So, to recap, here’s the weekend:
- Jen has several irons in the fire for a new job; our friends came together and found some promising leads, and the Washington Post has a ton of current listings.
- The invitations came out very, very well. Save the Date cards went out Saturday. (free offset printing is awesome.)
- Jen and I have introduced her sister Annie to the joy of sushi and Sapporo. May the road to alcoholism and raw fish be a happy one.
- The spring dinner was much, much better than last year. (They ran out of carryout. Sorry folks.)
- Jen’s folks were very cool this weekend. On our wedding day, she will be wearing a beautiful set of cameo earrings brought over on the boat by her great-grandmother. (Picture to come.)
- You already read my gloating about the doors.
- No, we weren’t on the ferry that capsized. (Mom, we got your message, but couldn’t call you last night. We’ll be in touch.) Trivia: I’ve never been on a water taxi in twelve years as a Baltimoron.
- Lest you thought we were expecting our guests would camp on the lawn, we have narrowed the hunt for hotels down to two. How much is too much for a hotel room these days? (Courtyard Marriott wants $90/night for a brand-new King bedroom with breakfast.)
- Rob and Karean came by to show off their new Powerbook and I showed them how to use their iPods; they took us out to dinner at the Trolley Stop. Behind the bar there is a picture of the 2000 Memorial Day Parade in Catonsville, featuring the front of our house.
- BG&E now believes us when we claim that the doctor no longer practices medicine in our house. (The guy looked at me like I was a child molester, though, when I showed him the old exam room.)
Free doors
On our way to run about fifteen million wedding errands this afternoon, Jen and I drove past the church we’re set to be married in, and she pointed out something on the other side of the street: two wooden doors leaning up against a tree in front of an old Victorian. Cranking my neck around to look, I saw the words ‘FREE’ scrawled on the other side, and she got the car turned around in three seconds flat. We loaded the booty into the back of the Saturn as mass let out and church bells rang: a six-pane French door and a huge one-pane front door, both with intact glass, hinges, and hardware. The front door is about an inch and a half thick, and it sports a brass letter slot as well as an ornate plaque reading ‘Roselawn’.
The best part about finding $1,500 worth of wooden doors on the side of the road is that they’re both oversized—the French door, minus about an inch on the sides and top, will fit perfectly in the Blue room doorway leading out to the atrium. And the front door will fit in place of the original, so we can use that for a sunporch down the road.
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.stuffed ham, oysters, candied yams, bread, and beets, 3.6.04
As much as I would love one of these to drag around behind the Scout, the price is just a little steep for my blood. Also, check out this link: Mocoloco—yummy industrial design to warm the heart and empty the pocketbook.
settlement check
Update: Jen called me on the way back from the printer to tell me the invitations came out looking pretty good. Even though she told the printer three times which direction to run the job on the paper, they still f’d up the RSVP card, but considering we’re getting the job run for free, we can deal with it.
This weekend we’re heading down to the L-P City to take in the Hollywood Volunteer Fireman’s Stuffed Ham & Oyster dinner (a peculiar southern Maryland delicacy which sounds gross but is actually delicious) and put in some face-time with Jen’s folks. Hopefully some more bridesmaid issues will be resolved and peace will reign over the land, but I’m going to be wearing my steel underpants just in case.
We’re also taking delivery of a used 400mhz G4 tower from our friend Jason, who has taken mercy on us with a generous payment schedule in light of our soon-to-be tight budget. I’m hopeful that Jen will find new employment quickly— it sounds like the local market is a lot busier than last summer, which was deader than Abe Lincoln.
Last night Jen and I sat and talked about our options in light of all the drama at her office. Ordinarily, after hearing some of the stories she’s told me about that company, I would have told her to leave months ago (and in fact I have), but our upcoming wedding has precluded any career moves to date. She’s been scared to leave because the money is good, and she’s been doing excellent work, but now that the new directive is to return to the old ‘look’—which is about as professional as a Kinko’s business card—there’s no point in staying. Meanwhile, details of the
This isn’t the first time we’ve been through employment upheval; in fact, we’re getting pretty good at it. We have structured our expenses around one income, and while it won’t be comfortable, it won’t be the death of us, either. The wedding, which is the single greatest worry we have right now, seems to be on track and mostly paid for. So we hope you’ll understand if we don’t join you for a night out at that swank restaurant, but suggest domestic beer and a pizza at home instead.
In looking through the classifieds last night, I realized that the Baltimore Sun redesigned their site—moving away from the ill-advised ‘Sunspot.net’ portal approach and embracing their actual name. While I still think the front page is way overloaded with information, and poorly laid out to boot, there’s improvement in a few areas, and it just looks better. (Plus, the emloyment section has a ton of good design jobs right now. *whew*)
Salon has a great article on the train wreck that is CSI: Miami, AKA Melodramatic Line Readings With David Caruso. News to me: Gary Sinise, one of my more favored actors, makes yet another wrongheaded career move to star in CSI: New York. Stop the madness!
House Progress. I’ve been able to run wire throughout the office, which sets us up with enough plugs to run an entire Home Depot lighting department. Still to come are the runs for cable, phone, and ethernet, but for the time being I’m fitting the baseboards back in place and beginning to button up the far side. This morning I made the top hole in the sill plate to start dropping wire down to the basement, so hopefully that will happen towards the end of the week.
Album Of The Day: Dinosaur Jr., Where You Been. Taking me back to 1992.
Speaking of music, I’ve found a reasonable solution to my WMA -> MP3 problem: convert at a higher bit rate. If I go up to 192kbps, the sound improves dramatically—no more hollow, compressed singing-into-a-pint-glass sound. It’s not great (I’d hate to see the second-gen wave compression) but it does the job.
For those of you wondering just what in the hell all this cryptic work shit is all about, it looks like Jen’s employers blew some kind of gasket and started making really stupid decisions about their employees. I got an email from her on monday with the cheerful subject line “I MAY BE GETTING LAID OFF TODAY CALL ME”, and promptly spat my coffee out over the monitor. Jen’s immediate boss resigned after finding that her boss was ‘reassigned’, which is corporate-speak for ‘shoved out of the way so that someone may make a blatant bid for power’. This leaves exactly nobody to deflect the huge shovelfuls of dogshit they throw around in there, so Jen spent the day huddled under her desk waiting for the other shoe to drop and dodging phone calls. Now it’s looking like the rest of her creative group is jumping ship, which is very much bad. After dealing with that junk at work yesterday, then savoring a lovely call with her mother last night, she started mixing greyhounds and didn’t stop until the icemaker was empty. So really, if anybody knows anybody who’s looking for a great, hard-working print designer, let us know.
ISO.
non-psycho, creative MA seeks stable, nurturing studio for long-term partnership. Must have well-adjusted staff, rational business plan, secure client base, and some form of organizational control. Turn-ons: Macs, 80’s New Wave, sarcastic humor, deep red, animals, horror movies, Indian food, and Futura Medium. Turn-offs: ignorant clients, PageMaker, “desktop publisher,” nü-metal, white wine, widows & orphans, reality TV, and bland food.
Drug-free, non-smokers only.