In just a few hours, Shar and I will be leaving the cool comfort of our apartment to journey over the Pacific Ocean to Waikiki, where we will be comfortable, and much hotter. I of course haven't slept all night as I waited until midnight to start packing/doing the District book calendar/assembling the questions for an email interview that's happening tomorrow/write my story for the day. My mom will be here in an hour, and I have to tie up a few things before then....but THEN, to Hawaii!!!!!! I'll post to let everyone know when we get there, as there should be internet in our room. Please think good thoughts at us as travel scares the shit out of me.

Also! While in Hawaii, we'll be sorting through some fun pictures, and I'll get around to finishing my Shar Party, wedding planning, Rehearsal Dinner, and other cool behind-the-scenes wedding retrospectives. Yay honeymoon!

Labels: Generalness, wedding

Holy. Shit. It's. Hot. I know I'm not the first person to notice or bitch about it, but can I just say how happy I am to be lying around in our apartment all week? During the one time we've been outside since the wedding (yes, that is one time in four days), we felt so absolutely cooked that we agreed to go outside nevermore. Until the honeymoon. When we go to Hawaii. Where it's hotter....

Anyway, in addition to tons of reading (Shar is plowing through one Harry Potter book a day and I'm tearing up the Earth/Universe/Paradise X trilogy, the densest reading this side of Faulkner and Ulysses), and some DVDs (re-watching Sports Night!), we've been sorting through pictures. Here is what I remember, from mental and photographic recollections, of my bachelor party:

To set the scene, this is the Saturday before my wedding. I've been working nonstop on tying up writing junk for the next three weeks, and on putting the last pieces of the wedding together. So to have one day, where all I had to do was show up at Pat and Dan's place at a certain time was pretty much exactly what I needed, a day hanging out with friends and doing no planning or writing.

I was the first to show up, and I watched Ninja Warrior with Dan and Pat until some other folk showed up, and then we went disc golfing, where Beef lost Brian's disc, we all got hotter than hell, and my brother called to tell me he wouldn't be able to make it down from Berkeley. I'd never disced at the Huntington course before, and I was pretty impressed by it: there are less trees than at El Dorado, and a shitload more hills. It also cost two buck, which wasn't a problem at my party, but would definitely keep me from playing there regularly. Rad course though, all in all.

Discing!



After we were done discing we hit Dairy Queen where I got my favorite food in probably the entire universe: chocolate ice cream dipped in a chocolate shell. Then we went back to Pat and Dan's to wait for the rest of our non-discing friends to arrive, while we played Mario Strikers and (in my case) napped, trying to catch up on some much-needed sleep. Mid-game, my little brother showed up with a shit-eating grin that can only be described as impressive, even for a Guardabascio. For the second time in his life, Matt tricked me; in this case, it was totally okay.

So around four, my co-best man Ryan showed up, along with a fucking stretch Hummer limousine! I'd never been in a vehicle bigger than a van before, and had honestly never thought I'd ride in a limousine, so this was a pretty insane moment for me. I was gripped with panic at one point, however, when I realized that like 4/5 of all the people I cared about in the world were on the same four wheels.

Fortunately, we didn't crash, and instead made it to Dave and Buster's, which I'd never been to but is more or less a grown-up Chuck E. Cheese's, in that it has both a bar and an incredible arcade. Ryan had arranged for us to have a little area set aside, with shitloads of food, two pool tables, a shuffleboard, and two televisions to watch football on. We snacked for a while, then the Chargers game came on, and a bunch of people ran off to play video games while the men's men stayed to watch.

Men's Men! (And yes, that is a beer-soaked cigarette in Kobane's mouth)


The Chargers ended up winning, thank God. Oh, and a note on the food: Dave and Buster's has unbelievable food. I particularly recommend their sliders, which are tiny burgers on hawaiian sweet bread. Ryan had them brought to us plain, since he knows I like my burgers plain (Ryan is easily the second-best wife I could have in the world behind Shar), and everyone had somewhere around a dozen (somewhere north of that in a few cases). To the man, everyone was totally ruined by them the next day, and I can't think of a worse case of diarrhea I've ever had. Still, every single guy there seemed like they would have been stoked to eat them again on Sunday.

