Oh, my stars and garters!

I didn't do anything all weekend.

I needed that.

No wonder he was so reasonable.

Now, maybe I'm just being picky. Certainly I'm no wedding photographer, and I would never tell anyone how to do his job. But if you take pictures of a wedding ceremony, it seems to me you might want to squeeze the bride into the shot somehow.

Where's Joolie? Do you see Joolie? Maybe she didn't feel like showing up today. That's really kind of rude of her, after everyone went to all this trouble.

Oh, look at how proud tiny Eric is to be marrying gigantic Jill! Except wait! That's not how it happened! I know because I was standing right there! Although...maybe I wasn't. Too bad there's no photographic evidence for me to reassure myself of this.

The traditional one-sided exchange: With this ring, I me wed.

Sure, they weren't all that bad. But they weren't really all that good, either.

To be fair, it's very difficult to get a decent angle with so much going on, but it seems like the principal rule of taking pictures of someone is to make sure she's not ALMOST ENTIRELY OBSCURED first. And also, yeah, it's hard, but that's why you're getting paid to do it.

I won't even get into the reception pictures except to say that if they are to be believed, our wedding guests did nothing all night but sit around chewing meat with their eyes half closed.

If anyone was there who took pictures and happens to have a shot, any shot, of the ceremony, please let me know. This isn't the end of the world or anything, but it was a really terrific day and we'd like to have pictures of it.

House and garden tip, now that we're all domestic and shit

If you lop the lower branches off the hideous, messy, invasive ligustrums that you wish you could chop down but don't dare to because they do a really good job of shading your house and screening your bathroom windows from the prying eyes of perverts, and you get bored with chopping them up and disposing of them per city regulations, why, you can arrange them just so and surprise your wife with a teepee in her own backyard.

Or at least Eric can. He did a pretty good job making it, too; it's super-windy out tonight and it hasn't budged.

I don't know why we would want to have a teepee in our backyard, but I suppose it's comforting to know we can. And, in fact, do. Thanks, baby. It's really, really great.

Drama

My sister called to tell me my wedding dress was on Guiding Light today. And so it was.

The character who owns it pulled it out of her closet to reminisce about the hot summer days when she wore it years ago, but she guesses she'll never wear it again, seeing as she's about to die because she can't get the heart transplant she needs, or something like that. But you know, I will probably never wear mine again either.

(Sobs. CUT TO Joolie slumping over her laptop in a schlubby T-shirt and jeans.)

JOOLIE: Never again! (Whispering) Never again.

FADE TO: BLACK

Mish. And mash.

I took this picture the other day when I was out on a bike ride, but I neglected to see what this otherwise desolate-looking building was being used for. So I did a little internet research, and according to this absolutely splendid local news story, it was a day care as recently as three years ago.

I like the window, anyway.

The ham turned out great, and just in time before we started cannibalizing each other for protein. I forgot to link to the dolphin birth video last night, but surely you'll forgive me given the distraction of ham.

Eric and I have almost finished the daunting task of writing thank-you notes from the wedding. It wasn't bad; I like sending mail and was very happy to get great stuff from nice people. Still, however heartfelt, there are only so many ways you can say, "Thank you so much for the noun. It will really come in handy when we verb our noun!" without starting to worry that you sound a mite insincere.

Finally, a fashion tip from our neighborhood grocery store, and really I'm just saying: There is a certain point during a woman's pregnancy when she might want to consider setting aside her non-pregnancy white tube top for a while, and--I'm still just saying--that point is probably before her sixth or seventh month. Yowza, lady!

I want ham.

I'm not sure what my deal is with the inability to estimate cooking--and therefore starting--times for roasted meat, but once again we are sitting around for hours waiting to eat. This time it's an Easter ham that is hovering at a maddening six degrees below the safe threshold for trichinosis-free enjoyment. Come on, stupid ham!

My sister and I have been passing the time and suppressing our appetites by watching YouTube videos of various mammals giving birth, an appropriate enough activity for Easter. My favorite was the elephant, although watching the kangaroo fetus worm its way up to its mother's pouch was pretty interesting too.

Twitchy

There are 40 minutes between me and delicious beers in the sun. Die, 40 minutes! Die a quick and horrible death! I will murder you by rechecking all the websites I've already read today to see if there have been any updates or new comments in the past few hours! I will do this because I completely lack imagination! Die!

Whether

It rained all day but the exhortations of the weather people to be careful, for god's sake be careful, sleep in an interior closet under a heap of fluffy, projectile-catching pillows tonight and dig yourself a storm shelter tomorrow; yes, dig it with your bare hands if you must and drag all your cats and kids and important papers down there and sit in there all day blinking in the dark hoping it won't flood, do it just in case were a tad on the alarmist side. I heard two growls of thunder and that was it.

