My Life, As Told Between (Baby Cakes') Naps

I bought my wedding dress this weekend!! After unanimous approval from both the Girlfriends and the Sisters, and a little whimpering over the price, I handed over my credit card (which was emitting its own pathetic whimpers). I love, love, love the dress though and can’t wait to wear it! Oh, and to get married and all that of course. =)

My weekend got off to a nice start Friday night, when we had dinner at C&O with a couple of T’s friends. Unfortunately, we had to call it an early night because I had to get up at 5:oo a.m. for a 20 mile run the next morning. The run, my first 20 mile run since the Marathon in March, was great! Aside from a brief moment at mile 15 when I wondered if I could go on, the run was fun and fairly relaxed.

T and I spent most of Saturday cleaning house and preparing for the dinner party we were hosting for some of my friends who were visiting from out of town. Dinner (aka take out pizza and snacks) was fun, although we bailed on going out afterwards in favor of watching Battlestar Galactica Razor and going to sleep early. Because that’s how we roll.

Fortunately, I got in a lot more together time with them on Sunday, when they came over for brunch, wedding dress shopping, and cupcakes. After they left, T and his brother dragged me to do more manly things – like watching I Am Legend. Which I actually only saw 1/3rd of as my eyes were firmly shut for 2/3rds of the movie. Either because I was scared, anticipated being scared, or was recovering from a scare.

(As told to me by T.)

T: Yes, my finance’s beautiful and in great shape [Note from Y: Not so sure I believe this part.] She loves to run and has run a few marathons.

Co-Worker: Really? Well, that’s all well and good now, but what happens when she blows out a knee and can’t run anymore?

T: Well, I guess she’ll just eat less. [Note from Y: I definitely believe this part.]

My sisters came to town this past weekend for a sister-bonding, wedding dress shopping weekend. It’s been years since all three of us have spent any length of time together, so it was a really great weekend. Made even better by the fact that I think I’ve found my perfect wedding dress (*knock on wood*)!

We visited three bridal stores and while we liked several dresses, we all fell in love with a dress at the last store. It’s simple, sophisticated, and sexy while still feeling like a wedding dress rather than just another white dress. The cut of the dress is a little reminiscent of the 1920’s. Best of all, it’s comfortable, lightweight and doesn’t require a petticoat! I absolutely love it and am dragging some friends along next weekend to try it on again. I totally want to buy it RIGHT NOW!

Some of you may already know this about me, but I have scarcity issues. I’m always slightly worried that things will run out before I get to them. I know in this context it’s totally illogical, but it’s there nonetheless. It may be a family trait since my sister B (who first noticed the dress) is now worried they’ll run out of all the good wedding dresses before she gets married/engaged. In fact, after we left the last bridal shop, she called her longterm boyfriend and told him, “You’d better get on it!”

In related shopping news, I bought these shoes on sale recently:

(They’re a darker, richer red than they look in this photo.)

I had thought to wear them underneath my dress (no one will see my shoes anyways and they’d be a fun touch of color!) but given my sisters’ gasps of horror and vehement objections, I may have to reconsider. Although I have no idea what else I’d wear them to/with. . .

Any minute now I’m going to start shopping for OTHER people. Really. I promise!

Remember me? I don’t know if you’re still out there, but I use to post on this Blog occastionally. I realize it’s been even more sparse than usual lately. Work’s been really busy and with the holidays and wedding planning (by which I mostly mean looking at pictures of stuff online and in magazines) and updating MySpace, Facebook, Friendster and my wedding site, this Blog’s been a little neglected. Sorry about that. I can’t promise that’s going to change any time soon, but you know you can always email or call me right? Cause I’m just saying, I’ve noticed a lack of such emails and calls recently. I know, I know, I haven’t been particularly good at instigating those either. However, T and I did order our cheesy Christmas cards recently so you can expect those in the mail sometime. . . hopefully before next Christmas.

So yes, all is good. We’ve been filling our days with lots of friends, family and food. We’re heading up to northern California today for a belated Thanksgiving dinner with my family, which I’m really excited about. I’ll also get to see some friends I haven’t seen in forever. My sisters are coming to town the following weekend to help me try on wedding dresses. Then one of my best friends, the Frog, is back in California for the holidays, so I’m looking forward to seeing her.  Hope your holidays are all going well too and would love to hear from you! =)

I hope you all are able to make it home to celebrate Thanksgiving with your families. This year will be the second year I’m doing a belated Thanksgiving (we were on our cruise to the Caribbeans last year). T unfortunately has to work Thursday so we’re going home to visit my family the following weekend. Since my family is small and everyone but me lives in San Jose anyways, they’re postponing Thanksgiving dinner until December 1st. Yay for great families!

Speaking of great families, T and I went with his mother and brother to Disneyland to celebrate Birthday Month (all three of them have birthdays this month). I had a blast, even when forced to endure scary rollcoaster rides like Space Mountain. We got to the park at 10am and stayed until midnight, going on what must have been every single ride in both Disneyland and California Adventure.

Unfortunately, my body chose to remind me the next day that I’m getting older and thus can no longer be physically active for that long a stretch without some repercussions. Exhausted, I slept through my alarm and completely missed up meeting with my friends for the run that I had organized, then just layed around and did nothing the rest of the day, periodically taking a nap to escape the exhausting laying around. Three days later, I feel like I’m just barely getting my energy back. . .

Anyways, happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Sorry, work’s been kicking my butt this week. Between substantive work, meetings, and firm events, etc., I’ve been stretched a little thin. I’ve even noticed that my right eye has been twitching a bit the last couple of days! Sigh. No end in sight until mid December. Woe is me.

On a positive note, T and I painted an accent wall this past weekend! It’s teal and super cute. I’ll try to remember to post a picture.

Sorry posting’s been especially spotty on this blog lately. Since we booked a wedding date this past weekend – September 19th! – I’ve been secretly putting together our wedding blog. Yes, even though my wedding is actually ages from now (in exactly 316 days according to my wedding website countdown), I’ve been checking out wedding websites and putting my own together.

In case you’re interested, here are some of the dresses I tried on and actually liked!

Update: Since my friend CH mistakenly expressed an interest in my wedding stories, I thought I’d explain why wedding dress shopping was so much harder than I had anticipated. Apparently most places require you make a reservation – which I didn’t realize and when informed didn’t understand. Since we only had an hour to spare (and I don’t want to spend $1,000+ for my dress), we popped into David’s Bridal, a big chain store that could accomodate walk-ins. The reason appointments are necessary immediately became obvious. Many of the dresses require petticoats and bustier bras (provided by the store), are heavy, delicate, and/or cumbersome. Getting those suckers on and off is a labor intensive endeavor so someone is assigned to you who gets the dresses and helps you put them on and take them off while your friends sit on the sideline ready to provide commentary. It’s a little unnerving to be the center of that much attention, but maybe it’s good preparation for the wedding?

Happy Halloween all! Hope everyone’s enjoying their week! We’ve been super busy lately, but mostly with fun things. Friday night, we had dinner with a couple of T’s friends who were staying with us as they had a wedding in LA that weekend.

Saturday morning I did an 11 mile run by myself because I woke up too late to join my running group. Saturday night we went out with KA and some other friends in Hermosa, which was a blast. The girls dressed up as sailors and T came as a low-budget pirate (because the Halloween stores were ransacked we only managed to buy the pirate accessories but not the actual costume, so he wore jeans and a white t-shirt).

Sunday I went wedding dress shopping with some friends, which wasn’t nearly as horrible as I was anticipating, but a lot more involved than I thought. I even found some dresses I liked. Afterwards, T and I went to a pumpkin carving dinner party. But being the old fogies we are, by the time the dinner portion of the evening was over, it was so late we were too tired to do any carving. Fortunately, most of the other guests felt the same way so our hosts kindly gave us all cute little pumpkins and a carving set to go. T and I carved ours last night (well, T carved while I hurriedly threw together dinner since it was getting really late):

Went to the UCLA game Saturday with a bunch of T’s college friends who were visting from out of town. I’m not much of one for football – I brought a book, which I finished during the game – but it was a beautiful day and I had a great time just hanging out. I even hear we (UCLA) won. =) Afterwards, we ate at Hurry Curry, which was super yummy!

T and I tested our hosting skills by having everyone over at our place for most of the weekend. Lack of seating aside, I think it went pretty smoothly. We even managed, with the much appreciated help of a couple of his friends, to prepare breakfast for eight on Sunday morning!

Between the game and the race in Santa Monica taking over my usual running route, I didn’t make it for my long run this weekend and instead settled for doing 4.5 miles at the gym Sunday morning, which did not put a dent in the massive amount of food I’d consumed over the weekend. Fortunately, after breakfast, and some more football watching, we went biking. It was the first time we’d gone biking since we’d moved. The bike path and beach were relatively empty and the weather was perfect. It was the great way to end the weekend.

