New Photo Blog

So I started a new blog, this one simply for photos from Adam's and my reception and wedding.  The fail on this, however, is that I haven't actually posted any photos there yet.  Yeah, I suck.  However, for future reference, the blog is located here.  I hope to get some photos up in the next day or so, but I do need to check with the photographers first.  Additionally, I'll endeavor to write more about the reception and wedding and honeymoon and such tomorrow.

Year-end Reading List

As previously stated, I do believe that this list is not fully comprehensive, but it's the best I can do for the year. Hey, I remembered most of what I read!

In terms of best book I haven't read before, it's a toss-up for me between Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy or Anthony Bourdain's Gone Bamboo. I very much enjoyed both; I read the entire Pullman trilogy in I think 5 days and I adore pretty much anything Tony Bourdain does--cooking, writing, TV shows, it doesn't much matter. I think I give the edge to Bourdain though, because a) Gone Bamboo is a stand-alone novel, unlike His Dark Materials, and b) I think it's probably more consistently, strongly written, and doesn't have as much (potential) controversy. It does have lots of violence (LOTS of violence) and sex, but it's a cut above the old pulp novels--good plot, great characters that are just a bit over the top, but still manage to be essentially believable, and fabulous writing. If you've never read Anthony Bourdain's writing, I strongly encourage you to start. If you don't like mysteries, try reading Kitchen Confidential, which is a memoir about Bourdain's early years and how he came to work in the restaurant industry. Whichever you choose to read, brilliant!

Best book of the year, however, goes to Pat Frank's Alas, Babylon. It's a 1950s post-apocolyptic novel and it's quite possibly the best ever written. It is dated, and yet still very relevant. If you've seen the now-defunct TV show Jericho and enjoyed it, you'll probably enjoy Alas, Babylon. Read it!

Books marked with an asterisk (*) I have read before. Books marked with a carat (^) are part of a series.

Alexander McCall Smith:

^The Full Cupboard of Life

^In the Company of Cheerful Ladies

^Blue Shoes and Happiness

^The Good Husband of Zebra Drive

Roald Dahl:

*Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

*Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator

*The Witches

Terry Goodkind:

^Debt of Bones (more of a short story/companion prequel novella)

^Wizard's First Rule

^Stone of Tears

^Blood of the Fold

^Temple of the Winds

^Soul of the Fire (currently reading)

Robin Jarvis:

^The Whitby Witches

^A Warlock in Whitby

Philip Pullman:

^Northern Lights

^The Subtle Knife

^The Amber Spyglass

J.K. Rowling:

*^Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

*^Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

*^Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

*^Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

*^Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

*^Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

*^Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Alan Alda:

Never Have Your Dog Stuffed

Margaret Atwood:

*The Handmaid's Tale

Anthony Bourdain:

Gone Bamboo

Elizabeth Peters (series books are not all part of the same series):

*^Crocodile on the Sandbank

*^The Snake, the Crocodile, and the Dog

*^He Shall Thunder in the Sky

*^The Golden One

*^The Serpent on the Crown

*The Copenhagen Connection

*^The Murders of Richard III

*^Die for Love

*^Naked Once More

*The Camelot Caper

Catherine Fisher:

The Oracle

Neil Gaiman:

The Graveyard Book

Allan C. Weisbecker:

Can't You Get Along with Anyone? (unfinished--it started to get convoluted and boring)

Stephenie Meyer:

^Twilight

^New Moon

^Eclipse

^Breaking Dawn (yeah, I read them all...shut up. They still weren't very good.)

Pat Frank:

*Alas, Babylon

Dan Brown:

^The Lost Symbol (Not really a series, but a recurring character. Past events are mentioned, however.)

Terry Pratchett:

^Carpe Jugulum (Nominally series in that they're all Discworld books. They do not need to be read in order, however.)

^Maskerade

^The Fifth Elephant

Scott O'Dell

*Island of the Blue Dolphins

Gordon Korman

*^Bruno & Boots: The Zucchini Warriors

Caroline B. Cooney

*Flight #116 is Down

Agatha Christie

^The Tuesday Club Murders (still reading) (not explicitly a series, but part of the Miss Marple books)

Wedding Details, Part 1

As I promised, I'll start writing about our wedding. I'm sure it'll be several posts, since in my mind it starts a week before we got married--a little before, actually. So without further ado, Part 1.

Adam was due to fly out of Manchester at about 6am Monday morning, meaning he needed to be at the airport by 4am (note, most ticket counters do not open until 4:30am, regardless of the time of your flight). Because of a distinct lack of 24 hour public transit in most of the world, this actually meant he had to leave the flat for the airport around 10:30pm. He'd mostly packed the day before, so when his jackass friend and another, slightly less jackassy friend invited him out for a beer, he accepted, providing it was just for one pint or two. In short, several hours later and very very drunk, Adam finally arrived home (via his father, but I got a little confused about how this happened). This was well less than two hours before he needed to leave for the airport, and a shower was required--as was telling me why I couldn't get ahold of his all day. This discussion is now closed, I'm not angry (with Adam), and everything turned out ok, but very not bueno at the time.

