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March 29, 2004
March 28
Another busy weekend, the highlight being wine-tasting on the North Fork of Long Island and a trip to Tanger Outlets. Speaking of wineries, my original dream was to have a wedding at one--when I was in Mexico for a Spanish language program I met a girl who had just gotten married at a winery in Northern CA and visions of a cavernous winery filled with oak barrels and warm lighting danced in my head. Then, when I first went to Pelligrini Vineyards in the aforementioned area, that became my local dream wedding site. What I envisioned is pretty well captured by the following.
Unfortunately, the wineries on the North Fork are a little too far out on L.I. for it to be within reasonable distance for non-Long Islanders to travel to so I ended up deciding against the idea but seeing these images does make me wistful.
Posted by Jennifer at 01:13 AM | Comments (1)
March 24, 2004
March 24
So I was having difficulty e-mailing a friend in Japan and wanted to find out whether she was coming to the wedding and if so, to tell her that the deadline for the hotel we blocked off rooms at is this weekend. I knew where she worked but the work e-mail address I had for her wasn't working either and online searches produced no contact information. I wasn't sure if the home phone # I had for her was up to date and was able to find the # for her company so I figured I'd try her at work. I called the general # for her workplace I had gotten off their website only to find out that the receptionist didn't speak English and to be hung up on. Frustrated, my mind raced when I remembered that Adam knew a little Japanese. I asked him to talk to the receptionist and he asked that he be able to think about what he could say first before I called back. He fumbled through his old Japanese notes and I placed a second call and handed the phone to him. I love hearing Adam speak Japanese--it's very rare and this was the most Japanese I think I'd heard him speak. Unfortunately, the conversation didn't go as smoothly as "Yukako, please?" and the receptionist transferring him but they were able to have some dialogue and eventually the receptionist gave him a phone # to call. He had no idea if this was the # for my friend but I tried the # anyway and handed off the phone to him to speak to another receptionist who didn't speak English. They spoke and she transferred him at which point he handed the phone over to me. To my relief, the line was promptly picked up by my friend who was extremely surprised that I had gotten through to her. There were many main #'s for her company so she was surprised I had managed to track her down but I think it was all thanks to my honey and his impressive Japanese skills! ; )
Posted by Jennifer at 10:24 PM | Comments (1)
March 16, 2004
March 16
My mom's quite clueless when it comes to weddings. She got married in a traditional Chinese immigrant fashion--at City Hall with a reception at a Chinese restaurant and has only been to a handful of weddings in her lifetime. Some of the wedding misconceptions she's had are that wedding dresses are only worn in churches and that the only two places where you can get married are a. City Hall and b. a church. When Adam and I got engaged and started looking for vendors she tried to convince us to use this person or place or that, even though they all involved people she had virtually no connection with. When it came to the photographer she insisted that we contact my cousin, who is a professional photographer but a. lives on the other side of the coast and b. I've never met (needless to say, we politely declined). Recently, when I told her about our honeymoon to Italy she insisted that we swing by Switzerland without giving any reason whatsever (I had the inkling that she wanted to visit Switzerland herself). Good thing we didn't hire The Bouncing Souls to play at our wedding I guess..
Anyhow, speaking of weddings, huge congratulations to my friend Kristen who just got engaged!
Posted by Jennifer at 07:56 PM | Comments (1)
March 11, 2004
March 11
My neck's sore which is rare. I had a different pilates instructor last night--one who didn't remind me how to breathe but worked me out a little more than my last one, who didn't do a good enough job monitoring me to make sure I was using the right muscles I think, and one who looked like Nicole Kidman with red hair and who I wish I could look like from doing pilates.
My friend mentioned she tried pilates once but didn't like it because it strained her abs so much which made me wonder because I hadn't strained my abs much at all during my first session. All through pilates yesterday my instructor kept asking me how I felt after each exercise and sometimes I'd feel a little bit of stomach burn but more often than not, I wouldn't and I think that's what she was expecting. My neck did hurt a couple of times and I think I used my neck muscles more than I should have doing some of the exercises. I'm not sure I'm understanding how to do the exercises properly yet--anyone have any recommendations?
Posted by Jennifer at 09:42 PM | Comments (1)
March 08, 2004
March 8
So I feel a little bit conflicted--I discovered last week that one of my favorite bands, The Muffs, are playing the weekend of our wedding. The first show I saw listed was the night before our wedding so obviously that was ruled out but then I saw that they're playing the Friday before our wedding and I started thinking about whether I could make the show part of my bachelorette party. Thing is, is none of my friends are into punk or even pop punk and several of my friends are coming from out of town so I would feel bad making a show they wouldn't be interested in part of the bachelorette party. But it's the Muffs, the Muffs!!
