Um, hello again?

It seems kind of arrogant to think that anyone still regularly or quasi-regularly checks this blog, since I haven't posted in over two months now, but since I have the urge to resume and I know there are people out there who do this mystical "RSS" thing that tells them when blogs update, I'm going for it.

The reasons for my absence were many, but they basically boiled down to not having enough energy at the end of the day to sit down and write any more than absolutely required. Now, though, things seem to have settled on the writing front and it seems like a nice change from doing reading or sifting through electronic piles of linguistics articles. So here I am!

Big news: wedding invitations should be mailed today! I'm planning on going home right after my afternoon class so I can drive them to the post office. (Put them in a roadside mailbox? I don't think so, my friend.) Michael I and have been diligently addressing and stamping and sealing envelopes and assembling invitations since Sunday. Speaking of which, did you know that the vast majority of wedding invitations require assembly? At the very least, you've got arrange the RSVP card, its envelope and the main invite nicely in the big envelope. At the most, you're talking gluing various backings to other backings which are then attached to the main invite body and securing the whole thing with an artfully-tied ribbon. Apparently if you don't trust your ability to artfully tie bows and swirls and so on, you shouldn't order those invitations. Personally, I followed this cautious route.

Still, ours did require some assembly. So if/when you get an invite (hopefully they arrive quickly and successfully), think of Michael, painstakingly applying layers of tiny "glue dots" to create your finished product. (As the only one of us with moderately legible handwriting, I was addressing envelopes while he did the construction. So think of me when you tear open the envelope?)

Otherwise, honestly, there hasn't been that much going on. We've got a list together of things we want to put on our registries (information forthcoming) that runs heavily towards kitchen things, perhaps unsurprisingly. For some reason I thought that signing up for things on the registry would be relatively speedy. But oh man. No. If you'd like a mortar and pestle (to choose one admittedly esoteric example), how do you choose which of the four available you'd like? How big does one's mortar and pestle need to be for all forseeable spice-crushing? I saw only one way to find out: "Um, hey Michael...?" Unfortunately, when said culinary expert is ass-deep in invitation construction, he isn't really available to help. Bottom line: we really need to put the registry together together -- Mike doesn't know if I'd prefer the green, red or white bowls, and I don't know whether we'd want the garlic crusher with the additional slicing feature or not.

So registry was put on hold for the invites, which were really the highest priority (since we decided on an RSVP date like Feb. 1st, when it seemed like we'd have forever to get them ready and sent). But it's coming!


In un-wedding-related news, Michael and I have also been house hunting here in Bloomington. We've seen several nice places and definitely have a few possibilities on our plates. The new tax credit is also a nice bonus. Also, in a fit of ridiculousness, I get additional breaks on taxes on money spent on room and board while enrolled as a full time student (so, like, all my money) because my county was part of the summer flooding that caused such problems in the Midwest. IU and Bloomington didn't really sustain much damage, but other parts of the county did, so all residents (which I now am) get tax relief on their academic spending. Sweet! Undeserved, in my case, but as a limited-income grad student with a wedding and a new house and a honeymoon to finance, I'll take it!

All right, I'm off to class. Hopefully now that things have returned to a more normal state of affairs here at IU, I can update more regularly. Either way, it's definitely time to turn my focus back to the nuptuals. Wedded bliss, full speed ahead.