Groceries: A Photo Essay

Last night, Torsten and I found the most domestic of ways to spend a Friday night: we got a Zipcar for two hours and used the time to go to both our normal grocery store and the local Whole Foods. It was great. Friday night at eight or nine is the best time ever to go grocery shopping--the store is totally empty, parking is easy, and there are no lines anywhere.

First, let me outline our past system of grocery shopping: We've been shopping every day on an as-needed basis for whatever we decide at four o'clock that afternoon that we're going to have for dinner. I leave work first, so I go and sometimes Torsten joins me. I buy however much I can manage to carry and often end up taking the bus home to prevent my arms from falling off.

We have limited storage in our tiny, walk-through kitchen, so the former system involved a strategy of "shove the newest thing in the cabinet/fridge/freezer wherever you find space, pushing older stuff further back to rot." I have to say, it was a charming and efficient use of space.

But now that we've joined Zipcar, which is the best thing ever because it allows us to use a car when we want or need one without having to actually own one, and it's not that expensive because gas is included, and they are parked all over the city so you don't have to go to the airport to pick up and return them, and also you only have to be 21 to drive them so there's no extra $25 daily fee for being under 25, we've realized that we can pay $8, use the car for an hour, and DRIVE to the grocery store to do a full week's worth of shopping. It's like we're adults around here or something.

Anyway, so last night was our first attempt, so we figured we'd hit up both a normal grocery store and Whole Foods. First, though, we realized we had better clean out all the crap in our cabinets (actually, it's "cabinet," singular) and fridge to make space for everything we'd be buying. The fridge had some moldy cheese and liquid vegetables in it, but otherwise wasn't so bad. But oh my god, we had not cleaned out the cabinet... ever. It was horrible. The worst was a bag of hard rolls that had been there since April, and had turned into dark brown gelatinous mush resembling mud or maybe puke. It was completely unrecognizable as anything that once resembled bread. It was awful.

I didn't plan this blog entry ahead of time, so I didn't think to take "before" pictures, but really that's probably for the best, since you would all run screaming from this blog, never to return. But I did take some fun "after" pictures, and even though I know all you people with big families who fill cabinets and pantries and chest freezers and two fridges with food for everyone for a week will probably snicker, we felt that we made off very well. We planned out the (healthy!) meals we're going to eat and purchased all the necessary ingredients, plus extra things that we use a lot, like chicken broth and Fresca (the diet soda of choice for both of us). So, I give you photographic evidence of how organized we now are.

First, the cabinet:


Next, the fridge:



And then, the freezer:


I also bought flowers at Whole Foods, because usually they're really good quality. One of the bunches was:


And the other decidedly was not:

Why my bridesmaids rock.

First off, right up front, I should say this, because apparently I have never mentioned it before: Our wedding is scheduled for November 1, 2008. My bad for assuming you all were psychic. We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

I know I just wrote about all the wedding planning I have left to do, but I also want to talk about one thing that I have settled on, which is the bridesmaids. There will be two bridesmaids and the maid of honour. And I just wanted to briefly talk about how wonderful they are. (Ha ha, I said "brief." As though I am ever brief.)

First of all, it's worth noting that all of my friends have been utterly fantastic about the whole engaged/wedding thing. Even though some of them are probably shocked that I'm getting married so soon after college, everyone has been super-supportive and enthusiastic and happy, even the ones who haven't met Torsten yet. And the ones who have met him go on and on about how great he is and what a good fit we are. I can think of at least six friends who would make fabulous bridesmaids and yet who will not be bridesmaids in my wedding. And they all know that, and nobody has pitched a fit or caused any drama about it. They all get that weddings are complicated and delicate and expensive, and none of them resents or expects anything, and they are all going to be there no matter how far away they might be living at the time.

But we are hoping to have a small, intimate wedding, so much as I would love to have all my friends standing up there with me, if I did, there would be as many people up at the altar as there would be sitting down watching. So I decided to keep it to two, and from there the choice was easy--my best friend and my closest non-college friend with whom I have the kind of relationship where even if we don't talk for six months, when we do call, everything is exactly like it always has been. Plus, of course, my sister as the maid of honour.

So, maid of honour first--My sister, two and a half years older, just turned 26. Living here in DC, got married herself in June 2005. I was her maid of honour and it wasn't a question for her either. It's just how it was and how we had always known it would be. I gave a toast at her wedding and she'll give one at mine, and it'll be great, and there's no pressure on her to make it great because she just will be. She's my sister and there just isn't a question. She is the reason I want to have two kids. The sister bond is like nothing else. There is nobody else who should be up there holding my bouquet and arranging my train and looking beautiful.

Then, my best friend--We met our freshman year of college when we were both part of Smith's community service organization, but we didn't become best friends until the beginning of the next year, 2003. We have the same name, except that she goes by Jessie, and our sisters have the same name, except that they spell it differently. She is strong and funny and smart and supportive and never lets me slack off and stay out of touch. She's living in a different country now, but she'll be back soon. We've been staying in touch over Skype and when I got engaged the reason I didn't update my Facebook profile right away was because I was waiting for her to call me so I could tell her all about it. I cannot WAIT until she gets back to the US in November and we will be able to talk for free over American cell phones. She gets it, and me, and I love her to pieces. We already have plans to go dress shopping when she comes to visit in February, and I am dying with excitement.

And last, my other closest friend--We met between our freshman and sophomore years of college, when we were both counselors at a summer camp for academically gifted high school kids. We were both 19 and we both had groups of 16-17 year old high school kids who were smart and knew it. They did not know how young we were, and it was our mission to keep it that way until the end of the camp. On our days off we drove out to the beach together, and after camp she stayed at my parents' house with me for a few days. We ran activities together and we signed up for night duty together and we made daytime trips to Target together while the kids were in class. We backed each other up against the returning counselors and their practical jokes, and we helped each other deal with the issues their kids were facing. We were counselors together the next year too, and we stayed in touch and visited all the time in between, and we still do. She was the first person I saw when I came back from my trip to France where I visited a friend of mine who had just been paralyzed in the hospital. I stayed with her in New York, and I cried to her, and she was there, and said all the right things, and didn't say any of the wrong things, and was genuine about it. She's also one of the classiest people I've ever met.

So, there you have it--the bridal half of the wedding party. Three people I am extremely lucky to have in my life. And let's just not talk about the groom's half of the party--because someone has absolutely no idea who he wants to have as best man and groomsmen. Not that I'm pushing him. He has over a year to decide. It's just my OCD side that wants to know exactly who everyone will be, and who'll be giving toasts, and which bridesmaid will match up with which groomsman. But really, it's fine. And at least I know that my half of the wedding party is exactly what it should be.

Lastly, a photo of my sister and me at her wedding:

Peter Piper picked a peck of... pickled pasta?

Apparently, I've taken a cue from Tessie today (AND EVERY DAY THIS WEEK) with the multiple posts. Because one mammoth post is clearly not enough. Anyway, all these amazing people are engaged, and when I read their blogs, it reminds me of the fact that I'm also engaged, and I have this whole wedding thing going on. And should probably be planning it.

Now, as I mentioned in my last wedding post, we have picked a site, a caterer, and a photographer. You may notice that the last wedding post was over a month ago, and yet nothing has changed. We have made a vague effort to find an officiant, but our one real attempt was thwarted and we haven't done anything since then. I sent a check-in email to the caterer the other day just to let her know that we aren't dead, but that's it. I've also done a bit of research on the invitation, but I'm getting way ahead of myself with that one since we haven't even started collecting addresses for the people on our guest list. I've thought about a lot of this stuff, like wedding dresses and attendant gifts and favours and rings and a DJ and flowers and hair and a cake, but I haven't actually done anything, and then there are other things like makeup, tuxes, cars, and ceremony music that I haven't even considered yet.