After the football game, we opened up the shuffleboard table, which certainly made things more...interesting. I'd never played before, and ended up having a blast, even if I did suck (which I did). Plus, it's always fun to see some of your friends take money off of your other friends.

The Board!


It was while we were shuffling that an old coked-up alcoholic (definitely last stages style) decided it would be a good idea to pick a fight with 18 young men, and got hisself thrown out of the bar, screaming that he could "buy this place" the whole way.

There are of course a gabillion other stories from Dave and Bustie's, including me and Dan attempting to make a freak baby in one of those "combine your photo" machines, and getting a stock photo instead (shenanigans!), but I have neither the time nor the energy to rewrite all of them. Needless to say, we had an amazing time, and then around 11 or so we all piled back in to the limousine (!!!), with me now wearing a bright pink D&B's shirt that Eli won/stole me (you never can tell with that Eli Bates).

On sitting down in the limo, two things immediately struck me: 1.) J.J. Fiddler is across from the radio, and 2.) I'm sitting next to Miles Lemaire. Predictably, J put on some absolutely horrible slow jams and predictably, Miles convinced an entire limo of my friends to attempt to tickle me to death. In the ensuing panic, I kicked Pat in the knee so hard my shoe came off, and I'm pretty sure Brian will never have children now. I'm relatively sure I've never laughed so hard for so long in my entire life. By the time we got back to Pat and Dan's, I was utterly exhausted, my face soaked in tears, and my sides hurt, both from too much laughing and too much sliders.

Slow Jamming in the Limo



Back at the house, we posed for a group photo, and then were immediately beset by Huntington Police, who demanded that we break up our (mostly) sober picture-taking.

The Riot!


After that we retreated inside, where most collapsed on couches and floors, a few mysteriously disappeared upstairs, and I slipped outside to talk to my bride-to-be and attempt to sweat out some sliders. After a few more photos, it was time to head home. On the ride home, it kind of hit me how strange it is to be getting so much older, so fast. It wasn't necessarily the wedding that spurred on that thought, though that was a big part of it, but the fact that everyone at the party now looked significantly older than when I'd first met them. I knew I was the one getting the ring on my finger at the end of the week, but we were all undeniably getting older. And that's fucking weird as hell.

Still, I got back safe and sound, despite a gnarly wreck that happened right in front of me, and retired with my lady for a long, restful sleep, before waking up to the second day of the longest week of my life. But more on that later. For now, more Sports Night, and then sleeeeeeeep.

The Bestest of Best Men

Labels: Generalness, wedding

So this time last week, I was recovering from an exhausting and wonderful bachelor party, and beginning the rush planning of Shar Party. We were both running on fumes, with the longest week of our lives in front of us.

Today? We took our first trip outside of our apartment since Friday night, a quick smoothie run, then immediately scampered back indoors, where we are surrounded by wedding presents and their wrappings. We are happy, and tired, but really really really great.

Over the next five days, I'm going to give each of the big events of last week their own blog post complete with pictures, so the blogosphere can relive everything that happened. I'll also continue to post a story a day, though these will undoubtedly be at random times for a few weeks, so bear with me. Then, on Friday, we're off to Hawaii for the homeynoon. Jawesome.

Labels: Generalness, wedding

So the wedding was yesterday, and it was perfect. There are a thousand things to write about, and literally more than a thousand photos to look at, but I'll post more about the event (and the events leading up to it) over the next few weeks. If you attended the wedding, you probably went home with a pair of CDs, filled with music that Shar and I have played each other over the years; my lovely wife suggested we post the stories behind each song on our blogs. So, here goes! A Shar and Mike playlistravaganza!

1. The Letter- The Box Tops
In the first three years of our relationship, I was making an average of three round trips to UCLA every week. For three years. Seriously. So, given that the scenery on the 405 doesn't change much, I had to come up with something to keep me from getting horrendously bored (especially because I came from class and often sat in that awful 405 traffic)...this song was the best thing I came up with. Serves as a great reminder of how worth it the commute is.

2. Brown Eyed Girl- Van Morrison
Yeah yeah yeah, this one is kind of a gimme: I mean, Shar has brown eyes and all. But there are a few other parallels we like: there's a reference to "Tuesday and so slow," which always gets me since, coincidentally, that was always the day we spent together in the months before we started going out (when I was laid up from an ankle surgery and Shar came to push me around in a wheelchair) and in the weeks after.

