It Takes a Village

After we had a quick PC rehearsal the night before, my girls helped me check that my wedding dress fit.  I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep unless I knew I could get the thing on.  At my last fitting, it hadn't closed, like at all.  I flipped out about it, but I also didn't stop eating and drinking things, so it was my own bad.  At the fitting I wasn't wearing any scary knickers, and my girls promised they would get the thing on me, come hell or high water, so we gave it a dry run.  It took all five available bridesmaids to get me into that mother fucker.  It was rough, but we made it happen.  I could get a little sleep and not hate myself for enjoying my rehearsal dinner, and cake, and wine.  I wore even tighter spanks the next day.  I explained my anxiety to Angie and she made sure that all photos of me getting in to my dress were not horrifying.  I made the guy videographer wait outside until I had that fucker on.  

All photos by Angie Gaul at milestoneimages.us

I don't really know why we had this around.

I think Amanda and Chris had given it to Elise as a late present for something.

But when  you pressed its paw it sang soft kitty.

We had a good time with it.

The moment of truth.  There was a wonder woman bra sewn into my dress.

It was ridiculously tight and we had to put it as tight as possible to get the dress to close.

When I took the dress off at the end of the night I breathed a huge sigh of relief

The dress was so tight I could barely sit down, slightly embarrassing during the ceremony, let me tell you, especially since I was trying to avoid showing my shoes since they were nothing special and didn't even match anything.  

My abs hurt for about 3 days afterwards.

I love these photos.

I have a similar one of Elise powdering my nose at Jaclyn's wedding.

Another one of my favorite photos from the wedding.

I intend to sell my dress, but I'm keeping the veil.

It was beautiful and not too out there, something someone else might want to wear one day.

It actually took all six girls to get me in the dress this time.

Jaclyn isn't visible, but she is holding my veil up in the air.

The flowers were perfect.

Inexpensive, fresh, beautiful, and on time.

The dress originally had an ugly flower on the hip.

I cut it off and replaced it with this vintage pin I found on the internet

Helpful tip: Vintage = old

It was beautiful and I still have it, but it did break off my dress at some point during the reception

When we were just about ready we realized we forgot a crochet hook to help close the buttons.

Elise did a lot of them with her nubby Hufflepuff thumbs.

My dad did the rest even with his arthritic hands, with the help of a plastic knife we had left over from the breakfast bagels.  

Makin Sure My Do is Did

We wake up early and head downstairs to the spa area to get our hair and make up done.  It is super expensive.  I feel really bad for the girls about this, but with the grandparents and wheelchairs, it is just easier to do it all in one place.  Hannah doesn't get her hair and makeup done but still looks fucking gorgeous in our photos.  The girls allowed me to give them random bullshit to put in their hair.  Cynthia lets me pay for her hairdoing, Morgan's parents helped her out with hers, so despite being ungodly expensive, our ladies are looking as beautiful as ever.  I wish I could have saved them some ridiculous expense, but everything went well anyway.  Our grandmas get all dolled up, I get a pretty braid, and poor Nancy has to go last so she has literally 10 minutes to get dressed and has to get her zipper up herself because no one is left in the hotel.  God bless you all.  All photos by Angie Gaul at milestoneimages.us

Cynthia was such a good sport, she wore this headband through the entire ceremony even though it was squeezing her brain and giving her a headache.

I loved this flower on my wife

I think this was Morgan's first time having her hair done all curly

Is it weird that all my favorite wedding photos of me are the back of my head?

I may have self esteem issues, but damnit my hair looked good!

MomMom is still angry

Nanny kept telling the makeup woman, "more rouge I think!"

Nancy getting a good daughter-in-law squeeze

Our fabulously feminine hair guy

God Morgan, you are so pretty!

We had my makeup airbrushed on so it wouldn't come off when I had sweat dripping off my face

I should seriously just get one of those myself when I have a bazillion dollars

In retrospect I would have had my lipstick a different color.  

It comes out really brown in the later pictures. Oh well!

Cynthia giving a good demonstration of some of her bridesmaids' gifts.

The applique belt I made, the necklace, earrings, and elbow length gloves.

The gloves were actually Chris' idea, I just want everyone to know that.

Special props to Cynthia for putting up with one of my minor Bridal Bitch moments.

Cynthia had on a large knit kind of shawl sweater over her dress.  For whatever reason, I guess because everyone else was wearing more of a cardigan, I decided to be like, "Can you wear a different sweater?"

And then I tried to dress her in my own black sweater that I had in our suite, which was obviously way too big on her and looked ridiculous, and I just told her to put her other one back on.  Cynthia was all sweet like "I don't have another sweater." And it really didn't matter, I don't think we ended up taking any pictures of the girls with them on and they didn't have them on in the church, so I don't know why I cared.  Chalk it up to crazy bride anxiety.  Even so, sorry/thanks to Cynthia for having to deal with me being an idiot bitch.

Jaclyn's curls looked really damn good if I do say so myself!

How Elise happened to have all these random black hair doodads is anyone's guess.

I'd also like to point out that "doodads" is apparently a word according to google.

I don't have a picture of Mima in here for some reason, but as she was getting her makeup done Elise and I come over to tell her how beautiful she looks.  Her response, ever the dry humorist, "It doesn't hurt to be good looking." One of my favorite Mima quotes.

Rehearsal Dinner

Some of the ladies and I went to get our nails done, and some of the men folk went off to do whatever.  One needed a new vest because the other one was too small, and I think the rest went to Dave & Buster's to hang out with some kids who were there having a bar mitzvah party.  We actually ran into my high school music teacher, Mr. Ezell, at the nail place.  He was getting a manicure.  Love love love my small town ridiculousness.

