So one of Todd's "resolutions" this year was to go to a real science fiction / fantasy convention and he happened upon one that was held this past weekend in Colorado Springs.
It was definitely more sci-fi than fantasy but one of Todd's favorite authors was there - George R.R. Martin. One of Todd's friends informed him that Martin is one of very few authors that directly resembles his fan base. I wasn't sure what that meant until I saw both the attendees and Martin himself on Saturday morning. Martin is a spry older man with plenty of years of experience under his belt, both in literature and film and he was incredibly interesting to listen to (even if the interviewer reminded me of a Will Ferrel SNL sketch). But yes, George R.R. Martin looks like the majority of his fans:
At any rate, the weekend was interesting and fun for both of us. We enjoyed getting out of town for a bit, the drive there and back was beautiful, we ate amazing food for lunch and dinner on Saturday and definitely took advantage of the indoor (very warm) pool at the hotel. We also had some pretty lively discussion regarding horror movies with the bar tender at the hotel.
All in all, a good weekend. Next month, we'll be doing something on my list of "resolutions" which is to see a Broadway show. Exciting!
On this day in 1849, Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman in US history officially recognized as a physician.
Madeline Albright was sworn in as Secretary of State on this day in 1997, becoming the highest ranking female official in US history. She is succeeded by Condoleeza Rice and Hillary Clinton. Isn't it kind of amazing that the last three, yes THREE, presidents have chosen women for this prestigous position?
Sasha and Malia, we're so excited to see what you do!
I'm feeling lighter today. Literally and figuratively.
The Britney Mission is in full-swing, Jillian Michaels is making attempts to kill me and I'm finding myself eating more and more vegetarian meals as the days pass.
I blew through the last barrier and am well on my way to breaking through the next one. I feel good in my clothes and that makes me happy. I have this one pair of pants that I keep around for just such occasions as this. I've only worn these slacks maybe half a dozen times and every so often, I'll pull them on just to see what the current prognosis is. They still don't fit, but part of that is because of the J-Lo booty I'm carrying around (and don't intend to get rid of...hahaha!)...
Emotionally, school is a refreshing change for me. Five weeks off from learning, while relaxing, can also be somewhat draining. Two history classes this semester and that's incredibly exciting for me...I can't wait to learn and learn and learn! Upper division courses are a welcome challenge...last semester was painful with all my freshman level courses. I'm ready for a big challenge and I think that I'm up for it.
Todd brought me flowers last night and they're cheery and perfect. My personal favorite is roses, but as those are quite pricy, when he gets me flowers on a whim, he typically gets these other little fluttery things that look like tiny lilies (I cannot remember their official name right now) that are just...happy flowers.
Plus, I have a lovely picture of cherry blossoms in Kyoto on my computer desktop and that's just making me giddy...for Spring, of course, but mostly for visiting Japan in just under nine weeks...yikes! I can't wait to ride a bike through orchards and take my own pictures of the blossoms...and I'll be sure to take the fricking date stamp off of the camera this time haha!
So I got this new daily desk calendar the other day...I love calendar sales! Anyway, January 2 asked several questions, most of which are worth answering, so I thought I would.
What makes me feel alive? Easy. Learning and traveling. I started classes again yesterday and only have one that's actually on-campus. My professor is engaging and INCREDIBLY smart and I'm so excited about what I'm going to learn in this class. My other two classes are online and I'm equally as excited about what the next 15 weeks are going to hold. And if you know me but at all, you know that I live for traveling. I want to see everything, experience every culture, eat food from everywhere and basically just try to understand all that I can about the rest of the world. THAT is what makes me feel alive.
What makes me thrive? Sleep, for one. I require more of it than I get, but what little I do get helps me through the days, weeks, even hours. Reading makes me thrive. It spurs my desire for knowledge and makes me want to become better. Being with people and then being alone equally are important. I require extensive amounts of time from both situations and have to be careful to do each in the appropriate manner. I've struggled with complicating my schedule for as long as I can remember and having Todd in my life has forced me to slow down and say "no"...and know that it's okay to do that.
What makes my mouth water? Eggs benedict, smothered burritos (breakfast or otherwise), tofu & curry and most importantly, PIZZA. Honestly, I just love to eat. I love the try new things (as long as there's not mushrooms in it). Portion distortion is a big issue for me and I have to try VERY hard to not eat 4 slices of pizza. But, as someone once said to me, nothing tastes as good as thin feels....and that helps. But dammit I still love food! Date night is always exciting for me because Todd and I usually wind up somewhere we've never been and get to try something fabulous...that, and enjoying dinner with Todd is just a really good time.
What do I really want from my life? Simplicity, joy and peace. I want to own less stuff, to start. I have so much random crap and the clutter in my home tends to clutter my brain. I don't like that. Joy and Peace, I think, are hard to come by, but working hard to get them isn't a worthless venture. There are so many other components to all three of those things, but when I boil it all down, those are really the things I want out of life.
I don't even know what I did. But this I do know. I can trust people less. And I should be trusted less.
I don't know what happened. What I do know is that I was betrayed and I betrayed. Not intentionally. Apparently it isn't wise to seek out both sides of the story. Apparently giving two sides the same opportunity isn't the best way to handle these situations. I thought it was. I thought it was fair, it was right. Obviously not.
I am sorry that I hurt someone...someone who is very dear to me and whom I love. I am incensed that I was betrayed, but in my quest to not further the damage, I intend to be done with that portion of the issue. It's not worth it to me.
But how does one undo something she's done without meaning to? I don't think it CAN be undone, really. But can it be bounced back from? Probably with time. How much, I wonder?
I don't like that I was put in the middle. It caused me, inadvertently, to do more damage and for that, I am sorry.
For nearly three weeks, I have been on my "Get Fit In Time for Brit" plan and, for whatever reason, keep plateauing at a particular level.
I am getting angry. I am getting frustrated. I am getting even.
I will not take this lying down. I will not give up. I will not lose the battle to the Barrier.
And so I enlist the help of one Jillian Michaels...via DVD.
I have 14 weeks to get where I need to be in time for Britney.
Yes, in 14 weeks, me and four of my friends will be descending upon Las Vegas for the Britney Spears concert. And the only way I'm allowing myself to go is to lose all the post-honeymoon/post-holiday weight. It has stuck around for far too long and my complacency has only encouraged this madness.
But in 6 days, I also begin classes again. This poses a bit of a threat against The Plan and provides yet another "in" for The Barrier, but with the help of DVDs and my own personal brand of ass-kicking, The Barrier can kindly suck it.
Can't hold me down now! I am on a mission and ain't nothing stopping me now...
I'm going to try my hand at writing about weddings and planning and all that good nonsense that I love. I always say that I'm going to do it and just never have...so I guess that now is as good a time as any to start.
I've been working weddings for about 6 years now and have picked up a couple of bits of really good information since then and figured I should share the wealth.
Weddings are hard enough to plan on your own...why bother with all the research when you can have someone else (me) do it for you? After having worked my own wedding, I have found that it can be the most enjoyable and most stressful time of your life (thus far) all at the same time. I have countless examples of this just from my own experiences....hundreds, if I add up all the weddings that I've worked or consulted on since I started doing this.
So here are some of the most important things that I've learned:
1. This is YOUR wedding. Not your mother's, not your mother-in-laws, not anyone else's but yours. That means, what you say, goes. The only time I'd really deviate from this thought process is when some/any/all parents are involved financially with the wedding. Then they get to have some say, but really very little. My parents, who paid for my reception, are vegetarian (well, my mom is...my dad is by-proxy) so when I showed her the menu which was 100% carnivorous, she was none too happy. But let's be fair...with as much money as she was willing to plunk down for a party, it's only natural that she would want to be able to eat something. Which leads me to my next point.
2. Be ready to compromise. I've found that it's relatively easy to appease all parties involved. It's not like I hate all things vegetarian...we swapped out about half of my non-vegetarian choices for 100% vegetarian and it worked out great...I honestly don't know why I hadn't considered these things previously! Compromise comes in various forms so while mine was found in food, yours might be in your first dance song or the flowers or even the colors...work together. Avoid fights and tears wherever possible.
3. Fit the party to the building. Retrospectively, this is something that I should have taken into greater consideration. We wanted to get married in the mountains, in a church and fortunately were able to do that, but we had to use a church quite different than the one we intitally wanted (a gorgeous historic church that only sat about 100 people). Our guest list was about 250 people long and in hind sight, that was probably too many. We could have pared that down substantially and fit it into the historic church. Think carefully about who you're inviting to your wedding and consider where YOU want to be married...does the building fit your guest list?
4. Think carefully about your guest list. Ah....lovely segue! If you're having a difficult time paring down your guest list and it's absolutely necessary that you do so, consider inviting only those people who are either very close family and friends whom you BOTH know. Your dad's boss' kid? How well do you really know him?
5. Finally, let yourself be surprised! Know that not everything will go as planned. Something will go wrong or at the very least, not the way you envisioned it. That's okay! But with that, you will have spent so much time planning and organizing and purchasing and booking that you'll know exactly what's going to happen and when. If you're like me and like the occasional surprise, find something about your wedding that you want to be surprised with. For me, that was the flowers. I told my incredible florist what flowers I wanted and in what colors and beyond that, I told her "Surprise me." I'd seen enough of her portfolio to know that anything she'd come up with would be amazing and when I saw all the bouquets on the day of the wedding, I could not have possibly been more pleased. Additionally, I charged my then-fiance with taking complete financial and creative control of any one thing he wanted...he chose the guestbook and it wound up being perfectly "us". So let go of some of the madness and let yourself be surprised.
Until next time, potential brides, happy planning!
So I recently had a conversation, albeit brief, with a friend about "stuff" that was going on with me. The conversation moved quickly to religion and faith. She's not necessarily a religious person, but I've found that sometimes those are the best people to bounce my thoughts and feelings off of.
I feel like I've been in a bit of transition with faith and religion lately. Yeah, those two are really quite exclusive to me. I still have my faith and while it's not waning, I've been fairly lackluster and lazy with it lately.
Mostly, religion is starting to piss me off. Not all religion, but the organization is starting to wear on me.
I've been incredibly hurt by the church I grew up in and continue to be so any time that I go back. There are several examples that I don't feel necessary to share (if you know, fine. If not, it's not pertinent), but I feel very vulnerable toward "the church" right now. Todd and I are trying to find a place where we both feel comfortable and that's proving challenging. Todd gets the most out of words, while I get the most out of music. We've found one church where we get both, but for one quite large reason, we're hesitant to go there. Mostly I'm hesitant.
Interestingly, we find ourselves going back and back to "my" church (which should probably be referred to as "my parents church" now) more often than we mean to. Mostly because I keep getting sucked in through music. It's like some weird form of punishment for me (har har). No really, it's rather masochistic of me. I can't really pull myself away from the music, but when I'm involved, I feel like I'm doing it for all the wrong reasons and I wind up just getting annoyed or irritated (at many things, including myself).
Honestly, so many of my friends have walked away from organized religion and I never thought that I'd be that person. I feel some unending pull toward being a part of a church and yet I'm scared of getting involved again because of how damaging the last few years have been for me. And at the same time, I know I need to be pro-active in my own search for truth but I struggle to do that as well. Probably because I'm lazy. Probably because I'm so busy with school that I simply don't have the time.
I don’t know what the remedy is, if anything. Time? Desire? I really don’t know. I want to be involved again. I’m just a little scared of doing it. I simply can’t seem to let go of how I was hurt the last time I became a “center stage” player at a church.
