Team Destruction

So, we are rewiring the house.  Or rather, we are having the house rewired.  We've owned the house about six weeks, and we're going about systematically destroying it.  First, we cut out a cabinet in the kitchen to fit in our new fridge.  We love the fridge, it was totally worth it, but we had to destroy the cabinet to get it in.

Now, for the rewire.  The house is from 1952, and it has 1950s wiring.  None of the outlets are grounded.  In many of the rooms, the outlets only have two prongs.  In the living/dining room, the outlets have three prongs, but they are merely cosmetic.  The outlets are not grounded.  So, since we're not living in the house, we decided to get the rewire done now.  But the electricians need access to the insides of the walls.  They apparently can go through the attic and through the basement ceiling, and claim they can do the whole house with minimal damage to the walls.

Only problem: we have a finished basement.

Maybe I should say we had a finished basement.  Can I wield a crowbar or what?

Here's my sweetie in the garage, brand new reciprocating saw in hand:

 

I believe we now own six saws.  Six.  The destructive possibilities are endless.

Malted Milk

I love malted milk.  I have no idea what it is, but I love it.  I always have a jar of malted milk powder in my pantry, and every now and then when I am feeling blue, I'll have a glass of malted milk.

Mind you, this is not chocolate malted milk, which I do not like.

When I was a kid (and, if I am honest, to this very day), I would nibble all the chocolate off the outside of the Whopper so that I could get to the crunchy, malted goodness in the middle and let it melt on my tongue, unadulterated by chocolate which is much too sweet, and much too overwhelming for the subtle flavor of malt.

Why bring this up now?

Well, it's summer.  And our new neighbors on our fabulous new block are having a block party next week.  The organizers gave everyone on the block a little map showing all the houses and the names of the people who live there.  You can imagine that my sweetie and I find this very useful.  We are really looking forward to it, and of course, since it's a block party, everyone is supposed to bring something.  I've decided to bring ice cream. 

I love making ice cream, but I must confess I only make it for occasions where there will be people to help eat it, because I actually get bored with a flavor before I finish a whole batch.  I love ice cream, but not that much.

So, for the block party, I decided to make two batches of ice cream.  One will be my favorite old standby, orange ice cream, the recipe for which comes out of my 1975 Joy of Cooking.  This is the ice cream which caused me to buy an ice cream maker, because a friend of mine made some, and after one bite I felt I must always be able to have it whenever I want it.  It tastes like a creamsicle, only much, much better.

I was going to make chocolate for my second flavor, because I have a very good recipe for a dark chocolate ice cream that's very easy and very good, but it's very dark, and therefore a very adult sort of chocolate.  There are a lot of kids on the block, and I wanted a more kid-friendly flavor.  But wasn't going to make ordinary chocolate ice cream because, you know, you can buy that stuff in the store :-).

After toying with a few things, I finally hit upon the idea of malted milk ice cream.  Not chocolate malted milk!  Malted milk ice cream with Whoppers mixed in.  Trouble is, since no one on earth besides me seems to like malted milk without chocolate, I did not have a recipe for it.  So, I made it up.

OK, OK, so really all I did was take a vanilla ice cream recipe and add about 1/2 cup of malted milk powder to it (as well as almost double the amount of vanilla extract), but hey, I created a whole new ice cream!  And when it came out of the ice cream maker today, I was licking the beaters like some demented kid.  I actually think I could eat the whole batch and not get tired of it.  I love malted milk.  When's that block party???

Malted Milk Ice Cream

2/3 cup sugar

2 large eggs

2 Tbsp flour

1/4 tsp salt

1 2/3 cup milk

1/2 cup malted milk powder

1 cup heavy cream

1 Tbsp vanilla extract

1 cup chocolate-covered malted milk balls (Whoppers)

Beat sugar and eggs until thick and light yellow.  Beat in flour and salt.

Put milk in a medium sauce pan over low heat.  Whisk in malted milk powder.  Bring to a simmer.

Slowly beat hot milk into egg mixture.  Pour the entire mixture back into the pan and set over low heat, stirring constantly until it thickens slightly.  Do not boil!  Strain the mixture into a large bowl.  Cool slightly, then stir in cream and vanilla.  Cover and refrigerate overnight.

Stir the chilled custard, then freeze in your ice cream machine.  When almost frozen, pour in the malted milk balls and let the machine stir then in.  When the ice cream is done, it will still be soft.

Pack into a container, cover and put in the freezer to harden.  Lick the beaters until your tongue hurts.

Heaven.

Roses in bloom

I've counted: our new house has 30 rose bushes.

Roses have a lot of old associations for me.  When I was a child, my father had a gorgeous rose garden along the southern wall of our house, in a narrow strip of dirt between the driveway and the house. I can remember him walking up and down the driveway for hours every day, tending to his roses, pruning and watering, smoking cigars and swatting flies.  He always kept a pair of pruners on the windowsill outside the house, to be grabbed at a moment's notice.

He owned several books about roses, and I liked to look at the pictures.  The roses had exotic names, and he knew the names of all of his roses.  There was Tropicana, a bright orange rose that was my favorite because of its delicious sweet smell.  Peace was my dad's favorite, with its delicate cream coloring with pink and peach undertones.  There was the newfangled Double Delight, an ostentatious bicolor rose with petals that were white in the middle and hot pink on the edges.  American Beauty was the classic deep red rose.  When I was ten or so I bought him a white rose bush named Honor for his birthday, or for Father's Day.  

For me, ever since, roses are not about bouquets.  If I had to choose my favorite cut flowers, roses would be pretty far down the list.  Cut roses are kind of tame, a little boring.  Roses, real roses, are fragrant, extravagant, showy, slightly wild, but always stately plants.  They are garden royalty, tended with care and supremely confident that they deserve every minute of the attention.  Flowers are cut from these plants only for very special people.

We moved away from that house in 1983, and my father has not grown roses since.  In Connecticut, where we moved, he was discouraged by tales of evil Japanese Beetle infestations, and California, where he now lives, is too hot.  He sees other people's exhausted roses and scorns them: if they cannot be beautiful, he does not want them.

But when I told my dad I have roses, he immediately thought of what I need to do.  In particular, he said, I should look out for fungus, because in a place like Seattle, which gets so much rain, fungus is probably a serious problem.  25 years since he last touched a rose, and he put his finger on the problem: many of my roses are covered in black spot, a nasty fungal infection which is common up here because of the rain.  So common, in fact, that the nursery told me I should plant only disease-resistant roses, and if I have some plants that are very far gone, I should probably just dig them up and get rid of them altogether.

Some of the plants are pretty far gone.

I've never been a gardener, since I've never had a yard.  When I was a kid I had a tiny flower patch in the back corner of our yard, but I took care of it in a very haphazard manner, so the flowers quickly died.  I also do not have a terrific record with houseplants.  In my last job my boss actually arranged to have the plants in my office watered, because I would never remember until the poor things drooped pathetically.  From this I've concluded that I do not have the knack or the patience for it.

