Finally! Now Youtube seems to be uploading videos for me again.

Friday night, we played D&D with Dara & Tiffianna – it was awesome. (And, not to be all D&D dork, except that I totally am, the highlight for me was when my druid shapeshifted, or wildshaped, whatever, into an owl, and flew over a forest at night, dropping lightning bolts on evil werewolves. It was fucking fantastic – I used “Call Lightning,” and killed 19 werewolves all by my lonesome. Hot.) Greg made lasagna, and I made those Barefoot Contessa Cupcakes, and Dara and Tiffianna brought over poundcake with fruit (which we didn’t eat, so they left it).

Saturday, we went to Target to get my eyes examined, and get me a new pair of glasses. (My old pair is like four years old, and held together at the bridge by superglue, because I broke them. Now, whenever I drop them and they fall hard enough, they break again, and have to be reglued. Time for new glasses.) In the evening, we went to Raleigh to see Firehouse at a free concert. It wasn’t quite as awesome as I’d hoped, because they kept playing their new stuff, and who cares about that? I did get some pictures and videos, but I’ve got to get ready to go to work, so I’ll put those up later. (And Bathilde is behaving better – it just takes for-fucking-ever to add like, one new album of music.)

Someone please explain to me why Apple hates me so much.

First I have a lovely little Shuffle, and then one day it refuses to let me alter the playlist, and it also refuses to play any of the music on it. It died, basically.

Now I have an iPod (named Bathilde), and I managed to load some music, but now that I’m trying to load *more* music on it, it refuses, even though iTunes thinks its been successful. And the damn thing sits there flashing “Do not disconnect” at me for thirty minutes solid, even though iTunes thinks it’s done.

What. The. Fuck. Apple. This is a brand spanking new iPod, and I seriously am hating your ass right about now. This shit better fix itself soon.

Well, let’s see if Photobucket can succeed where youtube is failing mightily:

Skeeter’s Reality Show – Episode 9: Almost a showdown, but not quite.

ETA: Well, apparently Photobucket succeeded in uploading it, but mangled the picture. (All that pixelation, oy.) But youtube couldn’t even get around to *beginning* to upload it, so score 1 for Photobucket. (AND! youtube’s stupid “having trouble uploading?” button was a dead link. Boo.) Also? Skeeter was high on catnip, so don’t be writing any stank letters.

29 new EPCOT photos. (I had to temporarily take the wedding photo out of the set, because Flickr insists on putting it smack in the middle, and I want the photos arranged chronologically in the set. So if I can’t convince Flickr to put the damn photo at the beginning of the set, it’ll have to go at the end, I guess. But I definitely don’t want it smack in the middle of, say, the photos from it’s a small world, because, hi, we didn’t stop in the middle of the ride and go to a wedding, thanks, Flickr, you dumbass. Drag and drop organizing, my ass.)

I’m also waiting for youtube to finish uploading a new episode of Skeeter’s reality show. Yeesh, it’s taking forever.

Well, a couple weeks ago, Greg ordered a new computer (a Mac Pro), and it finally came in. (Excitement!) He had mentioned that he could get a free (or, free after a mail-in rebate) iPod or printer, and was thinking about getting the iPod for me – which I thought was crazy nice, and I’d certainly appreciate it, since my Shuffle died a long time ago, and I’ve been wanting an mp3 player. But I also thought we’d decided not to get an iPod, and that I’d just pick up some other mp3 player later on. Turns out, when Greg ordered his computer, he’d gone ahead and ordered an iPod, too – so I had quite a nice surprise when we went to pick up his computer today. What a sweetie! I’m so excited to have portable music again! (Although apparently this one also can carry around photos and videos, too! Swank!) I’m charging her battery up right this minute, and will most definitely be adding more music as soon as I can. Sweet! (She’s also going to make working out so much more enjoyable.)

We went to a cookout at KT’s and Bridget’s tonight, and it was fun. The past couple times Greg’s gone to hang out there (as opposed to having band practice) I’ve had an upset stomach (read: horrible diarrhea) and have stayed home, so it was awesome to get to hang out and see people I don’t usually get to see. Their newest kid, Kaiden, is so much bigger! (I think the last time I saw him was around our wedding, so, a little over a year ago.) He is a handful, but pretty cute.

