Updates

Long time, no see! I have been both very boring and very busy these past few months, and therefore have not posted. When bored, I find myself unmotivated, and when busy, I have no time! But things have happened, I swear, as things tend to do.

We moved in March! Okay, okay, so we only moved 7 stories up, to the 9th floor of our Archstone apartment building, but so what? It was a lot of work. We are now in a pretty spacious one-bedroom which has views of both Boston and the ocean, and which has a ridiculously large kitchen - perfect for us. I sort of liked moving because it gave me an opportunity to (A) get rid of a bunch of crap and (B) replace some of the other crap with nicer stuff.  I was nervous going from a two-bedroom to a one-bedroom because I liked having the space and the separate room for an office, but we actually didn't lose all that much size-wise. The layout is, unfortunately, slightly more awkward, but overall it's a nice place. Moving also made us notice that we are out of bookshelf space and will need to acquire a new bookshelf soon in order to get books off all the available spaces we've been putting them onto.

We recently visited a work friend of mine at his house in New Hampshire. He had told me repeatedly that he and his wife had added a second floor to their house "for all the books". I thought he was exaggerating good-naturedly until we actually arrived and saw that three-quarters of their upstairs is a huge, high-ceiling library with tall windows and bookshelves built into the walls. I should have taken pictures, because that's exactly what I want in my house, when I eventually getting around to saving the money for one.

I also have a new job! I now work for Vistaprint, in Lexington, MA. If you've heard of Vistaprint, what you probably know about us is that we sell business cards. Well, we do sell those, but we also sell just about anything you can print on. So, I do nifty website and back-end engine work to ensure that the Vistaprint website functions as it should. I'm having a good time - my team is really awesome, and I also know a couple of people from previous jobs here, so I have plenty of people to hang out with in the cafeteria.

Diablo III came out! Thanks, Blizzard Entertainment! It's a pretty fun game, but I'm still a little baffled as to why it's taken Blizzard literally 12 years to come out with what is actually amounting to be a very short single-player game. I love you, Blizz, you know I love you, but I kind of wanted a little more. Oh, well. Still the best $60 I've spent recently. And there's always World of Warcraft to go back to when I get bored of Diablo.

I finally managed to cut my gigantic queue of books in half! Now I think I only have ten books in the pile? I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say they are all non-fiction, which isn't generally what I go for (it's always twice as boring as fiction and takes me twice as long to get through). But I made a deal with myself: if I let myself read all seven of Stephen King's Dark Tower books in a row, I had to at least get through a couple of non-fiction books from the pile. So I read 1939: Countdown to the War, which was blessedly short, and I'm waffling over my next choice from the pile. Probably Steven Bach's Leni - more World War II, but hopefully more interesting World War II.

My favorite part of the week is Tuesday nights, because I get to go downtown, eat Boloco for dinner and have my weekly voice lesson. I've been taking voice lessons for about 10 months now, and it's awesome. I study with Amy Dancz, who is absolutely fantastic. I could write a whole blog post dedicated to how much I enjoy studying voice with Amy. I've been working on a lot of musical theater repertoire, lots of belty mezzo-soprano songs like "I Dreamed A Dream". I have been steadily improving, which is great, but really I take the lessons because I love to sing and having at least one hour a week dedicated to working hard at it and learning something new is nice.

My voice lessons have been reminding me how much I like music and miss studying music. A few months ago, I talked with Ben about the idea of getting a digital piano - I was thinking about learning piano to help augment my voice lessons. He surprised me by expressing a rather serious interest in having a piano. So my great quest for a piano began! I knew immediately that I wanted a digital piano - acoustic pianos are too big, too loud, require too much maintenance, and are too expensive for our current living situation. Digital pianos, on the other hand, are small, compact, less expensive and have volume control. Ideal, really.

