Going places

It's almost a year to the day of my previous post. Whoops. I don't know how that happened. And it doesn't seem like I have much to report on the past year, exactly. But my blog has never really been about chronicling my life. It's more about thoughts I want to share.

Lately my thoughts have been focused on traveling. I want to go to at least one foreign country per year. This year I went to Chile. It was my 4th time, and my shortest visit ever (just 10 days!). But this time I went to a part of Chile I've never visited before, because although it's a territory of Chile it's over 2,000 miles away from the continent in the middle of the Pacific Ocean (Easter Island or Isla de Pascua). I loved the breezes bringing their smells of broth and sun-soaked volcanic rock. I loved hearing the Pascuense language, witnessing the intensity of the song and dance we saw there, ogling the tattoos (I never thought that the upper thigh could be a good site for one), and imagining that the moai could talk and walk when you least expected it (I can reproduce their groan "...uufff").

For 2010 I'm thinking Japan in the fall. I picture steaming bowls of ramen, hot spring soaks, temples, haunting scenery, mind-boggling crowds, intense orderliness, and crazy Japanese-to-English translations. I'm always thinking about future trips!

Conundrum

When I throw away underwear because it's in a state of disrepair, and it's worn, can I just throw it in the wastebin or do I have to wash it first and then throw it away? It feels disrespectful and unsanitary to throw away worn underdrawers.

Sometimes I have these questions and they remind me of something that Larry David would wonder aloud about on his show. Before becoming a fan of the show, who would have thought that I could identify so closely with a middle-aged bald Jewish man? Certainly not I. But it just goes to show you the universality of the human condition. Or at least the shared experience and camaraderie within the neurotic U.S.-American diaspora.

I'm a PC, darnit

I just saw the meanest Mac anti-PC commercial. It's getting as mean-spirited as the 2008 presidential campaign in the past month. The PC is a good machine. I'm sorry if I don't feel like a Mac is worth the extravagant price. They are pretty though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWLfEVGwjrA

Inspiration station

Compare this "real-life" board to the inspiration board I posted before the wedding (July 31, 2008). I used 100%, all-natural actual wedding photos from our wedding.

R2, it is you!

During my last week of freedom, before I began my first ever real job-without-end, I sat down to do something I never really did before. I watched Star Wars, episodes 4-6 (the newest movies disappointed me and I still feel burned, but I'll give them a second chance some day). The movies are so good! I wouldn't change a thing. Perfectly classic. Everyone should watch them. The world George Lucas created is amazing, and all the detail he put in to it is awesome.

Some things that I love: Not only is Leia the ultimate no-nosense feminist, but she snags the hottest dude in the galaxy. R2D2, although a droid, is as cute as the cutest puppy. If he doesn't make you all warm and fuzzy inside, you have no insides.

When I was younger, my brothers, especially the youngest, used to have Star Wars playing in the VCR all the time. But I realized, when I recently watched, that I never actually sat down and saw all of them from start to finish. It seems I was always doing something else at the same time. Well, my husband was a little miffed that I watched episode 4 while he was at work, but we watched the other two together like a family. Apparently, from the day we met he has been waiting for me to express an interest in watching them with him. I'm glad we had the bonding experience, and I heartily recommend the movies.

Kissing the tasteless

My tongue is having a terrible time today. It doesn't matter what I eat, my tongue feels like it has just licked 50 envelopes and I can't get ride of the awful taste. Awful, horse-hoof gummy taste. Blech. This experience makes me appreciate my tongue, and it's usual ability to taste yummy things, all the more.

I googled my symptom, and it came up with things like gum disease and tooth abscess. I haven't seen the dentist in a while (no insurance), but my coverage under my new job will start soon. But I hope that my tongue gets better sooner than that. I could also have jaundice. My skin has been looking pretty yellow lately. Ach! I just wikipedia'd jaundice and the pictures were so scary I immediately had to close the window. I will never complain about looking like a Simpsons character again. The taste isn't metallic, so it can't be mercury or lead poisoning. Thank goodness. It helps to not have any enemies with access to my food supply.