I also went to a bridal shower in Virginia last weekend, for my friend Michel. That was fun, too. We played a couple games – a quiz about Michel, a quiz about famous couples, and a wedding-themed bingo – and I won one of the games (the famous couples one – see, all that celeb gossip pays off sometimes!) and got a gift bag with some cute dish towels, a spatula thingy, and some Barefoot Contessa cupcake mix. (Which was totally appropriate, since the night before we’d been in Crate & Barrel getting a gift for Michel, and I’d convinced Greg to get some silicone muffin liners for us by promising to make cupcakes for him soon.) The shower was an Around the Clock shower, so we had to pick out gifts to go with the time we were given. I got 6 o’clock, and I know sometimes they eat late (I remember having conversations about how I would be so starving if I ate that late), so I asked Danny what they’re usually doing around 6: making/eating dinner, going out to eat somewhere, or going home on the subway. So we got Michel a chef’s knife off her registry: she can use it to prep food, or to stab people on the subway. (Har.) I had alot of fun at the shower.

Here’s a picture of a baby bunny I saw on my way to the car after work yesterday, just eating some grass on campus. Cute, huh?

I’ve been doing this sleep hygiene thing recently (the past two weeks or so), since I normally sleep horribly, wake up several times during the night, and am tired all day. So far, I’ve been sleeping through the night every night, and while I’m sometimes a bit tired during the day, nowhere near as bad as it used to be, and I feel much more rested. The problem is, there are several “rules” and I feel like I’m being obsessive about it – but if it means sleeping well, I guess that’s okay. One of the rules is no computer or television for like an hour or two before you go to bed. Which is why my posting has been so slack lately – I just get home and don’t feel like blogging right away, and once I’m in the mindset to blog properly, it’s past the time I can use the computer. I don’t have to get up as early tomorrow (even though I’m supposed to get up at the same time each day, I feel like I should be able to fudge a bit on my weekends), and I had two caffeinated sodas at the cook-out (not supposed to have caffeine after noon, and I definitely *started* the first one around 7pm), so I’m also staying up a bit extra now to blog and process more Disneyworld photos. 40 more photos. Enjoy!

No real post today. Too sad. I haven’t kept up with wrestling in ages, and I thought I didn’t care anymore. But Benoit was my favorite, and I’m upset. Of all people, I never thought anything like this would happen to him. Damn.

ETA: This excellent article pretty much echoes my feelings about all this. It’s beyond fucked up.

So, I realized a couple days ago that I wouldn’t be completing Run-a-go-go this time either. I’d thought I had two and a half weeks left (at the time), and had calculated distance to cover per workout based on that (and also on the assumption that the gym would be open on the weekends for the same hours it was during the week). Then I realized it was halfway through the third week of June, so I only had a week and a half left. Oh well. What can I say, I’m lazy.

Yesterday, I was reading up on sleep hygiene, and the sleep clinic’s info said to work out in the morning or early afternoon for more energy – but not to work out after 3pm, because that’ll interrupt your sleep cycle, by making you too energized in the evening. Interesting, but I get up around 7:30 these days, to get to work on time – and let’s be honest, I’m not really going to get up an hour or an hour and a half before that, just so I can have time to work out and shower. (I mean, maybe, I’m still thinking about it, especially if it means more energy during the day, and better sleep at night. But right now the idea of getting up at 6 or 6:30 is booboo.) However, in the Fall, our schedule looks like the earliest we’ll go in to work any day of the week is 11:30, so I’ll have plenty of time to work out beforehand. Anyway, so I’m giving up on Run-a-go-go, but, since I like keeping tallies in general, and a tally of the “distance” I’ve covered in specific, I’m starting my own count, which I’m naming Gazelle-a-go-go (since I usually exercise on the Gazelle, but not that I’ll be limiting myself solely to it). Which, appropriately enough for me, given my fondness for exercise (or lack thereof), abbreviates to GAGG. Hee. Anyway. So, today I got on the beast, and did 1.68 miles. Now it is shower time.

