Work, weddings, novels, and newsboys
I was feeling like I should update just to say I'm not dead, but I didn't really have anything else to say, but I thought of a couple of things after all, so here I am!
- I am not dead! I had a pretty exhausting couple of weeks, mostly for work-related reasons, but I have a little extra breathing room now, at least for the moment. I thoroughly enjoyed being a handmaiden in my friend R's wedding-the site (out on Whidbey Island) was stunning, the ceremony was lovely, everyone was incredibly nice, we got there with no problems-I was REALLY WORRIED about getting there in a timely fashion because it involved ferries, but we got up at 5 a.m. and caught the 7:30 ferry with no problem, and were at our friends' house by 8, for a 4:30 wedding, so we had plenty of time to get our tent set up (we were camping on their property for the night, since their house was full up but they have 5 acres of land) AND help them with various chores AND get ready ourselves. \o/. And after the wedding, there was delicious food, and s'mores around the campfire (the band-which was comprised of three middle-aged ex-hippies who sang a lot of John Prine and Townes Van Zandt songs, and there was slide guitar, YES PLEASE-was only supposed to play until about 7:30, but they stuck around and played songs for us around the campfire until like MIDNIGHT, and it was their first gay wedding and they were so into it and it was KIND OF GREAT), and no small amount of drink. I had also worked VERY HARD on my hair and makeup, and R picked out (and purchased, which was incredibly sweet of him) a truly fabulous dress for me, so that was fun; R told me afterward (and I don't know if he was exaggerating or if this is even true at all, but I am taking it) that multiple people had come up to him and asked, re: me, "Who is that girl? She looks like a movie star." *BEAMS* (It was the hair, I'm pretty sure-I had it in a low side bun with flowers tucked into it, which is a thing a girl really wants to try after watching enough episodes of Hart of Dixie, and it was SO FUN. I don't have any pictures with me in them yet, but I'll post them when I do.) Plus I just love gatherings like that-I love the alchemy of all of these different people from all of these different points in people's lives, all coming together for this shared purpose. ♥
A few pretty pictures:
First, while we were running errands in the morning, we ended up here:
We got wood there. At the Do-It Center. YEP. And then here are a few shots of their property:
AUGH SO PRETTY. It made me want to go explore the woods like I was 12 years old again! And then they had such a lovely setup for the reception:
EEEEEEEEEE. And then they gave every couple/family a picnic basket as a wedding favor, and all the food was in little single-serving containers, so you could just pack up your picnic basket and sit down on your picnic blanket for the reception:
(That is my friend G--another handmaiden--and her husband, who is an INTERNATIONAL SUPERMODEL, in the sense that he models for REI catalogs sometimes, HEE.) SO FUN, right? And these were the fabulous flowers I got to take home, arranged by the same guy who taught me the "lunch" game below; they came mostly either from the property or the farmer's market:
BEAUTIFUL. Such a good time!
- Also, one of the guys in the wedding party introduced me to my new favorite game, which is, when listening to music, to replace the word "love" with "lunch." IT'S SO GOOD. Like: "It must've been lunch / but it's over now / it was all that I wanted / now I'm living without…" And you can alter the verses, too, like "What's Lunch Got To Do With It?": "You must understand that each slice of your ham makes my heart react…" This is going to change my WHOLE LIFE, y'all.
- Starting at 8 a.m. the Monday after the wedding, I had to lead two daily 45-minute online training classes every day for two weeks. I had a LOT of anxiety over this, not because I'm particularly nervous about public speaking, but because we were having network problems and test environment problems and there were SO MANY possible points of failure that could have been very awkward to encounter in front of a bunch of people taking time out of very busy schedules to attend this training. PLUS we were really short-handed the first week, so I was worried about that, too. But basically, I kicked ass. I had backup plans for everything (which I ended up NEEDING), and I did some smoke and mirrors where necessary, and people's reactions ranged from "enthusiastic/appreciative" to "not openly hostile," which was pretty much all I was going for, and I trained about 900 people over the course of those 20 classes. \o/ And now I am DONE and able to move on to all the other billion things I have to do, so. This whole project rollout feels like being asked to run really fast across a field filled with quicksand, and that is exhausting, but I have been worried about this particular two-week timeframe for a few months now, so I am INCREDIBLY relieved to have it behind me.