To my surprise, though, I find myself caring very much about these roses. I want them to survive.  I don't want to dig them up.  I want to kneel down and weed the beds and water deeply and apply the right treatments to help the survive.  We are not living in the house right now, but I find I keep wanting to go over and check on them, pull a few more weeds, spray a few more leaves for aphids, deadhead a few more flowers.  My sweetie complains that he has to work at keeping the lawn alive, and weeding everywhere else, while I do nothing but obsess about the roses.

But...the roses are my childhood.  My father and I have a complicated relationship.  He infuriates me a lot, and I know I am not as patient or kind with him as I should be. As they say, he pushes my buttons extremely well because, after all, he installed them.  But when I look at these roses, I'm a kid again, and I want to make them grow well and make my dad proud of me. He asked me if I knew what roses are there, in a sort of wistful way, no doubt remembering the days when he pored over the rose books and sought out the award-winning roses each year.  I don't know all of them, by any means, but there is an Honor in our garden, and a Peace.  I can't wait to show him.

A Tale of Two Stores (Or, Sears Kinda Sucks)

So, we have this new house. New to us, anyway: the house dates from 1952, and while the appliances were probably not that old, I wouldn't have been shocked to hear they were from the 70s. I am absolutely positive the washer, at least, was exactly the same washer my mom had when I was growing up. The refrigerator....well. Let's just say that we were keeping drinks in the freezer, and they were juuuuust right.

So we had to buy new appliances. As with the house, I really mean "new to us," because having just bought the house, we are broke like we've never been broke before. We were going strictly used or scratch-and-dent, and we were making no bones about it.

On July 4th, we went to the Sears outlet. I was incredibly happy to discover that they had the exact range I'd had my eye on: a Maytag 6875 electric range. Yes, we have abandoned our dream of running gas to the house (see: broke), so the one thing I wanted to spend some money on was a nice electric range. After a lot of research, I thought I'd be happy with one of these, and I was even contemplating paying full-price for it. But: they had it at the Sears outlet, and at a really great price. Heck, we even got a stainless range for less than the price of a white or black one (usually stainless costs $200 more). Of course, once you added the warranty/maintenance program ($199), the delivery ($69) and the haul away of the old one ($10), it was still pretty steep, but we were pretty happy, still. We set delivery for the following Saturday, July 12.

On July 5th, we went up to the Maytag Store, which also has a clearance room. No, don't worry: we didn't see our range there (well, we did, but brand new at $600 more, so we were still happy). But we did buy a refrigerator (French doors, bottom freezer: exactly what we wanted, in super-cool black) and a front-loading high efficiency washer and dryer. By buying three appliances, even from their clearance room, we qualified for a rebate of $200. Their service/maintenance program was $99 for each appliance. Delivery for all three: $59 flat rate. Haul away of the three old appliances: $0. We scheduled delivery for July 12.

On July 12th: Maytag said they'd come between 8:00 and 10:00. Sears said they'd come between 10:15 and 12:15. Sears arrived at 10:13 (early); Maytag arrived at 10:15 (late, though they'd called at about 9:45).

The Sears guys ran in. They picked up the old range, they ran out. They ran in the new range, they set it down. The lead guy said to me, "Do you have the plug?" (Ranges are not sold with the plug already attached, because you need to buy the plug that fits your home) I said I did. He said, "Great, you just stick that in the back and plug it in." I was surprised. I thought they were supposed to hook it up for me. But I figured from the way he said it that it must be like a printer or computer plug: it plugs in in the back, and then into the wall, no problem. I said, "OK." I'm a fool. He ran out the door: he had 19 deliveries to do.

By the time he left, the Maytag guys hadn't even finished unloading the truck.

The Maytag guys:

• Measured all the doors to see the best way to bring in the appliances.
  
• Took the front door off its hinges.
  
• Unhooked the old appliances and hauled them out.
  
• Brought in the fridge, hooked it up, turned it on.
  
• Brought in the washer and dryer.
  
• Hooked up the washer, which I wanted in a different place than the old washer had been. This meant that the hoses the washer came with were not long enough, so the guy went to his truck and brought in 8-foot hoses. Which, by the way, he did not charge me for.
  
• Hooked up the dryer. Which meant attaching a plug, because dryers are also not sold with plugs attached. Not only did he attach it, he supplied it, after seeing which one I needed. Sears had me buy one when I bought the range, and I had to guess if it was the right one, based on the age of my house.
  
• Started both the washer and dryer to make sure they were working, and instructed me to make sure to let the dryer complete its cycle to burn off the protective coating on the inside.
  
• Put the front door back on its hinges.
  
• Left, at least half an hour, more likely forty-five minutes, after they'd arrived. I bet they were late to their next delivery, too. I didn't care that they were late.

Note: $79 versus $59.

Of course, when my sweetie and I went to attach the plug to the range, we discovered it wasn't as easy as we thought. There are three wires, which need to be attached to three screws. There were extremely vague instructions that came with the plug, and none that came with the range. We think that the middle wire needs to go to the middle screw. But we don't know if it matters for the two outside wires. We don't think so, but we're not sure, and we do not want to fry our range before we even get to use it.

So, we called the store. The salespeople at the store were very surprised to hear that the delivery guys had not hooked it up for us. After all, we had paid for "white glove service" (which means they bring it into the house and hook it up, instead of leaving it on the curb!). They were very apologetic. They said they'd call the delivery guys and get someone to come back out. After a couple hours, I haven't heard anything, I call back. The salesguy is flabbergasted: the delivery people are telling him that they are not going to hook up my particular range. He says he's arguing with them, and will call me back when he gets it figured out.

An hour or so later, the store manager calls. He says they'd made a mistake in telling me the range would be hooked up: the delivery guys do not hook up slide-in ranges, because they need to be hard-wired. I point out that I don't have a slide-in range, I have a stand-alone range. He is very surprised. He asks if I have the plug, and I say yes. He does not understand why the delivery guys did not hook it up. He is very apologetic. He says he'll take care of it.

A few minutes later, I get a call from their delivery call center, in Scottsdale, AZ. The guy is calling to schedule the appointment. Unfortunately, Sunday is totally booked. I say that I have to, you know, work, so if they could come at 8:00 am on a weekday, that would be great. He says he can't guarantee anything, but he will make a note that I've requested this, and since we're setting the delivery day for Wednesday, with that much lead time, I'm very likely to get it.

Of course, when they call me Tuesday night, the delivery time they've scheduled is 11:15-1:15.

My sweetie calls the 800 delivery call number. They can do nothing for him. They say that they cannot guarantee any particular time. He points out that the whole reason they have to come back is because they screwed up in the first place, but they are unmoved. He says he doesn't see why we should have to take a day off of work because they suck. They don't care.

Let me just say: I understand that these things are computerized, and that there's not a lot of control over things, and you can't give people requested times because everyone will want the same time, but there ought to be a way to override the system to take care of customers who are really pissed, especially if they're really pissed because you f**ked up. The fact that there is no way to do it suggests to me that they have so many customers who are really pissed, they cannot afford to give any of them special treatment.

At this point I am shaking with rage. I call the store again. They close at 9:00 pm, and it is 8:57. To my astonishment, someone answers the phone. I almost feel sorry for him, except that I am in a rage. I explain the problem, my voice shaking in that annoying way it has when I get so mad I'm in danger of crying. He is hugely apologetic. He says that he will call the local delivery people the first thing tomorrow morning (when I am calmer he admits it won't be him, because he won't be working, but he'll leave a note for the morning manager) and try to fix it. But he tells me honestly that they probably won't be able to get me an early-morning time. I say, fine, if you can't, then get me Saturday. He promises to do so.

