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.