Year-end summary

Originally I was going to write my own creative year-end summary, and then I saw the meme that Sundry posted, and I thought, Oh! Duh. This one is a good one that gets at everything I wanted to talk about in my own post, and probably in a more succinct and organized fashion. So, screw creativity. My only complaint is that hers had two question marks on the end of each question, which bothered me, so I deleted the doubles.

1. What did you do in 2007 that you’d never done before?
Started a blog. Became obsessed with American Idol. Started Weight Watchers (and lost fifty pounds). Lived with a significant other. Got engaged. Quit a job. Dealt with in-laws. Got my own Christmas tree.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I didn't make any last year, and I won't make any this year, other than my general conviction that I must stick with Weight Watchers and the healthier lifestyle that I've adopted along with it.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Not anyone that I know in person.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
Does a dog count? If not, then no.

5. What countries did you visit?
France and Germany.

6. What would you like to have in 2008 that you lacked in 2007?
A housekeeper. A real-life meeting with a few bloggy friends, particularly this lady. A house (or condo) that we own.

7. What dates from 2007 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
July 28 is the day that Torsten and I got engaged. No one other date particularly stands out.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Professionally, getting myself into a job where I actually do what I really enjoy and don't have to do any admin work. Personally, allowing my relationship to develop into the deepest, most fulfilling relationship I could ever have hoped to have.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Allowing a lot of personal stress to really get to me and affect my equilibrium and even my blood pressure, which is very unlike me.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
No.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
My Zipcar membership.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
In an effort not to be totally self-obsessed, I will forego using Torsten as my response to this question, and instead go with Molly Ivins, even though it wasn't her behaviour this year that particularly merited celebration. It's the fact that she died this year, and her behaviour over the course of her life absolutely merits celebration.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
George W. Bush. As always.

14. Where did most of your money go?
"Most" of it didn't go to any one thing, but the biggest single expense of the year was definitely the rent.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Being engaged! I am excessively excited about 2008 being the year that we get married.

16. What song will always remind you of 2007?
"Hallelujah" by Rufus Wainwright.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
 a) happier or sadder? b) thinner or fatter? c) richer or poorer?
Happier, thinner, and richer. The trifecta!

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Writing letters.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Stressing out. Eating at restaurants in the first few months of the year.

20. How did you spend Christmas?
The morning was spent flying from Miami to North Carolina, and the afternoon and evening were spent with my fiancé, parents, sister, and family friends at my parents' house, exchanging gifts and eating good food.

21. Did you fall in love in 2007?
Yes and no. Really I fell in love when I met Torsten in October 2006, but I didn't realize it until February of this year.

22. What was your favorite TV program?
American Idol. Also, House.

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
No, not really. I obstinately took against a few people this year on behalf of friends who'd been wronged, but I don't really hate anyone.

24. What was the best book you read?
I read a lot of good books this year. I would say The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon is definitely way up there.

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Pink. Snow Patrol. Rihanna. Wow, I'm mainstream.

26. What did you want and get?
I didn't know I wanted this a year ago, but an engagement ring.

27. What did you want and not get?
Nothing that I can think of. God, I'm lucky.

28. What was your favorite film of this year?
They didn't come out this year, but I saw for the first time and liked Jesus Camp; Good Night, and Good Luck; and Flyboys.

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I went to work, where I received flowers from Torsten, was taken out to lunch by coworkers, and got to leave early. Then I went with Torsten to a really fancy French restaurant that I had been dying to try. I turned 23.

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Nothing. It was greatly satisfying exactly as it was.

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2007?
I realize I should be snorting derisively at this, but I actually am not. Having shrunk out of my wardrobe, I had to think long and hard about what clothes were worth investing in. My "concept" ended up being nice textures (especially for skirts) and pretty colours. Also, as always I adore my Old Navy and Levi's jeans as well as my Reef flip-flops and my wonderful, perfect Duo boots.

32. What kept you sane?
Torsten.

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I guess I'll have to stick with the only celebrity I ever "fancy," Alan Rickman.

34. What political issue stirred you the most?
The issue of our president making the wrong decision at every possible opportunity.

35. Who did you miss?
Lots of people. My French host family. My Senegalese friends. My best friend who was off in Nicaragua on a Fulbright all year. Various other far-away friends and family members.

36. Who was the best new person you met?
I'm going to say my boss, because I am so lucky to have such a sane and wonderful one.

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2007.
Go with your instinct, within reason.

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
No. I refuse. The end. Happy New Year, everyone!

Help: Name Our Puppy

I need you all to do me (well, really my mom) a favour. While I was home over Christmas, my mother asked me to put out a call for help to all of my blog readers. She and my dad are looking into getting an English golden retriever puppy, which would be much lighter in colour than a standard golden retriever. They've pretty much decided on the breed, and now they're trying to think of a name for the puppy, which will most likely but not definitely be a boy.

They want to give the dog a name that is not common and most likely not a person name, unless it's a relatively obscure one. Past family dog names have included Pineapple, Vanilla, Velvet, Cava, and Lexi.

English golden retrievers look like this when they're puppies:


And this when they're adults:


So... any suggestions? My mom is eagerly awaiting the results.

Everything we dreamed it would be

Wow. We had an amazing, fantastic trip to Miami and a great Christmas, too. It was seriously just what we needed after all the stress we had been through over the past couple of months.

Miami was so relaxing, and I even have a tan (but not a burn, thanks to religious use of SPF 30) that extends to my legs! I always thought that my legs had two colour options: lily white or lobster pink. But apparently not, because now they are a charming tanned colour that makes me very happy.


It is amazing, I have to say, how incredibly tanned everyone in Miami is. Seriously, they are all brown and leathery like very old turtles. It looks so unhealthy, but they are all like that. Also, they are all incredibly fashionable, ironically so. They wear things like striped seersucker shorts with furry snowboots. Some restaurants in South Beach even have dress codes requiring customers to be dressed fashionably.

We went to the Everglades with my aunt and uncle on our first day, and it was really cool. We saw tons of alligators, and also lots of pretty birds. Torsten took lots of pictures and had fun experimenting with different camera modes.


Also: our hotel was amazing. We were prepared for it to be dilapidated, since it was so inexpensive and we had read that it was in need of renovation, but our room was gorgeous. We had booked a room with an ocean view and a balcony, and we ended up with exactly that, but right on the side of the hotel, so that it also had a gorgeous side view of the beach. The shower had a window with a beautiful ocean view, so bright that you almost needed sunglasses while you were washing yourself.


And also, speaking of the shower: It had been so long since I'd been to the beach, I had forgotten that one of the best feelings in the world is taking a long, hot shower after a day on the beach with the salt and the sand and the sunscreen and the wind.

The hotel had its own gorgeous stretch of nice clean beach, with a very friendly guy who gave out chaise lounges and sun umbrellas. And it had its own pool and hot tub with a bar and music and everything, plus towel service. It was so nice to have it all there at our fingertips that we're starting to think that maybe instead of going to Thailand for our honeymoon, as we'd been thinking, we'll go to an all-inclusive resort in Mexico. The resort will be more expensive, but the much cheaper airfare will make it work out to about the same price overall. Plus we won't have to waste two full days traveling.


