Tom & Alissa

White Teeth - Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith is nothing if not a story-weaving genius; how she comes up with such a densely populated book that seems all loose ends until somewhere in the middle, but keeps you interested, I know not. I do know that I really did enjoy this book, though it was very long. It’s sort of the story of a few middle-class families of varying ethnic and religious backgrounds in London; it’s also something more. If you tend to like books that I like (haha), then you’ll like this book. (4/5)

Wonderful Town - David Remnick (editor)
Thoroughly enjoyed this compilation of stories from the New Yorker about New York City. The authors ranged from Jonathan Franzen (yay!) to Lorrie Moore (double yay!) to Isaac Bashevis Singer, Woody Allen, J.D. Salinger, and many, many others, and spanned a period of 50 years. A lovely collection of short stories by some of the best writers we’ve got. (4/5)

Grub - Elise Blackwell
Borrowed and read on recommendation from Annie. It’s a re-telling of an older book, New Grub Street, and is a bit of a satire on the publishing industry. There were places that I felt the author could have used a better editor, and the characters were at times two-dimensional enough to be stereotyped; however, I think that’s exactly what the author intended, and she did it well and enjoyably. A good read, especially for writers. (3/5)

Birds of America - Lorrie Moore
Lorrie Moore is up near the top of my list of favorites. This collection of short stories isn’t my favorite overall (her novella Who Will Run the Frog Hospital is), but some of the stories were excellent. Still, if you haven’t read her, either start with Frog Hospital or Self-Help, another short story collection. (3/5)

On Beauty - Zadie Smith
Great stuff. It’s basically about a couple of families in which both fathers are professors of art, etc. at “Wellington College”, near Boston. They have wildly different ideas about politics, religion, culture, and beauty, and in its examination of their lives and their families’ lives, the reader gets to know the different permutations of views on beauty and what they mean, practically. There are some scenes that are a little too graphic for my taste, but they’re short and don’t color the book too much. Certainly excellent. (4/5)

Overall, I hit book #46 this month, which means I should cross the 50-book finish line in September, and I’ll just keep reading from there. I’m in the middle of two novels (Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov, and The Crossing, by Cormac McCarthy), and still have a couple of non-fiction books slowly going.

It must be Flannery O’Connor day again; first I read this article about what evangelicals can learn from O’Connor, then I find out that John Piper chimed in with a rousing agreement (hurrah!). And I’ve been thinking about her a lot again. In the end, I seem to always come back to her work.

Piper:

Fiction and poetry provide authors a unique way to glorify Christ that more overtly intellectual genres, like theology, simply can’t. These genres that aim directly for the heart and soul—rather than aiming at the heart through the mind—do not argue for belief, they show what it looks like and make you feel it. Theology, devotionals, and other books in the “Christian Living” section of the bookstore talk about belief explicitly. Their goal is to explain truth as clearly as possible. Fiction and poetry, on the other hand, tell the truth, but tell it slant. They offer an author a way to give his beliefs flesh and blood by enacting them in the confusion of the real world. In fiction, belief is not what you look at, but what you look through.

(My own article on O’Connor was published earlier this year in Radiant’s e-newsletter.)

I finally changed my name (to Wilkinson) yesterday at the Brooklyn Social Security Card office. I don’t have a card yet, but I guess it’s finally done. Our anniversary is in a week, so I guess it was about time. :)

I was confronted with an interesting question when I filled out the forms, though - apparently I could have changed my whole name if I wanted, or at least my middle name, and I could have retained my maiden name as my middle name. I remember a discussion about this last year. I did at one point consider retaining my maiden name as a sort of respectful remembrance of my Dad, but then I realized that he picked out my middle name and it’s the name he chose for me. On top of it, my maiden name is Clark, and that’s a man’s name. So I just scrapped the “Clark” altogether. I have a brother to pass it on.

I am getting on a train tonight after work to Albany. I just printed up a host of directions for Albany to Messiah, Messiah to our friends’ house, from there to the Morristown NJ Transit station, and from there to home for Mom. I’ll go straight to work on Friday and won’t be home until Friday night. I also just looked up Messiah’s schedule for the move-in day; very friendly. I can’t remember RPI’s schedule (which, because I never lived on campus, made sense, until I remembered that I was a Student Orientation Advisor my last summer - oh well), but it will be kind of fun to live through it again from a non-student, non-parent perspective. Parents are very funny when they’re moving their children into the dorm for the first time. That I remember well.

