And because you probably can’t read the titles, here’s the list (in order of when i finished them, from the most recent on down):

1. Marley and Me by John Grogan
2. Water For Elephants by Sara Gruen
3. The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz
4. I Don’t: A Contrarian History of Marriage by Susan Squire
5. Lying by Sam Harris
6. French Women Don’t Get Fat by Mireille Guiliano
7. Why We Get Fat: And What To Do About It by Gary Taubes
8. Bossypants by Tina Fey
9. Naked by David Sedaris
10. Letters To A Young Contrarian by Christopher Hitchens (may he rest in peace)
11. Remaking Eden by Lee M. Silver
12. The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and some other guy

I grabbed Marley and Me at a used bookstore in California when i finished Water For Elephants too quickly. I thought the former was a little too much of a writer-writing-about-being-a-writer type of memoir (you remember how i hate those, don’t you?) but i was suffering a pretty bad bout of puppy fever when i picked it up, so it entertained me. Water For Elephants was a really good piece of fiction—and by “good” i mean “entertaining.” DO NOT watch the movie until you’ve read the book! The movie will ruin the book for you, much moreso than other movies ruin other books. I can’t tell you anything more than that without giving too much away. Also, the movie is pretty much just bad all around, whether you read the book or not.

I Don’t was very dull. Lying was very intriguing and very short. Naked started off quite funny and quickly turned very weird. Remaking Eden was interesting if a little slow and sometimes far-fetched. It makes some really good points about why the “life begins at conception” argument is scientifically incorrect. I wish i could remember them.

Letters to a Young Contrarian was a little over my head, but it deepend my admiration for Hitchens. The book really made me feel like he was a champion of truth, and that that’s a very worthy thing to be even if it means ruffling a lot of feathers. He was still alive when i read it, and now that i’m reading his memoir, he is gone.

I expected Bossypants to go one of two ways: very funny, or very intimate. It was neither. It leaned more to the funny side, but i kind of felt like she was just addressing the major questions that she gets asked all the time (Why do you have that scar? How did you get a job writing for SNL?) rather than trying to communicate an original idea. I still liked it and i’m still a huge fan of hers, i just think her talent for writing is put to better use on scripts.

So, for 2012 i’ve made it my goal to read 13 books (although 15 would make for a nicer layout in that goodreads screenshot, hm?). I think i’ll try not to read more than one memoir this year, and this time i mean it. I want to read more about UI and other sciency things. And in keeping with last year, i probably won’t read more than one novel.

Any recommendations? Come be my friend on Goodreads so i can see what you’re reading!

January

In January of this year we suddenly decided that interest rates looked like they’d be rising sharply soon, and so we went one night to a seminar about buying a first house. We wound up being the only two people there. Two days later we went visiting homes in the area with the realtors who taught the seminar. The first house had a crappy basement. The next three had tiny kitchens. But the fifth one had a roomy kitchen, two fireplaces, a finished basement and an enormous shower with two showerheads. We fell swiftly in love with it, even though we had almost passed the house by because it was further north than we wanted to be. We made an offer that day, and within about a week the deal was sealed. We were on our way to purchasing our first house.

(The doors are different now, this is an old photo)

February

In February we took a trip to Chicago and moved into our new house!

March

In March Nathan traded in his BMW 1-series for a BMW Z4 M. He was a happy, happy boy. I was a stressed-out bride-to-be (but i don’t regret agreeing to let him make the switch. he really loves the car).

April

In April i had my bachelorette party. It was a blast! We went to Appare for dinner, had oreo balls at the house and then went to Uncle Buck’s for some dancing action. The ladies bought me drinks and i danced until i got all sweaty and gross. It was awesome.

May

In May we got married!!!

June

In June we went to Cancun for our honeymoon. After all that stress with the new house and the new car and planning the loveliest wedding, it was absolutely fantastic to just sit on the beach and do nothing.

July

In July Dustin visited before he went back down to Oklahoma to start his internship. We went to an Iowa Cubs game with Mom and i made the game seem pretty fascinating in comparison to my talk of the books i’d been reading.

August

In August i turned 26. My guy friends had a party for me at their place. We ate BLTs and stayed up late watching Twilight with the RiffTrax on, and then we went out to a park to watch the Perseids meteor shower. I had been warned that it was going to be crappy this year because of the full moon, but we went anyway and each of us saw at least a couple of shooting stars. I want to make this an annual birthday tradition, and hopefully the skies will be nice and dark for me in 2012.

September

In September we went to Iowa City for Nathan’s birthday. We got burgers and beers at The Vine and stayed at a weird little eco-friendly/vegetarian/salvaged-everything bed and breakfast. In the morning we went to Wilson’s orchard and picked apples for pies and apple dumplings.

October

In October we went to Grinnell to see Ume. The show was in the basement of a dormitory, and for a long time it didn’t look like anyone else was coming. North America opened with some spooky instrumental music, and then the college kids (who had all brought their own beverages) really started rocking out when Ume took the stage. It was a really good show, and it was free! I got Lauren’s autograph before we left.

November

In November we learned that my brother has cancer. It’s not really my place to talk about it much, but i can say that for a minute there i was truly scared and i thought that my extreme luck in life was about to run out. It turned out not to be quite as bad as some of us had feared, but still something that was very serious and needed to be dealt with as quickly as possible. My brother came and stayed with us over Thanksgiving and it was wonderful to see him. Shortly thereafter he began his treatment. So far he’s feeling extremely well despite everything, and we’re really hopeful that this will all pass without even being terribly difficult. I can’t express what a relief that is.

December

Earlier this month we went to California to celebrate my grandfather’s 90th birthday. It’s always nice to go down there, especially in the winter since it’s still warm enough to walk around in a light jacket. My grandparents seemed to be doing really well—even better than the last time i saw them, i think—but my great aunt did happen to be in the hospital with some grave-sounding infection. She’s 92, herself. I was glad to be able to go down there and see everyone, including my Dad and his wife.

So, that about wraps it up. What a year! One of the best possible things and one of the worst possible things happened in rapid succession. I still feel incredibly fortunate. I have a husband who is wonderful is so many ways, and a dear little house in which to live with him. I did not change jobs this year, which is a first for me. And my brother is going to be fine, which i’m eternally thankful for. It was a terrible thing that he got cancer, but i’m a lucky, lucky girl to have always had him in my life and to be able to continue on that way.

