Aftermath

After that giant melodrama of earthquake-hurricane double whammy, I was pleased to see this morning, as I drove to into the city, that damage appeared to be minimal.

Two things happened that spoiled my good mood:  1) I got rear-ended (everything's fine) and 2) this was what greeted me, as I turned down my friends' street, ready to take some photos for them.

No one was hurt, but that would be one nasty wake-up call.  Not enough for you?  This is literally 2 doors further down:

Don't want to share too much from the photoshoot I did for my friends' 3-week old little guy, but here's a little taste:

Ceremonial Musings

Last night, Brandon and I had our last meeting with the Rev. before the rehearsal.

And it was AWESOME.

When we went the first time, I asked him to take out two sentances from the service: the sentance that says "and created us man and woman for eachother"(obvious reasons) and "as affirmed by your baptism" (not baptized.) Our initial meeting was back in March or something, so I knew he would have forgotten, because he's an older men and as my father would say, "He's slept since then."

So when we got to the first one, which is all of 20 seconds in to the service, I again asked him if we could take it out. He again said sure, mused for a minute about how he sortof remembered me asking last time, read it over again without the sentance, and the looked up at me. He said, "You know? I like that. I'm going to read it that way from now on, because that sentance doesn't need to be there."

Then he told us that his daughter was gay, and not only were she and her partner happily married, but that he himself had performed the ceremony. And that they walk in the DC Pride parade every year. And he wondered why he hadn't just removed that sentance a long time ago.

This made me so happy. Any lingering misgivings I may have had about the religious aspect of the ceremony just washed away to reveal something shiny and new.

And I can't wait to get married.

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I made a thing!

We're totally watching How I Met Your Mother.

love it.

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Walking disaster

I know I'm not the only one this happens to.

But it's still annoying.

I was up almost every day with a random bruise.  On my shin, on my arm, on my ribs, or on my personal specialty - my hip bones.  Apparently I have no spatial awareness?

Yesterday, I managed to achieve the following:

• Found a massive bruise on my right hip, of unknown origin.  Or that could have happened this weekend, I'm not sure.
• Allowed my left arm to remain in the closing path of an extremely heavy door in my building.  It is now sporting a stylish lump and is prepping for the bruise.
• Whacked my elbow, right above my funny bone (for once!), onto the edge of my desk in a sweeping upward motion while reaching for tape.  Proceeded to lay my face down onto my desk and cry until pain subsided
• Cut my pointer finger on my right hand with the deadly sharp thumbnail on my left.  My left hand still bears the scar from earlier in the year, when I managed the reverse.

So I am only weeks from my wedding, and I am a walking ball of purple and blood.  Awesome.

Soooooo excited to get past this wedding, and for me to have nothing in the future I need to look good for.

On that note, since everyones been sharing recently:  Here's the last big thing I was worried about looking good for.

ahh prom.  How fabulous.  More fabulous when you're marrying your date in 3 weeks.

DC is full of special people

So I have continued to be rubbish with the blogging.  I've been sick, completely failing at working out, had a friend's bachelorette this weekend, and my wedding is in a month.  But here we go again:

One of the joyous tasks I had on my plate this week was to apply for an alcohol license in DC, so that we could serve alcohol at the wedding.

To do this, I not only needed to fill out a long form, and submit all of this documentation from the Carnegie, AND pay them $300 dollars!!


BUT

I also needed to get a police clearance.  From both DC and Fairfax county.

The DC police station... is full of people who are not my people.  By any stretch of the imagination.  I had to fill out this form on one floor, go down to another floor to pay the $6 fee (cash only, mind you) (in a room full of people waiting to have their court hearings), then go back up again to pick up the form that said I had a clean record.  I'm convinced they only make you go downstairs to pay is to give them enough time to stamp your form.