All this stuff with my brother starting college is making me all reminiscent for the ‘Tute - that, and some virtual run-ins with old college friends (hurrah for Facebook). On the bright side, it’s pushing me to work harder on my grad school apps. It’s true, I’m a classroom junkie. My career aspirations grow ever more understandable.

I love September, and it becomes September this week. I’m incredibly psyched. My favorite season is coming! I know I have enthused about autumn too many times, but this is my blog, and you’re going to just have to hear it. :) We missed September in NYC almost entirely last year with funeral/wedding/honeymoon arrangements, so I’m grateful that it happens every year.

It was a busy, happy weekend. On Friday night I - and pretty much everyone I know - was at the Creek and the Cave in Queens for a concert, after which my talented-and-prolific writer-friend Beth and her husband Wayne gave me a ride home to Park Slope. I finished another disc of Six Feet Under over some popcorn. Crazy Friday evenings, I have.

We slept in on Saturday; I got up around 11am and read for a while (I finished it last night). Tom got up a little later (he hadn’t gotten in until about 7am), and we had brunch at Black Pearl, then went back to the apartment and gorged on Arrested Development till Tom had to go to work. I then read for a bit and finished the second season of Six Feet Under before bed.

My mom drove into town yesterday with my brother and two of his friends, who had been in Wildwood with my grandparents for the week. They came to church with me and then we headed down to Grey Dog for lunch and Soho for a little shopping (I bought a few things at Anthropologie - so sue me) before they headed home. I went to set for a while to see Tom and get my keys (long story).

Thursday is the anniversary of Dad’s passing. If you’ve joined me in the past year, you can read the blog entries from last August. We miss him greatly, but knowing where he is has been such a comfort.

Thursday is also, incidentally, move-in day at Messiah, and my brother is moving in, so I’m heading to Albany on Wednesday night, driving to Harrisburg with the family on Thursday and moving him in, and heading back to NYC and work on Friday. I’m glad it’s a three-day weekend.

Unrelatedly: The Anthropologie catalog used to be my favorite catalog (I have piles of old ones stacked up for future slicing-and-dicing), but I have to be honest - J. Crew has outdone themselves with their latest Paris-themed catalog. I think I’m in love. And I’d love to be a walking version. Anyone want to donate to the cause?

I’m a nerd, and because of that, I’ve already started on my 2008 book list. I’m taking suggestions.

Two days ago I finished reading Birds of America on the way to work. A good thing, yes (I have hit #45!), but in my life it’s still a minor crisis, leaving me with nothing to read during lunch and the ride home. What to do, but visit the Barnes & Noble conveniently located on the lower level of my building? I ended up with On Beauty by Zadie Smith, partially because I really like her writing, partially because many others mentioned it, and partially because the back copy intrigued me:

Just outside of Boston, in the small college town of Wellington, lives a family that is anything but typical. Liberated by education, complicated by race, and hobbled by self-delusion, they are about to stray onto the battleground that divides personal belief from political conviction. ON BEAUTY is Zadie Smith’s brilliant, hilarious send-up of the culture wars that define our age.

And so far, it is good; insightful just far enough under the surface that if you’re not looking for it, you might not catch it.

On Wednesday night I went down to south Manhattan and visited the set that Tom’s working on right now. They’re shooting in a lovely building near City Hall - and apparently, one of the legal-type TV shows (I think he said Law and Order?) actually has a room they continually rent in that building for some of their courtroom scenes. The building itself is big and marbled with an arch-filled lobby, not unlike the Capitol building in Albany, but much smaller.

Last night I went out to Jersey to visit Tom’s family; his grandmother and his sister Jessica are both up visiting. We ate pot roast and vegetables and went with Jess to a random ice cream shop, where I (who rarely eat ice cream) had something sinful called “Holy Cannoli”. But it was scrumptious. I’m not really sorry.

Tonight, I’m planning to go to The Creek and the Cave in Long Island City (Queens) for my friend Carey’s concert with her visiting-from-Detroit brother (cheekily titled “Wallace Bros.”). I’m glad the weather turned nice; it’s been so frigid, but today is warm and bright.

Good words on auditioning, Christians, and giving the firstfruits in the arts. (1 and 2)

HT: Jeffrey Overstreet

This article talks about how a recent poll found that 25% of American adults surveyed did not read a single book last year.

I can’t even add anything to that.

My new favorite podcast:
NPR Book Tour.

“Each week, NPR’s Book Tour presents leading contemporary authors of both fiction and nonfiction as they read from and discuss their current work.”

