Amphigouri: varnished nonsense

This has been the first weekend Husband and I have both been home since mid-August, I think. It’s been an excellent one - we’ve both been super-productive, and have also had time to be Good Consumers and to enjoy each other’s company.

My folks are visiting us over Columbus Day weekend. This marks the first time they’ve seen our house since we moved in over a year ago, and is also the first Parental Visit since Husband’s father came to see us last spring. What with the planning for the wedding this summer and spending at least half our weekends in Maine, and also with our finely honed procrastination skills, our housekeeping has, shall we say, been low on our priority list. The impending company has started a fire under our butts, and we’ve spent much of the weekend trying to make the house vaguely presentable.

Yesterday I spent a couple hours in the Sunroom (thusly dubbed due to the many windows, and also because of the bold yellow paint we decided to put on the walls) cleaning out all the papers and such that I’d let accumulate over the summer. This room also doubles as my computer room, and I managed to toss enough stuff and to rearrange the furniture in order to accomodate the nice computer desk Husband obtained from his office. I now have a great work space for those days I manage to work from home, along with the nice cooshy reading chair and loveseat. The furniture kinda dwarves the room, but we’re both fans of oversized comfy seating, and figure that eventually we’ll have a house that is better suited for our stuff.

Also on yesterday’s docket was my second attempt at changing my name on my license. Yes, I did take Husband’s name, and Friday I spent the morning at the Social Security office in order to get my new information into their computers. When I was there last winter in order to obtain a new card (needed by the DMV in order to issue me a new MA license), they were able to fax over the information to the DMV across the street and I was able to get my license all in the same day. Friday, however, the folks at the SS office couldn’t/wouldn’t/didn’t fax over the info, and informed me that I’d need to wait 24 hours for it to be processed. The DMV needed to see this information in the SS database (it wasn’t enough that I took my stamped form from SS to the DMV). So, yesterday morning I stopped by the DMV to get it all straightened out (note to MA folks: the DMV in Lawrence hardly has any wait at all; at least it hasn’t the few times I’ve been there - lunchtime, weekday morning, weekday afternoon, and Saturday morning). Unfortunately, the SS database was offline. :-/ I waited around reading my book (I was taught at an early age to carry a book with me.. one of the familiar phrases before leaving the house on any sort of car trip was “everybody have something to read??”), but after 35 minutes I gave up and opted to try again first thing Monday morning. So I ended up wasting over an hour or more, if you count travel time… but I *tried* to be productive, and that’s what really counts. So I keep telling myself.

Husband and I are what bookstores and Circuit City (or other store with DVDs for sale) consider Dream Consumers (read: Impulse Shoppers). Both of us tend to purchase movies to watch, sometimes having already seen them in the theater. This has, in the past, been something I’ve considered a guilty pleasure, a luxury. Then we recently figured out that the cost of two theater tickets (even the matinee shows these days!), plus drinks & a popcorn to share, will cost us the same amount as purchasing the DVD and enjoying it (and the Bonus Material) in the comfort of our own home. It’s amazing what this sort of rationalization does for guilt. :-> We now have a handful of new movies to keep us occupied over the next two or three weeks. We also made the mistake of going to Barnes and Noble yesterday as well. It’s a very rare day that I can exercise restraint when entering a bookstore. Yesterday was not one of those days. We left the store with 8 or 10 books between us.

Today has also been a productive one - I was up reasonably early to get groceries, and got one of our favorite chili recipes started in the crock pot. After some web surfing, Husband and I went to Lowe’s to obtain some fixings for our house (another project in preparation for overnight guests). We detoured at Starbuck’s with our books on the way home, and have spent the rest of the afternoon fixing the bathroom floor (for some value of “fixing”).

Chili should be ready for consumption soon, just in time to camp in front of HBO for a couple hours of Six Feet Under and the Sopranos. A fine weekend, indeed.

