Happy belated birthday to me! I am officially 27.

I suppose I can echo Becca’s feelings in that I never thought I’d spend my 27^th birthday addressing wedding invitations. It took us a long time to get the timing of the ceremony and reception nailed down, so we’re a little delinquent in sending out the actual invitations. I spent a long time fiddling with the mail merge function in Word so that I could have my blank envelopes printed with everyone’s addresses at Kinko’s... turns out our envelopes (regular 5x7) “won’t fit in their printers.”

Seriously??

I tried to think of where else I could have this done (we don’t have a working printer at home) when Glenn called, wanting to know the exact address for the wedding and whether we reserved hotel rooms anywhere yet. I realized it would be stupid to wait longer to send them out just so that I could have the addresses printed, especially since we’re only sending out about 30 invitations. So I’m hoping my somewhat scrunched handwriting says, “personal and casual” rather than “ghetto.” All along, Josh and I agreed that invitations were very low on our list of priorities, especially when we have so little time to plan the wedding, but...

On the bright side, I like how the actual invitations turned out, and I got to refine the reception playlist a little tonight while I was writing our return address for the zillionth time.

Josh is in the middle of a two-week (possibly longer) stint out of town for work. When I whined about how he was going to be gone for Valentine’s Day, his response was, “Well, I’m going now so that I can be back for your birthday.”

Right. Done complaining now.

So I’m trying to line up some fun things to do over the long weekend. I debated trying to find a cheap flight to somewhere, but nothing really looked good, and I figured that most of my friends wouldn’t want a third wheel on their dates this weekend anyway. Plus, I figured it would be a good time to finish my taxes, unpack the rest of our boxes, work on some wedding stuff, and figure out what I’m doing with my professional life. You know, easy stuff.

But back to the fun part—tonight is dinner and Guitar Hero with Glenn and Phil. Getting together with Ann and seeing a movie with Paul will land somewhere on Saturday or Sunday, I think. I might hit up the outlet mall for some new work clothes, and I’ve been itching to get out of town to do some hiking or sightseeing or something. I predict I’ll be slightly sick of flowers and veils and centerpieces by Monday morning.

Marriage

"Fidelity": Don't Divorce... from Courage Campaign on Vimeo.

This video had me in tears within seconds. In the middle of planning our wedding, I sometimes forget how lucky I am to even be able to marry the person I love. While I believe that marriage should be a religious institution only, I also believe that the government has no business telling me who I can or cannot pledge to share the rest of my life with. After all, aren’t we all just looking for happily ever after? Someone to love and comfort us? Shouldn’t we be encouraging monogamy, stable families, love and happiness, in whatever form they exist?

Wedding update 2 and new apartment

Making progress on our wedding to-do list... officiant booked, wedding rings ordered, hotel rooms reserved, tickets purchased for (hopefully only) scouting trip in March, caterer & cake tasting appointments set, invitations chosen, 1 out of 2 flower girl dresses picked out, reception playlist draft completed, wedding shoes purchased.

However, still to do/figure out are... make final decision on ceremony time, order and mail invitations, reception decorations, marriage license, flowers, figure out what Josh will be wearing, figure out what ring bearer will be wearing (what will ring bearer carry? what will flower girls carry?) rehearsal/rehearsal dinner, music for ceremony?, where will everyone park?, what will I do with my hair? are we going to do a registry?, make more progress on mini-moon plans.

And of course, the above list does not include the following freak out items: What happens if my dress doesn’t arrive on time? (medium potential) What happens if the seamstress butchers it? (low potential) What if the caterer’s food and the baker’s cake suck? (low potential?) We’d have to start all over looking for replacements with less than two months until the wedding.


Okay, new topic.


The move went well last weekend, although of course it took longer than we thought. Having an office is really nice. The only downside to the new place is that it’s on the bottom floor, and there’s a family of elephants living upstairs. Seriously, the housing market would be in way worse shape if multi-story apartment buildings didn’t exist.

Quiet

It’s deathly quiet around here at work. We’ve lost several people to other programs and new buildings over the past few weeks, particularly people whose offices were along the same hallway as mine. eerie.

I guess I’ll get out my mp3 player. I wonder when iPod will become like Kleenex? At some point, will I give in and start referring to it as my iPod, even when it’s actually a Sansa?