It’s a 14-Year Moon River Mystery

Kevin and I have been married 14 years on Wednesday. I was trying to think of an appropriate gift and all I came up with was a blog post. I know. It’s that good. Oh, and I’m caught up on the laundry.
Here we are 14 long years ago on our wedding day. Frankly, we feel much older than we should now and we look about twice as old as this. 

Kevin and I planned everything ourselves. We had an outdoor wedding at Reiman Gardens at Iowa State. We designed and printed our own invitations, rsvp cards, programs and the like. We were very orderly the week of the wedding. We had to-do lists taped to the coffee table, one page for each day of the week leading up to the wedding.Then, we typed a master schedule for ourselves and each of us had our own copy. We even handpicked the black-eyed Susans from the side of the highway. (I’m sure this is illegal, although I waited until afterwards to tell Kevin I thought so.)
 
I never formally put together a wedding scrapbook. For now, everything is in a clear storage box in the closet. We really need to get around to scanning photos and all that. (If you are one of the people who took video at our wedding, please lose it! I don’t think either of us could stand to watch it. Lord, we were annoying. I mean, more annoying than we are now. Maybe by “annoying” I mean “young” or maybe I mean “in love” but anyway you call it, I don’t want to watch it on tape.)

We did make a cute little flipbook with black and white snapshots from the wedding using the backsides of rsvp cards.

We also made things like the guest book. I always hated those generic store-bought ones and this is the slapdash one we threw together and one of the entries in it. The creative guest book encouraged creative entries. (I see a lot more of this now at weddings than I did back then.)
 
 
This is one of my favorite photos from the day—me and my cousin Chantel. Can you believe she’s gonna be 20? Seriously.

There were so many random photographers (as we didn’t have a professional photographer and asked friends to take photos for us) that we have few photos with Kevin and I looking the same direction at the same time. I have one photo I took of all the people taking photos of us and it’s a bit ridiculous; we were cute, but still I hate to think of all the film spent that weekend and all the money spent developing it.

People still talk about our wedding. It really was a lovely day. One of the highlights was that both sets of Kevin’s grandparents were able to come, one from Florida and one from California. People talk to me still about getting to meet them. We enjoy this photo of Grandma Frances and Grandpa Hubert with their adorable hats.

This blog post is not ivory, nor is it a clock. But it’s what I got. Happy Anniversary, of sorts.

Ladies, No Hat Pins in Fight Club

I found out today there is only a one week break between summer school and fall semester. (I believe administration's solution to the budget crisis is just to kill us off slowly by depleting our souls through overwork!) I could have looked at the calendar before now, but I was trying to keep the time at which I would have to begin denying my preparation for fall semester at bay as long as possible.

But, there is good internet ju-ju-juice to keep us going. Ladies, welcome to fight club.

I'm enjoying these creative minds at <http://www.youtube.com/user/TwoTurntablesNMic> who cooked this up. How about you?

Enjoy the Funny Peoples

Sometimes I feel so terribly uninspired by stuff on the web, but not today. I’ve seen some laugh-out-loud funny stuff that affirms my belief that smart people are doing interesting things.
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I just stumbled on Hark! A Vagrant, the brain child of Kate Beaton, a genius cartoonist with a history degree and wit to spare. Her cartoons make me swoon with giddy jealousy. Jane Austen and monster trucks. Ha!

Her merchandise, like these t-shirts, is down right brilliant. Even though I don’t wear graphic tees I’ve almost convinced myself I need a full set.
 

She even has a book, aptly titled Never Learn Anything from History. Been there, done that.

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New age Chuck says  you need a set of Crystal Brass Knuckles. The tag line Debra Baxter added kills me:  “I am going to realign your chakras motherf*****.” These would certainly do that and more.

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Hyperbole and a Half never fails to amuse. I enjoyed her recent account of giving her dog an intelligence test to determine whether or not she was retarded. I identified and saw many looks she drew of her dog that looked very similar to my own below average mutt.

Although I fall in on the cake side of this debate, I appreciate the need to legitimize the argument in Cake Versus Pie: A Scientific Approach.