Anyway, back to Miami. I got stung by a jellyfish one day, but it wasn't that painful: it got swollen and stung for about an hour, and then went away, leaving only a little red mark. At first I wasn't even sure it was a jellyfish, because I had always assumed that those were extremely painful, but then I looked over and saw it floating in the water next to me. I did not scream or shriek, but I did take off for the beach at a good clip.


We flew in to North Carolina early on Christmas morning on a flight that was uneventful except that our suitcase didn't make it. Luckily, we had sent all our Christmas presents down with my sister in her car, so the lack of luggage didn't affect our ability to exchange gifts. The suitcase was delivered to our house at one a.m. the next day. Sucks for the poor guy who was out delivering luggage all night, but good for us, since we left the next morning to drive back to DC.

Oh, and speaking of Christmas gifts! I got some fabulous ones, including an amazing massage seat from Torsten that makes my back feel so loose and relaxed, a host of purple housewares from my parents (including a teapot, a vase, salad servers, bowls, egg cups, a picture frame, and a trivet), the complete series of My So-Called Life on DVD from my sister, and a gorgeous, GORGEOUS necklace with a platinum heart-shaped pendant and a white gold chain from Torsten. I didn't take a photo of my own, but it's so pretty that I have to share the stock photo from the seller:


Okay, happy materialistic bubbling is over, for now anyway. It might come back if/when I get around to taking my own pictures of things. Oh, and speaking of pictures: if you want to see the rest of the Miami photos, the full set is here.


It's amazing that it's already time to get back to work, but Miami was so wonderful and I'm so relaxed now that I don't even mind. It's a miracle! Or maybe I'm just delirious because it's only a two-day workweek. Either way, I'll take it. It feels so GOOD to be relaxed again.

Basking in the rays

Torsten and I are flying to Miami tonight to spend five full, glorious days and six nights there before we go to my parents' house in North Carolina for Christmas. I know I've been posting over the last month about how stressed I am and how badly I need a vacation, and I cannot even begin to tell you how incredibly glad I am that this day has finally arrived. For awhile there, I was starting to think it never would.

But of course, the day itself is not without stress. I'm at work until three, when I will head over to meet Torsten at the train station so that we can trek up to the Baltimore airport, and please, the next time somebody sees me about to book a flight through Baltimore because it's just so much cheaper than flying out of DC, please, do something, ANYTHING to stop me. Even if it means cutting off the hand that is about to click the mouse on "confirm."

And of course Torsten has an appointment that he absolutely cannot miss smack in the middle of the day, eight miles from the last stop on one of the Metro lines that runs into Virginia, which means totally in the opposite direction from Baltimore. So if he gets delayed at all, it will be very tough for us to make our flight.

But! Eventually, we shall get there! And then we will collapse into our king bed after admiring the oceanfront view from the balcony and we shall ignore the fact that the only way we could afford such a great view was by staying many miles north of South Beach in a hotel that is, by all accounts, in need of renovation. As long as our balcony doesn't actually fall into the ocean while we're there, I think we'll be set.

And once we are there, those five days... they will be spent on the beach, doing nothing. Except one of the days, which we'll be spending with my aunt and uncle, potentially seeing the Everglades, which hopefully will make for some nice photos. And then Torsten will have met nearly all of my extended family before the wedding, which makes me happy.

Oh, and not to jump back and forth in a hyperactive fashion, but back on this flight thing--can somebody explain to me how it works that we checked into our Southwest flight online 21 hours before the flight, and yet we were placed in boarding group B? Are there really people on the Southwest site exactly 24 hours ahead of time, frantically clicking refresh and waiting for the second when online check-in opens so that they guarantee themselves a spot in group A? Because if so, I will definitely need to point and stare at those people when I see them on the plane tonight.

The amazing thing is that we booked this flight way before the stress started, just because I had a five-day weekend off work and we thought we should take advantage of it. And let's just say the timing was fortuitous, because I have never needed a vacation so badly in my life. And now we get five days on the beach in the sun. The temperature is supposed to be in the high 70s every day that we're there, and it isn't supposed to rain. I can almost feel the sand already, which is a little awkward in my tweed skirt and tights, but oh, the thought of all that time lying on the beach, only with Torsten, doing nothing but letting all of the stress from the last month just float away... it's like heaven, right here in my cube.

Anyway, for those who are celebrating, I hope you have a great holiday, and for those who are traveling, I hope you have a safe trip. I will see you next week. With photos!

I'm so glad high school is over.

When I was spending the year in France, I had a big day where three things happened to me at once. It was December 17, 2001. Today is December 18, which is close enough that I'll consider it the six-year anniversary. So that's what we're going to have to discuss.

I had arrived in France on August 28, two weeks before 9/11 happened, so by the time December 17 rolled around, I had been living there for almost four months. I was in a public high school in a rural area where students came from tiny villages within a 20-kilometer radius. Originally, I had thought that I was the only American in the school, but I found out on September 11 that there was one other, Andre. I found this out because we were at school when the attacks happened (with the time difference, it was about 3 p.m.), and everyone was staring at us to see how we'd react when we all found out.

Anyway, I guess an experience like that can really make you bond, because even though Andre and I would most likely never have become friends if we'd been living in the US, we became really close over the next few months. We hung out all the time (probably not good for our progress learning French), and he was there when my wallet got stolen out of my purse in downtown Toulouse. He was the one who lent me money to call my parents from a pay phone, sobbing, to ask them to cancel my credit card.

Andre had originally been scheduled to spend only one semester in France, but he changed his mind while he was there and tried to extend his stay for the full year. However, he found out in November that his school back home wouldn't accept a full year's worth of credits from our French school, so he couldn't stay for an extra semester unless he was willing to graduate from high school a year late. Which he was not.

So, on December 17, at six a.m., he left. A group of friends saw him off at the train station, where he took the TGV to Paris to catch his flight home.

At about 10:30 that morning, at school, we had a break between classes and I went to the computer lab to check my email. I had one waiting for me from my boyfriend of a year and a half, who was in college in Canada. He emailed me every day, but this one was titled "Do not read this at school."

Think about it. If you want someone to do something, what's the best way to get them to do it? Tell them not to. Obviously I can't leave an email with a subject like that untouched. So I opened it. And in it, he broke up with me.

I totally fell apart. He was my first serious boyfriend, the first guy I'd ever been in love with. When I had gone to France and we had discussed the overseas long distance thing, we had agreed that if one of us decided that we couldn't take it anymore, we would tell the other over the phone. He had promised me that if he broke up with me, it wouldn't be over email.

I cried for the rest of the day. Everyone stared at me, and teachers dismissed me from classes. Being a foreigner definitely has its advantages, and one is that you don't always have to explain yourself.

