29 posts tagged “love”
Tomorrow is Mr. P's birthday, and I have a surprise in store for him. Can't wait to spring it on him!
Lots to be thankful for-- a wonderful husband, fabulous friends, a great family. And pie. One should always be thankful for pie.
Why, yes, I have. My love, Mr. P, does get kissed quite often, but he got extras today for his service, and because I'm very very happy that he is not in Iraq anymore. I had the day off, which meant that I was at least somewhat productive-- I did get some sewing stuff done that had to get done, and finished the second edit on the paper and worked on additional accoutrements. The project for which those pieces have been made is due tomorrow, and I think now that I will be able to get it wrapped up-- yeay!
In the meantime, I took Mr. P out for a Veterans' Day lunch, wherein we stuffed ourselves so completely that neither of us is interested in dinner. Instead, we're going for an episode or two of old skool Star Trek. We are just wild and crazy, que no?
My love, Mr. P, has a new solo show opening at Irvine Contemporary in Washington, DC on October 30th.
The work is fabulous (I should know, since I live with it!), so if you'll be in the area between Oct. 30th and December 12th, come see it! He'll also be giving a gallery talk on the evening of November 12th. More information about the show can be found on the Irvine website. And of course, more of Mr. P's work can be found on his website.
The last few weeks have been crazy busy-- lots of stuff going on, including my hitting the road for work once again. Just got back last night from my first multi-day out-- the first of many to come. In the midst of all of that we had to say au revoir to our dear friend Carrie.
I've been busy making stuff, too....
And we took in what is prolly the last harvest of the year. (I had planted peas for fall, but the bunny ate all the sprouts, so no peas for us :( )
Tomatillos and sweet red peppers...
And hot peppers. I put them all together for dinner the other night....
Tomatillo and Corn soup with sweet red peppers (and a few hot ones, too). Delicious!
In the meantime, Mr. P has been busy building a person out of wood. :)
More prictures! As promised!
We headed up towards the Shenandoahs last weekend for camping and hiking. I was the one who reserved the camping spaces, and clearly I need to learn to look more closely at where we are going when I do such things, because I failed to note two important facts: 1) this was a hike in campground; 2) that is the first state park with camping that one hits off of I-66 headed west out of D.C. Number one wasn't really a problem, just that we hadn't packed for hiking in, so we had to do some readjusting. Number 2, however, would explain the prevelence of fellow-campers who were boisterous and not appropriately packed for the hike in location. Or the woods, really, for that matter. Our much too close neighbors were a large group who sang Hindi songs well into the wee hours. They were set up in an ancient tent with giant poles holding it up that was meant for far fewer people than were inside it. They also brought EVERYTHING THEY OWNED. They had chairs. They had appliances. THEY HAD LAPTOPS. IN THE WOODS. At one point we heard a terrible dragging sound and turned to find one of them dragging a rollie suitcase up the hill. Who brings wheeled luggage on a camping trip?
This was only one of several groups that brought an enormous amount of stuff, most of it not so useful. There was another group that involved several annoyed looking young women who seem to be very angry at having discovered exactly what their boyfriends meant when they said "let's go camping!"
I believe that when looking at the website of the park I so fixated on the park's being an entrance to the Appalachian Trail, which in my mind conjured up images of lonely woodsy forests faaaaar from civilization, that I simply failed to really look at the map to see where it was in relation to, you know, NoVA. I also failed to process that we were in the descent path for planes coming in to Dulles from any and all points west. The park was pretty, and the hikes were nice, but it was like living in Flushing Meadows. yyyyyyeeeeeEEEAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOWWWWWWW, all night long, one after another.
The hiking was really nice, though, and I really enjoyed it. And, planes be damned, the cacophony of insects singing and singing all night long was cool. The lightening storm that went on and on was a little hairy, though it didn't start raining until about seven the next morning while P and I were quickly striking camp. We spent the rest of the trip imaginging the pandemonium that must have ensued when our neighbors woke to find water dripping on their laptops.
The next day it rained and rained and rained, but, undaunted, we visited that amazing site....
FOAMHENGE!
If you haven't gone, you should.
On Sunday we discovered why it is that you should always go to a state park on a Sunday.
We were blissfully alone, the only people in the entire primitive camping section of the James River State Park, which was pointedly not the first state park on I-66. We hiked a whole lot, all over the park, and saw lots and lots of bugs and animals and snakes and fish and birds. Lots of wild rabbits, a big spider with a crazy coned web that probably could have caught a chipmunk, quail running across the road, and several deer, including a huge buck with a giant rack of antlers. (Sadly, I am almost positive that we also saw several Emerald Ash Borers).
We rounded up a faaaaaabulous weekend with a little canoeing on the James, which was great.
