Dress shopping

This weekend, Ding and Loud dragged me down to Verona to go wedding dress shopping. While there, I quickly realized how ignorant I am about wedding dresses. Apparently, you can get pretty much any dress altered in any way you want.
Seriously! And if you go somewhere like Vera's or David's, you try on sample dresses, decide which one you want, and then they send an order off and the dress is made just for you. It takes like 4 months!
The place we went to was sort of like a consignment shop where the dresses they had were the only dresses. I actually tried on 2 dresses, and amazingly, they both looked pretty good. I think I have a better idea of what I want now - simple white, with bright crayola-red accents. That would go with the whole red/white/black color scheme we're thinking about.
Though, standing in front of the mirror dressed in a wedding dress and veil was quite possibly the weirdest event of my life. It was like seeing someone else, and the fact that my brain kept trying to deal with the fact that the person in the mirror was actually ME left me emotionally and mentally exhausted.
I guess it's a good thing that I have such a long time to get used to it :)

Fun and not so fun

This weekend rocked. We went on a canoe trip down the WI River and camped out one night. The highlight was the 9am constitutional of shotgunning a beer each day before we started out. Of course, I was then drunk by noon on Saturday (earliest ever, amazing) and me and the fiancé went to bed by like 9pm or so. Everyone else was in bed by 10pm. I figure that we technically partied all day so I don't feel bad about retiring so early.
The next day was pretty funny since everyone had somehow missed some part of their back when applying sunscreen and we were all pretty red/white splotchy. I think that, all in all, the trip rocked (pictures to come) and was worth the ouchiness that I now go through every time I put on a bra.
On the not-so-fun note, this afternoon was the sentencing for the OWI in January. Part of the sentence I've mostly already done, and a lot of the parts I still have to do. I'm hoping to avoid jail time and am praying that since my foot still doesn't work we can get in a loophole and I'll be able to just do about 3 months of home confinement without actually being in jail (the last time I was in jail it was the suckiest time EVEREVEREVEREVER, and I'm not looking forward to repeating it). I'd be able to go to work and that's it, like last time, only way longer. I'm not sure what the alcohol policy is - if it's pretty lax, I'll be hosting a lot more events at my place between 9/1 and 12/1. License revoked for a year and then I can get an occupational (only drive to work and back at certain times or something I think), and I have to get an ignition interlock device installed on any car I own for the next 2 years until I can get my normal license back (36 month total suspension). But again we're hoping to do some shifting and get through a loophole to avoid the IID at least.
It means that Damon will have to drive for the wedding, but while I'm in RI for that I'm hoping to hit up the DMV in Pawtucket and pay them $100 to officially remove the first DUI from my record (since it's been over 5 years and I think that's the time limit).
Yes, it's basically bribery and it's legal. What do you expect from a mob-run state? But at least my insurance would probably go down a bit once that's off the record. I'll have to see if it's now more money than what I thought - I think the last time I heard about that was like 4 years ago now. Yey inflation.

Recent activities (and pics!)

Busy busy lately!

The 4th was spent at Lucia's house, drinking, eating, and then generally carousing at the Monona 4th of July Festival. The highlight of that, of course, was the wife carry. While no one in our group actually participated (that would involve serious training, people), the 2 engaged couples were forced to prove that they could, in fact, at least show proper form if need be:

Other pics that led up to this, and of M also being subjected to this (and almost wiping out!):

Awesome.

The weekend after that was spent shotgunning cheap beer, playing flippy cup and washers, sitting around a campfire, and otherwise partying an hour east of Madison at Roswell's parent's house.

We had healthy eating night at Ding's on that Tuesday, during which I promised to hold the next healthy eating night at my place - theme: French cooking. Get ideas ready ladies, I will be holding that sometime within in the next month.

Last weekend was the Second Annual Deep Fry Extravaganza. Oh fried foods, how do we love thee (just not for another week or so at least). But more about that on the WI Roaming blog :)

