Canoe, Atlanta, Georgia, May 21, 2010
Three years ago tonight we rehearsed getting married and then shared a lovely dinner with many of our nearest and dearest on the banks of the Chattahoochee. A lot has changed since then — these days we have an adorable dog, shorter hair and better jobs, and Jon wouldn’t be caught dead wearing pleated pants — but we’re still as weird and nerdy (respectively) as this photo would have you believe.
Posted in family, grown-up stuff, love, nostalgia, Old-Timey Tuesday, weddings
January 3, 2004, Atlanta, Georgia/January 4, 2013, New York, New York
Although slightly belated, this post had to happen once I came across the picture on the left earlier tonight. That was taken at Abby‘s 21st birthday shindig at her parents’ house lo those many years ago. At right, we have a picture taken roughly three weeks ago up in New York at Abby’s 30th birthday bash. What a difference nine years makes, huh? (A camera flash that doesn’t wash us out helps too.)
BONUS: Check out what Abby instagrammed in honor of our 25 years together:
America, November 4, 2008
For the last election — my first to vote in person — I made an aspirational Blue State Blue Velvet cake, inspired by the Obama-centric blog Yes We Cake (which later featured my creation). Georgia didn’t go blue — surprise — but the country did. I’m hoping for the same outcome this time around. Four more years!
Now that it’s been a month since our second anniversary, I should probably post about it, huh? Last year’s celebration was a multi-day hit-and-miss affair; this year we decided to keep things low-key (and relatively inexpensive), particularly since it fell on a school night, so to speak.
Because Jon is forever a little kid when it comes to presents, the day started out with exchanging gifts. It’s possible I was still in bed when Jon brought me mine. The traditional gift for your second anniversary is something cotton; I love the challenge of sticking to a theme. Jon gave me a band t-shirt, and I gave him seersucker pants and a gift card toward a custom dress shirt. (I later noted that we each got the other their favorite form of cotton clothing. Good job us!) I also got Jon this awesome card: 
(He studied saxophone in college and now plays for the dog on occasion.)
That night after work, we got fancied up and had a lovely dinner at Empire State South. They didn’t have an appetizer I had seen and lusted after on the online menu and our waiter was kind of pretentious and inattentive, but the food was delicious and the meal didn’t totally break the bank; we counted it as a win. Besides, any meal that ends with phatty cakes is bound to be a triumph.
Pleasantly full, we left and drove around the block to the W Midtown, where we had lodged and afterpartied the night of our wedding, for a nightcap. As we entered the lobby, the doorman said, “Welcome back!” How did he know?
We ordered drinks in the lounge area then went in search of the secret cave beneath the staircase where we and our friends had spent a couple of hours once we left the clubby bar. I forget now who discovered it, but we were apparently quite lucky to have landed it that night, I was recently told; normally it’s a first-come-first-serve battle for those in the know. It was somewhat less lively with just the two of us, but it was cool to be back in that space and confirm that it was not merely a figment of our collective imagination.
Once we finished our drinks and marveled at how frickin’ weird W hotels are, we headed toward home, stopping on a whim at our friendly neighborhood Kroger to buy some scratch-off lotto tickets. None of the $10 worth of tickets we bought was a winner, alas. I’m gonna start playing our lucky/magic/sentimental numbers in the real lottery and see where that gets me…
But I digress. It’s hard to believe our amazing wedding was two years ago already, and that we’re, like, old married people. I was 26 when we got married! Now I’m almost 29!
Where does the time go? I have no idea, but I’m glad I get to spend most of mine with this guy.
I’ve wanted to paint our bedroom for a long time, and this weekend we finally got to it. As it turned out, we inadvertently matched the paint to the cat: 
Posted in grown-up stuff, nerdery, pets
Last Friday marked a year since I began my new job. In most ways, this is the first real job of my career; I feel like my initial 3.5 working years out of grad school led to brain atrophy and little else. (Well, that’s not true — it did good things for my salary history, and I learned some new parts of my hometown.)
I was really excited to start this job, because there was basically no way it wouldn’t be a thousand times better than my first one. Happily, that has been the case, and not merely by default. It comes as no surprise to me that I really enjoy working in a university environment. I’m writing stories and connecting media people to experts, meeting with faculty and proofing pages, and the subject matter I’m dealing with is constantly changing. I feel productive most days, which rarely happened before. Above all, I have a kickass group of coworkers who are not only great colleagues but people I want to hang out with after hours.
It isn’t all bunnies and moonbeams, of course — I am nowhere close to being past my frequent fits of writerly agony, and I still have plenty to learn on each of my beats. Someone told me shortly after I started that it takes a full academic cycle to get your bearings, so by that measure I’m just about on track. Regardless, I’m happy to have landed in such a nice place. Go Panthers!
Posted in deep thoughts, grown-up stuff, higher ed, HUZZAH, observations
[Oops! Forgot to publish this one on Friday...]