In the Fairfax police station, in contrast, the police officers behind the counter seemed to think I couldn't possibly be in the right place, and kept asking if what I needed.  Brandon is of the opinion that this is so they could continue to check me out, which is interesting because not only was Brandon there standing next to me, but I could have sworn I said I needed the clearance for the alcohol permit for my wedding.

Having collected these two precious sheets of paper, I got ready for the big one.  I got up early, bc the DC office where you get these permits actually opens before my office does, and headed to U Street.  Where I witnessed an interesting handoff in the window of the Starbucks I was waiting in.  Come on, 8am people?  Some of us just needed some coffee, take your shady deals elsewhere.  Particularly so because 3 minutes later, a policeman walked in.

Got to the builing, which houses a ton of DC regulatory boards and other city government functions, just as it was opening to the public.  I put my purse on the xray machine, and made pleasant conversation with the two ladies running the security check in.  A little Asian gentleman clutching an envelope also got into the elevator with me, also going to the fourth floor.  It took him 10 minutes to end up in the same reception area I found in 30 seconds though, so by that point the line for him was probably an hour long.

When I walked in, I was the first customer, and a very helpful lady behind the desk started going through my paperwork.  She finished reviewing everything I had brought, looked up and smiled.  "High five for having everything you need!"  I guess that doesn't happen to her much, and my guess is people are not too pleasant to her either.

She typed all my stuff into the computer, charged me the $300 its going to take to serve liquor and not just beer and wine, and casually mentioned that had I not gotten my paperwork in that day, I couldn't have gotten my license for another 2 weeks because the board was going to recess.  Veeeeeeery lucky.

I was out of that office in 15 minutes.  When I came back to pick my permit up the following week at lunchtime (after being complimented on both my top and my purse by the ladies of the security desk) I had my permit, all names spelled correctly, in less than 2.  So way to go alcohol permitting board.

After all that nonsense, I am finished.  And I can serve booze at the wedding!  Success :)

cannot breathe

I am trapped in my metro seat by a man who probably weighs 400 lbs, smells like old socks, and breathes like Darth Vader.

To his credit, he is turned sideways, projecting a long way into the aisle, to give me as much room as possible...which is something, I guess.

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from APW: Not Equal Enough

I know there are very few people who read this blog who did not get her via APW.  But just in case, and because this is something I believe in, I want you to go read this post if you have not already.

Everyone should have the right to get married.  Everyone.  And no one should be able to fire an employee because they disagree with their sexual orientation.

Wisely posted in the comments, a quotation that has always had deep meaning for me:

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn’t a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

~Martin Niemöller

aptly titled "Lord of the Rug"

Boris update!  My little guy is finally willing to use his wheelchair!  And there was much rejoicing!

Here's a link to the video my mom posted on Facebook - no idea if you'll be able to link to it, but thought I'd try. You might have to friend her first.

The longer he enjoys his life on this earth, the happier I will be.

But who's counting?

Today, we are one month away from the big day.  T-minus one month from all of this being over, and from me being able to look into the loving (or slightly goofy) eyes of this man I have grown with for 8 years and call him husband.

We've come a long way baby.  Almost there now.

Which I guess means it won't be over at all, because it will all just be beginning.

On that note, I have for you this gem of a photo:

in my defense, we are camping.

Enjoy people.  Beauty like this doesn't come around too often.  My kickboxing instructor told me he thinks we will have really good looking children (my old kickboxing instructor, don't worry Rachel.  I'm not just making stuff up here.).

It has come to my attention that this is my 100th post.  So happy birthday to the blog too, I guess.

Brandon promised that although salad dinner diet lockdown beings today, we can still go get icecream to celebrate our minus-onemonth-anniversary.  True love.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming..sortof.

I have been a slouch.  I know.  I am tired of making excuses for this blog, but:

I AM GETTING MARRIED IN ONE MONTH.  That should clear up any confusion :)

Look what we made yesterday for the grooms cake!

Hubs-to-be helped - he very carefully selected the toy car (a 1962 Shelby Cobra CSX2000 in case you were curious; I just liked that its a convertible) and I made the little balloons.

