Hurry Up and Wait

After realizing how much we still had to do for this wedding, Kevin and I sent out a flurry of emails to a wide variety of vendors so we could start nailing things down. That this happened to coincide with a major deadline at work did not do good things for my stress levels. But now we're in that frustrating place where all we can do is wait for people to get back to us. Which makes it hard to see the progress we're actually making. So I'm recording it here to make myself feel better.

Rehearsal Dinner. Kevin called a bunch of possible venues. Some were already booked, some couldn't accommodate our (admittedly large) party. Why do we both have such big families? At any rate, we narrowed it down to two possibilities and went to explore on Friday night with Kevin's mom. We got drinks at one and dinner at the other, and we have hopefully made a decision. But there are a bunch of details to iron out, along with payments to be made and contracts to be signed, before I can say anything more than that.

Flowers. We have feelers out to a couple of florists. One email bounced back to me, which was rather disappointing. The florist came highly recommended, but without a working email address I don't feel comfortable using them. We have one appointment scheduled for next Saturday and are waiting to hear back from another place. Hopefully we'll have a better picture of what's happening after that.

Cake. Much to my surprise, Kevin has decided that he wants to be in on this decision. Even though we are definitely getting a chocolate cake and he hates chocolate. So my plans to drag my Doctor of Honor, Sarah, along on a girl's day full of cake eating have been scrapped in favor of trying to squeeze in a tasting or two between everything else. Luckily, the place I contacted said we don't need to schedule anything until January. So I made an appointment, and I'm officially not thinking about this until next year.

DJ. Honestly, this was the easiest thing to scrap. It turns out I care way too much about the music to let someone else pick it. (Much to my horror, I'm mimicking my step-mom's behavior here from when she married my dad.) Plus this is an easy way to save money and (for now) sanity. Check back with me in the Spring when we're frantically trying to pull together a playlist, and you can laugh and say "I told you so" to your heart's content. But I've been to a few weddings that used iPods instead of professional DJs and I couldn't really tell the difference (except that the iPods tend to let the entire song play, I hate that mixing/fading thing DJs always do that cuts off the end of a song), so we're going to cross our fingers that this works out. It sounds like a perfect problem for future Caitlin and future Kevin to deal with.

Invitations. Um, well, I've looked at these. I think we have an idea of the design and all that. But we need to figure out what they're going to say and actually order them. I believe the plan is to send them out in early January. That means we probably need them by Christmas. Also, there is a surprising amount of work that goes into these, not to mention all the different pieces. At least this can be done during the week.

Honeymoon. Kevin's mom recommended a travel agent who we've been in contact with. Plans are becoming more solid, but they're still pretty up in the air. We probably ought to buy tickets soonish, though.

I believe that's everything we have to worry about now. There are a few things, mostly gifts, that are on the horizon, but can probably be put off until after Thanksgiving at least. I'll feel a lot better when we can check some of these off our list.

SHIELD: The Girl in the Flower Dress

Every now and then work explodes and makes it difficult for me to watch (and then write about) tv. So I was late getting to this episode and even later to write anything about it. Frankly I was just too tired last week to really engage with this show.

Surprisingly, that made the show rather more enjoyable. Or maybe not surprisingly. Maybe the word I'm looking for is disappointingly. I want this to be a show that makes me think and that sparks interesting conversations. But it remains a collection of really cool action sequences strung together by a bunch of witty one-liners. And there's nothing exactly wrong with that. It's certainly a show that I will continue watching until it gets canceled. Or at least until the end of the season. I just wanted and, perhaps foolishly, expected more.

Then again, we're still only five episodes in. There's still time for it to be great.

In the meantime we're circling around to yet another shadowy organization. That puts the count at four, which is a lot to be juggling. Unless there's some nefarious connection between everything, which seems both likely and easy.

At least Skye has a more interesting motivation now that doesn't force her to constantly be a double-agent. Her loyalties are more clear now, and they're mostly to herself. She isn't in direct opposition with her team, though.

Here's hoping this show gets better. Or at least gives me more to talk about

Revisiting the Venue

Over the weekend Kevin and I had a second meeting with the wedding venue to make sure everything's on track. We're a little behind where we should be, but I actually feel a lot better about this whole thing than I had been. It probably didn't help that I had my first wedding-based nightmare this week, in which our photographer refused to take pictures because it was raining and we had to share a ballroom with two other groups. It was basically a worst case scenario, which means there's no way things could possibly go that bad.