Also, we've picked the menu for the reception, but then we got stuck. We want to add a pasta option so that vegetarians can have a heartier meal than just side vegetables, and also my mom suggested a dessert bar so people can have choices other than cake. Neither of us feels particularly compelled to have a dessert bar, as we intend to have a great cake (though we haven't planned it, or tasted any options, or anything else yet). But hey, it's my parents' money and if they want some extra desserts, they shall have them! But this means that I have to confer with my parents on which of the dessert options they want, since I have no preference. And in the meantime, Torsten and I discussed the pasta options, each preferred a different one, didn't care that much, and then forgot about it. So I present to you, my wedding- and food-savvy readers, the three pasta options. Please tell me which one you would be most likely to load up on your plate, especially if you would not be having meat with it:

Option A: Pumpkin ravioli--Pumpkin and ricotta filled ravioli served with roasted corn in a sage and bourbon cream sauce presented with rosemary oven dried apple slices
Option B: Black bean ravioli--black bean and cheese filled chipotle dough ravioli with cilantro-lime pesto, spicy flash roasted roma tomatoes, and fresh avocado
Option C: Butternut agnolotti--Butternut squash and chevre filled half-moon pasta in maple-chipotle cream sauce presented with roasted corn and shallots

Seriously, all of these options sound fine to me, and I completely cannot make up my mind. I don't even remember which one I preferred the first time when Torsten and I discussed it. Which is where you come in. Help me, please. I need to tell the caterer, soon, and I am stricken with the worst case of indecisiveness ever. So please, please, tell me--which one would you be most excited to find at the next wedding you attend?

College, research, and investment in learning.

At work we're in the middle of a big project developing a new website for a major client. This project has been going on for a couple of years now, which is great because it means that I came in at the most opportune time possible. All the research has been done--expert panels, focus groups, scientific studies and results analysis. Even the wireframes have been put together, and there is a huge, gorgeous spreadsheet that contains links to all the resources that are going to be used to develop the content of each section. Now is when we're going to actually build out the website by developing the content for each section.

I spent the morning printing out tons and tons of documents to be used as resources for the first section. Now they are sitting next to me in a fresh, still slightly warm pile, all neatly organized and paper-clipped together, with a brand new, virgin highlighter next to them. I get to spend the rest of the day reading all of this information and highlighting the information that is most crucial to the website itself. Then I can categorize the information and come up with an outline for the section that I'm currently working on. And then I can actually start doing the writing.

I hated doing research in college--seriously, could not stand it. I was never one of those people who spent hours in the library or had huge stacks of old, musty books on her desk. I did research when I had to and I was good at embedding quotes, etc. But I always found it dull. This is part of why blog writing is so appealing to me--I get to just write whatever I want, and if I want to support it with links or citations I can, but I don't have to. There is no real accountability here, except that people won't read my blog if I fill it with a bunch of incorrect, silly assertions about crap. Most of the stuff I write is personal anyway, and doesn't really require any sort of citations or foundation literature. Which is another thing that appeals to me about blog writing.

But this time, for some reason, I'm actually excited about doing the research. The more involved I've gotten with this project, the more interested in the subject matter I've become, and the more I really want to learn more. It was this thirst for knowledge that eluded me during college. Actually, my complete lack of a desire to learn more about other people's research made me think that it really makes sense to take some time off between high school and college, do some fun and/or challenging real-world stuff, and then go back. Smith has a scholarship program for non-traditional age students, and whenever I had a class with an Ada, as those students were affectionately called, I found that they were the most engaged, the most eager to learn, the most able to successfully synthesize the academic reading we were doing with practical application. They were the ones who had stayed up late doing the reading not because they wanted a good grade on the midterm but because they were so engrossed in the book that they didn't even notice what time it was. Even the ones with young children. They really wanted to be in school, and their enthusiasm was noticeable.

By contrast, all of us who were just your standard good students in high school and went to college because it was the next thing in line for us to do rather than out of a particular desire to be there... well, we were the ones who hadn't done the reading, who didn't always go to class, who wrote half-assed papers hours before they were due. College wasn't exactly easy for me, but I relied on my natural writing skills, quick reading ability, and general understanding of what the professor wanted out of assignments to get good grades. I graduated with honours, but I definitely did not get the most out of my college classes.

I do believe that I got the most out of my college experience overall--I learned so much, and I met so many new people, and my perspective on and understanding of the world changed so drastically, and I'm a much better, richer, more empathetic person for the years I spent in college. But I always said that the worst thing about college for me was the classes, and that was really true. The best things about college for me were the community, the people, the random conversations, the late nights with friends and a bottle of wine, the time I spent on the debate team, the community service organization I was involved with. And those were all incredibly worthy things.

And there were even some classes that I was totally involved with, and got a lot out of. Most of the classes in my major--sociology--were interesting, and I was absorbed in them and learned a lot from them. But even then, I didn't do most of the reading and I didn't always attend class. I was almost too smart about what a professor expected--I understood when it was and wasn't necessary to read or attend, and I only did those things when it was necessary. I always went to my photography classes, which I loved, and I always went to my writing classes, because I loved those too. And I went to small classes, and interesting classes, and senior seminars. But other classes, like French and history and psychology and government... I was interested in the subjects, but I was more interested in getting as much sleep as possible. So that's what I did.

I don't regret the way I spent my time in college at all. I got good grades. I got a great job out of college that has segued into an even better one only a year and a half later. I am a much better person for the years I spent in college, and more knowledgeable, relaxed, and understanding for my time there. I have amazing friends who will last long after we've forgotten all about college. But now that I've been out of college for over a year, and am working in a field that truly interests me, genuinely engages me, I understand on a more personal level why those Ada scholars were always the most interested and the most invested. This feeling of actually looking forward to the work research I'm about to do is so novel to me. I truly cannot remember the last time I felt this way about a huge pile of reading and a highlighter. In a lot of ways, it's really too bad that our society tracks young people directly from one level of education to the next without allowing for time in between to try out other things.

And since we're talking about college and some of the things I learned there, I leave you with a couple photos from my advanced photography class, taken my senior year of college. You can see the full set here.

Shauna's Wedding Dress

First of all, congratulations to Shauna and Jason over at Pickles & Dimes, because they're getting married in ten short days! And Shauna, don't worry--you won't forget the dress. Your bridesmaids will remind you, or something.

Second, I volunteered to do a very important favour--I was going to say it's a favour for Shauna, but really it's a favour for her readers, since we're the ones dying to see her dress. Anyway, Shauna and Jason run P&D together, which means that she can't post pictures of her dress on her own blog because Jason would see them. So instead, she's sent me the link to post for all to see.

Click here to see a photo of a smug model wearing Shauna's dress.

I emailed Shauna to ask how she wanted me to deal with comments in order to make sure Jason doesn't hear about the dress ahead of time. But I haven't heard back yet and I'm totally impatient to post the link so that you can all see the pretty pretty dress, so for now I guess you should all just comment here to tell Shauna how gorgeous her dress is. Because it totally, totally is. And I'm so excited to see the actual wedding photos.

Scurvylicious.

When I studied abroad in Senegal in 2005, I got sick. Specifically, I got scurvy. And then mono.

The scurvy sucked. Like, really, really sucked. The worst part was that I didn't have the first clue what was happening to me. I thought I had gingivitis or... I don't know, gum cancer or some other horribly painful mouth disease that would eventually kill me. I had no idea where to find a dentist in Dakar. I was mildly scared of what kind of dental facilities might be available to me there (though I had a good, accredited doctor who eventually diagnosed me with mono. But that was later).

The reason I was so worried about dental facilities in Dakar had to do with the taxis available in the city. They were the scariest things ever. They would take you just about anywhere in the city for the equivalent of about $1, or $2 if you weren't good at bargaining. But their drivers drove like maniacs, and their windshields were all cracked and held together with some sort of special gooey thing that could be painted on so that the windshield wouldn't collapse and spray shards of glass into the passengers' eyes until the next accident, and all possible warning lights on the dashboard were always lit up, and the seatbelts were so long unused that one of my friends got a seatbelt-shaped black mark across her chest when she wore hers once, and they never, ever had gas in them. (By the way, gas in Senegal costs about the same as it does in Europe, i.e. about $1 per liter which is the equivalent to about $4 a gallon, which given the average income in Senegal and particularly the average income of a Senegalese taxi driver is a completely insane price.)

Anyway, you might be wondering what the taxis had to do with the dental care. And honestly, I don't know either. Maybe I was totally hallucinating from the scurvy or something. But there was a connection in my mind, like... if the taxis are scary and dangerous, and they take me to the dentist, then the dentist will be scary and dangerous too. Possibly not a bad assumption.