• Went on a great 11 mile run with my friend the Teacher this past weekend!
• Visited a beautiful possible wedding location both T and I loved. It’s a scenic ranch in the Malibu mountains. We’re looking at August ’08 and are leaning heavily towards a Friday wedding, since it’s so much cheaper, but we’re worried about the inconvenience to the guests. Wedding planning is hard. I’ll feel so much better once we book the venue.
• Bought some fantastic hand soap from Target this weekend. I’d been wanting to try it ever since I read about it. I bought all three scents available and the first one I used (Almond Flower) smells great. The soap container feels nice, looks beautiful and is biodegradable. The soap lathers wonderfully, is creamy without leaving a film and isn’t antibacterial! Yay for Method hand soap! =)
• Finally got an overhead light up in our bedroom without too much hassle. We’re slowly but surely getting our condo in order.
• Saw a beautiful bridemaid dress in one of the sample wedding albums we viewed. I’m now on a hunt to find out the dress’s designer and exact color. Unfortunately, googling “grayish blue bridesmaid dresses” hasn’t proven particularly useful, although it has exhausted my investigative arsenal.
• Hung out with T’s friends visiting from New York and their adorable 1.5 year old son who will hopefully be our ring-bearer. =)

How cute is this dress from BR?  Sadly, they’re out of my size online and it doesn’t seem to be available in any nearby stores.

We’ve been “working on” (i.e., messing up) the condo. This past weekend, we spent most of Sunday trying, without much success, to install overhead lights into prewired slots, a seemingly simple task. Except somehow, when we do things, the simplest tasks turn into minor disasters. After much cursing and fumbling, we concluded that one of the lights we bought was clearly defective (and hence it was not our fault we couldn’t get it on properly) and that the other light was meant to be slightly crooked. Oh well. At least we’ve got a bit more light in the place now. Also, a few more gaping holes until we purchase non-defective lights.

Between household chores (like laundry, installing lights, and battling against an invading army of ants), T and I went for a 5 mile run this weekend around the bluffs behind our neighborhood, which was fun. I also went to a Pilates class taught by my friend J and while I’ve done mat Pilates before, this was my first class with the Pilates machines.* I’m sore all over today. But in a good, I-feel-my-muscles-developing kind of a way. Can’t wait for the next class . . . which is unfortunately after my 12 mile run next weekend, so we’ll see if I survive to write about it. I have not been working out as much or eating as well as I should lately.

When not working out or puttering around the house, we did some reading (I finished a series recommended by a coworker while T started The Golden Compass), hung out with T’s brother (I watched while they played Halo 3), forced some of our friends to watch Serenity with us (one of my favorite movies), and caught up with one of my Quad friends who happened to be in town. (T also went to the UCLA v. Notre Dame football game, but considering the horrible outcome of that game, he’s choosen to pretend that it never happened.)

*Funny story. Upon being told that someone whistled at me on my way to Pilates (I realize I should be offended, but sometimes a good whistle is appreciated – especially when one is feeling a little tubby!), T’s response was a confused, “Why?”

Speaking of shopping, there are some great finds on Overstock.com. I’m reluctant to buy furniture online, but these are some of the things I’d get if I ever get over that (and if we ever replenish our savings) . . .

One of these rugs:

One of these tables:

One of these barstools:

For now, I guess I’ll just content myself with just admiring them online!

Even though I should be saving my money for our first property tax payment, I’ve been doing a bit of online shopping lately. Nothing very expensive but it’s starting to add up. I really need to stop . . . although some of the shopping has been FOR the condo, so it’s practically like I’m saving money for property taxes, right? For example, I bought these prints from Etsy. They’re so cute and bright and colorful. I can’t wait to put them up!

I also finally bought some new clothes for work: a herringbone wrap dress, a silk shirt (in plum), and two skirts. Nothing horribly exciting, but they’re all functional and most were on sale. I particularly love the pencil skirts and am hoping they are short enough that I won’t develop the dreaded stumpiness KQ mentioned.

I’ve been running semi-consistently lately so hopefully the clothes will still fit when they arrive in the mail in a couple of weeks! I’ve found that my weight is pretty steady as long as I run at least 15-20 miles a week (the fact that I’m not actually losing any weight running this much is a testament to my love of food). Although I love running, I’m beginning to sense that my knees are not so thrilled with it so I’ve started taking glucosamine supplements and trying to work in more elliptical training. I’ve also been avoiding high heels in the hopes that my feet will convey the message to my knees that at least I’m trying. Fortunately, I’ve been oddly uninterested in shoes of late . . . although my friend recently bought this pair, which I have been enviously eyeing.