I don’t want to make any promises i can’t keep, but in 2012 i hope to be a little more social and a little more creative. I’m starting to miss my creative outlets, and i plan to take some classes and/or make some time to get back into making beautiful things. I’m not sure what yet, but hopefull you’ll see.

I photograph the sugar cookies i made at my cookie decorating party.

Merry Christmas!

I expected this book to be primarily about consumer culture and how the overwhelming array of choices in any given retail environment actually scares off customers. I thought it was a book about UX, but it actually only touched on the consumer aspects of overwhelming choice. It focused more on people and how too many choices tend to make many of us miserable; it turned out to be more like what i wanted Blink and How We Decide to be. It explained how there are two types of people when it comes to making decisions: maximizers, who agonize over choosing the best thing and often keep looking once they’ve made a decision, and satisficers, who start a search with a set of criteria and stop searching once they’ve found something that meets those criteria. I’m definitely a maximizer. And as it turns out, maximizers are more prone to depression, regret, and dissatisfaction with their decisions.

Schwartz’s central argument in the book is that the increased number of choices that modern people face for just about every aspect of life actually leads us to be less satisfied in life—even though we have it better in almost every objective way than any previous generation of humans ever has—because most of us tend to be maximizers. I saw so much of myself in this book; this is why planning the wedding was so difficult for me, this is why i constantly compare my physical appearance to others, this is why i still don’t know what i want to be when i grow up. The world is too wide-open; i have too much freedom, i’ve been encouraged to want perfection and i blame myself when i don’t think i’ve achieved it. If i were a satisficer, life would be so much more—well, satisfying. Which is not to say that i don’t feel extremely privileged and grateful for the wonderful life that i do have. I just don’t focus on that gratitude as much as i should.

I thought this was a really insightful, useful book. My only criticism is that it almost felt more like a self-help than a science book. I think it could’ve been backed up by more research. I do think i was in need of the help it offered, though. I need to go shopping for boots soon, and when i do i now know to get my expectations sorted out beforehand, not set them too high, and only look at a couple of different shops. Wish me luck.

I recently read a couple of books about—well, fat. And they were both good, to different degrees and for different reasons. The first was Why We Get Fat: And What To Do About It by Gary Taubes, and the second was French Women Don’t Get Fat by Mireille Guiliano. While the former was well-researched, well-argued and smart, i thought the latter was anecdotal, nonscientific and a little bit boastful, but still for the most part worth reading. And, in fact, i felt i was able to glean the best advice from Guiliano’s book having read Taubes first and knowing where the text was probably flat-out incorrect.

I really think everyone ought to read Why We Get Fat. Everyone in America, especially, including the dietitians, personal trainers and doctors out there (hear me, family? ). If you disagree with Taubes, that’s perfectly fine. But you might want to do some research of your own to decide whether you disagree because you’ve been told otherwise, or because you can find evidence that contradicts the stuff he’s found.

Basically, Taubes argues that what we all know about weight management—that you must balance calories in/calories out, that saturated fat causes heart disease, etc.—is almost certainly wrong. I first heard about Taubes when i read his article for the New York Times entitled Is Sugar Toxic?, and i realized that he wasn’t just restating the obvious nutritional advice that we’ve all heard a thousand times, but was actually doing real research on the subject. So i sat up and paid attention, and i wasn’t too happy to learn what i did from his book. Meat is one of the best foods for us. Carbs, especially highly-processed ones like sugar and white flour, are almost certainly the worst. And while the book is very focused and sticks nearly exclusively to explaining the question raised by its title, it is quickly mentioned toward the end of the book (with no less convincing evidence) that carbs are probably also what cause many cancers, heart disease and diabetes. So even though i’m not a fat person, i feel like i should cut that crap out of my diet as much as possible for the rest of my life.

Have i started to do so? Absolutely not. Nathan and i have probably consumed more doughnuts since i read that book than ever before in our lives. But we’re thinking really hard about it.

French Women Don’t Get Fat was a different animal entirely. Guiliano cites nary a source nor study in her text, though she does refer to a whopping three individuals for whom her method has made a little bit of difference, in addition to her own fat-to-skinny tale. The basics of her philosophy are: enjoy what you eat as much as possible but eat moderate portions, especially of treats like bread (carbs), chocolate (carbs), desserts (carbs), fruit juices (carbs) and alcohol (carbs); walk a lot; and drink a lot of water.

Interestingly, there’s a lot of overlap between her approach to staying in shape and Taubes’s, despite the fact that Guiliano dismisses the low-carb approach to food as “ridiculous” and thinks that to practice that way of eating is to “risk heart disease” (not true). Everything that she says to eat in especially small amounts is a high-carb food (with the exception of meat). She and Taubes both advocate drinking a lot of water and eating plenty of greens. Both authors recommend eating plenty of soup as well, and limiting the intake of alcohol (especially beer, *sniff*) to a very low amount. Both advocate eating large meals and disdain snacking, and neither of them sees the point of intensive exercise as a method for weight loss when the result of it is almost always an increased appetite and calorie intake.

But from reading Why We Get Fat i can tell Guiliano that walking twenty minutes each day is not going to help anyone lose weight, either. It’s certainly not a bad idea and nothing ill is going to result from it, but it’s the diet that’s going to reduce a person’s waistline, not the evening stroll. She claims that those few extra burned calories “really add up,” but as Taubes points out, that can’t possibly be true unless everyone whose weight doesn’t fluctuate at all is consuming a very perfect number of calories every single day. Consider that if a person ate just twenty extra calories each day, it would take only a couple of decades for those calories to add up to an extra fifty pounds if the calorie balance imperative is true. Conversely, if a person were undereating by just twenty calories each day, she would steadily waste away over the years.

The body handles different types of calories in different ways. I’m not going to attempt to re-hash the science in Taubes’s book, because i didn’t take notes and i’d probably get it slightly wrong. But it made perfect sense to me. You should read the book, especially if you think what i’m saying is a bunch of bull.

