the triumphant return
It's been about three months since I've written anything here. In the same three-month period in 2003, I wrote thirty-one posts in this journal. And whatever happened to good ol' macroblogging, anyway? In 140-character tweets, even Billy Corgan seems tolerable. Well, not really.
Anyway:
1. Sarah and I got married last month. It was really wonderful -- our friends and family all made the trek up to Arlington, MA, and we got hitched in a little garden next to the Robbins Hall, with the reception following inside. My aunt Judy performed the short ceremony, and our three sisters (Natalie, Emma, and Molly) all did readings. We actually had a skunk show up right before we began the proceedings, edging up to the rim of a reflecting pool about fifty feet away; thankfully Sarah's burly cousin Kevin shooed it off without frightening it. At that point, I couldn't help but laugh -- of all the things one worries about for such a big day, skunk attack was low on the list.
But everything was great that day -- our caterer was awesome, the venue was beautifully made up, the DJ kept everyone on the floor until the last song, and it was just a hell of a lot of fun. Our families came up the night before, and we had a small rehearsal dinner at Max & Dylan's in Charlestown; a lot of folks, including us, were staying out at the Aloft/Element hotels in Lexington for some or all of the weekend, so that became our ad hoc meeting/afterparty location; we had people come in from as far away as Illinois, Texas, Colorado, California, and even Vietnam; Emma and Molly gave some very funny, very touching toasts; and our first dance was to Ben Folds' "The Luckiest" and our last to Andrew Bird's "Tables and Chairs".
After seven and a half years of being a couple, it feels good to have finally tied the knot. I'm still in the stage where I fidget with my ring (I've never worn jewelry of any kind before), but I have actually gotten pretty used to referring to Sarah as 'my wife'. Here's to many years of wedded bliss.
2. In other news, we've done a bit of travelling post-wedding, with two trips up to Vermont. The first was for a three-day mini-honeymoon at the Round Barn, a little B&B in Waitsfield near the Sugarbush ski area. We may have been the only guests there under sixty, but it was still nice to read books by the fire, go on some beautiful peak-foliage hikes, and go out for a few celebratory dinners. (The Pitcher Inn in Warren tried to celebrate our marriage, but did so by printing 'Congratulations Mr. and Mrs. Pascarell!' across all their menus for the evening. Whoops.) A very relaxing trip, though, after the hectic days leading up to the wedding.
Then this past weekend we went up to Stowe for an early birthday trip for Sarah, to the Trapp Family Lodge. Knowing that this was the family who inspired the 'Sound of Music', I'd gone in expecting it to be a little overbearing and cheesy, but it was actually a beautiful place, a traditional Austrian-style lodge nestled in the Green Mountains. They left a bottle of champagne for us in the room, and we had a shared balcony with some gorgeous views of the hills. And just a lot of a little things to make you feel welcome -- tea and cookies and roaring fires each afternoon in the common rooms, a bakery and a brewery onsite, and we even took a history tour that ended with a meeting with Johannes von Trapp, the youngest of Maria's children and the GM of the hotel. A lot of good local food in the area as well, as we hit The Whip and Piecasso in Stowe and the Alchemist in Waterbury. I think we'll definitely go back next year sometime, maybe to try a shot at a Mt. Mansfield hike.
3. Hangman's Alphabet had its first practice in more than three months this weekend; we managed to hop back into the stuff from the forthcoming album pretty quickly, though the first-album songs we attempted were a bit more rusty. We're getting ready to mix album number two, likely next month, and one of the songs will probably precede the album in a compilation appearance. We also started writing something new, which, if we see it to completion and performance, would be our first new song in over a year. Fingers crossed.
4. In other creative news, Sarah and I are both doing NaNoWriMo this year. She's past the 25,000 word mark, and I'm a couple thousand words behind her. I'm going back to the well I've used before, writing a story about a travelling band and their adventures and mishaps on the road, digging much more into my own personal experiences than I have for this kind of thing in the past. (The much-told Tulsa story is bound to appear at some point, in some shape or form.) If I can get to 50,000, I'll probably shelve the novella for the month of December, and then try to come back to it and start revisions in the new year.
5. And otherwise things have just been trucking along. I played in a Zombie Wilco Halloween show at the Rosebud a couple of weeks ago, playing piano and organ to fatten up a dozen or so songs from throughout Tweedy & co.'s career as part of a cobbled-together ten-piece band. I kind of overdid the zombie makeup a bit -- my bandmates made do with a little face paint, where as I made myself up to look like I'd hemorrhaged out of several organs -- but it was a good show, lots of people, and we got some nice compliments. I've also seen some great shows lately -- last week's Sufjan Stevens show at the Orpheum was one of the most fun times I've had at a concert, and the classic line of Guided by Voices the week before at the Paradise was a blast, if a bit of a time warp -- and we have some fun stuff coming up, including our first visit to Foxboro for a Patriots game. As always, onward and upward.
