Odds and ends

I've dropped off in my posting this week, mostly because work has been kicking my ass, but also because we've had a lot of social outings. Generally, I'm pleased if I have a couple of friend dates each week, because I'm really a homebody, but this week has been a little crazy. Multiple dates in one night! Boy, are we feeling like party people.

So I thought I'd just do a little wrap-up.

Work
Is still kicking my ass, though it's resorted to a kindler, gentler foot-to-ass approach. I'm still getting all the information I need in bits and pieces, which makes it hard to get the larger picture, but it's starting to come together. I think the hardest part, for me, will be maintaining good relationships with our vendors--large companies that create consumer electronics products. At my old job, I was free to tell them to fuck-off (though not in those exact words) because the job was clearly editorial. This new job is a weird admixture of...I don't know what. I mean, yeah, it's purely editorial in that we review these companies' products and we can't have the companies trying to influence what we write about their stuff. But we do need to make nice with them, otherwise they can actually make it difficult for us to get our hands on hot, new stuff, which would suck if everyone around us had the scoop on the latest and greatest, and we were left standing there, scratching our butts. So yeah, new for me. We'll see how it goes. In other work news, our little department staff (of 6) went out for a "Welcome Felisa to Big Internet Company (BIC)" lunch. I think I made a tactical error when I admitted to wanting a functional tail. I'll be known as "Tail Girl" from here on out, I'm sure. I also revealed my minor obsession with the Amish, though I think that's less damning.

Wedding
The list is pretty much final...the save the date cards have gone out...and we are enjoying people's reactions to the cards. Any guesses, people? Chris and I are going down to L.A. the weekend of 9/10 for my Grandma's birthday, so we're going to try to take care of some other stuff that weekend: photographer, florist, cake. Any recommendations? We went for a hike in the Presidio yesterday, and walked up to Inspiration Point, from which you can see Marin City, Angel Island, Alcatraz, and Berkeley. So fucking gorgeous. I felt a keen pang of regret at not seeing this place before because the moment I saw the view, I knew--I want to get married there. Of course, it's too late now, and besides, the Presidio would've busted our budget. But still...I yearn.

Random stuff
I went to an A's game on Wednesday (Dollar Wednesdays!) with Chris, Mike, Elliot and Adam. One of the most boring games I've ever been to: no runs until the bottom of the 9th, when the A's finally scored to win. So Adam and I set out to improve the game. So, Rule #1: if the pitchers are going to engage in a pitching contest, they should face off directly. Goal: to hit the other pitcher. Excellent. Rule #2: the game is now played on ice. NO skates allowed. The Zamboni machine smooths over the ice at irregular intervals, but under no circumstance should the game be delayed by the presence of the Zamboni. Play on, boys. Rule #3: there are hitters and then there are base runners. And the base runners will be culled from the ranks of young male gymnasts. As soon as the batter hits a fair ball, the gymnast takes off down the line with his best floor routine pass. He can be tagged out either by a defensive player holding the ball, or the ball itself. Rule #4: Huns. In the outfield. With flaming arrows and bows. That little gymnast better be paying attention. Rule #5: increased audience participation, in the form of stoning the players. So that's it. Got it? Play ball! (We're tentatively naming the game BESTball(tm).)

The cat
I've been feeling a lot of guilt lately, because what I feel towards the cat is less than...good. In fact, there are moments of active hate. Before you call PETA, rest assured, I've done nothing to harm him. It's just that...he's such a whiner. All day long, he thinks it's feeding time. If I go to the kitchen, it's "Feed me!" If I go to the bathroom, "Feed me!" If I get up from a nap, "Feed me!" His feeding routine hasn't changed in at least a year: breakfast in the morning, dinner at night. He's taken to breaking into his bag of food and chowing down. We've had to put all his food and treats into tupperware. And this woe-is-me routine only started up a couple of months ago. I'm afraid we may have broken him by moving across the country. Is that possible? He has been doing some pretty funny stuff, though, which helps ease the hate. He's been playing soccer with this...thing. It's plastic and looks vaguely like a mini air hockey paddle. He gets all spazzy when he plays with it, and scuttles around so quickly, it looks like he's grown four more legs and is actually moving in every direction at once. The other thing is that he discovered the stoppers on our doors: the screw-on metal thing that sticks out and prevents the door from slamming into the wall. The kind we have are tightly coiled metal that have some give and spring to them. He's taken to batting at them so they make a "sproing-oing-oing-oing-oing" sound. It's funny to be sitting on the couch reading, and suddenly hear "sproing-oing-oing-oing" from the other room. He must be bored, that little bastard.