GAGG: 1.68 miles

Okay, so the rehearsal went well, and the rehearsal dinner was pretty cool, too. Alot of food, and some nice people to sit and talk with. (Specifically, Meral and her husband, another Greg, who was French. And according to them, it is a very French thing to do, to discuss food while you’re eating, whether it’s critiquing the meal you’re eating, or discussing other foods entirely separate from what’s on your plate. So we talked food, and it was awesome.) After the rehearsal there was some more hanging out with the groomsmen, and, according to Greg, “light partying.” I hit the sack around 10:00.

The next day was the wedding! It was awesome. Here is my one picture of the wedding:

The reason I only have one picture of the wedding is this: sometime before the wedding (maybe on the drive down to Florida, maybe before that even, I don’t remember) I was investigating all the options on the camera, and discovered that I could set all the sounds to a cat’s meow. So I did, of course. Because I thought it was funny to press something and hear “meow.” I forgot all about that setting until I took the picture at the wedding, and heard a meow. (Embarrassment! Luckily, it wasn’t *too* loud.) And to change the settings, I’d have to press a shit ton of buttons that would also produce a meow, so I couldn’t change the settings in the middle of the wedding. So I only got the one picture. But it’s a good one, I think, with a good view of the wedding party. (At least, as good a view as I could get from where I was seated, without being totally obnoxious about holding the camera up and angling it – I was trying to be pretty surreptitious about it, and not detract from the wedding.)

After the wedding, there was some picture taking, and I had to stay for that, since I’d driven over three of the groomsmen. Then we went to the reception, which was at Kea’s family’s house – which was gorgeous, and situated on a lake. There was music and dancing – Greg danced with one of the flower girls (Emma? I don’t really remember any more, sorry). Greg sat with the wedding party for most of it (he *was* Jon’s best man), so I sat at a table with Job, Jeff, French Greg, and Meral (who was actually a bridesmaid, but sat with her husband instead of the wedding party – although, come to think of it, I don’t remember any empty seats at the wedding party table, at least at the beginning, so her sitting with her husband was a fortunate decision). The food was good, the company was awesome, and I had a good time. I also enjoyed meeting Jon’s family – very, very nice, not surprisingly – and getting to meet Kea’s family and watch them talk and stuff, because they all share a lot of the same gestures and manners of talking that Kea uses, and it was neat to see. Some of the groomsmen also went swimming in the lake, towards the end of things. So, a good time was had by all. Oh! And there was a magician at the reception, walking around doing magic tricks. He was pretty good – some of my tablemates (Jeff and Job) felt I wasn’t suitably impressed with his tricks. And they were neat, and well-done, but I did spend the first, like, fourteen years of my life convinced I would grow up to be a stage magician, and learning card tricks, and palming, and reading about Houdini and his tricks, and taping every single magic show I could (especially David Copperfield’s shows) and watching them over and over and over and over to dissect the tricks and figure out how they were done. We even drove to Charlotte once, to watch the implosion of the building he “escaped” from. (I mean, duh, he was totally safely away from the building before it was even begun imploding.) Not to mention all the books I bought – anything I could find on Houdini, or by Penn and Teller. All the magic shops we had to visit whenever we went near one. And when we went to California, we had to go to the Society of American Magicians so I could get a picture of the door to their headquarters, even though that was as close as a non-member could get.* In short (too late, as Susan would say), I was OBSESSED. So, yeah, this dude was pretty cool, his performance was smooth, but I know how he did most of his tricks, and I have a pretty damn good idea of how he did the rest, so, there you go. It was still cool.

*Don’t even get me started on the mystique of the Magic Castle, which, when I was in my formative years, was *only* open to magicians (at least as far as I knew – I guess it’s possible it was open to the public and I didn’t know about it?), and wasn’t whatever sort of dinner entertainment dealy thing it is today. Which you would think I would be excited about, in a “Finally! I can go to the Magic Castle!” sort of way – but really, after all that longing as a child, and its mystique and “private club” and “inner sanctum” sort of image, my reaction was “God, really? What a fucking sell-out.” Which is lame of me, but there you go.