Eric and I saw a talk with David Simon in the ACL studio tonight. He was good, funny and relaxed and personable, although anyone who has watched The Wire in its entirety and read even a few interviews with the guy probably didn't hear much they didn't already know.

One thing I thought was interesting was that the host of the talk, some UT journalism professor who must have come in after my time there, was very concerned about the possibility that people who hadn't seen the recently-aired last season of The Wire might hear spoilers during the Q&A portion of the talk.

At first that seemed courteous. Then, as people either tried very hard to word their questions without giving away plot points, or didn't care at all and let everything fly, it seemed monumentally stupid. How are you supposed to talk about the intention behind someone's work if you can't, you know, talk about it?

I try very hard not to spoil things for people if they haven't seen something, no matter how long that thing has been out, and I hate being spoiled myself. But when is it acceptable to talk about a show in public? After the series has aired? After all the DVDs have been out for a year? Five years?

How about when you're in a room full of self-selected fellow fans, the creator is sitting 20 feet in front of you, and you have the opportunity to ask him in person why he made the creative decisions he did? Is it okay then?

Apparently David Simon thought it was, because he kicked off his talk by mentioning that he expected lots of questions about one of the most shocking things that happened last season.

Apparently some audience members did not think it was okay, because a number of them left the room after making a big show of plugging their ears whenever anyone talked about what happened in season five.

I suppose it sucks to have something ruined for you like that, but what on earth did they think people were going to talk about tonight?  Macrame and its influence on 20th-century interior design?

Wifey

I'm happy, but you can't even imagine how dull my life is right now. Most of my evening was spent trying to rearrange kitchen cabinets to accommodate new small appliances slightly dismayed at the amount of resources, mostly fuel and tissue paper, that was expended for the wedding.

Time to plan our honeymoon to West Texas. That should cut through all the crap.

Historical neti

Nasal Lavage, photographer unknown. Tintype, 1861.

Who's your little genius?

We got a bread knife for our wedding!

It's sharp.

Oops

The Statesman's on a roll this week.

We are important.

The top story on the Statesman site right now tells us that the prostitute who slept with Eliot Spitzer said that she spent time in Austin on her MySpace page. Way to dig down deep and find that local angle, guys. Her page doesn't even say that right now, for Christ's sake; either someone edited it since this morning or the story is just wrong.

Really, this almost as thrilling as the time the Statesman trumpeted that the Westminster Dog Show winner had "ties" to Austin; the beagle's handler once went to high school here and one of his three owners lives in nearby Tanglewood or something equally tenuous like that.

I shouldn't beat up on the Statesman too much today because the  coverage in the New York Times isn't much better. I always crack up when reporters use someone's MySpace page as their main source. They always sound so formal and clueless when they do that, although I suspect the stilted discomfort stems from the fact they know it's ridiculous too. If I ever accidentally do something newsworthy, look for them to tell you I am 3'11" and live in Alabama, and that one of my friends claimed to have to "take a diarrhea poo poo" in September 2006.

P.S. More wedding pics here, courtesy of Vickie aka InMyHeadStudios aka Monkey123.

I did nothing to deserve this

It looks like Bed Bath and Beyond exploded in our living room. I kind of want to roll around gleefully in the pile but would likely end up in the emergency room getting steak knives and shards of stoneware pulled out of my lower back and surrounding areas.

I have found it's really entertaining to look up the registries of people with the same first and last names as ours and monitor theirs as well. I feel my cohort in Georgia will probably come to regret the Cuisinart egg cooker--will she really use it enough to justify the counter space it'll take up?--and really shouldn't have bothered requesting the $2.99 plastic soda dispenser. No one on earth would feel good about wrapping that up and bringing it to a party. I admire Eric from Pennsylvania's nerve asking for the six-quart Kitchen Aid mixer, and I can't help but notice that while the other me requested the same brand of towels I did, all the Erics wanted this one other kind. So now I'm wondering if there are some other, vastly better towels that we somehow overlooked in the store. I think the ones we got are pretty nice, though.

In conclusion, I really should be writing more thank-you notes instead of stalking other people's registries, and I also think it's for the best that I'm going back to work sooner rather than later, lest my brain be replaced by a set of wadded-up Micro-Cotton™ washcloths.

Yay, I say

Everyone kept saying your wedding goes by so fast and is a complete blur, and I was like yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, because people say a lot of things. Well, it turns out that they were all absolutely right.

As quickly as it went, I came away with the distinct impression that I had a really great time, and that was confirmed when I saw how happy we looked in all of Vickie's pictures. You can't fake that, or at least I can't. And I didn't fall on my face when I danced in high heels, so I'm calling it a total success.

Thanks to everyone who left or sent good wishes. You guys are all right. And now we rest before we must clean the house and write thank-you notes.

Mrs. Joolie

Photo by Vickie!

If all went according to plan, I'm a married lady right...about...now.

Whoo!