Do they look enough like balloons?  Do they want little thingies at the stem, the little part you tie into a know, to make them look more like balloons?  Le sigh.  I am just so proud of them, I don't want to touch them anymore.  But if you have any ideas, please let me know.

Its OK if you don't get the reference.  I think having a bunch of Mario characters around them will help people get it.

My google reader is getting out of control.  I just unsubscribed from several blogs that seemed like a good idea, but that I just don't have time for (and I feel a lot better)

I don't think I have enough time for all this internet stuff.  I don't even seem to have enough time for life stuff - but isn't that everyone's big beef?  Never enough time.  So much so that the previous owners of my sister's house stenciled it onto the dining room wall (except it was cutesy "never enough thyme" instead.  I would argue that too much thyme is possible.) 

Which brings me to my point: an update on what's happening and keeping me from updating the blog.  A ton of wedding stuff (which I will hopefully publish later this week) and a trip to Cleveland, to see my sister's new digs.

We left at 1 on Friday afternoon, hoping that this would land us in Cleveland around dinner time.  And it would have, except for the overturned car on I70 that blocked both lanes and turned it into a parking lot for 2 hours.  By the time we got to Breezewood for our traditional starbucks break, people coming off the highway seemed to think they were survivors leaving a war zone.  At starbucks there is always a line for the bathroom, and the people in this line apparently needed to share their life stories, so that they would feel better about the traffic.

I learned some interesting things.

We finally rolled into cleveland around 915, and did what we like to do in these situations: gorged on Chinese takeout.  Which Lisa isn't technically supposed to eat, but whatever, it was fine.  And then after dinner, we got to work.

Please note the visible haze in this garage.

Exhibit A, spray painting bandit in Lisa's garage around 1030 at night.  Priming her bedroom furniture ready for paint.

Then we unpacked a bunch of boxes and went to sleep, or tried to, on the old futon.  It was very nostalgic, but not in a good way: Brandon still doesn't fit on it.

The next day, I did a lot of this:

that light fixture is clearly in the way.  And yes, I am in my pjs.  I did not change out of them until we left for dinner.  and yes, they have paint on them now.

We did manage to get her entire living room painted, which is good because before we painted it, it looked like this:

yuuuuuucky green.  This photo doesn't do its awfulness justice.

And now:

pretty beige, with new ceiling fan installed.  yay!

We also went to Target, and bought some lamps.  Pretty.

To go in this room, Lisa's master bedroom!  Love the turquoise wall, think it turned out awesome.

When its dry, she will get to use this awesome bedside table!  I think it will look kickass with the silver headboard, coral sheets, grey duvet, and turquoise wall.  Or it will look like her designer was crazy (possible. I have not been well recently.)

OK, thats all for now.  Soon, I will update you on my other stuff.  All in all, and enjoyable weekend in the Cleve.

The strangest thing

A few weeks ago, I called Sandals over something for our vacation, and they asked me to confirm the presence of middle names/not on our passports.  And I thought, OK, yeah, I should check that.

A week later I dig out my passport, and sure enough, it has no middle name on it.  Thanks Canada.  But I digress.  I asked Brandon to pull out his passport so he could check.

4 hours and many rifled drawers later, Brandon still cannot find his passport.  Two days and a fully dismantled closet later, still no luck.  Four days and a rifled file cabinet later, we find his Social Security card (yay!).  And then we kinda gave up, and accepted he was going to have to get a new one.  There was still time before the honeymoon, no cause for real panic.  It must have just gotten lost in the shuffle of the move - we definitely weren't worried someone else had it or anything.

And then on Monday night, I had 2 different dreams that I found the passport, and I decided we should look again last night.  And what do you know, we found the passport!

...in the same place I had dreamt we would find it.  Not in the exact location, but on the same bookshelf in the corner of our apartment, where I would never have looked if I hadn't had the dreams.

So.  weird.   But I am so happy we found it :)