3. God Only Knows- The Beach Boys
There's not an amazing contextual story for this song: it's just perfect, and reminds me of that moment, one I think most couple have somewhere around that two years together mark, where you realize you no long have any idea of who you'd be without this other, wonderful person.

4. Do You Realize??- The Flaming Lips
This kind of became my anthem for wedding planning. Pieces of it are a little morbid (do you realize that everyone you know someday will die?), but that was kind of the point. Shar and I went into our marriage with our eyes open: the wedding was in part a wish, a hope that after our lives end, we'll get to go on somewhere together. I've never believed in an afterlife, but the last five years with Shar have made me hope for one.

5. I've Been Waiting for You- Neil Young
So, kind of embarrassing: I asked Shar out about a thousand times before she finally said yes. I had a crush on her in high school (who wouldn't?), but she wisely didn't want to be more than friends yet. Finally, when we started going out the summer after we graduated, we had a solid three year friendship as our foundation, a friendship that had gradually grown stronger and stronger over several years.

6. Angel, Won't You Call Me?- The Decemberists
Well, won't you? Anyone who's ever been in a long distance relationship, where the very act of basic communication depends on a phone call or email, will understand why this song is on the CD. Plus, we love the Decemberists!

7. If I Were a Carpenter- Johnny and June Carter Cash
This is a goofy song we both like. I go on dino digs with my uncle in the summertime, and end up spending two weeks missing Shar as well as having lots of fun. Two years ago my iPod and I got on a huge Johnny Cash kick, and this song always made me smile and think of home, not longingly, but goofily and happily.

8. You Can't Fail Me Now- Loudon Wainwright III
A very recent favorite, from the Knocked Up soundtrack. What a song! So many perfect lines: "Trust me mercy's just a warning shot across the bow" is a beautiful way of talking about the limits of patience in trying times, and the "You bite my tongue" statement has always been true of Shar and me. She's always been wonderful about letting me know when it's time to stop trying to say sweet things, and time to start acting on them. And "You know all my secret heart avows," and...really, I love this song. Perfect for when you feel like your relationship is soaring over all questions and doubts.

9. I Was Made to Love Her- Stevie Wonder
I was, I was! There's a lot of great love songs, but I don't know that any of them captures the feeling of being in love better than this one. The triumphant, flighty feeling of knowing that someone loves you, no matter what you've been through, no matter who or what forces stand against you, is the most powerful feeling in the world.

10. Maps- Yeah Yeah Yeahs
A little bit of the long distance blues, as my steam for driving 200 miles a week started running out, and I started to find a life at CSULB, thirty miles away from Shar. We wanted to make sure we stayed strong for each other, but we both knew we had things to do in other cities. This was a reminder to both of us that our love pretty much smashes everything else, at the end of the day.

11. Can't Take My Eyes Off of You- Frankie Valli
This was on the first mix I made Shar, and we still love doing stupid dances to each other. Don't tell Shar I told you all, but she recorded a cover of this song for me, complete with a capella trumpet solo. I'm an awful lucky fella, I know.

12. Happiness Writes White- Harvey Danger
This song has become one of our absolute favorites over the last year and a half. It's all about trying to deal with loving someone and trying to live a 9 to 5 life at the same time, when you never quite feel like you have enough time together. From the long distance at our beginning to the Borders day jobs and late night deadline rushes in recent days, we never feel like we see each other enough (hence the importance of a weekly date night). It also deals with something I've been dealing with from the beginning: how the heck am I supposed to write about how much I love Shar, when it's by definition so indescribable?

13. Harvest Moon- Neil Young
Following in my father's footsteps, I'm a huge Neil Young fan: I've always loved dancing to this song. It's one of our Toe Songs, which are songs Shar stands on my toes for. Fortunately, she's very tiny.

14. Every Little Thing She Does is Magic- The Police
One of my favorite games to play is "How fast can I get a song stuck in Shar's head?" This song is kind of a cheater move, as it usually only takes two notes of the chorus to have her singing it for the rest of the day. And when Shar's singing, everyone's a winner.

15. L.O.V.E.- Nat King Cole
I mentioned earlier that I had a crush on Shar in high school. My two best friends would always sing this song, often quite loudly, whenever we'd go over to talk to her at lunchtime (which, at my insistence, was daily). It was quite a happy thing to put it on a mix for Shar after we were going out, and laugh about it with her.