So that's about it for this week. If you want to know more about the tail-coveting, ask me. That may be an entry for another time.

Bunny Theatre

Holy shit, y'all, this is hilarious:Angry Alien Productions, Sase and Topsie! If you're watching at work, use headphones, unless your boss is cool. In that case, invite him/her over to watch. And please click on Amy's diary. (Link courtesy of the lovely Ilana.)

I've been working on the railroad...

All the live-long daaaay!!

Maybe not so much the railroad, but today was my first day of work for Big Internet Company. I'm exHAUSTed. I haven't had to sit in front of a computer for 8 hours straight in a long time, at least not with my pants on. It's been...two years since I quit my last publishing job, and during that time off, I've been either lounging around the house or working in food service. Food service is tiring in its own right, moreso physically than anything else, but a corporate desk job has its own brand of tired. Tired of staring at a computer screen, tired of trying to figure out things like benefits, 401(k)s, chains of command, passwords, names, faces...brain tired. The beat I'm covering has been somewhat neglected since the last person left, so not only do I have to battle the technology learning curve, but I've been assigned to sort out the logistical mess left behind. The information I need is scattered in about 10 different places, and no single person knows everything, so I'll have to shuttle back-and-forth trying to consolidate everything. Fun!

Really, I'd rather be at home, with Chris, in my pajamas, eating cereal at noon. Doesn't that sound lovely?

I think we're nearly past the dangerous, undertowey, deadly currents part of wedding planning: the dread guestlist discussions. We've nailed it down and sent out most of the save-the-date cards (watch your mailboxes!), except for the ones to people who haven't responded to my repeated pleas for addresses (do you not want to come?). This came up at work today, and the woman I was talking to agreed that the most stressful part of her wedding was the list. Oh, the dreaded list!

What can brown do for you?

Folks, UPS is diversifying its services: now, instead of just delivering packages, they also deliver entertainment! Earlier today, Chris called me into the living room with the words, "Our UPS guy is playing the trumpet in the street!!" WHAA? Sure enough, there he was, sitting on the rear bumper of his truck, wailing the blues on his horn. And he's good! I'm not sure what was making him blue--maybe a customer wasn't home for the 3rd time, maybe his brown uniform itches, maybe he's just in a funk for no good reason. I already had a crush on our UPS guy, because he's always friendly and always in a good mood, despite the fact that we live in a 3rd floor walk-up ("That's okay," he says when I apologize for the trek. "I'm getting a work-out on company time!" How good natured is that?!) Now, I'm in UPS love.

I know the picture is crap. You can barely see him. But Chris's digital camera doesn't have zoom. My camera does, but I couldn't find it, and anyway, it's not digital, so you would've seen that picture, in, oh, about 3 months. You'll just have to trust me: he's there and he's playing the trumpet.

If you look very closely, you'll see the UPS guy sitting on the rear bumper of his truck, wailing away on his horn. 

Legal eagle

As a general rule, I care very little what Chris does professionally. I mean, sure, I'd be unhappy if he decided he wanted to be, say, a professional football player, a politician, or a pimp managing a stable of hos. Otherwise, whatever floats his boat is fine by me. Aside from the general lawyer jokes and my own misgivings about what I think is the over-lawyering of America, in particular, I'm fine with him practicing law. Actually, I'm neutral on it...couldn't care less one way or the other.