The next day, someone from the local delivery center calls, and confirms the appointment for Saturday. At this point I'm so disgusted I say fine. He says I will get a call the night before to confirm the time window.

I've just got the call: they will come tomorrow between 4:00 and 6:00 pm. My sweetie had only one thing to say: "F**kers."

I just want to point out that it's a damned lucky thing we're not living in the house, or I would have had no range to cook on. I have 30 days to return the range if I need to, and seven of them are already gone. Heck, if we're counting from the day we bought it, we're at fifteen days out, and I still haven't been able to turn the thing on. Meanwhile, I am keeping plenty of drinks cold in the refrigerator, I'm making ice in the freezer, and I've already done two loads of laundry in the washer and dryer.

I cannot say anything for Maytag reliability, or for the services of the mythical Maytag repairman. But the Maytag delivery guys? I love them. Buy from the Maytag Store. The difference could not have been starker.

Sexy

Drrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrumroll, please!

Ready?  Ladies, I present, pictures of my sweetie:

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Mowing our lawn.  Is that hot, or what??

Ahhh, the buzz!

So, today is the day we close on the house.  I actually took today off, but to my surprise, there is actually nothing to be done today.  My sweetie and I went to the escrow company's office last week and signed all the paperwork, so there is nothing to sign today.  In fact, since possession doesn't happen until 9:00 pm tonight, we aren't even going to get the keys until tomorrow morning.  A little anticlimactic, I guess.

But, since I have a free day and nothing to do, I decided to get back into the swing of things and sign up for Pilates classes.  Since I moved to Seattle, I have taken only one Pilates lesson, and I fully intended to keep it up, but then I got the job, and I went on my honeymoon, and life happened.  Plus, Pilates is expensive, and it's even more expensive here than it was in New York, so I felt a little guilty about spending so much money on something just for me.  (BTW, if anyone ever tempts you to move to Seattle by saying the cost of living is lower than NYC, don't believe them.  It's complete BS.  By all means, come, for the space and the nature and the slower pace of life, but don't expect it will be cheaper)  So, after six months of taking Pilates classes two or three times a week, I have spent four months doing nothing.  But a few things conspired to finally make me do it:

1)  My watch.  I have a very nice watch, given to me by my dad on my college graduation.  It is supposed to wind itself from the movement of my wrist, and in NYC I never gave it a second thought.  In Seattle, it stops every night, and often needs to be reset as it slows down during the day.  This is annoying.  It is also scary: I move so little that my watch cannot stay wound.  Which led me to:

2)  The realization that I really do not walk anywhere any more.  I walked all over in NYC; I walked to and from work, I walked to the grocery store, I walked to restaurants, I walked to go shopping.  I thought I was a fairly lazy person, but simply by living in NYC, I walked.  Here: I walk about 25 seconds to my car in the morning.  I get to office and walk another 25 seconds to my desk.  Occasionally during the day I walk five seconds to and from the bathroom.  At lunchtime I walk for about 15-20 minutes, just to be out of the office.  That's it.  I've gone from walking at least an hour every day to walking 20 minutes if I force myself.  If I'm busy and don't take my lunchtime walk, we're talking two minutes of walking, if that.  No wonder suburbanites are obese.

3)  How physically trashed I was after working the graduation parties.  Yes, I was tired from lack of sleep, but I was also physically sore all over.  After the first 13-hour marathon, I could barely walk, my legs hurt so much.  After another week of these parties, my back hurt, my knees hurt, and my shoulders hurt (so much that even just wearing a bra was exhausting).  I just do not have any endurance any more.

4)  The realization that I have become reluctant to walk.  I was always lazy, but now I am extra lazy.  My sweetie wanted to go for a nice walk along the Burke-Gilman trail on Sunday and he had to bribe me with shopping first.  Once we did it, I enjoyed it very much, but he really did have to make me.  I didn't like that.

5)  My resistance to the walk on Sunday made me realize that I feel restless, but trapped.  The house, the job, everything, is making me just a bit anxious.  I want to do something, but there's nothing, really, to do.  I'm kind of in a holding pattern right now (though that will change when we finally close on the house!), and when I am stressed, I get very sluggish.  I want to hide in unconsciousness.  I sleep a lot, and I hate to make any effort to move.  But what I really need is to focus on something else and relax a bit.  Pilates is great for that.  When I was freaking out over the wedding and the move, Pilates was the one thing that calmed me.  For the hour of the class, and even a couple hours afterwards, I could forget about things and just take it easy.  That's worth a lot to me.

So, today, I took a private lesson.  And, having learned from my previous failure to follow up, I immediately signed up for a group class session this weekend and made an appointment for another private lesson next week.  And, let me tell you, I loved it.  I focused on nothing the whole hour but what I was doing with my body (one of my instructors in NYC referred to Pilates as "the thinking man's exercise" because you really think about what every muscle is doing and when; there's no running on automatic in Pilates!), and when I was done, I felt that buzz, that energizing lift that I had forgotten about.  I am sooooo happy I did this!

Honestly, Pilates is not aerobic, so I don't know that this will solve #1 or #2, but I think it will totally help me with #3, #4 and #5.  And just getting in the mindset of exercise will help a lot, I know.  

Plus, I really want my abs back!

I feel old

I am wiped.  I just finished my first busy season at my new job.

The company I work for organizes safe and sober high school graduation parties.  June is the busiest time of year; more accurately, three weeks in June is our busiest time of year. On our busiest nights we have a dozen parties just on one night.  These parties run from 11:00 pm until 5:30 am: the idea is to keep the kids busy all night so that they can't be out partying themselves.  Statistics show that more teens are killed drunk driving on their graduation nights than on any other night of the year.

Needless to say, during "grad season" everyone in the office is completely trashed from lack of sleep.

I worked several of these parties this season.  They're pretty cool, very elaborate parties.  It is the first time I have spent significant amounts of time with teenagers since I was a teenager myself.  That's a long, long time ago.  Here are some things I've come away with:

I am so old: I looked around at these kids and realized that I am old enough to be their mom.  And I wouldn't have had to be a teenage mom to do it, either.

I am so old: my first party was an unusually long one, about 13 hours, and after being on my feet for 13 hours, my legs were killing me.  I was limping around the next day like an old lady.  Which I am.

I am so old: my legs recovered after that first party, but by the end of the season, after several parties of being on my feet, my knees are hurting.  So is my back, and my shoulders (which already hurt, but hurt even more now).

I am so old: spending several hours in video arcade (I should say, a noisy video arcade) is not my idea of fun.  And I never saw anyone playing the Ms. Pacman machine!

I am so old: what the heck is with the dancing these days?  All the kids are pressed up in a big clump, humping each other.  I'm told this is "freak dancing."  At one party there was a pretty big floor and a lot of kids, but half the floor was empty because the kids were all pressed together in one corner.  Weird.

I am so old: I had never heard of Soulja Boy or his Superman Dance, until I saw/heard it at every single party.

