merry christmas!

Wrap presents: check.  Host Christmas party: check.  Clean blood stains from the walls after the fiercest white elephant gift exchange ever: check.  Gain 10 lbs from all of the holiday parties: check.  It’s about that time!!

This is our best attempt at a family picture with the tree.  We are blocking the tree entirely with our bodies which defeats the purpose of taking the picture in the first place, but it’s the only picture where Maddy doesn’t look completely miserable.  We chose Maddy over the tree.

Speaking of Maddy… she suddenly is having a love affair with the stupid Christmas tree.  This year she’s finally discovered that the tree is actually resting in an enormous tub of water *gasp*… and she’s become Pepe le Pew, seeking to be reunited with her lover no matter the distance or challenge.  (For those born too many years after me to count, Pepe le Pew is an amorous cartoon skunk that falls in love with a black cat and will stop at nothing to be with her despite her frantic protests… it’s like cartoon date rape.)  So we’ve built a fort of presents and shipping boxes around the tree to block access, but as you can see here…

…she mission-impossibled her way to her lover by wriggling through a three or four inch gap underneath the bookcase (the idiot couldn’t get back out though, and was totally busted.  See how guilty she looks?)  We’ve also now add various pieces of furniture and piles of heavy books to the Fort of STOP IT ALREADY.  So far it’s holding, yay.  Meanwhile, our tree is dying because we can’t reach it ourselves to give it more water.  We chose Maddy over the tree *again*.  Is this what it’s like to have kids?

We want to wish safe travels to all of our friends and loved ones regardless of naughty/nice status.  Hope you get everything you want this year!  From our family to yours, we wish you a very merry Christmas!

honeymoon: florence

Made it to Florence with very little incident.  I (Jeanne, to be clear) set off just about every single alarm possible at the airport and had to be pat down — the French don’t do any of that “back of the hand” crap, I was straight up caressed, rubbed, and honked every which way to Egypt.  The lady even looked down my pants.  And then when I finally thought I was through free and clear, they found my camera extender stick, which admittedly looks like it could be a weapon.. an extendable weapon.  “C’est bizzarrrreeeeee….” the airport agents whispered to one another as they poked at the xray screen.  I tried to explain (in French) that it was for my camera but they looked at me like that was the stupidest thing anyone’s ever tried to suggest.  Oh well.  *shrug*  I’m an American.

Reading about Florence and all of the amazing artists and thinkers of history,  one imagines a city of grandeur, a metropolis of greatness.  It’s actually quite small as cities go — it can be walked end to end in about 30 minutes.  Or 20 minutes if you are a very tall American man with a loping stride.

I’d been here many years ago when the only thoughts in my young head were which shop sold gelato for 3000 lira instead of 6000 (yes I came before the euro was introduced, holy cow) and why Italians appeared to ahbor air conditioning….  I don’t know if it’s an age thing or what, but this time around my experience was much deeper.  Maybe it’s being here with someone I’m in love with.  Doug and I sat around thinking about the greatness of mankind and what our contribution to the world was going to be (true story).  More about that later.

And it’s not like we didn’t have gelato this time around either.  My god.  Cold weather be damned, we had gelato around the clock.

The norm here, as with most European cities, is to travel by moped… thousands and thousands of mopeds, with the occasional teeny-tiny car:

Although when Italians do choose to go with a regular-sized car, they do it with style.  They’re Italians, after all.  Btw, Doug has a pretty impressive wingspan, don’t you think?  I peeked into some of these tiny cars and found that several of them are not cars at all, but moped fitted with a shell.  You’d have to open a “car” door, then climb in a straddle your bike seat.  What the hell is that all about?  How is that practical?

Of course the thing to do in Florence, and really you can’t miss it even if you tried, is to see the Duomo.  Looking down just about every other street in Florence, we caught glimpses of it, slices of white green and pink marble, tantalizing glimpses of our lady who finally introduced herself to us in the golden setting of the sun.  God, she knows how to make an entrance.

Of course… the setting sun meant that the thing was closing and we only saw the inside for maybe a minute before we were shoo’d out by a line of very well-dressed polizia.  Undeterred, we went right next door and paid good money to climb the $)(%@ tower (wondering most of the way whether medical assistance could reach us before we died).  If you look at our picture gallery, you’ll see that we took way too many pictures — at each landing we reached we thought to ourselves “oh wow we made it!  well done!  wow what a view!” and took another dozen pictures, before realizing that yet another set of stairs awaited us.

If you ever visit though, don’t give up on the climb.  The top is to die for.  But not quite literally, they’ve hamster-caged the entire thing so you can’t really die up there (not by jumping at least, I’m sure you can think of a way to die up there if you are determined to.)  By the way, being IN a bell tower when the bells go off.. ones you can hear from anywhere in the city.. is quite the experience.  They don’t exactly give you any warning that it’s about to begin.  I may or may not have peed a little.

We also saw David (I almost called him Michael just now, whoops).  Got off a few pics before I was assaulted by the guards who were screaming shrilly at me in English FORBIDDEN FORBIDDEN!!!!  Ok ok lady, I got it, settle down.  Then I went around his backside and took some pictures of his butt.  The lesser known side of David.  In David’s defense, these aren’t great pictures — it’s hard to think about taking good pictures when you’re under the constant threat of being deported.  Journalism under fire.

I got pretty good at taking pictures in places that don’t allow cameras though, our “dopey tourist” look worked to our benefit in this regard.  Took a bunch in the Medici Chapel, which is this ridiculously beautiful place that could easily pass for some important government building or an art museum or something, but it was built to be the tomb of one the Medici and seven or eight of his favorite cousins — of course he made his own tomb look practically like a shrine, with lots of spots for candles to be lit and flowers to be placed.  I’m probably going to be cursed by the Medici gods for laughing but I thought the whole place was hilarious.  I mean really, who do you think is going to come and worship your tomb?  You’re so vain!  You probably think this tomb is about you, don’t you don’t you????

Anyway!  Enough of my social commentary.  What else… we went across the river to climb a hill, Piazzale Michelangelo, that gives a wonderful view of the city.

Looking back at the pictures, I also found this one:

Good gravy, what is wrong with that lady standing next to us???? I hadn’t even noticed her while we were there.  Hope she’s okay.  Maybe she’s devastated by the view.

And speaking of going across the river, we did go see the famous Ponte Vecchio (“old bridge”), the only bridge not destroyed by Hitler’s army during his retreat out of Florence.  I’ll be honest, we saw it because we had to see it, found it “neat” and not much more… it was lined with jewelry shops which I really have no interest in.  BUT.  We happened to be there while the shops were closing for the night and I was completely enamoured with how they did it… the front of the stores were completely encased in polished wood and steel panels which the owners lock into place piece-by-piece by hand, and secured with padlocks so that the stores themselves resembled treasure chests.  Each treasure chest looked different than the one next to it.  This was a real glimpse into the medieval roots of the place.  I must have stood there transfixed for at least an hour watching this happen, until Doug reminded me that I was probably being monitored on a security camera somewhere as a potential jewel thief.

And only a few people will understand this, but I caption this next picture “Kiran”

Before I wrap up, I have to share one of our more profound experiences of the trip.  We went to the Basilica of Santa Croce, which is really gorgeous in its own right.  Inside of it are many many tombs (lots right in the floor itself, which I felt pretty “argh” about walking across.)  In clockwise order from top left, these are the tombs of Machiavelli, Galileo, Dante, and Michelangelo…

… in one room.   It’s not like I’m under any delusion that our world today is as it was in the 16th century.  But for a moment, just a moment, it was really blowing my mind that these men and many other notable names walked the same Florentine roads as one another and perhaps even shared meals and ideas and philosophies.  Doug and I sat in the church for a really long time talking about our contribution to the world and our legacy.  We talked about our world today, the technology renaissance of our times,  and whether our technology gamechangers will live on in the history books that “those that changed the world.”  We agreed that Steve Jobs was such a person.  I’m still filled with immense sadness at his passing.  This is somewhat unrelated, but a while ago I wanted to post this in memoriam of Steve but never got around to doing it:

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”
– Rudyard Kipling -

Thanks for giving of yourself, dude.  You will be missed.

ANYWAY.  More serious stuff was talked about and pondered over many pieces of artwork.  Perhaps that is the magic of Florence, that it inspires a person think and feel and wonder.  If any of you would like to join me on some book readings and discussions about it, I’ve picked up a few great books about some Renaisasance folks and I’m really looking forward to studying the time period and the people in it some more.  I know, nerd alert.  :)  Loving it though.

Oh and here is a picture of Doug pointing out the only entry point into the Duomo in Assassin’s Creed!  If you don’t know what Assassin’s Creed is, seriously don’t worry about this.  I have also not yet mentioned the two things Doug and I love the most about Italy, and Florence was no exception.  Pizza and cappuccino.  Bam.

Eventually we had to leave and head on to other parts of Italy…. arrivederci, Firenze!  Until we meet again!