Anyway, I started exhibiting signs of scurvy almost exactly three months after I arrived in Senegal. But I really had no idea what was going on. I thought I had a cold, and I knew my mouth hurt, and I took almost an entire (small) bottle of Advil in about a week, maybe a week and a half. Yes, I know, my liver is probably permanently damaged. Like I said, I wasn't thinking straight. My gums hurt so much that I would wake up in the middle of the night in horrible pain and seriously want to wrench my teeth out of my mouth. It felt like there just wasn't enough space in my gums for all of my teeth and if I could just get my teeth out of my gums, it would be this huge, glorious feeling of relief. The Advil didn't help at all, but I kept taking it, somehow desperately hoping that the next pill would be the magic one. I even tried one of my host mother's home remedies, a disgusting-tasting powder that I rubbed on my gums and that immediately turned into a substance resembling wet concrete. Also, whenever I brushed my teeth my gums bled. A lot.

It turns out that after three months of insufficient vitamin C is when you start getting scurvy symptoms. But I had no idea that I wasn't getting enough vitamin C--I was eating vegetables regularly, but I wasn't thinking about the fact that they had all been boiled for hours and thus lost all nutritious value they once had. I also was eating fresh fruit regularly, but only bananas because I didn't like oranges, pretty much the only other option. And also, I was a complacent American who'd grown up with tons of vitamins and fluoride treatments and whatnot, and who ever really thinks, Shit, I'm going to develop a vitamin deficiency if I don't eat some oranges? What, you all think that? Well, apparently you're smarter than me. I didn't even know what scurvy WAS. When I was finally diagnosed with a vitamin C deficiency, I had to look up the word scorbut in my French dictionary to find out the name of my condition. And was beyond shocked to find the word scurvy on the other end of the definition.

Anyway, after a week or two of severe pain, I finally went to the pharmacy and asked if they had anything to relieve painful gums. They offered me a rhubarb-alcohol mixture to be painted onto your gums with a little brush. I took it and was about to leave when the pharmacist said to me, "Wait, are your gums bleeding?" When I responded that they were, she nodded knowingly and said, "Ah ha. Scorbut." Then she added a pack of vitamin C tablets to my purchase and sent me home.

See? Senegal might be considered a developing country, but they sell things there that help with medical problems. It's not like I was living out in the bush somewhere, knowing that I had scurvy and desperately wishing I had some lime juice to spray on my hardtack (and in case anyone was wondering where the term "limey" comes from, now you know). There were beautiful vitamin C supplements WAITING for me about 200 feet from where I lived. I was just TOO STUPID to know.

Anyway, it took about two weeks of vitamin C supplements before the pain eased, and another two weeks before it was totally gone. It took a whole summer of a special mouthwash given to me by my American dentist before my gums and teeth felt totally back to normal and flossing stopped hurting. By the time I had totally recovered from the scurvy, though, I had developed mono and was sleeping all the time. And by the end of my five-month stay, I had some other kind of bug that was causing me to puke in the street, which probably made all of my neighbours think I was an alcoholic or something.

The point here really is that the scurvy totally sucked. But it turned a pretty great cocktail party story, and two years later my friends are still making (gentle) fun of me for it. I almost named my blog Scurvylicious instead of Du Wax Loolu, but I was afraid it would be interpreted as "curvylicious" instead, and that was an image that I definitely did not want to project. But even though I was sick, exhausted, in pain, and/or puking for the last two months of my time in Senegal, it was still a completely amazing experience. See? Here's some pictures of how amazing it was (full set here):

If I were to go back and decide all over again, I would definitely still choose to go. Scurvy and all.

Four Things from KLC

Okay, I was tagged over at Kwarter Life Crisis to do the "Four Things" meme, so here it is. It's one of the more interesting memes I've seen, so I'm pleased to be tagged.

Four Jobs I Have Had In My Life
1. Salesclerk at a toy store
2. Counselor at a summer camp for academically gifted high school students
3. Literary agency assistant
4. Non-profit writer/editor

Four Movies I Can Watch Over and Over
1. Bridget Jones's Diary
2. Big Business
3. Laurel Canyon
4. Little Miss Sunshine

Four TV Shows I Like To Watch
1. Sex and the City
2. House
3. American Idol
4. Friends

Four Places I Have Been On Vacation
1. Krakow, Poland
2. South Harpswell, Maine
3. North Carolina's Outer Banks
4. Seattle, Washington

Four Favorite Foods
1. Sushi
2. Goat's cheese
3. Avocado
4. Whole wheat pasta

Four Websites I Visit Daily
1. My entire blogroll
2. TMZ
3. CNN
4. Facebook

Four Places I Would Rather Be
1. San Francisco
2. Lying with my head on Torsten's lap
3. Thailand
4. Somewhere where I could own a dog

Four Bloggers I Am Tagging
1. Clink
2. Black Sheeped
3. Alice
4. Artemisia

Quirks.

Swistle requested a list of quirks that I have that Torsten thinks are cute enough to tell his mother about, only to find that she deems them horrifying rather than adorable. And since I am one of those bloggers who aims to please, I decided to provide such a list. Keep in mind that many of these things aren't quirks, per se. So this is more a list of things I do (or don't do) that Torsten finds cute but his mother does not. Note that the commentary after each item is projected from me and may not actually be going on inside his mother's head. Depending on who you ask. Let's see:

• I don't clean the house very often. This is not a quirk. But it's something that Torsten likes to talk about, and something that upsets his mother.
• I have a very dry sense of humour. I make inappropriate jokes and comments that are so "adorable" that Torsten feels the need to translate. Then his mother stares at me before smiling weakly and quickly turning away.
• I burp fairly often. Sometimes quite loudly. Which does not fall under the category of "Charming Future Daughter-in-Law Behaviour."
  
• I sleep really late on weekends. Until it is no longer morning, sometimes. This is a huge waste of time. I could be up at 4 and have spent an hour at the gym and several hours cooking for Torsten and scrubbing the apartment if I used my time wisely.
  
• I drink a ton of water and as a result, have to pee quite often. Sometimes we're late because just when we're rushing out the door, I decide I have to pee and have to go back in to the bathroom. This segues into...
  
• I am not always on time. This is extremely inefficient and therefore un-German of me.
• I don't always save money at every opportunity. I will take the bus home instead of walking even if it costs me a $0.35 transfer fee if the weather is bad or I have heavy groceries. I will buy expensive leather boots instead of the $15 pleather versions. I often order Diet Coke instead of just water at restaurants even if it costs $2.50. This clearly means that Torsten and I will wind up in the poorhouse. Also, our children will be sorely neglected.
• While I am perfectly capable of grocery shopping by myself, I much prefer to do it with Torsten and will often make him leave work early to meet me there so we can shop together. This is a clear demonstration of my lack of wifely abilities to keep the household running.
• While I am quite responsible, I'm not an overly cautious person. I don't scrub my hands every five minutes and I don't think it's necessary for us to oversee every movement our kids make. In fact, I think it would be better for us to give our kids a little distance to learn how to problem-solve on their own. This apparently means that if our kid falls over and lands on its head on a concrete floor, I will leave it lying there bleeding until it figures out how to get up by itself.
• I'm not an aggressive driver, and I don't take out my driving frustrations by driving offensively, but I do swear at and tell off other drivers when they do stupid things (only with all windows securely closed). Sometimes if I've been stuck behind a really slow driver in the left lane of the interstate for a long time, I'll accelerate hard when I finally get around them, just for the satisfaction. This more or less amounts to putting both of our lives in danger.
• I want many aspects of our wedding to be purple. This is extremely un-frugal of me, as it would be much cheaper to get everything secondhand in whatever colour I happened to find it in.
• I love bad TV and make Torsten watch it with me. This pollutes not just my mind, which is bad enough, but also his, which is much worse.

Okay, your turn. What are your quirks or habits that your significant other loves but that their parents dislike (or would dislike if they knew)?

Why we want to move to San Francisco.

