Category: fate

Really? No, can’t be. But it is.

Labor Day. A nice three-day weekend. A day off that signifies the end of summer.

WHY GOD WHY!?!?!?!?!?

I know I can’t regulate the passage of time, (cuz if I could I’d have a lot fewer birthdays I’ll tell you that much…) but COME ON! How did the summer slip away so fast?

Here we are again. September.

Heck, the frappin’ New Mexico State Fair (Oh, excuse me, Expo New Mexico) is just around the corner…like…starting on Friday.

The days are noticeably shortening.

Before you know it, Halloween will arrive with the chill it brings in the evening breeze. (the stores already have Halloween candy on the shelves!)

Pretty soon it will be five freaking thirty in the evening and pitch black outside…while I toil away at work.

Then the time changes.

Gah!

The Good Man spent some time last night explaining to me, again, how September and October are the *best* months in the Bay Area and I should be happy for Indian Summer. I am not.

I need sunlight! I’m a wilting flower in the hazy, cloudy skies!

(she says, whimperingly, while it’s planned to be 90 degrees here today…)

*sigh*

Seasons change. People change.

Basically, if I could go back to the week of my honeymoon in the heart of summer, sitting under an umbrella by the beach, happy hour at sunset…THAT would be great.

Instead I stare mournfully out my window…at work.

Maybe this is less about the seasons on the calendar and more about the seasons of my life, eh?

Thoughts at less than a week to the "big day"

I promise to get back to regularly scheduled snarkery soon, but I just gotta get through this week.

We are down to less than a week until I get…(holy crap) married.

Here’s the thing, I feel pretty calm. It seems like everyone around me (mostly work folks) desperately want me to display full-blown anxiety. Like my freak out would somehow validate them?

Oh, I’m sure that this calm feeling won’t last through the weekend. We’re down to where the “small stuff” gets sweated. Where you find out if the people you paid a not-insubstantial amount of money will actually step up to the plate.

So far, I’ve managed not to be a bridezilla. Ok, to be fair, I was *prepared* to lose my shizz on Saturday for my latest dress fitting. The folks just don’t seem to be getting it. The seamstress had the audacity to tell me that the top wasn’t too large, I was just “not used to wearing a strapless dress”.

I informed her, in no uncertain terms, that I would NOT be spending my wedding day tugging at my dress. So they fixed it.

On this past Saturday, I was prepared to take the dress home, but for this weird pucker in the seam at my hips. I said “that needs to be fixed” and the lady helping me said “oh no, you just need to smooth it”. I said no, she said smooth. This went on for a while.

After a bit, the owner came over (she hadn’t been privy to the no/smooth conversation) and said “hey, it looks like this fits great…oh, except for THAT” and pointed RIGHT at the pucker-in-contention.

Then she ordered her minions to fix it.

Heh.

No need to bridezilla when the owner of the shop (who puts her name on my dress) can do my dirty work!

And that’s not the half of it…

Am I worried that the lackadaisical new owners of the reception location will not pull it off? Sure. But there is little I can do about it at this point. We have to, as The Good Man says, “play through”.

Will I feel the intensity of the event when, starting Friday, our nearest and dearest start arriving? Sure. Family always ups the ante.

But included in those nearest and dearest are my best friend and my two goddaughters. For how ever worried I could be, I can look into the faces of my two baby girls and smile. Because being with them is what matters. And having my best friend to hold my hand. Oh, and having her help me into my bustier and Spanx.

I already promised her I’d try not to be too sweaty. I’m a real good friend, huh?

I’m not going to jinx myself by saying “oh everything is perfect!!” It can’t be.

But The Good Man and me…we’ll just play through.

It’s the foundation of our relationship.

And at the end of the day, if I end up married to him, then the day was a rousing success. No matter what else happens.

Oh..and cake! That always helps…

Don’t let the door hitcha on the way out

So Friday May 29, 2009 is the end of another era in the history of The Tonight Show.

Jay Leno breathes his last as host.

And to that I have to say…it’s about damn time.

I’ve not ever really been a fan of Leno and really wasn’t into it when he took over the show. But against my own negative opinion, he’s done his schtick and done it successfully for the past sixteen years.

But in my mind, he’ll never be the king of late night that Carson was.

And I wonder if his departure will be anywhere near as classy?

Remember Bette Midler’s appearance on the second to last Carson show? Memorable. She made Carson cry…I was watching that night.

In case you don’t remember or are too young, YouTube is there to pick us up.

Unsure that Conan will do much to fill the shoes of Carson, or even Leno.

Hard to watch. So I won’t.

Ah well, watching that vid brought back some happy memories. Ah the magic of YouTube.

If you are a GenX’er and REALLY want to sashay down memory lane, try out this one…link love to NewMexiKen for this voyage in the wayback machine.

Thar she blows!

Yup. There you go. The Good Man and me are legally licensed to run off like two crazy kids and hitch our lives together, willy-nilly without regard for consequences!

YIPE!

juuuuuust kidding!

The good news is that the county produces this handy illustrated booklet to help us get through “the rough patches”.

Last evening, we solemnly flipped through the pages.

Who knew that keys to a happy marriage included regular exercise and washing your vegetables before consuming?

Ah well…: plugs nose and jumps in :

____________________

PS: ok, that’s not the *actual* license above, rather a pretty souvenir the State of California provides…the real one is quite ugly…form-like, in triplicate and all that governmental schtuff.

Schadenfreude

–noun
satisfaction or pleasure felt at someone else’s misfortune.

Yup. American society, in general, seems to love them some schadenfreude.

Some coffee fans get grim delight in Starbucks woes

Really? Why?

I mean, if you say to me, “Well, I don’t really care for Starbucks coffee because it’s too strong/weak/bitter/strange for me”, then great. No one says you gotta like everything.

But if you say “feh! F–k ’em because they became so successful”…well that’s just mean. And elitist.

So while the coffee snoots are busy scribbling bad poetry in their local coffee shop, feeling superior that Starbucks seems to be faltering, they seem to forget it was the coffee snoots themselves who made Starbucks what they are.

Starbucks used to be the low-down cool thing. It used to quietly be the “in” thing, where the coffee snoots went for a cuppa and conversation. Starbucks was filling an unfilled need. Or they created a need.

That is capitalism at it’s finest!

So suddenly they go from being good to being dirt because they are worldwide? And making money? So neener neener now that you’ve come upon hard times?

As a Starbucks stockholder, I see this retrenching as a good thing, actually, for the long term health of the company.

It blows that people will be out of work and stores will pull out of neighborhoods, but I honestly believe “getting back to core competencies” is the right thing to do in this down economy.

Ah, that’s just me being rational again. I hate it when I get like that…

(note to my favorite New Mexico Barista: Hang in there friend!)