So, I’ve been playing with my digital camera a bit, and am having a grand time of it. Recently I was tinkering with some of the pictures I took the morning after receiving the camera, and discovered something unexpected in a few of them - bonus content that I hadn’t been trying to capture & didn’t even know was there in the shot.

In the yard next to ours that morning, I found a neat web of dew. Trying to see how well I could capture a close-up of the dew, I grabbed this shot:

It wasn’t until recently that I discovered a hidden scene near the middle of the image:

Snacktime!! Color me amused. I wonder how often real photographers find hidden treasures in the pictures they take (or maybe those real photographers actually pay a bit more attention to their surroundings than i do… ).

Here’s a spider-free one:

Yipes!

For the last 2+ years I’ve been thinking and talking about going back to school to get a Master’s degree in Library & Information Science. The idea is that the classes will be heavy on the Info Sci bit so I can apply the knowledge to my current work and interests, but also be broad enough to give me the foundation I’ll need to become a “Media Specialist” (or whatever they’re calling school librarians these days) sometime in the future. What with moving back to MA and the wedding planning and etc. over the last year, all this school stuff has remained just talk and thought. Until today.

Since I graduated from college nearly 10 (!!) years ago, the GRE scores I acquired back then are no longer valid (and no longer available, apparently.. I can’t even find copies with all my college stuff that’s taking up too much room in my parents’ garage). This requires me to retake the exams, something I’ve been loathe to do. Today I finally called and scheduled the appointment. This means that between now and November 30 I’ll be adding “cram for exam” to my long list of things I should be doing. Wish me luck.

I’ve looked at a few programs for the MLS. The only local program that I’ve found is at Simmons, but I get the sense that the courses aren’t quite as technical as I want at this point in my career. The upside, though, is that I’d be able to go to classes locally and meet face-to-face with professors and other students.

However, I’m leaning more toward the program at Drexel, in particular their Online Program for the MLS with a concentration in the Management of Digital Information (their other online degree program for MS Information Systems also looks good). The coursework looks interesting and fairly technical, and I’m drawn to the flexibility of a completely distance-learning program. I’m currently thinking that these points outweigh face-to-face interaction.

Another alternative is what looks to be a best-of-both-worlds program: Syracuse’s Information Studies Distance Learning program. This one would require some campus visits nearly every quarter, with a 9+ day initial visit. Unfortunately, I’ve yet to convince my employers that 9 days of on-site coursework shouldn’t be considered different from two one-week training classes (instead of giving time off for “training,” I’d be required to take the time as vacation days or time without pay - even though one of the current requirements for job advancement is advanced schooling) - this is a fairly significant problem, especially considering I’m already in the hole for vacation days. Drexel’s sounding better.

So, once the GREs are out of the way, I’ll be spending the winter preparing grad school applications and the like. I find this somewhat odd (as I did a couple years ago when I first realized I wanted to go back to school), because I really wanted nothing to do with more schooling when I finished college. Funny how several years of growth and experience can change one’s perspective (I suspect a high level of interest in the subject matter also helps).

Any words of advice from folks who’ve been-there, done-that are most welcome!

Last weekend we went to Husband’s cousin’s wedding, held on an island off the coast of Maine. It was nice on several levels… our wedding only three weeks past and the planning for it still fresh in our minds, we found it terribly relaxing to be able to attend someone *else’s* wedding and just sit back and enjoy the day without having to worry about any of the details. It was also a chance for me to meet many of the In-Laws as well as visit with some who were at our wedding and with whom I didn’t get a chance to do more than say hi and thanksfercoming. And… we were in Maine, on the ocean, which is where both of us feel most at home.