When I began looking, I had my eye on some cheaper Casio and Yamaha models online. When I finally went to look at some to sample their voices, I was pretty blown away by the sound quality difference between the expensive models and cheap models. After hearing them, I just couldn't go with a cheap model, which was a little disappointing for my budget. Last night I made my last stop at Steinway and Sons, which sells Roland digital pianos - the Rolands have sounds sampled off their Steinway grand pianos. The saleswoman was kind enough to play for me on two of the Rolands, and I absolutely fell in love with one of them. It literally sounded like she was playing a baby grand instead of the (comparatively tiny) electronic device. So I bought it on the spot, sighing as I held out my credit card for a purchase four times greater than what I was expecting, but worth every penny.

All of this I did in secret from Ben so that I could surprise him with the purchase. So when I got home, I handed him the envelope with the invoice which bore "Steinway and Sons" on the front of it and said, "Happy... I can't buy anything nice for either of us until at least the end of the year".  He took it in confusion and, when he saw the envelope, said something along the lines of, "Holy shit, you didn't..." to which I rolled my eyes and said, "I didn't buy you a Steinway". I can tell he's excited about it because when I told him they need to deliver it and set it up on a weekday, he volunteered to stay home from work to take the delivery so we could have it as soon as possible. Ben doesn't get actively excited about anything, so subtle clues like those are usually the best I get from him.

So, on Friday, our Roland will be delivered in time for the long weekend. Now it's time for me to start looking for a piano teacher. There are, suddenly, a remarkable number of things taking up my time.

The Big Day

It's been exactly 2 months since my wedding. I've been waiting to write this post (even though multiple people have asked me about it) until I had some pictures to illustrate the story. The few months leading up to the wedding were really uneventful; there was very little planning left to do, and I mostly just went about my life like normal - working and playing video games. It was only the week before that I had anything to do - send final confirmations to all my vendors, finalize all the details and actually start worrying.

The whole wedding weekend we spent in Boston, at the Boston Harbor Hotel where the event was taking place. The wedding was Sunday at 2pm. After getting a manicure and pedicure on Saturday morning, I went into Boston to have my final meeting with the catering coordinator and made some last minute requests and changes. This was about 1pm. Ben and my parents (who also had rooms at the hotel) weren't meeting me there until 3pm, so I took a seat at the bar and had drinks and dessert. The bartender was cute, and kept pouring me the extras from various martinis and bloody marys he was making so that I could try them. There was a young guy sitting next to me who was supposed to meet his friends for some sort of birthday dinner cruise and kept trying to convince me not to get married the next day, and to come cruise with him and his friends instead. Yikes. I think he was pretty drunk.

Finally, my parents and Ben arrived and we could check into the room, which was on the 9th floor and had a lovely view of the harbor and Logan Airport. It was a mini-suite, so it had a really cute little sitting room and a huge dressing room and bathroom. Since it overlooked the harbor, it also overlooked Foster's Pavilion, the glass domed room which was our venue. This came in handy the next morning as we could look down upon it and watch them set up for our wedding.

Foster's Pavilion and the outside of the hotel:

The rehearsal dinner was Saturday night at Maggiano's, and this was about the time my shyness, anxiety and annoyance kicked in. There was nothing to rehearse really, but since our families had never met, we figured it would be a good thing to do before the actual wedding day. Although the rehearsal dinner was very lovely - in this little curtained-off private room at the restaurant - and the food was fabulous, I just really wanted to get out of there the whole time. It had nothing to do with the people or the event, I just really wanted to be alone. The Ativan was really not helping, and I was choking down lots of pain killers to get rid of my impending migraine. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of that event. I guess I should have hired my photographer for that, too!

But - lo and behold - the next morning my anxiety (and migraine) had disappeared. We had room service for breakfast and pretty much sat around doing nothing until about 11am. We did go down to the venue once to watch the staff set up and make table placement suggestions. But other than that, nothing happened until my hairdresser arrived at 11 and then everything after that is a blur.