That night, my French host parents went out for dinner, just the two of them, and the kids, myself included, all went to bed. I couldn't sleep. It was the first time I'd experienced heartbreak and it was awful. Nothing had ever prevented me from sleeping like that. I just couldn't deal with the pain, and I couldn't even call Andre because he was on a plane back to the US. The phone rang while I was lying in bed, but I didn't answer it, and everyone else was asleep or not home.

When my French parents got back, I got out of bed to say hello to them. My host mother was listening to the voice mail, and just as I got into the kitchen, where she was standing, she thrust the phone into my hand. I put my ear to the phone just in time to hear my mother say, "I wish we were there to be excited and jump up and down with you! Congratulations!" I called her back and it turned out that she had just received my acceptance letter--I had gotten into college (that link is there for those of you who keep asking where I went to school).

I had applied early decision to only the one school, and if I hadn't been accepted, I would have had to madly fill out college applications from abroad, which would have involved lots of FedExing and stress and crappy, last-minute personal statements. I had already had to do that with my National Merit essay, and the idea of doing it for multiple college applications makes me wonder what the hell we were thinking when we decided we'd bank on me getting into the one school I applied to. But luckily, I did, and also luckily, I didn't answer the phone when my mother called, because I would not have been able to fake excitement on the spur of the moment.

It's funny, remembering that day. At the time, it was so awful, and so momentous, and I was so exhausted that it just felt like cruel irony that that day was the one when I got into college. Even though I was so tired, I didn't sleep all night. I was too upset about my boyfriend, and felt too alone, and the time when I wouldn't be in France anymore and I'd be in college and supposedly have friends and whatnot just felt so far away.

And now I'm on the other end of it, and college was great and I have never regretted my choice to go to the school that I did, and I'm so lucky to have the friends that I made there. And Andre and I are still friends, although we hardly ever talk, and the amazing thing is that I'm still friends with that ex-boyfriend as well.

Do you have friends now that back in the day, you never would have expected to stay friends with?

Wedding website screenshots

Okay, I know I said I wasn't going to post about the wedding again for a few days, but someone requested screen shots of the wedding website, and apparently I'm a sucker for personal requests, so here I am, breaking my own word. Let's just consider this post an extension of the last post, shall we?

Now, I have to explain. Over the weekend, I created the first website:


Then, just today, I was reading the terms and conditions and discovered that the site was a two-week trial of the premium version, and that after two weeks, we would either have to pay $89 to have the website for a year or lose 80% of the features, including hotel information, registry information, and the photo gallery.

So I created the second website. I'm a little grumpy about it because I liked the first template a little better, especially because the subpages showed little versions of the photos from the gallery below the navigation bar. However, rotating thumbnails are certainly not worth $89. So, I give you the second, and real, site:


What do you all think?

All about weddings

Before I talk about other wedding details, which of course I will, I have to talk about what happened to us on Friday. Because it's possible that it's one of the best and simultaneously most horrifying things that has ever happened to me.

Okay. Torsten and I met up with a potential wedding officiant for lunch on Friday. The man was very old--I don't know exactly how old, but he told us he'd been married for 64 years, so probably somewhere around 90, give or take a few years. Over email, he'd seemed great, and we could tell from the conversation that we had similar values.

However, he was pretty much deaf, even with his hearing aid, which meant that we had to shout to get him to hear us. Already I was imagining our wedding ceremony: "Do you take this man to be your husband?" "I do." "What?" "I DO." "What?" "I DO, damn it!"

Anyway. So, there was the fact that he couldn't really hear. And generally we just both felt a little awkward around him, and the conversation felt forced, which isn't really how I want to feel around my wedding officiant. But still, like I said, we seemed to share values, and he seemed like a nice enough guy, so I was still kind of on the fence about him.

And then he asked what our hobbies were. I went first and told him a couple things, and then he turned to Torsten and said, "So, Torsten, what are your hobbies? Aside from making love to Jess."

I just sat there thinking, OH NO. This 90-year-old man did NOT just say that to us. Seriously, I thought that I must have heard him wrong. But then, after lunch was over, Torsten grabbed me and said, "DID YOU HEAR THAT?"

Yes, yes I did. And that is why our search for a wedding officiant has not yet come to an end.

Anyway, you all gave such great advice about the save the dates on Friday that you know what? I ended up deciding not to go with any of them. This is in part due to what you all said (changing my mind about that last one with your comments about the pie chart) and in part due to the fact that Torsten, as it turns out, does not like brown. Who knew?

Anyway, I went back to the site with all the stuff that you guys had talked about in mind, and found another STD that came in purple that I overlooked the first time (because the website trickily named the purple "amethyst"). It's great. It has dots, which I love. It has purple, which I love. It's simple, which we both love. It isn't brown, which Torsten loves. And it even has a line for the address of our wedding website. I created that website over the weekend, and put ten pictures of us on it, so that, for me, alleviates the need to have a photo of us on the STD itself.

Here it is:


Now, I'm sure about this one, and so is Torsten. But still--what do you think of it? The actual version will have our last names too, and also obviously the real address of the wedding website, which I so want to show you guys except that that's a little too un-anonymous, even for me. But suffice it to say that the website is purple, and very basic--it just has some photos of us (nearly all of which you've seen), some info about the venue, and then the info about hotels and directions and the registry and all that.

There were options to add all sorts of other cutesy sections, like our story and descriptions of the people in the wedding party and downloads, but we decided to keep it bare-bones and just plain informative. So it's pretty much done, except that I need Torsten to translate the whole thing into German.

But hey--did you notice that I said that it has info about the registry? Because we registered yesterday! We went to Macy's and registered in person, using one of those fun little scanners. Then we went home and read reviews of all the stuff we'd registered for and took off half of it and created a second registry on Amazon with better, less expensive versions of it. We aren't done with either registry, but the biggest hurdle, of getting them started and figuring out what basic stuff we want, is done. And it's such a relief, especially after my angst the first time I tried to register.

Okay! Sorry for all the wedding talk. I swear I won't post about wedding stuff again for awhile. Or at least a couple of days.

Save the Dates: Help!

With the wedding less than eleven months away, I've started thinking about sending out save the dates, especially since most of our guests will be traveling a long way and therefore need plenty of advance notice. Also, we don't have most of their addresses yet so thinking about the STDs (that acronym always makes me laugh) early has the double bonus of making me get everyone's address well ahead of time, too.

Anyway, I found a great site that has lots of pretty options, some with photos and some without, and the added bonus that it lets you type in your information and add your photo and see what they would all look like when you order them. I picked my favourite photo of Torsten and me together, even though it doesn't really go with the colour scheme, and then I personalized all the card options that came in purple.

And now I can't choose! I am totally stuck. So I need your help. Keep in mind that the wording is not personalizable--just the names, date, and location. So whatever it says is what we're stuck with. Also, you can click on all of the images to enlarge.

Option 1: This one has a nice shade of purple, but is it too... whimsical and swirly?