16. Unchained Melody- The Righteous Brothers
The Righteous Brothers are probably as responsible for our relationship existing as I am. If you've never listened to this song while spending some time with a person you're madly in love with, you probably aren't living properly. And again, it has that wonderful triumphant feel to it.

17. Into My Arms- Nick Cave
This song has a lot of fancy imagery and lyricism (Nick Cave is awesome!), but at its core, it's about compromise. It's a compromise we've had to make, too: Shar grew up attending church weekly, and I grew up an atheist with very little patience for organized religion. In high school, I pointed out to a man handing out Bibles and telling my friends and I that we were going to hell that by encroaching on public school property, he was breaking the law. He shoved me, so I punched him in the jaw. You can imagine then that it was rather odd to start dating a girl who, though not a rabid believer by any means, still loved going to church. This songs makes me think happily of the times I've spent with Shar there, of the time I spent reading the Bible, trying to further expand our shared knowledge and interests, and, now, of my wedding ceremony. I think a good litmus test of how much you love someone is how much you're willing to compromise for them; a better test of the health of your relationship is how much you can compromise without changing who you are. "But I believe in love...and I know that you do too. And I believe in some kind of path, that we can walk down me and you."

18. Of Angels and Angles- The Decemberists
"There are angles, in your angles, there's a low moon caught in your tangles..." What a beautiful way to open a song. This song just feels right to me, in every way. Just a few seconds of it instantly transports me to lazy weekend afternoons spent in bed, reading and waiting for the sun to set, just to see each other in different lighting.

19. Dreams- The Cranberries
This song means a lot to me because of good timing. I had my iPod on shuffle, and as I was pulling into a UCLA parking lot, wondering how the hell I went from a Long Beach hoodlum with no money in my pocket to visiting my beautiful girlfriend at UCLA, this song came on, and the opening lines about how much life can change when you're with someone totally floored me.

20. I've Just Seen a Face- The Beatles
Another song that makes me feel like its writers have actually been in love: it just moves perfectly, and makes my heart beat the way it did the first time Shar came over to see me not as my friend, but as my girlfriend, way back on August 24th, 2002.

21. Uptight (Everything's Alright)- Stevie Wonder
Okay so I love Stevie Wonder. Who doesn't? This is a good song to play when something has me upset, and I feel like I need to reorder my priorities, and remember how lucky I am.

22. Don't Dream It's Over- Julian Davies
This song isn't actually amazing, but the performance is. Julian Davies is a street musician in London, and he entertained us when Shar and I were in England, for my first time out of the country and our first vacation together. Every time I hear this song, I'm flooded with memories of that wonderful trip, and I just want to grab Shar, head to LAX, and get on standby for a flight to anywhere.

23. The Luckiest- Ben Folds
I think somewhere around three weeks after we started going out, Shar played this song for me. We've listened to it literally hundreds of times since, usually dancing, sometimes just holding each other, but always smiling and often crying. I've never heard a more beautiful or heartfelt love song in my life. It's a song written by a man who has tried and failed, and has finally found something that's just absolutely right on every level. I don't know anyone who can't relate to the beauty of that. Every mix we've ever made each other has ended with this song, as has every year we've spent together. It was the first dance we danced at our wedding (the way we always do, with Shar on my feet holding on for dear life), and it's just flat out our favorite, in every way.

Labels: Generalness, wedding

So, the wedding is today. We are excited! So excited we can't sit still to write long blog posts...but we can sit still long enough to say that in the coming week of relaxation, the bachelor party, Shar party, rehearsal dinner, and the wedding will have their own posts and photos put up here. The first three were great, and we have high hopes for the wedding :D. Oh, if you have pictures of any of those events, send em to me!

Labels: Generalness, wedding

I just posted my story for the day, which means I can relax and enjoy the rest of the day. What is the rest of the day? Why, my bachelor party, which I leave for in like a half hour. It should be an incredibly enjoyable (and hopefully stress-free) day hanging out with some of my best friends (the ones that have penises). I will no doubt be caught sneaking away to call Shar at some point in the day and be mocked ceaselessly.