Anyway, we were able to meet with the actual wedding coordinator and get some definitive answers to our questions, previously we had met with the head of catering who didn't seem to have a clear idea of the big picture. The biggest takeaways are that the rooms aren't as small as we feared they would be, though they are smaller than typical hotel rooms. More exciting it that we get to offer our guests a choice of four different dinner options. I'm really excited for the tasting, which should happen in January.

The next big things we need to focus on are flowers and cake. So be prepared to hear about those adventures. We also need to order invitations, and send those out within the next few months. This thing feels like it's getting close! I think we're on top of everything though. Or at least we will be soon.

Fancy Dinner Party

Kevin and I had been wanting to cook a leg of lamb for a while. This isn't the sort of thing you can really just pick up and cook for two people. It's a lot of food. So we decided to have a dinner party. And when Sarah got her doctorate on her husband's birthday shortly before a college friend came to visit, well it was the perfect confluence of events to warrant a fancy dinner party. Not that we really needed a reason beyond wanting to eat lamb, but it's always nice to have something to celebrate.

I remained impressively calm throughout the experience. Kevin may disagree with this statement, but anything he calls stressing, I call planning. I mean, you need to figure out the menu and buy all the food and make sure everything's cooked on time. Figuring out the details is a necessary step.

We settled on a menu that was pretty easy to time. Soup and dessert were made early in the day. The potatoes were cooked in the toaster over. Roasted asparagus can be completed in the time it takes to carve the lamb. And if my scalloped potatoes were a little undercooked, Kevin's roasted potatoes were perfect.

 

We even remembered to put all the food on the table. Everything was delicious, although we drank entirely too much wine. I'm struggling right now between wanting to just buy kitchen things (particularly a larger variety of bakeware) and holding off until after the wedding.

At any rate, dinner was a wild success. We're getting better at hosting large dinners, which means I'm feeling almost no stress about Thanksgiving. Except for the part where I actually don't think we have enough plates for everyone we've invited. But we'll make do. In the meantime it turns out that good friends and food and wine is all you really need for an awesome evening. Even if it does result in a somewhat less than awesome morning/early afternoon.

SHIELD: Eye Spy

SHIELD just keeps getting better, which is definitely a good sign. Elements of serialization are starting to leak in, and I'm sure they'll become important soon. The dialogue is getting better, and, in my opinion, the actors are getting better at delivering it. Unlike many others, I have no issues with Chloe Bennet. I think she's doing a pretty good job in this role, and she usually gets the most laughs out of me. Of course, she reminds me of no one so much as Eliza Dushku, and I always had more of a soft spot for Dushku than many others. Maybe I'm just more forgiving or more in tune with their acting choices or something.

This episode opened with a scene that was familiar to me. A bunch of people, dressed identically and wearing red masks and carrying briefcases all enter a subway station and board a train. This happened to a train I was on in London, except that they were wearing Guy Fawkes masks. It had the same sort of surreal feeling that this scene evokes. Of course, the people on my train were merely protesting the Church of Scientology not carrying diamonds. And there was no blackout during which they were all killed. So maybe not so similar.

The story of Akela unfolds really nicely, and I liked the mystery that surrounded her. Both exactly what her powers were (I was going with telekinesis while Kevin guessed super-hearing) and what her goal was. That she was ultimately a pawn who Coulson was able to set free was a really nice resolution.

Of course we now have another shadowy organization when what I really want is to learn more about Rising Tide. I don't think these two are connected, since they have polar opposite mission statements. Then again, you never know. At any rate, the previews for next week promise that we'll get back to Skye's divided loyalties soon.

All of the relationships on this show are also coming along nicely, and that's where Whedon shows always ultimately shine. We have Coulson mentoring Skye, Skye starting to establish herself as a partner for Ward, Mae's respect for Coulson while she's also willing to disobey him, and the sibling-like closeness of FitzSimmons. There's a lot to play with here, and I'm looking forward to seeing everyone grow over the course of the season.

There were also a lot of cute little moments, which are really what make the show for me. Chloe not knowing the difference between the safety release and the magazine release was great, as was her meek "bang" right before Akela knocked their van over. Simmons needing to pee and Ward recommending the water bottle. And, of course, Akela wondering what happened to Coulson. I maintain that we should take the phrase "Tahiti is a magical place" at face value, but I'll be interested to learn the specifics of Coulson's resurrection.

SHIELD: The Asset

As we get farther from the pilot, we're starting to get into the meat of what this show is capable of without the scaffolding of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And so far the results are promising. This was easy my favorite episode of the show so far.