Recent authors include luminaries such as Jonathan Lethem and John Updike; whether or not you like an author’s book, it’s incredibly illuminating to hear what they’re saying about their work.

It’s impressively cold in here. I should have worn something involving socks, but the rain outside deterred me. It also reminded me of a few essential purchases I think I’m going to need to keep from freezing and/or getting mono again this fall and winter: a trench coat, a good solid umbrella, and winter-weather leather boots.

Tom was still home when I got home last night; it was his first on-set day at the new film, but since he’s a 2nd assistant director this time, he spends a lot of time at the “office” (which was in our living room yesterday). He left for the Bronx with a production assistant around 9:30pm and I finished watching a disc of Six Feet Under, cleaned up a bit, and went to bed relatively early.

The fall fashion issue of New York magazine came yesterday. (Note that we do not and never have subscribed to New York, but it showed up in our mailbox about six months ago and hasn’t stopped coming. If you bought the subscription, thanks!) It has some fascinating articles about the Olsen twins’ burgeoning fashion empire, Brooke Astor, and the dual suicide of a pair of paranoid-but-well-known artists earlier this year. Plus some strange but interesting fashion spreads.

It’s definitely the cold weather (and it will spike back in the 90s by the end of this week, so never fear), but I’m getting that hibernation urge again. I really want to curl into a ball on the couch with a stack of books and notebooks and pens and a lot of coffee (in the morning) and chianti (at night) and create things of beauty. What’s your impulse when cold weather arrives?

I need to get a move on here.

I re-discovered the Draper Interdisciplinary M.A. Program in Humanities & Social Thought at NYU yesterday and had a lightbulb moment. I’m definitely applying, in addition to Gallatin.

From the Q&As:

Many students use the Draper Program as a transition between undergraduate and doctoral studies. While completing the requirements for the Draper master’s degree, students clarify and refine questions that will be at the heart of their PhD research. Some students want to pursue a doctorate in a field that has little connection to their undergraduate work; in the Draper Program, they can begin to acquire fluency in conversations relevant to their new interests. If their doctoral intentions build on their undergraduate focus, they use Draper to establish a graduate-level scholarly record that increases the likelihood of a successful PhD application.

Other Draper students use the Program to choose among several possible PhD concentrations. If you want to earn a PhD but aren’t sure which discipline best suits your research interests, the Draper Program lets you consider different disciplinary possibilities. Many of our students arrive at Draper intent on a particular discipline only to realize that they are more excited by another field of study.

Draper also suits those whose undergraduate focus does not resemble their current interests. A biology major, for instance, now wants to study urban anthropology. Or a musician or a visual artist or an accounting major and now wants to immerse in Derridian literary analyses or the philosophy of science.

Finally, Draper is a good place for you if you have no desire to pursue a doctorate but want to participate in the intellectual excitement and academic challenge of graduate school.

This is a pretty great article from Comment about film as a vocation (and quite a bit about the nitty-gritty, too).

Glorious Saturday; Tom didn’t have to work last night and was here in the morning. I think I nearly slept till noon. Last night we saw the Bourne Ultimatum, and it was awesome.

We went to the 12th Street Bar and Grill for brunch (some kind of french toast for Tom and a lovely artichoke omelet for me), ditched our original plans for a matinee and just came home to bum around. Tom left for work around 6pm and I went out, bought some groceries (croutons, tomatoes, peaches, duck sausage, other sundries), came home and cleaned and cooked and other wifely things. Watched a couple episodes of Six Feet Under and I’m ready for bed.

I’m glad for weekends. They add just enough sheen to life.

Just playing around.

People, if you haven’t listened to Over the Rhine’s new album, you absolutely must. And you can listen to the WHOLE thing - for free! - by streaming it from their website (just click on the “Over the Rhine record player” graphic and it starts). It’s incredible. I’ve been listening for weeks and haven’t gotten tired of it.

There’s even a Linford spoken-song on there. Oh, the awesomeness.

With great happiness, we discovered that Tom has today (meaning, late tonight into early tomorrow) off, so we get to actually kind of have a weekend before he has to work at 6pm on Saturday. So we can do things like have meals together (or in my case, meals at all), maybe a little Bourne Ultimatum, and useful things like sleep and relaxation. Ah, bliss.

