leave comments with your answers to the following ?s, please.
--what day are you getting here?
--when are you leaving?
--are you staying @ the hotel? if no, then why the hell not? :-)
--if you are staying at the hotel, would you be interested in sharing a room w/someone?
--who's down to host a night of drunken debauchery in their room after everyone's had a chance to take a nap after the reception?
--who wants to go gambling w/me and laz at some point during the weekend?
go here for detailed directions -- the ones i'm about to give you are from memory.
from the hyatt to the church:
walk to state and lake and get on the red line heading south. get off at 95th street, which is the end of the line. transfer to either the #34 or the #119 bus. both of these buses stop at 114th and michigan. get off at 114th and michigan and make a right. go past the fire station and the row of houses. the church is on the corner -- the main entrance is on state street and those are the doors you'll want to use.
from the church to the hyatt:
walk back to 114th and michigan. get on any of the buses (#34, #119, and a pace bus that i can't remember the number of) heading north to 95th and the dan ryan. get on the red line heading north and exit at state and lake and walk to the hotel.
i think cta's site also has metra directions, so check there to see if that's an option.
i think we may have to launch an urbantherapy wedding awards. as the date gets closer and the potential for craptasticness and/or hilarity increases, we should be able to recognize some of the little things that we come across. i get the feeling i stole this from kim and nick, though, so i won't take full credit for it. yet. =)
for example, in the overall category of rsvp's, some of the awards would be awarded to:
earliest rsvp: tie b/t deb & her family (troy's co-worker) and kim & nick
cheesiest rsvp: barb and pete (although i doubt v. seriously if pete's responsible for drawing the heart around the "i" in the "i will/will not attend".)
smartass rsvp: frontrunners would be maya & keith. 3 1/4 guests, indeed. wtf is that...you're bringing the cat and a midget as special guests? but it did make me do a laughing double-take, so it counts.
i think there should be a special award for anyone we manage to find (outside of my family) w/in our circle of friends/acquaintances/people we know that was actually surprised/shocked by the news of our engagement. i'll have to give that some thought.
and the majority of the invites are now out the door. hooray!
"I gotta right to be hostile."
I'm going to share something, if only to get it off my chest. If any of my family reads this, well, I'm glad you can read.
My father is the oldest of five or six. Three of his sisters own an apartment building on the South side, where they all live. When I was in college, I would take that long-ass train trip to 79th Street and hang out with them sometimes. You with me? Good.
So summer of sophomore (or junior) year comes up, and I am offered a job over the summer in one of the tech labs. This could have been a prime job opportunity, or it could have been nothing, but in any rate, I needed someplace to stay. My father asked one of my aunts if I could stay with her, since she had room. He'd kick in some dough on food and all, and I'd commute between Evanston and the South.
My aunt had fallen head over heels in love with this guy who looked like Alan Thicke, I swear. I had stayed with her in the couple of weeks leading up to school, and, in that time, I found his porn. Now, a man and his porn is not to be trifled with and strewn about, especially when it's vintage Betamax porn, y'all. My attitude towards porn has always been, "Cool. Your business. Just don't leave it out in the open."
Of course, in the room I was sleeping in, that was his former "relaxation room," there were porn tapes EVERYwhere. I tripped over them. Of course I watched them; what else could I do? But I marveled at how he just left it all open and such.
What I didn't know at the time was that he surely didn't like me around, as I was a nephew of the woman of the house, and had gotten to stay that way, and he could do or say nothing about it. So he campaigned, when summer came around and I had the job offer, to not let me stay there. The campaign was successful, and I took my ass back home to LA to wait out the summer.
What miffed me more than anything else was that no one would SAY anything to me; no one would tell me why. The other aunts who lived in the building professed to not knowing anything, although later I found out they did. The aunt who refused permission wouldn't say anything about it, and the last time I talked to any of the aunts living in that apartment building was 1997.
So, fast forward to getting these wedding invites out. My father wanted me to invite my aunts; I had initially said no. They haven't called me in six years, and I live in the same area code. They profess they LOOOOVE me, but for the two times we were supposed to patch this thing up and talk openly, they canceled on me at the last minute. When one of the aunts was in the hospital downtown, I told them to tell me where she was and what she was in there for, and THEY WOULDN'T TELL ME. So how am I supposed to feel?
I thrive and confrontation, and I appreciate frankness. I could have been told once they kicked him out (he was found later to be exposing himself to one of my cousins) what had happened, and they were sorry it all went down like that, and lay the truth down. I get NOTHING for my efforts of finding out what happened and making peace. They want me to come to the apartment building, and I refuse to. Meet me halfway. I am not a vassal to be summoned to the castle on the hill when the queens deem it time to do so. I got my own little kingdom up here. Show me you give a damn and meet me downtown.
