I am one efficient bride

I know that since I announced my engagement I’ve been a little scarce, but it’s been with good reason.  Let me show you what I’ve been up to* (Jenny’s post earlier this week inspired me!)

• Booked ceremony site/church
• Booked officiant (family friend/pastor)
• Booked reception site
• Booked florist
• Booked photog (she’s even flying out to NYC for our engagement pics!)
• Picked my colors (yes, they changed a little after an uproar at work over my original colors (juuuust kidding :P)–and after I saw all the pretty colors at the bridal salon where I….)
• BOUGHT THE DRESS!!! (more on this to come!!)
• Picked and asked the bridal party (MOH, best man, bridesmaid, groomsman, guest book girl (my cousin, yes, the one who thinks she has mono), usher).
• Booked weekend w/the bridesmaids to come dress shopping for their dresses.

All in all, I’d say I’m doing pretty well for myself so far.  And I haven’t been a bridezilla once yet–just ask Boo…or my mom–she’s the one who went on the dress-shopping excursion!

la

*NOTE: This list is NOT in chronological order.

My faith in journalism has been restored

Did anyone else see the front page of the Post yesterday? No?  Well in case you didn’t see it, here’s what you missed:

(The picture is actually from the Web site, b/c unfortunately it didn't occur to me to save the image yesterday. And I'll forever be kicking myself for that!)

Okay, do you all see what that says? It says pussy whipped!

PUSSY WHIPPED!

Right there, on the front page of the paper.  Can I even tell you how excited I was to see that?  To know that not ALL newspaper editors are instituting the “no pun, no fun, just the facts” policy that mine did?  To know that there are still creative people out there who really want to get a rise out of people AND use a sexual ineundo on the front page of the paper–and who can get away with it?!  To know that irreverent headlines live on?!

Let’s just say that my inner-nerd was having one of the best days ever yesterday.

Bear v. Gorilla

Okay, I really didn’t want to have to do this but it seems I’ve been left with no choice.

Lately the topic of conversation in The Carton (our apartment) has been a debate over who would win in a fight: a bear or a gorilla.

Rachel and I immediately voted “gorilla” and were told we were wrong.  We fought tooth and nail to prove our point.  The gorilla is more solid, we said, and he’s got a pretty powerful fist and he doesn’t just sit around all day eating bananas.  Have you ever seen one of those things beat on it’s chest?  That’s quite frightening.

Meanwhile, Colin (yes, Bailey’s owner Colin who we feel is harboring ill-will towards us after his dog was so thoroughly trounced in the last debate we got into over here) and Boo were steadfastly voting “bear.”  Rachel and I of course assumed that they were voting out of sheer man power–the whole idea of voting for the thing that looks the meanest.  We made the argument that the gorilla is smart.  And that it’s super protective.  And that it will mess. your. shit. up.  But the boys held strong to their opinion.

As we’ve been debating this for weeks now, have called on other sources for votes and have noticed the trend of women tending to vote “gorilla” and men tending to vote “bear” I thought it time to post it up here.

Who do you think would win in a fight?  A grizzly bear or a gorilla?

And…..go:

la

Sidenote: There is an alarming number of information about this on the internet.  So much so that before I even finished typing “bear vs. gorilla” into Google it had brought that up as an option for me.  And when I searched it, well, damn, it’s alarming at how many hits there are for something like this.  ALARMING.

Another sidenote: Rachel, please don’t kill me for this, but apparently all that “alpha male” bullshit that Colin and Boo were spouting about historically being the hunters and having an inherent knowledge of wild animals might actually carry some weight.  After doing a little research (and I’m beyond ashamed to admit that I have researched this) I’m starting to think that a grizzly would totally annhilate a gorilla.  I mean, did you know that a grizzly can kill a moose with one swipe of its paw?

How I became the soon-to-be Mrs. Boo

First of all, thanks to everyone for the congratulations and well wishes!  Boo and I are beyond excited!!  As promised, here is the story from Saturday night.

Late December I found out that I was moving to a new team at work.  Boo told me he wanted to take me out to dinner to celebrate.  Well, when March rolled around and we still hadn’t quite gotten to that fancy dinner, Boo told me that we were definitely going out on Saturday.  He made reservations at Koi, a Japanese restuarant inside the Bryant Park Hotel.  We got gussied up (I’m such an old fogey already!) and, after a more-treacherous-than-usual cab ride, made it to the restaurant.  We went early (perfect for us) and sat in a corner table.  We ordered drinks and after they arrived I suggested that we toast to something.  Boo asked what and when I couldn’t come up with anything, he said this:

“Let’s toast to your new job and to our future together.”