I go back to the suite we have for our wedding night.  I was going to share it with my sister the night before the wedding, the same as we did for her and Jason's.  I spent an absurdly long time in the large bathtub shaving my legs, listening to music, and just chilling out.  Then downstairs to dinner!
All photos by Angie Gaul at milestoneimages.us

MomMom and PopPop

Married over 65 years

Still Cranky

My darling Cynthia with Chris

Chris' Uncle Bill with his two boys

Chris cutting into his groom's cake.  

His mother got it in Maryland and traveled the whole way with it on her lap in the car.

Elise & Jason

By the end of the night we had drank like 23 bottles of red wine

The one bottle of white that someone opened was still half full

I may have finished it

Just like old times

Chris pouring us all glasses of wine

My mother really loves to snuggle

My brother doesn't really

This looks so much like old times at RPI it's not even funny

Laughing so hard we're crying

Fancy Nancy and Bruce

The boys checking out the cake

Awkward Bruce hugs are my favorite

He seriously is adorable, he doesn't know where to put his hands

Doesn't know how much he should be hugging me

In my head I hear his internal dialogue going like this

"This is my son's fiancee, I really shouldn't be pressed up against her boobs.

She's kissing my cheek... WTF?"

Wedding Drama 3:  Besides my flipout about the nativity scene, which was entirely pre-wedding week, the rehearsal dinner was by far the biggest problem of the weekend.  The Viana is a Feng Shui crazy place, so their restaurant's menu is Asian/Italian Fusion.  They are so snooty and expensive there it really is ridiculous.  I don't think we would have chosen it, except they were willing to give me a really cheap rate on the rooms.  $99 a night for wedding guests is ridiculously hard to beat on Long Island.  Chris' Mom thought that every other hotel we brought her to was "in the projects," so we tried to up our game a bit, as they were the ones paying.  When they came to visit pre-wedding they stayed at the Holiday Inn by my house.  It was over $150 a night and they didn't sleep at all because they were too near the train.  Sorry guys, it's Long Island, we're in Queens, trains come by.  I can practically see the train station from my bedroom window at my parent's house, that's just how it is.  She even still thought the Viana was ghetto because there was a gas station across the street and we were even in like Garden City... anyway!

It is a really small restaurant, like it barely has a full kitchen, much of the food is made ahead of time as far as we could tell.  We ate there for dinner twice, and neither times was it particularly speedy, but the food was good, and we couldn't beat the convenience of not having to take the grandparents anywhere else in the car with wheelchairs, etc., so we had the dinner there.  The sales person at the Viana had changed like 3 times over the course of when we booked things to when they actually occurred.  The first woman was a complete pain in my ass, the second guy was great, but he didn't last long, then the third person ended up being their assistant who had actually be there all along and had dated one of my friends from high school.  Anyway, I went back and forth with them for a really long time about the menu.  It was an expensive place and I wanted to make sure everything worked out okay if I was going to be spending that much of my in-laws' money.  Their menu is Asian fusion.  Asian usually includes nuts.  My co-matron of honor, my cousin Jaclyn, is deathly allergic to nuts.  I had to be very careful to make sure things went to plan.  We were only using the Italian dishes off the menu, there were to be no nuts anywhere near our food.  Jaclyn wasn't even going to eat any of the food at the dinner, that would have been far too risky, she was going to be bringing her own food, but just had to be able to safely breathe the air in the dining room.  

The hotel guy had even talked to me in person earlier that day to make double sure that my cousin was still coming and that she wouldn't be eating anything.  I said yes, but still NO NUTS.  When we sit down to dinner our first course, a caesar salad is sitting at each place setting.  There are nuts on top.  Not only are there nuts on top, but it's not even a real caesar dressing, it's a nut based caesar dressing, like sesame or something along those lines.  Thankfully, Jaclyn hasn't arrived yet, but my best friend Libby's wife is also allergic to nuts, not to Jaclyn's extent, but enough to be very harmful.  I run over to him and all but smack the salad out of his hands.  I am PISSED.  The chef is literally right in front of me because they have no real kitchen, just a buffet window type thing, and I try to calmly explain what the problem is.  He says no one told him about the nuts, and that's just how their caesar salad always is.  So I run over to the hotel guy.  He says oh my fucking god wtf, basically, and I hurry to call Jaclyn, hopefully catching her before she gets there.  I ask her if she can even come to dinner now that there were nuts in the room.  She says she should be fine as long as they're not peanuts.  What kind of nuts are they?  Peanuts.  She is in the parking lot in the car with her husband and baby.  She can't come inside.  My matron of honor who was supposed to be giving a toast at dinner has to turn her car around and drive back home.  I cry.  We try to laugh it off, but my boss and his wife, who were not invited to dinner but were staying there that night are having a cocktail at the bar and are seeing me lose my shit.  I am horrifically embarrassed, and sad, AND mad.  Angie, who knows Jaclyn and my sister already from having photographed them for other occasions understands.  Takes a photo of the offending salad and sends it to Jaclyn.  We try to laugh about it.  Dinner goes on, and it is pretty damn good, but still.  The hotel guy comes up to me after, holding a copy of the menu we had agreed on.  He is so flustered trying to save his ass that he points to the salad description and tries to tell me that it says cashews.  I'm about to tell him that even if it did say cashews, that would have been passable, but they are peanuts, when I take a closer look at the menu.  It says croutons.  Idiot.  

