I promise a post about the wedding, with pictures and all that good stuff — by Monday, when I get a chance to breathe over the weekend. I’m home sick today, so you just get this meme:

Newsweek’s Top 100 Books of All Time (Orly?)

Bold the ones you’ve read, italicize the ones you tried to read & couldn’t finish, and underline those you’d recommend (plus comment freely in parentheses).

And now for something completely TMI…

Happy Father’s Day! Happy Summer Solstice! And…

Geoffrey and I got married today. Still mind-boggled by it. Details soon, but for now I must collapse…sooo exhausted. It was a pretty amazing day, all told.

Florists clearly have an astonishing racket going on — Geoffrey ordered some flowers for the wedding, and when told me how much florists charge for that crap, I almost had an apoplectic fit! $33 for a corsage, and bridal bouquets start at $85?!!!

Are you fuq’ing KIDDING?! That much money for some dead flowers and a stickpin?!

I’m beside myself. Thank heavens he only ordered corsages for the moms and me, and boutonnieres for himself and his dad. (When I heard boutonnieres are only $8, I said he should have gotten those for all of us.) He ordered purple roses, which is really sweet…but, if they have ANY scent whatsoever, I won’t be able to have a corsage, because rose oil is one of my strongest migraine triggers.

I’m still mind-boggled. EIGHTY-FIVE DOLLARS for a bouquet? (Do you know how many books I could buy with $85?!) Clearly, not liking flowers has saved me a fortune over the years. I will never understand how some people are willing to pay that kind of money for something so incredibly useless.

Less than a week until the wedding, eep! Here’s my list of stuff still to get done:

• Buy a new bra (and probably shoes)
• Get some speakers for my iPod
• Dye my hair (I may be 40 but I refuse to be gray!) & get it trimmed
• Buy the sparkling cider & grape juice
• Finish getting the ceremony written
• Order the corsages for the moms & boutonniere for Geoffrey’s dad
• Check the site for logistical surprises & do a brief walk-through
• Finish sewing the dresses!

It may seem like there’s a lot left to do, but actually most of the preparations are already finished. We have a dinner at Geoffrey’s parents house on Saturday night (eve of the wedding), so all this has to be done by late Saturday afternoon. I am hugely glad that I took these vacation days to prepare, or we would be completely FUBAR.

And my sixpence arrived in the mail today!!! It’s gorgeous, and the lady who took my order was so incredibly nice. When I called to order, she asked if I had a special year in mind, and I said no (they stopped making them 2 years before my birth year, which was the only year which popped to mind). Then she suggested one that’s a century old, to commemorate the year of the wedding, and I thought that was brilliant! So I have a 1909 King Edward VII sixpence for my shoe!

So tonight Geoffrey & I will do a bit of wedding-preparation shopping. Normally I hate all shopping unless it’s for books, but I promised myself a bra from Vicky’s, and I don’t mind shopping there too much. Except for all the ridiculous pink decor.

Oh hey, look — I’m 40. Weird, it doesn’t feel any different from 39.

In family news, my niece is off the ventilator and out of intensive care. She’s still having problems breathing, but the doctors said that is normal when someone is on the ventilator for a long time. I guess she has to cough up all the crap that built up while she couldn’t cough. They finally got a PICC line in, and that way they don’t have to stick her with so many needles. Things look good, except that she’s been running a fever, and doesn’t have much of an immune system at the moment, so they’re watching that very closely. The only visitors she’s allowed to have are her parents & sisters.

In wedding preparation news, my sewing machine decided to go on the fritz last night when I was halfway done making the first bridesmaid dress. I’ve had the damned thing for TEN YEARS and it’s never given me problems. NEVER. So, of course, this gets blamed on Murphy’s Law. I’m going to fiddle with it a bit more, and if that doesn’t help, it’ll be time to locate a repair shop that won’t charge me more than the blasted machine is worth.

Lyse keeps telling me to relax, that I’m on vacation. I’m not, really. I don’t have to go to work, but it’s not exactly a vacation — or, at the most, it’s a working vacation. I’m not even going to think about all the stuff we have yet to finish for the wedding preparations. Gah.

Geoffrey found out more today about being in the Navy’s Delayed Entry Program, and we discovered his basic training starts on April 10th (not in June) of next year. Because I’ve been married before, we have to get a certified copy of the divorce decree (first husband) and death certificate (second husband) so the military can have proof that I’m not a bigamist. (They don’t need to know about my other boyfriend. *grin*)

Poor Geoffrey, he’s not even allowed to talk to females during the 8-week boot camp, unless they’re instructors who have spoken to him in the course of training. That will be rough for him, considering that he’s never been all that impressed by the company of his own gender. Between now & then, he’ll be attending weekly training & PT sessions. They already gave him his first official Navy shirt — it says “United States Navy Health Care Team.” Oh crap, we’re both officially in the health care business now. (All we need is to get Lyse a job with the VA Hospital, and we’ll have a trifecta!)