We clinked our glasses, drank and the toast was over. I thought after that it would be business as usual.  So when Boo said, “so I have a question for you” do you want to know what I said?

“Yeah, what’s up?”

I said “yeah, what’s up?” after drinking to our futures together.  I didn’t bat an eye.  It didn’t even occur to me that he might be proposing.  Until he reached into his coat pocket.  And pulled out the little box.  And said “will you marry me?”

I was so shocked that I immediately started crying–I couldn’t even say “yes” right away–I just nodded over and over until I could finally talk and then I think it was a combination of “ooooohmygawd!” and “yessssss!!!!!” and Boo slid the ring on my finger!

The waiter, who was a hoverer (partly due to lack of crowds and partly out of desire for a good tip) saw and had complimentary champagne sent over and they decorated my dessert with “congratulations” in chocolate! (What better way to say it?!)

After dinner (most of which I was too excited to eat!) we took a little walk through Bryant Park and I called my parents, who, of course, already knew it was happening.  Even though their “surprised” voices weren’t as convincing as they could have been, they were still absolutely thrilled to hear the news!

After that Boo and I walked to Grand Central and stopped to get Starbucks and take a picture before we hopped the train back to my place.  After all, what’s more fitting for us than celebrating, even for a minute, in the one place we’re both in and out of every single weekend on our way to spend time w/each other?

That’s it.  That’s the story of our engagement.  When we got back to the apartment Rachel and her bf were there, waiting to see the ring because they knew it was happening too!  We spent the rest of our night calling friends and family, drinking Rachel’s award-winning (no really, it is!) cocktail and discussing who would win in a battle, a gorilla or a grizzly bear (more on that later).

I have to say, I’ve never been what you’d call a “perceptive” person and I don’t always know what’s going on–even when there are a million hints dropped in front of me.  But this?  This was probably the biggest and best surprise I’ve ever gotten.  And to all of those who had to keep the secret?  Well done!  I had absolutely no idea it was coming!

la

Now, to answer the questions that everyone’s been asking:

Boo and I are getting married Friday, October 23, 2009 in Pittsburgh.

We have no idea where we’re going to live yet.

The ring was custom-designed by a jeweler in Boo’s hometown.

And, for good measure, one more picture from our engagment night:

Hm, since we got engaged on Pi Day, does that mean we have to have wedding pie now instead of cake?

The Ring-a-Ding Kid

It’s official!!

Some brief thoughts…

Not quite short enough for Twitter, not quite long enough to deserve a post of their own.

Brief thoughts on the Duggar’s:

I realize I’m the last person to talk about the infamous 17 kids and counting, wait, baby makes 18, family but I don’t care.  Roomie and I watched the show last night and we heard, well, some disturbing things.

A daughter (on the Duggar family hairstyle): Well, we all have long hair because my dad likes long hair. Does anyone else find this weird?  Like, ‘hey, why’d you buy that blue top?’ ‘oh, you know, ‘cuz my dad likes blue.’   Seems odd….

Another daughter (on changing the oil): I dripped oil on the camera but it wasn’t my fault.  It dripped because my father did not inform me that it was about to come. Okay, Rachel and I almost choked on lemonade and fell off the couch, respectively, when we heard that.  We were SHOCKED to hear that the editing crew let that one through.

A son: Jackson, stop it!  You made it splatter everywhere!  Again…what’s going on with the editing crew?

Rachel and I assumed that this crew hates that they got this show and since they are weirdly creeped out by the concept of a family that’s 9 times bigger than the average family, they are doing their best to make sure that the lines and footage they keep in really reflect the “crazy.”

Brief thoughts on the MTA/Albany:

New Yorkers are pissed.  And if they aren’t yet, they will be by March 25th.  Know why?  That’s the day that monthly unlimited MetroCard jumps, nay leaps, sky rockets even, from $81/month to $103/month.  That’s a $22 hike.  That is UNBELIEVABLE.  Like the signs say, for $103 there should be “a sauna, a pool and Pilates classes down there.”

Not only do I know have to shell out an extra $20 and change a month, I also have to have my route suffer.  AT LEAST once a week for the past 5 weeks I have gotten to 33rd street, a mere 2 stops away from my stop, only to hear the conducter make the dreaded announcement: “Attention all passengers, the next stop on this train will be 14th street.”

Do you know what happened to me today?  I heard that same freaking announcement.  I heard it after I battled to even make it to 33rd street w/o people yelling, pushing, shoving, and slamming in the face with their purses (I was INCHES from getting a bag to the nose).  And so I schlepped myself, my purse, and the 2 extra bags full of crap for work off the train.  Then I got shoved out of the way by a fat chick who couldn’t see that I had more bags than I could handle and figured that slamming her large ass into my little frame was the best way to act (a simple “excuse me” would have worked wonders).