- On a rec from mrs_laugh_track, via
belmanoir, I just read a trilogy of romance novels by Cecilia Grant: A Lady Awakened, A Gentleman Undone (best title or BEST TITLE?), and A Woman Entangled. They were AWESOME. I don't read a lot of romance novels aside from some pretty mainstream ones (like I have read about a billion Nora Roberts books), so reading these felt like a breath of fresh air to me, in the sense that they incorporated a lot of the elements I'm used to mainly finding in fic. (I would be surprised to find out that Cecilia Grant did not have some fannish history, in fact.) They're sex-positive, they have some unconventional setups (like in the first book, the plot revolves around this woman whose husband dies and, in order to keep his evil brother from inheriting the household, she hires her rakish neighbor to have sex with her every day for a month in the hope that she'll conceive a baby that she can claim is her late husband's, and therefore the rightful heir-WHAT A GREAT SETUP), the relationships all focus on WHY these people like each other/fit together rather than just relying on instant attraction (in every book, there's some obstacle that requires the central couple to actually get to know each other before we're asked to believe that they're in love), and the characters are all just really great and interesting and sympathetic and well-rounded, and they all get to grow as people over the course of the books. Also her prose is BEAUTIFUL-her descriptions of things, especially, are just fantastic, and unconventional, and SO expressive, oh man, I just want to roll around in how awesome they are. The sex is pretty vanilla (though, again, a little less vanilla than what I'm used to finding in romance novels), but I found it satisfying, and the way that the third book really pays off the whole series, both thematically and in terms of results of earlier choices, is EXCELLENT, too. Highly recommended!
- I seem to be writing (at a glacial pace) Newsies fic. I DON'T EVEN KNOW. (I am also percolating Elementary fic, but I don't know quite what I want for that one yet.) But these past couple of weeks have been stressful, and Newsies has been one of my silly happy places, and it's working for me. I also bought the movie soundtrack and it is kind of exceptionally terribly mixed/mastered but it makes me happy anyway, and I got an email from Amazon wanting to know how I would rate it, and THAT IS KIND OF A COMPLICATED QUESTION, AMAZON. Like, on one hand, no stars, but on the other hand, ALL THE STARS. IDEK.
- I was afraid I was going to end up wasting my whole summer with work stress, but I had a LOVELY evening with Ma Noir and Sonia last week that allowed me to check off several of my "summer in Seattle" must-haves (ice cream at Molly Moon's, wandering Capitol Hill, gorgeous view of the Sound/Space Needle AND Mt. Rainier thanks to the rooftop deck of their building), and I've got some fun stuff planned for the next few weeks, including a visit to Denver to see my parents and my niece, and a surprise visit on Friday from my college BFF, who is flying up for a business meeting and is going to "miss" her flight and stay the night with me. \o/ So. SUMMER FUN. IT'S NOT TOO LATE.
This post is also at Dreamwidth! http://brynnmck.dreamwidth.org/296478.html Comments at Dreamwidth:
- I am not dead! I had a pretty exhausting couple of weeks, mostly for work-related reasons, but I have a little extra breathing room now, at least for the moment. I thoroughly enjoyed being a handmaiden in my friend R's wedding-the site (out on Whidbey Island) was stunning, the ceremony was lovely, everyone was incredibly nice, we got there with no problems-I was REALLY WORRIED about getting there in a timely fashion because it involved ferries, but we got up at 5 a.m. and caught the 7:30 ferry with no problem, and were at our friends' house by 8, for a 4:30 wedding, so we had plenty of time to get our tent set up (we were camping on their property for the night, since their house was full up but they have 5 acres of land) AND help them with various chores AND get ready ourselves. \o/. And after the wedding, there was delicious food, and s'mores around the campfire (the band-which was comprised of three middle-aged ex-hippies who sang a lot of John Prine and Townes Van Zandt songs, and there was slide guitar, YES PLEASE-was only supposed to play until about 7:30, but they stuck around and played songs for us around the campfire until like MIDNIGHT, and it was their first gay wedding and they were so into it and it was KIND OF GREAT), and no small amount of drink. I had also worked VERY HARD on my hair and makeup, and R picked out (and purchased, which was incredibly sweet of him) a truly fabulous dress for me, so that was fun; R told me afterward (and I don't know if he was exaggerating or if this is even true at all, but I am taking it) that multiple people had come up to him and asked, re: me, "Who is that girl? She looks like a movie star." *BEAMS* (It was the hair, I'm pretty sure-I had it in a low side bun with flowers tucked into it, which is a thing a girl really wants to try after watching enough episodes of Hart of Dixie, and it was SO FUN. I don't have any pictures with me in them yet, but I'll post them when I do.) Plus I just love gatherings like that-I love the alchemy of all of these different people from all of these different points in people's lives, all coming together for this shared purpose. ♥
A few pretty pictures:
First, while we were running errands in the morning, we ended up here:
We got wood there. At the Do-It Center. YEP. And then here are a few shots of their property:
AUGH SO PRETTY. It made me want to go explore the woods like I was 12 years old again! And then they had such a lovely setup for the reception:
EEEEEEEEEE. And then they gave every couple/family a picnic basket as a wedding favor, and all the food was in little single-serving containers, so you could just pack up your picnic basket and sit down on your picnic blanket for the reception:
(That is my friend G--another handmaiden--and her husband, who is an INTERNATIONAL SUPERMODEL, in the sense that he models for REI catalogs sometimes, HEE.) SO FUN, right? And these were the fabulous flowers I got to take home, arranged by the same guy who taught me the "lunch" game below; they came mostly either from the property or the farmer's market:
BEAUTIFUL. Such a good time!