I forgot to mention in my last post that the reason that we went to NYC on our way back to DC yesterday was to drop a friend off at JFK to catch her flight home. As we were driving down 678 toward the airport, we noticed a surprising number of police cars parked around, as well as cops stationed as lookouts on all the bridges and overpasses above us. Then we noticed in the other direction, headed away from the airport, a police convoy including several unmarked SUVs. Torsten and my friend both missed this, but at least two of the SUVs contained what appeared to be a SWAT team--men in black uniforms and helmets with assault rifles pointed out the open windows of the car. They looked very much like these SWAT officers, except they were seated and not running:

Man. I live in DC and I'm used to motorcades. The word in DC is that the way you can tell Bush's motorcade from Cheney's is that Cheney's has an ambulance, although Wikipedia says that Bush's also has an ambulance that contains a supply of blood of Bush's blood type (hopefully nobody with Bush's blood type will arrive at a DC hospital needing a transfusion and face a blood supply shortage). And I know that when there are motorcycle cops who drive ahead of the motorcade to stop traffic at every intersection so that the motorcade never has to slow down, it's someone important. I've seen those motorcades (as well as the resulting traffic nightmares). But I've never seen scary helmeted men pointing guns as alarming as those assault rifles out open windows of a motorcade before. In fact, I found the whole open window thing very surprising. We were thinking it might have been Ahmadinejad's arrival, but we have no idea what time he arrived in NYC yesterday (we saw the convoy at about 5 p.m.), and it could as easily been some other diplomat or head of state arriving for the U.N. General Assembly. I can't even imagine the hellish traffic the East Side will experience this week if every head of state gets a motorcade like the one we saw yesterday. What a zoo.

Speaking of NYC being a zoo, a few people commented in my last post that they were curious as to why I said that if money weren't a concern, without a doubt, I'd like to live in San Francisco. Alice is right that I mentioned it a bit in my post about the future, which is why I didn't elaborate further in the last post, but hey, since you asked!

There are several reasons why we want to live in San Francisco. Perhaps it's time for another list! This one will be numbered instead of bulleted, just to shake things up a bit.

1. Ocean. Both of us love the water and the ocean. The Potomac River here in DC is not enough for us. So we definitely want to live in a coastal state, and preferably in a coastal town.
   
2. Weather. The weather on the East Coast sucks. It's unbearably hot and humid in the summer even all the way up in New England, and even hotter and more humid (and for longer) down South. The winters from about New York on up are miserable, windy, freezing affairs. The Pacific Northwest, while gorgeous, is too unpredictable and rainy, weatherwise. That leaves California. I was just talking to a friend of mine from SF about weather yesterday, and she said something about how June and July aren't really summer months in SF, but in August and September it gets hot--like eighty degrees. I would KILL to live in a place where eighty degrees is considered hot, but where the winter isn't miserable. Torsten agrees.
   
3. Culture. There are people from all over the world living in SF, which is one of the things both of us love about DC and would not want to give up. There's an authentic Chinatown. If we adopt a child of a different race, most people we encounter won't find that shocking and novel. Having a bilingual family there won't be totally out of the ordinary. Our kids won't feel like freaks. WE won't feel like freaks. Many people are crunchy hippie types, to the point where it may annoy me, but my college experience was like that and I managed to find the people who found the whole thing as silly as I did without disregarding the principle behind it completely. It's less superficial than LA.
   
4. Landscape. SF is hilly. It has gorgeous views and gorgeous surrounding areas to travel to. It's interesting and complex. I feel like you could live there and constantly be discovering new little corners to explore that you'd never seen or heard of before. It isn't made entirely out of concrete. Plus, the hills mean that walking around will be especially good for our health.
   
5. Jobs. I love the writer/editor thing and would like to either continue in that direction or move back toward book publishing as either an editor at a publishing house or a literary agent. SF is a literary city with a reasonable amount of publishing houses, both little independent ones and arms of major ones based in New York or London. There are also lots of non-profits and similar organizations that are moving in the direction of the combo writer/editor-web developer work that I'm doing now. No matter which direction I decide to pursue, I will have options in SF. So will Torsten--all major American cities have independent consulting firms, and most major national consulting firms have offices in SF.
   
6. Atmosphere. The city has neighbourhoods that, while centrally located, also have a charming small-town feel. It doesn't overwhelm me like NYC does. And I don't mean to sound like a small-town hick when I say that. I love NYC and I'm sure I'd be happy living there. But the convoys and the rushing crowds on all the sidewalks and the too-trendy-for-me bars and the stylish fashionistas and counter-stylish hipsters and really tall buildings and impatient drivers just aren't really my style. Torsten would like it, but he doesn't crave it, and he would hate the winters.
   
7. Shopping and restaurants. It's important to both of us to live in a place that has a variety of good restaurants, friendly (and tasty) coffee shops, and interesting, fun stores. It's also important to both of us not to go totally consumerist-crazy and buy things all the time. NYC is such a wonderland of shopping and eating that if we lived there, I suspect we would wind up fat and broke. SF's more hippie tendencies help to moderate that consumerist edge while still allowing for plenty of fun places to visit and blow lots of cash (after all, the SF hippies are the rich ones who can afford to live there, and therefore can't be THAT hippie).
8. The lack of cons. There are two real cons to moving across the country to a popular city: distance from friends/family and high cost of living. I currently live within driving distance of my parents, and while that will change when we move to SF (notice I said when), they also love SF and will certainly fly out to visit quite regularly. My sister and I currently live in the same town, which is nice, but she doesn't intend to stay in DC forever either, so I can't make choices based on where she lives. And she too will visit. Torsten's parents already have to fly to see us, so a slightly longer flight won't make the biggest difference. My college friends are spread out all over the country, so wherever I live, I'll be near some friends and far from others. Torsten is the same way, except that his friends are spread all over the world. As for cost of living, from my research on Craigslist, it seems similar to that of any other major US city like NYC or DC, and we want to live in a major city.
   

So there you go--a rather thorough answer to the casual question a few of you posed. Also, as a side note to the people who commented on my "interview" post--none of you specified that you wanted to be interviewed, but I realized that I was unclear in my request when I said, "Comment if you want to be interviewed." I should have said, "Comment and TELL ME that you want to be interviewed." So, I'm re-doing this. If you want to be interviewed, comment and specifically say that you'd like to be interviewed, and then I'll write questions for you. I swear, they'll be personalized. Unless I don't know you and you don't post a link to your blog. Then they'll have to be generic.

I've been interviewed by Type (little) a.

This weekend, Torsten and I took Friday off and drove up to Massachusetts to visit some friends at my alma mater. I lured Torsten up there in part by promises of pretty leaves changing colours in a charming New England fall. Unfortunately, only about two trees complied and so someone was grumpy about having to drive seven hours each way just to see the boring green kind of tree. But still, he got to meet a lot of my old friends he hadn't met yet but had heard a lot about, and we stopped in NYC on the way there and the way back and he got to go to the Carnegie Deli, his favourite restaurant in the entire world. (By the way, I highly recommend this place as the best Jewish deli ever, but it's a bit touristy. The best way to avoid the crowd is to go there at 1:00 a.m. on a weekday. They're open 'til 4:00 a.m. every day of the year, and it's super nice and peaceful at night. And screw getting eight hours of sleep, anyway.)

We got back last night around 11:00 p.m. and I checked my RSS feeds--only to discover that there are nearly 100 new posts waiting for my attention. I almost feel guilty devoting time to writing my own post when I have so many of your posts to read. But I asked Type (little) a to interview me, and now I have five questions to answer.

The rules, taken verbatim from Type (little) a's post: Leave me a comment saying “Interview me.” I will respond by emailing you or leaving a comment with five questions. I get to pick the questions. If you don’t have a valid email address on your blog, please provide one. You will update your blog with a post containing your answers to the questions. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

Okay. Here are my five questions and answers. Like the rules say, leave a comment if you want to be interviewed, and I'll send you your questions.

1. What did you want to be when you grew up? How close/far is it to what you're doing now?
I wanted to be a writer starting from the age of about five. I never really specified what kind of writer I wanted to be, but I had in my mind mostly fiction and poetry, I think. Now I am a writer/editor, mostly for the web, all non-fiction. Still, not too far off.

2. Do you have any sore spots that you don't laugh at/make fun of?
Yes, just one--my weight. My health is too serious and personal for any jokes to be funny. Although I don't think I know anyone who does this to me--at least not since I went through a couple of rough years of teasing back in elementary school.