Option 2: It's pretty, but I'm not sure I like the font. And their wording doesn't have capital letters, so does that mean that I shouldn't capitalize our names or town? We definitely don't plan on doing that with our formal invitation, so would that be weird? Is this whole thing too plain?


Option 3: The purple is veering toward blue, which I don't like. But I do like the layout. Again with the whole lower case thing.


Option 4: First, please note that this card would also incorporate our last names, which is why the first names are so weirdly aligned to the left of the word "to." Now, is the design on the left too old-fashioned or something? Is the font for our names too swirly and scripty? I like this one because it doesn't include brown--not that I have a problem with brown, but almost all the other ones include a lot of brown, so this one is a nice change. Although the recipients wouldn't know that, I guess.


Option 5: I like the way the photo is incorporated and I like the font and layout. I'm not crazy about the flowers--they look kind of little-girl to me.



Option 6:


I like the circle thing a lot, and I figured out how to fix the lower case issue with this one.

Okay, what are your thoughts? Which do you like? Or do you hate them all?

Stress and de-stress

I am feeling much, much better and less stressed today than I have in a long time. So now I'm ready to talk about the stressful stuff that's been going on:

1. My sister is going through a divorce. I haven't mentioned this on my blog at all because I don't really feel like it's my place to be sharing details of her personal life, but she told me that she doesn't have a problem with me talking about it here. I won't get into all of the details, but suffice it to say that it's been really difficult. And that she's been turning to me a lot for support, which I'm glad that I can offer her, but which is also emotionally draining for me. Plus, it's hard for the family when someone gets divorced, because suddenly, someone whom you considered a part of your family gets taken away from you.

2. My father had an abnormal mole removed from his face and was told by the doctor that it was potentially cancerous, although more likely not. He was told that it would be two weeks until the biopsy results were back.

3. You already know that Cava died. That's been hard for me, but much harder for my mother, who was especially attached to him.

4. I have had a huge client deliverable stressing me out at work for the last couple of months. It had to be done before the holidays, which did not make this holiday season less stressful for me.

5. I went to the doctor right after that Zipcar incident, when I was still freaking out, and for the first time in my life, I had high blood pressure. Needless to say, finding that out probably raised my blood pressure even more. However, he said that since I've always had perfect blood pressure, even before losing 48 pounds, that it was most likely due to stress. Still, I have to go back in a couple weeks for some tests to make sure nothing is really wrong.

Now let's discuss the reasons why I'm feeling less stressed:

1. My sister has been feeling much better over the last few days, which means she isn't leaning on me for support as much, and also that I'm not as worried about her.

2. My father got his biopsy results back early, and the mole was benign.

3. I finished my big work project ahead of schedule.

4. I measured my blood pressure using the machine at the nearby Rite Aid after I had calmed down over the Zipcar thing, and it was back to normal.

5. I finished all my Christmas shopping and have even wrapped everything.

6. I know I need a vacation, and I'm actually getting one: Torsten and I are going to Miami for five days before Christmas. We leave on Wednesday. I cannot even begin to describe how excited I am about spending five days, just the two of us, lying on the beach with no family or work pressures.

7. Today is our holiday party at work, my first one with this company. It involves an open bar, a raffle with prizes like round-the-world plane tickets, and a sushi bar. It's legendary. I'm excited.

8. It's Friday!

Now tell me... what are you stressed about? Or what recently has happened to help relieve your stress?

Our wedding philosophy

Instead of focusing on the stressful stuff going on in my life right now, I thought I'd do a nice, happy post. Which means: let's talk about weddings! Woo hoo! I've never talked about THOSE before.

But seriously, I have a reason to be talking about weddings right now: Definitely RA wrote, at my request, two posts about weddings: one about her wedding philosophy and the other detailing her own wedding. Now, I haven't had my own wedding yet, so I obviously can't talk about what it was like, and plus you all already know all about the specific details that we are planning so far. But I haven't posted that much about wedding philosophy, and RA's post definitely made me think about it.

RA and I have simultaneously very different and very similar philosophies when it comes to wedding planning. She was very laid back about the whole thing; I like to think that I am as well. She didn't allow herself to get totally bogged down in little details that nobody was going to remember anyway; so far, I've avoided that trap as well. Her philosophy boils down to the fact that the beauty of a good wedding isn't in the details of the table linens, it's in the happy, emotional aspect of the day. That's exactly how I feel as well.

However, the place where we differ is in our opinions of who the wedding is all about. RA achieved her zen wedding attitude by reminding herself that her wedding was about her and her husband, not about all their guests. My philosophy is slightly more complicated. After four months of wedding planning, my feeling is that the ceremony is about the couple; the reception is about the guests. At least for us.

This is part of why we're trying to keep our guest list small. We want our wedding to really be about the people who are most important to us and not about politics or who we feel we should invite. And we want our closest friends and family to have a really great time.

Not that we don't want to have fun at our own reception, because we absolutely do, and fully intend to. The things we plan to do at our reception are things that we genuinely want to do. But we're also not flipping out about making this the perfect day for us, and a lot of the things that we're doing, we're doing for our guests. And I think that's how it should be. Almost all of our guests will be traveling a long way to get to our wedding, some internationally. They'll be spending money and taking time off work to come celebrate in our marriage.

And I want us to celebrate in our marriage, first in a ceremony that is meaningful, personal, and all about the two of us and our love for one another. And then in a reception that is just a big, awesome party. The only reason that all of our guests will be at this party together is because Torsten and I are in love and have chosen to bring together all the people that are important to us. We want them to have a good time. We want them to enjoy themselves. We want them to remember our wedding with only positive feelings.

And so we aren't asking the DJ to play a specific playlist of our favourite songs. We'll select the first dance song and maybe a couple other must-haves, but other than that, our only goal is to keep the dance floor packed all night long. We won't forbid our DJ to play the electric slide, though we also won't ask him to--but if a bunch of guests request it, why shouldn't they get to dance to it? There will be flip flops near the dance floor so that nobody goes home limping at the end of the night.

There will be favours, and damn it, they'll be nice and easily packed in a suitcase, though we don't yet know what they will be. We won't do a receiving line at the ceremony, because the receiving lines that I've been in involved waiting forever, then feeling pressured to talk for two seconds and then get the hell out of the way so the next person can have their turn. Instead, we'll make an effort to walk around to all the tables at our reception and have a longer chat with every one of our guests. Yes, we will bloody well eat first. But then, we will walk and talk.

There won't be expensive gift bags in everyone's hotel rooms, but hopefully I'll have it together enough to at least include a welcome packet with a map and a list of good nearby restaurants. We're paying extra to include a pasta dish that neither of us likes very much so that vegetarians will have a real dinner option. We're doing the formal photos before the ceremony so that the guests won't have to wait around. We're having an open bar so that people can celebrate in true Saturday night style.