Wedding planning sucks

So, I got up early again yesterday (10:30am or so), because I again spent a large chunk of Saturday sleeping. I was trying to get in touch with the place back in Rhode Island where the fiancé and I were thinking of having the wedding.
Well, I finally get in touch with them and find out that because our wedding will be so tiny (12-15 people) we can't rent their outdoor on-the-beach patio. They won't rent for less than 60-70 people. Boo!!
So then we had to go online to try to find new venues and I called all of them and had to leave messages and such, and that took like over 2 hours. I swear to god, I hate this wedding planning stuff. I want to elope, but noooooooooo, the fiancé wants a wedding.
I haven't even really gotten down the nitty-gritty of it and I already want to give up. That's not good, is it? I'm thinking of pairing down the wedding party too, to just a few people, and just having it in my parent's backyard. It's pretty and we could rent a tent and such and just have a dinner/small reception there and then hang out. The fiancé likes that idea (it actually was his idea) and my Dad seemed ok with it, but as predicted, it gave my Mom a grade A first class heart attack, *sigh*.
Eloping is the key. Maybe Hawaii. Just me and the boy. No fancy-smancy wedding, just elope, honeymoon, reception.
Anyways, since that's not an option, I'm looking for ways to make this smaller/simpler/etc. I am, perhaps, the only person that I know that doesn't want people around when I get married. I'm fine with celebrating with people, but I want the actual ceremony to be private. I can't be the only bride-to-be who's thought that, and yet, every venue we looked at yesterday were all for like 150-400 guests. Who has that many friends and relatives that they want to invite to their wedding???

Food!

No time for posting lately, wow. I should be better about this.
So, anyways, one Saturday morning last summer, I woke up at 7am and my right wrist and hand hurt REALLY BADLY. So badly that I took asprin (which I rarely do out of principle), wrapped it in an ace bandage, and had the fiancé drive me to urgent care when it opened at 8am.
On a Saturday.
They told me it wasn't broken and just badly bruised - let me just say I have NO idea how it happened but I have been known to sleepwalk when stressed. Perhaps I got into a tussle with the boogyman or something.
Anyways, I was up, it was 9am on a sunny Saturday morning, we were on the beltline - so I thought hell, why don't we go to the Farmer's Market downtown for the first time?
So we did, and spent oodles of money on yummy food.
This year there haven't been any bruised body parts to wake me up early on Saturday, and so we haven't gone to the market since then.
But Witty lent me her book, "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" and reading it has totally changed my opinion on food and such. You need to read this book - I'm only halfway through and can't wait to see what else is in there!
1) The fiancé and I hit up the Hilldale market before work last Wednesday and we will continue to do so all summer on a weekly basis. We hope to buy ~75% of our food there instead of from the grocery store (at least in the summer).
2) Most wine/beer that I buy will now be Wollersheim or New Glarus - both this and #1 are to promote small, local businesses and reduce the shipping costs of food.
3) I ordered a kit to make your own mozzerella and hope to ease off my dependence of store-bought cheese (and if it works, this summer I'll have home-made mozzerella with tomatoes and basil grown on my own deck............heaven!).
4) For food bought at the grocery store, we will try to buy local/organic/etc.
I'm beginning to learn a lot more about sustainable living, and it all makes sense. I don't think I could do what Barbara Kingsolver did - eat only things that were produced near them - because I love things like fruit in the winter, I could never kill my own meat, and I don't know much about canning/preserving. Plus I just don't have time to maintain a whole garden and menagerie of animals.
However, there is a lot the average person can do without much effort to really change the way they eat and live to make this world a better place for small farms - who make the best food anyways.
I'm trying to get the fiancé on board. I think he is about halfway. I'll have to work harder to get him to explore this with me.
On another totally unrelated note, I FINALLY (pretty much) finished my scrapbook of the 10 day cruise that we took last October. It's really huge and I only have about 30 more minutes of work to do on it after I get what I need from the store - so yey!

Big weekend, at least mentally

This weekend was Fat Far, an event that occurs every year on Father's Day up in Chippewa Falls and consists of lots of people renting inner tubes and floating down a lazy river tied to their friends and coolers of beer.
So, for the second year in a row, 6 of us went up there and did this (this year we took 3 coolers of beer instead of 2 - never let it be said that we don't learn from our mistakes). We spent 2-3 hours floating and drinking and talking, which was fun all in all. Since I've found that I hate getting drunk when everyone else around me is drunk (Halloween on State Street, anyone?) I didn't drink much, which proved to be the best decision ever. Here's why:
1) I didn't wear my ankle brace - the river would have gotten it nasty (the river is DIRTY) and plus tan lines (or in my case, burn lines, sigh) suck
2) We floated by a large outcropping of rock that people were jumping off of because the river dropped off dramatically right off of it, so you could jump about 20 feet into the water
Well, if you know me, you know that's something I would have participated in in a heartbeat before the accident. I was more hestitant this time, espeically since I was sans brace, but after about 2 seconds I decided "Fuck it, I wanna *do* this kinda thing again" and so I scrambled off my inner tube, swam to the side of the river with 2 of the other guys, managed to clamber up the steep, rocky side with only minimal help, and then, with my friends screaming my name, finally jumped.
It was awesome.
It was the most liberating thing I've done in a long time.
Ok, sure, it's nothing like the 6 hours of cleaning I did last weekend. But I still feel like I accomplished more this weekend than I have in a while.

