Aug. 31, 2006

---

p.s. “invincible,” [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:53 am
the movie with mark wahlberg is also really good. we saw it yesterday, and i think it’s funny that greg kinnear was in both films, and in both he gave lots of speeches to people about not being a big loser.

---

things on thursday... [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:52 am
my aunt sandy just wrote to me - “Has my official job changed to doing an interpretive dance wearing a diaphanous matronly gown or belting out an off-pitch love song from the 1890’s?”

who knows what she’ll be doing.

yesterday i made (and froze) the first wedding cake layer, the bottom 14" layer and it turned out perfect. i was surprised and delighted. i’d actually read a little of one of the many books i kept checking out of the library about wedding things, and there was this thing about things called magic strips - they’re these long fabric kind of strips that you get wet and then wrap around the outside of the pan so that it bakes more slowly around the outside since big cakes tend to bake unevenly. there was also another thing called a cone something that you put in the middle of the pan and fill with frosting. this makes it so that the middle of the cake isn’t still raw when the rest is done.

i bought both of these things and i have to say that they worked like a charm and i’m excited about the rest of the cake-baking.

other than that - i talked to christine this morning and she said she thinks “little miss sunshine” is FABULOUS only i know that’s not the exact word she used, maybe brilliant? anyway, i agreed that it was really really good and perhaps i didn’t make that clear enough in the last posting although i do recall saying “two thumbs up.” maybe i should have added “WAY up.”

she’s buying her bridesmaid dress this weekend, one that she gets to pick out herself. i’m just happy that i don’t have to be with her when she goes shopping, because this can be a somewhat painful process because she usually gets sick of the whole thing after approximately four minutes in any given store. good luck to whoever she might take with her.

i’m sure she’ll find something lovely.

i guess that’s all for now because there are hundreds of things i should be doing, especiallly vacuuming.

ok ok ok,

grace.


Aug. 30, 2006

---

little miss sunshine [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 4:01 am
we went to see the movie yesterday afternoon.

on saturday i called christine and left her a message. I’M GETTING MARRIED IN THREE WEEKS, IN CASE ANYONE CARES. that’s all i said.

she called on sunday. all SHE said was, “go see ‘little miss sunshine.’” i told her we’d have time on tuesday. she said “you’re waiting till THEN?” i said it was going to take a great deal of luck to be able to go see a movie. she didn’t seem entirely satisfied with my answer. finally she said “call me right after you see it.”

i didn’t call her. i have some phone calls i need to make, but i’ve developed a pattern of waiting till night, and by then i don’t feel like talking on the phone.

anyway, the movie - quirky. funny. dark. good. it started out pretty damn bleak and i wondered if i’d like it. sometimes christine and i do not see eye to eye on films. i can think of two, “eyes wide shut,” which i found to be mind-numbingly boring and tedious and it went on and on forever but christine felt was the best thing since sliced bread (perhaps that’s a very lame analogy but it’s four in the morning and i’m extra tired and am lucky to even be typing without too many typos") and “moulin rouge” which is one of my favorite movies but christine thought it was tedious which even if you didn’t like the film there’s certainly no WAY you could describe it as tedious. i was mad at her for a couple of weeks because she thought it was tedious.

in “little miss sunshine,” the family is more dysfunctional than any i’ve seen in a while. the grandfather snorts heroin (i didn’t know you could even snort the stuff, i thought it was all about shooting up, like in the very VERY depressing movie “trainspotting” which i really didn’t like despite the fact that the very attractive ewan macgregor was in it and he was also in “moulin rouge” and i’m pretty sure i didn’t spell his name right but if you think i’m going to bother to look it up right now you have to be kidding), and reads really raunchy porn and the adult brother of toni colette has just tried to kill himself because his world has fallen apart and greg kinnear, the husband, is incredibly annoying and the son, dwayne, is sullen and odd-looking and doesn’t talk at all because he’s taken a vow of silence until he gets into the air force academy and the daughter, Olive, is adorable and wants to be the beauty queen “little miss sunshine.”

and it’s a road trip movie and the family goes through some profound transformations but it’s not all feel-good hollywood happy ending but it does end well and i think you should go see it. i feel like i haven’t entirely ruined it for you by describing everything in it, but i will just also point out that it does an excellent job of illuminating the disturbing-ness of beauty contests for children. the little girls are sickeningly over made-up and sequined and look and act like frightening mini glamorous beauty queens and of course you can’t help but think of jon benet ramsey and that tragedy.

two thumbs up.

on other fronts. mostly i wish i was asleep right now. also, my chief annoyance is that my computer is teetering on the brink of not functioning anymore. the power cord connection has always been a little tenuous, but now if i jiggle the cord to get the computer to acknowledge the fact that it is, indeed, plugged in, it’s just not happening that much anymore and soon it will stop acknowledging it altogether and then the computer will be dead. my friend brendan told me this would eventually happen back in march so i guess at least i’ve had a few more months.