More on the Florida vacation later – I’m typed out on it for now. I’ll leave you with a picture I took on our way in to work yesterday. I wish I could’ve gotten a better picture, but I didn’t realize it was so…impressive, and had put the camera up, and then couldn’t get it back out fast enough to get a clearer shot. Basically, someone drove their car off the road, into the woods, and I think up a sort of embankment? What this means is, to get the car at that angle, they had to be driving in that direction and pretty fast – it couldn’t just be a matter of swerving to avoid rear-ending someone, because they wouldn’t be exactly perpendicular to the road, nor would they be that far into the woods. Very odd. And luckily, no one was hurt, so I didn’t feel bad about being all, “Holy shit. Let me get a picture of this.” (If you’re having trouble finding the car – I don’t think it’s hard to find, but I *did* take the picture, so I know where to look, plus it’s in the shade kind of – it’s to the left of the front police car.)

Well, Flickr’s being persnickety, so the vacation post will have to wait. In more recent news, my beloved elephant dress has to be retired. I got pretty shitfaced at Michel’s birthday dinner at Patio Loco recently (on some delicious, delicious, DELICIOUS! tamarind margaritas, and some mango margarita, but it was mainly the tamarind) and forgot how delicate the fabric was, scooted backward too quickly without hitching the dress up beforehand, and ripped the skirt from the bodice. Yes, grrl, you read right: ripped the skirt from the bodice. Not completely – but a good six or seven inches. And that was when I had to admit to myself that, cute as it is, it’s not really wearable. I’ve already patched it up a ton, and I can’t keep patching it. (Especially when, next time the skirt might rip completely off the bodice, and that would be a sticky predicament.) So sad.

I’ve got plans to finally get around to putting the blue in my hair. I’m still trying to figure out where all to put it, but it’s happening soon. And this time I will remember to get before and after pictures.

And I’m seriously lusting after some vintage patterns, on Ebay and Etsy. I’ve started reading my pattern drafting book again – this time I’m going to actually *do* the exercises, instead of treating them like mental exercises – and it’s got me thinking about dresses, especially. And also that damn shirt pattern. I really think the empire waist is too high for my bustline. I probably should have read the book and altered the pattern *before* I tried to make it. But I’m going to finish the shirt in the polka dot fabric and see what happens, “should haves” be damned. I’m a little nervous about trying to alter patterns – much less draft them myself from scratch – but both are clearly the only way to go. The more I think about it, the more I only want to wear clothes I’ve made myself, and who wants to wear knit pants? Really. So, pattern drafting and altering, here I come. And at least once I know how to do it, I’ll have the option of doing it or not. (Like, I can look at that cute but pricey dress, and I’ll have the option of either making a copy for myself for cheaper, or, if I know the drafting and construction would be a pain in the ass, I can buy it.)

Okay, so, Florida. I think instead of one long post, I’ll just do little short ones. That way it’ll be less daunting, and you’ll actually get to read about the vacation. Instead of me meaning to blog it, and not.

So, Wednesday night we packed, did last minute things, mooched around the house. I can’t remember if we went to Target Tuesday or Wednesday – but it doesn’t matter, because the salient point is, we *did* go to Target, to get a gift off their registry, and I picked up a super duper cute apron dress. So, Thursday we drive to Florida, and I am wearing my new super duper cute apron dress. Yay! We took turns driving – Greg usually does all the driving, and he can handle long turns at the wheel, but I would have felt bad letting him drive all the way to Florida. Plus he always threatens to not stop for anything, and I need food and bathroom breaks. And stretch breaks. Something. Anyway, I took a couple turns, but for some reason driving made me ridiculously sleepy, so I think the longest turn I took was probably an hour and a half, maybe two hours. Whatever. We took turns, and I made Greg listen to Thank You, Jeeves – turns out, he likes Wodehouse! Another yay. Anyway, the whole trip, with food breaks and bathroom breaks, etc, even hitting some traffic, took only ten hours. Pretty sweet.

We get to the hotel (Embassy Suites), and it seems there was a little mix-up about the rooms. Jon said his mom had reserved rooms for Friday through Monday – but we were staying Thursday through Sunday, so we just booked a room for Thursday night, figuring we’d switch Friday morning, no biggie. Turns out, Jon meant his mom had blocked off a set of rooms, for us to all call and make reservations from, so the wedding party and guests would be near each other. Oops! (And actually, when faced with the realization that we had no room after Thursday night, my thoughts were more along the lines of “Oh shit! Oh! SHIT!”) Luckily, Embassy Suites is the bomb, and they very kindly extended our reservation through Sunday – at the wedding party discount rate, even! Sweet!