I am so old: I heard a fair bit of Michael Jackson at these parties, mostly Billie Jean and Thriller.  I guess this year is the 25th anniversary of the Thriller album, which is the only explanation I could come up with for why these kids were dancing to songs older than they are.  Older by a lot.

I am so old: this week I saw Dance Dance Revolution for the first time.  But hey, at least I'd heard of it!

Squeeeeeee!

As promised, a squee:


This is the front of the house. Isn't it cute? It is, I must admit, a lot like the house I grew up in, at least from the outside, which I didn't fully realize until my dad pointed it out.

Note the sidewalk out front. This is a long-standing joke between my sweetie and me, because I grew up in a neighborhood with sidewalks, and he didn't. Whenever we are walking somewhere, I am always yelling at him to quit walking in the street. This block is one of only about three blocks in the area with sidewalks; when we turned onto the block and saw the sidewalks, I was so happy my sweetie started laughing.

Inside, the house is different from the one I grew up in. The part I love best is this main room, the combined living/dining room, which is just huge and full of light. The hardwood floors are new and just gleam.

The master bedroom is on one end of the house, and two other bedrooms are on the other end. There is also a bedroom in the fully finished basement.

The kitchen, which could use a little work. Mostly I'd love to run a gas line to the house so I could have a gas stove!

And, the crowning glory: the backyard. My sweetie and I really wanted a yard for our (someday) kids, but yards are hard to come by in Seattle. Lots are small and frequently the house takes up the whole yard. This house has a big lot, almost a quarter acre, and a large expanse of yard, with lots of beautiful mature trees (too bad the rhododendrons aren't in bloom in this pic: they're beautiful). The best part is that the lot goes all the way to the street in back, so there is no house behind us. My dad made us laugh by referring to the lot as "only 1/4 acre" and "such a small lot." He has, after all, lived in the suburbs for decades. Trust us: this is a huge lot for being in Seattle proper.

Don't get me wrong: the house will need work. It's from 1952, and needs updated plumbing and electrical. It's still on oil heat, and the windows are original, if in very good condition for being over 50 years old. My sweetie has fantasies of ripping out the bathrooms and remodeling them before we move in. I've pointed out that a full-scale bathroom remodel is perhaps not the ideal first project for a couple of people who have never owned a house before. Still, we've moved past terror at the expense to Big Dreams about our house.

We close in two weeks. Squeeee!!!!!

(All pictures from the listing agent, Lake & Company)

Wait, what's going on?

So, I've been feeling lately like I've become an adult, and I don't like it.

I've been working hard at this new job.  I often feel at sea.  Sometimes I like it, sometimes I hate it.  Sometimes I wish I could lie around at home and do nothing.  It is not yet a habit, the way my job in New York had become.  It's work.  Sometimes it's fun, and I expect (hope) it will become even more fun as I get my feet under me, but right now, it's work.

My sweetie and I spent a huge amount of money in Italy, and so we are trying to be good.  It's hard to be good.  We were used to a carefree, high-living, high spending life in New York.  I mean, we were never huge spenders, but we didn't worry about money.  Now, we worry about money.  A friend of mine recently sent me the menu of an extremely fancy meal he recently ate, and my major reactions were: I used to have meals like that and I can't afford meals like that.  If my sweetie and I blow $60 on dinner for two we feel guilty.

Then, this weekend, we bought a house.  This is wildly exciting, and I will do an excited, squeeing post later (with pictures), but this has turned our worry about money into full-fledged panic.  Don't worry--we can afford the house, but....it's a lot of money!  And, though I owned a condo in New York, owning a house is a whole different animal.  There's the sewer line, and the yard, and the roof, and the pipes, and the electrical systems to worry about.  There's the water heater, and the furnace.  Every one of these things either needs work or needs to be monitored until such time as it will need work.  And that means even more money!

So, now I have a job that is work (and pays less than I'd like), I worry about gas prices and the cost of groceries, we're about to assume a mortgage and a house, and we're thinking kids, maybe in the next year or so.  Heck, we bought the house because of its yard and its sidewalks and the fact that it's around the corner from one of Seattle's top-rated elementary schools, so we've just committed a heck of a lot of money to the just the idea of kids.

I miss my carefree single days!  I got married and life became, well, difficult.  I know it's what I want, I love my sweetie, I'm excited to be doing all these new things, but....but geez, I think I wasn't ready to grow up just yet.....

Say cheese!

This weekend I volunteered at the Seattle Cheese Festival.

It was utterly gorgeous weather, and so the festival was packed.  I was assigned to the booths of two different cheese distributors, handing out samples and selling $5 blocks of cheese.  Yes, I snuck some tastes.

I also attended a couple seminars.

This is the plate from my second seminar, "From Curds to Consumer."  Yes, both seminars featured a plate of cheese and complementary wine.  Even turophilic me was cheesed out by the end of the weekend!

We've been back from the honeymoon for two weeks now, and have not had a moment's rest since, what with various obligations.  

I started my job the Tuesday after we returned, so I have been working and learning.  It's been interesting so far; I am not sure it's the job I hoped it would be, but it did not suck as much today as it did Friday :-).  So for now, I am sticking with it.  We are coming into the busy season, which will mean I will be working insane hours for about three weeks in June--including overnight--so that will be a trial by fire if nothing else.

The Italy trip seems very long ago now, but we had a lovely, lovely time.  I offer this photo as proof:

Yes, I am in an Italian cheese cellar.

Gulp!

Well, surprise, surprise, I accepted the first job I was offered. My streak continues.

However, I did cancel an interview with three hours notice at company #2, because I had decided to take job #1. Company #2 sounded quite disappointed, tried to persuade me to come in anyway and hear what they had to offer before making my decision, and then asked me to call them if my "plans change." Leading me to think I would have been offered job #2, also, if I had gone through with it.

I.....am freaked, actually. Job #2 would have been the safe, well-paying job with a big corporation in a business very in line with my career to date. Very familiar, very doable, very boring. Job #1 is the poorer paying job (although they offered me more than I expected, which made me happy), at a small business (15 permanent employees!) with very very few benefits. I've never worked for a small business before, and am quite boggled to hear, for example, that they don't offer any kind of paid maternity leave (yes, I asked. Just speculative). No retirement benefits, either. This is going to be a very different world.

And, did I mention, I have zero experience in the job they've hired me to do? Yikes.

My stomach is doing crazy flip-flops. I am not a risk-taker. And it has been a very, very long time since I have gone into a job with absolutely no idea of what my day-to-day work life will look like. My last four jobs were all pretty similar to the job I had before. Sure, each company had its own idiosyncratic way of doing things, but the basic activities, the way the contracts read, the way meetings were held, the way fairs were run, the way sales were made, recorded, serviced--these were basically the same. With this job, I know what the job is, but I have no idea how it gets done. I will be learning everything.

But this job is in an area I am very interested in getting into, and didn't know how I was going to convince anyone to hire me in. Just like that, I've got the entry, and I'm pretty excited, when I'm not terrified.

My sweetie and I are heading off to Italy for our delayed honeymoon tomorrow. When I come back, I will be a working woman.

Wow. I totally should have enjoyed my free time more!