I  high-tailed it to the other end of the tracks, hoping for better luck as I got away from the middle of the train.  No such luck.  I watched another over-crowded train, the 4th I’d seen that morning (including the few that passed us by at 96th and the one we finally shoved onto) shut its doors, me still on the outside.  After another few minutes I finally made it on to a train, where a businessman sat, unabashedly chewing his fingers and unnecessarily taking up 2 spots on the bench, and eventually got to 23rd street.

So I have this to say to you, MTA and Albany/the NY government: get your shit together.  Hurry the hell up with that 2nd avenue line.  STOP skipping stops during rush hour (which I know is something that I harp on nearly every time it happens…I swear, I’ll stop now!).  It’s really not doing anyone any favors.  In fact, it’s making things worse.

Oh, and if you see an angry mob led by a short girl with a mop of curly hair on her head–run.  Run far and run fast because that means I’ve finally snapped, assembled a mob of like-minded commuters (slash* bloggers), and the end result, well, it won’t be pretty.

Brief thoughts on spelling out punctuation marks*:

I have always said “slash” in conversation.  Don’t expect me to stop just b/c I have a blog and I’m working with the written/typed word and can just type a “/”.  It’s just not the same and every so often I like to type a good “slash.”

She’ll be tired until she dies

I heard through the grapevine that my 13-year-old cousin thinks she has mono b/c “she’s tired a lot.”  Now, if I actually were her friend on Facebook I could tell her this face to face…ish.  But since I’m refusing to even acknowledge that I’ve heard of Facebook while in her presence, I have to just say this here.

She’s 13.  She will be tired until she dies.

Think about this.  If everyone middle schooler thought they had mono b/c they were tired all of the time, there would be mass mono epidemics.  It would wipe out entire classes, entire grades, entire school districts!  Because being tired is what you do when you are 13.

Let’s face it.  We really spend most of our lives being tired.  From birth to around 3 or 4 we’re tired.  It’s hard being a baby.  I mean, you spend all these months cooped up in the dark and then all of sudden you’re shot out into the world and expected to smile and coo and be adorable?  That, my friends, is a LOT of effort.  Plus, now you have to really work for your food, you’re not just soaking up the nutrients anymore.  It’s exhausting.  Then, as you get a little older, you start learning to walk and talk.  That too is tiring.  It’s bad enough that you have to learn all of these things but then once you do everyone around is all “say MaMa.  say DaDa.” and “walk for Mommy! walk for Mommy!”  Performing these tasks once is hard enough but then being expected to perform them for everyone else is just hell!  Once you finally master these skills (the walking and the talking) you’re expected to do them on your own.  And your legs are LITTLE dammit!  It’s hard to keep up with everyone.  So you are tired.  All of the time.

Then around 3 or 4 you get sent to pre-school.  And everyone there is short like you.  And it’s SO MUCH EASIER to keep up with everyone.  So you’re not quite as tired.  And then they keep you in school.  You’re there for a few years, you make friends, you play together after school, you run around the playground at recess like a bunch of wild animals.  And on Saturdays, you wake up early, find someone, anyone to play with and you do it all again.  You are beyond energetic and you stay that way until you turn 13.

13.  The teen years.  Puberty.  You’re officially screwed from here on out.  You’re tired ALL the time.  And now, what’s this, your bus is picking you up 45 minutes earlier?  Whoa whoa whoa, what’s that all about?  That’s 45 minutes you could be sleeping.  But, okay, well, it’s not terrible.  You’ve still got the energy for after school activities.  And you’ve got the energy to play with your friends after school, I mean, you should since they TOOK AWAY RECESS.

After a year or so you get used to this schedule…and then you get to high school.  And your bus is yet ANOTHER 45 minutes earlier picking you up.  That’s right.  Your bus is getting to your house at 6:35 AM!! DO YOU EVEN UNDERSTAND HOW EARLY THAT IS?!  You are waking up BEFORE 6 am.  It’s still DARK out when you wake up.  And not the, it’s just dark because of the time change dark.  ALL THE TIME DARK.  And now, instead of hanging out after school you are expected to do things like join clubs so you get into college.  And get a job so you can go out with your friends.  But all you REALLY want to do when you get out of school at 2:20 is go home and go to bed.  But you can’t.  Because after work and activities and everything else you have to stay up and do homework.  And you only have 2 days to sleep in (or just one if you’re stupid like me and picked the ONLY after school activity that has ALL of it’s competitions early Saturday mornings…).

After 4 years of this hellish schedule you finally make it to college.  And 8am classes.  Which really just seem like cruel and unusual punishment but you can go to them in sweatpants and then come immediately home and sleep for 5 hours in the middle of the day.  Or you can adjust your schedule to never have classes before noon.  But no matter what, you will still be tired.  You’re up late drinking or studying.  You’re up early drinking (hey, tailgating is practically for credit) or studying.  There’s no breaking the cycle. But at least you have summers off.  That’s been the one bright spot in the years and years of early mornings and rigid schedules.  You’ve had summers.

But then you graduate.  And now what?  There are no summers.  There are no “late starts.”  There is just morning after morning.  Commuting and struggling to make it into the office on time.  And you are tired.

And then, as you can imagine, the story goes on.  You get married and you’re tired.  You have kids and you take tired to a whole new level.  Then you get old and you retire and you know what?  You are still tired.

So, to my cousin (who I can only pray never actually discovers this blog), you do not have mono.  You are just an adult.  And as such, you will be tired until you die.

I suggest you make friends as soon as possible with a beautiful little substance called caffeine.  It will be your greatest ally.

Design details, or, why hipsters shouldn’t be allowed to making clothing choices

Raw edges.

A design detail that, apparently, isn’t always recognized for what it is.

An artistic, aesthetic detail.

I was content to let this go.  I was going to drop it, roll with the punches, try to forget about it.  But I just can’t.

This past weekend my friend Rebecca, (aka my stylist, whose blog you should go check out and then pelt her with emails and comments so she gets back to it) graciously offered to go shopping w/me.  Sorry Rebecca, I’m about to seem ungrateful here (I’m not, I swear, I love shopping with you, please shop with me more!) but I need to bash some hipsters.

We went to Buffalo Exchange in my first trip to Brooklyn.  Okay, wait, hold on.  Stop LOOKING at me like that!  I’ve done Brooklyn before but it was always in the Elle car, running to and from the photographers or a photo shoot and carrying 30+ lbs of clothing.  This time we took the subway (we still had the excessive amounts of clothing).  When we walked into the hipster-populated store full of budding fashionistas and thrifters alike we were met with a line.  When we finally made it to the front, the girl at the register explained the process to me:

I’ll go through each item and investigate it for wear and tear, wearability, style, seasonal appropriateness, etc.

Translation: I’ll judge you on all of your fashion choices, eventually rejecting most of what you brought in, including things that you will later find replicas of already on our shelves/things that are in way better condition than things on our shelves, and I will somehow make you feel bad about yourself while I do it even though this is the closest I’ve gotten to brands like Marc Jacobs and Vera Wang and you and your friend worked with those brands extensively–oh, and we’ll give her $28 (which really means $19.60)  for dresses that retail at $500, which we didn’t actually know until we asked you.  (End rant–and run-on sentence).

As she pawed through my potential merch, she came across a tunic with a deep v-neck.  Something that, if you’ve walked around recently and seen, well, any females, you’d know is still quite “in” right now.  They are being paired with leggings, tights and jeans.  Boots and flats.  Short girls and tall girls.  Everyone is rocking the tunic.  Except that my tunic (worn just a few times since I purchased it) seemed to have one fatal flaw.

Hipster: Um, well, okay, so I’m not going to be taking this item because the sleeves appear to have been cut.

Me: They aren’t cut, they are raw edges.  That’s a style detail.  I bought it that way.

Hipster (investigating the garment again): Hm, well, yeah, it just looks badly hand cut to me, and that’s how our customer will see it too.

Me (seething): FINE.

I was irritated to say the least.  Not only had this little “fashionista” wannabe insulted my taste in clothes, she’d also implied that I was lying about cutting the sleeves off my shirt AND that I had done so with shoddy craftsmanship.  ARE YOU FREAKING FOR REAL?!

I was set to just sort of brush the experience off as a, “well, now I can say I’ve been to Brooklyn.  And I’ve mingled with the hip kids.  And now people will stop trying to make me go back.” (NOTE: I have nothing against Brooklyn.  I know lots of cool people in Brooklyn.  My aversion, if you could call it that, to Brooklyn is simply that it’s far.  I have to change trains and I’m on the train for at least 40 minutes.  And it’s not a set up like a grid.  And I don’t do well without grids.  That’s why I have trouble with the Villages, both East and West.  And those are basically the same reasons that I lived less than 30 minutes away from downtown Pittsburgh for YEARS and never really ventured into the city).