Thanks for reading such a long post.  If you’d like to see our full picture collection from Florence, you can do so here.  I started to caption the pictures but then got lazy and …didn’t.  You’ll have to imagine where we are (hint: it’s Florence.)  Otherwise, we’ll probably break for some holiday-related stuff and then will be back soon to blog about our next stop, Venice!  Happy holidays to everyone — safe travels and good eats

honeymoon: paris

We’re back from our honeymoon!  There are quite a few pictures — I only took a tiny little camera on the trip because I wanted very much to be fully “present” on our honeymoon rather than constantly taking pictures, but there are still a lot of pictures to go through as you might imagine!  Funny to think that many years ago, I took a similar trip and would only take 10-20 pictures per city.  Times have surely changed.  Anyway, I digress…  Folks have been asking us a lot for a blog post — I can’t get to all of it at one time but will post about our trip in pieces, starting with Paris!  We did do the  touristy things of course… we visited the Eiffel Tower:

(The picture looks fake but I swear it’s not!)  And we also saw the Notre Dame cathedral.. and the Basilica du Sacre Coeur… and the Moulin Rouge.  Not saying any of these landmarks aren’t important… they were indeed all quite memorable, but you’ve also likely seen them in pictures or in person a million times.  So I’ll just skip those pictures (link at the end of the post for those that do want to see them), and I’ll skip to the bones of our trip!

We were determined to be savvy world travelers, and packed three weeks’ worth of clothing and supplies into these two backpacks.  Not too bad, eh?  We are all smiles here, freshly arrived in beautiful Paris.

One of the very first signs we saw assured us that the language barrier would present no problem… Doug demonstrates:

(I kid I kid.  I believe Titoff is some kind of French musical artist.  Or perhaps a stripper.)  First stop in Paris: the Louvre.  We had a few “wow” moments here but honestly we didn’t go in peak form and our experience was stilted (our own fault).  For starters we had just come off of a red-eye flight and were zombies.  Zombies don’t appreciate art at all, this is a fact.  And secondly, it was about two degrees outside and we were wholly unprepared for the weather.. by the time we had speedwalked over to the Louvre I was completely torpid from the cold weather and quite unable to process anything.  Doug was feeling the same way.

To illustrate, the brainy exchange at this gorgeous sculpture went something like this:

Hey Doug, take my picture with this thing.  Flying guy thing.
Ok. Why?
Because it’s pretty.
He’s touching her breast.
Oh ok, I won’t smile then.

And as you can see, Doug is just flat out sound asleep here inside the Louvre, sitting amidst priceless works of art.  Freakin Americans, no respect.

Visiting the Mona Lisa revived us a bit.   A crowd, 20 people deep, surrounded the painting and we took our place in the slow silent shuffle… it was amazing how reverently silent it was there, with only the sounds of shuffling feet and beeping cameras to break the spell.  Most people just took a picture of the painting.  We got to the front and turned to take our usual self-portrait.  Doug nearly punched a woman in the face doing so.  It’s ok, we’re American.

A day or two later when it was sunny and warm again though, we did revisit the Louvre to take the obligatory tourist pictures:

How did we do?

We also ate at Cafe des 2 Moulins, the cafe featured in the movie Amelie (where the main character worked as a waitress).

It was quite good, and very charming indeed.  Speaking of food… this isn’t a full roll call of all of the great food we had in Paris, but some highlights:

Clockwise from top left…

1. Cappuccinos (in retrospect these weren’t even close to the ones in Italy)
2. Delicious meat/cheese/cornichon platters.  Doug did throw one of these pieces of ham in my cappuccino, but he claims it was somehow an accident.
3. Orangina or aranciata.  Also Fanta, which I had everywhere.  Delicious, and nothing like we can get here.  No I take that back, I think you can get an Aranciata at import shops, made by San Pellegrino.
4. Falafel from the Jewish quarter.  The kind you stand in line for, falafels as big as your head.
5. French onion soup, or as they call it… onion soup.
6. Fresh crepes.

We also enjoyed some really good beef bourgignon and tons of great bread… and some good red wine, but after being in Italy where I didn’t meet a house red I didn’t like, it’s hard to say that wine made our top ten list in Paris (then again, we probably didn’t know what we were asking for half the time anyway.)

