My pitas page

i am too cool for school
i was just invited to be part of a poker game with chris moneymaker next week. i might stop by to say hi....but since i am officially crap at the game i doubt i'll do more than that.

i love the internet
c and i are having special thank you cards made up for our wedding guests, using a photo by our pro photogs. while it's not as cheap as going the hallmark route, it's nice and special and cool so we're a-ok with it. this site would even mail them out for us if we wanted, but we can't really let ourselves be impersonal like that once we've gone to the trouble of being all personal with the photo, right? right.

george bush's convention speech nightmare

The Big E
i think this is the year that c goes home with me during a weekend that the big e is in full swing. check out this year's musical acts--we might have to delay our departure to catch jessica simpson!

this weekend
a whirlwind! made a wedding cake for saturday afternoon (bride already e-mailed me to say it was awesome...thank goodness), confirmed i will indeed be making said same type of cake for the upcoming matt and big c wedding at the end of september, got far too drunk on long island saturday night, shopped and ate and weeded the beach in cutchogue on sunday, shopped yet again on monday and bought an insanely expensive pair of pants but they are so awesome i got over the cost, and then went out to dinner at five points last night with the whole clan for a certain mom's birthday. this is what we got her--she's in love.

i feel bad for his dogs
so this is my new most-hated politico out there, topping even good old dubya. zell miller, a DEMOCRAT, who last night gave the keynote at the REPUBLICAN convention. i have no problem with people who are republicans--it's a free country and they can believe whatever they want even though i personally do not agree with any of their political beliefs. but i do have a problem with republicans in democrats' clothing. if you want to be in the GOP, go ahead, but don't play both sides against the middle. did i mention this is the guy who nominated clinton a decade or so ago to the presidency? so, like, zell, what's your deal?

our wedding photos
we got the proofs and negatives last night and they are so, so great. i cannot express how lovely they are, how lovely everyone looks, and how well they captured the entire day. highly recommended for whatever your occasion-photo needs might be.

the overscheduled adult
that would be me. the next two months are going to be pure insanity because this is when many, many author events happen. which must be fit into my life around an already healthily filled schedule of social and cake-related activities. c and i are trying to figure out how we can have more nights at home where it's just me and him having quality time...but since the answer seems to be "quit our jobs," we may just need to suck it up for a little while and communicate via e-mail. thank goodness i have friday off this week to sort through the leftover wedding detritus. oh, and: we get the photos back from the pro photogs tomorrow. totally exciting.

adding to the list
of things i would like to do now that wedding planning is no longer a hobby: re-learn French. or at least get back to the level of non-proficiency that i had in high school. which was a pretty ok level, if i do say so myself.

on to something really important...
what to do about my hair. now that the big day/need to put my hair up in a fancy bun has passed, do i cut it all off, returning to my old winona ryder haircut? (seen here, tho not on me.) do i keep it long? do i layer? curl? bangs? any opinions you might have, please let me know. vote from boy is to do whatever i want but not too short, please...we shall see if that is what ends up happening.

kitchen 22
went here last night for dinner as an old married couple with a soon-to-be-old-married couple. while my salmon entree was good, it wasn't as great a place overall as i wanted it to be. though i must say their mojitos are really VERY good, as is the dessert "sampler" you can opt to get if you're dining with a group. it took a lot of restraint to not push my companions out of the way to get at more carrot cake. but that could have been the mojitos talkin'.

now what?
feel free to make fun of me, but now that there is no big party to plan or major life-step to take, there's a lot of free time mentally and actually in my life. so aside from focusing on my day job, which i am sure my bosses will be happy about, here is what i am going to do with it (once the thank you notes are sent and wedding stuff is officially finito-benito): build my wedding cake client base; do more runs with the road runner club (though none longer than 4 miles for now); spend time with friends and calling those who are far away; enjoy hanging out with my husband (eep!); and do all the technical stuff this website says we need to do now that we are officially together. this should keep me busy this fall.

so
the wedding is done and the honeymoon has happened and i am a married old lady, kids. and it's so great. the whole wedding day went pretty smoothly with a couple fun hiccups along the way, the food was fab, my dress fit, my dear friends gave amazing & touching & gorgeous speeches, and oh we did dance the night away. and the cake--as you can imagine, a big thing in my mind--was so damn yummy and pretty. the honeymoon was a revelation--i've never been on a 12 day vacation before and this was perfect, with the hotel i'm linking to here being the best place around. go there and stay there, ok? it's good for you to spend all day on the beach!