Due to my procrastination, we weren’t able to book a room in the main hotel on the island. Instead, we stayed in a small bed-and-breakfast nearby. I now realize that staying in B&Bs is going to be a difficult thing for me. This particular one was a cute house, and I felt like we were walking into someone’s home (probably because we *were* - even though the owner/hostess has her personal bedroom(s) upstairs, it was obvious that she lives in the entire house.. books, papers, magazines were everywhere -rather like our house, in fact). I felt like I was supposed to be helping, as I would if we were visiting friends and staying with them for a weekend. I stopped short of offering to do dishes (we *were* paying for the room, after all - I couldn’t quite bring myself to pay for the opportunity to help wash ), but did end up stripping the sheets off the bed in the morning and helped to bring coffee/tea mugs to the breakfast table, etc. Husband was amused.

Another highlight of the weekend was going sailing for a few hours with a couple of Husband’s siblings and one of their SOs. Husband’s grandfather was a boat-builder, and his mum has the last boat he worked on - a 25-foot sloop. Husband’s sister & her bf had borrowed it for the weekend, and sailing on it Saturday afternoon was one of the most relaxing and enjoyable things we’ve done in a long while. I’ve now got an urge to learn how to sail myself - I’d love to be able to spend a summer on the ocean, toodling around in a boat. Time to dig out that copy of Sailing For Dummies I bought ages ago, methinks. Perhaps next spring/summer we can take some lessons.

Google rocks.

The latest: http://news.google.com
“Search and browse 4,000 continuously updated news sources.”

Not only does it appear to be a clean layout (typical of Google) with good news stories from several topic areas, the coolest thing is that the pages are auto-generated without any human editors, as the amusing footer explains:

“This page was generated entirely by computer algorithms without human editors.
No humans were harmed or even used in the creation of this page.”

Read more: http://news.google.com/help/about_news_search.html

<gush>

Yes, I dig Google. I use the search engine almost exclusively for my internet searching, and I have the great fortune to be able to maintain/play with a Google Search Appliance at work. The appliance is typical of Google in that the admin interface pages are very clean and intuitive; the search results can be displayed in various ways by mucking about with an XSLT file (my current method of choice, there are other ways); it incorporates the PageRanking algorithms but also use additional analysis to determine relevance (since on an intranet, where there’s not a lot of cross-linking between various internal sites, the PageRanking system wouldn’t be terribly effective by itself). I’ve been very happy with their tech support thus far, and the addition of a user’s forum to their Appliance support website has been extremely useful.

Plus, they sent a free t-shirt with our trial appliance.
*sigh* I’m envious of the folks who work there. All sortsa extremely cool projects going on, and all that I’ve seen have been *very* well executed.

Go, Google!

</gush>

Just a few pics from early morning in Cushing, Maine, where we got married & spent our honeymoon. I grew up here and find the area very inspiring for picture-taking. The pics I take here may not have much meaning to folks unfamiliar with the area, but to me there’s a lot more to each photo than just a tree, or the incoming tide, or a bunch of old lobster traps that have been sitting behind the shed for well over a decade.

Online ‘Smiley Face’ turns 20.

Wow, has it been that long?!? I’m feeling old today.

Husband and I coexist with four cats (it would be mostly incorrect to say that we own four cats, as many a cat-person would probably tell you; in fact, it can be said that in our household, our cats appear to own *us* more often than not). No, we are not Crazy Cat People (though I could easily become one if Husband didn’t keep me in check); we had each adopted two furballs prior to becoming a couple, and since neither of us were a) willing to give up the two we came with or b) tell the other person to give up two, we joined forces. It’s worked with mixed results (my HugelyFatAndNeurotic kitty is still camped out under the kitchen table 95% of the time, hiding from Husband’s two infuriatingly cute monsters).

Despite cat fur on furniture (bleh), cat sick in inappropriate places (sorry, Bubba!), clawed furniture, and broken dishes, we love all of ‘em to pieces(and, I hasten to add, *not* in the same way I love, say, ice cream, or Husband loves, for example, lobster). They’ve been consoling through bad spots in previous relationships, distractors from the stresses at work, and company when many hours and miles separate friends&family.