Some shots of the details of my clothing and accessories:


I absolutely loved my bouquet. It turned out even better than I had planned. When talking to my floral designer, we went over a bunch of ideas. I wanted calla lilies, but I wasn't sure what kind or color. At first, I wanted just yellow calla lilies, but I also wanted Ben to be wearing a red shirt and a red rose, so I needed to find a way to tie that in. I was going for Fall-ish colors (reds, oranges, yellows, browns), and I wanted sort of a broad palette. My final request for my bouquet ended up being yellow and orange calla lilies and miniature red roses. We weren't sure that was going to work right, so I gave the designer free reign to do whatever was needed. Ultimately, she made it work spectacularly with full-sized red roses instead of miniatures. It was really chic and sculpted and lovely.

My hairdresser, Nicole, was great, and did my mom's hair and then did my hair exactly how I wanted it: simple and elegant. All the activity started picking up right as she was leaving. I needed to get my make-up on, and the florist arrived with everything, and Shannon (my photographer arrived. We still needed to take the favors (boxed chocolate truffles from Puopolo's Candies in Hingham) down to the venue and set them out on the tables.

Some shots of our rings (one in my bouquet and one next to my veil):

At about 1:15pm, we went down and saw the final set-up, and put the favors out. I had to rush back upstairs to finish my make-up and get my dress on. People were already arriving, so I basically stood by the window and watched them arrive until about 1:58, and then I went downstairs to wait by the doors.

The walk from the hotel doors to the venue room was really long, and involved walking through a bunch of tourists on the boardwalk who kept stopping me to offer congratulations. While I was walking in my processional. Really, guys? The processional song was Pachelbel's Canon in D.

The walk:


The ceremony was very short. We pretty much had some filler sappy stuff, Ben's brother Matt did a reading, we exchanged vows, and exchanged rings. That was all. I think it ran maybe 15 minutes max? I really don't remember much of it. Everything was kind of blurry.

Photos of the ceremony, including Ben waiting for me at the "altar", my best friend Hunter accepting my bouquet to hold for the duration, Matt doing his reading, the ring exchange, the kiss and us running the hell away when it ended:


Our music for the ceremony and the reception was provided by our friend Mackenzie, who is a professional violist. You can see her in the background of the ceremony pictures. I only remember hearing a little of what she played, actually (as said before, it was all a blur). That actually reminds me of one thing I wish I could've done: taken more time to actually enjoy my wedding. I wolfed down the food, didn't spend too much time with any one person or group, and rushed around coordinating things and taking pictures. It was the biggest event of my life and I essentially missed it. Another reason I wanted to elope: hopefully would've been less stress. I could focus on myself (and Ben) and not have to worry about everyone else.

After the ceremony, we went with Shannon to do our personal formal shots of just me and Ben. It was really stress-free. The big weight of "getting everything right" for the ceremony part was lifted. Now everyone was being fed and gotten drunk while we unwound doing our photos. All of them came out really nice. I love Boston, and I loved that we had a nice urban setting for our photos.


The venue was amazing. The staff did an awesome job of setting up the tables and food displays with all this cream, gold and brown linen. The flowers and favors fit in perfectly, and it was very simple and not over-decorated. The food was very good, or so I think I remember. We had passed hor d'oeuvres: lamb ribs, potato knishes, vegetable spring rolls, chicken satay, quesadillas, and risotto cakes. We also had a selection of desserts and fruit, and a cake from Flour Bakery. Oh, my god, it's my favorite cake in the world - lemon raspberry - and they did a great job decorating it. Don't forget the open bar (you don't want to know the bill for that one).

Here are some shots of the details of the food and venue, including the centerpieces, cake, and drinks:


All I can really say about the reception is that I've heard it was very good. No, really, I barely remember anything that happened. I remember talking to everyone and laughing, but I don't remember what I said, or what I was laughing at. I vaguely remember it all looking pretty (and the pictures confirm), but I didn't really get a chance to focus on anything. I only tried the food and the cake because the servers reserved plates of it for me and Ben, and I didn't try any of the cool drinks, like whoever got that martini pictured above. There was just too much to do and not enough time. Before I knew it, it was 4:30pm and the bartender was doing a last call. Really, the whole thing was crazy. By the time we said goodbye to everyone and went back up to our room, I literally had to peel my feet out of my shoes - heels are evil.