When I return from our honeymoon I try to get some recourse from the hotel people.  They take off the two meals that our guests were unable to come and eat, but that's it.  My mother-in-law is pissed and lists off a bunch of other things that went wrong, trying to give me some ammunition to fight with them about.  It just makes me feel worse that the dinner was so sucky, that things were cold, and they spilled meat juice all over her dress.  I could have lived my life without hearing those important details.  I get sick of arguing with them on the phone.  I stop trying.  Life goes on.

Jaclyn understands that it's not my fault, but I'm still sad about it.  I try to get her to give her toast at the actual reception.  She refuses, but gives me the paper copy to keep.  All in all, still an enjoyable evening, but still quite the disaster.

Wedding Rehearsal

So we packed up our car and drove to my homeland, Long Island.  For the rehearsal dinner, hair/makeup, and wedding hotel we chose the Viana in Westbury, NY.  It is definitely beautiful, definitely small and classy, definitely expensive, but it suited our needs well and the sales manager had slept with one of my friends from High School, so we went with it.  Everyone piles into town and we meet at the church for our rehearsal.
Photos one and five stolen off of Kristen's facebook, the others by Angie Gaul at Milestone Images.

Andy and Elise

At the altar with Deacon Rich

Patrick and Cynthia

Dan and Jaclyn

Jim and Morgan

Jim Scott

PC Men in the Choir Loft

My beautiful church

Dadoo

This go pretty well except I forget what order the bridal party is supposed to go in and end up having to search through my email on my phone to find a pdf of the program so I can tell them what to do.  My lovely Folk Group friends take time out of their day to serve as our musicians, and some of the boys from my a cappella group do me the grand favor of lending me their voices for the psalm.  As we go through the wedding saga, I'm going to label the wedding dramas, because really, everyone loves to hear about the things that went wrong.  These are in no way big problems.  We had a wonderful, beautiful, memorable day.  Only little hiccups happened along the way, largely thanks to our photographer Angie who knew when to herd the masses and when to kap a bitch.

Wedding Drama 1:  We were getting married two weeks after Christmas.  We had always wanted a winter wedding because we really hate to be hot, and there was no way we were doing spring or summer.  We chose the winter break because we knew at least one of us would be in grad school and wouldn't be able to miss class.  My church, St. Raymond's in East Rockaway, NY, is beautiful at Christmas.  The wreaths and trees are lovely, BUT, I hate poinsettias   I was hoping that some of them would have died off by then, but they hadn't.  I asked the deacon and pastor to let me move them for the ceremony and them move them back, but they wouldn't hear of it, not even after I tried to convinced them that Jaclyn was allergic to them, which is true, but not to the extent I was making it out to be.  The poinsettias stayed, they didn't look bad, I didn't fuss, and life went on.

Wedding Drama 2:  Our new church pastor put up this gigantic nativity scene the Christmas before.  As I It was about 3 feet tall and 5 feet wide (see picture above), had straw all over it, and had spotlights lighting it up with their wires taped down to the floor in front of the altar.  I hated it.  I seriously BEGGED the church to let me move it off the altar.  It was seriously huge, we couldn't stand in front of it at all.  My mom and I had noticed it the year before and had already been worked up about how it would look for the wedding.  I don't know what it was about this nativity scene, I guess I just thought it was ugly and gigantic and was getting straw all over the floor, but that added with poinsettias just made me snap.  I am not proud of it.  This was by far my biggest bitch moment of the entire wedding proceedings.  I begged Deacon Tom, my mother begged him, I explained that half my family was Jewish and having the wedding in a Catholic church at Christmas was already a sacrifice for them and I didn't want to shove it in their faces.  I actually CRIED.  In the Deacon's office with my mom and my fiance there, discussing our ceremony.  Something broke in me and the floodgates opened.  I was sobbing over this stupid fucking nativity scene.  The nativity scene stayed, life went on, the world continued to turn, but I seriously flipped a shit over that one.  My apologies to the church for being a total crybaby psycho.

Our photographer Angie came to the entire rehearsal the day before the wedding to check out the lighting and such, so I even have awesome pictures of the rehearsal and the rehearsal dinner... coming up!

Fill in the Blank Friday!

1.   I wish       I could find some more fun things to do around here and make some friends.  And stop worrying so goddamn much.  Also that my sister would move here and stay with me forever in sisterly happiness.

2.  Yesterday I   Had sushi with Chris and Cynthia, beat my stupid Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets Gamecube game, and watched some TV.  Chris after insisting that we watch Twilight Eclipse, fell asleep during it and then begged me to turn it off.

3.  Today I will      work till 5, possibly return some things via UPS, bake something for tomorrow, and have a few drinks with my manfriend.

4.  Tomorrow I will   go to trivia finals and compete for $1000.  Not that we're really going to win, but it would be a pretty awesome after party if it were to randomly happen.  Then meet up with the trivia people at Jon & Sara's house.  Yay for being invited to a party!  I thought we'd never make any friends!

5.  Maybe      I got some Christmas gifts in the mail that I can wrap this evening.  Wrapping presents is easily one of my favorite activities ever. 

6.  Someday        We will get a puppy.  And redecorate and re-floor our condo. 

7.  I love       lamp.

Fill in the Blank Friday!

1.   Holiday spirit       makes me happy.

2.  The holidays are incomplete without   Bing Crosby, White Christmas, a family member saying something inappropriate when mom is reading a bible passage at dinner, and dad sitting on the floor and handing out presents.