Some nonsense

Meet Howard:


A few years ago, I acquired a couple random balls of fun fur yarn. I had an idea that I wanted to make my sweetie a fur lined hat. However, none of the fun fur yarns were sufficiently fur-like to realize my vision, and I also found that I hated knitting with fun fur--it's utterly impossible to find or fix mistakes or dropped stitches, and don't even think of trying to frog the stuff!

Howard is made from the last ball I had left (I turned a few others into a potato chip scarf), and as it lost its ball band long ago, I have no idea what it is, who it's made by, or even how much yarn I had. I discovered, too, that the very things that make fun fur annoying to knit with are kind of advantageous when you're making something a bit haphazard like Howard: you can make mistakes and no one will ever know :-).

This took me maybe six hours to make; I had a tiny bit of black yarn left from my long-ago alien scarf, and his eyes are buttons from my button box (consisting entirely of spare buttons from clothes I've owned), so Howard is a true scrapyard monster. I wish this picture were sharper, because his button eyes are some sort of shell, and therefore somewhat bloodshot with pink streaks.

I think he's kind of cute, actually.

Job hunting

I've been job hunting. Job hunting is my least favorite activity in the world. I would rather go to the dentist every day. I hate it.

For some reason, I have always been absolutely convinced that I am unemployable. When I was in college, I went to a group interview for Cutco knives. I honestly don't remember why I went to this interview, but I did, and I was offered the job. My mom made me turn it down, because it involved going into people's homes and demonstrating the knives. She thought this was unsafe. I remember crying, and saying, "But I got the job! No one will ever hire me for anything!"

To date it remains the only job I have ever turned down.

It's not that I don't think I'm capable or smart. I actually feel fairly confident that I could do most any job that does not require specialized education (like a doctor or rocket scientist or something). The problem is convincing someone to hire me. I absolutely believe that I am incapable of landing a job for which I am not the obvious candidate because of my experience. No one will think creatively about me. No one will even interview me to give me a shot at convincing them.

After I left grad school I spent several months in London. I had a 6-months work visa, and so was trying to find a job. I interviewed all over the place, generally for retail jobs, and couldn't land one. I was either overeducated or underexperienced, or both. Finally I got a one-month temporary Christmas season job. I took it. After it was over, I didn't even try to find another job. I goofed off for another month in London, and then continued traveling.

When I moved to New York, I found a job fairly easily, because I had gone to a publishing course over the summer. This was a way of getting a short track into the industry, a leg up on finding a job. I absolutely believe I would not have gotten a job otherwise. As it is, I only got offered one job, after I had interviewed at half a dozen, though of course this could be attributed to the fact that I took the first job I was offered.

Some years ago I was desperate to get out of my job, and I tried to apply to jobs outside of publishing. This was a miserable failure: I never even got an interview.

Every job I've gotten after that first job in publishing has been because I had directly applicable experience and, eventually, a network of people who knew me. Publishing is a relatively small world.

Now, though, I am looking for a job, outside of my little world. My sweetie and I are leaving for our honeymoon at the end of next week, and he has been encouraging me to relax until we get back, to not look for a job now. I haven't been able to listen. I am convinced I am unemployable. I got started early, because I figured this will take a very long time. I figured I would have to apply to a billion jobs to get even one interview.

Well, this week I have had interviews with two companies.

One is a job where my publishing experience is actually relevant. The other is a job for which I have absolutely no experience, but they like my resume and they are happy to train me. (Who knew companies with that attitude even existed any more? Everyone wants directly applicable experience these days; they figure if they get someone who already knows how to do the job, they won't have to train them. this is a total fantasy, but it's pervasive.)

The first job would probably pay me in keeping with my last job, and with my years of experience. The second job will pay me an entry-level salary, well below half what I was making at my last job. But the first job seems like it could be quite boring, and the second job new and interesting. I am torn.

Of course, I have not yet been offered either job, but I'm pretty hopeful about both. And, for the first time, I'm in a position where I might actually have to turn down a job. This is weird. I've always been so grateful to be offered a job, any job, that I've always said yes. But here, I'm actually a little worried that I will take the first job that offers itself just to have a job. But if I turn down both jobs, what are the chances I'll find another?

God, I hate job hunting.

Useless rant #18

It happened again.

My sweetie and I went out for sushi tonight. I opened the menu, looked at the list of a dozen or so "special rolls." I went down the list, reading the ingredients of each roll, and rejecting those which included avocado. I hate avocado.

As usual, there were only two rolls which did not list avocado. I shouldn't say "as usual"--this is actually pretty good. Sometimes there aren't any rolls without avocado.

I chose one of the avocado-free rolls. I said to the waitress, "It doesn't have avocado in it, does it?" She said, "No, I don't believe so."

The roll arrived. It had avocado in it.

This has happened more times than I can count. Avocado has apparently become a standard ingredient in sushi rolls, so standard that it doesn't even warrant mentioning on the menu. Like rice and nori, you can expect avocado in your roll. However, no one has bothered to alert waitstaff to this fact, because I am always assured that, if it doesn't say avocado on the menu, there is no avocado. Depending on my mood, I have been known to send the damned things back. Otherwise I just pick it out, grumbling the whole time.

This has happened to me many times in New York. It has now happened to me in Seattle. You know where it never happened to me? Japan. Never. Even though I could not read the menus and was often ordering by pointing, or not ordering at all, just eating whatever was put in front of me. In two weeks traveling in Japan, I ate a lot of weirdo things, but I never had avocado ever, at all, period.

It isn't authentic, and it bugs the crap out of me that it is so utterly unavoidable. My sweetie says I should just order everything "no avocado" even if the menu doesn't say it has avocado. That way, the waitress will write down "no avocado" instead of assuring me incorrectly that I needn't worry.

But for some reason, to me, it's the principle of the thing. I don't want to accept that avocado is as much a given as rice in sushi. I want to believe that avocado is an ingredient which must be listed. It baffles me that it can go unheralded, because most people like avocado; you'd think if a roll has it in it, it would be worth advertising.

Consider this useless rant #18. Actually, given how often I have cause to use it, I could move it to position #1, but I hate to admit is pisses me off that much :-).

Magic

This is Elizabeth Zimmermann's Baby Surprise Jacket:

Elizabeth Zimmermann is something of a legend in the knitting world. She wrote books in the 60s and 70s that approached knitting in a very relaxed, no-nonsense way, and she's regarded as kind of a mother of the craft as it's known today. I admit I haven't read much of her work, but I have heard about the Baby Surprise Jacket for some time, and have been determined to knit one.

I have to say, the thing is a marvel. Look at that picture above. It's a blob, right? You can't imagine how it's going to turn into a jacket, right? It's knit all in one piece; in fact, if you have a length of yarn long enough (I didn't), you could knit it all in one string--at no point do you need to cut and reattach the yarn; that in itself is cool. Not only that, even though you know it's not the case, you feel like you're knitting a big rectangle, and that both cuffs are knit on one side of the rectangle, and the buttonholes are on the other end, and you have no idea how the thing is going to rearrange itself. I consider myself fairly good with spatial visualization, but I have to admit, the jacket is well-named: the "surprise" is that it makes a jacket at all.