I so do not want to come across as all smug and self-congratulatory about this. I really hope that I don't sound that way. I think RA is totally right that it's important to remember that just because the day focuses on you doesn't give you the right to go crazy and start making unreasonable demands. That's why I'm trying to focus on our marriage and what it means: our lifelong commitment to each other and the love we have for each other. The wedding is a celebration of that love and commitment, and to us, it's about bringing together the important people in our lives for the first time. I just hope they all have a damn good time.

I need a vacation.

Last night, Torsten and I booked a car for an hour and a half to buy groceries, as we do every week or two. After the shopping itself was done, I parked the car in the back driveway of our building and we brought the groceries upstairs to our apartment. We had some extra time before the car was due back, so we went ahead and unloaded the groceries with a mind to ice cream not melting, meat not going bad, etc.

And then we both just completely forgot about the car that didn't belong to us sitting down there in our driveway by itself. I don't know if it was our combined work and family stress that made us just totally put it out of our minds, but once we put the groceries away, we collapsed on the couch and watched Friends. Then we went to bed.

I even got an email about my car account and read it while sitting on the couch, and it still did not occur to me that the very overdue car was still chilling out downstairs.

Only this morning, on my way out the door to catch the bus to work, did I remember that I never returned the car last night. I have no idea what made me remember, but suddenly the events of the previous night played through in my head, and I realized that returning the car was not involved in those events.

To any of my neighbours who like to sleep past 7:50 in the morning, I'm sorry for waking you up with the loudest "Shit!" I have ever uttered.

I tore like a madwoman downstairs to the driveway, where thank God that sign about towing cars left longer than 15 minutes is clearly there for decorative purposes only. There was the car, just as I'd left it, sitting nonchalantly in the driveway. I couldn't get in, of course, because my reservation had expired. So I sprinted upstairs and booked the car for right then, then ran back downstairs, hopped in the car, drove it to its actual home, properly scanned out, and then ran for the bus. Which I made, by about three seconds.

When I got to work I checked my bill to see if we'd been charged hundreds of dollars in late fees. Because it's a minimum of $50 per hour if you return the car late. It has to be that high in order to make sure that people always return the cars on time. And it works. Everyone returns the cars on time. Except us, apparently.

I was trembling as I checked the site, totally prepared to call up and try to argue my way out of it. After all, the car had spent the night only about 100 yards from where it actually lives. I hadn't scanned out, though, and that's how you prove you dropped the car off on time.

It's obviously my lucky day, though, because there were no late fees. Thank god they do not have some sort of sophisticated, GPS-based system for knowing when you're late. Rather, they can tell if you've scanned out, they can tell if the car is being driven, and of course, when they get angry calls from whoever reserved the car after you, they can tell if it isn't where it's supposed to be. But that's all they know.

So I guess they gave me a free pass on the not scanning out part. But oh my god, I'm still shaking from the anticipation of seeing $500 in late fees charged to our credit card. I have never done something like that before. What the hell is wrong with me?

Seven-problem sublet

Thank you all so much for your kind words about Cava. The last couple weeks have been challenging, even before I found out about the dog, and it meant a lot to me to see all the sweet things you guys said. I wasn't sure I felt like writing a Tuesday Retrospective this week, but I decided it would be good to distract myself, so I decided to write about something that is, in retrospect, funny. At least to me.

The summer before my senior year of college, 2005, I lived in DC with a good friend of mine, Tamar. I had two internships with literary agents, as well as two nannying jobs and a temp job at a non-profit. I had just gotten back from my semester in Senegal and my sister had just gotten married. I had set up all my jobs from Senegal, using the internet. I was lucky that so many people were willing to hire me without having met me in person.

Tamar was still at school up in Massachusetts, so my sister, who lived in DC, was in charge of finding us housing. She found us a great apartment to sublet for the summer, but at the last minute it fell through and we had to scramble to find something else.

The something else turned out to be the basement of a nice house in Takoma Park. It was really like its own apartment without a kitchen--it had a living room, a bathroom, and a bedroom with a smaller room off it that we used as a second bedroom, as well as its own separate entrance. We were told we'd get this basement to ourselves, as well as unlimited access to the upstairs kitchen that we'd be sharing with the main renter of the house as well as another subletter. The basement was a little damp, but pretty much okay, especially for people desperate for housing, as we were at that point.

Everything started out fine. I had this crazy schedule, working one or two of my five different jobs every day. But it was good, really, and I was making plenty of money and also getting good resume experience and all of that. Some days I got to work from home, just reading manuscripts, which was fine or at least would have been fine if I'd actually had the basement apartment to myself as promised.

The first thing that went wrong was that our landlord turned out to be this passive-aggressive, holier-than-thou wholesome type. She taught ESOL (English for speakers of other languages, in case anyone didn't know--the PC replacement of ESL), and had her students call her Tia. She did a lot of yoga. She shopped only at the organic food co-op down the street.

Not that there's anything wrong with those things. We shopped at that co-op, too, and I have a yoga/pilates exercise DVD from Netflix waiting for me at home right now. It was more the way she was so smug about her lifestyle choices that was irritating. For example, one night Tamar and I went to Cheesecake Factory and brought the leftovers home. The next day, a magazine article about the 10 worst foods for you, which included Cheesecake Factory, appeared on the door of the refrigerator.

Anyway, we could have mostly ignored our landlord, except that then the second thing went wrong. The second thing was that she started a summer camp for children at her house, in the basement, otherwise known as our apartment. Not only did this badly interfere with my ability to work at home when necessary, but those brats were loud and woke me up early even on days when I wasn't going to be staying in. When we tried to discuss this with her, we were informed that she assumed we'd be working 9-5 and wouldn't even notice the kids.

Except that even if she had been correct about our traditional 9-5 schedules, we would have noticed the kids, because problem number three was that she left their artwork all over our apartment every night. The worst was when they did big painting collage things that had to be spread out overnight to dry, and thus covered every surface, including our couch, meaning that we essentially had no living room.

Problem number four was that the basement had bugs. Specifically, it had some sort of cricket spider thing that Tamar referred to as "hoppy bugs." They were extremely disgusting and they could leap really high in the air, making it horribly nerve-wracking to try to kill them, because if you missed then they could jump anywhere, including on you. They kept appearing, consistently, every few days all summer. It was awful.

Problem number five wasn't that big of a deal, since I'm naturally not a terribly clean person, but there was very limited space for me to keep my stuff, so most of it ended up piled on the couch and the floor. That wouldn't have been a big issue either, if it weren't for problem number six.

Problem number six was that the power went out, and while it was out, the basement flooded. This had something to do with the fact that the toilet was below-ground and therefore had some sort of electric suck-pump that didn't function properly when the power was out. Of course, we didn't know that. It was a Saturday night and there was a huge thunderstorm. Tamar and I were sitting on the couch in the living room, talking, until about three in the morning. In the dark, of course, since like I said, the power was out.

Then I got up to pee, and stepped in a puddle. Investigation by flashlight showed that there was water all over the floor of the living room, the bathroom, and of course, my bedroom. You remember, I presume, that problem number five had to do with me keeping my stuff all over the floor of the bedroom. So of course the bedroom flooded too--because how else would all of my stuff have gotten thoroughly soaked?