And i think there’s a lot of truth, too, to the French idea that while Americans enjoy gorging on huge portions of food, we might actually enjoy it more if we stopped thinking of it as “sinful” and took the time to really think about and taste what we’re eating. I also thought Guiliano’s advice to cook a lot, avoid processed foods and try to eat a lot of local, seasonal produce was sage advice that would do a lot for our country. If only it were as cheap and easy to shop a farmer’s market as it is to hit up Subway, eh?

Indecisive ladies: go with the first thing you find that you really like. If you try on a veil or shoes or jewelry that you love when you buy your dress, ORDER IT THEN. Don’t just think to yourself “well this dress is so expensive, i’ll just get the rest later! Besides, i might find something i like even better. I’ve got plenty of time.” Save yourself some stress and get it right away. I did this correctly with the bridesmaids’ shoes; i saw some cute flats on sale and thought they might work well, so i snapped them up immediately. I did not do this with my own shoes. I waited way too long, thinking i was safe to take my time, and by the time i went to place an order, the company had actually stopped making the shoe i wanted in my size (i wear an 11). Totally frustrating. I also procrastinated a week or two on buying the dress i wanted for the rehearsal, and it sold out in my size. So if you see something you like, just buy it. You can return most things if you change your mind later, and if you can’t return it you can sell it on Craigslist (to someone like me, who waited too long to order her veil, too).

The dress i missed out on. *tear*

Venues, Vendors—Everything.

Know there’s a song you want to hear? Start making a playlist right now. I don’t care if your wedding is two years away. Are there certain poems you like? Print them off and start a binder. Certain gifts you want to give? Buy them now. Just don’t wait on anything. Make a decision and go with it as soon as you can; this will save you so much time in the weeks before the wedding when all the little loose ends need to be tied up. We knew well in advance which restaurant we wanted our rehearsal dinner to be at, but for whatever reason we didn’t feel pressured to actually make the call until about five months before the wedding, by which time our date was already completely booked up. If there’s something you know you want, it’s never too soon to get it set in stone.

I’ve always been pretty healthy and not prone to terrible accidents, so the obvious benefit of having someone at home who could take care of me physically was something i only had to take advantage of for minor incidents. Whether i had an earache or a stomach bug, though, dad always had something for it in our vast medicine cabinet at home. Chances were that the mysterious remedy in its brown or orange bottle was older than i was, but my dad reassured me that its effectiveness was not hindered by its age. For example, there was one time when i was waking up in the mornings with gunky eyelids that i couldn’t open, and so dad flipped them inside-out for me and applied something that magically had the problem cleared up within a day or two. Dad also had some nifty doctor gadgets at home, like the big gray magnifying goggle things he would put on when he pulled splinters out of my fingers for me, and heavy-duty tweezers that also proved effective for extracting my tiny earring when it started sinking into my freshly-pierced earlobe when i was eight years old. He was handy with ordinary household items, too, and once had to vacuum little wads of kleenex out of my nose with a turkey baster after i lodged them up out of reach in a vain attempt to assuage my own head cold.

Sometimes i probably caused my dad undue alarm by informing him of some ill i was experiencing long before i felt it was serious enough to actually go to a hospital for; like the time i emailed and called to leave a voicemail for Dad from Rome while i was studying abroad to inform him that i was experiencing some sort of horrible throbbing stomach pain. Later that evening i received a call from my grandmother, whom my dad had contacted and asked to make the international call to check on me (and this was probably the second time in my life that she has ever called me, by the way, so i was quite surprised to hear her voice on the other end of the line). I told her that the problem had finally gone away; probably just gas or something. She sternly told me, “well, don’t do that again. Your dad was worried sick about you,” and promptly got off the line.

My doctor dad taught me some important medical things while i was growing up, like the time i dropped a little toy ballerina into the toilet and he had me fish it out, explaining that “urine—which is what doctors call pee—is sterile, which means it won’t make you sick to touch it.” Or the morning of his wedding to Mary when i was hung over from a night on the town in Portland with my brother Dustin and nauseous as hell, when he informed me that there’s a drug that quickly and effectively relieves nausea for patients of chemotherapy and, biting his lip, got me a one-dose prescription for it from the hospital pharmacy. He was right; it worked.

Having a dad who’s a doctor has always been a source of pride for me. I remember in fourth or fifth grade my class was studying the nervous system and Dad came in with his doctor’s models of a brain and an eyeball and taught us about the brain for a day. I thought it was so fun that all my friends had to listen to my dad because he was the expert. It became especially cool when the TV show ER rose to popularity in the mid-nineties, and everyone thought they knew exactly what i was talking about when i told them “my dad is an ER doctor” (and, actually, so did i).

I think Dad wasn’t really allowed to talk about work at the dinner table, so i didn’t hear a lot of gruesome stories from him. Every once in a while when he took me and Dustin out, though, we’d hear some work stories about people coming into the ER who had been struck by lightning or had somehow had their toes severed. I remember hearing one story in particular about a man whose finger had been bitten almost clean off by a woman at a bar when the man had drunkenly grabbed the woman’s face, and i was amazed to think that such a thing was even physically possible.

When it came time for me to choose a career path for myself and head into college, i had no desire to follow in my father’s footsteps, enamored as i was at the time with the arts. I have a much greater appreciation now for the sciences, and my admiration for my dad has only grown with time; understanding as i do now how hard he worked to get where he is now, and the kind of dedication, perseverance and intelligence it takes to get there. Still, i don’t have a strong enough stomach to ever do what he has done, and i’m a little ashamed to say that last time i had my eyelid flipped i very nearly passed out.

I may never have a doctorate like my dad does, and i’ll never quite know what it was like to walk in his shoes, but it’s still an honor for me to be directly descended from that kind of human being. My father has saved lives. That’s something that not a lot of people can say. Dad, i hope you enjoy a long and very happy retirement, because you most definitely deserve it. I’m extremely proud of you, always have been, and always will be.

Decide what you want early on

The very first thing you should do when you get engaged is figure out what it is that you want. Do it as early as possible; start looking at magazines, wedding blogs (i highly recommend Style Me Pretty), start a board on Pinterest (let me know if you need an invitation), and start putting together all of your favorites. Make a decision and stick to it. I know it sounds hard, but it’s best to have a clear vision of what you want when you meet your vendors for the first time.

My wedding board on Pinterest

Tell the vendors what you want. Exactly.

