Taking pictures of Lily! Duh.
Category Archives: nonsense
week in review
A lot of semi-interesting things happened this week. Rather than writing about one particular thing and trying to make it sound way more interesting than it actually is, I figured about I’d document the highlights. Here’s the best of the last seven.
1. I really like having patio chairs. While grill-shopping at the Home Depot on Saturday, we found these great, unfinished pine Adirondack chairs at a delightful $30 a pop. We stained them to match the over-priced wood Ikea bench and table, and finally, the patio looks worthy of outdoor entertaining. The strange thing, is that I haven’t really sat in them—I’m so used to not having chairs. I’m hoping that part comes with time. Aesthetically, however, I’m pleased.
2. White Italian Truffle cheese is life-changing. We bought some last night to snack on while watching The Machinist, and it was hands-down, the best cheese I’ve ever had. Cheese is great, and truffles are great, but cheese with truffles is a reason to live.
3. Change is difficult. Primarily because the unknown is a little frightening. I haven’t known very many people in my life that can make a decision without thinking twice. This is a huge comfort to me. Contemplating and fearing change, is totally normal. I’m totally normal.
4. Two cool women are moving to Portland this summer. One, I met in college, and am looking forward to reconnecting with, and the other is a friend of grad school buddy, Jason, who I’m very excited to meet. It’s official: I need more estrogen in my life.
5. I hate my sofa.I want a new one.
6. I complained a lot about traveling when I was averaging about 4,000 miles a month. Now, I’m a bit restless, owing . Looking forward to starting it back up with Key West at the end of July.
7. I should really start writing a novel.
8. I almost accidentally killed a human being yesterday on my home from yoga. Literally, I was going through an intersection in my car (with a green light, completely within my legal rights), when a man in a helmet on a bicycle started riding out into the crosswalk. I laid on my horn, and when he was obviously not going to stop, I slammed on my brakes and prayed. I had to swerve into oncoming traffic as he tapped my front bumper with his front tire. I wanted to get out of the car and push him over, but instead, I drove my car out of the opposite lane and continued on. I saw him waving at me in the rear view mirror.
9. I have very little interest in television now. I can’t get myself to sit through an entire episode of The Bachelorette. I taking this to mean that I’m not as vapid as I used to be.
10. I should learn how to code. It’s a programmer’s world.
on wedding websites
I have mixed emotions about the function of wedding websites. I like the convenience, the greenness, and the accessibility of the idea, but can’t quite put my finger on the actual purpose. I’ve seen quite a few of them. I don’t get it.
It’s fun, I think, for the people getting married, to write about themselves and how they met and the proposal, and bore potential guests with redundant details about dress code and parking that were (hopefully) already included on an insert with the paper invitation. And I think for obligatory guests, like removed cousins and friends of parents, a little background info on the betrothed of the sort-of relative can be useful, like for instance, if they were to find themselves standing next to each other in line at the (hopefully) open bar, or dancing with one another during one of those weird DJ-enforced group dances that usually occur sometime between cake-cutting and the closing of the bar. But are these people really the target audience for most of these flash in the pan URLs? Are these people—the free-food-and-booze gang—really going to take the time to visit a wedding website?
To what? Read about how funny it was that you both sat next to each other in a sophomore year geology seminar for almost a whole semester and never talked until the final exam when he forgot his pencil and you had to lend him one and then you both knew it was love at first sight? To read the names of your bridesmaids who they will probably never be able to actually identify by name or relation in any of the photos they might take (i.e., Sally Johnson, bride’s roommate first semester of sophomore year at community college)? To look at a few professionally posed photos of the soon-to-be-wed, very naturally frolicking in a field or holding hands and gazing into each others’ eyes in front of their Alma mater’s back-lit stadium? Probably not.
But for everyone else, who might actually take the time to reread this dress-code-parking-wedding party information, isn’t it a little like playing to the choir? I love my closest friends. I will visit their wedding websites, and more frequently, if I’m standing up at their wedding, as I very much like seeing my name on the Internet. I might pick up a useful detail or two, like that the groom’s parents are divorced (hence the names of eight parents listed), and that the maid of honor, while her name might be Erica, prefers the spelling ”Aeryceia.”
I’ve also looked at strangers’ wedding websites (those which are left wide open to the searching public, who might, just for kicks, Google Jessica & Eric’s Wedding, just for fun), if only to build a case against the whole practice, which I will base on this premise (aside from the pointless temporal nature of it all ): will you, creator of the wedding website, remember your theknot.com password in two or four or nine years, so that you might delete all evidence of your delusion in the event that you’re going through a divorce at this unfortunate point in time? Will you allow reminders of your past failed relationship be slathered all across the interwebs, so that a simple search of your own name in future years might reveal, based on an innocent algorithm, all of your bad luck in love?
The Internet is forever, right? And besides, I hate flaccid URLs. Unless it’s a Space Jam website.
So I offer a solution. Make it worth the time. Make your wedding website a destination. Here’s my list of the top ten things people really, actually want to know (because no one actually cares that he asked you out in an elevator):
1. Do one, or both of you, have full-time employment?
2. Did either of you sleep with/date the other’s best friend at any point in your history of knowing one another?
3. Do you know the net worth of the other’s father/mother/other significant relative?
4. Do you have any children from a previous relationship?
5. What was your first fight about? Namely, was it about him/her looking at a person of the opposite sex?
6. Have either of you been incarcerated for any length of time?
7. Are one or both of you under the age of 25?
8. Did you (the bride, presumably), hesitate, even in the slightest, when he asked you to marry him?
9. If you’re under the age of 25: Did you hesitate when he asked you to marry him?
10. Name the thing that’s most important to you on your wedding day. If you say any of the following, you’re going to be divorced: 1) that it doesn’t rain, 2) dress, 3) food, 4) that your guests have a good time.