Anyway, there was (clean-ish) water pouring down the base of the toilet, and we could not figure out how to make it stop. We tried turning the water line off but no matter which way we turned the knob, nothing changed. We ended up having to call the property manager, who told us how to turn off the water but also informed us that even though this whole fiasco was obviously not our fault, we might be held liable if there turned out to be water damage.

Of course, our landlord had conveniently left on a two-week trip to Guatemala a couple days earlier, so it was just us. We dug around upstairs with our flashlight and found a mop and a child-size bucket, and ended up taking turns mopping (and emptying the tiny bucket outside every three minutes) and holding the flashlight. We were up until six a.m., scrubbing. Tamar ran back upstairs and got some towels, which I later found out were our landlord's good towels. Call us bitches, but it was so satisfying to use them to clean up the flood.

The property manager sent out a cleaning service to deal with the aftermath the next day, so we wound up spending the next week with huge, loud, industrial green fans blasting in our apartment. But the three hours of mopping by flashlight had prevented any permanent water damage, so we were at least spared a battle over that expense.

Problem number six seemed like it put a lid on the whole summer, and the whole ridiculous subletting experience, but no. Really it was just a warm-up for problem number seven. A dress rehearsal, if you will.

Problem number seven was that we got evicted. We had found out earlier in the summer that our sublet was illegal because our landlord had a no sublet clause in her lease, and we had also found out that in the state of Maryland it's illegal to use a room without a window or a second door (such as Tamar's room) as a bedroom, so we had been a little nervous about the whole thing, but as it turned out, that wasn't the reason we got evicted. Our landlord had failed to tell us when we moved in that there was a clause in her lease that stated that if the house owners wanted to move back to Takoma Park for any reason, they had only to give her thirty days' notice and she would have to get the hell out. I guess the owner had some issue with his new job and decided he wanted to move back home. So it wasn't just us who got evicted--it was our landlord, too.

Of course, she didn't tell us that as soon as she got the thirty days' notice. First she procured another house, even further from the Metro than the current house (which was already a 15-20 minute walk away). Then she told us that surprise! We'd all be moving together! And wasn't that fun! And it wasn't an issue that one of us would be staying on the second floor of the new house with her while the other would be living in the basement, right?

This happened with about a month left in the summer, so Tamar just quit her internship and went home early, and I moved in with my sister for the last three weeks. Getting evicted was pretty much the best thing that happened to us that summer.

What was the worst living situation you've ever had to deal with?

Update: Tamar has just read this post and reminds me of many, many other problems that I totally forgot about. She wants me to clarify that this was at least a 17-problem sublet. I must have blocked the other problems out. But they bear repeating. Here's Tamar's contribution:

• The saw in the couch. [We found a handsaw in the couch by almost sitting on it and when we expressed concern she said, "Ah, I was wondering where that went."]
• The sour yogurt smell in the fridge.
• The rigging of our cable so that it was a jungle. [We couldn't pee without crawling both under and over cables.]
• That she only had one mop and only had kiddie buckets so we had to mop with only one mop and only tiny buckets and the property manager kept yelling, "Put your sheets down! Your blankets! Babies poop all the time and if they can get cleaned so can sheets!" instead of telling us how to turn the water off.
• When she surprise retroactively upped our rent when we decided to move out because Mal [Tamar's girlfriend] had been around.
• That "wireless internet" meant "stolen from next door maybe."
  
• The Korean roommate who kept talking about dirty Americans even though she was born and raised in Ohio.
• The bathtub burping things up!
  
• The door that wouldn't lock.
  
• The caulking so we couldn't shower, in DC, in the summer, for two weeks. [I feel compelled to add that we DID shower. We just had to use the upstairs shower, and share it with the landlord and the other subletter. We are not dirty people.]
  
• How she advertised as a "young professional" but was a 50-year-old divorced yoga teacher.
• Her random, ever-changing kitchen rules.
  
• The branchless, leafless Christmas tree with the peace sign.
  
• How she forcibly re-futoned my bed and moved my sheets.
  
• Her ongoing battle with the city to keep old furniture on the porch.
  
• The chanting women's circle and discussions of egg freezing.
  
• The hoppy bug that died in my water glass that I almost drank in the night ARGH DISGUSTING.
  
• Also, the peppermint smell of the industrial cleaner.

Cava

I don't really want to talk about this right now, but I feel compelled to mention it. I found out a few hours ago from my mom that our dog, Cava, died. He had just turned seven years old. Basically, one day he was healthy and the next day he couldn't even walk, so my parents took him to the emergency vet yesterday and it turned out he had cancer all over his body. They had to put him to sleep the same day.


He wasn't my childhood dog; he wasn't my favourite dog. But he was a cute dog, a sweet dog, a good dog.

Weekend, PSA, and ducks

Torsten and I had a great weekend, mostly because we had a BMW 328i at our fingertips for all of Saturday. This happened because we got $100 of promo credit with Zipcar and wanted to use it up before it expired. So we figured we'd use it for something we would normally never pay for--a premium car that costs quite a little bit more than a basic Zipcar.

We didn't do anything too special with it--we drove up the highway into Maryland until it started looking kind of rural, and then we got off the highway and drove around the pretty back roads, near farms and the C&O Canal. We went to the mall (surprisingly uncrowded for a Saturday afternoon in December) and bit the bullet and purchased Torsten a business suit, which he badly needed but which we badly did not want to pay for. We went out to my sister's house, picked her up, and drove to one of our favourite Thai restaurants that is not conveniently located near a Metro, which means we hardly ever go there.

It was a good day, and a good use of the car, and also Torsten was so, so happy to get to drive a BMW, because, well, he's German AND obsessed with cars to begin with, which can be a dangerous combination.

Then yesterday we didn't do much, but I did (finally) manage to upload our Germany photos to Flickr. You guys have already seen some of them, but if you want to see the rest, the full set is here. I did not upload all the photos of Torsten's parents' ducks. But in case you're interested, here's one china duck and one real duck:



And lastly, I have a public service announcement. To all non-Blogger people who are getting frustrated because Blogger changed their system so that you can't type your web address in when you post a comment, I want to make a suggestion. I suggested this to Shauna, and she did it, and it worked out great.

If you have a Google/Gmail account already, create a Blogger profile. If you don't have an account, sign up for one and then create a Blogger profile. You do not need to have an actual Blogger blog in order to create a Blogger profile. But what you can do with a Blogger profile is enter in your web address, which will then be displayed on the profile as "My Web Page." So when you comment on a Blogger blog and someone clicks on your name, they will see your profile with the link to your Web site. That way people who see your comments and want to know more about you will be able to find out.

If you're still wondering what the hell I'm talking about, check out Shauna's Blogger profile as an example.

There. I hope that helps.

So, how was your weekend?

A crash course in copyediting

This is my 200th post. I got from 0 to 100 in seven and a half months. I got from 100 to 200 in three and a half months. This blog seems to have picked up some momentum.

