Maybe we’re just feeling a little bit ignored.  Neither of us expected showers, bachelor or bachelorette parties… but it’s sort of weird to know that no one even wants to, like, take Jesse out for a movie and dinner or go grab coffee with me.  Obviously I know that no one’s owed a fuss prior to the wedding… but, at least in our circles, it seems sort of culturally expected.  Ah well, once we get to Oregon it’ll all be so exciting that I’m sure we’ll forget all about it.  And I have decided that we’ll do “one last date” before we’re married, on the weekend before we leave for Newport.  I got concert tickets to the Silversun Pickups show and I think we’ll go out for Indian food, maybe Samosa Factory.  Yummy! 

Anyway, other things.  I’m really enjoying my new job.  It’s fast-paced and very busy, there’s lots to learn and I feel like I’m doing pretty well so far.  I think the experience and being in my current department will be invaluable to me when we do decide to try to relocate near Portland. 

I’ve been trying to do more yoga lately in an attempt to NOT have to go to more doctors.  I’ve noticed my stupid back locking up more… waking up a bit earlier in the morning seems worth it for less pain and I really am enjoying it.  HOWEVER.  Doing yoga in a house with a cat is harder than it may sound, particularly when you have a cat who wants to be with you All. The. Time. 

Sebastian graduated from his training class!  We’ll be starting an intermediate course in the fall, working towards passing his Canine Good Citizenship test hopefully by the beginning of 2011.  He looked absolutely adorable in his little mortarboard cap although he knocked it off his head about 30 seconds after this photo was taken. 

Anyway, that’s all folks.

We had an awesome weekend, a great combination of needs and wants.  The house is incredibly clean and organized, we actually rode our bikes (Sebastian hates bikes, by the way, he seems to associate them with Jesse’s brother who he is not fond of unfortunately) and went for a long hike.  We grilled, played some Red Dead Redemption (which I am absolutely terrible at), watched Star Trek TNG and I found my engagement picture outfit!  I scored an adorable Theory dress (it’s a really pretty almost vintage-looking cotton print — florals in dusky purples, greens and blues on a creamy background, tiny little ruffled cap sleeves) and a mossy-green Milly short-sleeved cardigan with chunky brown buttons.  Retail value?  Nearly $500.  Reason I love the Saks outlet?  $85.  I am GOOD.

Also, I got the job!  It’s at my current company in a different department and I will be transitioning to it over the next couple of weeks.  I’m really going to miss my current job, co-workers, supervisors, etc. but I think this is going to be a really good change for me.

Exciting things are happening, apparently.

Most of you have probably heard me bitch about my skin lately.  Seriously, it’s been dreadful and my old routine of Lush was just not cutting it (sorry, Lush, I do love you but this is the desert and my skin is cranky — you’re still my back-up, I promise!)… it was dry, cracking, sore to the touch, flaking and the skin around my lips was splitting.  Lovely image, yes?  I’ve been HOT lately… NOT.  How on earth am I actually getting married again?  ;)

Anyway, Sephora is doing their skincare challenge where you get credit for skincare purchases and after you’ve bought four you earn a free, full-size product.  Not such a great deal if you don’t need new stuff already but since I did, the allure of a free product is definitely working!  Even better, I got a ton of samples before I actually bought anything so I could figure out if they were actually going to be worth the money for me.  Here’s what I got:

Purity!  God, I love this stuff.  It’s creamy and, unlike a lot of gentle cleansers, actually gets your face clean with no extra steps needed.  I’m almost tempted to pick up the largest bottle of this since I don’t see myself switching to anything else for a long time.

When Hope Is Not Enough replenishing cream.  The associates at Sephora have kept trying to sell me on just their regular Hope In A Jar moisturizer but it’s just not quite thick enough.  I use this stuff in the morning and at night and it’s just amazing — thirst-quenching without being greasy.