Until now. As I type this, Chris is on the phone with the reception coordinator discussing the various clauses of our contract, offering to redraft the contract (because it's very vague), and generally being very smart and firm in his discussions. He's being very lawyerly, but in an agreeable and polite way. I think I'm falling in love all over again! swoon A lot of the things he's discussing are things that I brought up (based on the wedding reading and research I've done over the past few months), so yeah, it's stuff I know about and understand, but there's no way I could be so adamant and authoritative (and yet polite!...I get rude when I feel flustered or cornered). Finally, three-plus years of emotionally supporting him through law school and the bar exam are paying off!

It's a little baffling, actually, how vague the venue's contract is. Well, okay, it's not at all baffling, because it leaves a lot of doors open for them to jack up the prices and pull a switch-a-roo on what the per-guest cost includes. This didn't sit well at all with us, because we are paying a metric butt-load of money to these people, and to my mind, I want in writing exactly what a metric butt-load will get us. But it's done! Contracts are signed, checks are being mailed!

And in a whiplashing-inducing change of topic, I'd like to talk about me and crying. Chris just put on Weezer's latest album, and one song (whose name I can't remember) made me think of the fact that I can cry for any reason at all, or even for no reason. This particular song's video showed Weezer cavorting with the cast of the Muppet Show: Kermit, Miss Piggy, the penguins, the Swedish Chef...the whole shebang. The first, oh, five times I watched the video, I cried. Real tears, fat tears, streaming down my face. Because I was so fuckin' joyful about the Muppets, and Weezer and the Muppets, and the random fuckin' penguins somersaulting throught the air. Lame? Maybe. My default emotional response is to cry. Aside from the obvious things--like being sad, or being touched (emotionally, you perv)--I cry at everything. I cry when I'm angry, frustrated, happy, surprised, SCARED. Chris scared me so badly once (he really didn't mean to), I burst into tears and couldn't stop sobbing for about 10 minutes, which, in turn, scared him, because who CRIES when someone pops out from around a corner? A one-note emotional retard like me, that's who. And this is yet another reason I'm thankful for Chris: I hate negotiating contracts and stuff like that for fear of crying and caving in. I'm such a wuss.

Au revoir, Julia

Julia Child died in her sleep, three days shy of her 92nd birthday: MSN Entertainment - News - Julia Child Dies. Chris was joking when he said, "People across the country will be cooking to honor Julia today," but I think he's right. She's such a fixture in the American gastronomic arena, with her overly long limbs, warbly voice, and down-to-earth demeanor. Lately, she's been doing a cooking show on PBS with Jacques Pepin, and I can't help cracking up every time I watch it. Between her warbling and his cartoonish French accent, I can't understand half of what they're saying, but I enjoy watching them anyway. I also love that she worked for the precursor to the CIA. Julia Child, international spy and chef extraordinaire!

Falling to pieces

Y'all, this wedding planning business will probably kill me. Slowly. Bit by bit. But surely. I just spent...oh...4 hours working on the guest list and compiling mailing and e-mail addresses. My eyes are crossed, my brain is confused, my hands are tired of typing, and my left elbow has that weird pain you get when a sharp joint rubs against a hard surface (like a desk) for too long. I'm fairly certain I'm going to wake up with whiplash, because Chris has been sitting behind me for nearly an hour, going through old photos and laughing and exclaiming, "You HAVE to see THIS one!" causing me to whip around to check out old pictures of him with a mullet. A mullet, my friends. Hee. Okay, that's probably the best part of the night. Anyway, I've also had mysteriously sensitive skin lately. In fact, the onset of my irritable skin maps exactly with the onset of serious wedding planning. Coincidence? I think not. People, I'm breaking out in hives over here. HIVES. Because of wedding planning. HIVES. This is not supposed to happen.