And do it in person. You’ll probably only meet with them once or twice in person, and you should bring photos of what you want and be very clear about it. Don’t tell your florist that your color is “berry tones, but not purple red or pink” like i did. Find something—anything—that is the exact color you want and bring it with you. Better yet, give your vendor a swatch. This is something i meant to do but never got around to; you can buy pantone swatches for your wedding from The Dessy Group. I think it would have been well worth $10 to have had those swatches to refer to from the get-go.

Learn to love the telephone

You should get used to talking on the phone anyway, because you’re going to need to do it a lot. But i recommend relying on the telephone for most of your communication. Do not rely on email. People ignore emails. If you send The Picture of what your wedding cake should look like to your florist and baker, you cannot assume that they received it. If you send an email to your florist to tell her that you want peonies, first of all be firm about it. Don’t say “what do you think, would peonies be pretty?” Just say “i want peonies, not roses.” And do it over the phone, so you know that she heard you.

Lastly, consider doing it yourself

I didn’t want to “DIY” anything, but i think i actually ended up most pleased with the things i did myself. I designed and assembled the invitations with a little help from my friends, and they were beautiful. I chose my own lanterns, table numbers, accessories, and the ribbon for my cake. I’m not sure that i could have handled doing the flowers on my own, but i could have worked closely with a friend on them and they would probably have turned out more like what i envisioned (and so much cheaper!).

My hair would have looked a little pathetic no matter who had done it, unfortunately—that’s just the nature of my hair. But i think i could have done a better job with my own makeup. For the money i spent on having my makeup done for the wedding day, i could have bought some really nice makeup and looked a little more put-together. I did boss my beautician around a little bit (don’t line my lower lid, please. Could you redo these eyelashes? I can’t open my left eye all the way. That lipstick is too pink. I don’t want bronzer, it makes my face look too peachy), but there were a few things that i still wasn’t satisfied with. I just have a certain way i like my makeup to be done, and i think i should have practiced up and done it myself.

Nathan and i both stayed home the night before, because while a lot of couples spend the night before apart to make it more “special,” i think i would have simply passed out at some point if the day had been any more special than it already was. He’s my security blanket through this thing, and i needed to be with him. I didn’t get a lot of sleep that night but Nathan—as per usual—slept like a baby. (Although, why does that phrase even mean what it does? Babies sleep in short bursts and wake fitfully, don’t they? At least that’s what i hear!)

In the morning we gathered up everything from jewelry to vows to the borrowed microphone and headed to Sticks for the setup. Nathan set up our computer (i.e. the DJ) and rearranged tables while i wrote every guest’s name on the chalkboard for the seating chart. Yep, i did that. Not everyone followed it and as it turned out not everyone who was on the board was present, and not everyone who was present was on the board. But people LOVED it. I’ve gotten more compliments on my seating chart than any other aspect of the wedding (except perhaps for my dress). It took me probably a couple of hours to do just because i was distracted and jittery and a little bit of a perfectionist.

The flowers arrived and i noticed that they weren’t exactly what i had wanted, but there was no real reason to fuss about it. I fashioned a long black bow for my bouquet and called it good. Then Kelly took me to my hair & makeup appointment. Kelly is a professional bridesmaid, and was good at telling me that everything was going to be okay as i bounced nervously in my chair. Oh, and did i mention that it was rainy? It had been raining lightly all morning and we watched the sky with anticipation, hoping that it would clear up by showtime. Nathan was in charge of deciding whether to hold the ceremony outdoors or indoors. After i had made the aesthetician redo my eyelashes three times and my appointment was finally over, Kelly took me to Subway but i couldn’t eat anything, despite having had nothing more than half a pastry and a small cup of coffee for breakfast that morning at Sticks.

Back at Sticks again i started trying to relax a little bit before the big moment. I had a few bites of Kelly’s sandwich and held a banana that she gave to me (but couldn’t eat it). Amanda was there taking photos of my dress. The cake was being assembled. The baker noticed that the floral topper wasn’t what i had planned on and she did what she could to make it a little more drape-y and less of a ball. She was amazed by how pretty Sticks looked with everything set up the way it was, and by how calm i seemed. I didn’t feel terribly calm, though.

The weather had cleared up enough that we would be able to have the ceremony outside. This is the one major thing that we had hoped for and that did actually go according to plan. The bridesmaids donned their dresses and i caught a glimpse of Nathan suiting up in his tux, which made me swoon. I waited until my mom & sister arrived to put my fabulous dress on, which they helped me with. Finally it was time to go. Everyone left except for my sister, whom i was extremely glad to have assigned at the last minute the duty of carrying my train. My dad came to get us, and we were on our way.

It’s so weird standing up there, getting married. I thought i would cry through the whole thing but i just beamed up until the guitarist performed our song (which we were all hearing for the very first time), and then finally i cried a little. I felt so nervous and strange, but looking at Nathan it all felt very right, too. When we kissed it really did feel like a first kiss; i had never kissed my husband before, and that’s exactly what it felt like.

From there things started to blur. We signed our papers while the guests unexpectedly formed an aisle toward the getaway car. We went around to greet each guest rather than having them come to us in a receiving line. My brother managed to dole out the white rose petals for the guests to throw (despite the fact that they had arrived in two large containers rather than nice bundles). We went back down the aisle through a shower of petals, made our getaway in Nathan’s car, and Amanda followed us to take our pictures at Greenwood Park. I hadn’t been able to freshen up my hair or makeup beforehand, but luckily the pictures turned out gorgeous anyway.

Back at Sticks we took some quick portraits with the families outside and then made our grand entrance. We cut the cake (an event which a lot of people missed, unfortunately) and got our dinners. Somehow the playlist i had made for the cocktail hour and dinner had been overlooked and at one point while i was eating, Bodies by The Smashing Pumpkins started to play (“love is suicide!”), but my hero husband went and put the playlist on before anyone else noticed. The food was delicious (although it was not as good as what we’d been served at our tasting), but i still had very little appetite. I couldn’t even finish my slice of delightful almond cake.

I hadn’t anticipated the toasts at all. I thought the best man would give a long toast and that might be the end of it, but instead he gave a short toast, and then they just kept coming. I can’t remember the order, but Kelly, Nina, Tim, Amy, Dustin, Elizabeth and my dad all said beautiful, sweet things. I don’t at all deserve all the glowing remarks that my siblings made; i’m nowhere near as intelligent, kind nor talented as they think i am but i’m grateful to at least be so remarkable in their eyes. Most people noted how happy Nathan and i are together, and that much i was able to affirm when i took the microphone. All else that i could manage to say was “thank you all so much.”