Also, today I got a response back from the Southern California Review, a prestigious literary journal out of USC. The story I sent was rejected, but I got my first written commentary from a journal of that caliber, which started off by saying "Excellent writing and opening," then gave a few really good points of constructive criticism. And I have a story being published in Verdad this fall, and maybe another being published in another local journal, as well as about 15 stories out for consideration at different journals and quarterlies. Being a fiction writer is a lot harder than being a journalist/reviewer, but it feels like I'm moving forward, which is all I need. And the work I'm doing (simultaneously) on two novels, one I think I could sell and one I just wanted to write, is going well: I'm at about halfway on each. I'd like to finish one (the one I think I could sell) on the honeymoon. But, you know, we'll see about that.

Here's a picture of me before the bachelor party:



I'll post about how it went tomorrow. Unless I get drunk and accidentally kill a prostitute or something, which is unlikely, but always a possibility.

Labels: Generalness, wedding

So, first and foremost: go see Stardust. Go see it, if for no other reason, because it's an original fantasy movie (that's not Christian or a sequel) based on a great book, and it got creamed by Rush Hour fucking 3 last weekend. The hope for Neil Gaiman, author of the book the movie is based on, and Paramount, is that word of mouth will make up for a bungled advertising campaign and a weak opening weekend.

So, word of mouth: we loved it. It was surprisingly funny, generally had the kind of dark/but still light tone I love for kids'/fantasy movies; part of why the ad campaign was bungled was that they never figured out what kind of movie it was, which is understandable. This is a love story, a coming of age story that features flying pirates, sword fights, Robert DeNiro, magic, witches, a plot for the throne, and a group of hilarious ghosts who watch the whole thing unravel. It's kind of indescribable: the acting is thoroughly good, with DeNiro turning in one of his best (and certainly most different) performances, and Claire Danes and Charlie Cox doing, I thought, a great job. There are problems, mostly a bad piece of dialogue here and there, but overall this movie stood out for me in a summer of big movies, and Shar and I are both prepared to validate the comparisons to Princess Bride. It's definitely a LOTR-era Princess Bride, but the tongue-in-cheek epic adventure mode is the same.



Now for a book, which is less good: I haven't been writing about books much because I've been back on my nearly-complete Vonnegut study, and reviewing the in-betweeners for a new web site I've been involved with (as usual, more on both of these later). The World Without Us has probably the coolest one-line pitch ever. What would happen to the world if we disappeared tomorrow? How long would it take for things to return to "normal"? What would happen to our cities? The possibilities are endless. Unfortunately, they're also largely undealt with, as Alan Weisman spends too much time talking about how things are now, and focusing on too many specifics to knock me on my ass with the big picture, which is what I hoped for. There's also little to no comprehensive order to the book: it reads like a collection of facts. Granted, they're really cool facts for the most part (if humans didn't pump it daily, the New York subway would completely flood within two days, for example), but loosely associated facts do not a great book make. Y'all're welcome to borrow this, and I really wish I could say it's worth buying, but sadly, it isn't.

Lastly: IF AT ALL REASONABLY POSSIBLE, DO NOT MISS FRIDAY AUGUST 24TH AT ACRES OF BOOKS. I will have to miss the event as it's my fifth anniversary, and the one day in the last two months and the next two weeks that Shar and I have committed to doing absolutely no wedding planning, just hanging out, getting a nice dinner, and remembering why we're getting hitched in the first place: cuz we like each other. Anyway, the 24th: HOBOETRY!!!!!!! HOMELESS POETRY! LIVE READINGS! SEVEN PM! Holy Shit! Ahem. Anyway, check that out, I don't often find don't-miss events for my friends while doing book calendar for the District, but this one really caught my eye in a big way.

Labels: Generalness, Mike Recommends or Trashes Random Shit, wedding

So, it's been quite a bit since we got massively caught up on wedding planning. Here's what's been up, with the accompanying pictures:

Most importantly, Shar and I have settled into our hectic schedule, with both of us working as hard as we can, then working as hard as we can on wedding stuff during all our free time. Here is what Shar looks like now, as opposed to the stressed out shell of a lady she was not so long ago:



Yes folks, life is a real party when you're planning an awesome wedding.