And then it was over. It's sort of funny how anticlimactic it all felt. I mean, the next day everything was life as usual, except that there was nothing in the fridge to eat for once ever and I was pretty tired and now I have a wedding dress that I'll never use again. I know everyone expects newlyweds to be gushing about rainbows and bunnies and whatever other sappy things, but essentially nothing has changed in our lives. I guess we can file taxes once together instead of separately - that's sort of nice. I guess I'm too practical to let weddings get to me - even my own.

Blog Share: In-Law Story

Attention Reader: The post below was NOT written by me. This post was written by an anonymous blogger, and is being posted on my blog as part of the winter 2011 Blog Share. To read more about this Blog Share and see a full list of participating blogs to peruse, please see my previous post here, and please give a warm welcome to today's poster.

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The theme for this Blog Share is supposed to be about in-laws and families. There really is some good commiseration to be had when comparing in law stories (don’t lie, you’ve read those iVillage message boards a time or two to help you feel better about your own situation). For me, though, it’s hard to come up with a good in-law story because most of them are just tragic in their awfulness and that’s because my in-laws are truly heinous people. Like WOW, I thought ugliness like that only existed in fiction. The most *benign* example I can think of is this.

When we were planning our wedding, my fiancé invited both of his parents. His parents had split up (in an incredibly rough divorce which took TWO YEARS to finalize) years before our wedding and, while he hadn’t really spoken to his mother since his parents had split up (his father told him that a “good son” would “prove his love for his father” by totally cutting off his mother and at the time my fiancé was still desperate to prove that he loved his Dad), he still wanted her to at least see him get married.

Then he made the mistake of telling his father that he had invited his mother.

His father, in return for his son’s honesty, threatened to boycott our wedding because my fiance’s even *thinking* of inviting his own mother to his wedding proved that he didn’t love his father after all and had been lying to him all along about where his loyalty was.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking “well good, nobody wants that kind of poison at a wedding.” Because that’s what I was thinking. Of course, I couldn’t say that at the time because it would have seriously upset the man I wanted to marry.

But then my fiance’s Dad went further and instead of just “well then I’m not comin’” decided that he would instead drive his RV out to our wedding site, park it in the middle of the venue’s parking lot so that nobody else could park there and then sit inside and not come out until my fiance’s Mom was gone.

“People gotta know where I stand.” Is what he told my fiancé.

Then the man decided “if you want to see me on your wedding day, you’ll just have to come into the RV and see me. If you want me to see you get married, you’ll just have to have it in the camper.”

What makes this behavior more immature is that the man had gotten remarried already and was bringing his new wife (a woman he had cheated on my fiance’s mother with) to the wedding.

Eventually it all got sorted. People got talked down. Both of my fiance’s parents came to our wedding. His mother even made a quick appearance at our reception. His father wore all black. No kidding.

My marriage was short. It was longer than Kim Kardashian’s though so that’s something.

Our divorce was finalized over the summer and it’s still hard for me. He moved on super quickly and is already dating and doing all of the things he refused to do with me with some girl he met on Match.com. I happily took back my maiden name and am making plans to move (I got our apartment in the split) but I still can’t look at what was his side of the bed without crying.

I know it will get better.

I also know that if things were to change and suddenly my ex-husband were to want to be my husband again I probably wouldn’t take him back…at least not now.

And that is because while I miss him like crazy, one of the very best things to come out of our split is that I will hopefully never. EVER. Have to deal with his crazy ass father ever again.

Blog Share Coming Up Again!

For those of you who don't know what the Blog Share is, it is a chance for bloggers to reveal something about themselves that can't be said on their own site. On Tuesday, November 15th, the post on my blog will not be my own - it will have been written by someone itching to get something off their chest and sent to me anonymously to post. Some people write about their significant others, their in-laws, their exes, their work, a personal flaw, or just some strange story. Sometimes the posts contain deep secrets that the writer doesn't want associated with them, other times people write about topics which merely don't fit with the theme of their own sites. Blog Share posts range from funny to serious to just plain weird. Please see the list at the bottom of this post for a complete list of participants, and take the time to read everyone's hard work.