Yay!!! After months and months of searching, we FINALLY bought a sofa this weekend! We’d been having a really hard time finding something both of us liked. I liked the aesthetics of a smaller, sleeker sofa and T wanted something comfortable and big enough to fit his (very tall!) frame. We’d started the search for the perfect sofa around December of last year and had been to every furniture store in the greater LA area at least once over the last several months. We were on the verge of giving up and likely buying something neither one of us would be happy with when we dropped by The Sofa Company this weekend and fell in love with – *trumpets blaring* – a sofa that was on SALE!

Unfortunately, the loveseat was not on sale and had to be special ordered, so it ended up costing us more than the sofa and we have to wait 5-7 weeks to get it delivered, but I’m thrilled our place is starting to come together. The sofa looks much better in person than in this picture. The fabric is microfiber and it’s a rich, warm tan with down-wrapped seats and pillows. I so want to buy one of these gorgeous decorative pillows for it, but I’m going to hold off since we need to make sure we can pay all of our bills this month first!

In other news, we also checked out a possible wedding location this weekend. It’s on a hill overlooking the ocean so the view’s beautiful. Overall, it had many elements we really liked, but it’s not quite perfect, it’s very expensive (although we haven’t found any place that isn’t!), and it’s booked up for Saturday evenings through October 2008.

Sigh. Wedding planning is really hard. We oscillate between wanting to do something (in which case, I already feel myself buying into the idea that it has to be perfect according to some undefined idea of perfect I have in my head) or not doing anything at all and saving ourselves a lot of time and money…

This may be the funniest/sadest thing I’ve ever seen…

I know, I know, it’s been too long since the last post. I’ve just been super busy lately. My parents and one of my younger sisters visited over Labor Day weekend, and while I adore them, entertaining them was exhausting. My parents in particular always claim they’re easy going and don’t need to be entertained, but they also can’t sit still in one place for very long without getting antsy and feeling unproductive. As a result, T and I spent much of the weekend driving them around greater LA, on one of the hottest weekends of the year, as they went on a quest to help us furnish our new condo (which, admittedly was a very sweet quest). Poor T had to deal with four back seat drivers as opposed to his usual one (me) – everyone in my family hates to drive, but unforunately we all have opinions on how it should be done!

Since the Great Labor Day Quest resulted in, among other things, the successful purchase of a grill, we decided to host an impromptu BBQ on Labor Day. I think it turned out really well, thanks to our wonderful friends who brought over their Nintendo Wii’s, drinks, sides, and, of course, their wonderful selves! 🙂

Last weekend was the first weekend we had to just sit around and relax in ages. So of course it was the first weekend I had to work since coming to my new firm. Nevertheless, we squeezed in a quick run to Ikea to buy this shelf I’ve been wanting:

We somehow miraculously managed to get it back to our place in my little Honda Civic and T surprised me by assembling it while I was at work! It looks great up in our den and I can’t wait to get the rest of the pieces we need for the room. . . and get rid of some old pieces. We’re also planning to pick up T’s grandmother’s dining room table set, which is currently in storage in Portland. And I’d really like to paint some accent walls eventually. In the meantime, I have a friend visiting from out of town this weekend and we’re hoping to scout out some possible wedding locations next weekend. Stay tuned for more exciting updates of the days of my life. 🙂

Back from Hawaii! It was wonderful vacation, but entirely too short. We ostensibly went for a friend’s wedding, but we mostly went because it was Hawaii. Unfortunately, with the new condo and the being poor and all, we had decided to do a very short trip – just three full days in Oahu. We got in late Thursday and left Monday afternoon.

Friday, we did a little canoeing and surfing (T’s one of the little surfing dots below) and pre-wedding BBQ .

Saturday, we drove to Lanikai to do some snorkling during the day. . .

. . .and went to the wedding in the evening.

Sunday, we made grand plans to go parasailing and jet skiing but ended up sitting in the shade, sipping Lava Flows and watching the waves. It was perfect.

T and I made tacos last night. It was our first homecooked meal since we moved into the new condo. They were fun to make, fairly healthy (we used lean ground turkey), and yummy. It reminded us of Taco Tuesdays in Westwood during our (respective) UCLA days, when Acapulco’s offered free tacos during happy hour. We’re thinking of making it a monthy tradition and inviting friends over next time. So, if you live in the greater LA area, your invitation is in the mail. =)

Overall, we’re settling into the condo nicely. Can’t believe we’ve been living here for almost a month. We finally got the curtains up in our living room (whether they’ll stay up remains to be seen). They’re aqua green with damask sheers behind them. The remaining curtain (in the guest room) and other major purchases (such as bookshelves and a new sofa set) will have to wait until we replenish our resources…