So, that was taken care of. We got up to the room, and I was so relieved at *having* a room through Sunday, that I promptly dove onto the bed. And popped off one of the buttons that attached the straps to the dress. Boo. So I had to change clothes. Oh well. The two other groomsmen staying in the room with us (Danny and Graedon) hadn’t arrived yet, so we went to the other groomsmens’s room to hang out with Jeff and Job (who were also short two roommates: Brian and Brett), who were in the other building because they’d gotten a smoking room. The nice thing about this arrangement is that all the partying took place in the smoking room, which meant I could butt out when I got tired and go back to our room and sleep in peace. Which I did. And apparently the partying continued – I heard something about wrestling? Greg had a couple scrapes on him. And at some point (although it may have been later in the weekend), Jeff punched Greg in the nuts, and Greg thanked him for it. (I have to assume he was *incredibly* shitfaced at this point, since when I merely accidentally brush his nuts, he rolls around in pain and yells. Or maybe there was rolling around and yelling in between the punch and the thank you. I guess I’ll never know. The things you miss when you’re an old lady and go to bed early.)

I should backtrack here and tell you that the first thing I did – well, after popping that button, but before hanging out with Jeff and Job – was to sit down with the little guest services/information booklet. You know Big Girl likes to eat. She also likes to take full advantage of the perks of staying in a shi-shi* hotel like Embassy Suites. (Possibly I was influenced by knowing that in a couple days we’d be checking into a bare-minimums hotel for the Disneyworld part of our trip.) So I knew all about the complimentary, full made-to-order breakfast (are you serious!), as well as the “manager’s reception” (free drinks between 5 and 7pm, which, somewhat sadly, we never took advantage of). So when I went to bed Thursday night, I made sure to set my phone’s alarm to wake up with plenty of time to get breakfast. I was going to eat breakfast every day we were there no matter what – even if I just got up, went downstairs in my jimjams, ate breakfast, and then went right back to bed. I woke up when the boys came in, and asked Greg if he wanted me to get him up for breakfast, and he did.

I wake Friday morning, and try to wake Greg up – he’s still tired, and wants me to wake him up when I get back from breakfast. I go downstairs, and have a delicious breakfast. It was splendid. Come back upstairs, try to get Greg up – he’s decided to skip breakfast today, too tired. I go back to sleep.

When we get up later, around lunchtime, Danny and Graedon are talking about their excellent breakfasts, too – and Greg decides he’s craving an omelette. He thought we passed a WaffleHouse on our way in, so we go looking for that, but all we find is a Denny’s. So we went to Denny’s – I got a cheeseburger (did you know they have Boca patties at Denny’s? it was sweet!), and Greg got his omelette. The greasiest omelette I’ve seen in as long as I can remember. And he washed it down with coffee, of course. It was getting close to time for the rehearsal, so we headed back to the hotel to get ready – taking showers, changing clothes, etc. While I’m in the bathroom, I hear Greg start throwing up – apparently brushing his teeth didn’t sit well with his stomach. (I guess after all the drinking the night before, then the greasy omelette and coffee, toothpaste was the last straw.) Greg had been watching television with Danny and Graedon, and they didn’t believe him when he suddenly announced, “I think I’m gonna go throw up now.” But he got up, walked over to the little sink next to the mini-fridge (I was in the bathroom, and the trashcan was small and overflowing already), and started barfing. I got out of the bathroom as soon as I could (my weak stomach means if I heard, smelled, or saw too much of it, I’d start puking, too), but caught a glimpse of the sink on my way into our room – it looked like gnarly hot and sour soup. Just…coffee and bile, with strips of egg. Disgusting. I hid in the bedroom until it was all over and cleaned up – and to clean it up after he was done, Greg had to use a highball glass to scoop his puke into an extra trash bag we’d had in the room. He threw it in a trashcan out in the hall somewhere, rinsed out the sink and the glass. Grody.

And then we went to the rehearsal. More vacation hijinx later.

*I don’t actually know how to spell this. I know it sounds like “shi-shi.” I’m pretty sure it’s not “chi-chi,” although I did wonder for a moment if it was perhaps a shortening of “chic” or “chic chic” (maybe meant to imply tres chic?), but whatever.