If I was told I could no longer see The Bouncing Souls (another one of my favorite bands, in fact what my fiance based the name of this blog after) or the Queers (another favorite band), I'd be sad but I think I could make peace with the fact. But the Muffs are the one band I want to see everytime they're in town, not only because they're the band I enjoy seeing the most and Kim Shattuck kicks ass but because they're a West Coast band and they're rarely in NY. Add to that the fact that they took a year off and haven't been in NY for at least two and you have a girl who feels really torn.
The obvious alternative would be to move the date of the bridal shower/bachelorette party (I'm doing both in one) but I chose the Friday before our wedding because I figured some of my out-of-town friends, a few of whom I rarely get to see, will be likely to be in town that day and I'd really like to include them in the festivities. The other thing is that, unfortunately, the venue the Muffs are playing at isn't in Manhattan or even Williamsburg but Park Slope which is a schlep. What would you do?
Posted by Jennifer at 11:41 PM | Comments (0)
March 07, 2004
March 7
Had a busy weekend this weekend--I wish tomorrow wasn't Monday because it almost didn't feel like a weekend at all because I barely got a chance to relax. On Friday, Adam picked up his new glasses! Adam's never worn glasses so it's definitely a new thing for both of us but they look good on him so fortunately it's not a drastic transition.
My sister's friend was driving up to Woodbury Commons on Saturday and I figured it'd be good opportunity to look for presents for my bridesmaids. We were meeting in Hoboken and when I got to the PATH station I noticed an unusually large amount of people waiting in the station which I thought was unusual but, noticing that a number of them were wearing green and overhearing snippets of conversation, I was able to deduce that Hoboken was having it's St. Patrick's Day parade. Hoboken is already yuppie central and having a St. Patrick's Day event only meant the most annoying people were flocking to Hoboken that day--all the 20-something year old Abercrombie & Fitch wearing recently college graduated but not quite outgrown from their frat days. I can't stand them. Anyway, luckily I wasn't spending my day with them and we spent our day at Woodbury and just as we were leaving, I found my bridesmaid gifts! I'm very happy about this.
Today, Adam and I had an appointment for a food tasting at our wedding place so we took the opportunity to check out the botanical garden we were considering having our wedding photographs taken at which turned out to be really nice (even if the flowers aren't in bloom just yet), ate yummy chateau briand, scoped out our wedding place for the second (and probably the last time before the big day), went to Roosevelt Field, and then met up with his family for a belated birthday dinner. Now we're back at home and I can't believe the weekend's quickly slipping away.
Posted by Jennifer at 09:58 PM | Comments (0)
March 04, 2004
March 4
So I had my first pilates session today. I'm not sure how I feel about it. I realize exercise-related pain usually kicks in the day after, but I really thought I'd be aching by the end of the session. Then again, I guess pilates is just a different kind of physical exertion. At any rate, it was challenging to me, between remembering how to breathe, being mindful of which muscles I was trying to exercise, and the exercises themselves. I have a feeling I wasn't really using the muscles I was supposed to be using even though my trainer kept careful watch over me. I guess I went into it hoping that I'd come out toned but I'm not sure if pilates will do this for me, at least if I only do it once a week for one month, which was my original plan. I just wish it wasn't so expensive.
An interesting article on blogs in this week's Village Voice. Damn, does this mean I'm in the bottom tier?
Posted by Jennifer at 10:00 PM | Comments (2)
March 02, 2004
March 2
Adam and I had our first meeting with our dance instructors tonight—it was, interesting. I make fun of Adam for not knowing how to dance but I suck when it comes to anything outside of informal dancing, even basic dance steps, so tonight was definitely a period of adjustment. I’m not used to formal dancing and they basically have you stand really close to one another so that the guy’s leg moves between your legs to guide your leg forward or back and I suck at coordination so I was never sure which leg to move when Adam’s leg moved forward. But I think their approach is good (learning to move with your partner first so you can dance in sync as opposed to focusing on memorizing your dance moves) which, besides having two instructors as opposed to one, is why we booked them (tonight was actually just an initial meeting with potential instructors with a short dance lesson). We signed up for three lessons first but may expand it to four depending on how well we do by the third I guess. I just hope we look decent when we dance at our wedding—I won’t say what our wedding song is but one thing that’s bad about taking dance lessons is that you’re forced to listen to that song until you get sick of it.
Posted by Jennifer at 09:09 PM | Comments (1)
March 01, 2004
March 1
I had no idea this was an unofficial rule of leap year. Personally, I don't think I could ever propose to a guy, could you?
Posted by Jennifer at 10:47 PM | Comments (0)