Our church moves our service outdoors once a year to Washington Square Park. I’ve missed it the past two years, so I’ve never actually been to one, but this year I’m neither getting married nor traveling and it’s looking good. We met last night to plan the logistics, and I somehow volunteered to put together some printed materials. Fun for me, but I should have known when I went that I am a compulsive church volunteer-er. It comes from my years as church staff. In any case, I’m kind of jazzed about it. I like print design. It’s so much more fun than web design; your end product more often actually meets what you had in mind, as opposed to the horrors that operating systems and browsers inflict on web design.

I’m enjoying summer, don’t get me wrong, but I do so love autumn and I’m very excited for it to arrive this year. I was in a very strange place mentally last fall (with Dad’s passing so close to the wedding), but this year I’m a bit more stable and feeling a bit more alive. The weather is so splendid around here in the fall.

You must check out this photographer on Flickr. Love her work.

Terra Nova Church, in my hometown, is co-sponsoring two really awesome events at the end of September during Abolition week, including screenings of Amazing Grace and a concert with the wonderful Derek Webb along with Hundred Monkey Theory, a band with many of my Troy-based friends. Read about it here.

Of course, it’s the one weekend we have plans so far that month (it’s family weekend at my brother’s college, which will be awesome in its own right), but if you’re in the area you should definitely check it out. Derek almost never gets up into the northeast, and he has a lot of good things to say.

We saw Nickel Creek & Fiona Apple last night in Central Park. Amazing concert. I took a video with my phone, but I have to figure out how to get it on the web!

A few photos in DUMBO.

Did you know we’re over 200 days into 2007? Past the midpoint. Whew.

I led a mostly-uneventful weekend; on Friday night I worked on our thank-yous and watched Friends With Money (great acting, intriguing, but in the end unsatisfactory; still, not a waste of time) and more of Six Feet Under. I ate random things from the refrigerator in an attempt to not buy groceries last week while Tom was working. I eat very strangely when he’s not around, because I don’t really want to cook for myself (a lot of mess and time), so I end up eating a lot of cucumbers, noodles, and sauted canned cannellini beans. Not necessarily a bad thing.

I got to go running on Saturday morning, finally, because the weather was cool and lovely, and after I got home, showered, and worked on more thank-yous, I headed out to DUMBO to take some pictures. Though the trip was unsatisfactory in the way of photos (I took less than 200), I did have several serendipitous discoveries:
• Firstly, I bought an iced coffee at Retreat and was bowled over; it was the best iced coffee I think I’ve ever had, and I drink a lot of iced coffee. Perfect balance between roast-y and sweet without being either bitter or sweetened. Splendid. I’ll be back.
• I stumbled on the Brooklyn Bridge Park, which is funky and lies between the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan Bridge, two of my favorite places in the city. Grassy and uncrowded, even on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, it’s filled with random installation art, smells like you’re at the ocean because of the salty East River water, and has a lovely view of east Manhattan. I think they do movies there as well all summer.
• I made an attempt to walk the Promenade, but because I’m an idiot I completely missed it and was walking along an ugly street facing some Port Authority buildings, talking to my mom on the phone, when I looked up and saw the Promenade waaaaay overhead, above the BQE, which I’d been walking beneath. Nice.
• But, I happily turned left at the end of the road and found myself at the corner of Joralemon and Willow in Brooklyn Heights, which is really one of the loveliest neighborhoods in all of New York. It’s weirdly isolated, lacking necessities like cafes, or it would top my list of places to live in NYC. But, it does strikingly resemble Beacon Hill in Boston.
Pictures will show up soon, very soon.

I got home Saturday night and went grocery shopping out of desperate need. Over the rest of Six Feet Under and many more thank-yous, I had a dinner of gourmet tortilla chips, fresh salsa, and pan-fried quail (strange, but good), and finished it off with just a couple of spoonfuls of creme brulee ice cream. Delectable.

Tom got home around 5:30am on Sunday (he was driving cast and crew back and forth from set most of the night) and slept a few hours, and after a pit-stop for pumpkin-raspberry-cream-cheese muffins and coffee at our favorite Brooklyn bakery, we went to church, and happily, our dear Angela was there. We had lunch at Philip Marie afterwards with her, our storyboard artist friend Jeaney; our longtime friend, groomsman, and going-off-to-seminary friend Darin; and my former roommate and rockstar architect Katie. A good Sunday brunch, which lasted late into the afternoon. We came home and watched two disks worth of Arrested Development and laughed ourselves silly over smoked mozzarella, tomatoes, basil, and pretzel chips.