3.  My favorite things to do around the holidays is      baking and singing and drinking wine with Elise!

4.  A holiday tradition my family and I have is   complaining about whatever mom has cooked for Christmas dinner.  Getting into a fight about vacuuming the house.  Complimenting the green wreath that Jaclyn and David colored when they were little.

5.  Holiday music is      Pretty freeking awesome.  I love the Christmas CDs that my mom puts in every year and singing at Church.  Also Handel's Messiah sing in is always fun.  I'm not a huge fan of radio Christmas music, they seem to always play the same five songs.  Sleigh Ride, Baby It's Cold Outside, The Christmas Song, Silver Bells, and It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas.

6.  This year, I'll be spending the holidays        at my house with my parents.  This year is the first time Chris and I will actually be spending the holiday together.  We'll have fake Christmas with his parents at some point afterward.

7.  Holiday wish list       My renewed sanity.  A decent night's sleep.  A non anxious day and night with my man friend.

Pre-Thanksgiving Post

I do not have much to report here this week.

This weekend, Chris and I went to his parent's to put up their Christmas tree, do some decorating, and some holiday baking.  We played pool for a bit, drove all the way home to bring back the correct type of walnuts (I wasn't aware there was a wrong type of walnut), and went out to dinner.  I like going out to dinner with the in-laws.  It's usually at a really nice place and we eat and have some wine and usually have a very serious conversation about whatever, which ultimately boils down to a hilarious relaxed conversation, but always only after we've paid the bill.  I don't understand why his parents suddenly get hilarious at the end of a meal, and we start having a good time, then it's time to go home.  Very odd.

I'm doing really good on the calorie counting this week.  I'm down a whole 3 pounds in one week.  Not too bad if I do say so myself.  The goal is around 2 pounds per week or at least 5 pounds a month, which would put me at 50 pounds lost by the time our wedding rolls around in one year.  That leaves me with eating about 1500 calories a day, which is really not very much.  Granted, we were eating a ridiculous amount of calories before, but I'm in a bit of a cranky-hungry mood this week.  I'm thinking it will start to get better and pass altogether once I get my body used to it.  Also, I'm planning on joining a gym after Thanksgiving, so if I do any exercising I can up my calorie intake a bit that day and still reach my weight goal for the week.  I started this journey at 220 pounds.  I'm at 214 right now, and hopefully will continue to drop steadily from now on. 

Elise and Jason are coming for Thanksgiving!  I am so very excited to do all of our holiday baking.  I have so much fun when my sister comes to visit and we have a lot of wine and dance around the kitchen.  Our baking list for Thanksgiving is as follows:

• Apple Pie
• Pumpkin Pie
• Pecan-Caramel Cheesecake
• Chocolate Mousse Cake
• Cinnabons for Friday morning breakfast

It should be majorly delicious.  Jason is planning on moving in with us when his lease is up at the end of the year, so we will be planning a trip down to Virginia to help him get his stuff and put most of it in storage.

I'm really feeling the Christmas spirit and have started listening to Christmas music already.  I know it's early, but I was in the mood. I'm dragging Chris with me to Target later so we can buy a tree and put up the ornaments that I brought from home. 

I checked out one of the local Roman Catholic churches on Sunday.  I need to become a parishioner somewhere around here so we would be eligible to sign up for our pre-cana or pre-marriage classes that are required for us to get married at my church back home.  It was epic and modern and so strange.  Much different from things at St. Raymond's.  There was preachy music played by a guy that sounded like John Denver, 2 jumbo trons and video cameras everywhere showing slide shows of the readings and whoever was talking at the time, inspirational videos shown before mass and as part of the homily.  There's a cafe that looks like a Starbucks in the lobby and a lounge with a fireplace, and they had so much staff.  There was a person like every 10 feet with a little ID badge on.   There was a street entrance that looked like the big stone facade thing of a country club.  You could tell that they had a lot of money to blow on updating and maintaining the place.  I e-mailed the info address to find out about becoming a parishioner and they said they already responded to me.  They have a program set up for you to hear about the church and have dinner before filling out your registration.  Seriously, it's intense.  I'm going to take Elise with me to mass on Sunday for moral support while I sign up for the program thingy.  It should be pretty interesting. 

Can it be Wednesday yet?  I miss my sister.

Julibean <3

A Day in the Life of Chris & Julie - Engaged Couple

I'm trying to think of interesting posts I could do once a week, kind of like news segments.  Elise already has the monopoly over Manjoyment Mondays, Wedding Wednesdays, and Dance Party Fridays, so I'll have to try to come up with some of my own.  So here is the beginnings of a post series called...

"A Day in the Life of Chris & Julie"

...in which I am going to re-enact a scene from this week in which we did something insane, funny, so mundane that it hurts, or just plain drunkenly ridiculous. 

So here we go:

Setting - The condo
The Scene - Thursday is our big TV night in which we try to watch everything on DVR including; Jeopardy!, The Big Bang Theory, Grey's Anatomy, Project Runway, and The Jersey Shore.  I am falling asleep in Chris' lap on the couch.

Chris:  Are you sleeping?
Julie:   No

ten minutes later...