And this is only part of the story. The southern California satellite office of this production is also freaking the fuck out, though in a way I can't begin to understand. The satellite manager (aka, mom) called this morning at 9:45 to tell me that she was up all night worrying about scheduling problems with the two sites. She wanted to know what time the florist would have access to the ceremony site to set up flowers and when we would have access to the reception site to set up placecards. Y'all, these are flowers that we haven't yet ordered from a florist we haven't yet spoken to and placecards for a seating chart we haven't even begun to think about much less fret over. We are, oh...7 months out right now and this is just not going to get better. How the fuck am I supposed to manage this?! I need to factor a new item into my wedding budget: a therapist.

Wedding Central, can I help you?

It's official, folks, we have a wedding site, I repeat, we have a wedding site. All systems are GO on Operation Let's Get Hitched. Congratulations, everyone, you've all put in a lot of hard work. Now go home, shower, and kiss your kids.

The last two days have felt almost like work, what with negotiating contracts over the phone, waiting to hear back from potential sites, hearing about new sites with potential discounts and potential drawbacks. A call from Chris's dad resulted in a call to my parents, asking them to go scout a site we didn't know about over the weekend. An answer to one person was contingent on an answer from yet another person who wasn't calling back. More than once, I felt the need to chart the various permutations and scenarios on a whiteboard (which we don't actually have, but now that I think of it, it's not a bad idea). When one of us actually needed to leave the house, we were in contact via cell phones, debating our next move. Y'all, this is ridiculous!

I had an e-mail conversation a couple of weeks ago with an old friend who got married a couple of years ago (and I could totally link to her website if she would just update it...ahem) about the pitfalls of planning a wedding when you have the shopping personalities that she and I have. It's never as simple as going out and finding something you like and buying it. If I go shopping with the intention of buying, say, a new purse, I usually have an idea in mind of what I want from the purse: size, color, pockets, material, price range. So I go out, and lo, there is a purse that fits my requirements. So I buy it, right? Because it's what I'm looking for, right? Oh no, you silly thing. I have to consider the fact that this is probably the first store out of many that may have something similar, better, and less expensive. So I make a mental note of this one and proceed to all the other stores. After I make my rounds, I consider each potential purchase, and whittle the list down to two or three top choices, and then? Then I must revisit those top choices, do a mental compare and contrast (like, I do like this one better, but do I like it $20 better than the other one? Will I regret turning down the one that's $10 over my budget just because of the $10? Because how long can you string out these sorts of justifications before it becomes ridiculous?), before finally plunking down my money. It's over and done with, right? Oh no, you silly thing, because then comes the what-ifs and did-I-do-the-rightsmartestmosteconomical-things, and y'all, this is where it gets sad. I've been known to visit the first runner-up, linger over it, and reconsider, before slowly moving on, casting longing glances at it and apologizing to it. It's a fucking purse. And yet...

So you see where this is going? Wedding planning is going to be a nightmare for me. Somehow, the decision to get married felt not so momentous or agonizing as choosing a site. Perhaps because deciding to get married is not one decision, but a series of smaller decisions made over the past four years. Hm, I like this boy, he is a nice boy, and he is a smart boy. Hm, I like spending time with this boy, so I think I'll spend more time with him. Hm, spending all my time with this boy certainly is nice, so maybe I'll move across the country to live with him (okay, so maybe that decision was kind of big and momentous). Hm, living with this boy sure is nice, how 'bout let's get hitched? On the other hand, I'm being asked to put down thousands of dollars for a room, some chickensteakfish, and linens. It's a much harder decision to make, I think. And truly, in the end (and this is the lesson that the aforementioned friend, Rita, to whose site I would link if it were operative, ahem, taught me), no matter what anyone says about "this is your day, do what makes you happy," it's not just your day, it's never just your day. You invite all these people to come surround you with happiness and love and celebratory joy, and you really really want them to be happy and have a good time, eat, drink, dance, laugh, create these memories you will cherish. And how do you put a price on that?