Anyway, as per Tessie's request in the comments of her post yesterday, I've decided to do a post that might be marginally useful. It's about basic editing and proofreading. I don't know exactly what she wanted us "editors" to post about (proofreading marks?), but I figured I'd discuss some editorial stuff that people ask me a lot.

So, first off, let me say that the most important thing when writing or editing a document is consistency. Many stylistic choices are just that--choices. Different style guides conflict on some basic things, or they say that two different ways of doing something are technically considered correct. So don't worry too much about whether the Chicago Manual of Style agrees with your stylistic choice (just make sure that we're talking about something that's a choice and not something that's a rule). But if you say 1990's with an apostrophe (à la the New York Times) the first time you reference a decade , you can't turn around and say 1990s without the apostrophe (à la the Chicago Manual) the next time. You have to pick a way and stick with it.

Okay, now let's discuss where to place punctuation when dealing with quotes. The basic way to remember how this works is to think about what messes with the way a quote would be read. If the punctuation does not change the meaning or tone of the quote, such as a period or a comma, then it goes inside the quotation marks. If it would change the meaning or the tone, such as a question mark, an exclamation point, or a semicolon, it goes outside the quotation marks. The exception to this is poetry, where every punctuation mark is considered to affect the meaning of the quote and therefore all punctuation goes outside of the quotation marks. Of course, any punctuation that is actually part of the quote stays inside the quotation marks.

Oh! And while we're on the subject of correct punctuation placement, let's briefly discuss parentheses. If the sentence preceding the item in parentheses is its own sentence, and the item in the parentheses is its own sentence, then the punctuation goes inside the parentheses. If not (the more common scenario), the punctuation goes outside the parentheses. I won't provide an example of the latter situation, because I inadvertently included one in the explanation. Here's an example of the former situation. (See, this part is its own independent sentence.) Got it?

Next: hyphens! This is a mistake that a lot of people make. Verbs that are modified by prepositions normally do not take hyphens. For example, if I were to be attending Weight Watchers meetings, I'd weigh in weekly. However, if we're discussing the noun or adjective form, the two words do take a hyphen. So at the WW meeting, I'd have my weekly weigh-in.

Another example of mis-hyphenation is the whole age thing. Tessie's daughter is one year old. She is a one-year-old. Tessie has a one-year-old daughter. In the first case, one year old is a state of being and does not take hyphens. In the second case, it's a noun, so it does. In the third case, it's an adjective modifying a noun, so it does.

This is the last thing I'll say about hyphens. If you're doing a series of different words that would all go before the hyphen, you give each one its own hyphen, and then follow the last one with the end of the term. For example, I have both short- and long-term plans.

Okay, final topic before I lose the three readers who managed to make it this far: proofreading marks. This is what was originally being discussed in Tessie's comment section, which is why I feel compelled to address it. First of all, proofreading marks are nearly useless to any editor who works in a company that is not writing-focused, because whoever sees your proofreading marks will have absolutely no idea what they mean. In a publishing house, they fly. In a public health non-profit, not so much.

However, it's still good to know the basics. The Chicago Manual of Style has a great figure explaining them all, but for your online convenience, check out Merriam-Webster's chart. Those marks are universal, so if you get an edited document back and you don't know what something means, maybe check there first. Just a PSA for overworked editors everywhere.

Okay, I think I've said my piece, at least for now. For my fellow editors (or fussy editor-types), what have I missed? What needs to be added? Tessie, is this what you were looking for?

Faux parental pride

I can't believe I'm about to do this, given that I don't have kids and therefore shouldn't be bragging about cute kids on my blog, but oh my god I just got the cutest and simultaneously weirdest-feeling email in the world and I feel the need to share.

The email is from my littlest French host brother, Emilien. The reason that it felt so weird to me is because this is the first time he's ever written to me. He was two when I lived there, and still wearing diapers. He was so little that he didn't understand that I wasn't really his sister. He's now eight years old and apparently he can write emails like a grown up person. The email that he sent read,

hello,Jess je fais du foot et je suis défenseur de milieu mon copain Corentin dit qu'on est une équipe de poubelle!!!!

je fais du piano avec François et je travaille très très bien j'ai une chatte

C'est bientot NOEL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

bonne nuit je vais au lit


For the non-French speakers, allow me to (loosely) translate:

"Hello Jess [you probably understood that part given that he wrote it in English], I'm on the soccer team and I'm a middle defender [not sure if this means midfielder or what] my friend Corentin says our team is garbage!!!!

I'm taking piano lessons with François and I'm doing really, really good work. I have a cat.

It's almost CHRISTMAS!!!! [some exclamation points omitted]

Good night I'm going to bed."

Plus, of course, the amazing illustrations. Holy god is it weird to hear from him and know that he wrote the email himself rather than dictating to his parents. I'm still used to receiving adorable but indecipherable crayon-drawn pictures from him with backwards capital letters laboriously printed across the top.

I know it's tough to watch kids grow up, but when you see them once every couple of years, it's completely unimaginable! Still, the email is adorable. Or am I the only one who thinks so?

Swamped

I've slowly been realizing recently that my department doesn't have a writer/editor, except me. And I was not hired to do that job. My writing skills were definitely part of what got me hired, and there was some writing and editing involved in the job description, but as a member of the web team a lot of my responsibilities were more on the interactive, marketing, Dreamweaver end of things. But there is just so much demand for content development for all of our projects right now that while I do those other things to some extent, my job has become primarily that of writer/editor.

Which, I'm not complaining, because I love writing and editing and I'm so glad that I work in an office that notices people's particular skill sets and capitalizes on them, unlike in my last job where it was much more a system of being required to struggle up the totem pole no matter what needs you could meet. Even if there was a document that needed to be edited and I had absolutely nothing to do, I was not allowed to edit it independently because I was too far down the chain. Whereas here, people just notice that writing and editing are my strengths and therefore ask me to do those things.

So really, I shouldn't complain that I'm the only writer/editor, because if this place were organized like my last office, there would be three editors and two writers, and those would be the only people allowed to do those jobs. The attitude of "Anyone who knows how to do this should just do it regardless of their job description" is what has allowed me to do all of this stuff that I'm really enjoying doing.

But my god, am I ever snowed under with work right now. I'm writing a science-based website for one project, which means that everything I write has to be based on huge stacks of research that I have to slog through, and it must all be cited. Which slows down the writing process significantly. In the meantime, other projects require monthly marketing pieces, newsletters, fresh web content, etc. And my reputation as an editor has spread, so now people have started sending me things they've written to proofread before they send them on to the client.

So, in a nutshell, I am really lucky to work where I do and get to really do what I love. But wow, am I busy. It's so nice to write a blog post instead of more web content and get to just write and flow and not have to cite or look up quotes or supporting research. It feels like a breath of fresh air. (And here I call myself a writer and then I break out the worst of clichés. Maybe I should be calling myself a hypocrite instead.)