Photo by Mark Cecconi

And then we danced! Nathan and i had created our own playlist, incorporating a few requests that we had gotten before the wedding day. For the most part i had chosen obscure music that only a few of my closest friends wanted to dance to with me, but i had a blast anyway. Bad Romance was a big hit, and i think we played a Prince song that went over well, too. I didn’t really leave the dance floor until the end of the night, and unfortunately that meant that i never even got to say goodbye to half of the guests when they left. As the last few were catching their shuttles i went outside and saw the beautiful lanterns in the tree and the tiki torches along the walkway, and it all felt so magical. Then we cleaned up and went home.

I never even got very intoxicated and could only stomach the cheap beer, but our guests were kind enough to take care of almost all of the wine for us, as well as every last microbrew (and then some). It was a great party, and although it ended pretty early (before midnight) i thought it worked out just fine. I’m so grateful for every last guest who was there—even the ones i’d never met before and also the handful who couldn’t make it. And i’m so thankful that my immediate family was all there. I adore them. And of course i feel deeply, inexpressibly grateful to be married now to the most wonderful man i’ve ever known. What could be more worthy and more perfect than that?

(All photos by Amanda Basteen unless otherwise noted)

Planning this wedding has taken a lot out of me. I feel like i’ve made a hundred phone calls and written a thousand emails. We’ve spent a lot of money and hashed out myriad little details about the big day. I tried to keep it simple and not have opinions that were too strong about anything, but decisions still had to be made even if they were arbitrary (and none of them ended up being arbitrary). I personally picked out every little ribbon, flower, piece of paper and garment. I even made a lot of decisions about my own bachelorette party, which worked out perfectly in the end. The best part of the process has been the things that Nathan and i decided on together; the food and the gifts. I have no doubt that those will be well received, and worth every penny.

I’m not a decisive person nor a “people person” but i’ve managed to at least get everything done, which i find to be amazing. I feel like i moved a mountain, with a little help from my friends, family, and my wonderful fiance. Who knew that planning a single event could be so much work? If i had known, i probably would have either hired someone to do it for me or simply eloped. But then this wedding wouldn’t have been so me. Er, so us.

I felt a lot of stress and shed a tear or two (or five thousand) over the course of our engagement, but now that it’s all coming together, i’m finally starting to feel excited. My sister and her son will be here in three days! My brother will arrive on Tuesday. My dad and his wife will be here in just eight days. And from there on out this will be pure enjoyment for the following week and a half. We’re going to Cancun for our honeymoon, and we’re going to sit back and do absolutely nothing while we’re there.

With all the planning out of the way, i’m able to think about what this actually is: a marriage. I’m getting married to Nathan, and that thought actually calms me. I suspect that there are some brides out there who start panicking about now, because they start to realize what they’re about to do. But when i think about what’s about to happen, i feel certain that this is the best decision i’ve ever made. I know this is the right thing for me; Nathan is the right man for me and spending the rest of my life with him is what i want more than anything. Married life is an adventure i can’t wait to embark upon, and with Nathan i feel well equipped for the journey. This is a smart move; a good idea. And it’s also wonderfully romantic. With the stress out of the way a deep happiness is settling upon me, and i’m pretty sure Nathan feels much the same.

We arrived at the B&B Friday evening, showered up and headed into the Lincoln Park area for dinner and a show. We parked near the Riviera Theatre and walked to Spacca Napoli for some authentic Italian pizza. (I chose this over deep-dish for two reasons: 1. there didn’t seem to be any good deep-dish places near the theater and i only wanted to deal with parking once, and 2. Spacca Napoli is supposed to be one of the best places to eat in Chicago.) As it turned out, it would’ve been much more pleasant to park twice rather than walking the mile-or-so to the pizza place, because it was much colder than we had anticipated. Note to self: even if it broke freezing during the day, always WEAR YOUR FRIGGIN’ HAT AT NIGHT during February in the Midwest. Duh!

The frigid walk was worth it for the delectable pizza & excellently paired Italian wine, and a little reconfiguring of garments and seemingly less wind made the walk back to the theater a lot more pleasant. Oh—except that we were very unpleasantly surprised to find, once we got there, that the theater was dark and closed, and the show had been postponed until February 14th. MONDAY. As in, the day we got back to work. UGH! I had been extremely excited to see Robyn, but alas, once again—just like when we traveled to see Ume in Iowa City last fall—my hopes and dreams were shattered on the cold pavement because the band had had to cancel the show that night. I vowed in that moment never to travel outside of Des Moines to see an indie band again, but i have since received a prompt reimbursement for my tickets and realized that Robyn’s concert was not our main objective for the Chicago trip. Besides, all that cold wind and disappointment made the fireplace and the whirlpool tub back at the B&B feel pretty much like heaven.

Saturday we took the El into the city and found our way to the Chicago Auto Show. There were a lot of shiny cars. Some of them were pretty. This one was my favorite:

The Audi somethingorother

And this was Nathan’s favorite:

The gull-wing Mercedes Spyder thing

As you can tell, that part was for Nathan. Then we went to the Field Museum of Natural History, where we saw a lot of amazing remains, including Sue the Tyrannosaurus Rex, plenty of stuffed animals including a couple of enormous elephants, and a the bones of Lucy, our oldest-known common ancestor (as humans).

These are the real fossils (minus the skull, which is upstairs)!

I could hardly believe that these were real, they were so huge.

Lucy, on the other hand, was surprisingly tiny.

As i was looking at a display that placed a human skeleton and an ape skeleton side-by-side to point out their similarities and differences, i overheard a man and his fifteen-or-so-year-old son reassuring themselves that there’s “no way” that people really evolved. Period. And i just couldn’t believe that a person could stand there and look at the actual fossils and the skeletons and read the very easy-to-understand-and-attractively-displayed explanations of how exactly evolution works and how it’s so strongly evidenced and how it’s still happening and how the scientific community really has no doubt about it, and still staunchly refuse to accept it. How do you take your child to a museum—a place of learning—and tell him that it’s all lies and not to believe any of it? But at least they were there, in the museum. A lot of people would simply stay away from the things they disbelieve. I almost said something to them but i didn’t trust myself not to get angry about it and push them even further away from understanding.