When Hope Is Not Enough hylauronic acid capsules.  I don’t actually use these every day like the jar indicates.  For one, they’re expensive.  Actually, that’s the only reason!  But I do usually get two uses out of them as I mainly use them around my eyes and lips.  I mix the liquid in with my moisturizer and serum, it makes my skin feel like silk and does seem to plump up the skin a bit.  If I ever win the lottery or start making more money I’ll use them twice a day.  ;)

Hope In A Tube eye and lip cream.  I’m constantly paranoid about wrinkles around these areas and normal moisturizer just doesn’t seem to be enough.  This cream, while rather thick and a bit sticky, is actually moisturizing enough to make me think I’m not doomed to be wrinkly at 30.

When Hope Is Not Enough firming serum.  I only use this one during the day, mixed into my moisturizer.  I use less than indicated, probably just about three drops, but the vitamin C really does seem to be doing the trick.  It broke me out pretty dreadfully for about a week but settled down after that.  All in all, it’s worth it.

Last but not least, this is probably my favourite of all my new products.  I love this oil!  I only use it at night before my cream and… bye bye forehead lines!

The best thing about this weekend had to be our new grill!  Oh, how I love it.  I wasn’t in love with it at all during the assembly process.  What the manual indicated should take less than an hour turned into 4 with tiny little bits and pieces that didn’t necessarily stay together well and drawings in the instructions that made absolutely no sense.  It all came together eventually, despite my burning desire to toss it into the back yard and set it on fire.  So far we’ve grilled some beautiful butterflied shrimp, corn on the cob, chicken breasts, salmon burgers, veggie kabobs and a ribeye steak.  Now we’ve got grilled chicken for the whole week and I can have leftover salmon burgers for lunch.  Tonight I’m planning on making turkey burgers stuffed with blue cheese and some portabello mushroom caps.  I love having leftovers, especially delicious, grilled leftovers.  I also made a big batch of jasmine rice for the week — some of which I’ll probably do with some stir-fried tempeh and veggies and some which will turn into cilantro rice for burritos.  I made some guacamole as well, full of lemon juice and cilantro, with the last of my bag of avocados which were just at the point where they’re no longer good for eating right out of the shell.

We also got a decent pump for our bike tires… I’m looking forward to a lot more evening bike rides around our neighbourhood.

Other than that?  We had an awesome brunch at Sunrise, I watched Jesse play a lot of Red Dead Redemption (and I kinda admit to wanting to try to play it), ran a bunch of errands and bought more stuff for wedding-related DIY projects at Marshalls.  I think I finally figured out what I want to do with the placecards and programs… now to see if my printer at home can handle it.  Thankfully I just need black ink but I need to figure out how to work with awkwardly sized bits of cardstock.

Looking forward to a LONG weekend coming up.  We’re getting out early on Friday and have Monday off.  I think we’re going to drive down to Primm so I can browse for a rehearsal dinner dress at the Neiman Marcus outlet… maybe check out the Williams-Sonoma outlet (dangerous!).  We’ll probably take Sebastian back up to Mt. Charleston on Saturday… I’m really hoping to do Cathedral Rock before it gets too crowded.  It’s been weirdly cool all Spring this year but people will probably start heading for higher ground pretty soon.

I’m starting to realize that all of the big things are done.  We have a venue, a (delicious-sounding) menu, a DJ, a fantastic photographer, a wedding party, I have my dress, Jesse has his suit.  I even think I know how I’ll do my make-up (barely, just enough for pictures).  Incidentally, it is very weird to walk into the second bedroom and be confronted with two garment bags containing these things.  It’s like “Oh, huh… a wedding dress… I guess we must be getting close!”

It’s just the hard things left now.  The ceremony.   The vows.  The music.  I am having the hardest time with the music.  It almost makes me wish that music wasn’t so important to me — it’s such an important thing to me, I can assign basically every important moment in my life to an artist, an album, a song, a concerto or even a particular instrument.  Realistically I know it doesn’t have to be perfect… but I am going to try to get it as close to it as possible!

Work is busy.  Class is over.  It’s finally getting to be summer here and I’m hoping for just a little bit of rain before we have to say good-bye to the clouds for months.  I’m trying to do more, read more, enjoy things a little bit more.  I think it’s going to be a pretty amazing summer.

