Sunday, September 19, 2010

New Features and Layout

...with flushing toilets!

Here is a brief overview of some of the changes that I have done to the blog over the last couple of months.

*Depending on your internet speed, you may or may not be hearing the sweetly innocent yet folksy sounds of my favorite music. Alexi Murdoch, Ray Lamontage, IZ, Joshua Radin, Amos Lee, and Rachael Yamagata are but a few of the musicians who have created the music of my soul. The player has a list of some of our favorite songs and artists, including the song that will accompany my walk down the aisle ("Somewhere Over the Rainbow"), and our first dance ("Sweet Pea"). Listen and enjoy.

*New picture of our ceremony site at dusk. There are geese in the pond...for now. Bwa-hahahahahaaa!!!

*Search feature on the left underneath the picture. Use this to find whatever your heart desires, as long as it desires the words written in this blog.

*Queries on how to plan our wedding. Current polls will be underneath the search ("Find Stuff") tab with all of the past polls located below my mini-autobiography, which was amazingly well written. Such an articulate author! Bravo!

I hope you enjoy the face lift and boob job to the blog, Joan Rivers and Kathy (with her Kath-eaters) would.

Saturday, September 18, 2010

If I scream in this blog, will it make a sound? Or is there an echo? Hello out there...
Chris is watching Don Draper and Bill Maher talk about politicky-stuff so this is a good time to ramble on and on and on...

I am back in school (recall the teacher from Peanuts: Waah wah waaah) so I am going to use some of the knowledge gleaned from those hours of oh-so-much fun. First up, when writing a lengthy bit of words and phrases- summarize what you are going to discuss in the beginning:

1) I will talk about stuff tangentially related to my wedding....
2) uh, haven't thought this far. Let's just go with it, noting that we will most likely end up in a gonococcus laced (Clap On!) hot tub with the epically coiffed (aerodynamically sound!) Pauly D.

A couple of biggie small accomplishments have been pushed through in the last couple of days. Today, we drove out to the Galleria to meet our new photographer, Jessica, at a Starbucks. We decided against hiring the first photographer because it's all about the Hamiltons, yo. And as grad students we need to save up our US Presidents. By the way, did you know that there is a $100,000 USD bill? I sure as hell didn't. I really wish there will be a point in my life in which I can snort coke off a stripper's ass with a rolled up Wilson. That's the American dream, right there.

Back to Starbucks- I sipped on my Passion Tea while she talked about the package deals and pricing. I was in a state of half-sleep, trying desperately to jolt my recently awaken body to full capacity before I passed into a sleep deprived coma in the midst of bustling shoppers. Thank Florence + the Machine, I survived the meet and drink, dodging mini-vans full of middle class drones filing into the doors of the authentic Mexican eatery, Jimboy's. "Excuse me waiter/cashier, it seems as if someone emptied their stomach contents onto my plate. Oh, that's how it's supposed to look and...smell? I'm gonna need to have someone do me a solid and call Poison Control."

Speaking of things that annoy, disturb, and upset the delicate nature of my gastrointestinal system- do you know about the "sizing" of wedding dresses? *breathe in, breathe out* So take the average American woman (size 14 according to Wiki). She walks into David's Bridal/The Bridal Depot/Brides-R-Us/Dress, Train, and Beyond and goes to try on a size 14. Sorry dear but that dress ain't fitting that ass. By walking through the doors of whatever overpriced tulle factory is nearest to her, she automatically jumps up two dress sizes. Two! Is the gravity in this place different? Did we move to Jupiter? I want to go back to Earth but I will settle for Pluto. A size 14 goes to a size 18 in a snap. How does that affect the bride's self esteem? Is she really going to feel like a princess on the "most important day of her life?" I used to ridicule the women who woke up at dawn to pound the cement, eating a slice of cheese coupled with a floret of broccoli as her daily nourishment but now I hear the treadmill calling my butt. Too much junk in the trunk. What is seriously disturbing is that there are size 0 wedding dresses. Think about that for a minute. [Size 0] - [2 dress sizes] = 1 seriously malnourished woman. During her Ally McBeal days, Callista Flockhart rocked the clothes hanger look with a size 0 but her chunky ass and thunder thighs must resort to a size 4 wedding dress. If the average model is a size 2, is the average wedding dress model a size 2, a size -2, or a size 6? How does that work? Do you go back to children's sizes? Can I get the Hannah Montana themed wedding attire, please? This flipping industry is going to give me an ulcer. It is absolutely mind-boggling how they can make a woman feel like Violet Beauregarde after her life altering gum chewing incident. Oompa Loompa doom-pa-dee-do/I have another Zoloft for you.

If I don't end the rant now, it will never stop and I will be concocting Oompa Loompa lyrics for the remainder of the weekend. Moving on. Tomorrow, we once again travel up to the mountainous hills of Placerville to take a peek at our venue and Bob, the two-foot catfish. I have my pinkie toes crossed hoping that he has successfully deterred my Canadian foes from nesting in my future ceremony site. I see your Avril Lavigne and raise you a Ted Nugent. Game on, birdie. Game on.

Monday, September 6, 2010

Food Comas Abound

You think you know...but you have no idea. This is the Diary of a Mad Brown Woman.