We only got through about 1/3 of the museum before we had to head back to Oak Park to get ready for dinner. We had chosen an Italian restaurant within walking distance of our B&B (and yes i wore a hat this time) called Cuccina Paradisio. The food was very enjoyable and somewhat imaginative, and we polished off a bottle of wine with it to make the walk worthwhile. The next day we stopped by IKEA on our way home again and picked up several lamps and things, and then i read to Nathan from Breaking Dawn on the not-so-terribly-long drive back home. It was a nice, relatively relaxing little trip, and now we’re ready to pack up the remainder of our things and move into our new house in less than two weeks! I’ll have plenty to say about that once the move is done, i’m sure.

The first book i finished this year was Stephen Hawking’s new collaborative work The Grand Design. Hawking piqued a lot of people’s interest by ending his bestseller A Brief History of Time with the poetic assertion that a unifying theory of physics would allow us to “know the mind of God.” In his new book, it is revealed that Hawking, as a scientist, actually sees no place for God in the creation of the universe.

The book was interesting by default, but it was a little bit hard to follow. For the most part i understood it, thanks to all the YouTube videos i’ve watched about quantum physics and the multiverse theory. There were just a couple of brief points in the book at which i felt that i was in totally over my head, and this is coming from someone who, admittedly, never even took high school physics. It seemed, though, that the argument against a creator wasn’t all that clearly spelled out. The book was more of a discussion of the current state of physics and how it’s trying to find a unifying theory, possibly to no avail. It’s the idea that time began when our universe—which may be one of an infinite number of universes—began, at the big bang, that shoves God out of the picture; but that point is only lightly touched upon in the book.

So i wouldn’t call this another atheist text by any means. It’s really more of an overview of quantum physics; it doesn’t seem to be meant as an argument for the nonexistence of God, and i think it was just played up by the publisher in that respect as a way of selling more copies. I’ve found that people of faith don’t base their belief in God on what scientists have discovered about the nature of the universe, anyway, no matter how famous or intelligent those scientists may be. I recommend this book to people like me who have watched those YouTube vids and would like to know a little more about the physics behind all the crazy-sounding findings in physics without getting too deep into the nitty-gritty science. And if you have faith, i doubt this book will shake it much.

In 2010 Nathan and i watched something like 75 movies, and i had only seen about five of those before. So we beat last year’s count by a handful. The theme of the year ended up being Awesome Old Geeky Movies, whereas 2009 was more about Classic Old Movies. We watched about 7 Star Trek films, two Superman flicks (which i LOVED!), two Planet of the Apes movies (the originals), Legend, and many other sci-fi/fantasy movies that i had missed somehow. It was pretty great.

We also saw a few movies in the theaters, including Eclipse, Harry Potter , Tron and Inception. For some reason i thought it would be a good idea to see the latter film in an IMAX theater, which turned out to be a horrible notion. Have you ever tried watching a movie on TV with your face two inches from the screen? Yeah, that’s what it was like. I watched it through half-closed eyes, for the most part. I think i liked the movie. But i need to watch it again. The original Tron film was one of the older movies i watched at home this year, and I thought Tron: Legacy was actually quite good. It was visually exciting, had good music, and the storyline was solid enough. Not life-changing, but i’m not complaining.

My favorite flicks of the year were probably Up In The Air and Sunshine, which was released in 2007. Wow—that one keeps you on the edge of your seat. I watched it, too, with half-closed eyes sometimes, but for entirely different reasons. It’s not gruesome though, really, and it’s very very good.

And since i named a Worst Movie of the Year last year, i’ll go ahead and crown The Ugly Truth with that title for 2010. It’s supposed to poke fun at stereotypes. Except the plotline itself is really, really demeaning. I lost a lot of respect for Gerard Butler on that one.

I rarely have much of an idea about what movies are coming soon to theaters these days since i only stream TV shows off the internet and therefore don’t see a lot of trailers, but the one film that i know i’m really looking forward to seeing in 2011 is the first part of Breaking Dawn. Not even gonna lie about that.

Last winter was actually a pretty content one for me. Having an SUV and big ol’ ear muffs and not paying too much attention to the bitchers all over Twitter kept me in really good spirits despite the crap that rained down on us for days on end. There was this day when i drove to work and everything was coated in a layer of frost and it was one of the prettiest things i think i’ve ever seen. Our downtown loft felt kinda like a warm cave—especially since we didn’t have to worry about paying for heating—and not having to shovel snow was a definite bonus. But the thin walls and high price eventually drove us to find a new place to stay.

In the spring we moved to our new house and i fell into a funk that lasted a couple of months. I had to stop paying attention to any and all news because hearing about the oil gushing mercilessly into the Gulf put a grimy layer of frosting on my not-so-happy cake. Luckily all of that junk passed and i had a very happy summer & fall planning the wedding details with Nathan and going to parties & shopping with my girls. My brother came to town for a couple of months and instilled in Nathan and me a humble appreciation for a really good IPA (i.e. beer). That was a very awesome way to spend the summer, if i do say so. We also took a trip to California to visit my dad’s family, including a handful of cousins who came to the U.S. from Belgium for three weeks to see the sights. It was a real treat to see them all again.

Come fall i’d been driving my stick-shift Honda almost every day for a year, and learning to drive it well taught me perseverance. I’ve gained a certain confidence that i might some day become good at other quotidian tasks, such as doing my hair, frying an egg or maintaining eye contact while speaking to people. When i lost my job in October, i was prepared to spend a couple of months doing very little and then go back to school to become a programmer, and i contemplated using my down time to practice playing guitar again. Okay—to be honest it was the hair thing that i was most looking forward to practicing, but—luckily i got a job as a web developer for August Home Publishing in November and was relieved of having to worry about what to do with my free time. ‘Cause when you work eight-to-five, you A. cook, B. clean up or C. watch movies when you aren’t at work. And on the weekends you sleep a lot and go out shopping/eating/hanging out with your friends. That’s just how it is. Well—for me, anyway.

