Make a note for future reference: I am never ever getting a flu shot ever again. ( Like, ever. )

[Error: unknown template qotd]
I absolutely want to be cremated. That's not a religious thing, I just think rotting things are gross. I can feed daisies just fine in ash form, thank you very much.

Wow, this prompt has me feeling very morbid.

Anyway, yeah. I do think that gravestones are... nice. Good as a physical marker, a way to remember loved ones, to leave behind something solid and real when our bodies are gone. But I don't want to be buried under one, if that makes sense.

I'm not sure how I feel about the whole "give your body to science" deal. I respect the hell out of it, don't get me wrong, but I'm not sure it's something I could do myself. I'm kind of hoping to be in one piece for the funeral, you know? At least visually. I suppose organs and things won't be missed so much at that point. Not by me, obviously, but I'm thinking of being, you know, presentable. Although I personally can't stand looking at the dead bodies of people I knew, and that whole practice at funerals kinda creeps me out, I understand that some people need that for closure. I guess.

OK, this is definitely the weirdest writer's block prompt I've ever answered. I maybe shouldn't have done this right before bed...

engagement party last night was so fun!! there were twenty people there including jim and i, and i knew almost everyone. we had the party at olive garden and it was so~o tasty!! and then we went back to my apartment and played apples to apples, which i've never played before. kathryn set it all up and got all the invites out, and there was even cake and flowers! and veronica got me a gift, which was pretty awesome, too. and then after everyone left i went over to jim's place and collapsed, i was so exhausted from this week. but i got like nine hours of sleep- and i actually slept- and i didn't have anywhere important to be this morning, no work to rush and finish. kathryn and i went to the rec this morning (and the weather was absolutely stunning), then we went to the bank and the grocery store, and it started pouring just as we were leaving the heb, but by the time we got back to the apartment it had stopped raining. *shakes head* that's texas for you.

so today and last night were amazing, which makes up for how everything from tuesday to friday morning absolutely sucked. (well, i had an okay crit on wednesday, but that was about it.) i haven't been sleeping well or very much at all, and i'm getting more and more uncertain about how my education is gonna play out. i talked to jim about this last night: i'm going to finish my degree, but i don't know if i'm going to try for my license afterwards. i just don't like what i've learned so far about architecture as a profession in the states. maybe it's different in other countries, or maybe i just don't know enough architects, but as much as this is what i've wanted to do since i was three years old, i don't know that i could handle becoming the kind of person that architects seem to be. so maybe i'll be a drafter. *shrugs* we'll see.

ETA: booked the church this past tuesday, and tomorrow i'm putting down the deposit for the sanctuary and reception hall. excitement!!!

the end.

........

*gasp* okay, studio is officially over!!! ( unnoficially, however... )

.... i want sleep desperately.

still to do:
final draft of history paper due by thursday
tuesday meeting at work 11a-1p, meeting with truitt 330p
wedding stuff: pick venues, dress shopping, reception party list - check theknot.com
documentation for studio
re-do section model and finish perspective drawings
secure loan for next semester
advising for honors course next semester
study for and take finals: bachman & taylor
gynocology/uti appt
post graphic design pic
compile portfolios for engl1300
laundry!!! (oh god.)
finances/ balance checkbook
work out spending for studio, bachman
help sana on her model
state inspection for marshy on wednesday morning
buy christmas gifts - jim, family/friends, secret santa
monday church 11:30am
2nd year crit on monday @1pm, visit after church?
save and print and put together fic 'zine
new cougar card

(also, i had thoughts about body types. my fiance is hott. *grins*)

ah, life. all its surprises are so... interesting.

so a couple days ago i talked to jenny durham, a friend of jim's who is also a wedding planner, and she gave me some good advice about getting started for a wedding. i explained about wanting a winter wedding, and the whole issue with december dates, and she said that it is feasible to have the wedding on new years' eve. the basic issues are these:

the dates when i want the wedding to be, dec 29-31 of '09, are right in the middle of the week, tuesday thru thursday. normally people have weekend weddings, but that's simply so that they can work around work schedules and travel, not only for themselves and their families but for all the people that they invite to the wedding. but because it's during a holiday when pretty much everyone invited will be off of work, on school break, retired, or close enough family that it's worth them taking vacation, we won't have to worry about that so much. we will have to worry about booking the place for the reception, because new years' eve parties will be going on about the same time. i wanted to have an afternoon wedding and a dinner reception anyway, but jenny pointed out that if there are parties that need to set up in the same place as the reception, we'll be hustled out early. so there's that.