Oh and as a side note… if you see a queue forming up anywhere in France or Italy, don’t think about it and just jump into line.  We found that the only time there was an orderly queue, there was always food involved — all other times it was just a lot of chaos no matter what the situation (particularly in Italy, where shouting the loudest appears to make you the winner).  One night in Paris, we jumped into a random line that was forming anew.. we tried frantically to discern what the line was for as it shuffled forward rapidly.  We still didn’t know by the time we got to the front of the line and the girl behind the counter looked at me questioningly — I hesitatingly poked a finger in the direction of the customer before me and said “one, please” in French.  And lo and behold it worked — we were rewarded with a steaming hot baguette, fresh out of the oven.  Happiness.

One of my favorite experiences in Paris was strolling along the Seine, hand in hand with Doug.  The sun was shining, and we stopped at many of the stalls to inspect books and artwork, much of it old and yellowed by exposure to the sun — somehow this makes the books more romantic and appealing (whereas here, we would admonish the store clerks for their negligence).  At one stall selling very old postcards and photos, we spent an hour rifling through the postcards to see who could find the oldest one.  Here is one of my favorites.. “I do not forget you,” a man writes to a young lady in 1905.  *swoon*

We also encountered some protesters during our time in Paris — nothing violent, but people did seem rather angry so I kept my camera in my bag and my mouth shut as we carefully picked our way through the large crowd.  Folks shuffled about discontentedly, and one kept angrily throwing big handfuls of copy paper up into the air — they may have been printed with a message of some kind, but he threw them in such a way that the papers all landed in a big clump three feet away from himself, so I find his message dispersal technique to be a little lacking.  We had finally made it all the way through the crowd (yay) when we encountered a line of French policemen outfitted in full riot gear — armored pads, full-face helmets, and standing shoulder to shoulder with those big clear shields… uh-oh?  Not knowing what to do, we timidly asked one of them if we could pass to go to a museum.  “NON!” he barked at us.  “FERMEE!!”  And then a moment later he added in English “IS CLOSED!” and made a shooing motion at us.  So what was there to do but to go back through this crowd of angry people?  In retrospect, trying to go to the stupid museum through a line of armed policemen wasn’t the greatest idea.  But it’s ok.  I’m an American.

And of course I can’t forget the very memorable moment (memorable to me at least) when I spotted a street sign and cried out excitedly for Doug to go pose with it, which he did.  Note his very tentative posture in the photo.  ”What are you taking a picture of?” he asked.

“DOUG,” I said solemnly as I snapped one last picture.  ”WE ARE AT AN IMPASSE.”  At which point I broke into hysterical laughter…  this picture is his actual reaction to my word-nerdiness.  I laughed until I cried.. then I wiped away my tears and wobbled a squeaky “I don’t know what we are going to do now!” which totally set me off again.  Lord help me.

And so, a few final pics to finish this post… here is the view from in front of our hotel:

Amazing, right?  However, before you congratulate us, check out the view from inside our hotel:

Isn’t that even more amazing?  This continued all the way around the room, covering all walls, the doors, the headboard, and even the bedcovers.  It’s like they wanted us to never find the door and never ever leave.  The Hotel California of Paris, ahhh!!

And so, until we meet again… au revoir, Paris!  Thanks for the memories!

Byeeeeeeeee!!

The full picture gallery for our Paris trip can be found here, for those that would like to see it.  Next up to be blogged from our honeymoon files, Florence.  Until then, I hope everyone has a very safe and happy Thanksgiving holiday, wherever you are in the world!

pre-honeymoon

Here we are in New York again on another food tour….. o happy day

Will post pictures of our full tour at a later date, but I at least wanted to share one photo of my favorite (unexpected) stop of the day:

We didn’t even mean to go there!  Good food finds us!!  While waiting for our table at the Spotted Pig (which is amaaazing, hit me up for menu recommendations!), we were wandering aimlessly around Greenwich Village, just killing some time and browsing in shop windows.  We strolled past a cheese shop named Murray’s where a large article plastered inside the shop window screamed BEST BREAKFAST SANDWICH!!  A grainy photo of a bored-looking man was adorned with a bright red #1 stamp.  BEST breakfast sandwich?  Could it be??  Feeling a little bit like Will Ferrell in the movie Elf, we rushed in excitedly to find out for ourselves…. yessss, a pre-breakfast breakfast.  And ohhhh glory of glories, we were not disappointed.  Salted meat + funky cheese + runny yolk = perfection.

Ok ok one more picture from New York… if you don’t know why this one had me in stitches, then you and I clearly don’t hang out enough…

Anyhow, I will post the full picture gallery of our food tour later.  These days we are really busy trying to get things ready for our honeymoon which we leave for in several days.  Yay.