However - no matter how much we love them (*not* like we love pizza!), we can’t help but pause in thought after reading the quote at the top of this entry. Ensuing conversation goes something [but not exactly] like this:

Husband, reading: *giggle*
me, curious: what?
Husband: I think Twist would make a good stewing kitty.
me: ?
Husband: Yeah, a stewing kitty. No meat, really, so you gotta stew her to get at the flavor.
me, getting into this now: *snerk* I suppose that would mean Idgie [HugelyFatAndNeurotic] would be grand on a spit, with apple stuffed in her mouth. Roasting Kitty.
Husband: Hee! What about Rumpus? I bet he’d be good as deli meat or a full Hoagie.
me: Mmm. Deli meat. Hoagie.
Husband: That leaves Escher.
me: Hrm. Escher.
Husband: We could always grill him.
me: Yeah, ok. Maybe with some teriyaki sauce.

Erm. One of those had-to-be-there moments, I think.

On August 31, after a 15-month-long engagement, now-Husband and I exchanged our vows in front of roughly 80 friends and family members.
Some of the pictures from the ceremony & reception will be posted here when available.

We had lots of folks comment on and compliment our wedding ceremony. I wish we could take full credit for it, but it was actually cobbled together from two or three books and a couple online resources we stumbled upon.
The bulk of the ceremony came from various sections in

Weddings From The Heart.

Here’s our ceremony. There’s also a PDF version.

Convocation:

We have come together - family & friends - in the presence of God to uphold ____ & ____ as they make their vows of marriage. We celebrate with them the love they have discovered in each other, and we support their decision to commit themselves to each other for the rest of their lives.

Marriage is a relationship entered into thoughtfully, reverently, with gratitude for the past & hope for the future. By our presence here, we help celebrate and encourage the marriage of ____ & ____.

Invocation:

Gracious God, before whom we stand: Look with favor upon this man and this woman who desire to make their vows before you and this gathering of family and friends. May they experience your presence as they pledge their lives, one to another. This we pray through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Readings:

Shakespeare: Sonnet 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments; love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
Oh no! It is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with its brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
    If this be error and upon me proved,
    I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Cummings:
i am so glad and very
merely my fourth will cure
the laziest self of weary
the hugest sea of shore

so far your nearness reaches
a lucky fifth of you
turns people into eachs
and cowards into grow

our can’ts were born to happen
our mosts have died in more
our twentieth will open
wide a wide open door

we are so both and oneful
night cannot be so sky
sky cannot be so sunful
i am through you so i

Psalm I (The book of Psalms, adapted by Stephen Mitchell)
Blessed are the man and the woman
Who have grown beyond themselves
And have seen through their separations.
They delight in the way things are
And keep their hearts open, day and night.
They are like trees planted near flowing rivers,
Which bear fruit when they are ready.
Their leaves will not fall or wither.
Everything they do will succeed.

Address:

Your wedding is an unmitigatedly happy occasion, but your marriage will be a many-textured thing. In it, both magic and sorrows will befall you. You will intend one thing and end up doing another. You will imagine your partner to be a certain way and discover that he is not, that she is a person unto herself. You will have clashes and discover things you did and did not want to know. You will rumple each other’s spirits as well as bedclothes and hair. You will say mean and terrible words, and, for love, be able to forget them, forgive one another, and go on.

Therefore, along with celebrating the marvelous feelings of today, remember, especially when you are saying your vows, that you are also promising to love for the long and ambiguous future. If you can hold onto this intention, then instead of bowing down or bowing out when you’ve misplaced your delight, you can ride out the storms with confidence, knowing that the thunderhead-clouded skies are temporary and not a reflection of your relationship as a whole.

Above all, remember that love is what matters. It is the love you feel for one another that will be the answer to all your difficulties. If in marrying you have chosen well and promised wisely, love will be stronger than the conflicts, bigger than the changes. Love will be the miracle always inviting you to learn, to blossom, to expand. And it is to love - to the love you are celebrating, embodying, and radiating on this special day - that you must always return.