- Also, one of the guys in the wedding party introduced me to my new favorite game, which is, when listening to music, to replace the word "love" with "lunch." IT'S SO GOOD. Like: "It must've been lunch / but it's over now / it was all that I wanted / now I'm living without…" And you can alter the verses, too, like "What's Lunch Got To Do With It?": "You must understand that each slice of your ham makes my heart react…" This is going to change my WHOLE LIFE, y'all.
- Starting at 8 a.m. the Monday after the wedding, I had to lead two daily 45-minute online training classes every day for two weeks. I had a LOT of anxiety over this, not because I'm particularly nervous about public speaking, but because we were having network problems and test environment problems and there were SO MANY possible points of failure that could have been very awkward to encounter in front of a bunch of people taking time out of very busy schedules to attend this training. PLUS we were really short-handed the first week, so I was worried about that, too. But basically, I kicked ass. I had backup plans for everything (which I ended up NEEDING), and I did some smoke and mirrors where necessary, and people's reactions ranged from "enthusiastic/appreciative" to "not openly hostile," which was pretty much all I was going for, and I trained about 900 people over the course of those 20 classes. \o/ And now I am DONE and able to move on to all the other billion things I have to do, so. This whole project rollout feels like being asked to run really fast across a field filled with quicksand, and that is exhausting, but I have been worried about this particular two-week timeframe for a few months now, so I am INCREDIBLY relieved to have it behind me.
- On a rec from mrs_laugh_track, via
belmanoir, I just read a trilogy of romance novels by Cecilia Grant: A Lady Awakened, A Gentleman Undone (best title or BEST TITLE?), and A Woman Entangled. They were AWESOME. I don't read a lot of romance novels aside from some pretty mainstream ones (like I have read about a billion Nora Roberts books), so reading these felt like a breath of fresh air to me, in the sense that they incorporated a lot of the elements I'm used to mainly finding in fic. (I would be surprised to find out that Cecilia Grant did not have some fannish history, in fact.) They're sex-positive, they have some unconventional setups (like in the first book, the plot revolves around this woman whose husband dies and, in order to keep his evil brother from inheriting the household, she hires her rakish neighbor to have sex with her every day for a month in the hope that she'll conceive a baby that she can claim is her late husband's, and therefore the rightful heir-WHAT A GREAT SETUP), the relationships all focus on WHY these people like each other/fit together rather than just relying on instant attraction (in every book, there's some obstacle that requires the central couple to actually get to know each other before we're asked to believe that they're in love), and the characters are all just really great and interesting and sympathetic and well-rounded, and they all get to grow as people over the course of the books. Also her prose is BEAUTIFUL-her descriptions of things, especially, are just fantastic, and unconventional, and SO expressive, oh man, I just want to roll around in how awesome they are. The sex is pretty vanilla (though, again, a little less vanilla than what I'm used to finding in romance novels), but I found it satisfying, and the way that the third book really pays off the whole series, both thematically and in terms of results of earlier choices, is EXCELLENT, too. Highly recommended!
- I seem to be writing (at a glacial pace) Newsies fic. I DON'T EVEN KNOW. (I am also percolating Elementary fic, but I don't know quite what I want for that one yet.) But these past couple of weeks have been stressful, and Newsies has been one of my silly happy places, and it's working for me. I also bought the movie soundtrack and it is kind of exceptionally terribly mixed/mastered but it makes me happy anyway, and I got an email from Amazon wanting to know how I would rate it, and THAT IS KIND OF A COMPLICATED QUESTION, AMAZON. Like, on one hand, no stars, but on the other hand, ALL THE STARS. IDEK.
- I was afraid I was going to end up wasting my whole summer with work stress, but I had a LOVELY evening with Ma Noir and Sonia last week that allowed me to check off several of my "summer in Seattle" must-haves (ice cream at Molly Moon's, wandering Capitol Hill, gorgeous view of the Sound/Space Needle AND Mt. Rainier thanks to the rooftop deck of their building), and I've got some fun stuff planned for the next few weeks, including a visit to Denver to see my parents and my niece, and a surprise visit on Friday from my college BFF, who is flying up for a business meeting and is going to "miss" her flight and stay the night with me. \o/ So. SUMMER FUN. IT'S NOT TOO LATE.
This post is also at Dreamwidth! http://brynnmck.dreamwidth.org/296478.html Comments at Dreamwidth: