rested

What a truly wonderful week and a half! All the planning and stressing about detail and choosing and running around all came together beautifully. I won’t bore everyone with the details; suffice it to say that we couldn’t have nicer, more supportive family and friends, or a better crew of wedding professionals (more about each of the latter to come when I have some photos to share that will illustrate what I mean about these talented, creative, generous, wonderful people).

Our honeymoon to Niagara Falls, Toronto, and Windsor was fun and relaxing — everything a honeymoon should be, but with miniature golf. And dinosaurs. All together.

A great way to start the summer…

see? see?

The next time someone expresses skepticism when I share my story of being attacked by a centipede, I’m going to direct them to this You Tube video. Assuming the centipede I bludgeoned to death in my yard with a garden trowel mere days after the incident was the same one or its brother, my attacker was only an inch or two shorter than the star of this film.

(I think the answer to the untranslatable archive dilemma is to simply repost the “best of” here a little at a time with the appropriate retro timestamp and let the rest retire quietly to CD to play shuffleboard and bore each other to death. I’ll lose the few comments I have, but so be it.)

happiness is . . .

catching up

[Exhale.] I’m back to full-time freelancing, and wow, does it feel good. Even though I was aware of the massive stress I was under at my recent staff job, it wasn’t until I left it that I realized just how much it was affecting every last fiber of my being. Freelancing has its own stresses, but they’re stresses I’m more willing to live with. The flexibility is allowing me to branch out and pursue some tech writing in addition to my established editorial services, and also to spend more time with my jewelry and other art.

Flexibility has also been a necessity in catching up on wedding plans. We’re just over four months away, and there’s still more left to do than I would like, but over the past two weeks I’ve been able to get a lot accomplished. Mom and I spent some time last Tuesday and again today doing the legwork on cakes and invitations so J and I could make our decisions. We settled on a photographer last week and figured out what we’re doing for favors. The next major obstacle is finalizing the guest list, probably the most difficult thing we have to do and something almost all couples struggle with.

My plate still overfloweth, but in a good way. It’s good to be back.

Grand Canyon to Texas

Hanging in the Dallas area with C & MK. Not much time to update and no pictures today (I hear the cheers from the dialup section).

The Grand Canyon was so breathtaking. I can’t come anywhere close to describing it, and the pictures don’t capture even a fraction of it, so you’ll get neither from me now. Everyone should see it at some point in their lifetimes. Staying in Grand Canyon Village was a good call. It made parking and getting to the rim and easy. The lodge was rustic but not at all bad, and not that much more expensive than outside the park.

Decided to head to Santa Fe instead of Albuquerque, and was glad I did. I really like Santa Fe. Bought a bauble that I really couldn’t afford but also couldn’t live without, a gorgeous turquoise bracelet.

Headed across Texas — big, hot, dusty state that it is — with an overnight stop in Amarillo. Stopped yesterday in Archer City to browse the Booked Up stores. Huge, amazing bookstores owned by author Larry McMurtry in this nowhere Texas town. You have never seen so many gorgeous books in one place. Got to C’s last night in time for the jam session. To the joy of ears everywhere, I declined their exhortations to sing.

On to Memphis just to overnight on Sunday, then to Lexington to hang with more friends.

Later, then.