Eh?? Anyone? No. I was the only one that watched that? Well that does explain oodles of noodles about me but I am a popular culture aficionado. Hm...maybe not an aficionado because they savor the sound, video, and images that flash before their eyes. They gently imbibe cultural artifacts, letting each bit sit on their tongue to allow for maximum appreciation. I'm not an aficionado. I am a pop culture junkie- I shoot up dangerously concentrated doses of reality tv, which is enough for those with lesser tolerances to end up in a Speidi induced coma. I greedily gulp down the high caloric content, dutifully chomping away at pop culture, one massive bite at a time. But I digress...

Well, that was only slightly tangential to the purpose of this blog but I haven't posted anything in a while so I am trying to satiate the readers, all four of them. Speaking of my absence, there was a good week or two with no substantial gains in wedding planning. We have the location, and singer but may change the photographer as we found someone for a third of the price with a portfolio comparable to the ideal of Ellie.

This weekend, Chris and I went to dine at Mama Susana's in River Park across from campus. It is the only Italian restaurant in town that serves actual Italian food. If you even mention Buca di Beppo I will punch you in the face- in...the...face. That is not Italian food and I am not even sure if it qualifies as food. Yes, the caloric content is present but who wants to actually ingest that crap? Not me. Does Buca serve hand-made, home-made, and fresh gnocchi? Unless the red dude downstairs is outfitted in a parka I am going to go with...no. Mama Susanna's sure as hell does and it is amazing. The dish was comparable to the home-made meals that I enjoyed during my semester abroad in Italy. I realized mid-ingestion that I should probably take a pic of my mind blowingly delicious dinner but I argue that my lapse in cognition is a testament to the yummy-ness of the dish. Mmmm..."knock-ees"



After a stomach expanding dinner, I had the brilliant idea of testing the elasticity of said organ by stopping at Ettore's and sampling the desserts that will comprise our dessert table. As a reminder- Chris and I are going to get an assortment of desserts for the wedding rather than the traditional wedding cake. Reasons? 1) adding the descriptor of "wedding," "nuptial," etc adds a couple of Benjamins on the final tab and that is not gonna happen when I hold the checks 2) neither of us enjoy chomping down on cake. Chris is a cheesecake man whereas I am a fruit tart gal all the way 3) we can all enjoy whatever dessert we crave at the time: pie? Gotcha covered. Chocolate? Which type? Yeah, there are multiple variations. Fruit? Have you seen this? Bam. I am amazing.

I have not been to Ettore's for nearly a decade yet even with such a long separation, I knew that they would be supplying the sugary treats for the nuptial celebration. Not quite sure why I chose to be dragged to Rick's when I could have enjoyed this the delectable Euro deliciousness all this time. We waddled into the establishment seconds away from food coma and stood in amazement at the beauty beaming forth from the glass display cases. Drool pooled under our feet as we jumped into line. A little kid was pacing back and forth eying what dessert he would conquer but homeboy never stepped in line. Sucker. It was later in the evening so they did not have a stocked shelf but we did see four of the desserts that we planned on having at the wedding so we sighed as we were forced to taste test the cakes and pastries. FML.


Oh, sweet dessert of the gods. Is that fresh mango? Whaaat? That was the best fruit tart that has ever gone down my esophagus. With descriptions like that- I should totally be a food writer: food taste good. Go down stomach. Nicole like. Nicole sleep now...I totally want to get another one of these. It was so amazingly good. Whoever made this particular tart needs an award. Send these over to war torn countries- war over. Everyone will be too consumed by their sweet treat to rip out any throats a la MacGruber.


Chris' strawberry cheesecake. He is not a fan of the non-traditional or non-chocolate cheesecake but he ingested that sucker quick. I have a feeling I won't have to twist his arm to go out on a dessert date to Ettore's.


Did somebody say eggs? We know how to grill them. Bring it on in to Omeletteville...No one said eggs? Oh, you said chocolate. Chocolate cake. Oh, yeah because of the picture. Well don't I feel stupid. Not really, I will snub Benny's and head over to Omeletteville every time I meander around 30 Rock.

Not a big choc-o-holic but this sucker was delish. Probably not going to have this on the wedding- give momma some fruit tart but it is in no way vomit inducing so help yourself.


I did not think that I was going to like this cake at all. AT ALL. It's pink. So strike 1 and it's pink- so strike 2 and 3 but this is amazing. I might actually stop gorging myself with a heaping helping of fruit tarts to get a couple of bites of this monster. If that isn't a compliment, I don't know what is and I don't want to live in a world in which my compliment isn't the compliment.

After the back-to-back entrances into an edible heaven, we crashed. Well, actually we came home and drank then crashed. I really need to stop drinking so I can work on my thesis. Who would ever think that alcohol would be such an effective procrastination tool?

To beat the oppressive heat of the weekend, we putt putted up the hill to the Sierras for a relaxing bit of natural beauty and escape from the chaos of the city.... Why can't I make a call? Do you have any bars? I don't have any bars!!!! I'm freaking out man, I'm freaking out. Flipping AT&T! Covers 95% of all Americans? LIARS!! I do not have the upper body strength to climb 2/3 up the tree to make a call.


At least Maia had some fun up there. Didn't realize my lapdog was a dirt devil at heart. Even though she was covered, and I do mean COVERED, in dirt and other nature-y debris, she still looked adorably majestic while she sat on my lap in the sun.

Well, minions. I have procrastinated yet again and should get back to reading for class, which will most likely devolve into pouring a glass of Casal Nova's Brachetto. Huh, well that sounds like a good idea...