Anyway:
1. Sarah and I got married last month. It was really wonderful -- our friends and family all made the trek up to Arlington, MA, and we got hitched in a little garden next to the Robbins Hall, with the reception following inside. My aunt Judy performed the short ceremony, and our three sisters (Natalie, Emma, and Molly) all did readings. We actually had a skunk show up right before we began the proceedings, edging up to the rim of a reflecting pool about fifty feet away; thankfully Sarah's burly cousin Kevin shooed it off without frightening it. At that point, I couldn't help but laugh -- of all the things one worries about for such a big day, skunk attack was low on the list.
But everything was great that day -- our caterer was awesome, the venue was beautifully made up, the DJ kept everyone on the floor until the last song, and it was just a hell of a lot of fun. Our families came up the night before, and we had a small rehearsal dinner at Max & Dylan's in Charlestown; a lot of folks, including us, were staying out at the Aloft/Element hotels in Lexington for some or all of the weekend, so that became our ad hoc meeting/afterparty location; we had people come in from as far away as Illinois, Texas, Colorado, California, and even Vietnam; Emma and Molly gave some very funny, very touching toasts; and our first dance was to Ben Folds' "The Luckiest" and our last to Andrew Bird's "Tables and Chairs".
After seven and a half years of being a couple, it feels good to have finally tied the knot. I'm still in the stage where I fidget with my ring (I've never worn jewelry of any kind before), but I have actually gotten pretty used to referring to Sarah as 'my wife'. Here's to many years of wedded bliss.
2. In other news, we've done a bit of travelling post-wedding, with two trips up to Vermont. The first was for a three-day mini-honeymoon at the Round Barn, a little B&B in Waitsfield near the Sugarbush ski area. We may have been the only guests there under sixty, but it was still nice to read books by the fire, go on some beautiful peak-foliage hikes, and go out for a few celebratory dinners. (The Pitcher Inn in Warren tried to celebrate our marriage, but did so by printing 'Congratulations Mr. and Mrs. Pascarell!' across all their menus for the evening. Whoops.) A very relaxing trip, though, after the hectic days leading up to the wedding.
Then this past weekend we went up to Stowe for an early birthday trip for Sarah, to the Trapp Family Lodge. Knowing that this was the family who inspired the 'Sound of Music', I'd gone in expecting it to be a little overbearing and cheesy, but it was actually a beautiful place, a traditional Austrian-style lodge nestled in the Green Mountains. They left a bottle of champagne for us in the room, and we had a shared balcony with some gorgeous views of the hills. And just a lot of a little things to make you feel welcome -- tea and cookies and roaring fires each afternoon in the common rooms, a bakery and a brewery onsite, and we even took a history tour that ended with a meeting with Johannes von Trapp, the youngest of Maria's children and the GM of the hotel. A lot of good local food in the area as well, as we hit The Whip and Piecasso in Stowe and the Alchemist in Waterbury. I think we'll definitely go back next year sometime, maybe to try a shot at a Mt. Mansfield hike.
3. Hangman's Alphabet had its first practice in more than three months this weekend; we managed to hop back into the stuff from the forthcoming album pretty quickly, though the first-album songs we attempted were a bit more rusty. We're getting ready to mix album number two, likely next month, and one of the songs will probably precede the album in a compilation appearance. We also started writing something new, which, if we see it to completion and performance, would be our first new song in over a year. Fingers crossed.
4. In other creative news, Sarah and I are both doing NaNoWriMo this year. She's past the 25,000 word mark, and I'm a couple thousand words behind her. I'm going back to the well I've used before, writing a story about a travelling band and their adventures and mishaps on the road, digging much more into my own personal experiences than I have for this kind of thing in the past. (The much-told Tulsa story is bound to appear at some point, in some shape or form.) If I can get to 50,000, I'll probably shelve the novella for the month of December, and then try to come back to it and start revisions in the new year.
5. And otherwise things have just been trucking along. I played in a Zombie Wilco Halloween show at the Rosebud a couple of weeks ago, playing piano and organ to fatten up a dozen or so songs from throughout Tweedy & co.'s career as part of a cobbled-together ten-piece band. I kind of overdid the zombie makeup a bit -- my bandmates made do with a little face paint, where as I made myself up to look like I'd hemorrhaged out of several organs -- but it was a good show, lots of people, and we got some nice compliments. I've also seen some great shows lately -- last week's Sufjan Stevens show at the Orpheum was one of the most fun times I've had at a concert, and the classic line of Guided by Voices the week before at the Paradise was a blast, if a bit of a time warp -- and we have some fun stuff coming up, including our first visit to Foxboro for a Patriots game. As always, onward and upward.