So, like I was saying, I was about to just forget the whole thing but then a strange thing happened to me at work the other day.  I was going over styles from our new line and I saw raw edges.  On men’s styles, on women’s styles, on sleeves, plackets, and hems.  And it struck me as odd that the same detail that deemed my otherwise still “trendy” garment COMPLETELY UNSELLABLE was the same detail making an appearance on not some, but many, of our current pieces.  As well as (I realized as I thought back on it) many of our past season’s styles.

So I would like to just break it down for you, just point out, if you will, the item rejections that I disagreed with.

Items rejected simply b/c the cashier/”buyer” didn’t immediately consider them items she herself would wear, without regards to their actual retail value:

• Sweet Pea top (retails at Nordstrom for $96)
• 2 California boutique tops (retail is approximately $78)
• 1 Audrey Hepburn top
• 1 Barbie studded top (Barbie is back.  She had a show at fashion week.  And her line of self-merch is expensive!)
• 1 tank dress (retail in CA in the mid-50s to mid-60s…oh, and “faded” is a washing technique.  Just so you know.)

Items rejected b/c their styling details didn’t fit this particular hipster’s aesthetic (yet which are details that are seen in upcoming lines (as well as past lines) of a certain company with which I am fairly familiar):

• 1 dress w/satin sleeves–it was though that the sleeves would pose a problem for the customer…if that’s the case, that customer shouldn’t check out our new line.
• 1 tunic w/raw edge sleeves–moments later I found a wool top that was totally unraveling, causing me to wonder about who was working register THAT day.

Also, discovered: a leather jacket that was more destroyed than distressed.  Paint/ink stains and holes where the “leather” is scratched away to reveal the lining underneath are apparently in more wearable condition than my sweater that barely needed the sweater shaver on it (oh, and by the way, some yarns have a more fuzzy look–they are called mohair).

So that was my hipster experience.  Do I want to go back?  Not necessarily.  Will that stop me from buying shirts with raw edges, sweaters that are fuzzy and therefore cozy, or boutiquey graphic tees?  Not a chance.  I just know that when I’ve finally gotten all the use I can get out of them they’ll be going to the Salvation Army instead.

Umbrellas are SNOW not necessary*

I love snowy days.  I don’t know anyone who doesn’t, and if you tell me that you don’t, I’ll tell you that you have no soul.  But I have one grievance about snow days.  Stupid people, despite the fact that they are normally annoying, are especially annoying on snow days, and I will tell you why in one simple word: umbrellas.

Stupid people carry umbrellas on snow days.  Snow is not an umbrella form of precipitation and you stupid people carrying them have become a burden, nay a safety hazard to the rest of us non-suspecting, non-umbrella-wielding pedestrians.

When it rains, I understand that I have to be on the look-out for “the dip;” that thing that you tall umbrella users do to avoid other umbrellas, nearly poking the eyes out of us short folk in the process.  But when it snows, I’m not prepared for that sort of thing.  So there I am, walking along, looking at those big, fluffy flakes and envisioning the nice warm cup of hot chocolate I’ll be drinking in my nice warm apartment when I get home when BLAM! Umbrella pokey thing right to the eye! Now all I can envision is the nice EMT who will be driving the ambulance to the hospital to remove that bit of metal from my cornea.

If that’s not bad enough, I have to compensate for your “slip” factor.  It’s snowy, it’s slushy and it’s slippery.  These are not ideal walking conditions as it is and then I get stuck behind you, and you’re walking slowly, and I know this because if you are the type to carry an umbrella in the snow then you are the type to walk more slowly than is called for, and you will do one of two things: either A) the stop-short causing me to dodge the pokey thing once again and walk around you while you decide which is the least snowy path (channel Frost here people, just pick a path) or B) you slip.

God forbid you slip, because that umbrella will take on a life of its own and it’s anyone’s guess where it will end up.  Will you throw it?  Will you try to hook it on something, something that is hopefully not me, to save your fall?  Will you jab it at me in the hopes that I will catch it, again, saving your stupid toosh from snowy peril?  No one knows and therefore no one is safe.  Not me, and certainly not you, because let me tell you, nothing could make me more angry on a snow day than trying to go sledding (ah to live somewhere again where I could actually go sledding…) and winding up with an umbrella jammed somewhere in my cranial region.  Should that happen you can expect that favor will be returned, but most likely not in a direct “eye for an eye” sense.

So I’m just asking this one tiny favor on behalf of pedestrians everywhere.  Leave your umbrellas at home and save them for spring.  Pull out a nice little hat and a scarf and brave the weather like the rest of us, with icicle hair and weakened immune systems.

la

*I first published this post on LionConnection.com.  It seemed very fitting that I pull it out again today.