And planning we have done: since last we spoke, we've written a couple of big checks, including booking our honeymoon (a week and a half in a very nice hotel in Hawaii, where we will enjoy sun, surf, and yes, the opening of the NFL season together, as man and wife). We also paid off the rest of the fee for the site, which was a bit of a doozy, and had our next-to-final meeting with Liz, the coordinator for the Arboretum. She's rad, though I don't have a picture with her.

Shar had her bridal shower on Sunday, which I am told was a great deal of fun, and which generated the following leftovers:



and the following presents:



A big thank you to those who attended; for everyone who was out of town, Shar's planning a second shower/bachlorette party/get-together on Saturday August 25th. That will also be when my bachelor party is. Beyond that I don't know anything about the bachelor party as I've been barred from all planning for my own good.

We've also seen a ton of friends and family come through here (which we love and appreciate), a budget crisis present and resolve itself, and about half our RSVPs come back, with lots of them covered in wonderful messages or creative drawrings.

All in all we're much less stressed than we have been, due in part to the fact that Shar is great and also due in large part to the triumphant return of my car (thanks again to Val and Whitney for driving it down). Being able to take myself places and listen to music while driving to destress has returned my sunny disposition. It's also enabled us to buy cool stuff like this Just Married window flag, to keep people from using car-soap on my beautiful car (which I'd prefer given that Brian spent like a half a year scrubbing that shit off of his):



We also bought an instructional wedding dances DVD, which we may not make use of for actual wedding dances, but which we've been enjoying all the same. So far, we've learned to fox trot, which we've been doing to Sinatra and Stevie Wonder. We're pretty good, and it's been surprisingly good exercise.

Other than that, the big time-consuming thing has been the music, which I've been working on for a few weeks. I'm coming up with a playlist for reception music, as well as a two-disc set for use as the party favors. Here are supplies:



The music for the CDs is pretty set, but as a reward for reading through all this mess, I would absolutely love any and all suggestions from people for reception music. If it's a song you like, a special song with your lady or fella, whatever, leave a comment and let me know: you may be dancing to it in three weeks and one day.

Basically, what I'm trying to say is, wedding-wise: we've been getting a lot done, and we haven't been worried about it. Because there's nothing to worry about but worry itself. Then of course there's this. I don't get on the moral high horse very often, but that got me up there pretty quick.... I've never been afraid Shar would cheat on me, but it's weird knowing that if she wanted to, there's a networking site specifically catering to that kind of thing.

UPDATE: Our wedding registry is also now listed in my links on the right, for your convenience. Well, really for ours, I guess. Anyway, it's there.

Labels: Generalness, wedding

Yes, uber-awesome friends Val and Whitney drove the Batmobile back to its rightful home, and I am once again in posession of transportation. The car is as good as new...it's even in better shape than when I dropped it off, since they detailed the outside, getting rid of the marks I made destroying dozens of CSULB Parking Gates. Oh, and magically, my iPod cable works again, so no more shitty fuzzy FM transmitter for me. Hurray life!

Shar's bridal shower is today, and I'll have a post later tonight or tomorrow with tons of updated weddingness.

Woo!

Labels: Car Accident, Generalness, wedding

We went to Acres of Books with our truly great friend Adam today, and it was probably my best haul ever in terms of price, and quality. I got all this:



for slightly less than the dust jacket price of HP7... an even better deal since about half of those are out of print; the Twain book has a foreword by Vonnegut and about 1400 pages of Twain, for five bucks. And that Joyce book is a translation of a seminal French biography that I've never found for a reasonable price, that I got for eight. Great times.

***

Also, I've got a new article in this week's District (which also features a great article about Acres); the new article is all about comic book stores in Long Beach, which (ahem) I may know a few things about.

***

In other news, thanks to everyone who has come by recently. We've been hanging out with friends pretty much every day, from disc golfing excursions to groomsman bachelor party planning to just lying around. It's been a great stress reliever spending time with all of you, and I hope we keep our happy home nice and full for the next (eep) four weeks.

***

Speaking of four weeks from today, we've been plowing through wedding resonsibilities, and we're feeling happy and relaxed about the whole thing. We're finalizing a ton of stuff at the Arboretum tomorrow, and hopefully checking it out with a photographer; I'll post a massive whack of a wedding update tomorrow night. Also, Shar and I are watching some VH1 huge wedding planning show, and this couple spent two thousand dollars more on their cake than we're spending on the whole wedding. Their total price tag was $2 million. Wowza.