Voila! Here is the Baby Surprise Jacket, properly folded up:

There are only two seams on the thing, running from the neck to the cuff on top of each sleeve. There are no seams under the arms or at the sides. Furthermore, if you examine the thing, you'll find that the cast-on edge runs across the back and around each cuff, while the bind-off edge runs around the hem and up each front edge. This is cool because the cast-on edge is always stretchier, just the thing you'd want to have at the cuffs. I swear, after I finished the thing, I spent about twenty minutes just looking at it, marveling at the design.

Seriously, it's magic.

Stupid cute

I know that, according to the last post, I am knitting a yellow sweater. However, I must confess I became disenchanted with the project this weekend, and I have frogged it ("to frog" = to unravel knitting, so called because when you unravel knitting, you "rip it, rip it") and begun something else with the yarn. To console myself for a week's worth of wasted knitting, I turned to a small project, for the new baby of one of my sweetie's coworkers:

These are Old World Booties from Interweave Knits. They took about three hours each to knit, and then 30 minutes in the washer to felt. They shrank, also: they were over 5" long when they went in, huge, even for the son of a man over 6 feet, but now they are about 4" long. Still big, but not laughably so.

I am utterly enchanted with them. They are my very first felted project (finally, I live in an apartment with a top-loading washer), and they're little and fuzzy and stupid cute. I am fighting the urge to dig up every random scrap of wool in my stash and knit up another dozen.

I've already started counting the expected babies in our social circle. There will be more.

Notes from Seattle

My friend Brian sent me this:


with a note reading, "So plant 'em yourself!" A friend in need is a friend indeed.

However, check out the view from our balcony today, March 28:


Yes, yes, I know the cherry tree is lovely. But look, look to right, where I have drawn a very very dim circle (I still haven't mastered Photoshop). I know it's hard to see, I know the tree is pretty and distracting. But let me tell you: it is snowing. Hard. Big, fat, wet flakes that aren't sticking, but it's snowing. Last night I slept with three comforters on me.

I would plant the seeds anyway, since they say to plant them 6-8 weeks before last frost, but we'll be leaving on our honeymoon soon, and there will be no one to water them.

Oh, and one last shot:


I've begun knitting again. No, my shoulder isn't any better. But the latest Vogue Knitting arrived, with a pattern I had to try. And I had the perfect yarn for it. And I have nothing to do but sit around the house, unpack, job hunt, and twitch about being unemployed. And do my taxes, but doing my taxes would involve finding my files. And, you know, doing them. My hands needed occupying. This picture represents about a week's worth of knitting. I tell myself that knitting is better for my shoulder than sitting on the computer all day.

Yeah.

Miracle pill

My eyes have been itching a lot lately. I have allergies, hay fever, mostly, and the way it most affects me is in terribly itchy eyes. If it's really bad, the inside of my mouth and my tongue also itch. Sinus problems are either less severe or less annoying, I don't know. I notice the eyes the most.

For years my allergies were at their worst in May and June. But the last two years or so, I've noticed I have symptoms all year round. Since I've moved to Seattle, they've been pretty bad, especially the eyes. I'd blame it on Seattle and its plethora of flowering trees (there are two outside our building, but I am not complaining: I love flowering trees), but I have to admit I first noticed it getting unseasonably bad in New York before I left. I thought it was all the dust kicked up by my moving, but who knows? Anyway, it was so bad that on my very last day in New York, I came up with the following song celebrating my #2 Drug of Choice (#1 being Excedrin), Benadryl.

(Sung to the tune of "Spiderman")

Benadryl, Benadryl
It's my favorite miracle pill.
Clears my nose,
Clears my head,
Nothing else will do instead.
Oh yeah! Bring on the Benadryl.

Is it strong?
Listen, bud
It courses through your allergic blood.*
Takes on cats,
Takes on dust,
It's an absolute musty must.
Oh yeah! Bring on the Benadryl.

When your eyes, in Spring,
Drive you wild, 'round the bend,
You don't need a thing
But your pink little friend!

Benadryl, Benadryl
It's my favorite miracle pill.
Clears your nose,
Clears your head,
Nothing else will do instead.
Oh yeah! Bring on the Benadryl!

* This line provided by my friend Laura.

Hey, nothing else is going on right now: unpacking, unpacking, unpacking. Ugh!

Toto, we're not in NYC anymore

Photo from gourmetsleuth.com

This is broccoli rabe, also known as rapini or broccoli di rape. It's an Italian vegetable, bitter, leafy, with flowers that kind of look like broccoli. According to Wikipedia, it's related to turnips. It's an acquired taste, as it is quite bitter; for many years I didn't like it, until I learned the secret: blanch it first.

My sweetie loves broccoli rabe, and it was a staple in our New York diet: easy to cook, readily available year-round, not expensive, healthy. Saute it with garlic and olive oil and you've got a side dish; toss it with some pasta and you've got a quick and easy meal. It goes well with Italian sausage, peppers, chickpeas. When I don't have a lot of creative energy but want a tasty meal with vegetables, I choose broccoli rabe. It is a vegetable I can cook without a recipe.

For my first cooked meal in Seattle, it seemed natural to use some broccoli rabe. Imagine my astonishment, then, when I went to two grocery stores and was unable to find it. In the second grocery store, I even asked the produce guy for it, and he asked a second guy, who asked a third guy, and they all agreed that, not only did they not carry it, they'd never even heard of it. Flabbergasted would not begin to describe it. Broccoli rabe is something you can find in the crappiest grocery store (and there are many crappy grocery stores) in New York. Not having it is almost equivalent to not having spinach.

Have I mentioned there are a lot of Italians in NYC as well as Jews?

One of the fun things about moving to a new place is seeing what is different in the grocery store--in my wanderings looking for broccoli rabe, for example, I saw bok choy, something you can't get in the average store in NYC--but, wow. No broccoli rabe. I learned to love broccoli rabe in NYC, so I honestly cannot say if it was readily available in California. And I'm not saying NYC is so much better because it has broccoli rabe; I'm just...stunned. I had not realized the extent to which broccoli rabe had become my go-to vegetable until I could not go to it.

I bought mustard greens instead. They're bitter, too, but not as yummy, or as substantial, as broccoli rabe. Sigh.

The end of an era

I have moved out of my apartment.




















I feel sad.























With all my stuff moved out, the place echoes in a very lonely way.








































When I moved into this apartment, I was 29.

I lived in this apartment 8.5 years. Other than the house I grew up in, where I lived until I was 13, this is the place I have lived the longest. In many ways, I became an adult in this apartment.

It was the first place I lived alone, without roommates. Now that I am married, it may remain the only place I ever lived alone. I hope so.

It was the first place I owned.
It was the first place where I had doormen--a staff that, in a sense, worked for me.
I bought real furniture for it.
I painted the walls bright colors, because white walls scream "rented apartment" to me.
I bought shades for it, and new faucets, and a new toilet, and other things homeowners do. I caulked the bathroom sink.

While I lived here, I changed. I lost a significant amount of weight. I started to care about fashion and shoes. I read less. I exercise more. I learned to knit. I go out to eat a lot. I became a New Yorker.

While I lived here, I achieved a certain success in my career. I was no longer the assistant, I became a boss. I was an expert. I was asked for my opinion. I was considered very valuable to my employer.