Very excited; tomorrow night we’re seeing our favoritest band ever - Nickel Creek - with Fiona Apple(!) in a Central Park venue! Tom’s shooting nights this week, but he took tomorrow off so we could go together. Who would miss the farewell tour?

Ah, the good life.

My debut article in Comment magazine about making friends off-campus.

I’ve been told it will show up in the newest print issue of Comment, as well. It’s a great privilege to be able to write for such a fine journal.

It’s a soggy morning, a fact which annoyed me when I woke up and wanted to go running. I supposed I could have gone out in the wet, but it was coming down hard enough that I wasn’t confident of my safety on the sidewalks. Alas. I’ve found that running in the morning is far better than a cup of coffee for feeling alert, and as a bonus prize, it’s good for me.

The good news is that it’s supposed to be relatively cool and partly cloudy tomorrow, so I think there’s some potential for a good day. If all goes well, I’m planning to go running (finally), do a little work at home, then head up to BAM to get tickets for some events in the fall (Sufjan Stevens’ symphony and the Kronos Quartet), then take off for either DUMBO or some other outlying Brooklyn neighborhood and take some pictures.

Tom, meanwhile, left for shooting in Jersey yesterday (he texted me saying, “We’re just filming traffic right now”) and will be there probably till early Sunday morning. Kind of weird having all this time at home, kind of not. I’ll be glad when he’s back.

I have been working on a few projects in my spare minutes this week: 1) getting our wedding thank-yous done (I know, it’s been a while, but Miss Manners says we get a year, and they’re special thank-yous and will be worth it), 2) recreating my online portfolio (which is still being re-created), and 3) setting up a way to archive cool recipes I find so they’re easily searchable. Don’t worry, I’m giving proper credit and linkbacks.

I totally did not intend this to be a self-indulgent entry; just not too much interesting going on. Sorry about that.

It’s just after midnight, I’m cleaning up from a busy evening of work, and suddenly I hear a dinging sound. Outside my window, the ice cream truck is just sitting at the corner.

It dings twice and drives away.

Riiiiight.

Gilead-loving New Yorkers, take note: Marilynne Robinson will be at the 92nd St Y in December.

The program:

The Psalms: A Reading and Conversation
Robert Alter and Marilynne Robinson

Robert Alter’s translation of the Five Books of Moses won the PEN translation award in 2005. “The most important reworking of a masterpiece that we have encountered,” the judges declared. Alter provides commentary for a recitation by local poets of selected Psalms. He also participates in a discussion with Marilynne Robinson, author of the novels Housekeeping and Gilead, which won the Pulitzer Prize. “Robinson’s words have a spiritual force that’s very rare in contemporary fiction,” wrote James Wood.
Monday, December 18, 8:00pm

At $18 a pop, it’s probably going to be well worth it. And if you’re under 35 and you hurry, you may be able to nab some of the $10 tickets available to young’uns.

You better believe we’ll be there!

Actually, in some ways, I can’t believe it’s Thursday. But I’m glad of it.

Tom was able to come home again late last night and leave this morning, because they’re starting night shoots for the rest of the week (or “splits”, as they’re called, which doesn’t exactly mean night shoots but I don’t feel like looking up the precise definition right now :D). So that was nice. He was very tired. He drove me in to work today, so I got to avoid the misery of subways in August.

My happy thing for the day: I located the headphone jack on my speakers at work and am putting them to good use. Podcasts make the world go ’round.

I suppose I should mention that I’m testing the waters and offering a handful of my fine art prints on Etsy for a modest price, suitable for framing and hanging (or really for anything else you want to do; I’m not fussy). If there’s any interest, I’m thinking of looking into printing notecards and other goodies at some point.

If you have suggestions, ideas, or particularly like any of my photos and think I should add them to the store (hint hint), let me know.

Tornadoes apparently touched down in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, which is south of us. (Read about it here and here on Gothamist.) I woke up around 5:00 am and saw the rain and lightning, but by the time I got up a few hours later, it wasn’t raining at all. It is unbearably muggy, but I still went running. Everything looked fine in my neighborhood.

Took me an hour and a half on the train to get to work, though, because of the flooding on the tracks (see above). Glad I got in an air-conditioned car. A co-worker apparently ended up on a bus early this morning, wherein he saw a tree uprooted that subsequently hit the bus, and then moved on to hit an apartment complex. Lovely!

In other news, Tom got to come home last night, though he promptly had to go out and exchange cars with another production assistant because - well, let’s just say, Tom runs a tight, efficient, organized ship when he’s an assistant director, but not everyone does.