she also explained that having the reception in a hotel is a really handy thing to do. since my entire family and a good portion of jim's family will be coming in from out of town, they'll need to stay in a hotel for at least a couple of nights. jenny said that most hotels with reception halls will offer a discounted rate to family coming in for a wedding reception, especially if you book multiple rooms in advance.

so what i need to do is pick a church (and pastor/officiary/priest/enabler/whatever) that will do a wedding ceremony on the afternoon of december 31st- and a church that won't look awkward with only 40 people in it, as jenny pointed out- and then find a nearby hotel with a somewhat larger reception hall open for the early (and hopefully late) evening of new years' eve, and then confirm them all.

i also need to make sure that my ring is insured, and meet the jeweler who made it- because it was custom done!!!! *amazed* it's so beautiful, i really want to thank her (him? i think her) for doing it. also because it won't fit in any standard clasp-style wedding bands, which is the kind i want: where the wedding band fits around the engagement ring like a puzzle ring. super-cool, imho. ^___^

and the last thing i've been thinking about is living arrangements for the summer and fall of '09. i finish school in may, and i have a home and a part-time retail job waiting for me in austin. but.... i want to do the PURS/SURF scholarship over the summer, which would mean that i'd need to stay in houston for at least a little while. and i want to get an internship, which is kind of hard to apply for in a city where i don't live. then, i'll have the five months and change of the fall semester of '09 before i get married in december. very few apartments off-campus offer one-semester/month-to-month leases, so i would have to get a lease for a year, basically. but then jim and i will be moving in together in december- well, technically january, i guess. so: where to live?

the only feasible option i have so far for living in houston is to bunk with jim (or another houston friend...?) over the three months of summer, and then get a lease for myself for a one-bedroom apartment until december... at which point i would get married and jim would move in with me and be on the lease with me. that sounds like a good idea to me, but i'm open to counter-arguments or alternatives. i've only just started thinking about all this.

so: thoughts? concerns? ideas? rancid fish? ....anyone?

^___^

okay, it's kind of weird how helpful the msn.com featured stories are. seriously.

( tips for pregnant women going green. )

~

in other news, i bought my first magazine today at the heb, and it was a bridal magazine called "the knot". sara and i looked at all the dresses, and then we got online and i signed up for an account at theknot.com. that website is badass. i mean, it's amazing, fantastic, fun, and incredibly helpful. it has so many organizational features and tips, i couldn't believe it at first.

i'm still so giddy about all this- i haven't even been engaged a week! but here's one downer: i was talking to don on the phone just a little bit ago, and he looked up the 2009 calendar. it turns out, dec 29-31 of next year falls right in the middle of the week, tuesday thru thursday. which isn't that big a deal since it IS basically new years' eve, so it's not like it's too much of a hassle, but still.... most weddings are weekend weddings, you know? and i'm not actually sure if anyone would be willing to do a new years' eve wedding. we might have to have it on the 30th. *shrugs*

well, anyway, i have work to do. ttl!

jim and i were talking about holiday traditions- or rather, we started out by debating whether we should watch love actually now AND at christmas, or just wait until christmas to watch it, because you HAVE to watch love actually on christmas- and then we got to discussing other movies and holidays and then i started thinking..... anyway. holidays. i have family traditions. ( do you? ) did i miss anything?

so, i've been up since 4am tending to a pair of male 2-day-old baby chinchillas. their mother died after giving birth sometime before saturday morning, probably due to complications in birthing, and cait volunteered- or was volunteered by her boss, i'm not clear on those details- to take the little guys home and feed them every hour or two. one of them is a bit of a runt and hasn't been able to hold his head up since yesterday evening.