but right now i have NO TIME to look for and buy a new computer. right now i’m using kevin’s computer because i don’t want to be mad about the cord in the middle of the night.

other than that, things are pretty good. people keep saying YOU’RE GOING TO BE SO STRESSED OUT and YOU MUST BE TOTALLY FRAZZLED, but i have to say i’m not. just very very busy. but things continue to progress, wedding-wise, and i’m not too worried about things. i just wish i had a little more free time. but obviously there has been a little time to see a movie plus last night we watched two episodes each of “sex & the city” and “reno 911.”

have i mentioned that show? MFH loves it and i was skeptical and watched the first couple of episodes he has on dvd and thought it was awfully stupid and the cops seemed kind of mean and amy and jim also love it and i thought maybe they were all actually not as bright as i thought they were (but i didn’t get mad at them at all for any length of time). and then i kept watching it and now i’m HOOKED.

one problem with not using my computer is now i’m forced to sit here in the office, which is not going to be tidy in any way for the next couple of months and there are big piles and stacks of things surrounding me and i’m afraid that if i suddenly have some kind of spasm (being grace of course i’m prone to things like that) that the stuff will start crashing around me. plus i can’t sit on the couch where it’s much more comfortable. plus winnie the cat really wants to sit in my lap right now but there’s just not enough room here on the chair so he’s forced to lie on the floor although he is purring anyway so maybe he’s not too upset.

there are many many other things i would like to discuss and i’ll probably forget what they are in the morning, but i should try to get back to sleep right now. i hope your week is going well.

ok then,

tuesday (technically, wednesday) grace.



Aug. 26, 2006

---

Saturday afternoon [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 4:02 pm

and things are going well. three more weeks!

“men in tights” was good, and i realized that the judge who is going to marry us, george ray, was one of the men in tights. i had to introduce him to Mom, because i’m sure she’s never had a daughter getting married by a man in tights.

actually, when amy and jim got married in hawaii, theirs was a hippie kind of justice of the peace, or maybe a minister of some kind? and who knows, maybe at some point he’s worn tight, too.

but i’m sure never in front of a sold-out crowd at the hoogland center for the arts.

this afternoon we met with kynda who is going to be in charge of all the flowers. kynda has a fabulous blog called canada garden and there’s a link right here on this page, as i’ve mentioned before. but if you’re just too lazy to actually move your hand over there and click on it, here it is, RIGHT HERE: CANADA GARDEN!

beautiful flowers, and incredible photography.

anyway, she’d made up a practice arrangement in a wine bottle and it was lovely and interesting and something i certainly never would have thought of. and she kept asking me what i wanted in the way of flowers but i just said i want nice, pretty flowers, nothing formal. i don’t have big specific ideas in my head about the flowers, i just want ones that are pretty.

and because kynda is in charge, they’re going to be DAZZLING.

things, shaping right up.

i’m going to take some more photos of the bottles soon, because they’re almost done. i think maybe we’ll end up with SIX more than we need, which is a lot, but that’s ok because it would be bad to run out.

that is all all all for now,

grace


Aug. 25, 2006

---

FRIDAY [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 5:00 pm

First, a funny update on things dead-mouse-related. my friend janet sent me an e-mail about her own cat and dead mouse story, and i do believe it’s more disgusting than mine:

“I was teaching Owen the finer arts of cat box scooping, when we noticed a stray *poop* on the floor in spilled cat litter. Well, we thought it was poop and then it seemed to be a dried out mouse body. We prodded it some more and flipped it over... (Owen was doing the touching and i was cringing and cowering) and would you believe it was a pooped mouse!”

yuck.

besides dead mice, things are good. very quiet now. we got a marriage license today. we talked to the lady at the reception place and told her our choices for entrees. she said we could bring in our own mints/nuts for the tables.

so i had a little free time and decided to see how much mints and nuts cost online, to compare to actually buying them at a store. i immediately got SUCKED IN to the huge huge wedding quargmire of all kinds of crap that a person could buy.

M&M’s will sell you M&Ms which are PERSONALIZED. you get two lines of eight characters apiece on one side, and the M on the other. they’re a little pricey, as you can imagine. you get to pick from many lovely colors.

i then found a website with lots and lots of photos of wedding cakes. i didn’t have time to look at all of them, but i found nothing that looks even CLOSE to how my wedding cake will look.

the reception hall woman, monica, said to me that my cake lady could bring the cake in whenever she wants to on the saturday morning of the wedding. i said “i’m making the cake.” she sort of raised one eyebrow and said, “oh, you’re making it?” but then she didn’t GRILL me about it and she didn’t say ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND? or anything like that, which was very refreshing.

things are COMPLETELY UNDER CONTROL around here, let me tell you. the crazy bottle painting is winding down, even.

i just ordered a pair of lovely silver shoes online. DON’T TELL RANDY! he is boycotting my website because i keep saying bad things about “into the woods” but he can’t FORCE me to suddenly like the music. but anyway, i told him that since my dress is pale pink with some silver sparkly things on it, i need silver shoes.