Chris:  Are you sleeping?
Julie:   No
Chris:  You're totally sleeping!
Julie:  No I'm not!
Chris: Why don't you just go to bed?
Julie:  What time is it?
Chris:  It's only 9:30.
Julie:  Okay I'm getting into bed, I didn't even see any of what just happened.
Chris:  You said you weren't sleeping
Julie:  No I didn't
Chris:  Yes you did
Julie:  I don't remember saying that
Chris:  You just said you weren't sleeping and then got offened that I would even ask
Julie:  Well I was lying, obviously.  I'm going to bed.  I have period week fatigue.
Chris:  Fine.
Julie:  I want some chocolate.
Chris:  I don't have any chocolate here
Julie:  Why?  Do you have some at work?
Chris:  Yes but you wouldn't like it.  It's butterfingers and reese's
Julie:  But...why wouldn't I like those?  I love peanut butter.
Chris:  Oh, well I don't have any here.
Julie:  You have candy in your desk?
Chris:  I couldn't stop myself.  Halloween candy was $2.50 a bag.
Julie:  Okay fine, goodnight.

ten minutes later...
Julie:  You want to go to the store and get me some chocolate? 

Chris walks into the bedroom and hands me a bag of chocolate chips from the pantry.

Chris:  Goodnight snugglemuffin.

I Can Haz Job?

I am employed! I am now working as an administrative assistant for LBC Solutions, LLC, which is a government contractor that comes up with ways to implement new initiatives of CMS which is the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The work is dull. I spend most of my time sitting around proofreading extremely boring and seemingly insignificant articles on the Medicare Learning Network website. However, I will be getting a paycheck next week if the payroll goes through, so I can't really complain. The pay is decent, the working environment is nice. It's quiet, I sit alone for the most part and can play music on my new computer. No one calls and no one really comes into the office either. The upstairs office is new and we spent most of this week putting together furniture and hanging walmart pictures on the walls. Those would be pictures bought at walmart, not actual pictures of a walmart building, for those of you who were wondering.

I'm finishing up my first week here and so far so good. LBC Solutions is owned and operated by Cynthia's grandparents. They have fewer than 10 employees and the owners mostly work from home so there's not really anyone in the office except Cynthia and me on any given day. Hopefully this isn't the end all be all job for me, but it has benefits and pays really well for my first full time job, so I will be sticking it out here for at least until after Chris and my wedding.

Speaking of which... our wedding has officially changed dates to Sunday, January 8th, 2012. It still sounds really far away, but I suppose it will creep up on us ever so slowly. Since Chris was baptized in a Christian religion we were required to be married in a Christian church. We were thinking that my church would not be an option because it was almost an hour from the wedding reception area and I had given up on it being there anyway since we agreed to have the ceremony in the reception hall. Once we realized that getting married in the Thatched Cottage wasn't going to be a legit Catholic wedding (which is required by my mother), I put my foot down and said that if we had to get married in a church anyway, I wasn't going to get married in just any church just because it happened to be closer to the north shore. That just seemed silly to me. I have a really great connection to my church, I have been going there since my mother had me baptized there, I'm a well known parishioner, and I wanted to be able to include my Folk Group buddies. Also, did I mention that it's beautiful? Here's a picture.

This is what the alter looks like on Christmas.  I'm hoping there might not be quite that many poinsettias, but the trees and lights are really beautiful that time of year.  

Here's one of the outside.  It's actually quite a large church.  If you ignore the red traffic light, it's rather nice.  So our ceremony is scheduled to start at 2:30 p.m. then we'll take pictures and everyone will be able to return to their hotel for an hour or so.  We will be chartering a nice bus to pick everyone up from the hotel and take them to the reception hall.  This way, no one gets lost or hurt driving if it happens to be snowing, and then whoever has been drinking will have a sober right back to their room.  The reception starts at 6 p.m. with a cocktail hour, and then a 4 hour party ending around 11 p.m. 

I'm pretty excited in the first place that the wedding isn't going to be in the afternoon.  I want my college friends to be able to get completely drunk and have an awesome time and I don't really expect that to be happening at noon.  Well I'm sure some of them would hit it pretty hard at 10 a.m., but not everyone. 

The next thing on the wedding planning agenda is to look for a photographer.  There are a few in the area that we could definitely take a look at if we ever actually took the time to sit down and decide on a few.  Word on the street is that Chris' parents will be paying for the photographer and we're going to try to keep it around $2,500.  That sounds like a lot of money, but when it comes to wedding photography, it really isn't.  Both my sister and Jaclyn's wedding photographers were in the ballpark of $5,000, but Chris and I didn't feel the need to go that crazy with it. 

Today is the first day of October and later this month Elise and I have an appointment to go look at wedding dresses at Kleinfeld's in the City.  I think it is going to be a lot of fun.  Elise is losing a lot of weight and looks great, I am not really.  They say that they have a really great selection of plus sized dresses, so hopefully we will be able to find something that I feel good in, nothing has really been fitting or looking that good lately.  It's really discouraging to try to fit in a wedding dress sample that is clearly like 3 sizes too small for you and then try to make a decision based on how you think it will look if it was the right size. 

Elise is hitting the job applications pretty hard and will hopefully have a few things to look at in the next couple of months.  She is really needing to get her stuff together and move down to Virginia to start helping Jason out.  Chris and I are really happy in the condo.  We could use a little more space, but in a few months or however long Cynthia will be staying with us we will not have use of one of our bedrooms and half of our living space.  Once we have that taken care of we may decide to get a puppy, which would be really exciting. 

Our tasks for this weekend are to install the Ensor's new family computer, pick a few photographers to make appointments with, and get the addresses filled out on our wedding guest list.  If we can get all of that done it would be great.  I am really loving all of the fall air around here and hope it starts to get cold soon.

Until then

Julibean <3

Funemployment?

My two months at the bakery was finally up a few weeks ago so there will be no more waking up at 2 in the morning for me anymore. Although when I gave up that job I also gave up any income that it might have been giving me, which was not much because they were mis-paying me, a problem which is still unresolved.