I’m really glad that we decided to take several months in between the wedding and the honeymoon.  On the one hand, now that I’ve gone through the process I can absolutely understand wanting to go lie flat on a beach somewhere immediately.  But on the other hand (my hand, I guess)… for Doug and me, we really needed the time to “finish” wedding-related tasks and get used to the fact that yes-we-are-MARRIED-omg … as of today, our gifts have all been catalogued and thank you notes sent, all of our vendors are completely paid up, our finances are in order, our bags are packed, our dog is safely stowed with the “grandparents”, and we are (sorta kinda) used to calling each other my wife and my husband.  Ok it’s still a little strange.  But I’m getting better at it.

The question we have been asked most often is “so how does it feel to be married??”  Always enthusiastically asked and answered with some variation on “OH YOU KNOW IT’S THE SAME HAHAHA”…. I’ve given the question much thought in the last few weeks and find that that’s not a truthful answer.  It’s not the same.  It isn’t just a piece of paper or a big party or a metal band on my finger followed by a return to my previous life.  Something is different now.  The changes between us since the wedding have been subtle, small, hardly noticeable as far as our daily lives go and likely unnoticed by the world at large.  But we aren’t just dating or living together any more, we are becoming a family and feeling that change as it’s occurring is the strangest and most wonderful thing.  I’ll stop there — I’ve tried to explain it to myself and I really have a gift for making marriage sound like an acid trip.  I guess it defies explanation.  All I can say is that this goes beyond just love.  This is just so much more.

Speaking of acid trips…. I asked Doug to pick up a small notebook for random notetaking needs on the honeymoon and he brought this home to me…

HMMMMMMM…….  that makes twice now…

ippudo

We received the most amazing wedding gift last week… a ramen care package from our friends Derek and Naomi (whom you’ll remember from our trip to Japan last year!)  During one of my recent “famous” food tours to New York, we paid a visit to Ippudo and I fell in love with the magical food that is ramen.  Oh how I gushed and gushed about it.. here in the blog (post here) but also in person, on facebook, by wire, by train plane and automobile… I shouted it from the rooftops!  Ippudo ramen is MAGICAL.

Well, our wonderful friends Derek and Naomi heeded the call — they visited Ippudo in Yokohama where they now live, and gathered up a treasure chest of bounty to send to us as a gift to celebrate our wedding… I was completely floored when we opened the package.

Fresh ramen kits, a collection of ramen spoons, and a nifty head kerchief like everyone in Japan wears!  The red kerchief is the same one worn by Ippudo staff, and the owner of Ippudo in Yokohama gave it to Derek to give to me.  Their ichiban fan!  I may frame this thing..

Well a meal is best enjoyed with friends, and so we gathered up some special folks to share our bounty with.  Joe who was our travel partner in Japan when we went to visit Derek, and Kiran who is my best foodie buddy (new spin on the ubiquitous BFF) as well as my co-food-tour-organizer.. Kiran is also the person I fell in love with Ippudo alongside, so I could not possibly partake in this ramen love without him.  By the way, it’s purely coincidental that our dinner guests are both brown.  We like and appreciate both brown and non-brown people of either gender and any variety of sexual orientation equally.  Besides, we needed some skilled labor in the kitchen to help us out with the cooking:

Oh relax, I’m just kidding.  We fed them didn’t we??  Besides, look.. Kiran is clearly drinking on the job, what a bum.

So I gathered up some fixins that seemed ramen-worthy by my best guess… spinach leaves, enoki mushrooms, roast pork, scallions.. the ramen packet came with some pickled mustard greens and sesame seeds as well.  We puzzled over how to soft boil an egg properly, so this was an educational experience as well!  How do you think we did?

OURS

THEIRS
Ippudo’s “Akamaru Modern” ramen
tonkatsu noodle soup with pork belly chashu

And then, just because we are who we are:

Note the head-wear.  We had to look the part of course, otherwise how would people know what we’re doing?  More pics of our evening found here if you haven’t had enough of us yet Derek and Naomi, thank you so much for your wonderful gift and we miss you so much… we had a really fun evening of ramen goodness, and I can’t wait until we can all hang out together again.  Perhaps over a bowl of ramen!  But until then, I may be sad but you know what cures sadness?  RAMEN.  IT FIXES EVERYTHING.

post-wedding

OHAI! It’s the GREENES here!!  We both fell completely off the grid for a while because there were ah.. post-wedding matters to attend to

Life for the most part went back to the usual after the wedding.  I was back shooting weddings no less than five days after our own — my bride and I compared our French manicures and oohed and ahhed over one another’s rings…  Speaking of rings, here is a picture I took shortly after the wedding — look, our hands are all dressed up!  Our rings of course are the ones that we made ourselves from a single piece of platinum several months ago.  That watch on Doug’s wrist is my wedding gift to him, timeless (har HAR god I love puns) and he has a mandate to wear it at our 50th wedding anniversary.