knocking on wood
today is my last day at work pre-wedding, so expect much stress to be emanating from madison between 49th and 50th today. but this morning i have already achieved so much in wedding land that who cares what gets done in real-work land? the reception place now knows our final head count, our final seating chart, and that we're going to take a huge leap of faith and assume we are not going to need the indoor ceremony site set up since the weather forecast for the weekend is nothing but lovely. and if any guests are confused as to where in battery park the wedding is, they'll just need to look for some of these (link above) flying around.

wedding nerves
if i could bring myself to be so unhealthy i might indulge this week. but i don't think i can--too much other stuff going on to add "ruin respiratory system" to the list of things to do.

september 9, baby!
bring on the danceable rock n roll!

police surge
a great NYT story explaining (sort of) what's up with all these police cards speeding around in formation. as per usual with these types of stories, the truly great quotes come from the police captain guy in the upper-middle and regular new yorkers at the end.

card holder
the last thing that i was really concerned about getting for the big day was a non-cheesy receptacle into which people put cards at the reception. it had to be secure, but not ugly or too girly or hatefully wedding-ish. One of these hatboxes is going to serve quite nicely, since i cut a slit in its lid last night. and the other two, well, one has been sent the way of the dodo and the other is serving as pretty storage. have i mentioned there's only 9 days left? and 11 days til mexico?

my next bestseller?
i am hoping so--this author is just so nice, plus he's lance's personal coach, people! he must know what he's talking about.

honeymoon reading
yes, besides hopefully much lovin' and margarita consumin', c and i are looking forward to quality reading on the honeymoon. in our big book-buying trip this weekend, i got this novel to start with, as well as "a conspiracy of paper." because nothing says mexico honeymoon like stories about hermaphrodites and/or 18th century british moneylenders.

check it off the list
one of our "thank you parents" gift for the wedding: done. hope they like it!

ah, fortunoff
while i hate this place, it did come in handy for finding c's wedding band. and today i picked up said wedding band, so i guess we're totally on track with this whole marriage thing and its accessories.

the jeopardy drinking game

18 more days til we're here...
not to mention the big party just 2 days earlier. have i mentioned it's hard to concentrate at work just when i need all my brain cells the most?

on an airplane
dear friends hp and np are on their way to hawaii as i type. check out her website for some fun updates (hopefully) at some point.

the weekend
c and i made our way to coney island to finally after all these years check out the siren music festival. the bands and the set-up were not so good, though the cool sea breeze and funnel cake were very nice. we only stayed for a coupla hours before heading home, eating mexican food, and venturing out to see the excellent "spiderman 2." yesterday was ceremony program/fan/bubble vial assembly day for me, myself, and i. it got a bit annoying toward #73 of these packets, but assembled them i did and now they are done and i don't have to deal with them ever again. and last night saw n and h over for dinner so we could see them pre-hawaii trip--much lemonade beer and white wine was consumed. a good weekend in all, though far too short. as per usual.

surprising
it is surprising to me that people who were invited alone to the wedding are rsvp-ing for 2. i would never, ever assume that i could bring a guest to a wedding without asking first. and i probably wouldn't even ask back in the days before c and i lived together and were pretty much common-law involved from then on out. so far two people have done this--one we've decided can bring the date and the other is going to get a phone call from c explaining why he cannot bring a date. if you're not dating someone for at least a few months, folks, sorry, it's not allowed. unless you're one of our close friends, which y'all are not. how rude!

w ketchup is america's ketchup
or something...

wedding rsvp's
ok, so it's 3 days from the deadline and a good number of people still have not responded for The Wedding. which to a certain extent i find to be very weird: there's a stamp on the postcard, folks. just fill it out and send it back--it's so nice and easy! i know--people have a lot more stuff going on than just our big day, and i guess there are always some stragglers... i will just hate calling to harass them come monday evening. we even did what this site suggests and mail them during the week so people would get them on the weekend and have more time to respond. i would consider whatever else this site says to be suspect given how not-right this advice has turned out to be.