Surely, I'm probably a bit hardheaded, and perhaps a bit selfish. But this episode has put into action just what I couldn't have known years ago. My father wanted all to be patched up through him and his role as intermediator; "They're blood." True, but blood does not equal family. Family gives a damn, blood just happens to be related. And while all my actions have been rebuffed, theirs consists of telling another aunt (who doesn't live with them) to tell me to come by the house anytime. How am I going to look getting invited to someone's house by someone who doesn't even LIVE there?
So, the ending? The entire family's invited to the wedding, and their invitations are in the mail. Let's see if they respond.
as the wedding date gets closer, i find myself getting more excited about seemingly trivial things. i've spent the past couple hours updating our registries and picking out favors for our guests. a good chunk of that time was spent figuring out exactly what type of container would best suit the favors. and i'm supposed to be quasi-studying today, too. i'm also thisclose to becoming addicted to wedding shows on tv. "a wedding story" on tlc and "i do i do" on lifetime (oy!) are easing their way into my regular tv watching rotation.
i'm trying to chalk this up to the fact that it's june and i'm going through some type of wedding sensory overload. i blame the media. y'all know me -- i'm not the most conventional type of would-be bride, so obsessing over favors and aisle runners and actually asking troy the following question is nothing less that weird.
"hey...i know you don't really care, but for the reception tables, would you want confetti hearts or rose petals?"
lucky for me troy didn't crack up laughing or look at me crazy when he gave me an honest answer. he was also cool when we went to our menu tasting and i started going on about how i wanted napkins arranged at the tables. i shit you not. my catering manager and i spent precious minutes of our lives that we can never get back discussing table linens and napkin folds. troy and andy can vouch for this.
i guess i should be lucky that i'm not turning into an obsessive bridal bitch. not yet, anyway.
in other news, the first wave of invitations are going out this weekend, i'm closer to finding an inexpensive florist i like, and we have our marriage license. whee!
Man, I'm tired just recounting this episode. Basically, we had planned to have the invites printed and in people's hands by now, but NO, I had to get so artsy and crap, that I finished designing them last week. What follows is the steps taken in the last five days. Remember, we open this act with the invites designed; all we have to do is get them printed.
- We go to Paper-Source and I pick out bomb -ass paper, along with envelopes. I buy a few of each, just to test. In the meantime, one of the good people in my company's design department takes my design and makes printer-ready files from it. Rock! So far, all is cool.
-The printer prints me a proof, and they frigging RULE. I call over to Paper-source, and they tell me that the paper I want isn't available in the quantity I want at the store, so they'll have to call the warehouse the next day. Cool. So far, not sucking.
-Kaboom. They don't have the paper. They don't have the frigging paper,a and they won't have any more for two weeks. The printer shows me the stock they have, and it sucks in comparison to what I've picked. I am at a loss.So the invites, already late, are gonna be later. Dammit. But hey; they have the envelopes en masse.
-Wait a minute! They can get the paper in by Friday! We've okayed the proof; the printer just needs the stock. They close at 6; the paper folk say they can have the paper ready to go between 4-5:30. potential for suck: High.
-The paper folk call,. They got it,r ready to go. Somehow, I am able to walk three-quarters of a mile up Michigan Ave. and not one bus passes me. Good ol' CTA. I walk up about a quarter mile, and get to the store. I run across the street and buy markers for decoration purposes. I leave the store at 5:20.
I get on a bus that, by my gut, will get me close to where I need to go, three quarters of a mile ion the direction I've came. John Cusack said it best: "I've been relying on my gut...and frankly, my gut has shit for brains."
I have to get off the bus, and have a half a mile to go. I refuse to look at my watch, because it would only piss me off. I am now loaded with two bags if paper,a and of course it looks as if its going o rain. Suckiness: Hard.
I pull up to the building the printer's in, and I still refuse to look at my watch. Keep going, I think. If they're closed, then we'll have a bout of curses, and take our ass home. I walk fast naturally, and at times, i've broken into a jog. Combine this sudden hurry with the fact that my muscles, most fo which were utilized for the first time days earlier at hockey practice, are plotting mutiny. I hurt, people.
I pull in. The guy who's handling my project looks at me, sweaty, funky, and out of breath, and says, "Man, we were just closing. You just made it." I look at the clock above the door.
5:58.
So,, the invites are getting printed on the spiffy paper, and I have started on the envelopes, and the printer's supposed to have them ready by Monday evening/Tuesday morning. The first round should be in the mail by Thursday.
So ends that episode.