Remember these things as you go out into the world as a couple: that your love will have seasons, that your relationship is a progression, and that love will prevail. Remembering them, holding them in your hearts and in your minds, will give you a marriage as deep in its joy as your courtship has been in its magic.

Remember to do the simple and beautiful things that will make this love a treasure. Play. Fight well. Communicate with one another. Focus on what you want, and entice your intentions into being. Plan for the things that are important to you, and make sure you do them. This love is to be nurtured, to be lived out to the fullest in every aspect of its dreams - in the simple ceremonies of shared daily life, in realized hopes and long-deferred plans, in a quality of emotional exchange and spiritual communion toward which the whole of your life has been leaning.

It is important to have a mutual sense of values and common objectives so that you stand together as you work through the world and do things for each other, not as a duty or sacrifice, but in the spirit of love and joy. Do not expect perfection of each other; perfection is only for the gods. But do give each other room to grow and cultivate flexibility, patience, understanding, and sense of humor in your relationship.

In the words of a counselor, make yours a relationship in which “the independence is equal, the dependence is mutual, and the obligation is reciprocal.” Remember that standing together never means dissolving your individual selves into each other, but indeed means the strengthening of the individuality of each. A good marriage evolves when two distinct souls face life’s joy and its sorrow in harmony, not in unison.

And, finally, be thankful for one another. Love is always a gift. You have been delivered to your ultimate partner, the person with whom you can share the fruits of all the lessons in your life.

Consecration:

Seeing that no moment is without meaning, no undertaking is without significance, be honored and expanded by the promises you are about to make, the marriage you are about to create. And may love be always in your midst, the handmaid and the master of your marriage.

Family Blessing:

The union of ___ and ___ brings together two family traditions, two systems of roots, in the hope that a new family tree may become strong and fruitful. Theirs is a personal choice and a decision for which they are primarily responsible. But their life will be enriched by the support of the families from which each comes.

Will you (parents) encourage ___ and ___ in their marriage?

Do you celebrate with them the decision they have made to choose each other?

Will you continue to stand beside them, yet not between them?

Expression of Intent:

Before God & this congregation, I ask you to affirm your willingness to enter the covenant of marriage & to share all the joys & sorrows of this new relationship, whatever the future may hold.

___, will you have ____ to be your wife/husband and will you love her/him faithfully as long as you both shall live?

Vows:

I, ____, take you, ____, as my husband/wife for life. I pledge to honor, encourage, respect & support you through our walk together. When our way becomes difficult, I promise to stand by you & uplift you, so that through our union we can accomplish more than we could alone. I promise to work at our love and always make you a priority in my life. With every beat of my heart I love you. This is my solemn vow.

Blessing & Exchange of Rings:

As a sign of my love
And that I am choosing
To share my whole life’s journey
With you, and of my knowing that in marrying
You I shall become much more than I am,
I give you this ring, with the pledge
That with you, I shall become most truly myself
And offer such gifts as I have
And I am to the world.

Pronouncement of Marriage:

Because ____ & ____ have chosen one another & pledged their love & commitment to each other before God & these witnesses, I declare that they are husband & wife.

May the Spirit that lives in and around all of us fill your hearts and bless your lives.

(From To Love Honor and Shave Twice a Week (David A. Johnson)):

May you always remain sweethearts, helpmates, and friends.
May your life together be full of kindness and understanding, thoughtfulness and rejoicing.
May the years bring you happiness and contentment.
May you enter into each other’s sorrow by sympathy,
Into each other’s joy with gladness,
Into each other’s hope with faith and trust,
Into each other’s need with the sure presence of love,
Into each other’s lives with enthusiasm and embracing. Amen.

<kiss>

Benediction:

(to congregation) Will all of you - parents, friends, and witnesses - do everything you can to honor, uphold, and care for ____ & ____ as they walk the sacred path of marriage?
  (we will)

May God bless your union;
May you find peace in your place in the universe & in our midst.
May you feel the love of each other always.
Go in peace.

Presentation & Recession