productive? that would be me.
this weekend was the weekend of getting little wedding stuff DONE. groom/groomsmen ties chosen and purchased, various favor materials purchased (including fun fans seen in the link above), shoes dropped off to be dyed, new silk flowers put on veil, cake topper power-cleaned with clorox (note to self: get cardboad separator so we don't poison our guests). now i just need to find time to make the programs and tie them to all the fans and bubbles...not to mention the mix cds need to be burned and labels created. oh, and manual laborers, uh, volunteers need to be found to hand all that stuff out. i am thinking the next couple of weekend will be good for this. but we're getting there!

make up saga continues
as of last night i was still trying to decide whether to wear honest-to-god makeup for the wedding or not. so i tried one more makeover ... and have decided i will not be wearing full-on make up for the big day. i did however find the most perfect glossy lipstick ever. so now i own one of these, in "angel red". highly recommended for the summer--it's shiny and yummy looking but not too sheer. next mission: find a tinted moisturizer, which i have been assured by a couple of people help even the skin but don't make you feel like a cheap ho. which, i'm sad to say, is exactly what foundation, etc., makes me feel like.

seriously...
it's now one month til The Wedding, and things are starting to get intense and relaxed at the same time. little tasks are being completed (program finalized, shoe color chosen, etc.) but a major list of errands has been drawn up for this coming saturday. and goodness knows i am again totally and completely obsessed with this damn website, which is admittedly very helpful in making sure all the i's are dotted and t's are crossed.

yay kerry
edwards will be his running mate, injecting some life into this dem ticket. fingers crossed that it works...

4th of july, where have you gone?
i wish every weekend could be like the one that has just passed us by, 3 days long and full of a lot of nothin'. saturday: east end of long island trying to catch fish (nada), eating like it's yer job, swimming in the creek and the bay. sunday: shopping (including at this crafty mecca) picking up some wedding supplies and other great stuff that cannot be found in the city. monday: gardening, cd shopping, eating chinese food on the patio in the semi-dark and getting into the city around 11 p.m. and now tuesday morning brings us our heroine back at her desk, slightly bummed that it is so gorgeous out. note to the a.m. tv weatherman--no one watching you at 6:30 in the morning wants to hear that it's going to be the perfect beach day. that is NOT where we're headed!

yummy in my tummy
c and i had our final tasting last night, so our menu for The Big Day is now set in stone. we even got to sample the wedding cake-cake...which was seriously decadent and amazing. i really felt ill last night after all the eating (not to mention the champagne and wine), but hey, i still have 5 weeks before i need to wear that dress! my favorite part of the evening though was seeing upon arriving at bayard's that there is even more scaffolding and tarp-ing up around the building. people are going to think we're having our reception in a condemned crack house. but i guess that's life in the big city.

last night's party
my boss had a party for c and i at her home last night to celebrate our upcoming Big Day. it turns out my co-workers purchased the table and chairs for us. i still cannot believe it--it's truly touching and way too much. i am pretty much going to work here until i die--who could leave such nice people? a thank you package from c and i (from this store) is on its way to her apartment as i type. i love how you can get anything delivered in this city!

holy crap
someone has purchased the dining room table and chairs chris and i had registered for. we only put them on there as sort of a "if you want to get us a gift certificate someday we can buy these" type thing..we didn't mean for anyone to actually BUY them!!! i am concerned. it is WAY too much to spend on anyone's wedding gift, unless you're The Donald. i hope it's basically all of our wedding guests chipping in--splitting the cost 100 ways is much less guilt-inducing.

father-daughter dance selected
this has been such a stress point--most of the songs used for this dance moment are either very cheesy or very romantic. like, TOO romantic. this i think strikes a good balance. plus it's a pretty accurate description of how much i love/like/respect my dad....at least i think so.

this weekend was lovely
seriously, it was great. lobster and peach cobbler with h and n on friday night. saturday was me and c looking at wedding rings (he finally picked one--see link), strolling in little italy, eating fab thai food, and cleaning the damn apartment. sunday was helping c's bro and his wife at their new house--three hours of gardening has left me slightly sunburned and very sore but it was fun. summer is here, baby!

i don't feel so good today
but i am at work. and it's a half-day friday (or i at least am making it so). i can do it.