3. You crack a fortune cookie and it reads, "Your dearest wish will come true." What is it?
This will never happen to me because I am one of those people who abuses wishes. I would spend forever trying to calculate exactly how to phrase my wish in order to get the maximum benefit from it. And this is assuming that the wish-granter would be able to see through my insistence that my dearest wish was for more wishes. Anyway, I would probably wind up torn between something really unselfish like world peace, no more poverty, etc., or something totally self-obsessed. As far as dearest wishes for me personally, it would probably be something like excellent health and safety for me and everyone I care about.

4. Let's say you had a LARGE amount of money to give away. We're talking make a difference money. Where would you give it and why?
This is a tough one, because there are so many causes to care about. I would have to do research to figure out exactly where money is most needed to make a difference, but I would probably give it to something to do with curing and preventing HIV/AIDS. When I was ten, one of my uncles died of AIDS, so it's a really personal and important thing for me.

5. If money/jobs/family were no object, where would you live?
San Francisco. No question.

Okay, your turn. Comment and I will interview you. And when you're commenting to ask me to interview you, if you want to tell me about your weekend, I'd love to hear.

Green card hell.

Torsten and I met with a lawyer this morning to discuss the steps that we'll need to go through in order to apply for a green card for him once we're married. Originally I had been thinking that we could just find the instructions and forms on the USCIS website and go from there, but AHAHAHAHAHAHA I must have been smoking crack when I was thinking that. The website is more or less impenetrable, so finally I found an immigration lawyer and gave her a call. She only charges $75 for a consultation, and it was well worth the money because I didn't know three-quarters of what she told us. NOR WOULD I HAVE BEEN ABLE TO LEARN IT ON THE US GOVERNMENT WEBSITE.

Sorry about the caps. I have a few venting issues about that website and how crappy and useless it is.

Anyway, here's what I learned about applying for a green card. Keep in mind that we are supposedly in the simplest situation because both of us already live and work in the United States legally. It's just a matter of applying for permanent residency for Torsten and switching his status from visa holder to green card holder. I think a bulleted list is appropriate here. I will note in parentheses which pieces of information I knew before and which tidbits were wholly new to me. Keep in mind that this is after hours of extensive research on the USCIS website.

• Getting the green card issued will take about a year and a half. It might only take a year, but that's if we're very lucky. (DID NOT KNOW.)
• We will have to fill out a total of nine different forms. (DID NOT KNOW.)
• The cost of submitting all the paperwork to the US government will be $1,365. (SORT OF KNEW--but was hoping that I was wrong about having to submit one particular form that comes with a $1,010 price tag.)
• This cost does not include lawyer's fees. If we wanted to have the lawyer submit the forms for us, it would cost an additional $1,000. (DID NOT KNOW.)
• The fees for applying for a green card have tripled since July 31 of this year. (DID NOT KNOW.)
  
• Torsten will have to have a full medical exam by a licensed civil surgeon, as well as submitting all of his vaccination records. (DID NOT KNOW.)
• We have to send a couple of examples of our joint life together with the application, such as bank statements for a shared account, a lease with both of our names, shared health or auto insurance, or a shared cell phone bill. (KNEW.)
• We will have to provide several additional forms of documentation of our joint life together at our interview. (DID NOT KNOW.)
• We have to provide our tax information from the past 2-3 years in order to prove that we earn enough to prevent Torsten from becoming a "public charge." (DID NOT KNOW.)
• All together, along with our nine official forms, we will have to provide approximately ten different forms of documentation about our lives, our birthplaces, etc. Also, seven passport photos of Torsten and one of me. (DID NOT KNOW.)
  

It's at this point that I would like to point out that the US government has a MONOPOLY ON GREEN CARDS. I feel very strongly that this is entirely against the principles of free trade that our capitalist government holds so dear.

You guys are my Weight Watchers meeting replacement.

Today is the three-month anniversary of the day I signed up for Weight Watchers, so I thought I'd do a little retrospective on how it's been going. First of all, I'm sick of running and I'm sick of our gym, especially since the trainer who rented it picked up and moved and brought all his stuff with him, so now the gym feels eerily empty. Also, I don't want to permanently kill my knees with the running stuff. So on the exercise side of things, I think I'm going to take a cue from Swistle (again) and order some different workout DVDs from Netflix until I find one that I can stand more than once.

In terms of the diet aspect (which is where Weight Watchers really comes into play), things are going reasonably well. I've definitely learned a lot about portion size and hidden calories from WW, and even though I don't need the system the way I did at first, I'm going to renew my subscription for the structure, for the ability to look up point values of everything, and for the recipes. I've lost 28 pounds so far, and it's definitely slowed down from how fast I lost weight at the beginning, but that's how diets work in general. So I just have to remind myself that it is still working, even if it's slower than it was before. And also, I've learned that the WW people cheat with the products they sell. The point values are ranges--for instance, one point can be 40 or 60 calories, depending on fat and fiber content. So sometimes, if something is right on the edge of a point value, having 2 of that thing will not mean that the point value exactly doubles. For example, one low-fat granola bar is 2 points--but two low-fat granola bars are 5 points. And Weight Watchers totally takes advantage of this with the products they sell--like the 2-point ice cream bars that add up to 5.5 points if you have two of them. How cheap is that? They market it as a 2-point product, but if it had one more calorie, it would be almost 3.

The problem with this little cheating system is that it's possible to cheat the software program yourself, as well. For example, if I have a granola bar with lunch and another one after dinner, I have two options for how to record it. Either I can put them both in the same meal section, in which case the software would combine them and list them as 5 points, which is the most accurate solution. Or I can list them in two different meal sections, and then the software considers them as 2 points each, which means they only add up to a total of 4 points, which means that I can cheat and save myself a point.

But what I have to remember is that this WW thing is not about number crunching to maximize the efficiency and benefits of my allotted daily points. It's about not cheating, because there's nobody to cheat besides myself. So I don't have 1 1/4 cups of cereal in the morning, even though that's the same points value as 1 cup of cereal. Because even if the points calculator doesn't know the difference, my body does. And that's the whole point here.

The other thing I've been struggling with recently is cooking. With the new job and the attempts to get to the gym and all the visitors we've been having and our social life, there have been a lot of nights out. And although I've gotten really good at finding the healthiest options on restaurant menus, it's still not as healthy as cooking WW meals at home. And unless we're at a restaurant that has its nutrition information online, I'm always estimating exactly what was in the dish I ate and therefore how many points it's worth. I deal with this by not using all of my allotted extra weekly points, so that if I inadvertently underestimate the point value of something I eat, the overflow is made up for. But it's still not good. I already vowed to make this a good cooking week, but then we went out last night and we're going away this weekend, so there will be a lot of eating out involved despite my best efforts.

But next week, it's back on track! No visitors, no plans, no trips, just me and the kitchen and a cabinet full of healthy ingredients. And in the meantime, the weight loss is still happening, slowly but steadily, and I'm still feeling healthier than I have in a long time. And I'm three gallons of milk and 12 sticks of butter lighter than I was on June 19. So it's been a good three months.

Unnecessary Tasering.

I discovered this article over at CNN, and now I feel like puking. This student, Andrew Meyer, asked a long and heated question to John Kerry at a forum, and got upset when the microphone was taken away from him. Then, according to the article:

"Meyer screams for help and asks 'What did I do?' as he tries to break away from officers. He is forced to the ground and officers order him to stop resisting. Meyer says he will walk out if the officers let him go.

"As Kerry tells the audience he will answer the student's 'very important question,' Meyer struggles on the ground and yells at the officers to release him, crying out, 'Don't Tase me, bro,' just before he is Tasered. He is then led from the room, screaming, 'What did I do?'"

Watch the video below. Oh, my God.

On dog ownership and breeds.

On Sunday, Torsten and I took a walk from our apartment up to a neighbourhood with a few shops and restaurants, including a toy store, because I wanted to buy a puzzle to do over the next week or two while we watch a lot of MLB pennant races get decided on TV. While we were strolling, we passed a woman walking her extremely cute Shar Pei. I love Shar Peis, and Torsten likes them too, and we had idly discussed the possibility of getting a Shar Pei when we live somewhere that allows us to have dogs, so of course we had to stop and pet the dog and ask the owner all about him.

