Someone Else's Wedding

My brother took some spectacular shots of my cousin Grace's wedding, which I stole for my blog. I brought the Flip camera, and learned it's hard to shoot good video.  Don't worry...I'll be my own videographer at my wedding.

Quick facts:  She got married @ Seagrove Park in Del Mar, CA (north of La Jolla) at 430pm on a beautiful day. Consquently, it was near impossible to find parking.  The reception was at the Pearl Chinese Cuisine restaurant, banquet style. Very nice restaurant w/a  Japanese garden outside. She'd already legally married her guy a year ago for immigration reasons.  

We stayed in Irvine...drove down for the wedding...then back to San Gabriel where another cousin picked Ikea furniture over her mother's furniture that's actually good. As a result, I'm going to fully furnish my place, minus dining table + sofa, for free. 

The mothers of the couple anxiously waiting.  The one on the right is my cousin's mom. 

Cousin + attendants. They made their own flowers!

Cake, strawberry on bottom, pineapple (yucky) in the middle. I literally sat this close to the cake. 


Me + the beach underneath.  Lots of people think we look alike, except she's shorter, older, and considerably sweeter. 

a funny thing

off to cousin's wedding tomorrow + wknd. low energy.

spent evening pruning blog, deleting some posts. it's a game to control my search results. moof'd is at #3 and will be #2 once i remove facebook. the idea is pple who look me up, will see what i want them to see in the first few results. i'm undecided as to whether to link this personal blog, and whether to continue the twitter account. it's nice to show a history of both, but its not like i have a lot of twitter-friends, and this blog is, well, personal. so while i was thinking about this, one of my tweets got retweeted, complete w/my name of course, to the local hockey twitter community. i dont know any of them. a reminder that internet infamy/death is oh so close like domino pizza's youtube videos.

Jenn & Crispin's Wedding Update!

1) Confirmed 70 guests. Need 75 to reach contract minimum. Anticipated more initially; unfortunate that so many can't afford the trip. Fewer = more opulent!

2) Room rates to 89/99 for king/queen. Book by April 23rd under our block. It's a four star hotel w/ free wine hour!

3) I need a final headcount by May 1, and meal selection by April 20th. But if you can get it to me sooner, that would be good.

4) Children can come, but it is an open bar, with cocktails and adult food. It's not a particularly child friendly reception site, no high chairs or daycare, it is an adult event. The garden will be fun though.

4) Most asked question...where are you registered....it is on the website here.

5) Most asked question among non-attenders...the answer is maybe, depends on where you live and my financial situation.


Anyhow, trying to cross post w/twitter and the wedding website, it's hard to convey info on 3 platforms. Unfortunately, those that can read twitter or blogs, aren't the ones I really need to reach.

Santa Cruz & Moving

You know you're a suburbanite when the closest beach is 30min away.

Last month I went to Half Moon Bay. This is the exact spot where people take wedding photos, after getting married at the Ritz Carlton Half Moon Bay (or something similar). Oh ya the beach (cliff) is behind the photographer. It's cold and not accessible from here. I'm not sure people actually get married *on* this beach.


Yesterday, the first warm weekend of the year, I went to Santa Cruz. A people's beach. Yep, we've got beach bums, a boardwalk, even a cute downtown.

Separately I'm slowly moving into my new place. What follows are pictures from the master bedroom. I lay where the bed will be, looked around, and photographed. So instead of perfect formal photographs, I treat you to an exhibit of what I'll see every morning.

View out window, from the bed up into the backyard sky.

View across bed to closet door.


View to bathroom and way out. It's possible a dresser will occupy this wall.

all i ever wanted

all i ever wanted was for people to look at me and say, hey everything turned out well for her.

paranoid about twitter

This blog is hard to find online and I don't use Facebook/blocked Linkedin. But I use my real name on twitter and this blog links back to twitter. Now I don't think strangers look me up. Why do I have this weird weird weird feeling inside . . . How far out of context can you take 140 characters. Or am I just paranoid.

Wedding invites & signing cloth

Invites from weddingpaperdivas in the enchanting forest pattern. They shipped in a week from Mountain View. Some online review said the invites don't look like 'wedding' invites, not fancy enough. Whatever. We only needed 55, but had to order 75, so some will double as wedding announcements.

Oh you'll notice a bird motif. Pure coincidence.

Ikea framed red signing cloth, instead of the guestbook. Still not sure of how to transport this, it's kind of fragile.

Birdcage my mom picked up at an Easter sale for cards, with paper cranes inside now. She thinks people will bring us cards. And a photo of us, taken by my brother. We set up our own engagement session. It didn't come out that well.

Photo from the engagement session, should be for the reception. But I haven't decided on size, 4x6 or 8x10 or color of frame. I purposefully altered it to be high color, but some say it looks seriously flawed instead of artistic.

comparing blogging platforms

have my new domain all picked out. a permanent domain. this time i'll tag, categorize, and seo my posts. question of what i'll do with the domain besides blog and whether i have the motivation/web skillz/server maintenance ability to keep going.


ning - requires non-authors to log in, not really a blogging platform

tumblr - awesome for photos/artists. possible as muffy picture platform.

facebook - no

twitter - like writing haiku alone in a forest

wordpress - the wedding site is on wordpress. requires a server. tons of time. tons of web skills. you kno 99% of the plugins are centered on monetization? blogspot just has adsense.

typepad - not free


oh but blogspot is so user friendly.


btw this is pretty cool: visual search engine searchme.com

Pre-nups are funny

The most common piece of marriage advice I get is to sign a pre-nup. I did some research.

Reasons to Sign a Pre-nuptial Agreement & How they don't apply to me

1) Substantial wealth or assets. In theory by my age I should have a stable well paying career, substantial investments, possibly own a home and certainly own a car. So I'm about 1/5 because I am substantially invested . . . underwater. Pretty far underwater.

2) Have my own business. No.

3) Have kids from a previous marriage. Have already provided for Muffy in event of divorce or death, so not applicable.

4) Expect to come into an inheritance. Used it up already. And then some more. And after that, I graduated and couldn't get a job. Working on using up my siblings' shares now.

5) Gave up a career or lucrative job to get married. I like this one. It's a good story. I suspect it's what a lot of people think when I tell them I moved up here without a job. Until about two seconds into the conversation when they realize that none of the following words applied: lucrative, job, or career.

6) Concern about being saddled with your spouse's debts/future lawsuits. This is actually applicable because C has a lot of school debt. Years ago we used to share a credit card account. Found out today I was still on the account, which is still his main CC. In a legally blond moment, realized that cutting up the card doesn't close the account. So here's the question...is it better to let your spouse ruin your credit b/c he doesn't pay his credit card or student loans, or is it better to ruin your own credit by filing for bankruptcy because you just don't make very much money?

It is concerning but I'm not sure a pre-nup protects me in a case of debt load 1 (10-20% chance of him defaulting) versus debt load 2 (80% chance I'll never make my share of the cost of living). So anyhow, no prenup for us, but I'm guessing we're the last of our generation to skip this step. Only because normal people a year older have jobs/assets.

Infinite Cats

C's gone but I still have Muffy. And inside today I feel like a Muffy.


Too bad I had to interview for a non-legal job while feeling like a Muffy. My interview went something like this:

1) Why don't you have a job already
2) Why should we hire you
3) What special skills do you bring to the table, that we won't find anywhere else
4) Tell me how you're a good fit for our company
5) Re-answer all the questions we sent to you before (interview 1), but this time in your own words (WHAT??).
6) Sell me my product.
7) Sell me a random product.

If I was an interviewer, that is how I would conduct the interview. Unfortunately I was on the other end.