I realized that I felt weird to wear a shirt that had seen almost two decades of use, when I was the original owner. I have a few vintage t-shirts my mother gave me (I'm wearing one today, natch) that are older than my high school shirts, of course, and probably some Goodwill shirts approaching that age, but my high school shirts are in remarkably good shape for workout clothes, and I will keep wearing them until I can't (and then I'll entertain ideas of making a quilt out of them). It's just weird to think of wearing something I've owned for more than half my life.

Getting older doesn't bother me, for the most part (except when I complain about aches and pains, and this stupid cough I've had for a week would have been gone by now if I was younger). I figure as I age the weird feeling will happen more often as I develop more nostalgia, as everyone does.

My friend Kate celebrated her birthday yesterday (and my parents celebrated their wedding anniversary!) and we had dinner. We had a good time, but I always forget I'm a year older than most of my core of friends. It's not that big of a difference, it just sometimes makes me sad.

This website is now 11 years old. I know I haven't kept it up, and I always intend to do more with it, but I just don't have that much to say. There's that meme for "Draw My Life" running around the viral video sites, and as much as I love them, I just don't think my life would excite anyone. I'll spare you my stick figures. Have a good one after the jump.

(The picture isn't of my dress, by the way. My fiance doesn't want to even hear me talk about it, much less see it on the blog! I could never afford a Vera Wang dress anyway.)

I'm a little disappointed that I didn't have that magical moment when I knew I had on THE dress. Honestly, I don't really like trying on clothes (though I don't mind buying them. I certainly have enough) and I don't think I've ever fallen in love with a pair of shoes, much less a dress. I think I'd be pretty happy with whatever I found, and I'm lucky to have somewhat of a nice shape so most things look okay on me. I tried a few, figured out pretty quickly what looked good and what didn't, and even gave my mom's picks a chance. I'm glad I did, because it turned out that the last dress I tried was her choice, and  that was the winner. It took a while and listing the pros and cons of other ones I liked, and a discussion about price and alterations. This dress was on clearance, so the store couldn't order a different size. Luckily the dress fit, but with a few additions, it could turn into the perfect dress, AND save me some money since I don't have to search for one with every single specification. It's not super fancy, it's not designer, but it looks good on me and turned out to be even less expensive than we thought. SCORE. The alterations won't add too much to the price, and I'll end up with a dress I like when I walk down the aisle. I might even look a little like a princess.

That teary-eyed moment may not have happened, but thinking about the dress kept me up last night. I usually wake up during the night, and I couldn't keep myself from thinking about wedding things. Every time I'd get frustrated with that, I'd tell myself to quit and just get back to sleep, but I suck at Zen. I'm excited about the wedding, of course, but I'd rather have my sleep, thankyouverymuch. I hope now that I have some time when I don't have to think about weddings I'll relax (she says, with NaNoWriMo looming). I'm really glad I got the dress out of the way now. I can concentrate on NaNo and enjoy myself for a while, without spending money. Next up, in a few months: creativity with pictures, I think.

(Before I do that, let me tout our NaNoWriMo region's massive planning spree and our relationship with 7 library branches around town! And we got all this figured out in August!)

Being the somewhat obsessive person that I am, I have a bunch of wedding magazines and a couple of wedding books (aside: a few of these are a decade old, and the information is still pertinent, if some of the styles are terribly out of fashion and the prices are surely too low) and everything says the first step is to find a venue. The venue determines more than you think: how many people you can invite (though you have to have an idea of how many people you want to invite to pick a venue), what kind of dress to get, what sort of decorations work with the venue, how much extra you'll have to do (does the venue cater? Will you have to decorate the place yourself?), how far will people have to go to get from ceremony to reception, where your wedding photos will be taken, &c. It also seems to determine the overall budget. You can go low and rent a location only, and DIY that thing to high heaven. Or you can blow the biggest wad you've ever seen with a massive ballroom and a steak and lobster course.

It happened, though. We picked a place, and I can't say I wasn't stressed before and after we did. Writing that check for a deposit on our chosen date made me sick--it's so much money. Everyone says weddings will cost more than you think. That's scary when you're the ones picking up the tab. As much as my parents love me, there's no way my dad's going to hand someone a huge check at the end of the day. That's fine--I don't mind, and I always sort of figured that I'd have a DIY wedding. But this is one of those moments when I wish I had a trust fund.

We're going to be very poor for a while. Planning a wedding is exciting, but not when you have to pay for it. But that's okay. We have a budget, we know what we can spend, and we'll try our hardest to make it a great party. I just want to have fun. And if that means we spend the whole time in half-lit hotel lighting, that'll be okay. We'll save, save, save, and hopefully not go insane between now and next October.

If you've got any wedding related advice or vendors you love, please leave a comment!

Hello from the Moonrise Hotel! You should go. It's awesome. Expensive, but super fun. Mike got us a room for my birthday...and another little thing. But before I tell you about that...

I turn 32 today. Happy birthday to me! Today is the first day of my week-long vacation. The past weekend we played softball in the rain and won, then played some accountants and lost. Ironic how it didn't rain all season then dumped a bunch of precipitation on us in one weekend. Good thing we've got this hotel room to enjoy...

Especially since this happened.

Jen's a happy birthday girl.

It's a fun place to be, sometimes.

Plenty of stories, they just have to be written down.

One day.

Sure, I've written several hundred thousand words of stories for NaNoWriMo. And amazingly, none of them are in the same world; all of them are discreet places. I have some ideas for sequels, but haven't finished the first in a series; can't move on till the first is finished, etc.

I'll just keep the ideas percolating, swimming around in the starfield of my own personal imaginary universe.

What's your favorite inner world?

(image via iwastesomuchtime.com)

Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad! I love you so much and I'm so glad you're still together.

Back then, I'd had my last final (probably math or something else engineering related) and most likely track practice (we were trying to qualify for Nationals, which didn't end up working out, alas) and then I got back to the dorm. I realized that I didn't have much to do for the next week or so (I got to stay in the dorm a little longer than most since I was a senior and still participating in sports) and I'd wanted to buy a domain for a while, so lo, I did.

The word 'etoiline' comes from a story I wrote while I was in high school. Yes, it's a derivative of the French word for star. The story is probably a trunk novel  by now, but it's still got a lot of good stuff in it, and I'm sure I'll be mining it for years to come. One of these days I'll get around to purchasing a domain with my name in it. But I'm not a famous author yet. I doubt anyone is really looking for me that hard.

I don't have the first entries from that blog easily available. I was using a different blogging platform at the time, and though the entries are saved, I have no idea where they are. I think they were little things like "Hello, world" and "I read this book today." The blog hasn't evolved much ;)

I wanted to a) have a new layout for the site and b) write you a short story, but I'm not the speediest web designer and whenever I try to write short stories they end up being pretty long. So you'll just have to wait for the new layout and pester me for the next story. Any blog topic ideas are welcome.

Odd to think that it's been ten years. Ten years since I finished my last college course, as well. How time flies.

Happy birthday to Kate and Gordon, too.

See you at the St. Charles Artwalk this weekend? I hope so. Come keep me company and see great art.