My new job is awesome, and a major part of that may be that it’s just awesome to have a job. I was really lucky to get another job so quickly, and honestly if it wasn’t for the connections i’ve made via Twitter it wouldn’t have happened and i probably would’ve had to buy myself a new set of textbooks for Christmas. Thankfully, i have an income instead and i’m spending too much money on holiday steals and insurance premiums instead. The people i work with are awesome. The work i do can be challenging (which is great) and frustrating (which is not so great) at times, but it’s not a bad gig at all. The websites i work on have a LOT of potential, and i say that in the most loving possible way.

I’ve started working out again, thanks to the free gym access i get through work. And no, i’m not trying to lose weight for the wedding; i’m just fearful that with osteoporosis & heart disease running rampant in my family i’ll probably end up pretty miserable down the road if i don’t start taking preventative measures now. I’m getting married; that means i need to take care of myself, right? So i jog for 20 minutes twice a week and i’m going to work on finding ways to increase that and/or supplement it with some sort of weight-bearing exercise. I’m really afraid of building muscle, though. Especially in my legs. They tend to get muscular and i really don’t want them to be any bigger. But enough whining—i can already see the comments i’m going to get in response to that tangent.

I don’t really know how to segue into this topic, but a couple of people i knew from high school died this year and it’s been a really strange experience for me. The first was Tiffany Robb who frankly gave me more of a hard time in school than anyone else i can think of. She was my cheerleading captain freshman year and she was a big reason that i only lasted two seasons with it. When i heard that she had died i was creeped out by how little sadness i felt. But then i heard that she had been shot, and i just felt so angry knowing that her life had been stolen from her at such a young age. Whatever happened between the two of us back in high school is of so little significance compared to the fact that she’s been forcibly removed from the earth. It got me thinking about whether any of us is really entitled to life and for how long, and it made me wonder who would miss me and who wouldn’t if this happened to me and whether any of that really matters. And just on December 17th, Brittany Hall, who was a good friend of mine in high school, died of complications caused by her epilepsy. I had let her slip away from my life almost completely, except for a comment here and there on facebook. She was so passionate and unique and troubled and here again i’m angry that during her short life something of great importance was just stolen from her. But that’s probably not my place to really talk about. I know it’s natural and okay for people to drift apart after school, i’m just sorry that i never sat down to catch up with her over a cup of coffee or something. I wish i had heard her stories.

On a lighter note, i’m looking forward anxiously to what 2011 has in store. This is the year i get married. It’s something i’ve always secretly wanted but rarely dared to believe could actually happen for the right reasons. But here i am, and here we are, and i am so excited i can hardly breathe when i really think about it. The wedding is about five months away now, and i’m going to savor the days from here until then carefully, because the anticipation is so sweet. I’m definitely looking forward to actually being married to Nathan, but i’m also enjoying the planning and designing and choosing and checking items off the to-do list in good time. The day itself will be wonderful no matter what happens or what color the flowers end up being. And then there will be a honeymoon in Cancun. And then a long and happy life together. And i. Am so. Pumped.

I wrote about several of the books i read this year, but a few of the ones that i neglected share a common theme so i’ll write about them now. The theme is the human brain; two can be categorized as “psychology” but the third is more of a neuroanatomy sort of book. I picked up Why We Love as part of the “research” i did this year on love & marriage. Helen Fisher is the leading expert on attraction and love in terms of the human mind. I should have written down what i took away from the book when it was fresh in my mind, but i think it boils down to this: opposites similar people attract; love is a real thing with measurable effects on the brain, much like a drug; and love can last but it changes from passionate to companionate love after a time, due to the possibility that humans evolved the ability to love in order to want to raise babies together and once those babies are independent enough, the parents’ connection is no longer really needed. Why We Love is definitely worth a read. Here’s a TED talk by Helen Fisher that i highly recommend:

The second brain book that i read this year was The Pursuit of Happiness by David G. Myers. I picked the book up partly because i really enjoyed Myers’ Psychology textbook back in college, and partly because a friend had recommended it to me. Or so i thought—i think i may have actually gotten it confused with Stumbling on Happiness or some other book by a similar name. It’s an interesting look at the things that correspond to happiness in people, but any good psychologist knows that correlation does not equal causation. Myers emphasized the fact that people of faith are in general happier without exploring the possibility that there may be another factor involved. It turns out that Myers is a big advocate of faith, but personally i’m less interested in whether faith is good for me than what the truth actually is about God. It did make me think twice about trying to convince people of God’s nonexistence though, which is part of why i’ve written—and said—a lot less about atheism this year.

The last brain book that i read this year was My Stroke of Insight by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. Taylor is a neuroanatomist who just happened to suffer a massive stroke in the left hemisphere of her brain, and of course recognized acutely as it was happening what exactly was going in inside her head. I had been eyeing this book for quite a while but hesitated to pick it up after watching her TED talk about the experience, due to the fact that her perspective of it waned queerly nonscientific. The book reflects the TED talk pretty closely, but it was fascinating to get the play-by-play of the events of the day of the stroke and the days that followed. It’s amazing how delicate yet resilient the human brain is, and how compartmentalized it actually is. I did find it odd that Taylor knew for a fact that her euphoric post-stroke feelings were due to the incapacitation of the left hemisphere of her brain and yet she believes that she was in fact having a metaphysical experience; as though her brain had to be severely damaged in order that she might experience the true nature of the universe. Of course you’re going to have a pretty different experience of reality when half your brain is practically destroyed, right? Isn’t that a given…?

Anyway, it was a really interesting book and worth a read. I can’t say that the books i selected to read this year were very entertaining ones, but i can’t decide if that’s really a quality i want to seek out in my reading material. I tend to go for the “things that make you go ‘hmmm,’” if you know what i mean. Movies, on the other hand, i expect to thrill me, and i’m always a little disappointed when they don’t.

EDIT 12/30: Damn it, i totally forgot to include What Shamu Taught Me About Love And Marriage in this post; another book about psychology and relationships. That one was pretty delightful.

I believe it was late last year that i discovered lala.com; a website where users could listen to (almost) any album in the world once through for free (legally), and then either buy the “web album” for a couple of bucks to keep listening to it or download the mp3 album at a competitive rate. Lala also let users sync up the music collection on their home computers so that they could listen to their music from any computer anywhere, so long as it had an internet connection (e.g. at work), no iPod required. In a word, it was AWESOME. And then Apple bought it and shut it down, and i’m still very pissed off about that.