While I lived here, I met a lot of men; I dated a lot. I met the man who broke my heart, and I met the man who is the love of my life.

While I lived here, I enjoyed NYC, I grew to consider it home. And I grew quite tired of its unique pressures.

On September 11, 2001, I brought my boss home with me, because she couldn't go home: the trains weren't running to the suburbs. My boss was a nasty woman, but I couldn't leave her alone in the office, so I took her home. We sat on the couch and watched the TV all day, until about 4:30 when they announced the trains were running, and she could leave. For years afterwards, people would say to me, "I heard you took so-and-so home on September 11! I couldn't imagine having her in my personal space!" But honestly, she was never nasty to me again after that.

When I bought the apartment, I had never had a serious boyfriend. I hadn't even dated much, really. Throughout my twenties, I thought I wanted to be alone for the rest of my life. When I bought the apartment, I thought there was a decent chance I would live in it until I died.

I am on such a different path than I envisioned coming to when bought this apartment.

It feels different moving out of this apartment, different from moving out of every other place I've lived. Every other place before this was temporary. I knew I would not be there long. This place was mine, it was home.

I am a little sad to leave it, even though I am excited to start the next phase of my life. I was happy here. I was, by some measures, successful here. The life I lived here was a life I knew I could do, was a person I knew I could be. It was safe. It was comfortable. I am a person who likes safe and comfortable.

It makes me wonder what I will think 8.5 years from now. What life will I have then, that I never saw coming from this end?

Times have changed

These are Ess-a Bagels. Ess-a makes my favorite bagel in NYC, and I will miss them. Today I ate what I believe will be my last Ess-a Bagel, a sesame, my favorite.

When I first moved to New York, I lived right around the corner from the Ess-a on 3rd Ave. I went there a lot, and usually got two at a time. Nowadays I go by only when I am nearby, and I only get one. They are huge, some bagel purists might say too huge, but for me they are the quintessential bagel. No other bagel in NYC is as satisfying and--I am sorry to sound like an obnoxious New Yorker, but it's true--no bagel I've had outside of NYC is even a bagel.

When I went in today, I noticed that Ess-a Bagels now cost $1. I think they were $0.95 last time I went in, but I could be wrong. Back when I lived around the corner from them, the bagels cost $0.60. I guess I have been in NYC a long time that I can track such significant inflation!

Other things that have gone up: movies. Movies were $7.50, I think, when I came to NYC in 1996. Now they are $10.50, $11 in some theatres. I remember when they went up to $8.50 (about six months after they'd gone up to $8) I was so annoyed I boycotted movies for a year. I go occasionally now, but nowhere near as often as I used to.

The subway was $1.50 when I first came here; now it's $2, and they're talking about raising it to $2.25. I actually think the subway provides a heck of a lot of service for a relatively small fee (heck, compared to Ess-a, the inflation rate on the subway is only 33% versus 67%), so I don't mind this. While I appreciate the NYC mindset that vocal complaining keeps city agencies on their toes, I do think the people who squawk loudest about how much the subway sucks and how outrageous it is should take a trip outside of NYC once in a while.

The suggested entrance fee for the Metropolitan Museum of Art was $8 in 1996. Today it is $20. Seriously. I blame MOMA: they renovated the MOMA a few years ago and reopened with a ticket price of $20, to much outrage from all sides. But people are paying it, so how could the Met not follow suit? The Guggenheim is $18. I've never been there, and will not go before I leave.

Do I sound like a crotchety New Yorker yet? Boy am I old, complaining about how much things used to cost! I mean, while I'm at it, I might as well complain about postage ($0.32 compared to $0.41), although like the subway, the post office provides a service that is easy to complain about, but is pretty darned impressive if you really think about what is provided for the price. But they might have done better to increase the rate all at once instead of bringing out another increase so soon after the last one. It's a PR problem as much as anything.

Finally, to get back on the subject of round bread, even more than bagels, I will miss bialys. Bialys are kind of a cross between English muffins and bagels, and they are pretty unique to New York. I once read that bialys are not made anywhere else in the world but New York; no one really knows where they came from, but the theory is they were brought here by Jewish immigrants, possibly from Bialystok, Poland. But if you go to Bialystok today, you will not find bialys, because, well, the bialys were lost along with the Jews. But if you go into any deli in NYC, even ones run by Koreans, you will find bialys.

In some ways that are not always obvious, New York City is very, very cool.

Reviews

It is customary on bridal websites for brides to review their vendors for others' information. Here are my reviews of my major vendors:

Venue/Battery Gardens: A+
I can’t say enough about Battery Gardens. First of all, the space is gorgeous, with spectacular views of the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and New York Harbor. It was also very affordable, by NYC standards, because we chose a date in February. Finally, the food is terrific, Asian-influenced and very well presented. And, they have the option of having Peking Duck, which I adore. With just these things I would have been happy, but in addition, their staff is excellent, and extremely professional. Alex, the Catering Manager, made sure he knew all of the details I wanted, and took care to arrange everything the way I requested. Eddie, our Maitre d’ for the evening, kept everything running smoothly and on schedule. The wait staff was unobtrusive and kept my water glass filled (my major criteria for table service, since I drain water glasses at a rate of about one every ten minutes). Most of all, I really felt that they wanted the wedding to be exactly as I wanted it—that it was a point of pride for them that everything ran seamlessly without causing me any grief or worry. They succeeded in this, and I appreciated it so much. I can’t recommend them highly enough.

Officiant/Julie Laudicina: A+
Julie is a secular celebrant, and she proved that a wedding needn’t be religious to be meaningful. Everyone was raving about our ceremony throughout the night, something I don’t think I’ve heard at other weddings I’ve been to. She created something very personal and moving, and that captured our personalities perfectly. Many, many guests told us it made them tear up, because she really made it clear what it was that we felt for each other and how special the day was to us. Julie began writing the ceremony back in November, when she sent us a detailed questionnaire for us to fill out separately. Then we reviewed drafts of the ceremony, refining it via email and a phone conversation until it was pretty good. Then, she delivered it in such a way that it became perfect: I was struck by how much more special the ceremony sounded when she spoke it over how it had read on the page. It really was exactly what we wanted, and it set the tone for the entire evening of celebration with the people we love. I actually think, now that I’ve gone through it and heard the feedback from our guests, that nothing personalizes your wedding more than a personalized ceremony done right. No one commented on any of the details I slaved over—the Blurb guestbook, the postcard table names, the travel mug favors, etc.—the thing they all talked about was the ceremony.

Flowers/Antheia Floral Design: A
When I started calling florists for the wedding, I quickly realized that my demands were going to be challenging: I wanted red flowers three days after Valentine’s Day, and I did not want to spend more than $2,000. Only three florists did not laugh at me, and only two had proposals that did not look like they were cheap. I chose Angie at Antheia because she seemed calm and her aesthetic suited my style better. I wasn’t disappointed. Not only did she do very pretty centerpieces and a bridal bouquet I loved, she came in more than $200 under budget. Angie was hugely busy in the week before my wedding because of Valentine’s Day, but I never felt that she had forgotten about me or that I was an afterthought. Because I ended up with fewer guests than I had originally expected, we made some last minute changes to the plan and she was accommodating and helpful. Furthermore, when I was really not sure what I wanted the bridesmaids’ bouquets to look like, she offered some great suggestions and created something pretty with very little guidance from me.

