Stingbox Daily

Sorry

Sorry I can't blog anymore now that I'm married; my husband doesn't allow it.

A wedding picture

This weekend will include the onerous burden of creating wedding & honeymoon trip photo galleries.

Here's a favorite!

I'm almost done.

I am at Heathrow

I am not a huge fan of 10 hour flights.
But, at least I managed to sleep a bit. We have an hour or two to kill before we fly into Prague.

Eerily perfect.

That went...so...well.

29 Palms was beautiful and blooming, our families had fun together, it was like a mini-vacation for everyone, we all ate a ton of incredible food and drank bottles and bottles of delicious wine, everyone helped make the desert ceremony go nearly exactly right* and we are both in a dazed afterglow that the whole weekend from start to finish was so, so much better than we'd even hoped.

*(once Scott & Mike & I were up on the platform, everyone was seated, and Mike was about 3 lines into the ceremony, Scott mouthed "RINGS" at me and I mouthed "better go get 'em" back at him. He jogged over to grab them from the RV while I pointed at our audience and said "Psyche!" and did a little soft-shoe. Then we started over.)

Here are sporadic pictures taken by me. More and better ones by our non-wedding-photographer will follow later.

edit: oops, added 4 wildlife pictures I left out.

Thursday

We begin!

Goodbye, Locust Street.

Annnd...we're here!

Inside the greatroom at Irene's Historic Adobe. Lots of old books on the book shelf. We brought 7 bottles of wine, and port and champagne and a halfkeg of Craftsman Hefeweizen; Scott's parents surprised us by bringing 8 more bottles of wine.

The kitchen.

Window seat.

This footed tub was almost too high for me to step into.

Upper left of pic got blown out somehow, but this is our courtyard.

Friday

Friday morning I got up at 6 (once the sun comes up, all the birds freak out; it's hard to sleep through) and walked around with hot coffee, checking out the grounds. I started with our patio.

I mentioned in another post I made a boatload of hanging jars for candles...about 100. Here are a very few already up.

I guess this is my "holy shit this is so awesome" face

The sun was only a bit over the horizon yet.

Back at the village entry.

FLOWERZ

Totally obscene.

I photographed 80% of the world's cacti.

The Houseboat is a room you can rent.

Here is Mara's Oasis, at the middle of the Inn village. It's a naturally occurring oasis, the only one in Mojave I believe.

I checked - there are more than 29.

The ducks weren't awake yet. They were waiting for the food man.

On the left is the library and the upper floor is a rentable penthouse; to the right is the pool area and the inn's bar/restaurant that attracts pretty much everyone in the area every night, due to tastiness. And guess who has Anchor Steam on tap? They do!

The way phone booths should look.

I was sorry to see that the bird shit had been scrubbed off the pumpkin carriage since we were last there.

Later in the morning, people begin trickling over.

On the way to Joshua Tree to get the legal mishegaas out of the way. The desert was embarrassingly resplendent.

- Friday evening dinner with EVERYONE at 29 Palms Inn restaurant
- Afterparty in our courtyard
- Saturday ceremony set-up
- And then the actual wedding deal itself in Bagdad

I didn't personally take any pictures of these things, but many did.

Saturday afternoon

Back at 29 Palms, preparing to head back to Pasadena. I'm pretty bedraggled and tired.

Scott isn't.

He took this nice picture of me.

And I took this nice picture of us.

The bride is happy to be back in jeans.

Sunday Morning

Brunch at The Raymond. The food was so good we all killed each other. Don't ask how or why, just understand - that's how good. There was either sea bass, a frittata, curried chicken, or french toast with nueske ham. (We picked the menu)

The Raymond is in a restored Arts and Crafts Bungalow where the Raymond Hotel, which burned in the 20s (?) once was. Shown here are Joe & my sister, Dad's wife Char & Dad.

Dorothy & Brian (Scott's brother), Mike (performed ceremony) and Nicole, Betty (Scott's mom) and Bob (Scott's dad) out of shot. Me, my mom, Scott, Russ (photographer) not pictured.

Then Sunday afternoon families came over & gave us some presents and left; Sunday night we had another ridiculously indulgent dinner, this time with Scott's folks at the Parkway Grill. I think the food may have been even better than the Raymond. Exquisite is a corny sounding word, but that's what it was.

Finally, and most importantly, the floorboards at the RV place when we returned the rental Monday morning.

Now we just have to finish the rest of that keg, pack, and we're all set.

WOOOO

OK I guess this is it

Leaving tomorrow for 29 Palms! And, you know, the wedding.

We have been running around all day getting everything ready and packing and so forth. I took our new shade structure on a dry run. Works good.

Picked up our rented RV, this is to caravan our families out to the desert site in style and comfort.

It's big!

33 feet!

Here's an innovation on today's modern RVs that I wasn't aware of: you can press a button and slide this whole section (orange) out, creating a pretty spacious area inside (about to green). Neat!

The house we rented at 29 Palms Inn — "Irene's Historic Adobe" — has a big courtyard in back, for our hang-outs Thursday and Friday nights. There's cactus and some trees and all kinds of shit. There's a woodburning thing for fires, and I got some kind of bee in my bonnet that I want to roast some Spam on a stick over it as part of my personal inexplicable pre-wedding rituals, so I got some Spam.

