I know of no such boss and no such boss's wife. It's just a funky idea that I have in my head, clearly because I still have some old-fashioned gender stereotypes that I need to work through.

However, it's still weird. Me? A boss's wife? Impossible. Soon I'll be placing an order for my resort wear and starting up some sort of charitable foundation. Which actually, doesn't sound that bad. But not a role I would have expected to take on, in any form, this early in my life.

Deliciousness

Yesterday morning we got some good news about one of our projects at work and everyone sort of congregated in the hall, discussing it and being happy and awkwardly trying to avoid going back to their desks, and finally the head of our department asked what we should do to celebrate. Someone suggested lunch but there was a client coming in at noon so a few people wouldn't be able to make it, and somehow, I'm not sure how but very quickly, it was decided that we would go for margaritas in the afternoon. But not afternoon as in after work. No, we headed off for the nearest Mexican restaurant at three in the afternoon for the best work celebration ever.

Plus, we didn't have to pick up the tab, and so before we knew it we were ensconced at a long table with huge pitchers of margaritas and baskets of chips and guacamole and cheese quesadillas, and not only that but we were actually talking, and amazingly, the talk wasn't about work. After the obligatory happy toast, we all just started chatting about... normal stuff. Our table was outside on the sidewalk and the weather was warm and everyone was in a good mood and it was just really nice.

I hadn't planned on drinking anything because, you know, Weight Watchers and wasted calories and whatnot, and also I don't really like alcohol that much and I tend to take really big sips, so I am usually better off with water or Diet Coke. But I was sitting there and there were all these pitchers of margaritas and somehow I wound up with a really yummy-looking frozen strawberry swirl margarita in a frosty, salted mug in front of me, and you know what? I drank it. And then I drank another.

I was totally outpaced by my coworkers, one of whom was doing tequila shots two at a time, but for me that's a lot of alcohol, because I can't even remember the last time I had more than one drink. And I was totally feeling the effects. And it was GREAT. And also? While I was drinking the delicious strawberry-ness, I totally indulged in lots of chips and guacamole and even a cheese quesadilla, which, yeah, not so much part of the whole Weight Watchers plan either.

But seriously, it was so fun and happy that the three guys who were at the table near us, sharing their own pitcher of margaritas and giant plate of nachos, leaned over to us a couple of drinks in and were like, "Um, we just graduated college, which is why we're here drinking in the middle of the afternoon, and um, we can't help noticing that you guys have the greatest job ever, and um, can you tell us what company you work for, because we want to apply for jobs there?" Which everyone in their tipsy state thought was HILARIOUS and started asking what they studied and handing out business cards and whatnot, and how awesome would it be if one of those guys wound up working for us? Except that he would be terrifically disappointed to find out that we do not normally spend our afternoons drinking margaritas down the street from our office.

Afterward I went home, still in my buzzed state, and then Torsten and I ordered a pizza and I had three pieces. Or maybe four. Which is a sign that I should stay away from the alcohol not just because of all the empty calories? But also because apparently when I've been drinking I think it's AWESOME to stuff my face with whatever unhealthy stuff is nearest. Frozen margaritas + Weight Watchers = BAD IDEA, apparently.

But the miracle of all miracles? This morning when I woke up? I had actually lost half a pound.

Mere months

So, this thing happened recently where the six month mark to our wedding passed and then suddenly I was like, oh my god our wedding is five months away THAT IS SO SOON. Like, to the point where at four o'clock yesterday afternoon, I was taken with the idea that we should go look at tuxes THAT NIGHT and when Torsten had to work too late to get to the store before it closed, I almost had a small conniption.

I think part of is that we have already been engaged for nine months and so for the longest time the wedding felt like it was just ages away and would essentially never arrive, and now suddenly we are 60% of the way there and we're at the time when the small details start piling up and suddenly it feels like even though the main stuff is pretty much done, there is SO MUCH TO DO and WHEN CAN WE DO IT? How about NOW?

Even though if we really start dealing with the details, we'll wind up with huge piles of flip-flops and candles and ribbons and pew decorations all around our not-that-spacious apartment, and we really do not need that. And really five months (and actually it's five and a half months) is still lots of time. And really we're getting plenty of stuff done now. And all of this is in my head.