Jobs, wedding (anti)fun, and hissyfits

The past half-week or so has been a little hectic, but ultimately good. First off, I have a job! They gave me the offer last week, as I was standing in the binder aisle of Office Depot. I was engrossed in the binder selections when my phone rang, and it took me a moment to shift gears and understand that I was being offered a job. Of course, I said yes (though it might be more accurate to say that I yelped yes--very very professional) and did a little job-getting-shimmy dance right in the middle of the store. To celebrate, I bought a teensy little highlighter from the fishbowl on the counter. I start August 23, so Chris and I have two weeks to have fun. This morning, as we were waking up, Chris crowed, "Who has to be at work? NOT USSSS!!!"

And then, we spent Thursday-Sunday in Southern California, looking for a wedding venue. We hit eight locations and probably covered nearly 200 miles in two days. We haven't yet nailed down a final choice, but I did learn a few things along the way. One, the wedding business is utter bullshit. And I get to swim in it. Two, when you get into a car with your fiance and your parents, and drive all over southern California on a hot, hot day, looking for a venue that wants to charge you buttloads of money to get married, you get headaches quickly and often. Three, inevitably, if you fall head over heels in love with a location, someone else in your party will h-a-t-e it. And get all passive-aggressive about why she hates it and pretend she can't hear you when you ask over and over why she hates it so much. We went to the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, and the place was fuckin' gorgeous: Mission-style architecture, beautiful garden with a fish-filled pond, delicious menu.... What more could you want? Apparently, to not have an El Pollo Loco across the street. My mom shit on my choice (and let me tell you, I envisioned the entire wedding while standing in the courtyard) and Chris hated the neighborhood it was in, and I was outvoted by all the voting members of the party. But I got my laughs when Chris fell in love with the very next place and I could see before we even left that my mom hated that one too. I started singing a little song about the shit shower he was gonna get. I'm so damn immature sometimes.

But we're narrowing it down...there are some issues to work out, but it looks like we'll have a reception site pretty soon. I'm keeping it under wraps until...well, maybe until the invitations go out. It's kind of a neat spot, with some cheese potential, but I like a little cheesiness sometimes.

What else? Oh, yes, we took Vinny with us to L.A. and he's turning out to be a pretty good little travel cat. He slept most of the drive, occasionally coming out of his carrier to sit at my feet or look out the window. I caught a truck driver laughing as he passed us and saw Vinny's nose pressed against the glass. We introduced him to Ginger, my sister's cat, and the first thing he did was hiss at her. Ears back, open mouth, full-on "back off bitch" hiss. Sadly, it was love at first sight for Ginger. She wanted nothing more than to be BFF with Vinny, while he wanted nothing to do with her, at first. After getting bopped on the head by Vin and hissed at every half-hour, she finally settled for just being near him, dogging him like a shadow. For a while, her obsession was a little pathetic and freaky, like she was gonna boil his bunny or something. By the end of the weekend, though, they were cool, if not best of friends.

Ancient kitty water torture

Chris and I just gave Vinny a bath. Huh, funny how that sentence makes the event sound so simple. It's like saying, we gave Vinny some treats, or we gave Vinny a nice scritch behind the ears. I mean, have you ever bathed a cat? I grew up with dogs, and washing a dog is easy, fun even. The only thing you really have to watch out for is when the dog winds up for that full body shake, starting with the slow flopping of the ears and ending with the frantic tail wiggle. Cats, on the other hand, have claws. And teeth. And they're the spawn of the Devil.

This is the third time for the Vin. The first time was actually okay, and I now attribute that to a generous dose of Dr. Bach's Rescue Remedy. At the time, I thought we had just lucked out in the kitty lottery. The second time, lulled into a false sense of security, we somehow forgot the Rescue Remedy. How does one forget the single ingredient that turns a furry, fanged creature of death back into a simply unhappy cat?! For whatever reason, we forgot and that nearly put us off cat-bathing for good. He turned into a sopping wet, yowling whirligig of razor sharp teeth and claws. The fur was literally flying. I was afraid the neighbors would report us to the animal equivalent of Child Protective Services, his aggrieved howling was so loud.