OMG first time for everything

So I slept pretty much all day Saturday since the fiancé was visiting a friend, and then on Sunday I actually got up before 9am (!!!!).
I fed the pets and then made coffee and cleaned, did the laundry, organized, did 2 loads of dishes, made a grocery list, cooked, and threw out so much stuff. It was great! The house looks amazing, but of course all of that took me like a full 6 hours to do and 4 cups of coffee (I was uber-caffeinated).
We even moved the small TV out of the living room, and cleaned off and put away the card table, and took the pillow off the easy chair. I put the walker and crutches away in the hall closet. Those were the last things hanging around as a reminder of the accident (except for my foot of course) and it was pretty damn refreshing to get those things put away.
This sort of thing happens once every 5 years or so, so I was freaking impressed with myself. I went through a bunch of drawers and chests and closets, and found a lot of remnents of my past, which I wanted to get rid of. I made a pile of stuff from an ex (shirts, childhood stuffed animal, class ring, etc) and will be mailing that stuff back to him. I threw away lots of old tickets and papers from past failed relationships. I just want to start over, move on from everything that went on in RI and from the accident this past January.
Maybe it's the spring cleaning bug that bit me, but I feel this need to just get EVERYTHING out of the house. I want to get down to the bare essentials and not get so bogged down with "stuff".
Though I want to hire a maid to come in monthly to just do the major stuff that I don't have the time to do - scrubbing the floors and dusting being the main things.
It'll be nice to come home for the next week while things are organized and clean. Which, of course, probably won't happen for another 5 years or so ;)

You'd think I'd be able to figure this out

This whole blogging thing confuses me. I have yet to understand how in the &#^@ to put up pictures. I shall have to bother one of the other girls sometime when we're both around a computer.
I also haven't spend much time trying to customize this blog, nor have I found out how to embed links into my posts. I'm probably thinking about it too much.
Suffice it to say, I hope to make this blog a bit more exciting once I have time.
I've been too busy. I spent the last Saturday in May recovering from a hangover induced by the terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day on the Friday before. Then the Madison Marathon was on Sunday so I had to go see the fiancé finish his very first half-marathon, then go to his parents house *yippee*. Monday was a holiday but I spent it freaking out about what to wear at a customer site since I was flying out that afternoon. Nothing fits anymore since I lost so much damn weight from the accident, and since I can't wear high heels, that severly limits what shoes I can wear. All in all I think I ended up dressed decently. Though I did end up wearing sneakers on Thursday with my dress clothes. Oh well.
Friday night I don't think I did much, as I was tired, and Saturday night was spent celebrating Loud's birthday, which was much fun.
This week is more work and hopefully a relaxing weekend, then the week after that I'm traveling again.
Things have gotten a tad bit better at work, but I still feel like I'm trying to talk but no one is listening, which is quite frustrating. But I *heart* the paycheck.

When is ok to give up?

So, the name of this blog is Never Give Up, started last Friday because work was bad.
And I don't mean bad, as in man, I'm glad that day is over. I'm not talking about bad as wow, I would give my left arm to not have to go through that again. I wouldn't even say that it was I'll give up my first born to erase that day from my memory bad.
No, it was the first-seeds-of-doubt-that-this-isn't-right-anymore bad.
This job is the whole reason why I came to WI right out of college (well, that and to escape RI, but that's a whole other chapter). So for as long as I've been here, my life has been pretty much defined by work. Who I'm friends with, where I live, where I shop, what doctors I see,how I view different things now, even who my fiance is has all been influenced by work. Which, until now, has been fine. Things were hectic, but that's what I live for. That's my caffiene. That's how I get things done.
But on Friday, in the space of 1/2 an hour, things went from hectic-but-doable to holy-christ-run-away bad - and that's exactly what I did. I ran home at 4pm because I couldn't face work for one more minute.
Now, this week I'm traveling to a customer site, so I'm not in the office, which is the exact place that I DO NOT want to be at this time (so I guess that part works out). And having most of the weekend off (but having to travel on Memorial Day, yey) and then having this week out here in beautiful VA is helping me gain perspective, but it's not the perspective I want.
Friday really blew me away. Its the first time in 3 1/2 years that I've doubted my decision to come out here and do this. Work has blown away my confidence in all areas of my life, since so many areas depend on it and how I define myself in a large way comes from it. It's stopped being fun or even challenging - it's become something that I dread more than I dread sawing off my own leg with a hack saw.
So I don't want to give up - but I don't want to be completely miserable because of this hated bullshit that makes me want to puke every time I even think about it. So that begs the question - when is it ok to give up?

Trying it out

I thought I'd try this whole blogging thing so you can know what's going on in my life.

Aren't you excited??