I've loved Shar Peis since I was about 10, but the only person I've ever known who owned a Shar Pei was my major adviser in college, who got a Shar Pei puppy my senior year and named it after her childhood pediatrician--Dr. Johnson. I used to see her walking the dog on campus my senior year, and I would always stop and pet it and talk to her, but I wasn't seriously considering getting a dog at that point, so I never asked her about the practical parts of owning one. But the reason we were thinking about a Shar Pei specifically is because they are independent, medium-sized, short-haired dogs who can be left alone while their owners are at work but are still loyal and cuddly. At least, that's what I've read. Also, they're super cute. Unfortunately, we'd probably want to adopt an older dog, and Shar Peis more than almost any other breed are at their cutest when they're puppies:

Anyway, so I asked this woman all about what it was like to own a Shar Pei, and she said that while he was the sweetest dog when it came to other humans, he absolutely hated other dogs, and for that reason could never be brought to a dog park and had to be held on a very tight leash when outside in case another dog passed by, because if he could, he would absolutely attack and try to kill any other dog he saw. This surprised me because everything I've read about Shar Peis said that they are very good watchdogs and are not particularly friendly to strange people, and nothing has said anything about them being vicious toward other dogs. I'm trying to decide if I think her dog was poorly trained and I can still pursue my dream of Shar Pei ownership. But then again, if we adopt an older dog, we won't have control over how it was trained or what fears or complexes it might have developed when it was younger. So maybe it's better to scrap the whole Shar Pei thing and go for one of my other favourite breeds--like chocolate labs, beagles, Welsh corgis, and, of course, un-pedigreed mixes. Does anyone have any thoughts on these breeds, or any others that are particularly good (or not) to own if you live in an apartment without a yard and aren't home for 8 or 9 hours out of the day?

Weather, Emmys, and commercials.

As I'm sure all of you noticed, the weather this weekend was beyond amazing and into the realm of delectably perfect. Torsten and I took full advantage on Saturday afternoon by using our Zipcar membership to obtain a Mini Cooper convertible for a few hours. We drove down the George Washington Memorial Parkway to Mt. Vernon, although we did not actually get out of the car when we got to Mt. Vernon. The GW Parkway runs alongside the Potomac River, and it was all clear and blue and sparkly and there were sailboats and people picnicking in the grass and it was generally just dreamy.

The unfortunate downside to this weather is that the heat is not yet on in our apartment building, which is one of the cons of not paying your own utility bills--they are very stingy with the expensive climate control system. At least when it gets hot in April before the air conditioning is turned on, you can use a fan and try not to die. But we don't have a space heater, and oh god, it was so cold last night. It was 55 degrees out, and it felt like no more than 57 degrees in the apartment. It was so cold that while we were watching the Red Sox-Yankees game (over which I am still bitter, incidentally), the light blanket we keep on the couch was not enough, and we had to go get actual bedding in order to keep ourselves from freezing. And I was almost late to work this morning because I could not bring myself to turn off the nice, hot water in the shower and step out into the frigid bathroom.

Unrelatedly, can I just mention how gleeful I am that FOX did not win a single Emmy last night? Yes, I know that half my favourite shows are on that channel. But that's just a coincidence, and since I don't like FOX, and especially FOX News, I retain the right to feel snobbily pleased that they were overlooked. Especially because they were the ones broadcasting the show. How about that Tony Bennett, though, huh?

Since apparently today is Random Tangent Day, I'd like to file a complaint about obnoxious commercials involving children who talk like adults. AIG and Verizon FiOS are especially guilty of this. Yes, the FiOS kid is cute, but only when he keeps his mouth shut. No, I don't want to hear a bunch of brats sitting around at the cafeteria discussing saving for retirement using big fancy words because ha ha ha, isn't it hysterical when kids talk like financial advisers? And yes, I would consider disowning my child if he woke me up in the middle of the night to rant like an accountant about how I was mis-managing my money.

On the other hand, Torsten and I both love love love the latest American Express commercials. Torsten cracks up every single time he sees the one with John McEnroe, even though he's seen it at least twenty times by now. It's really cute. Much cuter than those AIG and FiOS brats.

Anyway, now it's your turn. Those of you who don't use your DVRs to skip all commercials, what commercials do you especially like or dislike? Also, is it sad that I'm extremely eager to hear your thoughts on TV commercials instead of something more worthy?

Awful wedding stories

Torsten and I went out for dinner last night with my friend Matt from my old job and his fiancee, who just moved to town. They're getting married in Texas next month and Torsten and I will be going--the first wedding we will be attending together. We had Greek food at a great (and cheap) restaurant near my office, and while Matt and Torsten were downstairs ordering, Matt's fiancee and I discussed bridal gowns and wedding colours and when to send the invitations and all sorts of other fun wedding stuff. It was the first time that I had really sat down and talked with someone else who was planning a wedding, and it was so! fun! I have already discovered the joy that is reading blogs written by other engaged women, but actually getting to sit down at a table with someone and discuss reception locations and catering choices and all the stuff that is incredibly tedious and boring to anyone who is not planning a wedding... well, it's just thrilling. In a way that makes me a little bit scared, because oh my God, why am I so interested in this stuff? It's like being a member of a secret society, or maybe some alien planet.

In other wedding news, Torsten and I got up at 6:30 this morning to meet with a potential wedding officiant before work, only not to have her show up at all, even though we waited for 45 minutes in case she was just running late. Guess who won't be officiating at our wedding? That's right! Anyone who has the potential to show up late and therefore make the reception (also known as the fun part--with the dancing and the open bar) shorter is officially off our list of potential officiants. Also, I will never recover that lost hour of sleep, and for that reason I am extremely bitter.

Oh! And I loved your stories from yesterday! I had no idea that people narrated their actions in the third person! And I forgot about those people who always have to be sicker than you, or more correct than you. And since I'm once again feeling quite bitter due to being stood up this morning, I think this is a good time to turn to you once again for your horror stories. So, start sharing the worst thing that happened during your wedding or another wedding you were at (or during the wedding planning). Drunk relatives, angry toasts, ruined dresses, money-grubbing couples, no-show vendors, just plain bad manners, or anything so horrifying that I haven't even thought of it yet... I want to hear all of it.

I'll start: I read about one wedding where a groomsman walked around the reception with a basket and went up to some guests to tell them that the cost of their gift didn't cover the cost of their plate, and they should just put the price difference in the basket in cash. OH MY GOD.

Okay, your turn!

I hate That Girl.

First of all, may I just say that you guys and your comments on my post from yesterday are just amazing. You are simultaneously hysterical and sympathetic and I feel so much better for having read your reactions. I showed the comments to Torsten, and he was also extremely appreciative. After much discussion, we've come to the conclusion that his mother didn't mean her comment quite as meanly as it sounded. It doesn't seem to really have anything to do with me in particular; it's something she probably would have said no matter who he was marrying. It has to do with her own issues about needing to be in control and not trusting anyone else to make decisions or answer questions, ever.

But still, not the best ending to what was otherwise a very successful meeting. And yes, thank God for the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean, and for her location on the other side of it. I suppose if you're going to have a difficult mother-in-law, you couldn't ask for more than for her not to speak your language and for her to live on a different continent. So, I'll take my blessings where I can find them.

Moving on, I spent four hours this morning in orientation for new hires at work. It was your traditional, too-long, somewhat repetitive but marginally useful training session where I learned a couple things about the company benefits and where to find things on the intranet. But for most of the time I was hard-pressed not to roll my eyes as two people dominated the meeting with their inane questions and insistence on telling their own personal stories at every possible opportunity. You know, they can't just say, "Can I log onto the media station near my office without reserving it first?" They have to tell a five-minute story about how there's a media station near their desk and they thought about using it and once they got as far as actually sitting down in the chair before they panicked and thought maybe they shouldn't, because this one time at the job they held five years ago they tried that and the scanner ended up being broken for three months, and haha, this whole thing reminds me of this one time, in band camp? AND THEN I KILLED THEM WITH MY ANGRY STARE OF DEATH.