When Adam landed in Portland on Monday (early!) I was there to meet him, and he had no problems with Border Control. This was a nice change, given that the last two times I've gone to England I've had to be interrogated--last time for more than two hours. This was especially nice, as Adam was coming over to get married and had no visa; he didn't need one, but technically, neither did I for the last two trips to England.

After a stop at Gustav's (nummy!) we made it down to Eugene. Tuesday we did a bunch of running around, including applying for our marriage license and talking to the Judge who would perform the ceremony. Judge was fabulous, and marriage license was easy-peasy. However, the third part of our running was not so great. We went to my financial institution, and were told that we couldn't add Adam to my account--which I have held for 29 years--because, and I quote, "he doesn't live in Lane County." Apparently my being a long term member and his being a week away from my husband didn't matter, because he personally doesn't meet the membership requirements. Brilliant. However, we went back the day after we got back from the honeymoon, and had no problems whatsoever, just a bunch of paperwork.

Wednesday Pam, Tony, and Mark arrived into Eugene. They did surprisingly well after so long a day, but we sat around for a few hours (and bottles of wine and beer) and talked before they crashed. Being one person/couple short of a bedroom, poor Mark was in the living room, but at least he had a mattress and box springs, and a sheet to block the entryway. Classy...

Thursday was unmemorable, except for sushi that night, which went really well, and came complete with a magician, who was quite talented at card tricks and sleight of hand. Friday was crazy mad, however. Mom, Pam, and I went out and got mani/pedis, which took about two hours. Then we had to call and confirm food pickups for the next day, THEN go out to Territorial and set up for the reception. Oh, and we were also supposed to meet a bunch of friends. But somehow, we got out to Territorial, all the rental stuff had been dropped off, and Lisa let Adam, Mark, and I, along with a handful of friends into the back so we could set up a bunch of tables, a bunch more chairs, and just generally try to make it all happy for the next day.

Shortly before we finished, we found out that a carload more of friends had finally made it into town--the roads went psycho icy for a stretch--and so piled into various cars, picked them up, as they weren't going to drive anymore themselves, and hit a bar for food and drinks. It was lovely :) Icy as shit, but lovely to be with good friends and good beer. But Saturday morning soon began to beckon, and so we piled back into the cars, back to the hotel, and then for Adam, Mark, and I, back to the house and bed, so as to be well rested for the first of two big days, which will be the subject of Part 2.

Over and Done

I trust that I will be forgiven for not having written since December 4th. Since then, Adam has come and gone, his parents and brother have come and gone, we've hosted a wedding reception (in pretty atrocious weather--13 guests couldn't make it to Eugene), gotten married, and been on our honeymoon. And then I had to go Christmas shopping in order to properly celebrate Christmas Eve and Day. Because nothing says happy holidays like receiving lots of loot :)

I will post about our wedding reception and wedding (really, not a lot to say about the wedding though) over the next few days, as well as our honeymoon. As I get pictures, I will post them. My brother-in-law, who took hundreds of photos for us, has all the photos. Everything was shot on digital, but for some reason one of the two memory cards couldn't be read by my computer, so I don't have any photos from the wedding day itself right now, though I do have a large chunk of the reception photos, and the few photos we took on our honeymoon. But major kudos go to Mark, who did a fabulous job of shooting everyone at the wedding reception, and took some absolutely gorgeous photos, even of our tremendously unphotogenic family.

This is my single favorite picture of the nearly 200 I have--I don't think Anne knew she was being photographed here, and there's just something I love about how Mark captured her here.

And for the PLU crowd (go Lutes?), we have this unholy gathering. Believe me, it was unholy.

Left to right: Jimmy, Anne, Rob, Heather, Katie, Levi, Me, Kristan

Kneeling: Kat, Kellie

A Good Day to be an Oregonian

The University of Oregon Ducks are the Pac-10 Champions, finishing their season with a 10-2 record, having lost the first game of the season to the currently undefeated Boise State, beating the seeming juggernaut of the USC Trojans, and falling only once in conference play, to the Stanford Cardinals. With tonight's Civil War win over the Oregon State Beavers, the Ducks finish with only 1 conference loss, the fewest of any team in the Pac-1o, sending them to the Rose Bowl. The Beavers finish with 3 conference losses, which will hopefully send them to the Holiday Bowl; sadly, this is only a lock if they are the outright second-place team; they are tied with Stanford, who is also done with their season, but can also be tied with some combination of USC, Cal, and Arizona (USC and Arizona still have to play each other, and Cal still plays Washington). In the case of a tie (or ties), the decision is not made by looking at tiebreakers, but instead by debate and vote of the Holiday Bowl Committee. Hopefully, they will make the correct choice, and send the Beavers to San Diego in a few weeks.

Either way, it's a good day to be an Oregonian. Tonight's game has proven that Oregon has two stellar teams, in the Pac-10 and in the NCAA.