Fifth Annual Birdaversary Extravaganza

I'll call you back later
Originally uploaded by Pockafwye

Friends and family have probably already seen this video.

As of today I've been married to this wonderful, playful man for 5 years, and living with him for 8 years and change. I should not have been surprised when he pulled this little stunt in the middle of our wedding ceremony.

Yesterday was his birthday, or "bird day" in the family vernacular. With the two dates back to back like that, he's taken to calling the 10th and 11th of October as the Birdaversary Extravaganza.

Did I mention I love my Mister?

An invitation to our nieces and nephews

My Mister and I are house hunting, and we're hoping to be in a new home by the end of the year.

What I'd like to do is get an original artwork from each of the nieces and nephews who are old enough to participate. The ideal would be something that could be either framed in an 8x10 mat, or in a similar sized shadow box. We'd like to hang their art around the house, a visual daily reminder of our family members who live so far away.

This could be anything from a favorite photo they've taken themselves, a multimedia collage or crafty thing, a sketch, a painting, a fiber art piece (knitted or crocheted, hand sewn, woven potholder, whatever), a small puzzle they've finished prepared with glue to keep it from falling apart, or whatever else they enjoy working with. Even a story they've written would be fine, as long as it's all on one side of one page.

Ideally I'd like the pieces to be signed by the artists.

The top end of their ages is in the tween range, and some are quite young, so the range of possibilities are pretty broad. I'll leave it up to their parents to decide who is old enough to participate. And of course, if any of the kids would rather not make us something, that's fine, too.

We'll get the frames or shadow boxes once the artwork arrives. And there isn't a deadline for this. Just whenever the spirit moves them.

We're still waiting to hear back on the short sale home we've put in an offer on. Could be days or more weeks yet before the lenders on the current owners' end are done with the extra stuff that happens in a sale like this. No guarantees, but it sounds like it's moving along in a promising - if slow - manner.

doing fine

Last week was the National Weather Service's official Lightning Awareness Week.

In a bizarre coincidence, I received a text message from my Mister while I was out of town over the weekend which read:

[Your cousin] was hit by lighting yesterday. Doing fine.

Ack! Like a soldier who has returned injured from the war hasn't had enough traumas for one lifetime?

From what I've pieced together out of calls from family and an email from my cousin, he was mowing the lawn when he was hit by a lightning bolt that first struck a tree, then traveled through the ground to him - blowing his boots off and frying his cell phone in the process. It sounds like it was one of those sneaky bolt from the blue situations.

Back from NC

Wedded
Originally uploaded by Pockafwye

I'm back from North Carolina, and back at work.

My cousin and his lovely bride survived the three-ring-circus that wedding planning so often becomes, and the ceremony itself was beautiful.

I got a chance to meet up with some old friends of the family I hadn't seen since childhood, and got to finally meet a close friend of my cousin's about whom I'd heard many good things. I'm slowly sorting through all the photos I took, and will be posting them to flickr in small batches.

The cake, by the way, was truly the yummiest cake I've ever had at a wedding, and was made by the groom himself.

I caught a sinus cold while I was there, but fortunately it didn't hit until after the wedding.

Ever since my surgery last year, I'm prone to nightmares when I'm under stress. There was an event during my trip--unrelated to the wedding itself, thank goodness--that really shook me up, and that's all I'm going to say about it here, except that now I'm having nightmares again.

Last night's dream was an epic-length affair about being hunted through Southern California chaparral and steep, dry hills, occasionally broken up by various suburban settings. In the dream I was captured by, escaped from, and then spent the rest of the dream fleeing from a group of terrorists, who had apparently hired David Carradine (à la his Kill Bill period) as their hit man. I woke up several times, but dropped right back into the dream where it left off each time. There was someone with me who had also escaped, and we were helping each other avoid recapture.

I usually associate David Carradine with the Kung Fu TV series, having grown up watching and re-watching it in re-runs, and Kwai Chang Caine is as un-menacing a character as I can imagine. So when I woke I was a bit surprised by my sleeping brain's choice of casting Carradine as my pursuer. I was able to see Carradine's face, incidentally. Third time in as many weeks that I've seen someone's face in my dreams, so I think faces are going to become a semi-regular feature.

At any rate, I'm going to do my best to get my sleep patterns back under control before the nightmares snowball again.

Lunch break is over. Time to get back to work.