Last night my favorite shop, Young Blood Gallery & Boutique, hosted an event with Meg Keene of A Practical Wedding, the blog and now the book. While I’m not a daily reader of A Practical Wedding (as I write this I have 54 unread APW posts in my Google reader… so very behind on so many things), I am a frequent one, and I was interested to go and hear her speak — and, yes, to buy her book. I figure I’ll feed my interest in weddings for the moment, and I’ll lend it and One Perfect Day out to my marrying friends in the future.
As it happened, the event had very little to do with weddings at all, beyond Meg’s initial spiel about how odd it was that this book hadn’t been written already. The rest of her remarks and the subsequent discussion were focused on female entrepreneurship. It made sense, I guess; most folks there were already married.
There was, however, one question from the crowd about submitting weddings to be featured on APW. A theme that ran throughout Meg’s response was that you shouldn’t write about your wedding with the sole purpose of landing yourself a feature on a popular blog like APW. You should write about your wedding for you, for any number of reasons: to chronicle the process; to stay organized; to recollect; to ease the transition from single to engaged to married; the list goes on. (I wish I had written down whatever Meg actually said — I’m certain it was more concise than that.)
I kept a wedding blog from about 11 months out from the big day on. It’s already been interesting to look back over what I wrote and remember what life felt like or what was going on at any given stage in the process. I’ve never been big on keeping journals, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve found myself writing about significant travels or transitions so I can recall them with some detail later. In addition to serving as a memory aid, my blog was a repository for ideas and a way to keep myself sane. (I also like to think of it as a resource for Google-happy Atlanta brides.) Some of my friends and family followed along; many did not. I never shared the link on Facebook because I didn’t want the random people I’m friends with all up in my business for the sake of more page views; It may also have been a teeny bit because I didn’t want my coworkers to get wise to the fact that I was planning my wedding and blogging about it from my desk. Ha!
The other recommendation Meg had that I really liked was to write about your wedding (for yourself) before you get the photos back from your photographer. Sift through your own memories while you wait, because, lovely and intimate as they can be, the images will only tell the story of your wedding from an observer’s creative perspective and can color what or how you remember once you’ve got a disc of photos to click through. Write down the things that stood out in your mind from the day so you can hang onto them over the years. (I’m sure it helps put the photos in context when you look back, too.) Even if you don’t fancy yourself the writing type, this seems like a worthwhile exercise. I hadn’t thought of it in these terms before, because it was something I was doing anyway.
I haven’t cracked the book yet, but I’ll be interested to see how it differs from the website. Have any of you out there read it? Thoughts?
Posted in deep thoughts, grown-up stuff, weddings
It’s 7:18 a.m. and Jon and I are sitting at gate T15 at the Atlanta airport, bound for Spokane (ultimately Moscow, Idaho) via Denver. My family, ever committed to maintaining tradition, all rolled out of bed and downstairs to the Christmas tree at 5 a.m. to open presents together. Jon thought we were crazy to get everyone up so early, but it worked out just fine. What champs! Showed him. At this point they’ve all been back in bed asleep for at least an hour.
I know plenty of families that exchange gifts on Christmas Eve, but the Poes are not one of those. Mom worked at our church when we were growing up and I’ve had choir jobs since late high school, so Christmas Eve always been sort of a working day with its own protocol. Things that can’t not happen on December 24 include: going to church; eating a late-night second dinner at Waffle House (the one on Roswell Road); and watching hilarious holiday family videos from the ’80s. Watching the midnight service at Atlanta’s Cathedral of St. Philip on television isn’t totally mandatory, but usually happens as well.
Our flight is about to start boarding, so I’ll sign off from ATL. (Dispatch from Idaho to come later on.) Merry Christmas to all!
Posted in family, grown-up stuff, holidays, travel
If Kathleen and I could have devised a business strategy on the playground in second grade, this is what it would have looked like, even before we knew about the internets.
As it happens, Jon and I have recently been joking about making a cat-video series starring Little Man. Maybe it’ll be my/his/our big break! Stay tuned…
In the meantime, can we make this place a reality and get me a job there?
Posted in grown-up stuff, in the media, inspirations, pets, pop culture
You may have noticed that posting’s been a little light of late; what you probably couldn’t have noticed is that the mirthmobile had a HUGE spike in visits last week. A couple of tumblrers with decent readerships linked to my post on the fancy Bernardaud cat bowl. I’d be lying if I said those inflated numbers didn’t help me rationalize slacking off last week.
Another contributing factor was the glacial slowness of my laptop. I swear I’ve lost weeks of my life watching the rainbow spinny wheel on my OG 2006 13″ white MacBook. This weekend, I finally caught up to the times and bought myself a shiny new 15″ MacBook Pro.
Upgrade!
Frankly, I’m surprised the white plastic one lasted this long given all I put it through during grad school… and, okay, maybe I could have offloaded a few more gigs to speed things up. But! I’m thrilled with my purchase. And I’ve pledged to be much more conscientious about labeling documents, organizing my photos and iTunes library, and keeping the desktop tidy this go-round.
Saturday brought not only a new laptop, but an excellent photo opportunity outside the Braves game. Behold, the latest addition to the ever-growing collection of pictures of me with giant inflatable foodstuffs!
Who doesn’t love Combos, am I right?…
Posted in grown-up stuff, lowbrow, nerdery