BUT GOLD IS ONE OF YOUR WEDDING COLORS he YELLED at me. YOU CAN’T HAVE SILVER SHOES. GET PINK SHOES.

i told him i’d been to all the shoe stores in town and there were no pink shoes.

YOU CAN DYE THEM he continued to yell.

I didn’t see any dyeable shoes. i did find some very lovely silver shoes, but they only had a size six and a size seven, and i need a six and a half, so i quickly and easily found them online and they’ll arrive AT MY DOORSTEP in the next 4 or 5 days.

i just can’t let randy see my feet during the wedding so he doesn’t have to be HORRIFIED anymore.

he’ll be too busy with other things to worry about that.

we’re going to see “men in tights” tonight. if you don’t know, it’s a performance by the ballet company, and local men perform in a few numbers and they have to raise money to be in the performance and it’s quite amusing to see them in tights. last year kevin was actually in the show, but he didn’t have to raise any money because he knows how to dance. is that why? yes, i believe so.

this year, we’ll just be watching.

and that’s all for now. i hope your friday is good and your weekend, even better.

ok then,

friday grace.


Aug. 23, 2006

---

LIVING IN THE JUNGLE [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:28 pm

today was very busy. very very busy. many things accomplished.

did i ever tell you about the mouse face that i stepped on? i think it was about a month ago, maybe. maybe longer, time is hard to pin down these days. anyway, i thought i stepped on one of those hard dried-up flower pieces on the living room floor (not that there are any dried-up flower pieces there, ever), and i picked it up and it was a MOUSE FACE. not the whole head, just the face part. it was HORRIFYING.

i thought i’d mentioned this before.

anyway, after a busy day i was sitting on the couch with honey the cat. she is very very independent and generally doesn’t want to sit next to me, but tonight she was feeling affectionate and was lying there purring.

and i glanced over, and winne the other cat was nonchalantly walking past, carrying A DEAD MOUSE in his mouth.

at least it was dead?

i followed him into the office and turned on the light and he looked up at me. “i prefer mood lighting for my mouse snack” he seemed to be saying. i turned off the light and called kevin who is working and he seemed to think it was FUNNY.

SOMEBODY NEEDS TO TAKE OUT THAT MOUSE. IT’S DEFINITELY NOT MY JOB.

even though it is, technically, my cat.

but now it’s BOTH of ours cats. co-habitating, soon to be married.

COME HOME AND GET RID OF THIS MOUSE.

i watched as honey ventured into the office. i think she’s eating it right now. winnie seemed to have lost interest, or maybe he brought it in for her. a special treat.

now she will eat it, except for the face, and once again i’m going to find a MOUSE FACE SOMEWHERE IN THE HOUSE.

at least this time i’ll be prepared and won’t PICK IT UP.

ok then,

grace living in the jungle.


Aug. 22, 2006

---

p.s. ads on website [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:41 pm

kevin read about that woman heather who has her blog dooce.com and doesn’t have to do any other work and neither does her husband and he thought it’d be nice if i could do that, too.

maybe he can go find me some people to put big expensive ads on the site.

because you know i have no marketing abilities WHATSOEVER.

i make mighty tasty french bread, though.

still not eating it.

oh, and i forgot to mention that randy YELLED AND YELLED at me about going on about not liking “into the woods.” but i am ENTITLED TO MY OPINION, aren’t i? i don’t care if most of the world loves that show, I DON’T. he also complained that i didn’t mention that he was in it at muni about 20 years ago and he was jack and he was really good. COME ON NOW. like i said, mostly all i remember is this vague notion that i DID NOT LIKE THE MUSIC.

NOT AT ALL.

this afternoon we picked some songs for my friend ann to play while people are milling about before the wedding ceremony. we decided against “do it to me one more time.” randy said a woman actually wanted him to sing that song during her wedding. hmm. maybe that’s not really the song she said. but i think it was.

we also decided against “i’m leaving on a jet plane,” even though i like it. also, no “lucy in the sky with diamonds,” although maybe we’ll change our minds about that one.

i have to go look at my blue cheese-oozing bread now.

ok then,

EXCITING tuesday night grace.