But it's so exciting! And the wedding nightmares have evolved so MUCH! The most recent one featured everything going according to plan, except that all the little details were off and the guests were annoyed and I couldn't get my veil right and nobody was there to help me. In the dream, I was extremely grumpy and stressed about that stuff, but it was still a long way from the first wedding nightmare, which featured an empty, grungy basement auditorium and my dad officiating in a grubby pair of shorts.

Oh and the other part of this feeling is probably that we booked our honeymoon flights yesterday, so now things are not as easily canceled as they were back when we had only booked the hotel. Not that we would ever want to cancel, because it is going to be the best trip ever, and I am pretty much as excited about that as I am about the wedding itself, but now it's really official and we have real, actual money committed to it, and we've put in for the time off work, and it's really happening!

Oh, and one last thing? OH MY GOD FIVE MONTHS. YAY.

So tell me, has this ever happened to you? That something felt really far away and then all of a sudden, BAM, it switched and suddenly it was like RIGHT THERE, about to happen? What was it?

P.S. Yes, you are allowed to laugh at me when it's, like, October 30 and I'm talking about how SOON everything is and you remember how I've been talking about that since May.

Trees and premieres and invitations, oh my.

So, it rained all weekend, and particularly hard on Sunday evening and all through the night. The culmination of the storm was at 4:30 on Monday morning, when Torsten and I were awakened by a huge thud that I, in my half-asleep state, thought was a garbage truck slamming a dumpster back onto the ground in a particularly ferocious manner.

But no. It wasn't a dumpster. It was a tree. A very large tree. Landing across the residential street behind our building, and crushing about six cars in the process. In the morning there was a police car out there, and some car owners taking photos of the damage for insurance purposes, and one dumbass trying to climb over a waist-high downed power line to get to his car rather than walking around the block, until the cop stopped him by turning on his siren.


Anyway, as of this morning the tree was still there, surrounded by Do Not Cross barriers with two crushed cars underneath it. Crappy way to start out the week, huh?

In other news, I know I don't normally get all pop-culture here on the blog, even though I do love Red Carpet Fashion Awards for its non-ironic, very interesting take on fashion and read it every day. But as you probably already know, I adore Sex and the City, and I can't wait for the movie to come out, and last night was the premiere in London. (And also, um, why London? Wrong city! But let's move on.)

So anyway, Sarah Jessica Parker being known as somewhat of a fashion icon, and her three co-stars attempting to keep up, I was dying to see what they all wore to the premiere. And they did not disappoint. I knew SJP would be outrageous (I swear that hat is almost as tall as she is), but wow, was I ever not expecting to see quite so much boob from Cynthia Nixon. My. Goodness. The only one who disappointed me was Kristin Davis--that neckline is way too Charlotte.


Oh! And also yesterday? My sister and I assembled a mock wedding invitation, and it looks SO GOOD. It has wrong colors and crooked cutting and everything, because it was just to get an idea of how it would all work, and yet I am in love with it, because it is so nice and it is also OUR WEDDING, for REAL like IN PRINT. So we went to Paper Source and bought all the supplies, and even with unexpected things like 12 rolls of double sided tape and a circle cutter and all number of random other extras, it still came out to way less than what we would have had to pay for a very simple invitation from an actual store.

AND this invitation includes all sorts of amazing little details that wouldn't have fit our budget if we'd ordered them pre-assembled, like vellum envelope liners with silver leaves, and a pocket with scalloped edging and polka dots, and oh, it's perfect, just perfect. And I know I totally rolled my eyes when people talked about how your invitation matters because it is the first picture that people get of the wedding, and therefore it's representative of you and your wedding plans. But actually? This invitation is so perfect, and we both like it so much, that now? I totally understand that concept. And I feel like we totally nailed it.

Even though the assembly is going to be SO MUCH WORK and I'll probably be posting in a month about oh my god WHAT WAS I THINKING is it too late to just order invitations from a store and have someone else do all the dirty work? And that's when it will be YOUR job to point me back to this post and remind me why I'm doing all this work. Because they are perfect. And that is worth the work. So once I'm knee-deep in hole punchers and bone folders, remind me of how great the finished product will be, would you? You guys are the best.