Wedding Weekend Part 1: Bachelorette, Rehearsal Dinner, and Preparations

Wedding Weekend Part 1!

Once the wedding weekend finaly began, all the planning was done and the only thing left to do was show up. John and I started by having lunch with his grandpa (with coordinated hats) and checking into the hotel.

I began wearing my contacts at the beginning of the week, which meant I could wear fun sunglasses, and that I felt like I was tripping from how different my contacts feel. Seriously, everything looks big when I have my contacts in. It's like wearing a tiny but powerful pair of magnifying glasses.

Several of my awesome lady friends threw me a fun bachelorette night that started with champagne, presents, and pizza, then involved wine and EXPRESSING OURSELVES THROUGH THE MEDIUM OF PAINT.

Though I'm sure it conflicted with policy, a nice cab driver offered to drive all five of the people who were left in the same cab back to the hotel.

Not shown: bar crawling (not shown for good reason...), then a relaxed run on Friday morning. One of my favorite parts of the weekend was Friday afternoon. The women of the Fellowship of the Ring and I got our nails done, then I got to spend some pretty relaxing time with Kira and Lauren. It was so nice to get some time with just two of my best friends during the weekend. I wish I had more solo time with each of the members of the Fellowship, not to mention many of the guests. 

Soon enough we headed to the Auditorium for our rehearsal, conducted by Kira and the awesome Auditorium staff.

                                       

Our rehearsal was very reassuring and made the whole thing seem very real. 

The rehearsal dinner was at the catering facility at Upland, my all time favorite Bloomington brewery. Here's John giving a toast. I love that Lauren looks completely bored.

Also not shown: we all went back to my parents' house for dessert after the dinner. Their house was absolutely packed with our friends and relatives, and John's mom supplied fabulous cookies, brownies, and macarons from Blu Boy desserts. John and I picked out about 24 bottles of wine from Sahara Mart which made the drinks fairly simple and relatively inexpensive because of their discount for large wine purchases. 

On Saturday morning, John and I ate breakfast alone at Feast - one of the best decisions we made. 

I should mention that by this point, I had pretty much completely lost my voice. I got a minor cold late in the week, and between congestion and a lot of talking/shouting/laughing the two nights before, I could not talk at all by Saturday morning. I brought a pad of paper and a pen wherever I went and tried not to talk much throughout the day. That added a layer of stress for me, since I was with a group of people who I love and rarely get to spend so much time with. 

So when I went to the salon after breakfast, I mostly wrote my messages and mouthed things to the bridesmaids, the both our moms.

Above: Carla persuaded Dave to go with her to get Crescent Donut, and she brought some with her to the salon. My mom and aunt prepared a few bags of light snacks for us to eat while we spent a few hours doing hair and make up. 

Eventually, all the ladies but Carla returned to the hotel to get dressed and take cabs to the Auditorium while I finished my make up. It was fun to have a lot of hang out time to catch up (if slowly and quietly via my handwritten notes) with all of my closest friends. If all the fun had ended with the first few days of the wedding weekend, it would still have been an incredibly fun time. I'm lucky to have these people as my friends and family.

Next: Ceremony and Reception.

Note: I'll do a link round up at the end, in case anyone would like to know who our vendors were. We had many good experiences and I'll be happy to recommend them.

Gym Christmas Day 1

Day 1. 

Work out: 30 minutes of Iron Strength, adjusted to make me less motion sick (no mountain climbers, no sit ups, etc). Includes things like squats, push ups, lunges (I did the physio variety I learned last summer), 5 lb. weights, and stretching.

GYMGO Card: crossed off a "Grab Bag" square in the top left corner. I've studied the card and decided that my strategy will be to get the diagonals first.

Photo and food I've eaten today: cranberry + cottage cheese + sweet potato muffins, from the Lean Green Bean, via Djillian. Shown here with some Christmas items.

Oh man, these are good, and super easy. You want to make these muffins.

Side note: you may have seen on facebook that Sargibso's smart and very funny boyfriend, Aaron, was recently diagnosed with testicular cancer. He's started a blog where he can write and make jokes about it. It's definitely worth your time.

Californ-i-a

Last week I got to go to L.A. to present at a conference. During the trip - subtitled "Random Girls Weekend in the Desert" - I got to spend time with some of my favorite people, like my brother Andrew and my good friend, Sargibso.

Obviously, I took about 5 pictures to commemorate my travels.





2 of the five pictures were of Zorro, Andrew's dog. Surprise!


















Instead of tons of picture of sunny Santa Monica, here are some highlights!

- This was the sixth trip I've taken to L.A. since my brother moved there in '94 to go to film school at USC. And I finally had my first celebrity citing! Nothing too life changing. We went to a restaurant called Rustic Canyon and saw Michael Keaton at the bar. Andrew asked if I knew who he was (a fair question, I've only seen about 12 movies in all my life), and I said, "Of course! He's Batman! And Beetlejuice!" At that point Andrew told me to stop looking at him, so as not to be obvious. Michael K. looked good for his age, but older than I picture him.