---

bread on tuesday [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:35 pm

is it really only tuesday? how is that possible? but for a while this afternoon i thought i was monday.

so i’m baking bread right now. at the moment, two loaves of french bread, one with green olives and blue cheese, the other with just blue cheese. they look perfect, and that is because they rose for a very very long time today. this is because i was buying swim suits.

i was at work and told sandy that i have to buy a swim suit and she said i’d better buy one pretty quick because they’re liable to be ALL GONE, and the ones that come out in winter for people who cruise won’t be out for months. so i panicked and went to the mall after working and tried on about 15 of them.

it was about as horrible as the process usually is, except then there were about 5 that didn’t look so bad and i didn’t know what to do and i thought maybe i’d put them all on hold and make kevin go back with me tomorrow and tell me which one he liked best, but i didn’t want to wait, and then i was going to ask the saleswomen what they thought but decided it would be too humiliating to parade out of the dressing room in a swimming suit.

so i kept trying them on over and over again and finally bought three. they weren’t cheap, but they actually were a steal because originally they were about a hundred bucks APIECE.

i don’t know exactly why i bought three of them, i guess becuase i couldn’t really decide.

so i’d mixed up some french bread at about noon today and was going to go home and punch it down and then bake it but i didn’t get home till almost eight and one of the bowls of dough had oozed up and over the top and was spreading out over the counter, like the pudding that woody allen makes in “sleeper.”

i’m making four loaves tonight so i guess i won’t be going to bed till after midnight.

i just took two of the loaves out of the oven and one of them, the one with blue cheese and green olives, has an oozing fissure down the middle of it from where i folded it over after putting in the blue cheese. and it looks perfect but i’m also afraid that maybe it will split open so i tried to wedge it against the blender so it won’t leak out.

also, i just want to eat both loaves of bread. these are supposed to be cooled and wrapped and frozen and then re-heated for the wedding rehearsal dinner, but what if i just eat them, instead? when MFH gets home from work, he will definitely want to eat them.

nobody would ever know if i just bought some bread at the store and served that, instead. except christine will read this and she’ll say I DESERVE SOME FRENCH BREAD, DAMMIT! YOU CAN EAT IT ANY OLD TIME BUT I HAVE NO FRENCH BREAK-MAKING ABILITIES HERE IN DENVER!

she’s right. i won’t eat it.

she hasn’t bought a dress yet. this does not worry me.

i’m not really worried about much, wedding-wise, as a matter of fact. things seem kind of ok, like it’s all going to be fine.

i’m looking forward to saying to thad on my wedding day, SEE? I’M NOT ALL FREAKED OUT. because he insisted that i’m going to be a BIG BASKET CASE and it will ALL JUST BE A BLUR.

wrong wrong wrong.

i just set off the smoke detector because some cheese dripped on the bottom of the oven. i’m slightly accident-prone today. i spilled approximately a cup of flour earlier, and just about a half hour ago i dumped a great deal of corn meal on the floor. mollie didn’t care to lick it up.

hopefully that’s all the mayhem for one day. TUESday.

ok then,

grace.


Aug. 20, 2006

---

things such as they are right now. [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:51 pm

i’m feeling kind of tired, not feeling like doing anything, mad that my e-mail isn’t working right now.

i went to this very very funny website called dooce.com. if you haven’t heard of it, well, i don’t know why you haven’t. this woman started a blog in LA quite a while ago, and she wrote bad things about her boss, i believe, and she got fired because of it, and now she lives in utah and has a husband and a child and it’s very very VERY funny.

and so i read a little of it tonight, and i suggest you do the same. she’s an actual PAID BLOGGER, and gets lots of money and her husband doesn’t even have to work because of all the money she makes writing on her blog.

sweet.

anyway, she listed some of the mean stuff peope wrote to her, and it makes me glad that i’m not famous and rich from having a blog, because all that negativity would get to me.

but on the other hand, it’s funny if you think about it.

and the fame/richness from writing on a blog would be VERY NICE.

one of the funniest entries was from august 9th. read that one. especially the part about the dog.

very very funny.

i’m going to be mad at my e-mail now. i hope you had a good weekend.

ok then,

grace

---

SUNDAY NIGHT [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 9:55 pm

finally, FINALLY i took a couple of photos.

two, to be exact.

first, the bottles. 11 are almost done. eight more are about halfway done.



i’m pretty happy with how they’re going.

“how are wedding plans going, grace?” someone will ask.

“the bottles will be done soon” will be my new reply.

damn bottles. why do i have to be insane? these bottles will be such a small blip in the overall reception thing, which is only going to last a few hours anyway.

ok, and here’s the practice cake topper. i made it...how long ago? couple of weeks? i think. i can’t recall, the days are a blur. anyway, the frosting flowers are all quite crunchy now but sometimes i try a bite to see if they’re still edible and they are.

kind of like a goat, grazing on flowers made of sugar.



and by the way, the REAL cake topper will be infinitely, INFINITELY better than this one. this is a practice one, which has been nibbled upon for a couple of weeks.

i can’t think of anything memorable at the fair today, except it was such a beautiful, beautiful day. what if all days were lovely and not humid and perfect like today?

we’d call it LA.

my friend patrick called me today. HE’S GOING TO SEE “INTO THE WOODS.” he’s there right now as a matter of fact. now, i generally enjoy musicals. he doesn’t even like the whole GENRE. the singing and the music and all. oh boy, that’s all i have to say.

four weeks from today, i’ll be getting ready to go to HAWAII.

i haven’t really given this aspect of the whole wedding-honeymoon thing much thought. what about a new bathing suit, for one thing? oh brother. i have a serious bathing suit, that i bought last year when i was in a triathlon (WAS I OUT OF MY MIND?). i’m certainly not taking that to hawaii. i have another one that’s kind of cute but it’s at least seven or eight years old and i haven’t really ever worn it much but the elasticity is all going out of it anyway. i have a couple others that are kind of worthless.

i’ll add that to my list of many things to do in the next few weeks. do they still sell bathing suits? hmm. surely somebody has one.

i have lots of hawaii guidebooks that i haven’t even glanced at yet. i have a serious tendency to over-plan trips, poring through the books, planning out the itinerary. but this time it’s gonna be different.

mostly because i don’t have the time to do it.

but no, a HONEYMOON, that should be more romantic and carefree, right? that’s why we’re going to HAWAII, instead of say, new york city.

whew.

ok ok ok,

sunday grace.


Aug. 17, 2006

---

Elevator Guy Part 2 [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:00 am

i wrote that it’d be nice if somebody stopped by to see me, but i figured nobody would - but then, yesterday afternoon, a guy came up to me and congratulated me on the wedding. i said thanks, and he said, you don’t remember me, do you, and i confessed that i didn’t and he said he was the elevator guy - i wrote about him a while ago - a month, a couple of months, a year maybe? anyway, i was on the elevator at the hospital where i work and he was on the elevator and announced that he was a faithful reader.

his name is...ed? ed. i think. thanks, ed.

the best t-shirt i’ve seen at the fair was worn by a young woman and it read “i AM the doctor my parents wanted me to marry.”

after working at the fair yesterday, i walked around a little bit with mom. we went to see the goats, and i brought my video camera. when we saw the goats on friday, a couple of them were the funniest things i’d ever heard. they were male goats who were in pens all by themselves and they were acting like they were talking to the goats in the next pen. they sounded pissed off, and they’d go BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH, and they sounded exactly like human beings who had been turned into goats. and then at the end of this ranting and raving, they’d SPIT at the goat across the way.

it was so funny, but of course i didn’t have my video camera then. and when we went back yesterday, they had taken the talking goats away.

oh well, next year...

we were going to meet kevin at the ethnic village to hear the band “real time” but when we got there a martial arts group was performing and they weren’t very entertaining and where was real time? i got a program. real time wasn’t playing at all, but hank helton’s other band, “emerald underground” was playing over at One Particular Harbor. where the acoustics are terrible. the band is really good, though. one of the guys wore a kilt and played the fiddle and he was awesome.

MFH told me that wayne, the leader of kevin’s band, wants ME to play the fiddle for some songs. i was slightly horrified and flabbergasted. DIDN’T YOU TELL HIM THAT I SUCK AT PLAYING THE VIOLIN? i asked him.

there is now way i’m going to be talked into that. it would sound SO TERRIBLE.

TERRIBLE.

when we played at that wedding reception on saturday night, sometimes i preteneded i was Laurie Partridge from “the partridge family” and just acted like i was playing because there wasn’t anythng for me to play, no music, and i got bored and felt stupid just sitting there. but there would be no way to pretend to be playing the violin.

after i got home from walking and walking and walking around the fair, mollie was whining and whining because she’d had no walk all day. so i took her for a walk, except she was so wound up that it was more like she dragged me down the street, and sometimes we had to run because she was pulling so hard. such a relaxing ending to my day.

today, things will be more calm. but still at the fair! stop by and see hi if you’re in the neighborhood.

ok then,
thursday grace.



Aug. 15, 2006

---

yuck. [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:06 pm

that is the summation of my review of “into the woods,” now playing at new salem.

it’s the musical that i don’t like. i don’t like the songs, i don’t like the music, i don’t like the singing.

i saw it about 15 years ago when they did it at muni, and i had a vague memory of not being so fond of it, but i figured that maybe i was just in a bad mood or something when seeing it. kind of like when i saw the movie “sideways” and my mood was very very very bad and so i still don’t know if it’s a horrible movie or it was just my mood that was horrible.

but anyway we went to “into the woods” sunday night and right away when they started singing i knew i didn’t like it way back then because i DO NOT LIKE THAT PLAY.

i like sondheim’s “sweeney todd” and “a little night music” and probably other sondheim plays if i could think of them. but “into the woods,” NEVER AGAIN.

most of the performances were good, except the sound system was pretty bad, which didn’t help.

aside from that - fair fair fair. i worked LIKE A SLAVE in the illinois bldg on friday afternoon and then kevin and his nieces cara and nicole and i walked around and we shared a DELICIOUS GIANT TUB OF FRENCH FRIES and cara got fried oreos which i had one of, and it was all good, food-wise. except nicole kind of went over the edge after having a large vanilla shake from one of those buildings shaped like a milk carton. she should have shared it with me, to avoid feeling sick. next time.

i go BACK TO THE FAIR tomorrow, for the next three days. stop by and say hi if you want to. and then i’m there again on sunday and then i’m FREE FREE FREE which is good because i really have to get to work on painting those bottles. i worked on them for an hour tonight, but i was kind of falling asleep while painting.

oh, and wedding plans...on saturday night the band that MFH is in, and that i played the keyboard for a couple of songs, played at a wedding reception. and it made me not want to do ANYTHING ELSE regarding my own wedding reception because it just all seemed so...fleeting.

also, there were many many children in attendance. and when the band started to play, most of the children began screaming and chasing each other around the dance floor and out into the hall and around and around and i wanted to kill all of them. i mean, they were really obnoxious, and i think the parents must have all been outside drinking.

this made me wonder if any children have been invited to our wedding, but i concluded that even if there are children around, there’s no way they could be so incredibly annoying. and if they are i will KICK THEM RIGHT OUT.

fair fair fair fair.

i hope you were outside today, because the weather was PERFECT. mollie and i had a pretty good run this morning.

ok ok ok,

tuesday grace.

how can it be only tuesday? it feels like the week has been going on for about four years at least.



Aug. 11, 2006

---

FRIDAY AND HEADED FOR THE FAIR [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 9:43 am

two of kevin’s three nieces are here this morning, and first we’re going to take cara shopping to try to find her a flower girl dress and then we’re GOING TO THE FAIR.

i’ll be working there for three hours this afternoon, and six total days of the fair, so if you want to stop by and say hi some afternoon, i’ll be there.

aside from that....busy, no time, etc etc etc. status quo.

more later.

ok then,

friday grace.



Aug. 06, 2006

---

p.s. RANDY [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:51 pm

i just bid on a tape for him on ebay. i love ebay. he was looking for a “pirates of penzance” tape, it was a movie that came out and he’s gotten a couple of DVDs but they weren’t the right thing when he got them, they were tapes of the show in central park. so i found it on ebay and bid and it should be arriving in a few days.

ebay is a good thing.

---

sunday already gone... [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:43 pm

ZOOM, it went speeding by, and now it’s 11:31 and i was going to be in bed by...oh, you know the story. earlier. got caught up in stuff. etc etc.

tonight i suddenly thought, how many people who are getting married in six weeks spent their weekend making a practice cake and then decorating wine bottles?

ok, here’s the thing - when i lived in LA, my apartment was fairly close to the House of Blues on Sunset Boulevard. i didn’t walk up to the boulevard that much, but when i did it was cool because there are all these totally iconic places there like clubs like the whiskey and the rainbow room and the viper room, outside of which one of those phoenix boys died. plus there are lots and lots of trendy fancy shops and restaurants and one time i remember driving by and kato kalin was sitting outside at a restaurant. gee, do you remember kato kalin?

so i went into the House of Blues one night, as i was walking by. (i actually saw a couple of performances there, too - tito puente, and the blues singer keb 'mo). in the gift shop were these painted wine and alcohol bottles, and they were called voodoo bottles and they had lots of glitter on them and i loved them a lot.

so i went home and got wine bottles and started painting wine bottles and painting wine bottles some more and i just kept doing it, it’s like i was posessed. at one point i attempted to sell them, but of course i never ever sell anything i create, but i kept painting them anyway because i liked it.

anyway, i’m (probably) wearing this pink dress for the wedding, and i have this one bottle that i painted that i really love. it’s pink, with purple and gold and teal and white on it, and it reminds me of mardi gras (i’ve never actually been to mardi gras) and i decided these should be my wedding colors.

and then i decided i should paint a bunch of wine bottles like these bottles, and put some flowers in them and use them for wedding centerpieces.

i promise i’ll take a photo of the bottles. tomorrow. maybe the next day.

anyway, so i have 11 bottles now and i’ve painted a base coat on them and they’re in various stages of done-ness. actually, only one so far is nearly done. but i haven’t put any glitter on it yet.

i figure i’m going to have to make about 23 or so bottles. must drink more wine.

today when taking a walk, i thought, maybe i shouldn’t spend so much time on each bottle, maybe i should make them more plain, since they’re just going to be for the reception anyway and they take quite a bit of time.

but you know i don’t listen to myself so much.

one bottle done, pretty much, except for the glitter. 22 to go.

meanwhile, i haven’t given much though to my list of WEDDING THINGS TO DO, except i revised the list so it looks much neater now.

everybody keeps saying “it’ll be fine, it’ll be beautiful.” in theory this is a sweet and lovely and EASY FOR YOU TO SAY sentiment.

i have to think about things like maybe finding a new DJ because i think ours has bailed. i have to...oh, let’s just say i have to do a bunch of stuff.

but right now i’m going to read at least a page or two of “in a sunburned country” and then i’m going to GO TO SLEEP.

i hope your monday is not just bearable, but actually GOOD. somehow. maybe you’re on vacation.

ok ok ok,

six weeks and counting and what, exactly, happened to seven weeks? grace.



