Brandon and I featured on The Weather Channel show

Friends and family know my husband and I were married this summer on Mackinac Island, Mich. July 25. Yes, yes, I did all the nauseating wedding gushing, from making a wedding announcement page to an online wedding photo gallery.

Anyway, my mom just called me to let me know she saw us on a Weather Channel feature story on Mackinac Island last night! Yes, us! In our wedding carriage!

My mom didn’t recall the name of the show, but my mad google skillz suggests that the show was called Weather Ventures, which highlights dream weather destinations. The show aired last night and is supposed to air again Dec. 14. I even located a MySpace page for the show’s host, who blogged from the island on July 27 - we were married on July 25 so it may have been his crew who filmed us.

Seven Random Things About Me meme

Deniselle at Fatly Yours tagged my other blog, www.the-f-word.org, in a Seven Random Things About Me meme so, I’m posting my answers here, instead, on my personal blog. I don’t do memes that often, but here’s my stab.

OK, so here are the rules of the game:
1. Link to the person’s blog who tagged you.
2. Post these rules on your blog.
3. List seven random and/or weird facts about yourself.
4. Tag seven random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
5. Let each person know that they have been tagged by posting a comment on their blog.

1. I have a rather odd fascination with Hubert Humphrey - you know, the former U.S. vice-president under Johnson, and democratic contender to Nixon’s 1968 presidential run. He only lost to Nixon by point-eight-percent of the popular vote. Yeah, I get a few strange looks. I had never heard of him until I did a self-study on the Vietnam War years ago, and I was intrigued. I spent one summer reading voraciously every book I could find on the man.

2. My supreme goal in life is to be a contestant on Jeopardy. No matter how much homework I have to do, how many books need read, papers that need written… I take half an hour each weekday to tune in and bemoan how I should be on the show. I’d probably do pretty horribly though. I was on Academic Team in both high school and college and I’m awful at giving on-the-spot answers.

3. My favorite singer is old enough to be my grandpa, looks a little like Santa Claus, and his surname sounds like a venereal disease. A good professor friend of mine (who’s the age of my parents) turned me on to Bruce Cockburn several years ago. I have more than half of his 28 albums, including his very first album, which is very hard to find. Words can never express how much this man and his music means to me. I’ve met him twice - at a concert in Louisville in 2003 and again last year after a concert in Lexington. Both times I appeared to be a drunken, bumbling idiot.

4. I once slept beneath a freeway in a homeless encampment in downtown Cincinnati. I wanted to learn about homelessness, up-close and personal. What better way to learn?

5. I have a book-buying obsession. Literally, I have thousands of books piling up and collecting dust in every corner of the house. I’ve always been a bookworm, and books are just my metaphorical security blanket, I guess. Brandon and I met online, where I had tried to make my profile sound as geeky as possible with things like “I own more books than shoes.” A couple months ago, I called Brandon from DSW Shoe Warehouse to tell him I’d be late coming home and he said that I hadn’t been completely honest in my profile; the only reason I have more books than shoes is because I have thousands of books. Oh, well. That just means I can buy more shoes!

6. I’m trying to grow a 500-pound pumpkin in my back yard.

7. I want to raise alpacas, not for profit, but as pets. I had never even heard of these cousins to the llama until I took a wrong turn while covering another story and drove past an alpaca farm. Since then, I’ve done several stories on alpaca farms in the area for the newspaper - one farm even sent me an alpaca wool purse as a thank-you gift. I tell my husband that our next house will have enough land for a few alpacas, some chickens, a goat or two, and maybe even a few horses. He just rolls his eyes.

Here are the folks whom I’m tagging: TechGirl’s Blog, Mo at Big Fat Deal, Pretty Pear, Charlynn at Disordered Times, Digging Me Up, Meowser, and Harriet Brown at Feed Me!.

At least it isn’t another pair of shoes

I’m debating whether to purchase this vintage jacket from Missphit now or to add it to my meager Christmas list of things I tell my husband to buy me.

Either way, it’s mine.

Thanks to Colleen at the Pretty Pear for the tip.

Hey kids… Join the club!

I always thought it somewhat odd that Amanda and I became such close friends while in high school, considering we were complete opposites. She, the lesbian liberal; me, a lapsed Christian heavily influenced by my stodgy, Republican parents. I always attributed it to be a shared teenage angst.

Now, I wonder if it was our morbid delight in cynicism that drew us together, because like her, I found her latest blog entry to be deliciously ironic and hilarious at the same time:

our library system - all 42 branches - circulates a children’s book series called the Magic Attic Club (different, btw, than the Magic Tree House — in case you were wondering). inside the paperbook editions of the book comes a little tear-out card to join the Magic Attic Fan Club (similar to those subscription cards in magazines). anyway, it has just come to our attention that the Magic Attic Fan Club had gone out of business some time ago, and that when kids are calling the 800 number listed on the card to join, they are being forwarded to the new owners of the phone line — a phone sex company!

Public Announcement

Happy Birthday Brandon!

An ode to my husband

My darling, perfect husband had to rescue me yesterday, after my car ran out of gas on a busy stretch of I-71. I had noticed that I was on empty when I parked at the office and made a mental note to get gas first thing, but two hours later when I left the office, I “forgot” said mental note and found myself stranded on the side of the road.

This isn’t the first time this has happened – I ran out of gas just several months ago and he saved me then too. This is precisely why I am on the legal equivalent of crack.