Totally unrelated, I looked my name up on Google (for the first time ever…scary!), and found something I had completely forgotten about from 15 years ago: I got published in the Dear Abby column. I wasn’t asking for advice, mind you, I was giving it. (I’m sure that will shock and amaze those who know me.) If I’d looked a bit harder, I’m sure I could have found the Letters to the Editor that I wrote to various newspapers that also were published in the early 90’s. Not like I was opinionated or anything. *smirk*

I’m continuing to be woefully unprepared for the wedding; reserving the park and making/mailing the invitations are the only things we’ve accomplished thus far. We don’t have a ceremony hammered out. We haven’t ordered the cake, or figured out what other refreshments we’ll have. I don’t even know for certain what I’m wearing yet — or if I’m going to buy it or make it. Good thing I have several days of vacation immediately prior, so I can frantically catch up on everything and turn into a total stress puppy. Hey, I do work well under pressure.

Hell, the only thing keeping me from completely freaking the high holy fuck out is the thought that on June 22nd, I can collapse in whimpers. Also visualizing a certain book cover helps.

It’s been a month since I’ve blogged?! Oh crap. Hey, I’ve been busy.

For about 3 months prior to my grandmother’s 80th birthday (the first weekend of May), I’ve been cross-stitching a gift for her. And not cross-stitching from a pattern, mind you, but an original design I put together myself. (NEVER do that! The math alone — and I say this as a person who likes math — was aggravating to the nth degree. Ohmigawd, what a huge pain.) I finished it a whopping 15 hours before the start of her birthday party, only to discover that the frame I’d purchased for it was broken upon removing it from the packaging. Since it was 11-freaking-pm, I had no choice but to dash back to the store as soon as it opened the morning of the party and exchange the frame. Then I remembered why I hadn’t done cross-stitch in years (about 10 years, actually…) — framing that stuff is a stone bitch. (This was, most unfortunately, before I discovered a nifty product called “peel & stick mounting board,” which I will use for my next needlepoint project.)

Anyway, here’s the finished product, which is approximately 11″x13″ (forgive the lousy pic, it was taken in a hurry under less-than-ideal conditions):

All I can say is 18-count Aida fabric can BITE ME. That’s 18 itty-bitty cross-stitches per inch of fabric! Only certifiably crazy people use anything smaller than 14-count. (Thank the gods I didn’t try 22-count. I tremble in fear just thinking about it.)

In other craft-related news, there are 6 (SIX, gah!) projects that I have partly finished, and 2 more in the works that I really need to get started on as soon as possible (which means “after the wedding”). The partly-finished include an afghan for Anxiety, an open-work tunic-style sweater for Angst, a cap-sleeved summer pullover for myself, an artsy wall decoration that I keep forgetting to finish up, and some other stuff I’m keeping under wraps for the time being.

And now for something completely TMI…

I’m all over Rule #50. The other rules are pretty good, too.

Gee, sometimes even the liberal media mentions (sort of) how the current economic disaster was years in the making, and began with the choices and deregulations of the Democrat-controlled government of the 1990’s.

This would be an awesome pet…now I just need a time machine…

I love LiLo. Can’t help it, I just do.

I also love Gerald Warner, the guy who coined the phrase “President Pantywaist” — and explained how this isn’t real life, it’s just Scary Movie 5.

The more I hear about shipping container housing, the more I think this may be the best choice in building a custom-designed, low-cost (!!!) home for Geoffrey, me, and Lyse. We’re certain to come up with much niftier designs than the ones I’ve seen online so far (not like that’s difficult), and the sheer creative potential makes me drool a little. (No, I will not be crocheting any house cozies. I am not that crazy.)

More companies should encourage this kind of awesome in their employees. Srsly.

Have you noticed how all the “global warming” talk is now referred to as “climate change”? Interesting, very interesting.

Sunday night, Geoffrey and I watched 60 Minutes so we could see just how much of a bias CBS would throw onto a story about the increase in gun sales since the Presidential election. It was a LOT of bias. I wonder how many of those guns were sold to women? Why don’t stories about how guns save lives ever make the “mainstream” news? As an employee of a university, I’d feel a lot safer at work if I knew that my employer honored the concealed carry permits of its employees, rather than denying their employees the right to self-defense in an effort to make people “feel” safer.

One of my coworkers sent me this link (it increased my opinion of her tremendously, I might add). Some of the best lines:

Australia has more terror per capita than Elm Street, so if something looks like a nightmarish monster, odds are it’s probably a household pet in the land down under.

Australia: Even though nature vomited monsters all over this barren isle of Lovecraftian horror, we fucking live here anyway, because we just don’t give a shit.

See, Geoffrey having an Aussie girlfriend totally makes sense to me now.

Indeed.

I agree with it all, but nodded most vigorously at this:

I’m real tired of people who don’t take responsibility for their lives and actions. I’m tired of hearing them blame the government, or discrimination, or big-whatever for their problems.