Aug. 05, 2006

---

and one more thing [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:19 pm

i really want to take a picture of my practice wedding cake and show it to you, but i doubt that i’d get any feedback, plus right now, as previously noted, i’m too tired to do something as vigorous as taking a picture. as finding the camera and trying to get enough light in the kitchen to take a photo and then downloading it and shrinking it...

maybe tomorrow. only a day away.

---

saturday night... [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:17 pm

i can’t believe that yesterday was friday. i feel like a week has passed. i was going to be IN BED by 11, with LIGHTS OUT by 11:30. so far i’m not meeting my goal.

i was looking at our online wedding registry yesterday in order to try to find more stuff to add to it, and was surprised and delighted to see that SOMEBODY BOUGHT US SOMETHING ALREADY! two pillow shams.

but the funny thing is, they must have been doing shopping for themselves at the same time, because now we have a couple of things added to the registry, including two light bulbs. very funny.

here’s the lighted palm tree which i added to the registry, back when i was sure i wouldn’t find more than three things that i wanted/needed:



now, of course, i believe we have more than 60 items. somebody told me to add crate & barrel online as a wedding registry place, but i’m sure they have nothing we need/want.

boy i’m tired. today i spent a few hours decorating this practice cake. it looks...ok. lots and lots of icing. it’s not exactly how i want it to be. i’m too tired to worry if i’ll be able to achieve that which i want to achieve. today a friend said to me YOU’RE THE ONE GETTING MARRIED, YOU DON’T NEED TO MAKE YOUR OWN CAKE.

yeah, but i want to. because...

because i’m somewhat insane?

but only somewhat.

this morning i confessed to kevin a serious flaw that i’ve been keeping from him.

i break irons.

i mean, irons always break. somehow i drop them.

last night, though, i went into the laundry room and the iron was lying on the floor. i was nowhere near it when it plunged to the floor. but i know that somehow it was my fault. i don’t know that it’s broken for sure, but a lot of water seemed to be leaking out of it.

i drop irons.

he suggested that we could put about 14 irons up on our wedding registry.

but that wouldn’t be nearly as fun as lighted palm trees.

saturday night. i’d like to watch something fun on tv, but i fear that if i turn on the tv i won’t find anything interesting at all. so i’ll keep reading “in a sunburned country” by bill bryson, about his travels in australia. this is the second time i’ve read it, and it makes me want to go to australia and at the same time makes me never want to go there, because basically most things there will kill you. alligators, fish jellyfish, all kinds of horrible plants and things and it sounds pretty deadly and i’m prone to getting stung, etc anyway so maybe i shouldn’t go there anytime in the near future.

mom had a great time in switzerland, by the way. i have all her photos right here on my computer but i’m much too tired right now to show any of them to you.

tomorrow, maybe. no cakes to decorate tomorrow.

ok then,

saturday grace.

p.s. today my brother-in-law jim, who is the BEST, came over and mowed/trimmed the lawn, as a birthday present for kevin who has everything he could ever possibly need/want. what a good guy, my brother-in-law jim, who remembers events that happen at the same time as the tour de france every year because he is a little obsessed with the tour de france.





Aug. 04, 2006

---

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KEVIN! [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 2:43 pm

We just went out for a lovely birthday lunch at Bella Milano, the restaurant that’s out past the 12-plex movie theater. why doesn’t that movie complex have any kind of sign outside? there’s not even anything on the side of the building. what if i’m driving by and want to go see a movie? very odd.

it’s cooler today, a good thing, especially for FRIDAY. mollie and i went running this morning and neither of us got too hot. except the only this is that sometimes i take her off the leash when we’re out on the trail and there are no other people around, but then i kept yelling at her MOLLIE! MOLLIE! MOLLIE! to get her to come back to me because she was about to run into somebody’s garden, but she refused to listen. sometimes she’s a little bit crazy. at the moment, as a matter of fact, she’s running around with a (toy) mouse in her mouth, and she won’t let go of it for anything.

as you can see, things are hopping around here this afternoon. a good way for them to be.

mom is flying back from switzerland, after spending her last day yesterday in geneva. i’m looking forward to hearing all about it and seeing the photos and it makes me want to travel more and more.

ok then,

friday grace.



Aug. 02, 2006

---

Chateau de Chillon [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 3:25 pm

"Lake Leman lies by Chillon’s walls:
A thousand feet in depth below
Its massy waters meet and flow...
There are seven pillars of Gothic mould,
In Chillon’s dungeons deep and old,
There are seven columns massy and grey,
Dim with a dull imprison’d ray,
A sunbeam which hath lost its way…"

Lord Byron, The Prisoner of Chillon

this is a bit of lord byron’s famous poem (I’d never read it). this is the castle, which mom visited yesterday. they also performed in the castle’s courtyard. cool, huh?

this is the restaurant where they had dinner tonight. it’s called the Altes Tramdepot and i had to look it up because it sounded like...train station. which i thought would be a funny place to eat dinner.

here’s the photo:



and this is what the website says about it:

The restaurant has a fantastic view onto the old town of Bern and is located right next to the Bärengraben (Bear Pits).

The Tram beer is brewed from hop and malt right in front of the guests in the copper brewery in the middle of the restaurant. The banquet hall on the first floor as well as other areas of the restaurant are ideal for any type of event.

**********

Bern is a UNESCO World Heritage Site; this is what the switzerland website says about the city:

The perfectly preserved medieval street plan, with its arcades, street fountains and doughty towers persuaded UNESCO to deem Bern a World Heritage Site, placing it in the company of such legendary sites as Florence, Petra and the Taj Mahal.

nice. let’s go to switzerland! what are we waiting for?

ok then,

wednesday grace.

---

LAUSANNE SWITZERLAND [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 12:48 pm

Mom was in Lausanne on tuesday. i looked it up online and once again have to think I MUST GO TO SWITZERLAND, AND SOON.



here’s a bunch of information on lausanne, maybe more than you want to know, but you can read as much of it as you like. yesterday they took a cruise on Lac Leman, and ended up in Montreux, which has the Montreux Jazz Festival.

Here’s the lausanne info:

“From the terrace of the cathedral, I saw the lake above the roofs, the mountains above the lake, the clouds above the mountains, and the stars above the clouds. It was like a staircase where my thoughts climbed up step by step and broadened at each new height.”

Victor Hugo

LAUSANNE tends to inspire hyperbole. In a country of spectacular natural beauty it is the most beautiful of cities, Switzerland’s San Francisco, a city of incredibly steep hills that has developed tiered above the lake on a succession of compact, south-facing terraces. Vistas of blue water, glittering sunlight and the purple and grey of the looming, whitecapped Savoy Alps peep through between gaps in buildings or at the ends of steeply dropping alleys. Much of the city is still wooded, there are plenty of parks, and the tree-lined lakefront promenades spill over with lush, beds of vibrantly colourful flowers. Attractive, interesting, worldly, and well aware of how to have a good time, it’s simply Switzerland’s sexiest city.

The comparisons with San Francisco don’t stop at the gorgeous setting. If Switzerland has a counterculture, it lives in the clubs and cafés of Lausanne, a fact which – odd though it seems – lies broadly within the city’s long tradition of fostering intellectual and cultural innovation. From medieval times, Lausanne has stood at the Swiss cultural avant-garde. Back then, the cathedral crowned the city the most influential of the region; it still sits resplendant on an Old Town hill, the country’s most impressive Gothic monument. After the Reformation, students flocked to Lausanne’s pioneering university, and in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, restless Romantics sought and found inspiration in the setting and the life of Lausanne. It remains a grand-looking city, full of shuttered foursquare mansions and ritzy shopping streets, and with its own glamorous lakeside resort of Ouchy; but, despite the looks, there are few cities in Europe that so actively value and support the pleasure principle. For decades, the municipality has generously subsidized art and culture of all shades, resulting in a range of festivals, live music, clubs, theatre, opera and dance to rival a more sluggish metropolis ten times bigger than 300,000-strong Lausanne. It would be an exaggeration to say you could find anything you wanted in Lausanne, but the happy combination of a long tradition of cultural experimentation, open and willing audiences and chunky public subsidies gives the city’s arts and entertainment a refreshing breadth.

Aiding the dynamism, a defining feature of the city is its international population of students, attracted to the prestigious University of Lausanne, Switzerland’s biggest, and the French-language arm of the Federal Institute of Technology. Hundreds of language schools and private academies enhance the city’s reputation for learning, along with the world-famous École Hotelière, training ground for top chefs and hotel staff. An array of international study programmes helps to feed Lausanne’s uniquely diverse multi-ethnic makeup. This youthful spirit, and the city’s hilly aspect, have also given Lausanne a new role as European blading and skateboarding capital: when the sun shines, every public space hisses with the spinning of tiny wheels, and the Ouchy waterfront in summer echoes to the clack of skateboards. Bladers have been clocked doing 90kph on the city’s hills, and in the winter, after days of heavy snow when blading is necessarily curtailed, it’s not unknown to see the same intrepid characters skiing through the streets down to Ouchy.

On a more orthodox line, since 1874 Lausanne has been the home of the highest Swiss federal court of appeal, and has also attracted many multinational companies, not least Philip Morris, who chose Lausanne as a base from which to sell their Marlboro, Chesterfield, Suchard and Toblerone brands to Europe and Africa. However, the feature which the tourist office has lit upon is that the International Olympic Committee has been headquartered in Lausanne since 1915, and has attracted to the city an array of world governing bodies in sports ranging from chess to volleyball; they tout the city as “Olympic Capital” and endlessly plug the rather vapid Olympic Museum. It’s a mark of Lausannois spirit that given the chance to host the 1994 winter games, the locals dismayed the municipality and the IOC by voting the idea down and embracing the annual International Roller and Skateboarding Contest instead.

0.350 [powered by b2.]