I tried running minty floss over my tongue. Bad idea. It stung and the taste became even more intense. I scraped my tongue. Didn't help. I'll use some mouthwash before going to bed, and I'll hope that a good night's rest will bring my tongue to a full recovery.

To splurge or not to splurge

One thing I chose not to splurge on - the cake. I had tasted a devil's food cake at a birthday party at the groom's house and loved it. The cake was from a nearby grocery store, Graul's. So we made an appointment to taste the other flavors there, and I decided on a 3-layer plain pound cake (top layer = devil's food) with buttercream frosting. The cake decorations are very minimal. I never liked the cascading frosting flower look. So the cake is taking up 1% of our budget.

Initially, we had other desserts on the menu to be served with the cake, but we scratched the other desserts so we'll just have the cake, champagne, and some sweet wedding favors for the guests. As a couple, we're not really into sweets that much. We'd rather consume the extra sugar through our signature cocktails. And this is pretty much an adult affair. We might have two child guests, if even that.

We were interested in personalizing M&Ms for the occassion, but decided against spending the extra dough. You can even add pictures to them now! It's just like the personalized stamp thing. It's nice, but it's just extra money for the ability to customize - not a necessity at all.
http://www.mymms.com/customprint/

Personal wedding details

Our wedding will be this September, at the groom's family's house in Baltimore, an hour from where I live now. Having a home wedding is great because it affords you a lot of freedom, but anything you want at your wedding has to be brought over - which means rentals. Lots and lots of rentals: ceremony chairs, tents, tables, tent lighting, table service, tablecloths - and these things add up in a serious way.

The biggest part of the budget is eaten up by the reception food & drink - almost half in our case. We are using a personal chef, who helped us plan the menu, coordinate the rentals, find the music, and visualize lots of other details because we're also using him as a wedding planner. I wanted the food to reflect Californian and Latin American cuisine, to represent where we're from as a couple - with a focus on fresh flavors and ingredients with a lot of Latin flair. We tasted the menu last month, and it was delicious. Tomorrow we're meeting up with the groom's family and some friends to play mixology and mix the perfect pisco sour (Chilean/Peruvian drink), caipirinha (Brazilian), and a purple martini. Only the best recipes will win and be served at the wedding as our "signature cocktails." We're giving the drinks our own names, too.

I find talking about tablecloths boring, but if you work with the right people they can really help you find the perfect "Table Toppers" - a company in Baltimore. They have an overwhelming collection, but they're good at picking out the most relevant styles for any particular event. The reception tent should look awesome because just the tablecloths by themselves are beautiful. I can't wait.

More wedding attire - for the menfolk

I have to give a shout-out to a great company with great service, value, and selection for your men's formalwear needs: http://www.beautiesltd.com/. After deciding on the right color (you can ask the company for swatches in your color scheme, I asked for purple) I ordered ties for the groom, groomsmen, and fathers. If the tux rental and the bow tie didn't already consume your budget, you could also order a matching cummerbund. How cool is that. We're doing black tuxes, wingtip collars, black cummerbunds, and the purple ties. The groom is wearing a different color in the same style as the bridal party - he wanted to stand out. They're going to look sauve and debonair.

I've been seeing a lot of bridal parties rockin' the hipster formalwear socks and suspenders. I also appreciate that look, but the groom in my case is a lot more classic and formal than that. It's his special day too, you know. So in the few cases that he provides input I try to comply.

At this point I don't really know what the flowers are going to look like, including the boutonnieres, but I plan on having a 2nd meeting with the florist to iron out such details.

Unrelated to weddings: cool movie alert

Last night I watched "Eagle vs. Shark." I rented it based upon the fact that Jemaine from Flight of the Conchords is the love interest, and I was not disappointed. It's like "Napoleon Dynamite" but with cool kiwi accents, a coherent plot, and stop animation.

