Thursday, October 13, 2005 1:41 pm  <|>
<231> On The Move: Things are going kind of nonstop right now. It's great, I mean, things are really happening or at least starting to, so really I have no complaints, but it is kind of amazing to me sometimes just how many things I allow myself to put into motion at once. Currently on my plate: planning a wedding, surveying my job situation, continuing my grad art project and research paper, restarting / moving forward with Sticky Art, starting my own company, catching up with old friends, keeping up with ones across the ocean, and figuring out just how to make it all work together!

Dan and I just got back from our trip to England and Scotland last week. We were gone for a week and a half. First we were in England, in a part called Woodley, which is near Reading, which is about an hour outside of London. We were there for his older sister's wedding. That was a large part of the trip and why we were on the trip at all, but all the family events left us only a little time for sight seeing. I have amazingly enough been to London before, on the one ever trip I took to the UK at the end of high school. We saw Windsor Castle on one of the first days we were there and then we went to London on our last day together, but part of a day in London really isn't enough time for much. Another highlight of that part of the trip was going flying with Tim's (Dan's new brother-in-law) sister. We went up in one of those little 4-person planes and it was a lot of fun. The second part of our trip was the best though. We went to see Concetta in Scotland - Edinburgh to be specific. She's there for grad school for this year if you haven't already gathered that by my many posts about it! We unfortunately only had a couple of days to spend there with her, but it was a great time for the time we had. We mostly just spent our time hanging out, exploring the city cafes, shops, and restaurants. Highlights, besides seeing Concetta of course, included the Analogue Book Store, meeting an unexpected acquaintance, and a really good goat cheese pasta. It was also really good to see where Concetta is, meet some of her friends, and even see a little bit of her school. There is something to being able to picture slightly what's going on when for the most part you only have a telephone to connect you. I hope I can go another time or two before her year of school is over. I definitely loved the city, though the rules of the UK would probably get to me pretty quickly if I were actually to try to live there for any prolonged period of time.

So I'm off from work today because it's a Yom Kippur (we get all the Jewish holidays off because it's a mostly Jewish company), so while days off have lost there excitement due to the fact that I no longer get paid for them as a consultant, it has allowed me to get in some important things today. Well, I haven't gotten to them yet, but I'm about to. Dan and I (and my Mom) are looking at what we hope to be the ceremony/reception site for our wedding. Oh and we picked a date, June 24th 2006! We're looking at two places today actually, both run by the same catering company. They both look really good, so I hope they look at good in person. If we like them enough we're going to put down the deposit today right away since the wedding date is pretty close as wedding booking goes. Also, in other related wedding news, we ordered my wedding dress on Tuesday. It takes about 5-6 months to come in (yeah I think that's a long time too for one dress!) so I guess it's good we got the order in now. While it does feel like there are a lot of details to attend to for a wedding, I don't really see why people freak out so much or why the term "Bridezilla" gets brought up all the time. I know they exist and I certainly know a lot of girls freak out about having everything for their wedding perfect. Well to me, it will be perfect if you simply put a bit of yourself into it and really enjoy the planning phase as well as looking forward to the actual wedding day. I don't understand how people allow wedding planners to do everything for them and then play out a ceremony practically on a stage... I mean I understand how some people need to do this for time or religious reasons to some degree, but don't you want to make this as personal as anything else in your life? It's about two people coming together, standing in front of the people closest to them, to show their commitment to each other... that is the point, not the flowers, not the cake, and certainly not the YMCA (which, by the way, we are seriously considering banning from the reception playlist). I'm finding as long as I take the planning step by step, it's going along just fine. I'm sure it'll get a lot more hectic as the date gets closer, but you just have to keep at it... afterall, it'll be worth it in the end, what won't be worth it is making yourself miserable just for the hope of one happy day, because if you do it that way changes are you won't truly be able to enjoy the day once you get there at that point.

So I should really be eating breakfast, errr lunch, well brunch right about now. Dan and I had our first big food shopping trip yesterday. Besides that he looked like he was going to faint when we went to pay, it's going to be nice to have the house stocked with food for a short while at least. I was getting sick of always being hungry and not having enough in the house to make anything, so we'd always go shopping right before making a meal or going out to eat. I'm sure we'll still end up going both, just hopefully not as often as when you have no other options. I'm off to eat then, we'll be leaving in half an hour anyway. I'm resolving to write more... it's been a little crazy since my computer has been having some freezing problem related to a driver issue that I haven't figured out how to fix yet.. but bringing myself back to write here more should help me stay true to getting all these other gears related to my work going too. Until later - Later!