Now I've been job searching every day for something/anything that will pay me a decent amount and be worth my time. I've been on a few interviews, but nothing that has really gotten me anywhere because all they really wanted was for me to try to sell people Direct TV at a Best Buy and that just so isn't happening. I had a really good interview for a job at Chris' company, but they didn't end up giving it to me.

I spend most of my days looking for jobs on the internet. I'm all over monster, careerbuilder, and the corporate websites, including the government agency websites, and no luck yet. I have a lot of temp agencies call me and they say they will be looking for jobs for me, which is nice, but even so they will probably only be temp positions and do not pay as well as what I was hoping to get.

The rest of the time i am doing housework and watching tv and playing solitaire on my laptop, it is seriously thrilling. So if any of you know of any jobs in the Baltimore area, please hit me up.

In other news, I ordered a new iphone so I should be getting that in a few weeks. My 22nd birthday passed without much incident. Chris came home with a chocolate cake, 2 bottles of red wine, and flowers for me. Then we went out to a simple dinner with Patrick and watched High School Musical.

There was something strange clanging around on the bottom of my car. We took it over to the Midas and they basically just pulled it off and sent us on our way. Needless to say I am seriously bored and getting rather depressed just sitting around applying for jobs with really no end in sight and no discernible self worth or measurable income.

The Maryland State Fair is in town, and by in town I mean down the block, because we live right next to the fairgrounds. Elise is coming to visit on Thursday on her way down to VA to see Jason. I am missing my New York friends and don't think I'm going to be able to see Morgan before she moves out to California. Sad face.

kbye <3

Strep Throat

So our last day in Seattle we went to the park and took a bunch of pictures with Dan's new badass camera.  We basically just ran around posing and jumping in midair and such.  It was a beautiful day, clear blue sky, great temperature.  These are the days that make me want to move to the west coast.  Well maybe some day, but certainly not now. 

Later we packed up our stuff into Dan's car and then met his friends at a hibachi restaurant.  I've been to plenty of hibachi places, and I pretty much always love them, but the performance tends to always be the same.  However, the guy at this place was the best hibachi chef I'd ever seen.  He did awesome unexpected tricks, and was so nice, personable, and funny.  I would definitely go back there again.  Pretty much everyone in the restaurant was laughing and having a great time, the atmosphere was amazing. 

This couple that we had dinner with is actually getting married shortly, and Dan, our very own internet minister will be marrying them.  Trust me, I had the, "Dan should marry Chris and I" argument with my mom plenty of times and I'm just not even going to bother going there again.  It was pretty pointless.  It's a Catholic wedding for us!

We had a pretty terrible flight back.  Elise felt awful at dinner, and whatever she got slowly spread to me throughout the flight so by the time we got back to JFK we were both miserable.  I called in sick to school because I could not even keep myself sitting upright I was in so much pain and discomfort.  Turns out we both had strep throat and Dan got bronchitis.  What a lovely trip to Seattle it was!

Elise and I had crazy high fevers and went to the doctor.  Elise's throat was so sore that her tonsils were literally swollen and bleeding and she had to be prescribed pain medication.  I was told to stay home an extra day from school until I was on antibiotics for 48 hours.  I ended up missing Creme Anglase, Pastry Cream, Pate a Choux, Meringue, Chocolate Mousse, Eclairs, Ganache, and Paris Breast so I had a lot of catching up to do when I got back to school.

Unfortunately, whatever antibiotic that the doctor put me on did more harm than good.  Apparently when I was a baby augmentin made me very sick, but my mom failed to mention this to me, so I didn't know to avoid it.  I was incredibly sick to my stomach, could barely eat anything, had to use the bathroom a lot, and was consequently very dehydrated, still had a sore throat, and was light headed and dizzy from not eating.

I stuck it out in class anyway, after telling Brooke that I felt terrible and asking her to do anything that involved walking over to the hot ovens or stove tops.  I was really pathetic.  We prepped flaky pie dough and apple filling for a pie we were going to make the next day.  I made it through the day and then really started to feel sick as we were leaving.  In true Julie style, I managed to throw up out the driver's side door of my mother's car on the shoulder of the Meadowbrook Parkway after quickly drifting across three lanes with my mouth clenched shut.  Not one of my finest moments.  Needless to say I think I went home and went to sleep.  I don't even remember.  All I know is that those antibiotics were really not working for me, and my throat still hurt like a mofo.  

Back in Seattle

After we got home from the Olympics were were back at Dan's place in Seattle.  On Saturday we hung around the house and played some rock band.  Everyone was pretty sleepy and Dan was feeling like crap since his arm hurt and he was getting sick.  We took a quick trip to the supermarket to get some Seattle's Best coffee for Mama and then had some sushi for lunch.  On the way home we stopped by the Boeing Plant where Dan works because we saw the giant marshmallow plane taking off.  It turns out it was landing, but we got the chance to show Jason the planes and took a quick trip through the gift shop.  I picked up a few pens, a pair of really soft sweatpants, and a tee shirt for Chris.

Later that night we were invited out to dinner for Dan's friend Julie's birthday.  We had met her and her husband one previous time.  The last time Elise and I visited Seattle a few summers ago, we went to the Folk Life festival and the Space Needle, among other places, and had dinner with Dan's friends at Julie's place after we watched them play an indoor soccer game.  Before dinner we stopped by Dan's friend The German Guy's (Thomas') house and helped him pack up the kids, Runja and Leif, and bring them along to dinner.  A few years when we visited, Runja was just a toddler trying to crawl/run around.  It was great to see her all grown up as a 6 year old, and meet their baby son Leif.