I recently read a blog of a friend of mine...he talked about why he's going to school to study what he's studying. It got me thinking, I guess.
I've switched my major plenty of times. More than I should have, honestly.
I started as a secondary education major; then on to music production; then to social work; on to sociology; next to hospitality/event planning. Finally I settled on English Writing with a minor in Spanish. I recently dropped the Spanish, which is fine with me. I love Spanish, but studying it was killing me. And on top of all the major changes, I've been to five, yes FIVE, different schools: CBC, OHCC, RRCC, MSCD and now I'm at UCD. Again, I'm fine with that.
Anyway, all of the majors I've chosen over the years are reasonable. I thought I'd enjoy teaching, but as it turned out, I hated being in Minnesota more than anything and as that's where I was going to do the education major, when I left, I just sort of....stopped going to school for a while.
My heart breaks for the disenfranchised so social work would have made sense as well. I actually came to this conclusion while watching an episode of Law & Order: SVU. The episode made me cry. That's when I kind of knew I should do that. Turns out, there's a ton of red tape that I just don't have the energy for. I saw it when I worked at Volunteers of America. Those people have more patience than I ever could muster up.
So sociology seemed logical next. Study the disenfranchised in order to help them. Meh. I didn't take to that too well.
So the hospitality major seemed to make sense...I love planning weddings! This would have been perfect...if I had endless supplies of time in order to do the work required. The whole program was jacked up for me from the beginning. I cried a lot and, after planning my own wedding, found that I much prefer doing the planning on a purely "pro bono" basis...and I've done quite well at that. I still enjoy planning weddings and events, but I don't think I want to do that for a living, frankly.
After that, I took a semester to really think about what I was passionate about.
And the first thing that popped into my brain was...ENGLISH. I LOVE this language! I have too many books to name that are about grammar, punctuation, syntax, history....all on the English language. And yes, I read them for pleasure. Most of you know this. I love words. I love how they fit together. I love learning new words and working them into daily usage (tee hee). And beyond all of that, I love to read. Why hadn't I thought of this all those years ago?!? I'm good at this...really good at this. I could have wasted so much less time if only I'd have really considered what it was that I'm passionate about. Bother.
So I'm officially (and permanently) in the English Writing program at the University of Colorado-Denver. Granted, I don't enjoy the writing so much as the reading, but the point here is to eventually become an editor and let's be honest....if I can't write well, how am I to judge if someone else writes well? But I have enjoyed writing several of the pieces I've done in the past year or so and that leads me to thinking that writing ABOUT weddings might not be such a bad idea either! Maybe I could write for a magazine or website or something?? I don't know, but it sounds like something I could do.
My mom has also kind of put it into my head to teach English at my high school. I have long been disappointed with the English program there, but I also have pretty fierce feelings about teachers actually being licensed educators and as many of the "teachers" at my high school are not that, I would really need to be sure to get my license before considering teaching. Fortunately, my program allows for students to get their licenses in conjunction with their degree so that might be something to consider as well.
I mean, teachers are kind of always in demand so for the sake of job security, it might not be a sucky idea to get a license anyway.
And Todd thinks it would be super fun to move overseas at some point and I could teach English anywhere we go, which would make getting a job that much easier...
So yeah....I love English. So I study it. With fervor and passion.
It was definitely more sci-fi than fantasy but one of Todd's favorite authors was there - George R.R. Martin. One of Todd's friends informed him that Martin is one of very few authors that directly resembles his fan base. I wasn't sure what that meant until I saw both the attendees and Martin himself on Saturday morning. Martin is a spry older man with plenty of years of experience under his belt, both in literature and film and he was incredibly interesting to listen to (even if the interviewer reminded me of a Will Ferrel SNL sketch). But yes, George R.R. Martin looks like the majority of his fans:
