Tah-daaaaaaah!

We are moved, completely and entirely. All of our possesions out of the old place and in the new place, though by no means organized in the new place. The only things left behind are a few errant hairballs that I couldn't chase down with the vacuum cleaner.

So, on the dawn of our second anniversary of meeting we woke up in the third apartment we've lived in together officially (as opposed to living together alternating between both our apartments), and our first home with a mortgage. Two years ago today, at this time of day, I didn't even know what he looked like. Today I woke up next to him, like I have been doing for the past year and a half, and curled up in a ball with him, trying to fend off the message of awakeness the alarm clock was bombarding us with. It seems things have moved very fast for us, but only because things are right. Everything that's happened for us has happened at the right time. Meeting, moving in together, deciding to get married, being forced out of our first place together into a teeny tiny little place with bucketloads of character, meeting our kitties, and finally getting into the housing market...it all worked out for the best possible result: us, at two years, planning our wedding, with a stable place to live, two lovely furballs to keep us entertained, and a a lot more adventure to look forward to.

If My Lab Notebook And Journal Were Combined

Mon. 3-29 - Changed Human Brain Endothelial Cell (HBMEC) coverslips to minimal media. Handed on to Aline for PI treatment. Will stain with H2DCFDA for confocal imaging on 3-31.

Plated 24-well plate, with coverslips, of HT22 cells for Tat/Meth treatment and H2DCFDA stain.

Plated new 24-well plate (no coverslips) of HBMEC for Monica's repeat of Methamphetemine toxicity study. Will supervise treatment on 3-30.

Passed Human Umbilical Vein Endothelial Cells (HUVEC). Split one flask into three.

Drove to PetSmart. Purchased new litter tray (with odor-absorbing cover), litter-catching mat, rubber tray to go under water dish, and 8lb of IAMS light hairball control formula.

Took 52-E to 805-S to 163-S to Friar's Road. Visited The Container Store to purchase plastic shoeboxes, cedar blocks for clothes storage, a large container for cat food, and a pan-lid rack for the kitchen. Also obtained an acid-free archival quality box. Box will be used to store wedding dress, which is to be picked up sometime before 4-2.

Returned home, met with building manager to establish protocol for our early vacation of premesis, and transferring apartment to two post doctoral students from London.

Dinner was made by Matt, the popular combination of Trader Joe's Marinara, Hunt's Tomato Sauce, 95% lean ground beef, and various spices, poured over al dente pasta.

Tues. 3-30 - Blocked PGP test blots for 1hr @ room temp in 5% non-fat milk solution. Washed 4 times in PBS-T. Put in primary Ab solution at the following concentrations: 1:250, 1:500, 1:1000, 1:2500. Incubated overnight in cold room.

Walked to bank, withdrew $20 for gas money.

Returned to lab to eat lunch.

Wrote rather silly and rambling blog entry, in the process of which remembering what I have left to do today...followed by publishing and getting on with the day's work.

Mole Update

The delayed closing of escrow wasn't the only thing causing me to freak out on Monday, I also had my stitches removed. I expected it to hurt a lot more than it did, based on my experience with the stitches in my scalp from last year's mole. Gah, I really hope this mole-removal thing doesn't become a springtime routine for me. Anyway, I was anticipating brief but significant pain, combined with the general freakiness of my face being messed with, plus the background worry of what the biopsy results would be.

Turns out it isn't melanoma (entire family breaths a sigh of relief), but a less malignant form of abnormality called Spitz Nevus. So it's a mixed bag, hooray for absence of melanoma, but since the cells were still abnormal, I have to have the margin excised. Which means more of my face being removed. A very melodramatic way of saying that they'll take out a slim oval surrounding the original excision site, leaving me with a line about twice as long as the one I have now.

I was not happy about this news at all. The wound on my face still looked pretty swollen at this point, and the indents left by the sutures were still very evident, all I could think of was walking around for the rest of my life with a highly visible zipper-like scar in the middle of my face. As if I don't have enough appearance issues already. My one big self reasurring point has always been that even if by body is ungainly, at least my face is ok, sometimes even more than ok, sometimes beautiful.

I have no way of knowing how much I was channeling all the surrounding tension into the issue of further surgery, probably quite a lot, but I cried most of the way home, and the only reason I didn't continue to cry much at home is that Matt calmed me down and made me feel better.

Tuesday, Mum called me in the middle of the day to say hi. It turns out Dad had called to update her when he got my email saying the mole wasn't cancerous, but they still wanted to remove the margin. It meant a lot to me that from that minimal information she knew it was worth calling to see if I was ok. She has a couple of small scars, one from a broken nose, one from thyroid surgery (on her neck), so I know she understands the worry of being marked.

Today I'm a lot less worried, the swelling has gone, and the stitch marks too, and all that's left is a red line about half an inch long. No zipper, no big pucker marks. If the result of the margin removal looks like this, only longer, I can cope. My dermatologist is clearly capable of lining up the edges properly when stitching up a hole. I'm not ecstatic about the prospect of a further piece of my cheek being removed of course, or about another week of looking after sutures followed by however long it takes to heal fully after the sutures are taken out. At least I feel fairly confident I'm not going to become an investor in copious amounts of cover-up, just a more regular sunscreen wearer.

Escrow Limbo

No luck on the obtaining of keys, we're waiting on the Veteran's Affairs appraiser, he has to go and appraise our condo before the VA will fully approve the loan. Four other units in the same development have already been approved by the VA, so we're not worried about being refused, just waiting for the wheels of that government agency to catch up with the lender and escrow company.

I spent most of Monday freaking out about all of our neatly laid plans being messed up. No moving out by the end of the month, no being moved before our anniversary, no camping trip and Handfasting site-scouting. Then I realized that it's only a week's delay and spent Tuesday morning rescheduling like a crazed secretary. Our neatly schemed move will still happen as we mapped it out, with box-moving and the arrival of the fridge through the week followed by the big stuff on Saturday, only it'll be the next Saturday. My previously arranged beauty appointment to de-stress after the move will now be a de-stress in preparation for the move. The camping trip is the only real casualty, and we'll make that up as soon as possible.

Yesterday the estimate was that the appraisal was going to happen on Friday, which means the report wouldn't be submitted till Monday or Tuesday, leading to keys being handed over exactly a week late on Tuesday or Wednesday...But he might just possibly do the inspection on Thursday. If he does, and if he submits his paperwork that day, not Friday, we could maybe have the keys this week.

We're not counting on it.

If we get the keys this weekend it will be a bonus chance to move some boxes in, we're not going to be waiting on edge to see if we can do the big move after all, we're on edge enough as it is.

So much for the keys, clicker, storage shed, fridge, new furniture and all that rot. To compensate for life's failure to deliver those wants, the fates gave me an ego boost in the form of a size 12, timeless little black dress that fits perfectly and makes me want to wear it with bare legs and strappy sandals. Not the LBD I linked to earlier, an even more classic one in linen, with no convenient web photo. You'll just have to take my word for it's fabulousness.

So instead of taking my Friday public holiday to move boxes from North Park to El Cajon, I'm taking my Friday public holiday and getting a one hour facial, followed by having my hair lowlighted brown. After a quick visit to the lab (because there is no such thing as a full day off unless you're going out of town), I shall don the timeless little black size twelve dress that fits me perfectly, put on makeup and strappy red heels, ignore the fact that I do not posses a Coach handbag and meet my sweetie for dinner to celebrate our second anniversary early and congratulate ourselves on almost being on the real estate ladder.

Poor Matt, being confronted with a new hair colour and a new dress to notice, all in one date.

There's No Place Like Home

I want the keys to our new condo.

I want the keys, my own gate clicker and a storage shed, already leased and in our posession.

I want the keys, gate clicker, storage shed, us to be moved in, the fridge to be already delivered and installed (and full), a lazy susan installed in the corner cabinet of the kitchen, a dark hardwood bar/display cabinet for the dining area, a big chunky coffee table and an air filter to capture the flying cat fur.

I want the keys, gate clicker, storage, fridge, lazy susan, new furniture, air filter, a timeless little black dress[>] that fits me perfectly, a coach purse[>] with the little daisy tag on it, a pair of heels [>] I will love forever, and a dinner date with my sweetie on which to wear aforementioned dress and shoes, carry said purse, and spend an evening being grownups celebrating two years together.

But I'd settle for the keys to our new condo.

There is an additional factor to me being in organizational overdrive, complete with the usual accompanying feelings of sleep deprivation and overcaffienation. This additional factor is sorting out someone to take over our current lease. I have agreement from a pair of post-docs from London that they will take the apartment starting the first week in April, but I also know they haven't bought their tickets from the UK yet, and probably won't arrive until the middle of April.

So now it's a question of them faxing me signed leases, and wiring me the 1st month's rent and security deposit. If they don't take over the apartment, we're responsible for rent until someone else rents it. That's $1100 a month extra that we just don't have. I don't think it will fall through, but it's something very serious that I'll feel a lot better about once it's signed, sealed and delivered.

The escrow paperwork is signed, sealed and delivered. However, there is now a problem with the mortgage paperwork. They got some of the assets and liabilities listed in the wrong columns, and since Matt not only has to sign the list, but a paper swearing all financial information to be complete and correct...He couldn't sign everything. This stuff needs to be completed and handed in either to the bank, or the escrow company, in time for them to complete all the processing by the close of business on Monday. Of course, if it isn't complete by then it's only a delay, not a disaster, but if there's too much of a delay, I won't be able to get the fridge delivered on Thursday, and we'll be fridgeless until the next Thursday.

In short, there are far too many things up in the air, many of them entangled in lovely complex little cascades of cause and effect with each other.

No wonder I'm having trouble getting to sleep.

It Never Rains But It Pours

The past three days have been rather eventful. On Monday I had a mole removed from my face, temporarily replaced with a charming pair of sutures, and hopefully in the long term only replaced with a faint scar. Tuesday, I had an appointment lined up for a facial, to treat myself before the move...In light of Monday's minor surgery I changed the facial to having my eyebrows shaped. Matt preferred them before. I'm still undecided.

This morning I had my annual eye exam, complete with the scary eyedrops that make everyone look like a dope fiend for the rest of the day by dilating the pupils. The eye doctor was impressed by how healed-looking my stitches look after only 48 hours. I hope this bodes well for minimal scarring.

I'm thinking of getting my hair dyed brown. No particular reason other than I think it would look nice.

Added into the mix is the fact that to close escrow on Tuesday next week, we actually need to have all of the paperwork signed and at the escrow office next Monday, or to be really sure, this Friday. Day after tomorrow in other words. We only got the forms from the mortgage company this morning, and some of the escrow paperwork remains to be deciphered. Even if Matt signs them all and they're mailed tomorrow, we're cutting it a bit close. This will probably mean me acting as courier, rather than trusting the local mail service to deliver it all in a day. The realities of "we're buying a condo" and "we're moving in less than a week" still have not sunk in enough for it to be exciting. I think I'm more in organizing mode, and I'll be excited once we're unpacking. Or maybe I'll be excited when I'm waiting, in our new condo, for the fridge to be delivered. Fridge ownership is an easier concept to grasp than home ownership it seems.

I haven't babbled about the kitties much recently, they're still ridiculously cute, and getting more friendly too. Marble now seeks out lap time, complete with purring and kneeding of the paws, though she only gets snuggly in the bedroom or study, in the living room she sits off to one side and stares at us. This morning she was under the covers down by my feet, and I was petting her with my toes, mostly on her tummy. Every other cat I've owned would have responded to this by fighting with my feet, both because of tummy contact and the whole feisty under-the blankets thing. Marble stretched and started to purr, then used my ankle as a pillow. She also does this adorable flirty thing where she'll reach her tufty little paws up onto the arm of the futon or comfy chair while looking at you, and then squeak a little comedy meow for emphasis.

Talli has developed an addiction to greek yoghurt, so have Matt and I, but we don't end up with a face covered in yoghurt after cleaning out a bowl. We should probably train him to use a spoon, but it's far too amusing to see him with yoghurt all over his eyebrows. He's also an utter love bug, just like his sister. He's not the only cat I've known who likes to be carried about so that he can get a good view of the world without exerting himself, but he is the only cat I've known who actively likes to be hugged. If he's sitting in my lap he won't settle down until he has an arm draped accross him. He'll keep trampling in a circle and leaning up against my stomach until I give him a hug and leave my arm wrapped around him. He's got me well trained. He's also trained Matt to pick him up and carry him about the apartment tucked under one arm.

Yes I did say he's trained Matt. Cats are good at that sort of thing.

I'm looking forward to see what zooming pattern they adopt in our condo, they won't have such a long hallway to bound along, but they will have full carpet for better traction. They were getting pretty good at leaping from rug to rug to avoid the hardwood floor scrabbling, or launching themselves off the sides of walls and furniture when there wasn't a rug nearby.

Now I must stop extolling the virtues of the fabulous furballs and go learn a new fluorescent staining protocol.

Yesterday we met at Costco and ordered a refrigerator. I used the massive $7 cash back rebate from my Amex card to chip a tiny bit off the price, the free shipping rebate will help too. When it arrives after it's "4-6 week" journey through rebate limbo.

******************
And Now For Something Completely Different

"I imagine insanity tastes like lemon drops."

"Lemon drops with chilli sauce: that's more insane."

"Different types of insanity would taste different, for some reason I want to say that my ex's brain would be more like rancid guacamole. Largely because of the wierd grey colour avocados go when they go bad."

"My brain is like watermelon: tasty, yet mainly made of water. And you have to spit the seeds out."

*****************
What does your brain taste like?

Now we have (finally) got the mortgage details from the lender, the condo thing is starting to feel a lot more real. I've thought of beginning the process of notifying the phone company, credit cards, bank etc. about the address change, as well as ordering a refrigerator in time to have it delivered in that first week...But without anything solid from the lender it felt that taking those steps would be premature.

Perhaps now I will finally start filling some of the boxes I've taken home for the move, and go down to the Core Facility to beg some more conveniently sized ones. I've found that the standard 18" cube of the Invitrogen boxes are perfect for hauling books and other worldly possessions. Nobody watching us move could be in any doubt that at least one person in our household works in a lab. Fortunately not too many of our boxes have biohazard symbols on them to frighten the general populous with.

We are in escrow!

Well, technically, Matt is in escrow, and I'm standing next to him holding on to the paperwork. We were told that we could close escrow as soon as March 18th, but are going to ask for a week after that. At this point the exact closing date only depends on when the lender can get us funded. Considering she still hasn't sent Matt the details of the two loans he gets to choose between...I have some doubt that we're really going to know the closing date until it actually happens.

Either way, it's time to start hoarding delivery boxes from work and packing up the things we don't need on a daily basis. Because it's going to be in the next month that we get the keys and start moving. This will really and truly be the last move for years. That way we'll return our average to one move a year or less, not four in one 12-month period.

I'm looking forward to having a bit more room. A place to have my sewing machine set up and my few craft supplies somewhat organized, not just part of the heap of boxes of things we have nowhere to store properly. Having counter space in the kitchen again, a coffee table in the living room and a real dining area for our personalized table and chairs. Two closets plus a linen cupboard, a dishwasher, space for a second dresser in the bedroom. A dresser of my own and being able to get out of the bed on my side will make it feel like a palatal bedroom. No more trampling poor Matt on my way to the bathroom.

The study will no longer contain the dining room table acting as a desk, and the bedside cabinets acting as printer stand and office-supply holders. Cooking will no longer require having an assistant to stand and hold things for me because there's nowhere to put them down momentarily while I stir!

However, I will miss waking up and seeing the dark wooden beams of the ceiling. I will miss coming home and looking up and knowing that the shack-like structure on top of that building is our little cottage apartment, secluded by it's height, with a view from the eastern mountains all the way around to the sunset. I doubt we'll ever live in a place with a 360 degree view again, though we may well have an equally nice outdoor space as the deck.

It's hard to say why we love this teeny apartment so much, in describing it it sounds poky and inconveniently crowded once all of our crap is in there. I suppose it's one of those place that you just have to see to understand it. Something about the combination of wooden floors and ceilings, the warm beige on the walls, the one corner of the hallway that's been painted burnt orange, the runner on the stairs with little llamas and northwestern doo-dads on it. The unused and unusable private elevator adds a touch of mystery, though I never let myself think too hard about my sister's conclusion that it must be haunted.

It's warm and welcoming, people have been happy there and the walls reflect that. It's the first place Matt and I felt homey in, our first apartment together was plagued by an alley full of screaming brats and even more screaming rap music, it never felt like a sanctuary. I hope the new place will be peaceful enough to feel like a sanctuary, being able to paint the walls will make it easier to personalize, we just have to hope for a minimum of the screaming brat/obnoxious rap music.

I feel so intelligent. I just sent an email to my senior boss in which I used the phrase "Gorbachev's role in the dissolution of the USSR", ok so I was actually telling him that an author I thought might have written on the subject hadn't published any non fiction on it after all. But still. Not just a pretty face. Or a boring scientist either.

Yesterday I placed an ad in the San Diego Reader for our apartment, to find someone to take over our lease, since we're going into escrow on Sunday. With a 30 day escrow, that means we'll be moving the first week of April. There have already been two calls about the ad.

This is giving me a small taste of what it might be like to be a landlord, it's really odd to be the one answering the phone to "I'm calling about the apartment in North Park...". I've had two major apartment searches recently, and now I'm on the other end of that phone call, answering questions about security deposits and pet rules. Matt and I have just removed ourselves from the world of apartment hunting and stepped into house-hunting. They're both pretty stressful frankly. I'm not sure I could say one is preferable to the other, except for the fact that house-hunting tends to be repeated less frequently.

I was in the middle of writing a post about the past week when I extremely cleverly quit my web browser application on a whim. Don't ask, suddenly the [command] [Q] called to me.

On Saturday we met with a realtor and were given a list of places to drive by and check out the areas.

Sunday (after 5 hours of whale-watching) we met the realtor at a condo in La Mesa and looked at the inside.

Monday we drafted and sent an offer to the seller.

Tuesday we twiddled our thumbs with much excitement and applied for financing.

Wednesday we got a counter-offer, looked at the condo a second time to be sure, drafted a response and sent it off.

Thursday noon I found out we don't qualify for the 100% loan with closing costs rolled in we'd been hoping for. Or the 100% loan where we pay closing. We qualified for a 3% down loan, which meant help would be needed.

Thursday 2pm I left for the conference in LA, after leaving a voicemail for Matt saying we didn't get the mortgage we'd hoped for so we couldn't buy unless we got a couple of grand from my parents asap.

Thursday 3pm Matt called me back, not a happy bunny, and told me that the seller would accept our offer if we could promise (in writing of course) to show him an approval letter from the bank on Monday, and show that we had the funds for down payment and closing costs in our possession by Thursday...

We had until 3pm Friday to respond.

If we responded "yes" and then were unable to show funds by the required day, the seller could kick us out of escrow and keep our $3000 deposit as a souvenir. If we failed to respond the condo would stay on the market and might sell before we had our financing all lined up and ready to go.

Noon Friday Matt and I both told our realtor we had to back off on this one and we all started breathing again.

As soon as we figured out it was a choice between risking our deposit and risking someone else buying the place before us, it was an easy decision. You'd be surprised how much there was ricocheting about in my head before I came to that realization. For a while it felt like no matter what we did we'd be risking our money, but that's exactly what the seller wanted. They wanted to lay on the pressure to hurry up the deal.

Right now, as I type, we're waiting to hear on a different place, this one in El Cajon. We've qualified with their lender (which means a nice big credit to help with closing costs), but nothing has been signed or put in writing yet and we're not in escrow, so chickens are not to be counted as yet.

By the way, Matt and I are trying to become homeowners, it's been in the works for a while, but last week it all of a sudden became an active search, last week we stopped looking and running numbers and started chasing around East County trying to make decisions and find something that works for us.

February is trying to make up for how fast January went by dragging it's feet and refusing to get into the upper teens. I can't believe it's only the 17th, it's only the 17th and I don't get paid until March 1st. The problem with getting paid monthly is sometimes payday can seem a really looong way away. Especially when paying off large purchases from the previous month.

Right now I'm playing with layers of text in photoshop, making a banner title for posters being presented at an HIV conference in LA on Friday, which will also be my first ever conference as a working scientist. Huzzah.

I learned something new the other night. I learned that parmesan chicken pizza can survive being cooked for almost an hour, rather than the recommended 25 minutes, and still be edible. Crispy and a little flame-broiled in flavour, but entirely edible. Apart from the edge of the crust, which may as well have been made of wood.

Maybe having the kitchen timer built into the microwave isn't such a great innovation after all. With me in the study, it was far away enough that I didn't register the sound. I was also deeply absorbed in figuring out the budgeting feature on Quicken. Having tracked my spending for a year I figured that perhaps it would be a good idea to start setting spending (and not spending) goals, rather than just watching the pretty money trickle away.

I've made progress since last year, especially considering I just dealt with Christmas and the first of the wedding-related expenses without touching my savings. But I'm tired of looking back and realising how much I've spent by buying my lunch or dinner because I forgot to bring a sandwich or I'm too tired to cook, as long as we keep a stash of decent canned soup I can avoid the evening meal expense, and I just have to get more in the habit of sandwich making. It should be easy enough considering how addictive the curry flavour naan bread from Trader Joe's is. I need to locate a decent brand of tuna fish too.

I will become a grownup dammit! A grownup with a financial plan and a (bigger) savings account and all that good stuff.

There is something really disturbing to me about people who eat a great deal faster than I do, and especially if they eat a significant-sized meal and are hungry again within an hour, hungry enough to eat another meal.

I'm a wolverine, I have to take care to avoid inhaling my food, because I have learned that inhaling my food means I don't notice eating it and have no feeling of having enjoyed it...Therefore I want MORE food so I can enjoy that instead. It also takes a while for the stomach to realize it's' getting filled, so if you eat fast you're very likely to eat more than you need because you feel full well after you've eaten a filling quantity.

I spent the weekend with a friend who I remember as being pretty much perpetually "hungry", but I hadn't been up close and personal with his eating habits since I've learned a little restraint and appreciation of food for myself. The day that got me onto this rant involved getting up at 10am, breakfast was two (count 'em) chicken burgers and an order of fries a little after noon. By 4pm he said "I'm getting hungry, is there a place we can go get food soon?", so we swung by a Greek place about half an hour later and he got a gyro. I must add that this was after four hours of sitting in the computer room at my work, browsing the web and making phone calls, not four hours of walking around town or anything else involving significant exertion. Less than 45 minutes later he said "so are we going to go to that McDonald's you mentioned then?" and here I had been thinking the gyro had been in place of McDonald's...Silly me...The greasy beef sandwich had just been a SNACK!

We weren't, as it happened, near to a Ms Donald's at this point, but we were near an In'N'Out, so through the drive-through we went. As soon as we got home he chomped through the double-double, fries and strawberry milkshake in less than 5 minutes and started nursing his bucket of coca-cola. When I exclaimed at the speed with which he demolished the burger his explanation was that he didn't pay good money for food only to have it go cold before he'd finished it.

In case you are wondering, this guy is not obviously obese, he doesn't look like he eats this way. He looks like a slightly chunky man of 5'9" or so, with a bowling ball for a gut, but not so much of a bowling ball that a button down shirt is incapable of minimizing it. I cannot speak for the state of his arteries or attest to how his insulin system is holding up, I do know that his father has had adult onset diabetes for several years and has not altered his eating habits accordingly.

The day before the burgerama there was a large Chipotle burrito for lunch, which didn't fill him up, he "should have had two of them really". He supplemented the inadequate lunch with lots of chips. These burritos are dense, I have trouble finishing one, and I've got a pretty high capacity. Then 1/3 of a pizza that evening left him longing for a chocolate binge. The local 7/11 allowed him to fill his need with a dove ice cream bar and 3 bars of chocolate.

I was seriously freaked out by all this. I felt I had a binge-eater as a houseguest, that by transporting him to get his dinner I was enabling his self-damaging behavior, an accessory to his destruction of his own health. I worried about the state of his mind that he didn't see (or care) how healthy he's making himself.

His joyless gobbling bothers me because it's how I gained about 40lb over my last 6 months of university. I sought solace in comfort food and ate it all so fast that I could barely taste any of it, so I kept taking more and more. I already had some worrying health complications showing up from that by the time I graduated, I was lucky I nipped it in the bud before I did permanent damage. I've been there, I've eaten ridiculous amounts of junk, not quite so meat and grease heavy, but ice-cream and Belgian waffles in excess are still every bit as silly.

It bothers me because he's my friend and I can't see how such eating habits can ever be healthy, or indicate a healthy mental state. I don't want him to give himself diabetes, because if he can't curb his habits now, he certainly won't be able to curb them if he's diagnosed with something that requires a restricted diet. I don't want him to DIE. He's living like this guy [>] did as an experiment... And look what happened to him in just a month!

I'm not yet sure how much of my freakout is caused by concern for his health, and how much by the fear that if I'd spent much more time around those eating habits I might have gone back to them myself. I was disgusted because it reminded me of myself at my least happy and most self-destructive. I was afraid for him that he was hurting himself so much, but I was also mildly envious that he didn't spend parts of his day trying to map out intelligent food choices. He felt hungry and ate what he wanted, when he wanted. I can't do that, I choose not to. It doesn't mean that I don't sometimes I wish I could.

I am the most computer-literate person in the "girls' lab", which is to say that I have used both apples and PCs without feeling daunted by the differences, I know how to load virus scanning software, update it and run the virus scan, and if your stuff isn't printing I might be able to get it to print (usually by turning either the printer or your computer off and back on). I'm the woman who gets asked to fix random computer stuff because I evidently look like I know what I'm doing. Possibly because I have dated a computer science major, had two highly computer literate roommates and am living with a network systems instructor...So I recognize a lot of the jargon even if I can't really use it myself.

It's all an act though, because on Monday night I killed my home PC to the point of no return by downloading a Windows Update and installing it, then restarting my computer as it told me to do. This should not be a damaging process, the restart is just to complete the installation. Only it didn't restart, it shut down, tried to restart and then gave me a black screen with the message "NTLDR Missing Press any key to restart".

I pressed a key: NTLDR Missing Press any key to restart.

I pressed a different key:NTLDR Missing Press any key to restart.

I panicked. I pressed a third key repeatedly.

NTLDR Missing
Press any key to restart

NTLDR Missing
Press any key to restart

NTLDR Missing
Press any key to restart

NTLDR Missing
Press any key to restart

I tried the trusty [cntrl] [alt] [delete] , and it came back to the same black screen and the same message. At this point I decided it might be a good idea if I knew what the message meant, so I asked my friend Marc, who was visiting, he told me it's part of the boot drive, which is the part that starts up your computer and gets the operating system going, anything wrong with that part is not a good sign. We tried powering down, unplugging for a minute, and starting it back up again. No joy. We tried F8, F10, and F4, both holding them down and tapping them quickly while restarting. Still no joy.

I called HP support, unplugged all unnecessary peripherals from the box and tried the F10 tapping thing again. I was told that since that didn't work we would have to do a "destructive reload", which means wiping my hard drive and reloading windows and all the programs, but loosing whatever files I already had on the computer. Like the photographs we took on my birthday. Not acceptable. I asked some more technical questions to make it obvious I wasn't a complete tech-idiot and was told that I could physically remove the hard drive, take it to another desk top and slave it to that computer's hard drive to retrieve the files.

I called Bob, woke him up and spouted a lot of techie jargon at him, some of which I understood, essentially asking if I could open his box and plug my hard drive into it to save some files, and by the way did he want a free colour printer?

At this point Matt was already home and he decided he'd have a go at fixing the computer, which seemed pretty pointless since we'd tried everything already.

He had it running again inside about 40 seconds. All he did was remove the floppy disk from the disk drive and start the machine up again.

D'OH!

I had looked at the disk drive to see if there was something in it, and since the disk was black and label-less I hadn't seen it. I didn't think to push the eject button anyway. Just in case.

So...I may be the most computer literate person in my lab, but I think that's more indicative of the fact that my lab is in serious trouble if anything really does go wrong than it is of my computer-tech prowess.

Self Image & Playing Dress-Up

I have always been a big one for the fun of playing dress-up, creating an alternative persona and donning appropriate attire for the role, even if that persona is merely an emphasis of a single aspect of myself. Nowadays this is usually the feeling I have when I take the time to put on makeup, the emphasis of my features making me a slightly exaggerated, hopefully better looking, version of myself: New Improved Rosie PLUS! With decreased blotchiness and 50% more eyelashes than ever before!

Before I discovered the joys of cosmetics most of my self transformations were achieved through clever manipulation of old net curtains. Our dressing up box contained a few discarded 1960s outfits of my mother's, ranging from smart dressy blouses to hippyish kaftans, one extremely ugly baby blue nylon negligee, and dozens of yards of heavy-weight chiffon which had adorned the windows of our house when my parents moved in.

Net curtain is a surprisingly versatile costuming medium, especially combined with a child's imagination. There was a lot of "I'm a roman senator!" of course, and some "I'm Cleopatra... Dressed like a roman senator!" I'm pretty sure the Greek and Roman pantheons factored in somewhere, along with the White Witch of Narnia, Glenda the Good Witch of Oz...And probably a great deal of randomly draping myself in white and declaring that the curtains represented Elizabeth I's famous gold gown, or Victoria's plain black mourning dress. They didn't have to accurately resemble anything, the point was to cover day to day garb and become something, someone different.

You'd think with such a preponderance of white frilly dress-up stuff surrounding me at an early age that I would have played the ultimate girlish fantasy role of "bride" many times in my early years, perfecting my mental image of myself as a virginal princess awaiting my shining knight. But I didn't.

Princess never factored in strongly as a fantasy role for me either, since in most fairy tales one achieves princess status by marrying a prince. I liked Cinderella more before she got the prince: she put up with a lot of crap and was still nice to the local wildlife, afterwards she was just "the princes bride". The Little Mermaid was absolutely stark staring crazy for giving up being a mermaid, just to be a mute wife to a stuck up ponce of a prince, not to mention the whole walking-on-knives thing she had to live with in the version I read. I mean come on! Mermaid... Swimming about like a dolphin, being one of the sexiest mythical creatures ever conceived, sitting on a rock combing your hair all day...Since when is being a half-crippled land bound princess better than that?

My sister planned a pretend wedding for me, marrying me off to the boy down the street when I was only three years old. I wore a many-layered net curtain skirt pulled up to my armpits in place of a dress, blue canvas mary-jane shoes with paper flowers glued on specially for the occasion, and a mantilla style veil of (you guessed it) net curtain. That was fun because it was an excuse to play, it was a party, plus it meant a great deal of attention for me and the little groom, nothing to do with the wedding part.

When I fantasized fairytale roles for myself I was a nymph of the woodland or river variety, I was Botticelli's Venus rising from the waves, I was Titania, a mermaid or selkie, a mortal child thrust into a magic world like Dorothy in Oz or Lucy in Narnia, sometimes Nancy Drew or a female version of Sherlock Holmes. What I'm getting at here is the absence of damsel in distress roles. I hated being cast as the girl tied to the railroad tracks when I played with the boys in my neighborhood.

Of course I had insecurities that I ignored with play, but I played at being a strong adventurous female to quell my fears, rather than dreaming of rescue from my emptiness by something tall dark and handsome. I was lonely, so I made up varied characters to fill that space, not some hunky husband.

Perhaps that is why the bridal boutiques I have visited have had such a surreal dressing up box feeling to me. All that white lace and netting reminds me more of flouncing around the upstairs bathroom declaring myself the child incarnation of several of the ancient gods (all rolled into one of course), of the dusty mothball smell of some old lady's misplaced attempt to prettify the windows of a Victorian house. It all seems like a hold-over from more than a century ago, when tight fitting bodices and full skirts were daily wear, the wedding dress was just a more special variation on the regular style.

I have been trying to take the attitude that this is an excuse to buy an unusually expensive outfit and dress much more ornately than usual, then I get caught up in the cultural expectations of ornately beaded bodices, chapel trains and schiffli lace and and I start to get the feeling that somehow my search for The Dress should be some sort of spiritual journey.

Everything I tried on until last Friday felt like a costume, even the one dress that was close to being a contender was more Scarlett O'Hara than it was Rosemary Grace...These confections did not elicit the mythical moment of wonder and high emotion supposedly brought on by donning a heavily structured gown of ivory satin and shimmering sequins: the moment when you first "feel like a bride". Maybe I don't know what this Bride Feeling [TM] is supposed to be. It's hard to get religious about an item of clothing that has been elevated to iconic status by the fashion industry as an excuse to squeeze at least a grand and a half out of every woman who wishes to make her wedding a big celebration.

Then I finally achieved the moment when you know you're wearing The Dress, and it was a simple as looking in the mirror and realizing that the size ten sample I had half-squeezed myself into looked like something I would wear in real life, that what stood out was me and not the dress. After all, that's what I wanted: to be pretty, and to be myself. Rosie Plus! Shiny Hair! Not-Shiny Forehead! 50% more eyelashes! Best foot forward for a day that celebrates how lucky I am to have found my life partner, how lucky we are to be together and happy.

I don't recommend having a massive dose of progesterone injected into your hip as a mood-lifter. I nearly burst into tears and hid under the bed this morning because I put too much milk in the bowls for our instant oatmeal and it was runny. The agony of runny oatmeal! Of course it wasn't the state of the oatmeal that upset me, it was the inference that I was incapable of a task as simple as making said oatmeal. The unfortunate side effect of hormonal birth control is that it gives me a week of feeling utterly stupid, and highly defensive about that stupidity.

Defensiveness seems to run in my family, I noticed this Christmas that my parents and sister and I are frequently to be heard saying "what, do you think I'm stupid?" or some other similar hackled response. Having noticed it I'm starting to head those thought trains off at the pass. Before they reach my mouth. It leads to lots of uneccesary aggro, we're such a drama free unit, it would be nice to be even more drama free.

Right now I need to get back to updating my notebook. I have to get myself organized before Dianne goes to Ethiopia for two weeks, leaving me in charge of the lab, and the high school student who arrives next week. I'm still getting used to being in a teacherly position, though luckily this time I won't be simultaneously teaching a high school student and a recent graduate, that makes it more tricky because they're at very different levels of understanding to start with.

So much to mention, very few things of vast importance, but then that's how my life has been going recently. There's very little big huge news, low drama levels, so I feel that anything I think of to write about here is terribly trivial and not essential to be mentioned...and end up writing nothing. While I still go to read the trivial details of other people on their blogs, so clearly trivia is what makes things interesting, details and minutiae. Hell, I even wrote a poem once about how life (and love) are made up of the seemingly trivial details.

Perhaps what I need to do is to pick my favorite detail and write about that, rather than listing off everything and watching it flatten like toothpaste as it's translated into text.

Marble has developed a false idol. Instead of dutifully worshipping us two humans as the givers of catnip toys, crunchy nutritionally balanced food, the occasional treat of a scrap of cheese, and a warm place to sleep, she spends her days gazing lovingly at one arm of the futon sofa. The arm that contains her One True Love: the feather wand. If I sit at that end of the sofa she will start pacing back and forth, stretching up to paw at the hinges, sitting up on her haunches like a meerkat so she can stare at me and make a little squeak that I can only assume is supposed to be a meow. I can be there for an hour or more, watching a movie, and every time I look at her she's still wide-eyed with anticipation and lets out a little peep to tell me to get a move on and give her some fun. She must have a built in sensor that can tell if the arm has been opened while she's of of sight, because if I open it to retrieve a remote control, or a lighter, Marble materializes right next to me, pulling herself up onto the seat of the sofa, ready to chomp on some feather and plastic. She's a crack addict with fuzzy paws and a round belly.

Which brings me conveniently to her newly acquired pot belly. That cat has gotten decidedly rotund since we adopted her. I'd worry, but she can still leap 3 feet in the air, flipping over sideways as she flies in pursuit of the elusive feather wand. When she's stretched out full length her tummy is clearly globular, accented by dainty little paws. When Talli stretches out he's just all leg and spine and a whole lot of hair. He is legs-and-fur, she is belly-and-fur. She can still out-leap him though, bouncing from floor to couch to chair and back again like a miniature hornless mountain goat, even without a feather to chase.

I just checked the sunrise/sunset times for Edinburgh, and tomorrow they get a whopping 6 hours and 58 minutes of daylight (8.42am-3.40pm), by midwinter it will be 5 minutes less than that. It's cloudy too, so it won't really feel like daylight until at least 9.30, and by 2.30 the sun will be so low in the sky it will already feel well into twilight. I remember days where it felt as though the sun had never risen, going to school in the dark, coming home in the dark.

My mental image of November in Edinburgh is walking down the Cowgate (a street in the Old Town) in the dark at 4 in the afternoon, hunched against the rain blowing around me and trying not to slip on the wet flagstones, or step on one that will tilt and cause a puddle underneath it to jet cold water up my ankles. Christmas shopping is always in the dark, the light provided by the advent calendar style panels lining Princes Street, the huge city Christmas tree, the shopfronts full of cashmere sweaters and sparkling things of various descriptions.

I don't know why, but I still miss my home town at this time of year, even though when asked what I remember most is being cold and wet, longing for a sunny day without the necessity for a thermal undershirt under my school uniform. In the winter, warmth came from the atmosphere of the city: the pre-Christmas bustle, the preparations for the huge street party on New Year's Eve, the ubiquitous bagpipers on the street corner, only with the addition of a Santa hat and a few variations of carols in their repertoire to keep them up to date with the season. The cold air felt good on my face with the rest of me bundled up, I walked fast to keep warm, winter forced a spring into my step.

Now I come to think of it, it's the walking I miss, winter or summer. It's easier to feel energetic when every day contains at least 20-30 minutes of brisk walking to get where you're going, especially when that walk isn't following 30-45 minutes sitting in traffic in your car. Sometimes I think fondly of lazing around the garden on a warm summer's day, but most often when I think of Edinburgh it's walking: up hill and down alley, from Old Town to New, beside vendors stalls and street performers in festival time, weaving in and out of laden shoppers in December. This time last year that's exactly what I was doing. Walking around Edinburgh, frequently arbitrarily. I even planned my schedule so that I would zig-zag across the centre of town horrendously inefficiently, just so I could walk across Waverly Bridge and North Bridge, go up Cockburn Street then down The Mound, circling around by a long route for the hell of it because all I had to do was wander about town all day and buy souvenirs for my friends.

I probably won't be there again until close to this time next year, I think that will be a record length of absence for me, though the prospect of it doesn't scare me the way it did a couple of years ago. I miss the city and the people there, I get to see my parents here, but I don't get to see my friends or the cats. The difference is that now I'm much more established here, San Diego feels a lot more like home, my home feels a lot more like home because I have Matt sharing it with me, and cats of our own to hog the bed and sprinkle cat litter on the bathroom rug. I have a job I enjoy, a couple of hole in the wall places where I love to go eat, I have favorite places to go...I'm starting to feel I have a place in the general scheme of things.

It's still a pity I can't walk between most place, it takes more work to be active here.

The Dreaded Lurgie has caught me. Or, rather, I've caught it. The cold/flu that's been going around my work, and has already hit Matt, had until now passed me by. Until Last night that is. My throat started feeling oddly scratchy, and Matt's foot jiggling on the bed made me feel positively dizzy, even for a few minutes after he stopped jiggling.

This morning I woke up with a rasping gurgly windpipe, achey all over, but strangely not feverish, I've still got most of my mental capacity. I'm waiting for that to depart also. A few minutes ago I laughed at a joke made by a coworker, and the laugh turned into a raspy wheeze, I sounded like a dirty old man who's been smoking cigars for 40 years. Oh boy am I glad I'm not still a smoker, I'm certain I'd be a whole lot more sick already if I were.

Right now I'm feeling the urge to go home early and curl up with the cats, who will hopefully have figured out how to bring me soup without getting their mucky little paws in it.

RE: Handfasting

I have a lovely two-page list of things to consider for the ceremony, everything from mechanics of the ritual (who stands where, how we're going to cast the circle, the order in which to have the exchange of rings and binding of hands) right down to the color of the altar cloth, what goes on the altar (and where) and if we're wearing shoes or not. John also sent us three sample ceremonies, which is exactly what I needed, a bunch of random specifics to ponder, and a few examples of how other people have done it.

The nice thing was that none of his questions completely threw me, I knew what he was referring to and why it was important, and we already had answers for quite a few of them. Oddly enough we both know exactly what we're wearing, and have had many ideas for the material aspects of the ceremony, but not so many ideas on the substance of the wording. John made a very good point: we have complete control of what the ceremony says, which means we control the symbolism, and the form of bond it describes. We can skip the parts indicating that two people become joined into one big squishy entity in favor of emphasis on partnership and retained individuality. We will make the point that neither of us is being "given away" by anyone, but that we enter the circle already joined, as equals, and leave the circle having strengthened the bond.

One of the ceremonies I read over also gave me ideas for the wedding ceremony, which will be toned down on the pagan aspects, but still be very personalized. I'll get to that bit in a moment.

So far we have some basic points established. The handfasting cord will be white ribbon, embroidered by yours truly in a design we have yet to figure out. John will be the only one inside the circle with us, the audience will either be inside a larger, loose-cast circle, or none at all. There will be a broom-jumping at the end (too fun not to include it, and it's a Scottish tradition besides). We've got to decide on candles and colors for the altar, and find a chalice. There' is a lot to think about and do, but now we know what we're supposed to be deciding on, rather than "we've got lots to think about...but we don't know where to start".

The most important thing is that I bought a pair of silk slippers to wear, they greatly resemble shoes I've seen from the 16th and 17th century, only more foot-shaped. Gold silk with green and pink floral embroidery. I never thought I'd squee over something that fits that description.

RE: Wedding

As mentioned above, in one of the handfasting ceremonies I read I found something I definitely want to include in the ceremony involving the families (and less Pagan Claptrap [TM]).

It's an alternative to the traditional "giving away". Rather than walking me up the aisle and consenting to hand me over to Matt as one would a sack of potatoes (albeit a sack of potatoes in a dazzling white gown), this involves my father, and Matt's mother, representing the respective families. Giving blessing to our marriage and welcoming their child's partner into their own family. So my Dad gets to walk down the aisle with me, Marilyn gets to walk down the aisle with Matt, and instead of a handover of bride-as-property, we have a mutual welcome-to-the-family.

It sounds like my Dad's side of the family are up for the trek from Europe to California to be present, I love the idea of having a big party with my US and European family all present, I'd like to see a conversation between Aunt Pat and Aunt Julia, my two most outspoken aunties, the idea amuses me. Two women who have both influenced my development, and yet have never met. I hope Matt's family also surprises him by making more effort than he suspects they're willing to and all showing up.

RE: Stuff

Clearly, things are falling into place rather well, both ceremonies are beginning to take a more solid form. I'm getting a nice picture of both, and the differences between the two. I'm more sure that, for us, this is the right way around to do it, the slight separation of an "us" ceremony and a "them" ceremony.

And Now, We Get To Practice Normality

Whatever that is.

Even though we've lived together for six months, (and been in our new place a whole month) I don't think Matt and I have developed a true routine of living together. The only real routine seems to have been one of transition. Moving the furniture around, re-organizing, getting stuff in the orientation we want and completely failing to ever truly tidy up, him going to Japan, getting back, getting laid off...getting 60 days notice to quit...no point settling in further, getting cats, selling off extra furniture, re-organizing, moving (the move that never seemed to end), Matt starting new work, rearranging furniture, re-organizing, buying shelves, re-organizing, taking excess furniture up to LA, re-organizing.

It needs to stop.

We need to relax. Before we forget who we both are in the continued re-organizing and "improving", before we wear ourselves out further by unnecessary efforts to be superhuman streamlined and efficient beings.

Since mid-September we've both been afraid of losing forward momentum. If I stopped moving I might have been hit by the full force of how screwed we'd be if Matt didn't find new work, of how unfair it was that we had to leave our first home together after only 5 months, if I stopped moving I might not have been able to keep up being supportive, I might have turned into a selfish gibbering heap begging Matt for reasurrance that he wouldn't end up chronically unemployed, depressed and angry at the world.

If he stopped moving he might have stopped filling out online applications, going to job fairs, tweaking and polishing his resume, if he stopped moving he might have had the full force of the feeling of rejection hit him in the face, he might have started to wonder more and more at his own worth and abilities. If either of us stopped moving we might not have made it through the rough patch. It's the rule with rough terrain: don't stop moving, if you stop moving you lose traction and start to slide, to skid and get stuck in the mud.

The determined maintenence of momentum was good. It got us through, but now we're back on a smoother path momentum is not nearly so desperate an issue. We can hit cruise control, even take a little break and wander about looking at the scenery. Enjoy our new home and the deranged animals we share it with. Enjoy each other again, rather than "being supportive" through a difficult time.

Oddly enough the first thing I'm going to do to achieve improved relaxation is join a gym. Extraordinarily I've come to view exercise as rather a treat, since it serves no purpose other than to make me feel good. It's ultimately purely for me that I would climb on to a rowing machine, because I'm the one who benefits from the good quality sleep that follows exercise, and the increased energy levels that come from sticking with it. I surprise myself, it's not too long ago that it was a chore, something I was supposed to do if I wanted to be a virtuous bunny, karate helped fix that, then my work schedule made karate feel like a chore again.

My Christmas vacation time is on its way, hopefully before that I won't feel quite so in need of a holiday, then I'll be able to enjoy it more.

This time I shall attempt to post more than a sparse paragraph about the sleep deprivation torture the cats are trying to inflict upon us. Which is still periodically in effect, Talli brought me his toy carrot at some point last night, and then meowed from the bedroom windowsill to announce the arrival of dawn. It was a pretty spectacular view, so I don't blame him for wanting to share, a very bright scarlet morning sky to my sleepy eyes. I'm almost sorry our patio doesn't have an Eastern view too, every once in a while it's nice to watch the dawn.

*warning* Christmas Shopping Linkfest Approaching.

I spent $100 on my face last month. In true Californian me-me-me fashion I started my Christmas shopping by buying something for myself from Clinique [>]. It seems rather silly since I rarely wear makeup, but I got a different foundation, a fancy oil-control cream that is working wonders (no more daily oil slick on my forehead), and two gift sets: one containing a collection of eyeshadows, the other a set of makeup brushes with a travel case. I always love the little compact makeup palettes you can get, but I only really use eyeshadow, not blush or lip stuff, so they're not something I can justify getting, this one is practically custom-made for me, shades of brown: cream through golden brown ending in a coffee-ish almost black. And brushes! Soft brushes! In a bright red patent leather vanity case just big enough to hold a basic essentials kit of makeup. Hooray. It's shiny, and it makes me happy.

After breaking the seal on the Christmas spending thing, I proceeded to check off a few singificant people from the list on the day before Thanksgiving. Online shopping is a wonderful thing, I found onyx pillar holders for Mum at Illuminations [>] for 30% off the store price, and free shipping (yay for free shipping). A custom-made boutonniere that looks like a little sprig of flowers from Tradewind Tiaras [>] for Granny, and pewter candle cups (again from Illuminations) for Evie. Yesterday Matt and I went up to the Witch Creek Winery [>] in Julian and stocked up on port, and some wine. Dad's getting port again for Christmas, since it was a big hit last year. I hope nobody points out the slight illogic of presenting my Mother with chunky onyx Christmas presents when she's got to lug them home again, I did skip the decorative onyx fruit-bowl because of potential impracticality of transport.

The cats are still...cats. Marble is getting more noodlesome, spending most of the time scampering about the apartment looking like she just got a static shock on her rear. She seems a little less affectionate these days, more concerned with being off on her own little feline missions. But that could be due to her figuring out that the feather wand lives in the arm of the futon, she spends all her non-scampering time trying to figure out how to open the lid and get to her favourite toy. Well, when she's not sleeping curled up with her brother in the large cat bed I bought them, they've still got that bookend image to maintain after all. Gah! They're so cute and fuzzy, so silly and crafty at the same time, and so FUZZY...I can't keep from waffling about them. Be warned: I bet it's going to be even worse when I get around to having children.

Monday night's 2am routine was repeated again last night, without the sock this time. Evidently he just wanted some extra loving and an invite to sleep under the covers on MY side, maybe he thought Marble was getting special treatment or something. These cats are so adorable, in the superfuzzy way and the quirky noodle-brain way too.

They'd be a lot cuter if they let us sleep through the night on a regular basis.

2am Fun During Sock-Hunting Season
I was woken up last night by the sounds of one of our ravenous and deadly beasties running about with a rolled-up sock gripped between his teeth. I am assuming this was after thoroughly killing said sock, through the method of picking it up and shaking his head about vigorously. Always the best way to kill a sock.

I suspect this was an attention getting ploy, since his sister was asleep under the covers somewhere near Matt's legs, and he had nobody to play with. After 1/2 an hour of noisy purring and mewing and chewing on my hand he finally settled down and let us all sleep again. But not until after he'd succeeded in getting Marble ejected from her hiding place by jumping up and down on her head through the blankets.

Pretty much any sort of planning or ceremony writing for the Handfasting has been put off until after our move. We've now moved, so I suppose it's time to start on the ceremony, I want a basic framework to start from, other than the trad Christian wedding we all pretty much know by heart. Otherwise it's just too daunting. Time to call in John, the officiant, for a bit of prodding us into action.

* * *

Matt told his family we're engaged, it had been put off to allow a decent interval between his sister's wedding and our announcement. Some members of his family seemed to think it might be held in Pennsylvania, and were shocked to hear it's going to be in San Diego, which would involve travel for them, possibly even by plane. If anyone actually whines about it I'll point out they're lucky it's not going to be in Scotland, which would require not only travel by plane but getting a passport as well. The idea of getting married in a castle somewhere in Scotland is still very appealing to me, but it's so impractical to arrange, we'll just have to make sure we stay in a castle hotel sometime when we visit.

My Mum tried to convince me that it would actually make more sense to go for LA over San Diego, since then everyone could stay at Granny's...I shot that down pointing out that the planning part would be made considerably more complex by doing it in a city other than where I live. We're fortunate that nobody in either family is going to make a real issue out of the location, it seems it's just par for the course that everybody is going to think it would be a splendid idea for us to be married on their doorstep rather than our own. I think that's the first stereotypical "wedding planning conversation" I've had so far.

I was concerned that my determination to abandon the modern tradition of a white gown would lead to some tutting and head-shaking. Fortunately for me nobody in my family gives a rat's ass if I choose to wear blue or green, or even burgundy, over white, which relieves me. My Granny was married in a tweed suit at a little chapel in LA, and my Aunt in a plaid skirt in a Courthouse, nobody's going to care if I don't have a trad wedding (at least in the sense of the level of formality). Hooray.

OK, so Matt's family will be somewhat nonplussed at the absence of a big white dress, but they will also be nonplussed by him wearing a kilt, and by the various accents of my family. That's not even counting my European cousins, that's just my Mother (transatlantic), Father (English), and Sister (German-influenced brit). So I'm not really worried about confusing or disappointing them, because I already know it'll be pretty darn unlike their image of a wedding.

Today we're grabbing the FINAL scraps from our old place. Yes it took us this long, the difference between moving just up the stairs and moving to an entirely different apartment. Last time I opnly had to pick up everything once, this time I had to load my car, then unload it all and haul it up two flights of stairs.

It's been a long slog, but we love our new place, we just need to find ways to make ourselves fit more comfortably in here, we need to streamline our possesions, store them efficiently I mean, we've already done the throwing-out part of streamlining.

Status Report:
All available boxes have been filled, I should have been stockpiling them from work for the past month, we've got much more stuff than boxes to put it in. My car is full to the roof, except for one spot in the trunk, a little smaller than a shoe-box. Matt's car is not full to the roof, but he has an insane volume of cargo space, there's still a lot of boxes in there. Work is going smoothly so far, helped along by my considerate boss not dropping 5 hours of work in my lap on moving day (considerate employers make life much simpler).

Back to the cell culture hood for me, then it's box-hauling time!

The plan for the move is taking form. We can get the keys tomorrow any time after 2pm, I am also supposed to be picking up the U-Haul around 2pm tomorrow.

So. Tomorrow...I will bike to the med center, catch the shuttle to campus, work for a few hours, catch no later than the 12.30 shuttle back to hillcrest and then bike to the U-Haul place to collect my 14' monster. They double-booked the 10' truck, and originally tried to offer me the 17' as a replacement, fortunately I thought to ask if they had anything smaller. After picking up the truck, I will drop it at the old place, pick up my (already loaded) car and drive with Matt to hand over our rent check, get our keys and start filling the new place with our junk. I'll unload my car while Matt does a Boot Camp Inspection of the place and fills out the move-in inventory. He's really good at finding random little bits of damage to make sure we don't get screwed on our deposit.

Then it's back to load up the truck as much as possible, hopefully with everything, but failing that with essentials like the bed. The goal is to be able to move the cats Friday night, which means having the bed set up so they have something familiar to hide under when we lock them in the bedroom on Saturday so they don't get underfoot for the rest of the move.

Around 5 a friend is showing up to help with the loading/unloading of one lot of furniture in the truck. Saturday morning will be the second load of furniture, if needed, I have to return the truck within 24 hours, so we have until 1 or 2pm to make use of it.

I'm hoping very much we'll get the actual moving part done by the end of Saturday, so we can use Sunday to unpack, clean the old place, and recover.

The packing has begun, I took home every decent sized box that came into work yesterday containing shipments from various biotech supply companies. None of them biohazardous I hasten to add.

I'm having what seems to be the usual pre-move misconception that all of my belongings will be relatively simply and quickly stashed into conveniently categorized boxes, leaving no random detritus of odd-man-out items that doesn't fit (either physically or categorizationally) into the other boxes.

I know this is a misconception because it's happened every time I move. I start packing with the conviction that in no time I will have everything neatly and securely packed into appropriate boxes. With no leftovers. Then I keep stumbling across more and more stuff that must be packed and moved and it all has to get packaged up somehow. All of this ends up being unceremoniously crammed into whatever receptacle happens to be at hand, as long as that receptacle has handles.

There was the large IKEA bag that ended up containing the last-minute stuffing of: two silk cushions; a half-dead woolen sweater; a season of Sex And The City on VHS, still in it's plastic wrappings; a roll of ribbon; some pens and a couple of books. There is also the large cardboard box I still haven't unpacked entirely from moving in to this place. At one point it had candlestick holders, candles, a fire iron, tubes of decorative frosting...And a spurtle. A spurtle is a wooden spoon without the spoon part, it is used for stirring porridge. In other words: it's a stick. Only this stick has the shape of a thistle flower at one end, and a little tartan bow around it. Just in case you were in any doubt that it is an object of Scottish origin.

It is vitally important that I own a spurtle.

Important enough that it languished among the drying out tubes of frosting for four months before I thought to go find it and put it with the more frequently used kitchen tools.

Halloween has been survived, this year we had two parties to go to, in place of the big fat none of last year. We just had to stop back at home to re-apply our fake blood in between. We were Bonny & Clyde: vaguely 1920s clothes and bullet holes in our heads were all we needed.

It was unsettling seeing Matt with a pair of bloody bulletholes in his temples, he looked gory from all angles, I looked normal from one side, but when I turned the wound on my throat, and the one on my temple, became visible. It was kind of fun being the goriest pair of people present at one party. I think we got out-gored by the guy who came to the second party as one of the Reservoir Dogs, he was wearing a few more pints of fake blood than us.

Now it's time to start packing up our apartment, we're moving into the teeny weeny super cool place this weekend. Hopefully things will stay settled for a little longer after this move. I don't want to average 2-3 moves a year any more.

Thought For The Day (One of many...)

George W. Bush is a miserable failure [>]

We are paranoid parents. I didn't realize until we got the cats home how worried both of us had been that the visit to the vet would result in their complete trauma, and possibly news of some terminal illness causing the sneezing fits. Or that after one trip to the vet they'd never trust us again.

The only thing that seemed to bother them was being trapped in individual cardboard boxes, unable to see each other or what was going on around them. They're curious enough that they don't think to be particularly scared, they just want to check everything out. Including all the cupboards in the Vet's office. I solved the cardboard box problem by buying a carrier big enough for both of them (only just), so that on the way home they could be together and check out the world as well.

They got inspected, and had a giant worming pill each shoved down their throats, and were sent away with the verdict of a case of the sniffles that will clear up on it's own. We were given antibiotics to give them just in case, also to prevent secondary infections, we get to capture them twice a day and squirt orangey medicine down their throats with a needle-less syringe. Again, something that seems to traumatize them for all three seconds. I wish I had such powers of recovery.

Day five of cat-ownership. They've learned they don't need to wake me up to ask permission to jump onto the bed, so we all four sleep peacefully together. Maybe we need to upgrade to a king-sized, just so there's room for me, Matt and two cats.

We've figured out that Talli just pretends to be standoffish, all you need to do is pick him up and put him in someone's lap and he turns into an interactive teddy bear, complete with purr and the happy trample dance. We've also figured out that Marble is the bubble-head of the pair: she lives entirely in the moment, easily distracted by shiny things and her own tail. They both love milk (my morning cereal was eaten in a besieged state this morning), and butter, and one of them even decided they wanted to sample the Parmesan garlic bread I'd foolishly failed to put away immediately.

Other items of note are: Talli's developed a sniffle, he's been sneezing comic little squeak sneezes; Marble gave us a little present of a hairpellet the size of my little finger, and she may have *ahem* worms. So they're going to the vet tomorrow, I'm glad I've already signed up for a healthcare plan for them that covers vet visits, so I know exactly where to take them and don't have to pay just to be told what's wrong with them.

Parenting...It's a blast. I love having them around, the sniffles and hairballs are just minor hiccups. Pardon the pun.

Speaking of parenting, my parents will be in LA on Wednesday, then down here for the night on Friday. Before then I have to try to make more inroads into organizing our things for the move, with the side effect of the apartment looking tidier for their visit.

Later on Wednesday I got a call from a woman at the Friends Of County Animal Shelters (FOCAS) office, asking me when we were moving, and if I could give her the number for our current manager too, just to make sure it's all legitimate. Other than that we could collect the "little buggers" as soon as we were ready. She also said she'd knock the adoption fee down to $75 a cat so it was $150 total. Needless to say I was very excited, apart from having to sort out permission for them to be in our current apartment, that could have put the kibosh on the whole thing.

I couldn't give her the number right away, as it was saved in my cell phone, and we were speaking on my cell. This fortunately gave me time to call Matt, get him to ask Red if he'd say it was ok, even though the previous owner didn't allow pets and the current owner seems only concerned with getting all of the tenants out asap...Red said ok, so I called and gave FOCAS his info.

Much calling back and forth on Wednesday. I gave the FOCAS volunteer at Pet Smart the number for Red, then Deborah from the FOCAS office called me a while later only to realize the number was sitting on her desk already. THEN the afternoon volunteer at the Pet Smart called to ask if I'd given anyone the number for my current landlord. They may not share information too well, but they're certainly thorough about following up on adoption prospects.

By the time I left work I was hoping to be able to pick up our beasties on my way home, but I was also wondering if anyone had been able to get through to Red, and if so, had they told the people at the Pet Smart so that they'd give me the cats?

On the way there I got a call from Deborah, the woman in the main office, just to let me know everything was a-ok, she gave me her cell phone number in case the people at the store weren't sure if I'd been cleared or not.

Many forms to fill out, in duplicate (one for each cat), a great long string of coupons from Pet Smart to get started with kitty supplies, a 30 minute shopping spree involving much internal debate over brands of kitty litter, which food dish is cuter, and if they really need a climbing scratching post...and I was ready to claim my two meowing cardboard boxes. The cardboard boxes which contuinued to meow most pathetically all the way home. Especially when I turned a corner.

I called Matt when I was nearly home so he could hear the complaining for himself. With all the whining going on I fully expected both of them to bolt under the futon and stay there for a few hours as soon as we opened their boxes. As it turned out, both of them started for the shelter of the futon, but after a foot or so got distracted by checking out their new surroundings. Then they proceeded to wander about with their tails in the air examining everything. Especially Marble, she very soon was sidling on everything, which is a way of claming things as her own. Inside a couple of hours their body language changed from inquisitive and a little suspicious to inquisitive and feeling well at home. About 3 hours after we opened the boxes Talli had jumped up into Matt's lap and done the circular trample dance, complete with loud purr and face-nuzzling. It was like he was saying thanks for bringing us home, I like it here.

They're both enjoying having room to zoom about and chase each other in, and they both like coming into the bedroom at night to meow pathetically until invited onto the bed. They need to learn to just jump up without being asked, I don't want to have to wake up to give permission every time one of them feels like sleeping on me! Funny beasties.

Marble is still very kitteny, when I left for work this morning she was busy attacking the edge of the random spare square of carpet we have in our hallway, she wasn't having much luck in getting under the carpet, but she was giving it hell nontheless. I'd almost forgotten about cats' fascination with rugs and edges of almost anything.

The ginger cats were huge and standoffish as it turns out. Not unfriendly, just not really caring if they're getting petted or not. They're the big living teddy-bear variety of cat, and the lack of curiousness was the main putoff for both Matt and myself. There was, however, another pair up for adoption who checked us out pretty well. A brother and sister pair, the boy cat kept giving Matt the eye, and the girl came by for attention in between her frequent naps. They're both friendly and playful, and seemed unfazed by being in a small room with strange people and a bunch of other cats. So we applied to adopt them. All they need is to get in touch with the manager for our new building and confirm that they allow pets. The one potential barrier is that it looks like the adoption fee may be $100 per cat, not $100 for the pair, which is what I was told on the phone. $200 is...just too much, even though they're very sweet.

It's odd that there isn't a slightly lower fee for adopting a bonded pair, they're harder to place. Fingers crossed we'll be able to bring home Scout and Radley soon, though they'll get new names if we end up adopting them!

I may be about to get myself in trouble. Not big serious trouble, more introducing mildly uneccesary turmoil to my life kind of trouble. Leaping with minimal looking. Leaping after extensive looking but not at the optimal time.

There is a pair of pale orange feline brothers at an adoption center in Point Loma and Matt and I are going to go meet them tonight. If we want them, we'll have to take them as soon as the adoption is processed, not in a month when we'll be moved in, they won't hold them for us, their spots are needed by other homeless cats.

I'm not sure if I want them to be adorable, and to make friends with them right away, or if I want them to be too big and a bit standoffish, and not so fabulous so we just decide to see who's up for adoption when we've already moved.

I guess it's up to the beasties, if they decide they like us we'll be powerless to resist.

I called and left a somewhat stilted message for the building manager, it's rather hard to figure out a polite and non-psycho-sounding way to say "please mister, can I have your kitten? He's awfully cute...", and I haven't heard back, not surprisingly. It was a long shot, but it didn't hurt to ask/offer. I'm now on the trail of a pair of ginger cats up for adoption through a San Diego animal shelter, but I suspect I'll be told they won't hold specific animals for the 3-4 weeks until we've moved, and that's also understandable, the rescues run on tight budgets. Holding two cats for me would mean two places that could be given to animals in need would remain filled for longer than necessary.

I think it's pretty apparent to all that I'm getting really into this cat-hunt thing. I haven't lived with pets for two years, and the three years before that it was only weekend visits and vacations with my parents and the two cats there. Now that I know I'm going to be able to have a cat (or maybe two), I want 'em immediately.

Of course, I'd also like to be already moved in, settled and organized in our new place. Without having to do the actual moving, settling and organizing myself. I want to locate a magic moving device that will also (as a convenient side-effect) transform myself and Matt into more organized and tidy people. We do ok, but we're both spoiled by having a great deal of floor space on which we can accumulate random heaps of papers and junk with no assigned home. This will not be the case in our new home. Heaps of junk also don't mix too well with cats, they find things to chew on (and choke on) and may even decide that pile of papers looks like a litter box one morning and pee on the paystubs and receipts for some variety from peeing on a pile of absorbent gravel.

This time next month we'll be in the process of moving. It seems I was only just talking about us moving in together in June, it was only four months ago. We'll be leaving our building almost exactly a year after I took up residence in the studio on the ground floor. In that year a lot has changed, things have gone better than I could have hoped, even with the upheaval of having to move again so soon.

Sweater weather! Hooray!

Today I want to get around to calling the manager of our new place to offer to adopt the third kitty he just inherited from a former tenant. Buster the gangly grey purr-pot. He may already be attached to him of course, but it's worth asking/offering.

The only other significant news is that I just narrowly avoided being stuck at work until 7ish, being told to begin a 6-hour treatment at noon...but it hasn't been pre-treated so I get to do it tomorrow morning and leave at a reasonable time. Again: Hooray!

That threatening cloud I mentioned earlier, about our apartment being condo-fied, and us having to move again, well, that cloud burst a little over a week ago. We received 60 days notice to quit, or the option to buy our current apartment "starting at $320,000" It's a nice place, but there's no way in any version of reality it's worth 1/3 of a million. If it were a free-standing two bedroom house of the same size, with a bit of a yard...maybe, and then only because I live in San Diego and the world of real estate has gone collectively insane.

On Friday we found out that a notary public who lives in our building had gone to a lawyer and had a letter drafted to the new owner, pointing out his complete lack of legality in ousting us with 60 days' notice. Apparently we're supposed to get 90 days' notice of his intent to file for city approval of his conversion, then two more notices, the final one being 90 days' notice to quit (or buy). It all adds up to nearly 11 months worth of notice. We were given 60 days. Ooopsie, naughty new mister landlord evidently thought he could pull a fast one.

So mister corporate bigwig is going to have to backtrack and start again with the whole condo thing, but we're still leaving. I don't want to be providing this guy with a nice fat rental income while he plans to oust us all, and in the gap between being given notice and hearing we might not have to leave so soon after all we found a new place we love.

It's tiny compared to this apartment, but it's a tiny little 3rd floor penthouse with a private roof garden, hardwood floors, wood beamed ceilings, wrought iron decorations in the archway to the kitchen, mellow colors on the walls, a window in the bathroom...did I mention the private roof garden? It's rather important, because it's our new dining room, the indoor living space doesn't have a dining area.

Moving will be a pain in the ass, we'll have to learn to be a lot more neat and tidy in a smaller space, there's no dishwasher, and only one washer and one dryer for the while building, but it's one of those places where "charming, cute two bedroom" means that yes, it is ridiculously small, but it's got the personality to make up for it. Plus it allows kitties. KITTY! I've been missing having a pet more and more. Two years catless is quite enough thank you. Lori and Glen's beasts have made me realize how much nicer life is with a pleasant furball around.

Haitus. Maybe.

Every time I come here to write about what's going on I can't think where to start, or how to express how I feel about what's going on. I've been feeling somewhat in a rut, probably based on the plateau in my weightloss and fitness, and there's nothing drastically wrong that needs fixed. This is somewhat new to me. There's a lot of things that I do...but I'm not really sure why any more. They don't mean the same thing to me any more and I can't tell if I'm continuing out of habit, a sense of obligation, or a genuine wish to continue. This site is one of those things, karate is another, actually those are the main two. I know I enjoy karate, but it's no longer some sort of refuge for me, because I don't need a refuge any more. I need to come back to it knowing why I'm there, or it will continue to feel like something I'm supposed to keep doing for no real reason other than to just continue.

So I think I'm taking a haitus from blogging, I know I'm taking a haitus from karate, though I suspect the latter won't last very long. That handfasting log is probably coming down too, I don't have any significant issues that I need to work out in print regarding my marriage, so it's already degenerating into a list of sparkly objects I want to involve in the ceremony.

The world is coming to an end.

Starbucks is no longer agreeing with my innards. The last two times I've partaken I've ended up with some interesting efects in the lower gut region. Odd, since my morning espresso that I make myself doesn't disagree with me, nor does brewed coffee, but it seems I am not to have espresso based drinks during the day any more. Wagh! Oh well, I suppose it will save me some money.

I never did get to see the tiaras last weekend, I got about 30 minutes away from the studio and Matt called from San Jose to say his trans pacific flight had arrived early enough to allow him to get an earlier flight into San Diego...so could I pick him up around noon. OK sweetie, I might be a little late...I'm north of Anaheim right now but I'll get off at the next exit and head straight back to San Diego. A complete waste of half a tank of gas, but at least I knew what my "something's going to go wrong with this escapade" feeling had been about. It wasn't that I'd get stuck in La and miss picking him up, it was that I wouldn't get to make it to the studio in the first place. I didn't care at all, because it meant I got to see him 4 hours earlier than expected, it meant we got most of Saturday to catch up instead of just Saturday evening.

We're still catching up, making up for two weeks of not being able to hang out and blabber at each other, not to mention two weeks of no snuggling. We've got lots of plans to be made, much plotting, for the Handfasting and for our lives together. Some of it serious, some building toy castles in the air, it's all fun.

There is a slight cloud hanging over us at present that involves our apartment building being sold, which could mean a hike in rent, or even being ousted in favour of converting the building to condos, but we don't know for sure yet. We could be allowed to continue just as we've been, or we could be presented with 30 days notice and yet another move. Que sera, sera. I'm willing it to turn out to be a false alarm, I really like our place as it is thank you very much.

Damn this sleeplessness.

I was such a zombie this morning I ended up submitting my car to the $50 special wax and polish thingy I talked myself out of last week. The oxidised patches on my car are still dull and oxidised, the rest of it is pretty shiny I suppose, but the guy didn't even bother to wipe off all the streaks, that's shoddy service.

This monetary stupidity was a result of me being too lazy to try waxing the thing myself first, the assumption that they've got some magically super effective waxy stuff, and the all important zombification. Oh, and being way more than ready for Matt to be HOME already dammit. Oh Lord, I just comfort-bought car maintenence. That $50 could so much better have been spent on lacy underwear, or a fuzzy sweater, or a purse, or something more frivoulous and, well, comforting!

At least I got the important task of replacing my engine coolant done as well, I've been meaning to do that for a couple of months, and considering I'm plannning on driving to (and from) LA on Saturday it seemed insane to put it off any longer.

So now I feel tired, crappy and really stupid for the whole car wash thing. It's only $50, it won't kill me, but it's still a significant amount to have wasted. It's official, I'm pining. Pity I can't pine by having a reduced appetite, I feel I've been pigging out in excelsis for the past two weeks.

I have achived one of my goals for while Matt's gone: I successfully ordered my dress for the handfasting. I went to September War and hung out with Peldyn for a while, looking at the swatches of fabrics. It's going to be a deep green velvet irish style dress, with a damsk insert in the front of the bodice, and silver trim. I'll have a fitting at May War, which seems a long way away, but this way I don't have to drive all the way to the central valley to try it on at her shop.

It was a new experience to be ordering a custom made dress, able to pick and choose my colours and fabrics and say "make me this!" and know that it's going to come out the way I want. She's an excellent seamstress, and has a good eye for what works too.

Matt will be home soon! Before he gets back I'm going to: go try on modern traditional wedding gowns, just because I have an excuse to, go to Costco to restock our cupboards for his return, and drive up to Pasadena to look at a tiara. Yes I'm crazy, but it's less crazy than ordering a custom made headpiece over the internet without looking at any examples in person first.

I think this past week has been the "wallowing in self pity" phase of Matt's absence. Though I've not exactly been moping about with my lower lip dragging on the floor, I had pretzels and two bowls of ice-cream for dinner on Wednesday, and I haven't tidied up the apartment, or tackled my filing box full of unfiled papers, or written out my recipes onto index cards...or any part of my grand plans for being super efficient and making up for a few months of borderline organizational laziness. Instead I've been sitting around watching my leg hair grow.

(It's rather fascinating actually: I have random bald patches on my shins, rectangular bald patches, maybe the result of super-efficient waxing.)

I did better last night, I had some pizza and only one bowl of ice-cream for dinner, and I didn't eat the whole pizza, I had the appropriate portion size (so I could cancel out my virtuousness by eating ice-cream afterwards). So what if I washed it down with two hard lemonades... I've been completely alcohol free since Matt left, and it's a lot better than having a whole bottle of wine to myself. I certainly hadn't expected how much my alcohol consumption would go up when we lived together, but I can't entirely blame our cohabitation, there have been festive gatherings and many private causes for celebration since the beginning of June.

So, tonight I will not turn on the TV and vegitate, I'll crank up the stereo and work from one end of the living room to the other, transforming the little chaotic heaps of papers, discarded jackets and sweaters, and various pieces of debris from Pennsylvania, into neat stacks of debris. Preferably not stacked on the floor. I may even put away some of the stacks, it depends on how much into the tidying thing I end up getting.

After that I may even have a bath, a proper bath. It's a pity rental apartment bathrooms are so box-like. It's much more relaxing soaking in a tub in a room with a window, and some colour on the walls. If I were to decide to blow off the security deposit, the bathroom is the first place I'd want to paint.

This weekend will be busy, which is good, it'll keep me distracted. Tomorrow starts with waffles at my place, followed by a drive out to Potrero War. There I'll get to see Dawid, and talk to Peldyn about my garb for the handfasting. Mostly that'll just be me picking a fabric from the swatches and getting measured. I already know I want it to be green, preferably hunter green, I just hope she has a nice shade.

Sunday I'll be hanging out all day with Lori and Glen, there will be volleyball at the beach (the beach!), and a lot of sitting about talking and drinking. Monday is undecided, there is a remote chance I'll be driving up to Pasadena to look at tiaras, but more likely I'll be watching The Two Towers on DVD with Bob, and maybe going to try on wedding dresses just for the hell of it.

Maybe next week I'll turn into the super efficient reorganizing machine I had envisioned. Next week will be the approach of Matt's return, that'll spur me into more action than inaction. At the very least I'll wax my legs, and possibly even my car too. No, not using the same products.

It's all Bob's fault. Though I suppose I have only myself to blame for entering all the screen-names I can remember having used.

What Is Your Battle Cry?

Striding through the tarmac, cutting down all who dare stand in the way using a bladed baseball bat, cometh PainfullyFluffy! And she gives a gutteral grunt: "I'm going to hack into your brain, and type FORMAT C: !!"

Find out! Enter username: Are you a girl, or a guy ?

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