The reasons for that are, I think, two-fold. The characters are starting to get more fleshed-out, which was bound to happen over time. I have reasons to care about Agent Ward now, and I can see the common ground he might share with Skye. Skye's conflict is becoming better-defined (though it seems to boil down to which bad guys are the worst in any given situation). We still haven't learned much about Agent May's past, but since Ming-Na Wen may be the best actor on the show we don't really need to in order to care about her character. The fact the she's changed her mind about going into combat has me hopeful that we'll get her backstory soon. (Please, don't pull a Shepherd Book on us...)

I also like that the show seems to be getting more confidence. The advertising is absolutely abysmal (I cringe every time I hear a radio ad), but the plots are coming along. I liked that this one toyed with the idea of a super-villain who wasn't entirely evil. He did some bad things, but he also made some points that Skye agreed with. The titular asset is the one who's on the path to becoming a super-villain, trapped in the gravitonium and locked in an unmarked vault. If he's not just ignored for the rest of the show's run (which, given Whedon's track record he probably will be) he could pop up as a really great bad guy in a future episode.

There isn't a ton to say about this episode. It was fun. The banter between the characters is improving. Coulson's immediate past remains a mystery, and probably will until the season finale. At the end of the day, the show is entertaining and holds my attention. That's enough for now.

Reorganizing the Library

As Kevin pointed out on our wedding website, I reorganize my library a couple of times a year. This is mostly because I accumulate books constantly and occasionally need to move everything around so it all makes sense again. And sometimes I need to get a new bookcase, which is what happened this weekend.

I try to wait to get new bookcases until I can mostly fill them. Empty bookcases are just too tempting for me. I have to fill that space as quickly as I can, which results in me buying far too many books to quickly. This time I waited too long. Even with a fourth bookcase, my library is overflowing. Just barely - I found space for all my books except one. But I certainly didn't expect to fill it that quickly.

I am pretty proud of the organization, though. There a few oddballs, but almost everything makes sense. So I'm sharing it with you. Because this is my blog, and what I say goes.

Here's the first bookcase:

This is essentially the children's bookcase. It has a bunch of my books for kids, along with tons of books that Kevin's mom recently took out of storage. That sudden influx is why I filled up a whole bookshelf so quickly.

Starting at the top we have children's poems, fairy tale anthologies, and mythology

The next shelf has Shakspeare, Nancy Drew, old scout handbooks, and comics

Then we get to one of my favorite shelves. I know there are a lot of duplicates here, but I don't really care. I love that this section takes up an entire shelf. We have Laura, Jo, Anne, and Alice giving way to Jane Austen and Margaret Atwood. Literature by and about women for all ages!

The next shelf is lots of little kids books. A lot of them are falling apart, but this is where you'll find Dr Seuss and Winnie the Pooh. Again, there are actually a lot of duplicates here, including three copies of The Little Prince.

The last shelf is the "Grab in case of fire" shelf. I grew up in Colorado, and the fire seasons there taught me that I need to know what I would take if I needed to evacuate quickly. The answer is this shelf. It's closest to the door, and it has all of our yearbooks and photo albums.

The second bookcase is off in the corner, so it gets a lot of random things and books I'm slightly less excited about. It's sort of the catch-all case

The top shelf has my grandfather's books, Kevin's dad's Garrison Keillor collection, and miscellaneous literature that didn't fit anywhere else or warrant its own shelf.

The second shelf is "Crime, Autobiographies, and Memoirs". Okay, those don't really go together, but the number of books makes it work.

Then we get to sexuality, psychology, and history of science. Feynman probably belongs up with the biographies, but I like him on this shelf. Also, he fits better here. On the far left are the playbills of all the plays, musicals, and ballets I've seen.

Next comes history and historical fiction. Also books I had to read for school. It's sort of a theme.

Finally we get to Kevin's college textbooks.

The third and largest book case is basically science fiction and fantasy. I have a lot of that.

First comes science fiction. Plus a little bit of leftover historical fiction, mostly because Mary Doria Russell writes in both of those genres, and I didn't want to split up her books.

Then we come to the first of many fantasy shelves. If I had to grade it, I'd probably give this shelf a B. I liked these books, but they aren't among my favorites. We'll get to those later. This shelf has A Song of Ice and Fire, The Lord of the Rings, and anything pertaining to King Arthur.

Then we come to children's and young adult fantasy. Here you'll find Narnia, Tortall, Earthsea, and Oz.

Then we get to the "C" shelf. I like these books fine, but they all have their problems, too. Or they didn't fit anywhere else (that's a common theme). The bulk of this shelf is The Dresden Files, which I do intend to finish, and Sword of Truth, which I gave up on years ago but can't quite bring myself to get rid of.