I remember those people from college, that one girl who was always sitting front and center in the class with perfect posture and tons of notes and highlighting in her book, raising her hand even when other people were talking because what she had to say wasn't just important, it was downright enlightening, and by a month into the semester the professor would start twitching whenever that hand shot up in the air again, and the silent wait for somebody, anybody, please for the love of God anyone, anyone besides this girl, please raise your hand and answer my question, even if you answer in Pig Latin, that wait was excruciating. And then the worst part was that even if somebody else answered the question, even if they answered the question CORRECTLY, that girl would STILL keep her hand in the air because SHE wasn't going to just answer the question, she was also going to share a personal vignette that would enrich the lives of her classmates in unmeasurable ways.

My point here is, I was really fucking sick of people like that by the time I graduated, and now, to encounter more such people here in my office where I spend half of my waking hours... it's just not fair. Really, not fair. As in why, why, WHY DO YOU STILL THINK THAT WE CARE ABOUT HOW DIFFICULT IT WAS FOR YOU TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO CHANGE YOUR PRINT SETTINGS TO DOUBLE-SIDED?

Ahem. Sorry about the caps. I think what would make me feel better here is a little round of oneupmanship. So, please, tell me about the worst or most obnoxious classmate/colleague/neighbour/whoever that you've had to deal with, and then I'll be reminded of how much worse it all could be. So, start sharing.

Wild emu sex

Torsten's parents came back into town on Monday, and they leave today to fly back to Germany. So last night the four of us attended the Cirque du Soleil show Cirque Dreams: Jungle Fantasy. I had never seen a Cirque du Soleil show before, unless you count this year's Super Bowl pregame show, part of which I saw on TV. But we had the most amazing tickets for this show, in the second row right in front of the stage, and it was so, so cool. Part of it was really scary, like when two men were balancing on three small tables on top of a rolling stack of cylinders on a very tall stand, but for the most part it was just completely amazing. Also, it featured a comedic moment involving simulated sex between two emus.

The costumes were cool and the music was neat, but really it was just the amazing things these people can do with their bodies that's the coolest part. Some of these people are graduates of the Mongolia State School of Contortion, which should tell you something right there. The acrobats and trapeze artists were just amazing displays of muscle and grace, far beyond anything you would see at a Barnum & Bailey circus. The way the whole cast could manipulate their bodies was just astounding, and totally gorgeous. Now I really want to see the original Cirque du Soleil show.

After the performance, Torsten and I walked his parents back to their hotel, where we had to say goodbye. We are going to visit them in Germany in just under two months, so it wasn't exactly like we were parting forever (in fact, we'll see them again before we see my parents again, and my parents are just a few hours' drive away). But it was still difficult for his mother, who has a lot of trouble dealing with the fact that Torsten lives so far away. Saying goodbye to him made her cry despite the fact that she'd be seeing him again so soon. But I can understand that--the psychological difficulty of not seeing your only child very often and having to leave him in a country you wish he didn't live in. I get it, and I politely stood aside while she clung to him and cried.

At least, I was understanding about it--until Torsten told me later that while she was clinging to him and crying, she also said to him, "Remember, when your marriage falls apart, you're always welcome to come stay with us."

Charming, huh? At least he knows their door is always open. To him, anyway.

Buses, Britney, and bridesmaids.

I feel that it's worth pointing out right here at the beginning of this post the commuting injustice that I suffered this morning. I was running a little late, so I decided to take the bus instead of the Metro because the bus runs door to door and therefore saves me about 15 minutes in commuting time. I was waiting at the bus stop a full five minutes before the bus was scheduled to arrive. It did not arrive on time. It did not arrive five minutes late. It did arrive ten minutes late, with just enough time for me to barely make it into the office at the stroke of nine. Except that IT DIDN'T STOP. I made eye contact with the bus driver, she clearly saw that I wanted to board the bus, and yet she just kept on going.

I'm thinking of suing, is my point here. For emotional distress caused by cruel and unusual treatment on the part of a District of Columbia government employee.

Also, I wish everyone would stop calling Britney fat. Yes, she's lacking the extremely toned abs she used to have. But I still think her body looks great, and she is by no means fat, even if everyone is hiding behind saying that she isn't fat, she's just too fat for that outfit. Please, just stick to criticizing her performance--there's plenty of material there. No need to start getting personal.

Lastly, I have a wedding-related question for all of you. Say you're a bridesmaid in a wedding. If the bride asked you to pick out any dress you wanted as long as it was purple, and it didn't matter what shade of purple or the length of the skirt or anything else, as long as it was really purple and not blue or pink posing as purple, would you appreciate that? Or would it be easier/preferable for you to be told, "This is the dress I've picked, now just buy it in your size"? I ask because I have no problem doing it either way, so I want to do whatever will cause the least stress and pressure for the bridesmaids. And my bridesmaids are being too nice to answer the question honestly--they just keep saying, "It's your wedding, so whatever you prefer." But I don't have a preference. So, I'm turning to you for the honesty thing. Thanks! You guys are great.

The cost of technology.

I am so sick of hearing all those people who ran out and bought an iPhone the second it was unveiled complaining that the price has dropped. This article on CNN about how Steve Jobs is actually apologizing and Apple is offering a $100 credit to everyone who bought an iPhone before the price cut is pissing me off even more. People need to get over themselves. Anyone who was willing to spend $600 on the iPhone obviously knew what they were getting into. They were paying not just for the gadget, which was obviously overpriced, but for the cachet that comes with being the first to own it.

Everyone knows that technology innovations are always way overpriced when they're first introduced, and that their prices drop radically when the initial buzz wanes. Look at VCRs. And iPods. And any other fun gadget that made a splash when it first came on the market. The type of people willing to drop $600 on a gadget are exactly the type of people who knew full well that if they waited, they could get it for cheaper. But they didn't want to wait. And now they're whining because their exclusive moment in the sun didn't last for as long as they expected it to.

That's not how it works, damn it. If you pay $600 for an iPhone, it's because it was worth that much to you. It's all about supply and demand economics. If it wasn't worth $600 to you, then you shouldn't have spent $600 on it. And if it was worth $600 to you, then you shouldn't be whining, because you got what you wanted for your $600. Now get over it and stop whining just because Apple is doing what any sane company would do and trying to boost its holiday sales.

Future with a capital F.

Okay, in keeping with the "serious posts about real issues" theme present among a bunch of my regular blogs recently, I have a whole stream of consciousness set of thoughts/worries/considerations that have been floating around my mind recently.

Getting married leads to a lot of thoughts and confusion and wondering about the future, and the rest of your life. Ultimately, knowing that I love Torsten and will share my life with him serves as a rock, a solid, known thing that anchors a whole lot of unknowns. But it makes me wonder about a lot of things that used to seem very far away, very "I'll cross that bridge when I come to it," and now that I'm getting married and thinking about two people's futures (not to mention our future children's futures), that bridge has started to feel like it's really looming close.

First of all, where we want to live has become much more of a question. I was born in Massachusetts, grew up in North Carolina, went to college in Massachusetts, and spent brief stints through internships or study abroad in Toulouse, Dakar, the Hamptons, and DC. I've lived in DC since I graduated. In terms of practicality, DC suits me--it's about a five hour drive from my parents' house, which means that they're close enough that they can easily come visit for a long weekend, but far enough that I still feel independent. It's a nice city, interesting but still with a bit of a small-town feel, with low buildings and lots of trees and residential neighbourhoods. It's expensive, but not as expensive as New York, and it's very diverse and multicultural. There are lots of jobs here that appeal to what I like. I really like my new job and would like to stay in it for awhile.

But I don't want to live here forever, and neither does Torsten. Based purely on weather considerations, I don't want to go back to the South or to New England. If we stay on the east coast, I think it would have to be somewhere mid-Atlantic-ish, basically between DC and NYC. And we both want to live in or near a city. So basically DC, New York, or Philadelphia. And while I like all three of those cities, none of them really calls to me as a place where I would love to live. In general, I think maybe I'm just sick of the east coast.

I don't really want to live in the middle of the country either, although I love Chicago. I'm not sure I could take the winters there, and I'm not sure how much I would appreciate being so far from the ocean, even if they do have a giant lake. Really, what all of this boils down to is that Torsten and I would love to live on the west coast. Specifically, California. Specifically, San Francisco.

And that's where all the confusion comes in. We're planning to get married in DC in fourteen months. I do not want to plan a wedding from afar. I just got a new job, and I like it a lot. So the tentative plan is to stay in DC until after our wedding, and then reassess. But who knows? Maybe something will come up, maybe something will change--like our building is supposedly on the market, and if it sells and gets converted to condos we might have to move, and if we have to move, would it really make sense to go through the trouble of finding a place here in DC and moving there when we could just pick up and move to a place we would prefer to be in the long run?