- I went on two pretty memorable runs while on the trip. The first was during my day alone in Andrew's neighborhood in Santa Monica. Since his house is only about a half mile from the ocean (!), I started there and ran 6 miles total along the ocean-front path, including a brief stint in Santa Monica Pier. To my right were trendy, cool houses, to my left was the ocean, and dead ahead I had a great view of the mountains.
The second run was more impromptu. I left on Sunday morning from Sargibso's apartment, in a totally different part of town than where Andrew lives. From his house, it's hard to get lost, since the ocean is a good mark of where you are (duh, on the land). But from Sarah's, all I had was a giant mall (The Grove), and my mental image of the route she and I mapped. Unfortunately, my 3-mile route turned into a 5.35 mile exercise in suppressing fear, since one of the key turns did not make it into my list of directions. I managed not to panic, though, and got directions from a dude at a Von's grocery store.
Related side note: for some traveling entertainment, I bought the Kindle version of Mindy Kaling's book, Is Everybody Hanging Out Without Me?, which I would totally recommend. Near the end of the book, Mindy reveals that she lives in a Spanish style house near the Grove - Sargibso's neighborhood! In my 10-block hike up Sarah's street (after getting directions and figuring out that I was a mile out of the way), I may have passed her house! Very exciting. Maybe even more exciting than seeing Beetlejuice.

- The real reason I got to go to California was to present a paper on George Crumb at the Frederick Loewe Symposium on American Music, at the University of Redlands. It was a productive little conference of 5 papers by grad students and 1 young scholar, followed by a keynote by Larry Starr. We had a modest panel discussion at the end of the day, and the topic was something like this, "Analysis: what's the point?" My favorite topic!
Sargibso agreed to go with me to Redlands, and we stayed for the night at the Dynasty Suites, a perfectly nice motel with a few oddities inside. Sarah kept referencing an episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia where Frank recounts the story of a bar he once owned called "Shadynasty," (terrible youtube clip, but it's the only one I can find and you get the point) pronounced either sha'Dynasty or Shady-Nasty. What with the fake fire place in the entertainment center, or the torso-level mirror in the shower,* you can guess which one we used to describe our lodgings. But it was fine, for what it was. Sarah and I bought cheap wine and bridal magazines at CVS and then settled in to Shadynasty for the evening.

- The night after we returned to L.A. from Redlands, I went with Sargibso and her boyfriend, Aaron, to a vegetarian restaurant named Hugo's in West Hollywood. Hugo's had a HUGE menu, or so it seemed, since I'm used to picking the one veg thing on the menu and calling it a day. I ended up choosing the vegetarian club sandwich, with tofu, guac, and fake bacon,** and it was delicious - though not better than the AMAZING lentil soup with carmelized onions. I need to recreate that.

- The only other restaurant whose name I wrote down was Zengo, where I had brunch with Andrew, his wife Nora, and some of her family. It was a belated birthday brunch for Nora and her brother, David, and the food was tapas style. Of course, they had several delicious vegetarian items, like the veg omelette, the veg benedict, and veg sushi with a tasty sauce. I loved having so much choice! It's a wonder that I did not eat my weight in brunch food. The hilarious - and best*** - thing about brunch at Zengo is the DJ. Oh yes. They can't just play an ipod or internet radio. They had an actual DJ for brunch. Andrew leaned over and said he expected to hear a record scratch, followed by, "This is BRUNCH, muthafuckas!"

- Andrew and I got to take a walk around Santa Monica the day before I left, where he graciously bought me beer at bars on Main St. The weather was perfect for my entire visit, and it was great to do something relaxing and mundane with my brother, who I rarely get to see.

- Sarah had some errands to run at USC the day we left for Redlands, so I chilled in the main library and (theory nerd alert!) read Thomas Christensen's edited book of papers presented at a conference on early tonality (two thumbs up, if you're interested). Andrew pointed out to me that the inside of the main USC library has been in several movies, like - wait for it -

Ghostbusters!

It has an impressive painted ceiling, and when I walked in, I immediately thought, "Wow!...Private school." And then I pictured Andrew, Nora, Mike, Heather, and the other folks I know who have gone to USC, studying for their undergrad classes there.

It was a great trip! All this is to say, I wish I lived closer to California.






The view from basically every spot on the Redlands campus.













*"The mirror I never knew I always wanted."
**or, "fakon."
***not.

"Random Girls Weekend in the Desert."

For a while now, the universe's policy is to only let me present papers in pleasant, small towns no one's heard of (unless you live in Warrensburg, MO, in which case, it was nice to visit you!). And Kansas City. Oh, and New Orleans. I guess this is a recent trend.

And this year, the trend continues. I got a paper accepted to the Frederick Loewe Symposium on American Music at the University of Redlands, in Redlands, CA.

However, this time, there is one key difference:






The night of Sargibso's graduation from IU, after many rounds of Sink the Biz.


















Fabulous picture from his wedding 5 and a half years ago.















I get to visit Sargibso and my brother! Redlands is only 65 miles from Los Angeles, and I get to make a whole thing out of it!
This is only a preview post since the conference isn't until March and I'm really excited about it. I applied to a lot of conferences this year, and I'm so happy that this one has accepted me. Besides getting to see everyone I know and love in L. A., I get to leave the snowy tundra of southwestern Ontario and go to warm, sunny California. My choice to apply was only somewhat strategic. I also get to present with a bunch of people who like talking about 20th century American music. Sargibso is going to go with me for the conference itself, and she gave me the title for our trip: "random girls weekend in the desert." Because that's where Redlands is.

Win and (dorky) win.