I made a bunch of hanging candle things to hang in the courtyard - I bought hardwood dowels, painted them different colors. Then I collected together / purchased about 80 glass jars. I wired the threads of all the jars to hang from black wires. They will get hung from the dowels at varying lengths — 5 to 8 jars per dowel, hanging in a line — and then the dowels get hung levelly from whatever — trees, adobe wall, eaves, etc. Tealights will be put in each jar to be burned and enjoyed when night falls. So there will be hanging candlelight everywhere in the courtyard from these crazy jars. Someone else will have to light these because I will be roasting Spam.

Then Tuesday we leave for central / eastern Europe. I am pretty excited.

Cheers and love to my doggs, suckers! I will be missing you until I get back.

Hello

It's a dress

So I got this dress. I am confident it will function properly in the harsh, arid desert.

Miscellaneous jewelry pieces

Brass Coil Earrings on classy fish-hooks

This Thing
I made U-shaped pins for this one to see how they would behave when linked up; they made a sine wave. (links to bigger)

Here it is on:

Cubes

Weird Pulled Canes of Glass
This makes a tiny glass insect clicking noise with every motion of the head or neck.

How it would look if you were trapped or just visiting inside a bottle of Bombay gin

...provided your bottle was inside my house.

The Strap

While ensickened, I learned how to crochet a basic block from the internet. Didn't have any yarn, so I used 5 strands of sewing thread together and made this sick ass strap for my camera. It's 4' by 2".

I sewed a backing of silk onto it to keep the shape, and for reversability.

The thread-into-yarn turned out to be a pretty good racket. To keep it together and untangled, I took a block of foam, jammed 5 bamboo skewers upright in it to be spindles, and put each spool of thread on one. Fixed the foam to a surface. Drawing on the multiple line while crocheting was just like pulling yarn from a skein.

UPDATE:
Well, I went ahead and made a bag for the camera. You know — to attach the strap to.

UPDATE #2:
The camera bag goes drinkin'.
The blur to the far right is Scott.

SICK

I am sick. Good heavens, I am so, so sick.

This is the most my throat has ever hurt.

So sick.

sad face

Murder in room-temperature blood

I killed our fridge. I stabbed it to death.

It Frosts Over Regularly
I was happily chiseling large chunks of winter wonderland out of our freezer with a hammer and a big knife the other day, when an incautious blow pierced the freezer wall, and the hissing started.

I panicked; I tried to plug the tiny hole with ice shavings to no avail. Then I tried superglue, which also failed. Shrieking, I ran in circles around the kitchen, patting my head in alarm and bouncing from foot to foot.

The hissing eventually stopped, replaced by a menacing silence.

Later, the internet confirmed that what escaped was the refrigerant gas that had, up until now, made our refrigerator cold .

To Add to My Disgrace
While chiseling, I had been playing out the scene which would occur when I showed Scott the clean, empty, un-ice-encrusted freezer and crowed at length regarding the ingenuity of my defrosting method over his (a blowdryer and patience.)

I know if this period in my life is replayed before my eyes when I die, it will be to the soundtrack of 2001: A Space Odyssey — the refrigerator-shaped monolith, the terrible burden of tools, the skull-smashing ...and me throwing the knife up into the air and it becoming a space station.

Under delicate siege

It's been a banner year for Vanessa cardui, apparently.

Thousands and thousands of them have been passing through town, en route from Mexico to the Pacific Northwest.

As I drove around last weekend, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. At first I thought they were escaping from some central location, because there were just so many of them.

Later, I realized they were all going one direction.

You can stand still and count them as they fly past, fixing your eyes on a different one each second or two, and noticing the others in your peripheral vision.

If they develop weapons, we are finished.

A little snow on my euphemism

I'm going gray. Well, actually, white.

I've always had 15 white hairs in one area on my head; I noticed them as a teenager. Now, though, they are being fruitful and multiplying — one on the temple, one in the bangs, etc.

A white hair refracts a lot of light, and is thicker than my standard brown hair. I do not object to its presence.

Once I've gone thoroughly white, I will grow it out long and live in an isolated wooded thatched-roof cottage.

As a bit of red herring, though, I will only wear denim worksuits.

Don't you want some meatball to love?

Don't you need some meatball to love

Wouldn't you love some meatball to love

You better find some meatball to love

"Turkey Meatballs"
Co-starring hummus, chopped green olives, sauteed onions and dark greens.

Hmmm.

I was so enraged for much of Friday I could hardly breathe. This culminated in hysterics Friday night, which Scott was nice enough to be present for.

Saturday was wasted; the aftereffects of Friday included face swollen beyond recognition, and an absence of energy or will.

Sunday was dark and drizzly, which thwarted the long bike ride I had already dressed for. After pointlessly walking around the house wondering what I was going to do, I went for a ride anyway. I rode around for 90 minutes in the wet gray fluorescent sky: soaking in drizzle, face wet, hands chilled, exhilarated beyond description, superhuman.

Wondering if I should ditch the new pill I switched to and get an IUD.

I have a big pile of peeled baby carrots

I guess I'm just going to sit here and eat them until they are gone.

Once they are gone, I will be insane.

A return to sunity

Quite continental

Soon, I'll be able to stand up a little straighter while lying about being a worldly jet-setter...because it won't be shameful, filthy lies for much longer.

Pictured above: my first passport

Our upcoming itinerary currently includes Prague, Salzburg, Bratislava, Munich (for a football match), and Budapest.

This is pretty close to the top of the list of things that are as completely exciting as possible.

Will I be insufferable when I get back?
Only time will tell.

Views through the glass I picked up

(links to 1600 * 1200)