Goofy puppyface!

I’m really looking forward to training classes with him.  I know we’ve waited a long time but, to be honest, I think the wait was for a good reason.  He is SO much more comfortable with us now, even more than he was a few months ago.  We’ve done a lot of work with him on our own (he’s got Sit, Lie Down, Stay, Paw and a few other commands down) but mostly we’ve been working on making sure that he feels safe and protected and that he trusts us.  I think the hardest part of training will be getting him to focus on us instead of on all the other dogs who will be in his class!

On the wedding front, we got our rings yesterday from the amazingly talented Justine of singleBbeautiful.  I took a few quick shots yesterday on the formerly-ugliest-oak-table-in-the-world.

Jesse's band, my band and stacking solitaire

Close-up of my set

101 days!  A little over a week until Sebastian starts training and we go see Conan O’Brien live.  Only a couple more weeks until classes end.  And hopefully?  Change soon.

We had a really awesome weekend!  I spent Friday evening addressing a few final invitations, embossed envelopes on Saturday morning and had them all sent by Saturday afternoon.  Hopefully our invited guests will be getting them shortly and our mailbox will soon be full of response cards.  Everything’s starting to feel very real!  Our rings should be delivered tomorrow… can’t wait to see them!

Saturday afternoon was mostly spent covered in flour, sugar and other sticky things.  I made strawberry lemonade bars to take to my first surprise party ever.  Not sure how well we did at the jumping out and yelling part but really, it was a lot of fun!  Makes me wish someone would throw a surprise party for me one day!

Sunday was spent mostly being domestic.  Went out and bought a new camera cord (where mine go I can’t determine… I think there may be a technological equivalent of wherever the single lost socks go… Narnia?) and Wii Fit Plus.  Jesse and I had lots of fun playing it last night.  Cleaned the house, washed the dog, did laundry, got his claws clipped (at Petsmart — I’m not fearless!) and finally got to talk to one of their trainers about their basic training course.  She invited us to bring him to her class this Friday to watch and then I think we’re going to sign him up for their class starting in early-May.  I think it would be really good for him.  He actually knows quite a few commands but the socialization aspect of it is priceless.  I’m sort of an awful puppy-mama that way… He gets so overly-excited when he sees other dogs that I don’t let him go over there and greet.  He’s so strong and weighs about 2/3s of what I do… I know that if something happened I probably couldn’t control him.  So for our own safety he doesn’t really get to see other dogs which I know he’s missing.  If he got to be around other dogs more often I’m convinced that he wouldn’t be a spazz every time he saw one.  It’d be good for all of us, I think, and he’d certainly be SO happy.

Talked to a visitor at work today who mentioned how many companies in our industry are moving all of their operations to Oregon… she gave me her card.  Not that we’d be able to do anything about it now but it’s very interesting information for the future.

So, things are really coming together.  I have my final presentation in my psych class this week, then finals.  Then maybe something new coming up. Then a better-behaved dog (who is finally starting to develop the urge to play).   Then before we know it?  We’ll be heading to Oregon to get married.  There’s still a lot to us but it’s finally getting to the point where I can really see what it’s going to be like… and I’m excited!

I am trying very hard to think of this as a scene out of an absurdist play.   I’ve always adored Ionesco… but unfortunately, no matter how much I try to tell myself that this is, in fact, absurdly entertaining, I find myself merely irritated.

I hope I have enough return address labels for our invitations because I sure as hell am not willing to wait another week and a half to two weeks to have this fixed again.

Stressed over this one stupid wedding issue.  Stressed over work.  Stressed over being a degreeless 26-year-old.  Stressed over not having valuable, strong relationships with more than a small handful of people.  Stressed over, essentially, BEING a failure.  Not a failure in the sense that I’m not a good person or that I’m not trying, but a failure based on everything I was ever taught or raised to believe about success.

It’s rather overwhelming, really, trying to walk around while carrying around the weight of Epic Fail.

And I do just wish I could explain it all away by saying “It’s Thursday.”