The rules of the Blog Share state that I cannot identify which post is mine (it breaks down the anonymity of the whole thing). You may recognize it among the group but, if you do, please refrain from identifying me. If you recognize the writer of the post on my site, please be respectful of their anonymity as well.

To my new readers: Welcome! I'm a software/database engineer living just south of Boston, MA with my husband and two cats. This blog is my personal blog, which usually covers the events in my life, things I buy, books I read, things I see on the internet, etc. I'm excited to open my blog to the Blog Share again, and I hope you enjoy and admire the hard work done by everyone to make this event possible.

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Andrea Unplugged
April On Ashley
Bright Yellow World
Drifts Get Deeper
Malfeasance
Our Little Geekling
The Reluctant Grownup
Together They Come
Did I Say That Outloud?
Snarke
Operation Pink Herring
Nonsense and Frippery
Mama Bub
Heidikins
Nothing Is Easier Than Self-Deceit
Barfing Rainbows and Unicorns
And You Know What Else

Picnic Days

Today, we took the opportunity of the 82 degree weather, sun and new picnic basket that my mother gave Ben for his birthday to have a beach outing. It's been a pretty good week, all in all. I set up an appointment for early September to go over the details of the flowers with the floral designer, and we're taking care of a few final things for the wedding next week such as favors, picking up Ben's new (tailored!) suit, and applying for that very necessary marriage license. We had dinner at Meritage on Tuesday, which is the restaurant at the Boston Harbor Hotel that does their catering and (as we found out) has spectacular food. So our food should be great. We also booked a cruise to Alaska for next summer - a Princess cruise, round-trip from Seattle, hitting such ports as Juneau, Skagway, Ketchikan and Victoria. All I really care about is the dog sledding!

So, with all of this happening, we rewarded ourselves with a picnic - a little different from our usual reward of going to the book store or Red Mango. It was a modest picnic - some sushi, potato salad, fruit, cheese, crackers, and juice - but it was nice nevertheless. Oh, and something that we got a Fresh Market called "banana pudding", which is pretty much heaven in a little plastic cup.


We went to the beach that's about .5 miles from our apartment and always fairly empty and laid out my very comfortable double-towel to do a little reading. After finally getting Ben to pick up the first Game of Thrones book, he's hooked and won't put it down. I'm reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, about 6 months behind all the cool people, but hey, my pile of books to read is very tall. I should take a picture of it sometime. But anyway. Off we went into the sun and sand.

And it was nice for about an hour until it became unbearably hot. We returned home about 20 minutes ahead of the massively down-pouring thunderstorm, with bright pink sun-burned backs because we didn't think the sun could possibly be that bad on an hour-long picnic and didn't bring sunscreen. Oh, well. It was still nice to get out! Hopefully next weekend my outing will be to the mall.

Wedding: Getting Closer

The wedding is just over a month and a half away. I haven't updated in a long time because there was a long period in which nothing really happened. After you decide on all the major points and the deposits are in, it's mostly just a waiting game until you get closer to the date.

A few interesting things happened over the past couple of months: my dress was altered and finalized, I found a necklace and earrings at a fair in New Hampshire, we purchased a new suit and tie for Ben (shirt pending), I picked a wedding cake from Four Bakery, I called the cleaning company to come clean our apartment the week before the wedding since people will be staying there, I went to my doctor to get a prescription for some nerve-reducing Ativan, and I made facial and hair and nail appointments. See? It was mostly little stuff. In the last couple of weeks, we made two bigger milestones: planning the rehearsal dinner and meeting with the event caterer.

The rehearsal dinner is going to be at Maggiano's, an Italian restaurant in Boston that fit our three requirements of: reasonably priced, has private rooms, and offers gluten-free options. Not that we're rehearsing anything, per se, but we thought it would probably be a good idea to let our parents meet at a time that was before the actual wedding. It was rather fun planning the rehearsal dinner - getting to pick all the menu items and the wines and whatnot. What could be better the night before the wedding than unlimited wine, beer and food? That's a good idea, right?