Sigh. wish there was more trips like this coming up.....
But in the meantime it's back to work....
A place I hardly ever see. I was gone all week, and when I came back things were sprouting and growing and all sorts of things in my absence.
P and I had a very nice, very chill weekend, that, miraculously, did not involve looking at houses. Whoo! The last day that we went to look at houses our realtor told us that we had seen more houses than any other client he had had in over five years. We were fast approaching the 100 mark. In two months. Which, by and large, involved grueling days of seeing 12, 14, 17 houses in a day. That all blended together in one, big, lump of ghetto madness. (We spent a lot of time cruising the ghetto in search of real estate.).
Blissfully, we were able to got a whole weekend without having to look, disgustedly, at some fool's get rich quick tiling job on the house they were flipping. Yeay! Instead, we went to Richmond's Italian Film Festival. You didn't know Richmond had such a thing, did you? Well, neither did I. But who wouldn't love this? You have some very yummy Italian food, you watch an Italian movie, you drink some Italian wine (or beer, in P's case), and there you go. This is a great date, no? Well I thought so. Which is why I took P on a date to the Italian film festival. We were outrageously full of really good food, and then we got to watch Divorce, Italian Style, which I had not seen before (though I am a fan of Marcello Mastroianni). I was torn between seeing that and the Fellini film that was showing before it, Juliet of the Spirits. But I was glad we saw Divorce, Italian Style-- it was hilarious (darkly so, which is my favorite kind of hilarious).
We need more weekends like this. Though we won't get them soon-- it looks like we'll be spending our weekends packing for the near future, in any case. But I'm hoping to have more movie nights in the next year-- particularly after having gone through the entirety of 2007 having only seen one film in the theaters, and that on the second to last day of the year. (We went to see I am Legend, which, P will attest to, scared the hell out of me. I'm not so much with the zombies, though I much prefer (usually) zombies to straight up gore-- I have no interest in Saw or Hostel or anything along those lines. Watching it did make me curious about the two stabs at this that have preceded it-- The Last Man on Earth (with Vincent Price!) and The Omega Man (Charlton Heston!). If I ever get around to watching something that we have from Netflix so that the queue isn't full, I'll have to put them on there).
Dat's right, peoples, we are o-fficially hitched. About which I am delighted. I would show my delight in a picture, but, alas, I have now realized that when you are your own wedding photographer the pictures you never get are the ones of the bride and groom.... Of course, many friends were there with cameras (thanks Anita, Chris, John, John, Eric, Amber, Do, Brett, and anyone and everyone else who had one!), and there are pictures of us on Flickr (I'd love a disc of the photos everyone got!). I do have some pictures of other people frolicking in the backyard among the fairy lights..... And extra thanks to my parents, my brother, my aunt and uncle, and family friends Ed and Anne, without whose springing into action the entire thing would not have been possible. And thanks to Pat for a great job as Reverend, to Rebecca and Eric for coming in early and brining that coffee urn, and a big thanks to everyone who came to share the day with us!!
In lieu of a cake (as per my earlier ranting post about the cost of wedding cakes) I made cupcakes:
And what's not to love about cupcakes? They're yummy, they're inexpensive, and you don't have to serve them....
We were really happy at how many people made it, local and really not local (we had peeps from CA and Montana, not to mention NYC, TN, and a heap of Mass. folk).
And there were definitely cameras around....
And bubbles!
And music!
Friends that I've known for decades or more and ones that I've been lucky to have come into my life more recently....
Food and surprises!
The irrepressible Emma.....
Things to contemplate....
And the delight of a Tiny Gentleman Friend....
It was so much fun-- absolutely fabulous to see so many of my friends and family all in one place. I have some seriously awesome friends and family, in addition to an awesome husband. :)
Okay, planning a wedding is a full time task list of minutae threatening to eat your life. (Despite your life being so all consuming it's threatening to eat your wedding). And this is a casual affair, people. We're having a barbeque. In the backyard.
Though, you know, in the backyard has problems of its own. For example: Oh Crap! There's going to be a hundred of my closest family and friends in my house and I haven't gone after the dust bunnies since, uhm, never! On the upside, I've found a cake solution, have a dress/shoes/whatever to wear (though P still doesn't know what he's wearing), we have rings, I have chairs and tables reserved (people can sit! On something other than the grass!), and I've ordered lighting stuff for the yard. I'll be cooking for several days in the lead up.... which may mean dust bunnies be damned. Everyone look in the other direction, please. We haven't totally sorted out the music issue yet... but I've decided not to take this advice:
Sounds like an awesome wedding to me.
On the GW campus:
Girl: "I am going to kill the next person who has 'Another One Bites The Dust' as their wedding march. And that is only a sample of how tacky this wedding was."
