the hours they go in front of me

Summer is just flying by. HTB and I are having a housewarming/engagement party on Friday and are busy getting the place ready. We bought a cute chair (on clearance!) and are busy keeping Willow's claws away from it. This weekend is jazz festival time and two friends have birthdays, then the 4th, and then my birthday, then a trip to Minnesota to see Body Worlds, and plenty of other things on top of that.

I'm still obsessively researching wedding locations and addicted to the Knot boards, but trying to cut back and will try to keep wedding spew from overtaking the blog. But aren't some of these villas gorgeous?

Had the first of what I'm sure will be many wedding meltdowns yesterday. Got that over with, at least. It wasn't even directly related to the wedding, but just that for the 3rd time in the space of a week, I felt let down by someone important, each time a different person. I hate feeling disappointed in people and I have a habit of turning the spotlight on myself and wondering if I'm justified in being disappointed or if I'm just holding people to an unfair standard. I am lucky that HTB always knows how to make me feel better and I trust in his ability to be the voice of reason if I am being unreasonable.

Still haven't been in all that much of a mood to write. A little bit of the summer doldrums, I guess, but I know it'll pass.

aruba, jamaica, ooh i wanna take ya

It's been a rough day. I sit in my air conditioned office poring over the Knot destination wedding board and Fodor's boards and look at hotel websites and then break up the monotony by walking downtown and shopping and collecting cash I've made from a consignment boutique and then picking up an iced raspberry mocha and brownie from the bakery across the street. Being lazy is good.

The prof I TA'ed for this past semester cracked me up by showing me some evals he got of the other TA, who is quite a good looking guy. "B is a dreamboat!" "I feel in love with B." Lol. I didn't know young people today still used the word "dreamboat".

I might have spoken too soon about Puerto Rico. We met with another travel agent yesterday and she's strongly voting for the Virgin Islands - St. Thomas for the wedding and St. John for the honeymoon. We had thought about getting married in San Juan and then going elsewhere to honeymoon, maybe Grenada, perhaps including a stop in Vieques first because I really wanted to experience the biobay because how effin' cool would that be?

But the TA pointed out that island to island flights would be super expensive. She also said San Juan is the Las Vegas of the Caribbean and maybe not what we're looking for. Originally HTB and I thought we wanted someplace adventurous, with lots of local color and culture and things to do. We didn't want to spend all our time holed up in a resort. But on second thought, we think someplace beautiful and mellow with nice accommodations is more important than someplace adventurous. St. John isn't going to be as suffused with West Indies/stereotypical Caribbean culture, but it is supposed to be quiet and gorgeous.

We do want two different locations for wedding and honeymoon because we want a tourist friendly location to suit our guests (easy to get to, lots of places to stay, lots of amenities and activities) but want to get away from the tourist hordes afterwards.

It's a little frustrating to think that our options are now wide open again, because we could consider any island if we don't do PR and let me tell you, I am so tired of reading about all the different islands. There are gorgeous pictures of every location and every tropical paradise is starting to look the same.

I know, I know, cry me a river as I ponder this gazebo

versus this gazebo.
But I just want to know where we're getting married!

no dum dum dee dum for me

Had to put music on to get "We Used to Be Friends" out of my head, where it was still stuck from last night's watching of Veronica Mars. Happens every time.

Current song: "I wanna know girls" by Portastatic.

Got the hell outta Dodge with Husband to Be this past weekend, driving to his hometown to go to a wedding. Always enjoy spending time with HTB's parents. Time with them and time spent looking through HTB's childhood things and high school yearbooks help me to understand him even better.

The wedding was nice, in a very traditional sort of way. I had bet HTB beforehand that the bride would wear a strapless ballgown. Not that she didn't look lovely, she did, but seriously, why does almost every single bride in America wear the same thing?

My eyes may have gotten a leetle wet during the ceremony. HTB held my hand and smiled at me and we both thought about when it would be us up there.

We had to wait an hour and a half for the happy couple to make their grand entrance into the reception. That's too long, people. Standard wedding food. As HTB pointed out, the lunch his parents made us (grilled chipotle and peach glazed chicken, roasted sweet potatoes and onions) was much tastier. Granted, there were around 150 guests and it's going to be far easier to have yummy food for a much smaller group. Standard playlist, with a scarcity of slow dance songs, dammit. HTB and I are gonna do things differently.

After the reception we drove up to a quiet spot and watched the sunset spilling down over a field of horses, with fireflies glowing like mad among the grass. It was lovely. Ended the evening comfortably ensconced on the couch watching TV on his parents' ginormous flat screen. I want one.

Every wedding I go to just confirms that traditional weddings are not the way we want to go. Current destination - Puerto Rico, baby! Whee!

we'll meet beyond the shore, we'll kiss just as before

The skirt is long and made of silk and falls around my ankles like water. It starts out sky blue and gradually becomes indigo. I wore it yesterday and listened to Hawaiian music on my iPod and smiled, thinking of the last time I had worn it. It was on our last day in Hawaii, the day Husband to Be proposed. The last thing we did before going to the airport was watch kite surfers, sitting on a beach next to water of an impossible sea green. It was a beautiful sunny day and the sand was warm and powdery under my feet. HTB knew how much I didn't want to leave. He leaned over and kissed me, a slow, sweet kiss, and said that every time I wanted to remember that exact moment, all I would have to do is kiss him. That moment alone was enough to realize why I was going to marry this man.