So I shouldn't have been surprised when Chris looked at me with horror and fear when I suggested we give Vinny a bath today. That day was traumatic for all of us. But there was no denying the kitty was getting a mite rank. While it's true that cats are self-cleaning, it's also true that they clean themselves with their tongues. The same tongues they lick their butts with and that live in the rotten fish-smelling caverns called their mouths. Really, a cat can only get so clean on its own. And we're taking him down to L.A. for the weekend, where he'll be meeting my family and his cat-cousin, Ginger, for the first time, so I wanted him to make a good impression.

We oh-so-casually set the stage. We quietly hid all the bath mats and toilet paper (so they wouldn't get soaked), laid a towel in the bottom of the tub (for the cat to grip onto), gave him an extra-large dose of Rescue Remedy (the cat, I mean, though Chris could've used some, too), and changed into our suits of chain-mail armor. Chris snagged the cat, plopped him in the tub and held on for dear life as I soaked and soaped him. And lo, Rescue Remedy really is the key--it wasn't bad at all. Oh, Vinny squirmed and twisted all right, even yowled a few times, but it all seemed half-hearted and the whole event passed with nary a scratch, though Chris and I were both pretty soaked. He even put up with the post-bath toweling, but we decided that using the blow dryer on him was really pushing our luck.

So now, Vinny's stalking around the house, busy with the chore of getting all his fur back in order and picking up the pieces of this shattered pride. Moral of the story? If you need to wash your cat, don't forget the Rescue Remedy. And be thankful that cats have pea-sized brains. They won't hate you forever.

Finally!

Chris is done with the bar exam! And hopefully for good! We won't know whether he passed until mid-November, but since there's no point in fretting about it in the meantime, we've been kicking up our heels. It all started Thursday night: he came home from San Mateo and the booze started flowing. An innocuous beer with dinner, followed by a veritable tidal wave of liquor at the bar: shots, shots, shots, beer, beer, beer... The best part was when in the cab home (I only had 1 drink over the course of the night, wisely realizing that one of us had to be coherent enough to get us home), Chris slurs to me, "Ishn't it weeeird that even when I'm shooo drunk, I shound totally shober??" Hee...okay, so I exaggerate, but it was still funny.

Friday hurt for Chris so we just stayed home and appreciated being able to hang out together without the cloud of impending bar exam doom hanging over our heads. It was weird.

Then Saturday rolled around and off we went to the Farmers' Market, because I'm convinced that you haven't lived until you've tried a grilled peach. I figured it would be a couple of hours of me bouncing excitedly from booth to booth, while Chris slogged along behind, not understanding my joy over organic heirloom tomatoes. But lo and behold, guess who lurves the FM?! Chris was in raptures over the Chinese teahouse, in particular, over his choice in oolong tea and the plateful of little dim sum goodies we ordered. Then he scarfed down a handful of tortilla chips with yummy mango salsa, plowed through a fruit tartlette (of which I got maybe one full bite), and ate the majority of our juicy grilled peach. Piggy. Along the way, he picked up some loose-leaf tea, a jar of apricot conserves, a bag of the most delicious tamales, and a few peaches. Retail therapy seems to be his weapon of choice in dealing with post-bar decompression. I have no complaints. We also admired some strange-looking mushrooms, fondled some tomatoes, and pondered barbequed oysters, but managed to pass on them. Pockets lightened considerably, we left happy and stuffed (at least he was) and went off to the Haight for an armful of CDs at Amoeba and spent the rest of the day with Mike and Adam, doing little more than lolling on Mike's beautiful new couch, eating large quantities of food, and blabbing about this and that. The perfect Saturday, as far as I'm concerned.

This Thursday, we're heading down to L.A. to look at a bunch of potential wedding sites. The stress that I managed to forestall while Chris was otherwise occupied has moved in and brought its relatives. But I'm hoping that once we have a site and caterer nailed down, we'll be able to relax and take care of the remaining details in a more relaxed manner. Hahahahaha...who the hell am I kidding??