Her merchandise is nifty too. I think this procrastination cycle poster would make a great magnetic board. I’d change out the “drawing dinosaurs” part with “cleaning my desk” or “checking facebook” and it’d be my own version. Oh, and I only get about 65% of what I need to get done done, so I’d need another shame box.

Keepin’ It Real Since Birth

As I try to get this blog rolling, I’ve been looking at how other bloggers do it. One piece of advice I see over and over is an admonishment for bloggers to keep their posts positive. In theory I’m all for this. Most of us don’t search the web and read blogs to increase the negativity in our lives. Lord knows I get enough negativity in the car ride bringing Benjamin home from school; I don’t need more of it in my online life. Even on Facebook I tend to hide people whose status updates are continually negative because I don’t want to fill my brain with it.



But—and you knew there was a but—I am not an especially positive person. I don’t superimpose a rosey glow on everything I see, nor do I experience what self-helpers preach:  positivity breeds positivity. I’m naturally dark and grave, even at my best and most positive, and attempting to bedazzle that for the masses is silly and not what I’m about. I always said my motto, if I had one and it was PG-13, would be, “keepin’ it real since birth.”



Another recommendation by various successful bloggers is to have regular features. This not only keeps you posting regularly, which is another tip, but allows readers a sense of expectation and something to look forward to. There are a number of regular features I really enjoy on blogs I read and this seems like a good idea to me.

• Peter @ Male Pattern Boldness updates his Goals and checks in with his commenters on Mondays. (He’s even mentioned me, which totally made my day!)
  
• Chez Larsson posts her week in photos on Fridays.
  
• And, Joanna at A Cup of Jo posts her links for a lovely weekend on Friday, which is always just a hodgepodge of fun things she’s found on the web.

All of this is quite a bit of lead up to say that I will be adding at least one regular post to the blog soon and it will not necessarily be positive in nature, although hopefully it will be positively received. Essentially, I’ll be complaining about bad design, stupid ideas and wondering why I’m not general manager of a great many things. Stay tuned for that. I need to come up with a good and clever name for it first. And, I’ve got to comment on these student essays. I’d like to eat some ice cream too, but that will likely make me want to nap instead of work.
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Although I've read lots of stuff about blogging, I thought this one was pretty darn good: Colour Me Happy’s 10 Things I’ve Learned about Blogging.

A Few Favorites

Since I seem to be on brain-drain juice this summer, I'm going for eye candy this week. I've got a few posts in the oven, so to speak, but with the funeral and family in town and all the papers I still need to grade, they've been put on hold. So, please enjoy these picks, some of my favorites from Etsy.

Summer School Blues

Maybe when your career is keeping you from doing the things you want to do it's time to consider a new career. 

From the movie Summer School, posted on this site.

Summer school is a drag. I'm sure that's what my students are saying too. There is just no time. I have no time to get anything done, for work or pleasure. Classes in the summer are longer than normal and I commute to Woodland for one of my classes so I'm busy with school from 7:30-5:00. When does that leave time for preparing, reading, responding and then all of those dozens of other projects, unrelated to school, I want to get to?

Hobo Swag Bag from SaltWaterKids

Cargo Pants Messenger Bag from Noodlehead

Finish cleaning the dining room, office and garage.

And clean, sort and store all the fabric.

It doesn't. Oh, and forget about sleeping and eating. Ha.

And, we have family in town. And life and death keep happening. And there is still stuff to do like buy dog food and make sure there are clean socks and shorts for everyone. 

I really think summers are too busy. In this economy I can't say no to any class I am offered--and since this blog is not about the politics of higher education I won't go further as to why that is the case--but I wish I didn't have to say yes. 

As much as I enjoy my students and their stories, I'd rather be living than commenting on essays. At least today. And probably tomorrow, too.

Got An Hour for Underwear?

This lecture on underwear is fascinating. Instead of popping in Transformers 2 tonight, why not spend your Friday evening learning about ladies undies. Seriously.

It won't let me embed the video, so you'll have to go to the source. Revealing Undergarments: A Brief History of Women's Underwear.