Really my question is, when does the long run start? I always viewed my life in terms of casual, impermanent decisions, like oh, maybe a couple years here, then a couple years there, then maybe we'll see. And now that I've made one permanent decision, it's all sort of flowing into more permanent decisions. And it would be nice if we could raise our kids in one city, so we wouldn't have to pick up and make a big, traumatic move that would uproot them from their schools, their friends, and the communities that they know. If we need or want to do that at some point, of course we will. Kids move and it doesn't ruin their lives. But if we're living somewhere we love before we have kids, it would be great to have kids there and stay there for a long time.

So, assuming we stay here in DC until the wedding. Then does it really make sense to pick up and move all the way across the country right before the time when we might start trying to have kids? I have a small immediate family and so does Torsten, and it seems so wrong to move across the country and then have kids when their whole extended family will be so far away. I know my parents will be sad to have so much distance between them and their grandchildren. But it's my life, and Torsten's life, and we don't want to stay here forever. So we're going to go.

And speaking of children, we know we both want them. I would like to be pregnant and have our biological child, but I think once will be enough. So assuming we're both fertile, we think we'll have one kid and then adopt the second. If we're not fertile, I'm totally with Black Sheeped--I am not interested in the time and agony of infertility treatments. While it would be an amazing experience to be pregnant and give birth, and while it would be fun to see a child who has genes in common with us and our families, I'm not so set on it that I would spend time and emotional effort and tons of money insisting on having my own child when there are so many kids out there who need parents anyway. I already feel guilty even planning to create just one child myself. Can you really justify creating a child to live on a world that might be destroyed by nuclear war or climate change or any other such horrible thing that we now have the technology to instigate? Can you really morally justify forcing someone to live who had no choice in the matter, who might not have wanted to experience the world but will be forced to because that's what you decreed? Can you really justify creating this child and spending resources on it when there are so many kids who have few or no resources dedicated to them?

Of course you can justify it; everyone has the right to reproduce and have that experience, and it's societally accepted to do so, and while it's great to adopt if you feel it's right for your family, it's not something that people should feel morally obligated to do. But I do think adoption is right for our family, and Torsten agrees, and given that, there is definitely some guilt surrounding our decision to at least attempt to create another child in the world.

And then the flip side of that is when do we have these kids? When do we start trying? How much time do we want to spend just together, building up savings, moving forward with our careers, traveling, sleeping late, enjoying just being with each other, before we move forward with the decision to change our lives permanently? We both like the idea of being young parents, and while I'll be 24 when we get married, Torsten will be 30, and he's already freaking out about the idea of being really old and not being able to play sports with our kids because his knees will have given out by then. And of course he's being melodramatic about it and he knows it, and there are so many fantastic parents we know who didn't have kids until they were in their 30s or even later, and he knows that, but his feelings of wanting to have a child while he still feels young are still valid.

And what if we decide that we want to start trying to have kids at some given time, say in 2010, and then what if I get pregnant earlier? What will we do and how will we feel about it? I can't imagine that we would really, seriously consider having an abortion, but what if I were to find out right now, this month, that I was pregnant? I'm only 23 and I just started a new job and I'm still building my career and we're still living in a small 1-bedroom apartment and we still aren't financially where we want to be before we have kids and we still aren't married yet and my god, it just feels too soon, way too soon, which is why we would never plan to do such a thing. But if I'm pregnant, you know, I'm pregnant, and my parents had my sister and me when they were still struggling financially, and it was fine, and really you don't have to be rolling in money for your kids to be happy, and I know we'd be competent parents and we would love our child and it would have a happy, well-adjusted life, and that's so much more than most kids could say, so of course we would go ahead and have the kid if I got pregnant now.

And plus, that whole maternal instinct/biological clock thing is definitely happening with me, because I love love LOVE babies and when I see one, I want one, and I go crazy over baby clothes and I read all sorts of blogs written by parents and I so so so want to experience that too. And I look at baby name websites all the time and Torsten and I have semi-agreed on a name for a future daughter already. So having a baby now would actually satisfy a craving. But I know, I know, I really know that it's too early and that it will be so much better for everyone involved to just force my maternal yearnings to wait for a couple years. But then the other question is if I got pregnant now, would we still wait until November 2008 to get married? Would we feel the need to get married in a rush? Would we be doing it because of silly societal norms that don't really apply to our lives? Would we care about the opinions of anyone who would be judgmental about such a thing?

And speaking of getting married sooner, sometimes it seems like it would be so much easier to just go down to the courthouse next week and get legally married, so that we can have one insurance plan and Torsten can go ahead and get his green card now instead of having to go through the process of renewing his visa, which he will have to do next year before we get married so basically it will be a lot of time and hassle and money to renew a visa that will then be used for all of two months before we get married and he gets a conditional green card. In so many practical ways, being married now would be so much easier for both of us, and really, marriage is a legal thing, it's a status in the eyes of the government, and even though we in the US conflate legal marriage with religious or spiritual marriage, they really can be totally separate things.

But then I think about how we would definitely have a wedding anyway, because I want a wedding, and how I really want that moment in front of all of our friends and family where we put the rings on each other's fingers and vow to love each other for better or for worse, I want that to be the moment that we become married, that it becomes legal and official and permanent. I don't want to feel like a fake and I don't want to push our wedding up because I really want to get married in the fall, and this fall would be too soon and feel like a rush and many of our far-away guests would not be able to make it on such a short notice, and I'm really comfortable with our November 2008 date. And we both want to be getting married for only the right reasons, meaning love and the desire to commit our lives to each other, and to go get married for boring tax and insurance and immigration reasons would be the most unromantic thing ever, and even though I am in general a practical person without much concern for romance, some things are sacred even to me, and one of them is my marriage and how it will be formalized and celebrated.

And then, after the wedding, if and when we move, how will that affect our jobs? And what kind of careers are we going to pursue? Torsten knows what he wants and what he wants happens to involve high-paying jobs that require lots of hours. But neither of us wants to be that family where the father is the breadwinner and often doesn't make it home from work in time to see the kids, and the mom is at home doing all the work and being resentful about it, and the couple never gets to spend any time together. We don't want to be work-obsessed and we don't want our jobs to define our lives. But that kind of job is the job you have to get to succeed in Torsten's chosen field, and it's not just about making money, it's about doing what you love and what you're good at. So how will we balance those things, especially because I think I'd like to keep working, at least part time, once we have kids? Or maybe I would like to take a couple years off and then put the kids in daycare and go back to work. But it's not always so easy to go back to work when you've been out of the public sector for two years, and you're not up to date on the latest innovations or changes in the market, and you aren't always that marketable, and if you're not making that much anyway, do you really want to go back to that when there are other things you could be doing with your time?

And in the meantime, when I graduated college I wanted to be a book editor, purely that, in either a publishing house or a literary agency, but I ended up doing the nonprofit thing because that's what was available in DC at the time, and I wanted to live in DC, and also because I had all these qualms about book editing being some sort of selfish job that didn't do enough to help improve the world (I was an idealistic college student, you'll have to forgive me). And then I didn't like the nonprofit thing that much but then that turned out to be because I wasn't getting to do any real editing and also because the really technical health-related work that my old company did was just really dry and boring to me, and then now at my new job I get to do all this web stuff and I have a lot more editorial independence and creative power, and the angle we take on health is much more marketing- and community-focused and therefore much more interesting to me. So then now I don't know at all if I want to stick with the web stuff, or eventually move back to the book editing thing, and if I want to stay in the nonprofit public health thing, or go back to the for-profit sector and focus exclusively on books, and profit, and that sort of thing. And I think that both sorts of jobs are available in San Francisco, which is one reason why that city seems like a really good fit for both of us.

But ultimately, I understand that getting married doesn't mean that I somehow need to answer all these questions right now, and that a lot of these questions are what-ifs that hopefully will never need to be answered at all. And it's so good to know that Torsten and I will be answering the relevant questions together, and that no matter what choices we make, they will be our choices, and we will be together wherever we go. Right now, that's all we really need.