He finally got to bed around 1am and was back up at the crack of dawn to pick up actors and bring them out to the set in NJ. Last I heard from him, he was looking for directions that didn’t involve the congested BQE, but I had no internet (Verizon DSL is completely useless when the sky is cloudy, so imagine it during a tornado) and couldn’t help him. We’re glad this job isn’t for much longer.

I’ve nearly finished White Teeth, by Zadie Smith. And I’m actually rather enjoying it. I think it would make much more philosophical sense if I were a) British and b) older, but it’s a thoroughly entertaining book. I really like her style of writing.

I’m planning to take a copyediting class (non-credit) at NYU this fall. Work pays for it because it’s directly related to my job. I’m actually really looking forward to it. I’ve been out of college for more than two years now, and the last class I took at NYU was in spring 2006, and, well, I’m a geek and I love classrooms. And I’m trying to stop doing any more web development (much too stressful of a freelance job when you have a full-time job) and perhaps work on short-term copyediting projects instead. So if you have a project, contact me! ;)

Two luscious food blogs I’ve enjoyed for a while: La Tartine Gourmande and Food & Paper.

And lastly, some recent Flickr favorites.

1. orange, 2. pink toes + rosé, 3. Untitled, 4. new love, 5. thirsty for rain, 6. where the purple thistle grows, 7. going crazy, 8. Julie, 9. Attente du Tour de France, 10. #02 stand in a row, 11. #03 until the small hours, 12. cherry blossom / cerisier, 13. Time for fresh juice, 14. Untitled, 15. Untitled, 16. Tomato Salad, 17. Agapanthus africanus, 18. Untitled, 19. gutter, 20. on the street, 21. far, 22. #03 in cycles, 23. lingering, 24. towards the sky, 25. flores

We spent a beautiful Saturday in Brewster, New York and the surrounding Connecticut towns for Adam and Renee’s wedding, which was absolutely picturesque; I chased the girls all Saturday morning and shot their preparations, and then handed the camera over for the rest of the day and participated in the festivities and the eating and the drinking and the conversations and the contradancing in a tent on a hill overlooking a body of water and the sunset, with twinkling white lights. I haven’t been to too many weddings as an adult, but this one was certainly one of the loveliest you could hope for, with the loveliest couple.

Sunday found us in desperate need of relaxation and together-time, as Tom is out of town all this week. So we had church, quiet meals, Frida, and even a nap. Tom had my engagement ring repaired (one of the prongs was chipped, making the diamond precariously loose in its setting), but it came back and he gave it to me over dinner. It’s wonderful to have it sparkling at me again from my finger.

This morning I was reading a short story on the train when four guys came into the car and started talking. In New York, that usually means either panhandlers or people asking for change, of which we’d already had two come through the car. Then they broke out singing, “In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight . . . ” and they were GOOD! I think everyone in the car was smiling when they left.

I’ve been cleaning up tonight, while eating grapes and playing old Gilmore Girls episodes, and I’ve realized our stacks of books are getting precarious. Too many more and we’re in danger of having them collapse on us. I see no relief in sight.

Renee’s Grandfather told me I’m the hardest working wedding photographer he’d ever seen and at his age I’m sure he’s been to a lot of weddings. So here’s the count:

436 photos of the rehearsal
124 photos of the rehearsal dinner
602 photos of the girls getting ready (by my lovely wife)
1193 photos of the wedding
114 group shots
and 2356 photos of the reception
Grand Total: 4825

Now all I have to do is look at each of them!

That’s where our church meets - it’s not our building, but it’s pretty nice, though sans A/C.

(I love my cameraphone.)

I got a new phone yesterday; a LG Chocolate phone in “Black Cherry”. For all my geekiness, I’m not much of a phone girl, and my last phone was from 2003 (I think). Because I switched contracts mid-stream when I moved out of my parents’ house and got a real job, my Verizon “new every two” re-started and didn’t end until last weekend. But now! I can take pictures! And have speed dial! It is very cool.

Tom got a job as a PA on a funded film (meaning, he gets paid now instead of deferred) and has been very busy, and it looks like he has to be gone most of next week. Which means I will be alone, but not at loose ends . . . not me. I think it does mean I will get the camera all week. Look out, world.

We head north tonight to Brewster, NY for Adam & Renee’s wedding, which we are shooting (Tom mostly, me with the girly before-the-wedding bits). Haven’t been to a summer wedding with friends in a long time. And it’s a bit stifling out; hopefully being out of the city will help a bit.