Thanks to lala.com i was able to listen to just about every new album that came out in the first few months of 2010. I also listened to some “Top Albums of 2009″ lists, which is how i discovered UME. Although their 2009 EP Sunshower contains only five tracks, i totally fell in love with the album and the band. Nathan and i made a trek to Iowa City this fall to see them; alas, they canceled the show at the last minute. I’m definitely looking forward to a full-length album from them to come out in the new year.

For the most part, i’ve been pretty disappointed with the music released in 2010. There’s this HUGE low-fi/vintage movement, and i find it overdone and not very compelling. Sufjan Stevens, at least, took his experimentation this year in a new direction, so i thought Age of Adz was an interesting album. The National are still doing what they’ve been doing the last few years and i still really like it. Ra Ra Riot toned down their sound a touch with The Orchard and, sadly, it failed to hold my attention for very long. The Arcade Fire are doing different things but personally i don’t know what all the fuss is about. Their last two albums were both more enjoyable than The Suburbs in my opinion. I did, however, really dig OK Go’s new sound on Of The Blue Color Of The Sky, and who didn’t love all of the amazing music videos they put out to accompany it?

I did acquire a few albums this year that had more of a 2009 sound and therefore were more enjoyable for me. La Roux is one that actually was released in 2009 but didn’t really catch on until this year. LCD Soundsystem’s This Is Happening is great fun and is definitely going on my “party music” list. Chromeo’s Fancy Footwork is also good stuff, even if it is a total throwback to the ’80s. And i was very happy to stumble upon The Joy Formidable via Lala; their debut A Balloon Called Moaning is light-hearted and inspiring at the same time.

My favorite album of the year was Robyn‘s Body Talk, which she released in three separate parts and then as a full-length conglomeration at the end of the year. She managed to make me buy this album three times and it was definitely worth it. It’s pop, it’s hip-hop, and it’s a heck of a lot of fun to listen to. I wish there had been more albums like this one this year.

Kanye’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is definitely worth a mention; it’s got some pretty great tracks but at the same time i still can’t love a lot of the things the mainstream men of hip-hop say about women. We’ve heard it. Move on.

Here’s a playlist of my favorite tracks of the year. Enjoy!

I didn’t.

I hope to never again read a book about being a writer. Every writer has to write about being a writer and i find it terribly boring. People who make documentaries rarely pepper their films with coverage of what it’s like to be a filmmaker – hell, people don’t often make films about their own lives at all. But the Memoir is this genre of books where writers write about their ordinary writer lives and try to paint them as being interesting somehow and it’s just… boring.

Anyway. About the book. It’s mercifully short and padded with recipes, which i thought was a nice touch since most of the book is a description of cooking this or that meal. Maisto attempts to use these meals as an illustration of a transformation she undergoes while being engaged, but there is absolutely no soul to the book. She describes starting to resent cooking when it becomes her “job” in the house. Her mother – mercilessly – always told Michelle that marrying her father and becoming a housewife was a mistake, and Maisto seems to be deathly afraid of repeating her mother’s mistakes (just like every other feminist i’ve been reading lately). But in the end she realizes that she has always loved cooking and still does and is not in fact being oppressed because she finds herself in the kitchen on a daily basis. Duh.

There’s just no passion in the writing. And her fiance sounds like a royal pain in the ass, by the way. Not that Maisto complains about him, ever. She doesn’t seem to actually realize that he is, in fact, a pain in the ass. There’s no humor in the book, nothing really sentimental or moving is said, and i took nothing away from it except for a reinforced notion that young women are actually afraid of doing more than fifty percent of the housework now for any reason, even if they enjoy it. She doesn’t have a meal planned. She throws out a few ideas. Her fiance whines. They finally settle on something. She cooks. They eat and are satisfied. This happens repeatedly, and this is pretty much all that happens. And the story ends days before the wedding. I DIDN’T EVEN GET TO HEAR ABOUT THE WEDDING. The only aspect of wedding planning she seems to enjoy is choosing the food; even her description of dress shopping is excruciatingly dull. I mean, come on – this is your wedding. Have a little fun, for God’s sake.

In the personal realm of life, Nathan and i have been enjoying the season together quite a bit, despite having opted for Thai food and a zombie movie at home rather than a party on Beggars’ Night. We made a trek to Iowa City a few weekends ago and visited an orchard, picked up some seasonal microbrews, had dinner with Nina & Karl and went to a hookah bar after discovering that the band we had traveled to see had cancelled the show due to van troubles. At the orchard we picked a couple of ill-fated little pumpkins and enough apples for Nathan to double our current stockpile of delicious homemade pies.

The treasure was a small decorative gourd.

Day 2

Day 4

Day 6

Evidently the squirrels around here have a taste for pumpkin.

More recently, i walked the Race for the Cure with my mom, a thirteen-year cancer survivor. It was quite a sight to see a river of pink filling the streets of Des Moines and all the names written on their backs of survivors and victims alike. It wasn’t quite the feeling of accomplishment that i got two years ago when i ran/walked it, but it was definitely more of a sense of sisterhood. This time it was about relationships rather than endurance.

Autumn has been pretty kind to us this year; we haven’t seen a snowflake yet, but it is getting chillier as the days pass. Most of the leaves have fallen now. It’s time to pick up the pieces.

Our tree

It sounds just like throw when you say it, so i’ve seen a handful of people write about hearing their phone’s death throws or even remark on the sounds of their neighbors in the throws of passion. What they’re actually saying though is throes, which means violent convulsions or struggle. It’s mostly used as a hyperbole these days, but that doesn’t mean we don’t need to know which word we’re using, right? Right.

I feel bad that i don’t have a lot more to say than than he’s very talented and prolific and i really enjoyed his album Greetings from Michigan, but sadly that’s the only other album i own. His brand new release Age of Adz is quite a lot different from that album, which was largely acoustic and folksy. This one is electronic and experimental, and i don’t think it’s for everyone but i’ve certainly found it to be intriguing. I failed to find any sort of video to go along with it, but i have found something better: you can listen to the entire album right here! If you only have time for a song or two, the first track and the one called Vesuvius are my faves so far.