Hair/Stacy Pitt: A
Stacy gets lots of raves and they are deserved. I had two trials with her, one almost a year ago when I first hired her and one just a few weeks before the wedding. She is so calm and cares so much about making her brides beautiful, not just for her own professional reputation but I think because she wants brides to be beautiful. My hair was not behaving on the day of the wedding: Stacy had to take it down and start again three times, and we got very behind schedule. I think she was more upset about stressing me out than I was stressed. In the end, because the style we had decided on in the trial just wasn’t working, Stacy created a fallback style on the spot, and it looked great and stayed perfect throughout the night. You would never have known it wasn’t what we had planned. In addition, Stacy made my mom and my bridesmaid Laura, who both have short hair and figured there was nothing to do with their hair, look elegant and flirty and terrific.

Makeup/Laura Nadeau: A+
Laura also gets lots of thoroughly deserved raves. Like Stacy, I get the impression that Laura loves brides and loves being able to make them beautiful. She’s also a lot of fun to have around when you are getting ready. She was faced with four women (me, my mom, and my two bridesmaids) who rarely if ever wear makeup (she was astonished that my mother, at 72, had never used any eye makeup. Ever), and she handled the task perfectly and made all of us look beautiful but natural. She hung around well after the makeup was done to help however she could in the last moments before the ceremony. When my MIL’s corsage broke, she sat down and tried to fix it with a safety pin. It was like having another girlfriend around to gossip and laugh and help. She was great.

DJ/Expressway Music, David Swirsky: B+/A-
This is tough review to write as I think there were a few things with the space that made the music challenging. Battery Gardens is a huge room, and we had only 100 guests, so the dance floor felt very far away. Dave had to work pretty hard to keep anything going on the floor, and mixed it up quite a bit. It was a great mix of Motown, 80s music, hip-hop, a little big band, and everyone felt included. Several of our guests commented that the music was great. Dave absolutely respected our “do not play” criteria (no line dances, no breakup songs, no “Celebration”). However, there were a couple songs we specifically requested he play that he didn’t, and we were a bit disappointed, though he explained that these were decisions he made in an attempt to keep the dancing going, and we had emphasized that dancing was our biggest priority. As far as the guests were concerned, the music was great and helped create a good party atmosphere. Alas, I think because of the space the music was more of a background, and I'm not sure how we could have fixed this, honestly. I do want to say that Dave himself was great, my husband and he really connected, and he obviously loves music and what he does.

Photographer/Agaton Strom: A
This is a provisional grade, since I haven’t yet seen any of the photos :-). But we were really, really happy with Agaton, who was there from early in the day until the end of the wedding, traveling from Battery Gardens where the groom and groomsmen were decorating, to the hotel where I was getting ready, and back to Battery Gardens for the wedding. He was very professional and unobtrusive, but whenever I turned around he seemed to be there, capturing the action. The bunch of us piled into two cabs to go from the hotel to the venue, and Agaton was in a different cab from me, yet when I got there, he was waiting to catch me emerging. He even offered, at the end of the night, to pop in to our brunch the next day for half an hour, since it was just a few blocks from his studio, to sort of capture the end of the wedding, and when we arrived he was there, shooting us coming down the street. He was generous and good humored, and we were really happy to have him. I can’t wait to see the pictures!

Video

Darn, do I hate myself in video. But if you are curious, my fabulous makeup artist, Laura Nadeau, has a short video of me on her blog. We are discussing my necklace(s), which were eBay purchases and hung on my neck backwards :-). You may recall my necklace obsession. This is what came of it.

Laura Nadeau

We're married!

Well, we are married. Funny, I don't feel much different :-). My sweetie leaves for Seattle again tomorrow, so I think it might not really hit me until I get to Seattle myself.

I think the wedding went really well, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. *I* certainly had fun!

Here are a few pictures taken by the husband of our officiant.

All pics by Joe Laudicina






The last pic is with our officiant, Julie Laudicina, who was wonderful. She created a ceremony that was very personal, funny, touching, and really captured us. All of our guests were raving about it all evening. She was great.

New friends?

My sweetie has finally arrived for the wedding. One week to go: I can't wait!

(For the curious, the 10-day forecast predicts morning clouds and afternoon sun for the day. Whee!)

Tonight we worked on the seating chart. What a bear! We will have tables of ten, and we kept producing logical groupings of seven or nine. Then there's the question of whether we should seat people entirely with people they know, or if we should mix it up? And what about the people who know nobody? What about the handful of people we don't even know? And, of course, you never want people to feel like they're at the boondocks table, so far from the head table that they are obviously second class. Since our wedding is small and we are truly happy to see pretty much everyone, we don't want anyone to feel slighted. We mitigated this problem (somewhat), by seating ourselves smack in the middle of the room :-).

We arrived at a "final" arrangement three different times, but I think we are done now, if only because we're both sick to death of the task. Some tables are logical groupings of my people, some of his people, and we're pretty pleased that we've come up with several tables which are a nice mix of both sides.

The funny thing is, we are having a buffet dinner, so I honestly think people will be sitting at these tables for, at most, an hour. Seriously, can't anyone make stupid small talk in a group of ten for an hour? So I don't know why this was such a struggle. I guess we just want everyone to be happy. But, as with most things with this wedding, I could only sweat so much over the task before I called it done. Bridezilla, I still am not.

But I am soooo excited! It finally hit me three days ago that I am getting married. This isn't just some big party I've been planning, it's, well, a wedding.

I've started checking the weather

Happy Groundhog Day! Apparently Staten Island Chuck and Punxsutawney Phil disagree on whether we will have six more weeks of winter. In less than six weeks I will be Seattle, so: I really don't care :-).

I do care, though, about the weather on my wedding day. Here is what I would consider ideal: clear days for the two or three days leading up to my wedding (so that people who are traveling have no trouble), and then a freak snow once the wedding starts, with big, fat, photogenic flakes. I even bought myself a red Asian paper umbrella just in case: if it snows, I am going outside for pictures!

Alas, I think it is far more likely that, if we have precipitation, it will be rain. It doesn't snow terribly often in NYC--I really think the city produces so much heat it changes the weather. New York in the rain is a pain in the butt, so I definitely don't want rain. Happily, February is the driest month in NYC, so our chances are decent. How do I know this last fact?

Weather.com, of course:

Average monthly temperatures and precipitation
Averages highs and lows for every day in February
The forecast for the next ten days

When we first booked a February wedding, my dad expressed concern about the weather. But he has lived in California for twenty years, and his formative experiences of a city winter occurred in Chicago. I can understand why it scares him. I was not overly concerned. I considered getting wedding insurance just in case a large number of our guests missed the wedding because of weather, but decided it wasn't worth it.

This doesn't stop me, though, from checking the weather. I just want to know, you know? What will the day look like? Will I have to bring my galoshes? Which coat will I have to wear? Will we have a glorious sunset or just clouds?

I wish it were the 7th so I could get a (highly inaccurate) ten-day forecast that covers my day. Seriously. I wanna know.