Labels: Generalness, wedding

First, sorry things have been so matrimonycentric here, but we've been hectic and we're both pretty excited to share progress. I promise I'll have a review of an old but good movie and more fun lists in the future. Today was the biggest day yet: we went to the county registrar in Norwalk to get our MARRIAGE LICENSE!!!!!!! Then we had dinner with my grandparents who gave my the last address I need to finish sending my first round of invitations, and stopped to pick up Shar's dress on the way back!

It was great to see my gps, who I haven't seen in weeks. I had a nice little while of gazing out the back patio and thinking about all the weeks and weeks of summer I've spent lying around their house, reading and writing.

Pictures!

Here's the license package:


Here are our first mail-delivered RSVPs that came in today (!!!):


And here is our now very expensive coat closet, with wedding and bridesmaids' dresses all in a row:


Okay, off to see the Simpsons at midnight, as a refresher for a review I'm writing for Bates, and to see the rest of my friends I haven't seen recently. Then home to write said review and wrap up the District's books calendar for the week.

Labels: Generalness, wedding

So announces the District's website, and it's true: I do have a new article in this week's issue. In fact, it's an article I'm really proud of, and that I spent a lot of time on. I really like the illustration accompanying it, and acutally really liked the subjects of the article a ton, too. Anyway, I hope you read it and I hope you like it; it's been a bit since I felt so creatively rewarded for a non-fiction piece. Nice to be back in the pages of the District: should be there for at least another week in a row; we shall see. I'm also working on some other cool projects/articles I should be telling you about soon.

In personal news, today was the least lonely I've been in a while, and the kind of day I really needed: one spent with people. My brother came over at 2 and ran me around on various errands (post office to mail even more invitations, etc), then we hung out until Ryan got here, to beat me at a childhood video game. Then they left and Erin Hickey and I went grocery shopping, and I cooked pasta for she and Conor, with plenty of leftovers for Shar to eat when she got home. I got a bit of work done in the morning, and I'm getting a bit more done now, but all in all, it was nice to take a personal day.

I'm on deadline for one article tonight and two more tomorrow, but somewhere in between there we're going to get our marriage license (!!!!) and have dinner with my grandparents. Stay tuned!

Labels: Generalness, wedding

Wedding plans are progressing nicely, if horrifyingly fast (five weeks and two days till the big day!). All the invitations have been stamped, addressed, return address-labeled, stuffed, sealed, and mailed, with the exception of a few stragglers. We got the invitation we sent to ourself today, so hopefully we'll start getting RSVPs within a few days (as a glimpse into how stressful and hectic it's been, Shar has had two separate panic attacks about the possibility of nobody showing up, despite the fact that everyone is going to show up).

Today the bridesmaid dresses came in (I'll post pictures tomorrow if the soon-to-be-missus gives the okay), and we got our registry finished! If you're interested, for, you know, one reason or another, it's right over here. It's an Amazon registry, and I have to say I'm actually really happy with it, even though I was initially against a registry. I figure, presents aren't why we're getting married, and we don't need anything but each other; my mom and grandma smacked me aside my head and pointed out that the registry isn't anything other than a convenience for guests who might need a guide for what to get us, and what our needs are. I think we did a great job of keeping it personal, which has been our goal in every stage of planning; there's Dino stuff, ice cream stuff, and general happy Mike and Shar stuff.

I'm typing in bed, something I haven't done in quite some time, because I wanted to be a few yards closer to Shar, which pretty well sums up the kind of day it's been (despite the creepy/disturbing story I posted earlier).

Labels: Generalness, wedding

10. Not having to feel the harsh rays of a desert summer sun on my skin. Like, ever.

9. All of the walking and biking I've done everywhere, or could conceivably, if I weren't so lazy from having owned a car for 8 years.

8. Finding out how generous a number of my ride-offering friends and family are.

7. Seriously, in regards to number 10, I'm even paler than I usually am, which is saying something.

6. Not having to pay for gas.

5. It's a great excuse for not going to lame things I don't want to go to.

4. I haven't been able to see my grandparents for two weeks, and my grandma dropped a pro-level guilt trip on me yesterday.

3. I've been getting a ton of writing done.

Subsection 3b. I've been getting a ton of reading done.