The bottom shelf is my college textbooks. It's really similar to Kevin's college textbooks because we took so many classes together. I held on to a few more than he did, though.

Finally we get to the favorites bookcase. This is the one that probably sums me and my interests up the best.

The top shelf is Neil Gaiman with bonus Patrick Rothfuss. It's a good thing Rothfuss isn't too prolific yet. He can still fit here.

Then we have the Discworld shelf, which is something every good fantasy fan ought to have. There was a time when Gaiman and Pratchett shared a shelf, and I thought it was impressive that I could fill an entire shelf with only two authors. Of course, that was back in my first apartment when I only had one bookcase. I've come so far since then.

Here we have Discworld overflow, because there's a lot of those books. They get to share space with my horribly mismatched Harry Potter collection.

Then we arrive at the true display of my geekiness: The Whedon shelf. This has everything pertaining to Buffy, Angel, and Firefly. It also has my Middleman comic book, because it seemed to fit here. Also Of Human Bondage, which makes sense if you've seen the fourth season of Buffy. And if you're as obsessed as I am.

Finally there's the vampire shelf, with bonus zombies. Yes, Twilight made it onto my favorites bookcase. Don't judge me.

Then there's this small and completely random bookcase, which does double duty as a cat bed.

The top shelf has my "stack" of books to read. I'm actually impressed that it's not completely full at the moment.

Then there's all this random crap. I barely even know why I own any of these books. But there they are.

And that's my library! None of you are half as excited about this as I am, so I'm impressed if you made it all the way down here. Have a gold star. I'm just going to sit here and delight in everything having a place, because that's not going to last very long.

The Case of the Missing Bridal Boutique

Last weekend my mom flew out from Colorado for the official Wedding Dress Shopping Trip. I'd made appointments at a small bridal boutique that had gotten great reviews and at the local Macy's. I'd also attempted to make an appointment at Nordstrom, but that basically fell apart. It all worked out in the end, though. Which is to say I found and bought a dress. After a bit of an adventure, that is.

The boutique I'd made an appointment at was a place called Vivian's. It had a bunch of great reviews online, most of which emphasized how cheap the dresses were. Cheap as in price, not quality. Everyone seemed impressed with the dresses they had been able to find. So I was excited to check it out and see what they had.

We left twice as early as we needed to, because I like to schedule time to get lost. I had the address of the place and figured it would be easy enough to find. I wasn't expecting to find myself in an office park on a Saturday morning.

We went inside the building, but we didn't see the name of the company on the directory. I called and left a voice mail asking if I had the right place. Then we went upstairs to see if we could find the suite.

We couldn't. As far as we could tell the place didn't exist. None of the doors had either the suite number or the boutique's name on the door. Kevin's mom eventually asked someone, who said there was, indeed, a bridal boutique on that floor.

I tried calling the number a few more times, but it always went straight to voice mail. After we'd waited for almost half an hour we decided to cut our losses and head to the mall. I emailed the person I'd been in touch with to find out what happened, but I have yet to hear back from her. I'm not sure we'll ever know, but I'm sticking with my theory that she had to flee the country in the middle of the night.

We wandered around looking at formal dresses in Bloomingdale's and Nordstrom and got lunch before heading to Macy's. Where I bought the second dress I tried on. So at least I can call the day a success, as strange as it was.

Soup 3: Curried Carrot-Squash

The last couple of soups have been pretty easy, so this week I'm graduating to a purée. The ingredient list is pretty simple and somewhat healthier than the tomato soup I made.

Look at all those vegetables

First you need to chop up all the veggies.

Veggies: sliced and diced

Now heat up some olive oil and a bunch of garlic

The recipe called for five cloves, but recipes always underestimate the amount of garlic you actually need. I used six cloves.

Then toss in the onions and carrots. Cook for a few minutes until the carrots are tender and sprinkle in some salt.

Then add the squash and some more salt.

That's a big pot of veggies!

Let that cook for a few minutes while you measure out the curry and wine. These two ingredients are the whole reason I chose this recipe.

I think I may use a bit more curry than that next time. Just a bit.

Then pour yourself a glass of wine for good measure.

The best part of cooking, really.

Now stir in the curry

It smells so good!

Then add the wine and a box (48 oz) of chicken broth

And now it looks like soup!

Mmmm. Now cover the pot and let everything simmer for an hour. While your kitchen smells progressively better and better.