I'm fascinated with New Zealand from the snippets I've seen/ learned from other films. I like the small-town feel, the 70s/80s-kitsch, the mellow math rock, the unabashed nerdiness, and the accents - which I cannot faithfully mimic, by the way. I'm horrible at accents because I lack consistency. Also, New Zealand is undeniably beautiful. I'm going to look up how much plane tickets to NZ cost and cry now.

Name change

There's a crustacean on my driver's license. I have found myself compelled to become the resident of a new state, officially leaving my beloved California for the east coast. I feel like in California they're a lot more serious with their licenses, because there are a ton of cutesy little things on my new one, including a donor's heart. I also took the opportunity to apply to register to vote in my new district, so that's pretty exciting.

My "new" name is also on the license -- the first step to what will be a series of notifications of name changes, to creditors (student loan people!), alumni associations, banks -- but social security should be my next big step. It took some soul-searching for me to decide on changing my name and the combination of names I wanted, but I'm satisfied with the result. The thing is, I suddenly have an extremely exotic name. People are already confused about where I'm from because of the way I look and my weird way of speaking English (due to spending most of my time with non-native English speakers and being a confused language person in general, I think), so now the name is just going to throw them completely of my scent. Maybe I'll run into a certain Mr. Higgins who could tell me where I'm from upon my uttering a simple sentence.

The most important thing for me, regarding the name change, was that I share the same name as any future children we might have. And it's also kind of fun to have a new name.

Inspiration for wedding look-feel

The right side of this is from an inspiration board I found on a different website, and the left side reflects many little images I found which inspire the theme of my wedding.

I recommend browsing as many wedding magazines and websites as possible to get a feel for the colors, styles, and images that appeal to you. It's also helpful to have these kinds of pictures and sketches to bring with you as you order your wedding cake, invitations, flowers, and rentals (tablecloths, dinnerware, etc.).

First things first - bridal attire

So the very 2nd time I went to try on dresses (the 1st time wasn't so great - I went to a place where I couldn't find a single decent dress and the sample sizes I had to put on where at least 8 sizes too big for me. I'm sorry I don't remember the name of the place) I found my dream dress. Unfortunately the dream dress came with a heavy price tag which I just couldn't reconcile with my budget. Unfortunately, the store didn't allow pictures (pretty common practice with these places) so I don't have a picture of myself in the dress.

By the way, this whole wedding business is quite a racket. The lack of transparency is incredible. Not only are cameras banned from the dress stores, but often times the price tags are hidden or non-existent and it's pretty much impossible to return your purchase, even if you don't end up wearing it. Not your typical American shopping experience.

So of course I'm not going to put my dress up on this site, as it is a secret, but once the wedding transpires you might get a glimpse. I will say where I ended up purchasing the item - The Running of the Brides event at Filene's Basement in Tyson's Corner. I got there a few hours after the initial madness of the early AM opening. 3 of my lady friends helped me pick out and put on dresses, and after 2 hours I finally settled on a nice dress for 1/10 the price of the dream dress pictured. Of course, all sales are final at this event, and you take the dress just as it is - in my case, with a few mysterious black marks that should come out after spot cleaning, and with a much too large bust that will also be fixed by the time of the wedding.

If you want to see some bridal madness, check out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVtisU3yFj0.

First things first - wedding attire

I thought that since I'm not super-busy at this moment in time, I could do something perhaps useful to society by taking all of the stuff I've found and learned since I started planning my wedding in January of 2008. I hadn't really given my "ideal" wedding a thought before my fiance proposed early this year. But since, I have spent countless hours thinking/ planning/ collaborating with my many helpers (my friends and family members).

The first thing I did was choose bridal attire to set the overall theme, tone, and formality for the wedding. I choose this tactic because all of those things determine other very important elements such as the time of day and budget for the event, which play into pretty much every decision you will make about your wedding.

I spent pretty much all of February and March looking online at hundreds of wedding gowns and bridesmaids dresses. I got my Donna Ricco bridesmaids' dresses at Nordstrom - they're cocktail length, simple, elegant purple dresses. The best part is the color. The quality of the fabric isn't too high (it's a little itchy), but they really go with my vision of the color scheme. The maids will wear silver strappy shoes.