Our hands weren’t the only thing that were all dressed up!  Our groomsmen were really rocking some hot tuxedo socks… their feet were all dressed up!!!  Observe:

Dunno what’s going on with the rest of Joe’s attire there.  I can only assume the rest of his tuxedo went missing some time during the night, oh my.

There are entirely too many special little details and things to share about our wedding day… I can’t possibly do it all in one little blog post, so it will likely be a separate page and section on this website in future days.  I’ve written down an account of the day, those moments and feelings that I’ll forget years from now.  Will publish it later on when it’s finished, but here is an excerpt:

It’s 4pm Friday afternoon. We are checking into the W Hotel. I don’t match the hotel at all, I look like a trucker checking into the YMCA. I’m wearing daisy dukes, flip flops, and a Hooters cap with my wedding veil plonked atop my head. Is the receptionist judging me? Maybe a little. She sounds like she’s from Australia. Our bridal suite is amazing — a three-room corner suite with a killer view of the Washington Monument and an enormous round purple couch. Oh! That’s what everyone says as soon as they walk in the door. Oh! Ooooh!!

It’s 5pm Friday afternoon. The entire bridal party is in our suite putting things together and being helpful in general. I still haven’t showered. I have cards to write. “Dear Mimi…” I write, as Mimi sits two feet away talking at me about the rehearsal. It’s time to go to the rehearsal. We are practicing our entry and the ceremony. Doug’s father, who is our officiant, is reading through the entire ceremony and I can see Doug beginning to get a little red around the eyes. I am squeezing his hand and telling him to knock it off, and I look over at our bridal party. Andrew has his very serious face on, which is also his very sexy face (it’s hard to tell what he’s going for sometimes). I can tell he’s about to cry. I don’t look at him again for the rest of the rehearsal, just in case.

It’s 7pm Friday evening. We are walking down the block to an Italian restaurant for our rehearsal dinner. It’s warm out, the sun is just starting to set. Doug and I are holding hands. Doug says the first thing on our itinerary for the weekend is over already, so fast, too fast. He’s right.

We keep saying it over and over again, but we had an amazing weekend and we are so incredibly grateful for all of our friends and family who supported us with the process along the way, who offered to help and kept us sane when things got hectic, who traveled long distances to come celebrate with us… to that end, a special shoutout to Jen and SiHeng who flew all the way from Vietnam to come to our wedding (you’ll remember them from our visit to Vietnam and Thailand last year!)  I seriously start getting teary-eyed when I think about it, so don’t even bring it up around me.  Thanks guys, we’re really humbled.

I especially want to give two thumbs up (make that four, I’m throwing Doug’s thumbs into the mix too) to our awesome bridal party:

We chose them because we love them and they’re important to us of course, but as a group we couldn’t have possibly engineered a more well-balanced combination of FUN and CAPABLE if we tried!  These guys moved together like professionals to keep things running and kept us in stitches the entire time.  Oh and future brides…. it is tremendously helpful when your “maid of honor” is not a maiden at all.. my Dude of Honor (Kevin) was hard at work and running all around town on our behalf while we girls were stuck in the chair getting the whole hair and makeup thing taken care of.  Thanks all of you.. you really made our day extra special and we couldn’t have done any of it without you.  Ok stop it, I’m starting to get all sentimental again.  Blah.

The above photo was taken at our one and only bridal-party-only rehearsal.. for what you ask?  For this:

Totally fun!  The above vid was taken by my cousin Aaron, and here is another video taken by our friend Thomson from a different angle.

It was really upsetting to me to not be allowed to hold a camera, even a crappy little one, for the entire day.. and then to have zero pictures to look at the next day!  We can’t wait to see our pro’s pics and share them with you, but in the meantime our friends have generously shared their snaps with us … you can see them all here if you feel so inclined, or eventually I will put my favorites on our wedding page and you can just see them there.  There are of course, the hilarious photobooth pictures as seen here (click on the picture to see more):

And to wrap up, I leave you with a snap I took at the DC courthouse where we went to go pick up our marriage license (I totally got yelled at for taking the picture too):

What do they know that I don’t know???  Hmmmmm…..

bye july

The last month has seriously been a whirlwind….  A roll call:

GOOD: Our fabulous bridal party took us to a lake house in Deep Creek where we ate and drank and hot-tubbed and merrymaked (??  merrymook!) for several days.  I’m constantly amazed at how wonderful and generous our friends are!  We are grateful and undeserving.  Here are some of the folks, I think a bunch or people are missing from this picture though.. it’s really hard to round these people up   I’m the big mouth in the center of the photo.