Julie's birthday dinner was at a Moroccan restaurant.   None of us had ever eaten Moroccan food before, but it was absolutely delicious.  Everything I ate that day tasted amazing.  Dinner did take fucking forever, but it was more of an experience, than a meal. 

Julie eating her birthday cake. 

The Belly Dancer. 

 The waiter was really great with Thomas' kids, especially Runja who would not stop talking the entire night.  Julie's birthday was easily taken over by everyone talking to and paying attention to Runja.  Who is pretty cute, I'm not going to lie.  But I think she may have been the one to get us all sick...

Runja's little brother Leif with my sister.

Ketchup Post

I'm not even going to pretend that I had time to post in the past few weeks. So instead of back dating posts and trying to remember what happened at every point since February, I'm just going to start recapping with pictures interspersed wherever applicable. So here we go!

Kitchen Day 3: Cheesecake, Creme Caramel, & Creme Brulee

I have no idea how to make French accents in blogger, so I'm just going to pretend that all of these French words are spelled/accented correctly.

Kitchen Day 3 was the last day I would be in class before I left for Seattle to visit my brother and go to the Olympics in Vancouver. Since our flight was leaving at around 2 p.m., I was only able to stay for the first few hours of class. Brooke and I put together our cheesecakes and creme caramel, and then I had to get going. Sadly, I missed creme brulee and still haven't had the chance to try it on my own, but I'm pretty sure that as long as I can make custard (which I've got down pretty well at this point) then creme brulee wouldn't be too much of a stretch.

Chef Katie was nice enough to bake off my cheesecake for me and use it to demonstrate un-molding during the next class and put it in the freezer for me so I could pick it up when I got back from my trip. I ended up giving the cheesecake to my friend Casey and her family who raved about it and said it was the best cheesecake they've ever eaten. I will have to make sure to try a piece next time I make one that comes out that good.

Creme caramel a.k.a. flan, was also pretty simple. We made caramel first, just heated water and sugar until it browned to a nice caramel color. Then we poured the caramel into small individual ramekins and let it harden, then poured the custard on top. I had to leave before they were baked, so I'm not sure how it came out, but it looked pretty f*ing delicious to me, so there you go.

Trip to Seattle and Vancouver

On 2/24 we flew to Seattle from JFK. The flight was pretty uneventful considering I can't remember what happened. The woman who had the seat next to Elise was nice enough to switch with me, so I got to sit with her and Jason, so that was nice. It's always better to be able to touch the person next to you without feeling weird about it. I listened to the Twilight books on tape for the majority of the trip. As embarrassing as it is, I decided to read the books after seeing the first Twilight movie. I'm not going to say that I am now a Twilight freakazoid and don't ask me what fucking team I'm on, I so don't care, but I liked the movie enough to be curious about the books. After hearing from Casey and Elise about how utterly ridiculous the story line was, I decided to see for myself. I'm never going to say that I enjoyed them 1/4 as much as the Harry Potter series. I am a true HP fiend at heart, and I am not one bit ashamed to admit it. However, being apart from the fiance for so long makes me really into love stories and happy endings. I was particularly interested in the Twilight movie because of the whole, "I can't kiss you even though I'd kill my rabbi with a pork chop to stick it in you right about now" mentality. The anticipation was very sexy to me and I got interested real fast.

Anyhoo, Dan picked us up from the airport and we hit the Seattle Ikea because Elise wanted to show Jason some of the furniture that she has so expertly picked out for his apartment that she doesn't live in yet. I wandered around and scoped out a few things that the fiance and I will be needing for the new condo, if and when we actually get our hands on it. I sat on a few of the couches and looked for some china cabinets that might be useful to us in the new place. Afterward we went to meet Dan's friend Christina for fo. I had never eaten fo before, and I will definitely try any food once, but it was not my favorite. Dan and Elise were really into it though so I just ate my meat and bean sprouts quietly until it was time to go.

We packed up our things for the Vancouver trip and then went to bed. We left for the Olympics in the morning after triple checking that everyone had their passports.

Passport Check

Apparently Dan had read the Twilight books as well and asked me to put on the audio book where I had left off over the car stereo. Let me tell you, my 27 year old brother Dan gives an amazing commentary to teenybopper drama novels. We had a great time laughing at him making inappropriate hand gestures and comments along with the audio for most of the trip.

We passed through the border to Canada with no incident, switched the GPS to kilometers so we wouldn't accidentally speed through Canada and break Dad's one and only rule for our trip, "no international incidents". We drove through the Olympic traffic of downtown Vancouver, parked the car and went to the will call office to grab our tickets for the Women's Gold Medalist Curling event we were to see the next day. Then we went for a walk to find the Olympic Superstore (touristy souvenirs) which was incredibly well hidden and once we finally found it after making several laps around the mall had a 3 block long line, and we decided to skip it, get back to the car and go to Stanley Park.





Stanley Park is a beautiful 1,000 acre park whose main attraction is little area with a totem pole exhibit. We checked the poles out for a while and then did some serious damage at the gift shop. They were carrying a lot of Olympic merchandise and since we didn't end up getting anything downtown, we bought all sorts of crap. The saleswomen were really nice and helped us pick things out for about an hour or so. We had a lot of gifts to buy for everyone back home.



After that we made another little trek to the Cappilano Suspension Bridge Park that I had been wanting to visit ever since I saw the pictures of Mom and Dad there with Dan a few years ago. It was beautiful and really cool. Here are some of the better pictures.

Fun in the gift shop.