I choose 3 lovely bridesmaids, but the sad thing is that one of them is probably not going to make it to the wedding after all. So I will probably have my youngest brother, 22, sub as the "bridesman."

Yet another reason to hate country music...

...as if you needed one. I plunked down on the couch with my greek yogurt & honey, granola, and a spoon, and turned on abc at the stroke of 8pm, as I was excited to catch my favorite show (the only one I keep up with right now). I see my Pushing Daisies lovelies flashed briefly, then something about "and now, the Country Music Awards" and I hear the unmistakable twang of something I cannot tolerate. So I guess my show will have to wait until next week. I don't even know why I bother with real time anyway. I usually just watch my show on abc.com and that works out just great. The one time I give the tube a chance it disappoints me.

Boo.

Gimme a break

This winter I get to go to the very ends of Latin America (and the earth) and then to the very tippy top of Latin America. I'm going to Chile with my boyfriend to spend the holidays with his family and at the beach since it'll be in the 90s at that time. Then I'm going on a school trip to Mexico to interview various people and find out how their socioeconomic situation is going with the effects of NAFTA.

I'm quite excited about it and I hope I get to speak lots of Spanish. I know for sure I'll only be speaking in Spanish in Chile, but I'm going to have to make a pact with my fellow students to ensure that we only speak Spanish to each other during our trip. Pura vida.

I thought to myself "SELF!"

Yesterday I made a friend go boot shopping with me. We went to Filene's Basement and found a pathetic and cheap-looking selection. Then my friend suggested we go back up Connecticut to another shoe spot. And my boots were in the window, in three colors. I picked the brown ones, and they were a good fit. Oh, and the shoe guy wanted to measure my foot even though I knew my size and I'm 25 years old. My feet stopped growing long ago, so you'd think I'd know my size.

So I didn't bat an eye at the pricetag, bought the boots, and when I started admiring them later that evening, I thought "Hrm. That was a lot of freakin' money I just spent there. I wonder if I could by chance google my boots and see if there's some kind of deal anywhere else." And lo and behold, the first page to come up had my boots, my color, my size. I bought them, with free shipping, for 75% off the store price. Cha-ching!

Here's hoping that the package arrives in good time and I actually get what I wanted.

The Germans call it "yogging"

When I jog, my body simulates sudden and massive organ failure. I get a shooting pain in my lower back region, my ankles feel like they're going to give out, my ears pop and I can hear my inner ear jiggle with each step, and bile starts to travel up my esophagus. I wonder if all that's something I should be worried about.

I'm glad that some people can get their jollies from jogging (like my roommates, who will go unnamed), but the truth is, I don't feel like I need it. I'm a Class-A walker. You won't hear me complain about walking because I can do it all day long, for miles and miles. And I walk faster than the average person. It's just that it's not quite a jog.

Girl with two pearl earrings

If I had the fortitude and the wherewithall to do it, I would take a series of photographs of ladies switching their shoes for an interview. The photos would feature college students and young professionals clad in their best interview suits stopping a block or two from their interview destination to change their shoes from their worn-in flip-flops or sneakers to their more appropriate, close-toed heels.

And maybe my exhibition would include close-ups of bunyons and hammer toes. Eww. But perhaps good news for anyone with a foot fetish.

We can call it the "iTote"

Someone out there needs to create some nice looking tote bags that have a protective pocket for a laptop and can fit a bunch of stuff. And the strap has to be sensible and wide so that it doesn't cut into one's shoulder.

The tote bags should come in cool prints, especially animal ones (because we all know how I love them and thus how cool they are) and cute and endearing prints and other designs. The bags should be made of soft leather and should have other adornments such as zippers, outside pockets, tassles, buttons, and other such things (probably not all at once though).

I've searched high and low for a tote bag worthy of my precious cargo (my darling laptop) and appropriate for my age and personality but it just hasn't happened. I got a lead on some Vera Bradley diaper bags, however, and although that may sound weird I think it has potential. Maybe 10 years from now I can actually use it to carry diapers. Who knows though, my bladder may give out earlier than that.