Kevin, my “dude of honor” is front and center, and played a huge role in getting everyone organized and fed and very very drunk.  He’s a special kind of awesome.  I’ll write an ode to Kevin after the wedding is over, but I am fairly certain that after he has now seen me through the “behind the scenes” of the wedding planning process and undertaken (undertook?  what is wrong with me tonight) a lot of wedding-related tasks as my right-hand man… he’s just never going to get married, ever.  Sorry, single ladies of the world… I put the last nail in that coffin.   Hoo-rah.

It was a VIP party.  More specifically, a Justin Bieber VIP party.

For the record, no one made him kiss the Biebs.  He did that all on his own.  Many other pics which may or may not be posted at a later date — just a general word of advice, it’s against your best interest to be the first to fall asleep at a bachelorette party

BAD: Apparently someone (hopefully unknowingly) brought the Plague to the party with them.  Upon returning home from the weekend, more than half of the able-bodied adults became violently ill, including one Justin-Bieber-loving bachelor.  I sealed Doug in the bedroom and stuffed an iPad and DVDs and very flat foods under the door, fearful that I would become infected by mere association with this toilet-hugging man.  Praying fervently, I was certain to my core that the Plague was lying dormant in my body, waiting for the most inopportune moment to release itself… I had an exit strategy everywhere I went that week, eyeing every dark corner or wastebasket as a potential place to empty my stomach should the need arise…. luckily, I survived and never became ill, but that was a hard week.  I know what the people in Final Destination must feel like now.

GOOD: I resigned my position in the corporate world and have decided to follow my longtime dream of becoming a full-time photographer.  This decision has been a long time coming (and several years’ worth of preparation), and it’s gratifying (and terrifying) to finally yank that plug.  What’s more gratifying is that when I told friends about it, I was not met with shock or alarm or friends worrying about my ability to feed myself…. instead, I heard whoops of joy and many variations on “it’s about time!”  Yay for friends that believe in you!  I haven’t really had a lot of time to consider this move yet because of the wedding and everything else — but saying goodbye to my coworkers was surprisingly difficult, and as I left the office for the very last time… I had a moment of fear and self-doubt so strong that I considered going back and telling everyone I had made a terrible mistake in quitting.  Lots of people say that they wish they didn’t have to work or could be their own boss, but when the time comes to leave the safety of a regular paycheck……. well, I was not prepared for how afraid I would actually feel when the moment came.  I liken the situation to leaving a (very rich) boyfriend who doesn’t make you happy and isn’t right for you… yet you stay with him for all the wrong reasons.  Wow, I am so deep.

BAD: I had not even reveled in my freedom for 24 hours yet when we found out that my little beagle Maddy had cancer and needed immediate surgery

Here she is several hours after surgery, with a shaved armpit (she’s a lady after all) and hate-filled zombie eyes.  Just kidding, she’s just groggy and grumpy in this picture, but who can blame her.  You can see the gaggle of pills that I’m trying to sort through here.. as if making the dog recover from being cut open isn’t enough, we also had to shove handfuls of pills down her throat for a week after.  And then we had to put this terrible little t-shirt on her (ok it was adorable, not terrible) to keep her from suicidally ripping her own stitches out — Doug chose a shirt that said “Mommy’s Favorite”.  But all it did was teach my baby Maddy how to unclothe herself more efficiently.  That little slut

But the surgery was a good thing in the long run, she’ll be with us for several more years yet, and since recovering from the surgery she’s perked up quite a bit — she probably wasn’t feeling well for a while and didn’t know how to tell us.

Side note.  Did you know that the backrest pillow thingy in the picture is called a Husband?  Doug told me this; I had no idea.  WHY IS IT CALLED THAT??  What is husbandy about it?  I guess.. maybe it sits around and does nothing?  I don’t know if the inventors were that funny though.  My husband is black, by the way.

GOOD: Soooooo Obama responded to our wedding invitation!  In classic politician style, he neither accepted nor declined, but wrote a loving note (by hand, I’m certain of it) wishing us a happy marriage and so on and so forth.  I think he might have cried a little too, I detected some wrinkly spots on the note that are surely teardrops.  Anyway, he didn’t say he wasn’t coming, so maybe we’ll see him there after all.  I AM right next door.. he could just pop over and have a beer or something.  I should have mentioned beer in my invitation hmmm.

