Miscellaneous Nice Things

It's been clear and sunny yesterday and today, and this has made a world of difference in my mood. There's really no beating Seattle for the pretty on a clear winter day. I love the summer, don't get me wrong, but on a sunny day in winter there's no haze (or smog, I guess), so you can see all of the mountains at their snowy white best, and the air is nice and clean. Plus, you're a hell of a lot more grateful that it's not raining. It's nice.

We registered for wedding gifts this weekend. I'm sure you are as sick of hearing about wedding stuff as I am of talking about it, so I will only say that this exercise in wild consumerism just wasn't as much fun as one might expect. Still, I am humbled and grateful that people want to buy us stuff, so I'm not really complaining.

Have you been watching the Jane Austen Extravaganza on PBS? I watched Persuasion last week, and then this week our dumb vcr only recorded the sound for Northanger Abbey, so I'll have to catch the re-airing next week. I will watch each and every one of these (because, you know, costumes! and accents!), but I was a little disappointed with the first one.

I have some questions for the good people of Masterpiece Theater. To wit:

1. Did Anne's hair have to be so GREASY? Perhaps you were trying to make the point that they didn't bathe quite so much during the Regency period. Point taken!

2. Did the actress who played Anne insist on having her mouth open the whole time, or was the director into getting all those shots of her uvula?

3. 90 minutes? For a whole book? Why not go nuts and use all 120?

That is all.

Wedding Ideas

Wedding stuff is so weird.

For instance. The lovely Lass just pointed me to some dessert-related ideas for my wedding. Currently we are planning on having a tower of doughnuts (seriously), which would no doubt be much more festive once adorned with a cake topper that looks like us. This example is my favorite:



Because nothing says forever like cell phones and weaponry, am I right?

But there's plenty more where that came from. Have you considered having a dolphin-themed wedding? Someone has! How about a lovely NASCAR wedding? Don't worry, the guide has already been written!

I don't even know if I should show you the other thing Lass linked to today. Are you ready?

Seriously, are you?

How about a cake that looks like you?

I assume the cake part is red velvet. What fun to disembowel yourself on your wedding day!

Two Tickets to Paradise

I think I might be getting married. Within the past few days, I've bought:

1. A wedding dress.
It's poofy, even. I never thought I'd buy a poofy wedding dress, but here I am, poofing it up.

I did end up buying it from that charity that supports breast cancer research, and they had plenty of extra certificates lying around.

I didn't take any more, though. No need to be greedy.

2. A veil.
I also never really thought I'd wear a veil. It's the kind that comes with a comb that you just stick on the back of your head, so there won't be any games of peek-a-boo at the altar, but still. So bride-y!

I tried the whole get-up on again when I got home, and I am embarrassed to admit that I was kind of completely into it. I've never understood the wedding outfit before--"White is so unflattering!" I would say to myself. "And veils are weird! Why don't people just get lovely formal gowns in black, or green, or something? And why must they be so POOFY?"

What can I say, I'm a jerkwad. I have been totally won over by the poof.

Even so, the most exciting recent purchase was:

3. Two one-way tickets to Dubrovnik, Croatia. Check it out:



Can you stand the pretty? It is almost intolerable, how pretty that is. I bought the one-way tickets only because I found a super cheap deal, and we decided that we'd leave the return ticket open for now and see where else we might want to go. But I'm going to pretend that it was because we're never coming back.

My Certificate

A friend of mine recently got married in a great vintage wedding dress, and she bought it from an organization that donates the proceeds to breast cancer research. Cool, right? So I did a little online research of this organization, and gave them my email address.

In return, they sent me an offer for a CERTIFICATE. Oooh, I thought, a gift certificate towards a wedding dress? Fantastic! So I clicked on the link they provided, typed in the login and password (wishes/granted, if you please), and was presented with this:



Wow, right? I mean. Wow. Of couse, I printed out two of them right away--one for me, and one for my coworker who is also getting married next year. We hung them up on our Wall of Certificates*, which we gaze upon every day with pride.


*We also have a Certificate of Completion, for an online professional development class my coworker took, and a Certificate of Achievement, for an online Disaster Preparedness course I was required to take. However, neither of those are pink, so this one was a real coup.

The Words of Engagement

I recently became engaged to a very nice man, which is awesome. Do you know what is not quite so awesome, however? The word "fiance." I generally refuse to say it. But someone almost always pipes in, "Hey, he's not your boyfriend anymore! He's your FIANCE!!!"

There is no escape.

I'm not sure exactly what it is about that word that drives me so nuts. Maybe it's just the poser Frenchiness of it--"Oh pardonez-moi, ma cher, but have you met my fiance?" Gack.

But it's not like my other options are much better. "Boyfriend," which is my standard term, sort of conjures up images of seventh grade and going with someone, whereas "partner" (which I also sometimes throw in for kicks) makes me feel like I have now found someone with whom to run my law firm. And "lover"--gross, let's pretend we never even brought it up.

Hence, my quandry. Anybody out there got a favorite term-to-use-when-speaking-to-others-about-one's-very-special-lady/man-friend? In a few months I can go with "husband," I suppose, but even that one I'm not 100% sold on.

Probably I should get a reader or two first, then start asking the questions. So backwards I am.