A lot of the statues in Vancouver were decked out in Olympic gear.

The Suspension Bridge

D'awww

I'm a Tree Hugger

I love these pictures of us

Dan took a lot more awesome pictures on his badass camera, but I haven't gotten to those yet.

I've got my hiking face on!

After this we drove about an hour to our hotel, picked up dinner and hit up a liquor store, and then settled into bed while watching Olympic Women's figure skating. You've got to love Canada, they took American cash for everything and had two liters of delicious hard cider in multiple flavors. Why isn't America so accommodating?

Let's face it. Jason snores like a beast. My Dad is a terrible snorer, one you can hear from the opposite side/floor of the house, but Jason blows him out of the water. This is why Elise warned us, and equipped us all with ear plugs. I fell asleep fine and it didn't really bother me. Dan however, couldn't sleep at all, and unbeknown to us spent half the night screaming at Jason, throwing pillows at his face, and kicking him to make him shut up. At some point in there I did hear Dan say that he had had enough and was going to sleep in the bathtub, but I wasn't quite coherent. Apparently Dan slept in the bathtub for a few hours until he accidentally turned the water on himself. Add that to the fact that Dan is in incredible pain and needs surgery on his shoulder, and he was just about ready to kill Jason the next morning. We hit up a Denny's for breakfast and drove to the Olympics.

Olympic Curling

We spent a good 40 minutes looking for a spot in the parking structure of one of the local train stations. Finally we were able to stalk a nice Canadian man to his car, and Elise got out of the car, followed him to his spot and stood in it while he left. Everyone was jealous, but we had already claimed him. We got on a train for free with our curling tickets and traveled a few stops and then took a shuttle to the arena where the event was being held. It was raining at this point and we waited in line for security for about 15 minutes. After being very mildly molested by the security guards we made our way inside the arena and promptly got some Molson's at the concession stand.

We got to our seats with about an hour left until the event was scheduled to start, so we just got situated, people watched, and watched the staff prep the ice and the curling stones for the match.

Quatchi Hat

By the way, if you haven't figured it out yet, I take the worst pictures in the world. They're really terrible. It's a combination of me sucking and not holding the camera steady and the quality of my hand me down camera in the first place. But let's just say that if you think of them as art, they're really quite nice. And if you see a really nice looking photo on my blog at any time, chances are I didn't take it at all, it was probably one of the other members of my family.

Canadian Pride!

Let me just say that everyone we came across in Canada was incredibly nice, polite, considerate, and helpful. 95% of the people in the arena were Canadian, and there was a lot of national pride going on since their team was in the gold medalist match. As far as I saw, we were the only Americans in the bunch. The people around us were so nice and explained the entire game to us as it happened. We were curling novices compared to the rest of the people at the match and they were more than willing to fill us in on the rules and what kind of strategy they thought the teams were going to use and why. It really enhanced the experience for us, and gave me a great appreciation for curling, way more than I would have had, had the Canadians not walked us through it.

Checking out the Stones

Sweet Curling Hat

Prepping the Ice

The Swedes

The Canadians

Measuring to see whose stone is the closest to the button.

National Pride or Starving for Warmth? I think you know the answer.

Cowbell!

We rooted for the home team, cheered, rang our cowbell, and chatted with everyone around us. It was a really good time and I would absolutely do it again. The Canadians ended up losing to the Swedish, but Silver is still pretty awesome and we continued to show pride for our seriously terrible countrywomen who placed 10th out of the top 10. Yeah that's right, U-S-A! It was pretty dark by the time we got out of the arena and we decided to walk back to the train station this time. We made it back to the car and drove the 2 hours back to Dan's place then promptly passed out.

Medal Ceremony

National Anthem Time

Things I noticed while in Canada:
1. Everyone is super polite. One Canadian fan was heckling the Swedish skip, yelling and making a scene. Someone a few rows ahead of us stood up and simply called, "Excuse me, do you think you could be quiet? Thank you." Dan and I were laughing so hard at this. If we were in America, someone would have cursed him out and decked him by now.
2. The Canadians did a great job of running the events. There were volunteers everywhere directing traffic, everyone was friendly and helpful, pointing you in the right direction and answering questions. Their crowd control was great, and there were even people sitting on ladders with megaphones giving people directions and also giving the scores and outcomes of other events that were happening at the time.
3. Canada seems to be entirely on the honor system. No one checked tickets at the train station, there were cops everywhere and no one even asked. And yet, Canadians were lined up at the ticket machines buying them anyway.
4. When we went to go to the bathroom, Elise and I pushed open the normal door with the ladies room sign and suddenly found ourselves in a tent that was outside the actual arena completely filled with upwards of 50 porta potties. Totally not what we were expecting, but hilarious nonetheless.
5. Everyone was so friendly. I had conversations with the people on all sides of us in the stands, and everyone was nicely chatting it up on the lines for the bathroom and drinks. Asking where we were from, about RPI, how we got into curling, why we traveled to Canada, how the drive was, etc.
6. Even though you would expect mounted police officers to be, you know, mounted. There were mounties all over the place but none of them were actually on horses.
7. You can set off fireworks in the bedroom, and Jason still isn't going to stop snoring or wake up in the slightest.
8. The accents are adorable. They do say aboot, and other things like that, but mostly they sound like they're from Minnesota or something. And they don't curse. I felt like a drunken sailor on leave the whole time we were there and was constantly trying to hold my tongue.

I'll get through the rest of the Ketchup post tomorrow, it's almost 1 a.m. and I have class tomorrow. Until next time,

Julibean <3