All joking aside, this envelope *was* actually hand-addressed.  Which means it’s somebody’s job somewhere, to address these silly envelopes all day long, every day.  I wonder how much money they make….

Ok, I’ve skipped over a whole bunch of stuff but there’s no more time to blog… I have things to do today!  I’m getting married!!  I’m going Greene baby

jeff & beth

Ahhh…. we are one week away from our wedding day and so so much has happened in the last month, both good and bad.  I will find the time this week for a full and proper post!  But before too much time passed, I did want to send a big public hug to the new Stricker family.  Jeff and Beth got engaged several weeks before us and just last week had themselves a gorgeous wedding in historic Williamsburg.  Here we are with them — not quite two married couples yet… I’m still considering making a run for it.

They love to play games (board games?  mind games?  both?) so the theme was everything-games!  Guests played wedding madlibs and taboo and pictionary instead of signing a traditional guestbook, and the placecards and centerpieces were cleverly made with Jenga sets.  A set of enormous king and queen chess pieces adorned the wedding cake — although perhaps a queen and a pawn would have been a funny twist haha.  Regretfully, I did not take many pictures as I had injured my back and my feet shooting a wedding the week before and I just didn’t have any hustle left in me, but I’m certain their photographers did a bangup job.  My injuries did not stop me from performing a detailed examination of Beth’s GORGEOUS wedding dress though…. so pretty!

And Jeff very cleverly built his own photobooth set, which of course drew me like a fly to a honeypot.  His pictures have not been posted anywhere yet (perhaps thankfully), but this snap was taken at some point in the evening… Doug would have smiled for the camera but he was busy battling a mustached pirate in defense of my honor.  It was a very serious matter.

Congratulations Jeff and Beth!  We wish you a long and happy life together (and many many fat and smushy babies for me to play with!!!)

engagement pics

Hooray!  We received some pics back from our photographers for the engagement shoot.  God bless them, they found a way to make me not look like an alien  Please visit their blog and see their full blog post of our session here.  Thank you for a fun afternoon, Michele and Andy!  We’re looking forward to seeing you again on our wedding day, and making some great images!  No aliens allowed!

engagement weekend!

Less than 60 days away now, and I finally feel like it’s real.  We’re getting married!

This weekend, Doug’s family friends threw us a wonderful engagement party, and I found myself in a house filled with warm-hearted people who have watched Doug grow up and have known his quirks since he was a young silly boy.  Everyone was excited for the wedding celebration, but it was especially moving to hear everyone’s heartfelt (and sometimes learned-the-hard-way) advice for the days ahead of us after the wedding is over… the highs and lows of marriage, the need to stay together but still grow separately, and the reminders that we are surrounded by layers upon layers of people that love us and won’t let us fail.  It’s a funny thing — when I was growing up, my parents always told me that marriage is hard work.  Of course I was a ninny-headed dreamer and never believed them (you get married because you’re in love, right???)  But now that I’m a little older and have seen more of life, I think it’s pretty near miraculous when a couple can stay happily married for 20-30-40+ years.  I think Doug and I are really blessed to have so many great people in our lives that will be there for us when the tough times come, and I think I’m pretty blessed that on the good days, Doug’s the one that I get to spend them with  *cheeeeeeeeeeese*

Thank you to Anne and Ray, and Katie and Skeet, for our lovely engagement party.  How did you know exactly what my heart needed to prepare for marriage?  (PS I have a tendency to cry a lot, so cut it out )

We also headed to Chicago this weekend for our engagement photos with Misha Media Photography — I can’t wait to see the results, but I’m kind of afraid too.  The photographers, Michele and Andy, were exasperated with our (unintentionally) funny faces and variety of expressions that were apparently anything but loving.  They kept fruitlessly instructing “look loving!  look like YOU’RE IN LOVE!!!  AHHHHHH!!!!”, to which we’d look at each other and burst into laughter.  This should be interesting.  Michele and Andy, sorry we have weird faces!  Be kind to us please…!

Despite spending two full days in Chicago, I have zero pictures to show for it except for these, taken with my phone as we sat on the tarmac in Chicago.  See what our poor photographers had to work with?

Lastly for our engagement weekend, we mailed out the wedding invitations!  I’ve been cautioned against posting too many of the wedding details on our blog or facebook to avoid visits from wedding crashers (do people really do that?), so I can’t post pictures of our invitations until after it’s all over…. but this seems safe enough to post.  We invited a few high profile guests, one of which is right next door!  Think he’ll come?

We also invited the Pope and the Queen.  They don’t have anything important to do, right?