Oh, and in other news, the voting has commenced for the photo contest that I entered last week. For a long time nobody voted for mine at all and I felt like a failure, but now one person, named Sylvia, has voted for one of mine (they are numbers 10 and 11) so I feel marginally better. But only marginally. Still, thanks to Sylvia, whoever you are.

Wedding inspiration board

So I realize I haven't talked about the wedding in awhile, but don't worry! I'm about to rectify that situation, right now! The planning is moving ahead, albeit slowly--since the last update, we have signed a contract with a DJ and have scheduled a meeting with a potential officiant for Monday. Next on my list is to find a florist, and I'm also getting closer to being ready to shop for a dress.

Anyway, since all the big things like music, food, location, photographer are set, now is time to focus on the little details like colors and look and feel of the ceremony and reception. So I thought now would be a good time to develop an inspiration board of things that I've seen other places that have inspired me in one way or another. You'll notice that many, though not all, of the items on my board are purple--but don't worry, the ones that aren't purple inspired me in some other way. If I do something like them at the wedding, it will probably be in a purple version (except the dress).

Anyway, here's the board (click to enlarge):


And to give credit where it's due:

Top left, top center, and bottom left photos are from Brides.com.
Top right and center photos are from Petal's Edge.
Center left photo is from Martha Stewart Weddings.
Center right photo is from InspirAsian Creations.
Bottom center and bottom right photos are from The Knot.

Snowy day

It's snowing right now, just little tiny flakes that are barely sticking, although it's supposed to accumulate up to an inch this afternoon. I went to school in Massachusetts for four years, so I realize that an inch of snow is really nothing at all. In fact, the snow I'm used to looks more like this:


I took that photo from the porch of my old dorm, and that's much more what I think of when we talk about snow. But also, it snowed like that all the time, and from November to March the campus smelled grossly sweet, like molasses, because they put this molasses mixture on the sidewalks before every snowstorm to try to melt the snow. I don't know what was wrong with good old-fashioned salt, but that molasses crap smelled nasty and also made the snow turn brown and ugly before it otherwise would have.

My point is that when I was in college I really got sick of snow, fast. But now that I live down in DC where it doesn't snow very often, and when it does snow, it isn't usually very much, I do appreciate the occasional flurry. I also appreciate that, unlike where I grew up in North Carolina, DC does not shut down at the first sign of wintry precipitation. Because this is what I do not miss:


I mean, seriously. That chair was probably buried and therefore unusable for months after that storm.

So, what about you? Do you like snow or not?

Happy old friends

My first year of college, I was lucky enough to have a fantastic roommate, Brooke. She is one of those people whom everyone loves--a genuinely cool, interesting, nice person with a magnetic personality. I don't know if we ever would have become friends if we hadn't shared a room, but we got along great. She turned me on to Sex and the City and coppery lipstick. We rearranged the furniture fairly regularly. We had parties where we tried to turn our beds into couches. One weekend I came back to our room at around two a.m. to find a raging game of drunken strip poker taking place. Some guy I had never met before was sitting butt naked on my desk chair. It turned out that she had never met him before either.


I had another great friend my first year of college, Toby. Toby lived one floor above Brooke and me, and I don't remember how we became friends, but I do remember that I was her first friend at college--not because she had trouble making friends but because we went to college in her hometown and so she spent most of her time with her high school friends. Toby is an amazing actor and director and writer. Once when we were walking back from a play she had been in, she was happy and excited and it was snowing and the middle of the night and she just leapt off a porch in a graceful swan dive right into a bank of snow. Brooke and I followed, slightly less gracefully. The three of us were great friends.


The three of us didn't do everything together, but they fill my memories. Before Brooke transferred, the three of us all came back to school after winter break several weeks before classes started again. We spent most of January wandering around in the snow, going to movies, helping Brooke pack, drinking wine and apple cider and amaretto sours, sleeping, going to coffee shops, and generally being depressed at the fact that Brooke was leaving.


Our sophomore year, I got a single room and Brooke and Toby were roommates, two floors up. But Brooke transferred to a new school halfway through the year. As a going-away present, we gave her a framed photo of the three of us, a great photo that unfortunately I do not have scanned. We stayed in touch, but it faded. At this point Brooke and I talk maybe twice a year. Toby and I stayed friends, but we each became more wrapped up in other friends as college proceeded. I think of Brooke and Toby as freshman- and sophomore-year friends. But also, lifetime friends.

How to buy a Christmas tree in 10 easy steps

So, you all convinced me to go ahead and get a Christmas tree, so that's what we did on Saturday. Well, actually, Torsten went downtown to do some Christmas shopping and my sister and I went to Target and then Home Depot to get a tree. It turned out to be much more difficult than we were anticipating. We got some ornaments and a tree stand at Target (and, umm, a dress and a shirt and a skirt. But that's beside the point). But Home Depot, well, sucked. Here's what happened:

1. We were hoping to buy a tree that was about five feet tall. The two options at Home Depot were 2-4 feet and 6-8 feet.
2. We found the perfect tree after much searching. It was listed as 6-8 feet but really it was a little bit shorter than me. The reason it was so short was because its top part had broken off. We decided that if we could get a discount on it, I'd get it anyway.
3. Nobody was outside to help us carry the tree, trim the branches off the bottom of the tree, put the tree in the netting stuff, or tell us if we could get a discount. I went inside to find somebody. It took forever but finally somebody came out to help. At which point everyone else who was buying a tree stampeded over into a line, which we wound up at the end of.
4. I bargained a 25% discount off the tree and my sister and I hauled it outside to where there was supposedly a parking lot attendant who would help us tie it on top of the car.
5. There was no parking lot attendant. We emptied the trunk of our Target bags and tried to fit the tree in. It didn't work.
6. I went inside and found someone in orange to "help" us. The help consisted of first trying to wrap the tree itself in saran wrap. Then I told him we didn't need to do that because we wanted to put the tree on the car, not in it. He told me in it would be better. I told him it wouldn't fit because there were going to be three people riding in the car later, and also we didn't want to get needles all over the car. He picked up the tree and attempted to ram it into the backseat, spraying needles everywhere.
7. Finally, after much pleading from my sister and me, he agreed to put the tree on the car instead of in it. But he didn't want to do it until we put a blanket on the roof to protect it from the tree. Even though he clearly had absolutely no regard for the state of the inside of the car, where we actually have to sit, he was very concerned that we might scratch the roof, which nobody cares about.
8. We convinced him to put the tree on the roof without a protective blanket. He spent about ten minutes trying to figure out which way to strap the tree onto the roof. My sister did more of the work than he did while I held the tree steady.
9. Eventually, we got the damn tree attached securely to the car. We thanked the guy, who told us to have a good night and then stood there, expectantly waiting for his tip.
10. We gave him all the cash we had, $2, and he left. My sister and I had to sit in the car laughing for like five minutes after he left before we were composed enough to drive away.
    

But look! Wasn't it worth it? My first Christmas tree with Torsten!