The other major thing we did was meet with the caterer. The catering is through the Boston Harbor Hotel (our venue), so when I say "met with the caterer", I really mean, "planned all aspects of the venue, timing, food, drink, decorations and service". So, the Boston Harbor Hotel is expensive, this is true, but the worth of the price really comes through in the service. My catering director/coordinator is great - she is thorough, nice, and extremely accommodating. She really has everything completely under control. When I asked her such questions as "When should I have Winston deliver the flowers?" she just said, "Oh, don't worry, I'll contact them directly and take care of it". Very smooth. The banquet order she wrote up was extremely comprehensive, listing exact food, drinks, and timing, and included all the special details we had talked about. She didn't miss anything. I have had nothing but good experiences with them so far.

And... Ben and I talked about going to Alaska next year, and it seems like we are probably going to book a trip! Like 90% sure? Very, very exciting. My best friend went on a cruise to Alaska a couple of years ago and I was always jealous of his cute family pictures of helicopter rides, botanical gardens, dog-sledding, and beautiful sunsets. It will pretty much be the honeymoon we wanted but couldn't plan because we're getting married too fast and October isn't an Alaska-friendly time of year. Not that Montreal won't be fun, but Alaska is the carrot-on-a-stick.

So that's that. The list of things left to do is getting smaller and smaller: find the right color shirt for Ben, meet with the florist, order the wedding favors (chocolate truffles from Puopolo's in Hingham!), apply for the marriage license, and a few other details. And, we are going to be attending our very good friend Gretchen's wedding this weekend, so I will be watching extra closely to see how everything goes as an interested future bride!

Wedding: The Middle

It's been just under a month since I got engaged, and I have just blown through the wedding planning! Pretty much everything is booked and ready to rock and roll. Seriously, everything is moving with very little issue.

I looked at two florists and decided on Winston Flowers. They work a lot with my venue (The Boston Harbor Hotel) and I really felt like the woman was actually interested in planning my admittedly small wedding, whereas the other vendor I looked at, while nice, seemed like they were put-off by the size. (Only 7 centerpieces??) The Winston Flowers consultant was even nice enough to give me a ride back to the T in the pouring rain (it wasn't raining when I walked there) after meeting with me and showing me their back rooms of flowers.

We booked our officiant, too, who is very nice. When we met with her, she asked us all sort of awkward questions about our relationship that it was funny to watch Ben stumble over. What do you really love about Angela? What makes you know she's the one? She seems very laid back and funny, which is perfect for us since we want such a low-key ceremony.

We got a musician - a violist who's an old high school friend of Ben's. We were lucky enough to have the choice between two lovely Boston Conservatory students - a harpist and a violist, but Ben liked the sound of viola more, so we went with that.

We still have to do engagement photos - we postponed because of the rain - but the photographer and I have a couple of ideas in mind for location, so I'm excited. And I have a new shirt coming in the mail that I think I can wear for the photos!

Perhaps the biggest news: I got my wedding dress yesterday! (I've sent pictures to a few people. If you want to see it, let me know and I'll try to get a picture to you.) Ben doesn't want to see it or really hear about it until that day, so I can't post a picture or describe it, but it is quite lovely. I had seen it online weeks before and when I went into David's Bridal, I tried it on first right away. Even though I tried on a few others after, that first one was the one! The size I bought fits me absolutely perfectly except for the length, so that's great. I wasn't originally going to get a veil, but when they brought out the matching one, I actually really liked how it looked, so I got it as well, and a pair of simple shoes to match.

There is very little left undone at this point. We need to get Ben's clothes, and pick out the wedding rings. Other than that, most of the planning is in the details, which don't get sorted out until closer to the wedding anyway. Marriage certificate, what exact food and appetizers to serve, layout of the tables/chairs, color of the linens, ceremony wording, exact selections of flowers and music, etc. Oh, yeah, and that paying people part. Like all engaged couples, that's probably the part we are least looking forward to. =P