2. I'm totally not feeling stuck, paralyzed, and at the bottom of a deep hole. Uh...totally not.

1. Getting to have relaxing bonding time with my brother when he, like a champ, drove me up to L.A. for the Simpsons screening on Saturday, and didn't even ask to me to chip in for gas (which I wouldv'e when I was 18), or make me ask him to take him.

Okay, so more than half of those are total bullshit, but...I try to find positives in every situation I can; it just happens that most of the positives in this situation are negatives, that's all.

On the bright side, we got all the return address labels printed and trimmed and stuck on the envelopes yesterday, then put stamps on all the RSVP cards, then stuffed them all into their respective envelopes, sealed them (a lengthier and grosser-tasting job than I imagined), and now the invites are ready to send today! Be prepared to be amazed by all of Stephen's hard work; we totally are. Also, thanks to my mom and Robyn for all of the stuffing/licking help. Also! Our registry will be up and ready soon, and Shar and Robyn hammered out a bunch of bridal shower details. Go wedding! Go productivity!

Labels: Generalness, wedding

We're about 90% done with the invitation process, which is good because we want to mail them all out by the start of next week. Amazing friend/champion bridesmaid/unbelievably dependable Katie Wynne came over for a several hour mega-hand addressing sesh last night, which produced this massive stack:



The invitations themselves (which I'm not posting a picture of yet because I want everyone to see them in their pretty packaging) are amazing, and were designed (with an awesome drawring by) Shar's brother. Now we just have a few more stray addresses to track down, and RSVP stuffing to do, then print out 350 address labels for the invites and the RSVPs, stick them on, send them all out, get the responses to figure out who's coming and who's not, then determine who else we can invite based on who all declined, package and hand address more invitations, and that will be that! For, you know, one one hundredth of the responsibilities to go before the wedding.

Anyway, we're not stressed: it's been amazing to have a few people like Katie around who have been willing to talk, come over, help out, and de-stress us at a moment's notice. Thumbs up, Katie!

However, thumbs down to stamps. This is why wedding planning is infuriating when you're doing it on a budget and paying for half of it yourself:



That may look like a stack of stamps, but it's actually $150. Which means that, between the stamps and the address labels, we still went over-budget on invitations, despite the fact that Shar's bro graciously offered to pay for the invites themselves, in addition to designing and drawring them.

(PS- Don't let any grumbling we do make you think we're not more excited about the wedding than we've ever been about anything else. All the work and scrimping and saving will be worth it, exactly six weeks from today! Holy Shit!)

Labels: Generalness, wedding

Golly. It was a long one, alright. Today was Shar's day off, which usually means a luxurious day full of lying around, watching DVDs and reading comics/real books together. Today we woke up a half hour late, then rushed through getting ready so that we could make it up to Downey in time for my tux fitting. Of course, once we got there, we had to wait twenty minutes because their staff (which consisted of one late middle-age/early old-age man) had its hands full with a bratty little ring bearer.

Once we had his attention, the guy was very helpful, and got me set up with a Hilfiger luxury tux that looks like this:



Except that it has a really amazing vest and tie to go with it that look like this:



We also picked out some really nice tuxes for the rest of the wedding party and negotiated a solid deal with discount on those, then drove home and grabbed some In and Out, some comics (wednesday, baby), and some ribbons from Joann that Shar wanted to use as color samples for:

Our trip to the florist, accompanied by me ma, who made it an enjoyable trip with her offer to, you know, pay the florist. We got a quote and talked about a lot of different options (and by we I mean Megan the florist, Shar, and my Mom; I mostly just nodded my head because I generally think all flowers look pretty nice). Then we ate and went home. Shar headed off to LA while I started working on some District work (more on that tomorrow) and watched the ma'fackin Ducks become Champions of Lord Stanley's Cup! What an amazing game.

Then I went to visit Dan and Pat's new house which is, frankly, unreal. Such an amazing place, I'm really and truly jealous, and couldn't be happier for those two guys, who deserve nothing but the best all the time. A guy couldn't ask for better friends, and a guy's friends couldn't ask for a better house.

Anyway, all of that is leading up to me using my busy day as an excuse for posting a story that's barely a hundred words long. I liked it decently, but I promise a weightier effort on the morrow.

Thanks for reading! Leave comments if you'd like! I'd like!

Labels: Generalness, wedding