I do
I'll get a photo up soon I hope.

Anyway, we're married.

Finally.

The wedding was perfect. Everything we wanted, but better than we expected.

The flowers were beautiful, small roses in a bunch, tied with ribbons.

Scott was handsome as ever in his suit.

Our friend Rohit married us. He put a lot of work into it and he was charming and funny and only a little long-winded, but still wonderful.

Scott and I wrote our own vows. I think we hit all our jokes, and there was not a dry eye in that little field. They were heartfelt and sincere and could probably be used against me in a court of law. I won't go into too much detail, but "Growing Pains" was mentioned twice and Ms. Pac Man came up, too.

And then we promised to take each other as husband and wife (for the state*). And then we kissed.

Somewhere along the line I ended up with this ring on my hand.

It was lovely and perfect and warm and sweet.

And then we took lots and lots of pictures.

*New York, and probably most other states, has certain requirements before you can get married, including someone to marry you, a license and age requirements. They don't mention much specific about the vows, except that you actually have to say that you take the other person as your husband or wife. It seems kind of corny, but then if you don't, I guess you're just declaring to the world how much you dig the other person and not making any real commitment at all.
- posted by Tanja @ 8:17 AM (6) comments

 
Getz/Gilberto
Scott and I recently sold a bunch of books to a local used bookstore. Well, okay, we sold a couple of books and deposited the rest (i.e. most of them) in the FREE BOOK bin outside the store.

We didn't know what we wanted when we sold the books, so we took credit, which we pooled. We then researched and discussed what to do with the credit and the solution was simple: the bookstore sells a small selection of mostly Jazz and international music and we want to listen to more jazz.

We are just starting to listen to Jazz. That is, we have some jazz cds that we've been listening to for the last, oh 5-8 years. We had some of the usual: Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, a little Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong singing Gershwin, Dave Brubeck. We were not sure what to get next and a little afraid of what to try.

So, we consulted the experts. Newark, NJ has an amazing jazz station called Jazz88 (WBGO at 88.3 FM) that I used to listen to when I lived in New York. They have a pretty good website, with live streaming music. I think they realize that Jazz can be difficult to get into, because while some jazz is classic and most people have heard of it, some of it can also be a little difficult for the person just getting acquainted with it. The way most people feel when they see the cubist paintings of Juan Gris and Pablo Picasso is also the way many people feel when they encounter a lot of the more experimental jazz.

But Jazz88 has solved this. They have a music library on their web site that lists 88 Jazz Recordings You Should Have In Your Jazz Collection". (They also have Blues and Soul, for those who are interested.)

So, we took this list and went to the local bookstore and picked out 4 albums we did not already have. One of these was a Stan Getz album called Getz/Gilberto. We didn't know Stan Getz, or Joao Gilberto, but we recognized the song Girl from Ipanema in the song list and thought, well, how bad could it be?

It couldn't be bad at all. In fact, it couldn't be better. We listened to Getz/Gilberto last night and were immediately mesmerized. This was not a cover of Girl from Ipanema, this was the quintessential version. This was the release that made this song famous in 1963 and the reason we know it today.

The songs were like the best cocktail party music you ever heard. They were cool and easy and happy and fun. And we could almost taste the martinis we would drink one day while listening to this.

We listened to the whole record through before going to bed and the sounds of Astrud Gilberto singing the Girl from Ipanema was our lullaby at the end of a relaxing weekend.
- posted by Tanja @ 1:54 PM (1) comments

 
White Sands

Happy Anniversary, Scott. I hope you like the fake snow.
- posted by Tanja @ 4:25 PM (0) comments

 
Capsaicin
Me: Lick my finger.

Scott: It tastes like a finger.

Me: Okay, try this one.

Scott: Oh my god!
- posted by Tanja @ 6:04 PM (2) comments

 
The Plan
Scott and I have discussed this a great deal. We want a small wedding. And by small, I don't mean less than 200 people. I mean less than 20. Including us.

Sure, we'd love to have all our friends there, but the truth is that we're not endowed, funded by our parents, nor independently wealthy. And even if we were, to be honest, I just don't like weddings. I'll explain this in more detail in a later post. But I also don't like being the center of attention. Even if we did have $30-$40k to spend, well, we'd rather spend it on a house. Yup, it's true. The current housing market has made any wedding unaffordable. But then, as I said, we didn't want a big wedding anyway.

