De-stress Tuesday

As October comes a knockin' on the door (better than it banging on the pipe as that's sure to cause structural damage and then a gas leak) the stress levels around the wedding blog o sphere seem to be hitting critical mass.

I'm sure anyone about to get married in a week or two is running around like some kind of domesticated animal missing its cranium so rather than talk about weddings or anything related to weddings today I was thinking we'd all need a good laugh.

So first up: Monty Python and the Cheese Shop sketch (I have a slight crush on Michael Palin)



Much like Cake Wrecks, Photoshop disasters presents an entertaining world where models have no legs, extra hands , or are secretly Elastigirl.

For any Dr. Horrible fans out there, you can now get the soundtrack on iTunes. I've been listening to it constantly.

And if you've actually got too much stress and lots of time on your hands, this little game will keep you busy for hours (extra points if you do the new one).

It's Lego Batman day!

This week I had to go out and get myself a little pyrex bowl for work (really, I swear. It's a lab thing). And I was thinking, hm, I could do it on Tuesday so I could pick up Lego Batman at the same time.

I thought I was being all smarty pants, and I headed out at 2 to get to Target at a dull shopping time. Well as I was a few steps out the door I hear a huge boom and just as I look up the heavens open up to dump about 50 gallons of water on me as I make a quick 10 minute walk/run to the car (this is what I get for working at a university).

Walking into Target I look like something the cat drug in, out of the sewer, that no one is willing to touch for a few days. Rather than spend the rest of the day soaked to the bone, I look through their shirt options and get a simple t-shirt to replace my drowned one (I wish I had a camera on me now to show you the picture of my other shirt sitting on the lab bench drying).

But I was finally able to get it into my own little hands. Lego Batman.

My fiance is gonna be so happy I can get him to do whatever I want for at least a week. Maybe it's a good time to start deep cleaning the oven and bathroom.

A geeky rehearsal invite

After catching a post about people using their Wii Mii's (or something with lots of i's) on their wedding invitations I had the idea to make our rehearsal dinner invitations using a fancy pancy Lego character creator (I wasn't allowed to play with Lego's when I was little but my guy loved them).

First I downloaded a really fun program from Lego.com that lets you build kits that you can later buy (if you so choose), then to make the characters I used a simple program on-line.

I haven't gotten much further than this, but I thought I'd share.And yes the groom is dressed up as Han Solo (closest I could get to a tux) and I don't have DD's now to just come up with some wording.

I'm the God damned Batman!

So we're going to see The Dark Knight today (there was no way we were gonna attempt last weekend).

To get in the mood I present some great web videos "I'm a Marvel and I'm a DC"

If any nerds haven't heard

You have to go and check out Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. It stars the adorable Neil Patrick Harris (he had me at Rifftrax) as an evil scientist trying to make it into the evil league while also trying to attract the attention of a girl he's barely talked to. To stop him is his arch nemesis Captain Hammer (Firefly fame Nathan Fillon). Oh and there are some really catchy songs in there

I still can't get "It's a Brand New Day" out of my head.

Nerdy Counseling

In honor of our recent counseling talk with the minister (and the fact I am a huge nerd) I give you MST3K: Are you ready for marriage.

Boring wedding stuff

It's been a very weddingy past 12 hours for us. Last night we met with our wedding coordinator who is a good friend and also recently got engaged. I ordered in some pizza and we spent most of the night talking about different things we've found for our weddings and how our various plans are going. It is an interesting experience as I'm planning for mid October and have about a year, she's planning for early November and has 6 months.

We did eventually get down to business and decided who was sitting where and walking and what not. (I have managed to get out of the grand entrance by not having any ushers, hooray!) I'm guessing most people when they meet with their church "telling you where to go" people they don't have some pizza and chat about wedding and other things, but I wouldn't have it any other way. I just view this whole thing as a sort of laid back get together and not a "Once in a lifetime, call now or you'll miss it" event.

Then this morning we went and picked up some cake samples to try at home. We had three different fillings in the red category (raspberry, cherry, and strawberry) and two different frosting options (with boring white cake, we want chocolate buttercream so white goes well with black I think). Well the frosting tasted the exact same and the cherry was a dud. So it came down to rasp vs straw in a battle royale. In the end rasp pulled it out and KOed straw in the 9th round. I've also learned from all that tasting that I am not really a cake person, it was a lot of cake, and am glad we don't have to do that again. (I thought that was supposed to be the best part of the whole planning experience *shrug*)

I suspect there will be a major sugar rush in about three minutes. . .

Otherwise the rest of the fun filled past 12 hours (where we weren't sleeping) was spent enjoying each others company playing Lego Indiana Jones. That game rules!



If you've played the Lego Star Wars before this has so much more to it. Every character has its own special skills and you can pick up things like shovels/wrenchs/bazookas. Though 9 times out of 10 we just wound up blowing each other up.

I'd say that if you have to get a game to play together then get one of the Lego ones (Batman is gonna hit in October, I know my guy is more excited about that one, but I've always loved Raiders). There are a lot of puzzles to figure out, death really isn't that big of a deal, and block young Harrison Ford is still sexy. It's gotta be a lot more fun than Wii fit.

Oh a sad note, I am not cool enough for weddingbee, but then again I'm not really cool enough for the arctic. And now it's time for that sugar rush, WHEEEEE!

I'm not ready for the close up

I'm slowly coming to realize that me researching, finding, and booking a photographer means I will in fact have to have my picture taken.

This is probably rated a million on the scoville rating of terror for an introvert. (The pure capsaicin would be having to perform a song and dance while reading your poetry and doing a strip tease)

I was always really good at not smiling in pictures, ever (which seeing as how most people can hear my laugh about three miles before meeting me shows how much pictures are not me); and my fiance is notorious for doing a fake smile that I can always pick out.

Me practicing, mostly laughing thanks to Futurama
(Only another two months for the second movie!)

So I've been trying to see if I can find a way to fake smile for real for all these horrors of wedding pictures. My first thought was to just stick pictures of everyone in the bridal party in their underwear all over the back of the church. Then I realized that I'd probably just have flashbacks to going dress shopping and I'll huddle in the corner crying.

Another thought was to pull the ol' (trying to get babies to look at the camera) and arming the photographer with a squeaky toy. But then we realized just how spoiled our dogs are already.

I thought about trying the advice from About: to lose 10 pounds in the camera, but I realized that since the camera adds 10 pounds, I'll just come out equal so there's no reason to twist myself into a pretzel to appease the camera gods.

All I can say is thank God I still have another 6 months or so, because at this rate I can either invent the camera that will capture your self image on film, or replace myself with a clone.

Either way, I will never really be photogenic.