And sometimes when I kiss him now, I do hear and smell the surf. And realize anew why I'm going to marry him.

the days are just packed

Contentment and business are a blogger's worst enemies. I've been too busy to make blogging a priority, plus I think I’m just in a phase where I don’t need it as much. Between teaching and getting settled into the new place, most of my time is accounted for. Had some time on my hands Friday but I wasn’t in the mood to write. The officemates and I bitched about grad school over lunch and I got into one of those periodic “What the hell am I doing here” funks. My advisor has been AWOL for the past month, she finally resurfaced but I’m still frustrated with her. A research application of mine has been sitting somewhere at the review board office for the past month as well. Assclowns.

I know I’m getting old and domesticated when I enjoy spending time looking at plants and furniture with Husband to Be and how excited I was about buying our first plant (some rosemary, with more herbs to follow). Being domesticated doesn't bother me, though. Home is such a nice and cosy place to be that I really love to stay in. I love puttering around the house together, vegging on the couch and watching TV (a glut of Food Network to make up for the time I was without). Love continues to glorify the mundane and starting and ending every day with HTB is just as satisfying as I knew it would be.

Watched a LOT of Wedding Weekend on Food Network. Even HTB watched some with me, saint that he is. I want to win a Food Network catered wedding in Hawaii, dammit. Also finally got started watching Season 1 of Veronica Mars. Enjoyable.

Spent all of yesterday planting wetland plants at the new convention center in town. Backbreaking work and I’ve got blisters, bug bites, and scorched skin to show for it, but the weather was beautiful and it was nice to get my hands in the earth and feel useful. Getting paid $15 an hour certainly didn’t hurt.

As I was writing this, HTB called me out to the deck because the sunset was getting good again, and I really need to work on a lesson plan, so there goes my time. I’ll carve out more time to write again, but right now I’d rather be doing things than writing about them.

back off man, i'm a scientist

I was sitting in my office as rain started pouring and the tornado siren downtown started wailing but sirens go off here frequently enough that I mostly ignored it. I finally checked weather.com and saw a tornado warning, but none of the folks who work down the hall seemed to be leaving, so I continued to ignore the weather. Finally, I thought "Dammit, woman, you're a psychologist! Snap out of it! Have you learned nothing about pluralistic ignorance? This is how people die." Being on the fifth floor just didn't seem smart, so I headed downstairs and found a crowd of people sitting in the hall. The danger quickly passed, but I can't believe I almost fell into the trap of basing my reaction to a potential emergency on other people.

Maybe this degree will be good for something after all!

sweetness follows

It's been a busy week. But thanks to Husband to Be's parents and our fabulous friends, the move went very smoothly and we are slowly but surely getting settled into our wonderful new place. There are still way too many boxes and miscellaneous junk and duplicates of things to deal with but it feels so good to be in our new home together.

I love watching the sunset from our deck, the fact that it looks out onto a hilly cornfield instead of the highway or other buildings, having a decent Mexican restaurant just up the road, and being only a two minute walk away from M and Miss A. And it's just so bright and airy and roomy and quiet and cosy. Just perfect.

And in between pre and post-move chaos, we've been grilling and drinking mojitos at the swanky new tapas place downtown, and making late night runs to the ice cream shop downtown. There's something really sweet about small town USA on a summer night, sitting on slides under the stars and by the splashy fountain and watching undergrads walk by dressed up in their skanky best.

Went to an arts festival that takes over downtown every summer and is filled with some of my favorite things - live music, shiny things, meat on a stick, funnel cakes and some excellent people watching. Bought some pretty earrings and heard some good music - Ben Lee, who was endearingly goofy, opened for Nickel Creek. I had no idea how hard a person can rock out on a mandolin! You haven't lived until you've heard "Toxic" sung by a guy and accompanied by violin, mandolin, guitar, and stand up bass. Priceless.

I really love the arts festival, how the streets fill up with people on a balmy evening and the traffic lights become part of the light show. And soon the free Friday concerts will start and there'll be yet more music and dancing in the streets. I love summers here.

I know I'm starting to sound like a broken record with my love of summer, but after a long hard winter, you really appreciate the pleasures of summer. And it's not like life is perfect. I still haven't found someone to sublet my old place and progress on my prospectus is glacially slow, not helped by my advisor's disappearing act. And I'm currently trying not to fall asleep while reading up on social psychology methodology as I make a lesson plan for the class I'm teaching this summer.

But even when I stress out about things, the dominant feeling in my life is gratitude for everything that's going right. Chalk it up to the inexplicable workings of my neural networks, but these days I often get a snippet of a song from the Sound of Music stuck in my head:

somewhere in my youth or childhood
I must have done something good