So, we have a vague plan--an idea really. We're thinking something outdoors, with just our immediate family and someone to ask us a couple questions, gesture for us to exchange jewelry and then fill out the appropriate forms. Even this has proven to take more planning than I'd like. We've talked about just going to city hall and taking care of it. But we know that we'd like to have our families there and we know that they'd like to be there, but the truth is, we're both more interested in the honeymoon than the actual wedding. And we're hoping to find a date that's easy enough to remember--because let's face it, neither of us is particularly good at remembering dates.

The really pathetic thing here is that, although I only need to find a dress, a location, a date, tell some family members and make a reservation for 19 at a restaurant, it seems like a lot to do. Even with such a small wedding, I am tempted to hire someone to take care of all the details. I would love to just show up, say I do and smile for some pictures.

I can't imagine planning one of those weddings (and by wedding, I mean EVENT) that involves caterers, flowers and fine printed envelopes.
- posted by Tanja @ 1:51 PM (1) comments

 
I said Yes.
Yes is an affirmation of life.

We had been fighting. All day. Things were not looking good for our hero. I was crying; he was crying. Over email, over the phone, while we both tried to make a show that we were actually doing work.

We came home and sat together on the couch and talked calmly, straightening things out. I cried some more.

And then he said: I have a surprise for you.

It was a surprise he had been promising for a week or so. He said he would give it to me when the time was right.

He got up from the couch, got something out of his backpack, and hid it in the palm of his hand.

He came back, crouched on the couch and said, "I was wondering...do you want to marry me?" and he held out this small thing that was a thin silver ring.

I said, "I do!"

And then we didn't feel like fighting anymore.
- posted by Tanja @ 5:10 PM (0) comments

 
NaNoWriMo
National Novel Writing Month is upon us. I meant to put a post about it here earlier, but, well, I've been busy. So now NaNoWriMo is half over and I'm finally posting about it. You can still join. You only have to write 3,334 words per day to finish. Go on! You can do it!

So, I have a few observations about novel writing that I'd like to share. Now, for a little background, I have an MFA in Creative Writing. I have a small collection of short stories that served as my "thesis" and I have the first draft of a really bad screenplay. In the ten years since I completed the work on my thesis, I have done very little in the realm of writing, though I have dozens of story ideas and have the first draft of a new short story that I haven't even begun to try to edit.

So, I decided to write a novel. Even with my background, I find the idea of writing a novel daunting. First of all, I've never written a novel. Second of all, I tried writing a novel 2 years ago when I was in Albuquerque, and didn't get very far. And finally, I want to write well; I want to write stuff that I'll be proud of and can show people who will then tell me how great a writer I am. This puts a lot of pressure on someone to write well, so naturally, the net result is that I really have not written at all.

My greatest amount of experience writing, aside from email, has been short stories. In short stories, you have to get to the point right away. You can't explore things that are interesting but have nothing to do with the plot. You have an economy of words that is slightly less strict than poetry. So, it was with this feeling of limited space that I started to write the novel.

But the NaNoWriMo people are brilliant in their concept. They don't care about quality. They just want you to write 50,000 words in 30 days and that's it. If you have characters, proper grammar and even a plot, well, you've exceeded the expectations. They just want you to have 50,000 words in whatever you want to define as a novel by the end of the month and you WIN!

Well, okay then. I'm just writing. I was struck with an idea two days before the novel writing was to begin. I liked the idea. It was about things I know nothing about and set in a land very very different from my own, but I figure, hey, you have to start somewhere, right? So I've been trying to write a modest 2000 words each day. It's a modest goal. And since I don't have to worry about quality, it's easy. I just write. I'm meandering through a story line without concerns about character development, pacing, factual correctness (much of the novel takes place in Beijing, which I know nothing about and if I try to research it, I'll get caught up in the details and it'll slow me down too much--so I made up Beijing) or even plot. That's all stuff that can be fixed in the next draft. For now, I'm just writing. It's easy.

- posted by Tanja @ 1:40 PM (0) comments