An hour later, it's time to puree the soup. Once again, I took a bunch of pictures of this process, but my blogger app seems to have eaten them. Next time I'll have to triple check that that things syncs once I've finished my draft.

Pureeing the soup was quite an experience. We ladled it into a blender, then poured it into a separate bowl. It took three batches to do everything, and we made quite a mess. I'm glad Kevin was there to help out. I'll definitely be sticking an immersion blender on the wedding registry.

We served the soup with a fish that I took a cool picture of, but that has since disappeared. Stupid iPad.

Next week we're hosting a fancy dinner party, and I'm considering making a batch of this for everyone. It's actually both vegetarian and paleo-friendly, which is a rarity among the things I cook. We'll see how ambitious I'm feeling.

SHIELD: 0-8-4

 It's hard to talk about a show this new. Things aren't quite where I want them to be yet, but they're moving in the right direction. You need to be patient with new shows, especially new Whedon shows, while they find their footing. You also need to be patient while everyone else gains confidence and backs off so the people in charge of the show have some room to try new things.

So what we have is a second pilot, with a touch more character development, a ton of action scenes, and a reference to nearly every movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Did you know that Stark is officially a S.H.I.E.L.D. consultant, not an agent? Or that the last 0-8-4 was Thor's Hammer? Or that Hydra used Tesseract technology and Gamma Radiation to make weapons of mass destruction? Fury even made an appearance in this episode!

Eventually we'll movie away from the movies as SHIELD learns to stand on its own legs. For now they're doing their best to remind everyone why they started watching this show in the first place.

But on to the characters, because that's what I'm here for. At least, it's what I should be here for.

I know it isn't the popular opinion, but Simmons continues to grow on me. I like that she and Fitz are starting to get some definition. They're beginning to become individuals instead of a single character split in two. So far, Simmons is far more gung-ho about being in the field. She's the one who dragged Fitz out of his comfort zone so they could go in the field. And she's the one teasing him about snakes and Dengue fever.

Ward remains my least favorite of the group. The actor can't quite pull off some of the dialogue, but I hope he gets better with time. For now he's basically Riley 2.0, the new and not-improved version. (Or maybe he's Riley 2.5, since Ballard was Riley 2.0? I don't know.) If he was just a little less serious, he'd work so much better. There are hints of it, like in his scene with May at the end. Actually, both of his scenes with May. I really like the two of them on screen together, so here's hoping they build on that relationship.

Ward and Skye on the other hand. I don't really know what to make of them, because their conflict did not go where I thought it would go. Instead of an argument about the good S.H.I.E.L.D. does versus the people it steps on, we got an individual vs team conflict. Maybe the other conflict is just being saved for later, though, when Skye's double-agent status is revealed.

Speaking of which, Coulson knows, right? He has to know. He's not that stupid. I can't figure out if he genuinely wants her on his team or if he's just using her to find Rising Tide, but there's no way he thinks it's this easy to get her on their side.

Lipstick

If you know me, you know I don't wear makeup. I had a whole blog post about my inability to even buy makeup a couple of years ago. I actively resisted it in high school, and now it seems like way too much of a hassle to wake up early and paint my face every day. Especially because I like my face the way it is.

But back when I was twelve, I fell in love with a lipstick. I was officially too young for lipstick, I think. I wasn't supposed to be wearing it to school or anything. I did, however, get to wear makeup once a year during my dance recitals. And I chose to wear this lipstick as often as they would let me.

The lipstick in question was Revlon's Sandstorm. I first discovered it in a magazine ad. The kind where they give you a sample just big enough for a single wear. I put it on immediately and bought a tube as soon as I could. I had it for years. Every time I wore it, I got tons of compliments. If I put on this lipstick and nothing else, people still reacted as though I had made up my entire face. It was basically this effect:

Even though the lipstick wasn't red, I had found my "red lipstick".

By the time I finished my first tube, the color had been discontinued. I guess that sort of thing happens a lot. At that point I didn't have the energy to devote to finding another perfect lipstick, so I let it go. I tried my hardest not to look back, and eventually I almost forgot about those few blissful years when the simple application of lip color could change my entire day.

So why bring it up now? Well thanks to the magic of the internet, I just found out that Revlon has decided to re-release this exact shade of lipstick next year. It's like they know that I'm getting married soon, and they're firmly on the side of me having perfect makeup at my wedding.

I didn't even realize it was still possible for me to get this excited over makeup. Nor did I think the day would ever come that I would happily fork over $15 for a tube of lipstick. But here we are. I guess I don't completely fail at this woman thing after all.