i have new and increasing sympathy for mothers of newborn babies. and human babies aren't born with teeth. and evaporated milk has possibly the most noxious smell of any non-fecal matter i've ever encountered. i think i'll be breast-feeding my children, thanks all the same.

it's a painstaking process, making kinky (the bigger boy) stop squirming long enough to eat, and then holding the little guy at the right angle and gently pulling his mouth open- he can manage swallowing, barely. we've been feeding them with a dropper, and kinky can generally take a good squirt of formula milk and lick it off his whiskers, but the littler one is taking one drop and one painful, hard-won swallow at a time. they're both napping in my lap- i found the little guy sleeping upside-down on his head earlier. *eyeroll*

after the 6am feeding kinky widdled on me. little rat. *glares* he likes sitting on my shoulder. i call him kinky because there's a little kink at the end of his tail. chinchillas look kinda fun- like some kind of rat-gerbil hybrid. they have gerbil-like fluffy tails and a huge puff of fur on their heads, it makes their skulls look two or three times the actual size, SO funny. they're big, though- these guys are literally newborns and they're bigger than adult mice, about the size of a small young rat, but fluffier. i don't doubt chinchillas have color morphs, but these two are a gorgeous salt-and-pepper coloring, with white on their bellies and tails. they have really long kangaroo-like back legs, though.

oops, it's 9am- time for food, little guys!!!!

EDIT: 10:55am. the little one's dead. i fed him at 10 and curled him up with his brother on the heat pad, and when i got out of the shower he wasn't breathing anymore. *sighs* his body curled up in my hand is still warm, and it almost seems like i could be mistaken, but one look at him and it's obvious he's not breathing. still....

i'm in a kind of angry/nostalgic mood at the moment.

i'm done with working at tuesday morning as far as break is concerned, and it only sucked out my soul- just thirteen hours yesterday, and my cuticles were bleeding and covered in bandaids and tape by the time i got home. i spent most of the morning in the party aisle napkin land, and the afternoon with the pillows, and the evening with toys and any other batches we'd missed. everyone over 35 got to leave at 6:30 in the evening- lucky them. at home, the kitchen is painted, except for behind the fridge, but i'm so ridiculously sick of painting, maybe because i was the only one doing it, so it took two weeks. now i'm down to boxing up random stuff in my room that i don't really have time to sort through. which sucks, because it's in my nature to sort through all that crap and throw away three-fourths of it, but the fam is moving, like, tomorrow or something, so....

but cleaning out my room is making me all nostalgic and... wisdom-ish, which isn't a word, but what the hell. i went through a bunch of cards that i'd saved up- you know, get well cards, birthday and christmas cards, graduation congrats, etc- and i was forcing myself to throw them away and not keep them all any longer, but i kept reading them. it kept reminding me of when i was younger. and i say younger, but these were from just the last two years. there's a box in my dresser drawer that has the years before that, and i haven't gotten to that yet.

people accumulate so much junk in their lives, you know? especially as kids, and why did i keep all that stuff? toys and papers and books i'm never gonna read again or never even read in the first place... there are three lamps in my old bedroom, besides the one that i took to college, and i only want to keep the one that won't work anywhere but europe. i can kind of justify keeping school papers and notes, except really that's only worthwhile in high school, disregarding the fact that i take great notes, almost compulsively. but... if i was ever one to do scrapbooking in a real way (as opposed to the packrat way), you'd have to watch out.

well, anyway, so that's kind of... life. there are so many things i hope to do differently when i'm getting a house for myself and all that. so much that i want to do with my life that i'm afraid i won't be able to, because i don't have the time or the money or the space to do it. i just don't have options like i need them. yeah.

we learned about jigs today in studio. the carpentry kind, not the dancing kind. ^/____^

weather is AWESOME!!!!!!! we already had our week of autumn weather- it rained. and now we've had a cold snap going since, oh, monday or tuesday. it's wonderful... the morning temperatures are in the 50's, and on one memorable occasion it was in the 40's, and the days are crisp and breezy and never higher than about 70 degrees fahrenheit. clear skies, clean air.... mmm.... winter is here. winter for houston at least. i'm sure that it's snowing by now in wisconsin. *grins*

when i get out of college, i want to live somewhere that's cold. at least in the winter.