Though he was in the middle of a $70k order, Brandon came to my aid with a can of gas in less than 20 minutes, proving yet again that I have won the husband lottery.

So, I dedicate this post to my wonderful husband, as well as a special thank you to his mother for raising such a stand-up guy. In order not to make any other woman (or guys) jealous, I will enumerate just a few of the reasons why I love him so.

1. He went vegetarian, not because I pressured him to or withheld conjugal rights or anything, but because he respects my moral views on the practice.

2. He finds my keys, my work badge, my phone etc… at least several times a week, without ever complaining that I should learn to be more responsible or put things in one spot etc…

3. He’s MacGyver, reincarnated. For someone who professes to hate math as he does, his brain is a logical machine and he is so clever and innovative in his approach. And since I read directions only as a last resort, he’s probably saved us from a lot of home disrepairs.

4. He isn’t afraid to show his sensitive side (something which he’d probably prefer I not mention on a public blog), but for someone like me who came from a family who doesn’t hug or show much emotion, the fact that Brandon is physically affectionate and tells me at least several times a day that he loves me is so fulfilling.

5. He not only accepted my inordinate amount of cats, I think he loves them (at least Teddy) just as much as I do.

6. He respects (and somewhat shares) my personal beliefs on feminism and gender roles, and didn’t take offense or raise an eyebrow when I decided to keep my own name. He also helps around the house, knowing my personal quirk in that I can’t work without it being spotless.

Okay, so there’s so much more, but I’m sure you’re all sick of hearing such newlywed bliss. All I can say is that I am quite the lucky woman.

Vigilante dog justice

After rescuing five cats and briefly taking in a dog last year, I’m only now realizing that I can’t save every mistreated, abandoned or stray animal who wanders in my path. At five cats currently, our house is probably at the city’s legal limit for pets, anyway.

I might have mentioned this before, but we have three generations of hillbillies inhabiting the three houses flanking ours. Yes, imagine. Hillbillies in Kentucky. The day the grand hillbilly matriarch placed a “for sale” sign in her front yard, we celebrated with hopes the others would follow suit. Unfortunately, the housing market around here has softened and they still haven’t sold.

You would think a single mother with two kids on welfare whom we secretly believe to be mentally challenged and who cannot even afford a car, would need the responsibility of a pet like a hole in the head. Yet the hillbilly girl across the street has done exactly that. An adorable Boxer puppy is now chained to a leash tied to an old basketball net in their driveway. No grass. No water. Scarcely any food.

I first saw the dog yesterday, when its incessant barking interrupted my workday at home. The poor thing craves human attention. He’s a very sweet dog, well-tempered and would make a great pet, I bet. Unfortunately, he’s been “adopted” by an owner who doesn’t take good care of him. Yesterday his chain was wrapped up in a crack in the driveway, and the poor thing could hardly move three inches, let alone reach the empty water bowl. Might I mention, it topped a record high of 98 degrees yesterday.

Calling animal control will do no good; they’re overstretched and understaffed as it is. I’m thinking a covert rescue mission is in order.

Second thoughts

Brandon’s mom spread the word about that we’d prefer gift cards to Lowe’s as wedding gifts, and both our family and friends responded with showers of home improvement gift cards. Since we both lived independently before we met, we didn’t need to register for anything, but we do have a list of home improvement projects a mile long. We’ve mentally spent our upcoming tax return sevenfold.

We set out Saturday to squander our newfound wealth, and thought up of new projects to add to the ever-expanding list, like refinishing our kitchen cabinets. I’d love to totally renovate the kitchen when Ikea opens, but I know we’ll never get the return on the investment. Along with the cabinet materials, I also bought enough spring flower bulbs to open a small conservatory, along with mulch that I need to finish Phase I of the backyard project.

It occurred to me on the way home that for the next two years, I will not have the time to do projects like these, thanks to the time black hole they call graduate school.

I’ve been looking forward to graduate school ever since I returned to college years ago. I’ve always felt like the geriatric outsider lurking around the MTV spring break set in my undergraduate classes, and I envisioned graduate school to be oh, so much more serious and intelligent and full of academic people like me. For the record, it isn’t - the second-year grad students treat us like lowly high school freshmen.

I’ve been looking forward to graduate school for so long, but now that it’s here and classes have started, I’m ready to hang it up. It’s intimidating; reading two books on average each week with reviews and papers due several times weekly. My first American lit class is on Monday, and we have a 12-page review of a reading due on Friday. This wouldn’t be such an impetus for panic, except that I also have to squeeze in a 40-hour work week sometime.

Add to this the difficulty I have even getting through the first chapter of a book, any book. I tend to skip words, lines and even paragraphs when I read dull and dry material, which is how most historians write, unfortunately. Writing papers can be a test of true endurance. I’m trying to get back on ADD medication, but it’s going to take some time for it to even kick in.

Have I gotten myself over my head? And for what? The vanity of a master’s degree?

Dig my photography

The Enquirer, in collaboration with C-Change, is looking for the best photos of Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky to be put in a full-color, hard-bound, coffee-table book.  The photos that get the most votes will be published in the book alongside the best photos from The Enquirer, so the book is truly the best of  the best.

You can check out my photos and vote for them by going to my profile page.

Just in time for tax refunds

IKEA is on schedule to open their West Chester location come spring.   Bring on the Scandinavian furniture!