Tuesday, July 11, 2006 8:40 pm  <|>
<249> Here Comes The Bride: Well, actually the bride already went and she was me! Dan and I got married on June 24th! It was great of course, things went off pretty much without any trouble. It did rain, but despite this we managed to have our ceremony (and photos) outside, as I really wanted it and as it should have been. I'm really glad that worked out ok. A couple close friends ended up not being able to make it, which was disappointing, but the reasons were very understandable and I know they wished they didn't have to miss it. It was a time for a lot of old friends to come together though and that was great. The thing about when you get married is, you are going around to all the guests, and so you know ahead of time you aren't going to have extended amounts of time with each person, even the ones you haven't seen in awhile... but I know everyone understands that I'm sure. It's just too bad I didn't get to talk with everyone more... especially the people who I've not seen or barely seen since we graduated! Maybe it won't be so long before we all see each other again, but that requires effort on my part too I know. But I guess with the wedding and everything else, it's put me into one of those reconnecting kind of moods - nothing wrong with that I suppose!

So as I said, the wedding was great and we took a honeymoon weekend (couldn't take much longer since I had to get back for Monday dialysis) at the Chimney Hill Inn. It's a little bed & breakfast in Lambertville, NJ and while neither one of us had ever been to a bed & breakfast before, I'm fairly sure that this one is well above average. Needless to say, we had a great time and didn't want to leave. Hopefully we'll be able to go back there for an anniversary or 'just because' sometime not too far into the future. We stayed in one of their nicest suites, which was in a separate house not connected to the main house. Our room was BIG with a little living area, fireplace (which we just had to turn on for 2 minutes even though it's summertime), jacuzzi, and lofted bedroom with a spiral staircase. It was just so nice. It did manage to rain the entire weekend, but just as it let up for parts of our wedding day, Saturday night and Sunday allowed us a bunch of rain breaks - all right where they needed to be so that we didn't even end up buying an umbrella (cause you know we didn't prepare and actually bring one!). We had dinner in the town both nights - really only exploring their main street and the blocks off of that. It was pretty small - only about 3 blocks off of a bridge that connects to New Hope, PA. The first night we had dinner at a great little local Italian place that is owned by the chef who also cooks all the food herself. We were there at the end of the night and she also comes out personally to each table to say hello around closing time. We were lucky to get in there because it was packed (though the place was small) and said reservations were recommended, but there luckily was a two person table available with an hour left before closing. The second night we ate at a place called Lambertville Station because we had a gift card (part of a package we bought with the stay). That food was ok, though the Italian place was definitely a lot better. We also visited a couple local used bookstores (which is something we both love) during our weekend and enjoyed in room massages (another part of the package we got). Oh and the Alpacas were cool too!!

It seems too far away already - the wedding and the honeymoon, but alas we had to return to real life... eh but that isn't so bad. Married life is well, not really so different, but we are happy! :) I do have a bunch of time back and I'm liking it. I'm finally getting to some things I haven't been able to really move forward with for a long time now. I managed to catch up with Sticky Art before the wedding. And lately I've been working on the website for Metatative, which should be ready soon too. I ordered my business cards (finally!) this weekend and I'm not sure how long those will take, but once I have those I will at least be able to move forward with that aspect of my business with a little promotion. I also took a leave of absence from school. This doesn't mean that much really... because due to me already needing an extension from getting sick at the beginning of the year, I was already behind and I'm not able to attend the summer residency in Austria this year (which is about to start next week) because of dialysis. Just for the record, it IS possible to set up dialysis in Austria and I could have tried that, but with everything else going on and my dialysis status as it is - which I'll mention more about in a moment - it just didn't make sense this year to try that, especially considering how nonstop the workshops and everything else are during the residency. It really is 3 weeks almost nonstop from 9-6 or 7 at night if not later each day with only 2 or 3 days off (1 day during the week each week), so while I'm sure they would have been willing to work with me because they've been great in working with me already for my current situation, it just would have been too much I think. So taking a leave of absence ended up making a lot of sense. It does mean I'll have to go an extra year now - but there will be time when I'm finished before that... I'll just need to attend another residency for my graduation year (now 2008 instead of 2007), but with everything that has happened I suppose that's ok. There really isn't a hurry, but I just don't want to get away from it too much. I'll get my MFA eventually and this will give me more time to really focus on my latest project (concerning social networks and mapping), which is good because I wouldn't want to short change this one that I've wanted to do for awhile now. I'm still working on it currently so while I have another whole semester to do it, it really won't be so much of a break.

Anyway, dialysis continues. I still don't gain fluid between sessions... which is a good thing, but by now it's sort of surprising that it still goes that way. So I just took a test to check on my levels to see where we are at. I mean, when I started dialysis again they said it might not be permanent and then they put me on and never really followed up on the levels after that. Since then, it's been back and forth with this intestinal infection that I got from being in the hospital on antibiotics. The way they treat that is with more antibiotics (yeah for modern medicine) and I continue to be on those now. Everytime I've gone off them, the infection has come back... so this is really the last time I can risk being on the same ones or else I might start to be immune to these too and that can only make matters worse. In between, I also had to go to the ER and spend the weekend in the hospital the weekend following our wedding weekend because the original infection that got my kidney to the place it is at now came back also VERY suddenly (and so it is possible that it was laying dormant this whole time since too). The doctors say this infection doesn't present itself "normally" - whatever that means - so they've had a hard time figuring out exactly what to do. So what else is new about something that affects me? They never quite know how to proceed. Such is my life... but I'm not taking it without my own efforts (like that's something new too). We'll see what this latest test reveals, but really that has nothing to do with the infections (except maybe hurting the kidney further of course) and so I'm going to have to look at other ways of improving and curing these things inside me myself. I also happened to go to the ER of a different hospital from the one I've always gone to. That was already something on the to do list eventually, so I think having new doctors look at my case from a new perspective cannot hurt at all. Actually it's already spurred a different approach and I'm supposed to follow up with a doctor from this hospital in comparison with the advice I get from the doctor I see through the other hospital at dialysis (they don't quite agree already) so we'll see what happens. It's important that I figure this stuff out anyway, but also so that I can think about the transplant now and move forward with my life again (though you know me I never really let it stop moving forward).

So that's where I'm at. I'm going along pretty happy. Hmm... anything else? Well, I got 665 lines on Tetris yesterday. It would have kept going much longer, but I started playing it late and dialysis was over. Haha... I know you really didn't need to know that, but I just thought I'd share. I'll try to update more often now with this time I'm claiming to have... we'll see how long this lasts, but until then, take care! :)