I Am Large, I Contain Multitudes

So, jessruth and her lovely L are getting married, and the original plan was to have a big formal wedding in central PA (where L is from) in June of 2017. We were planning to roadtrip out there; all was in the works.

However, then the election happened, making things highly uncertain for same-sex couples. And also various medical issues in both their families that are going to make traveling difficult over the next several months. SO, they decided to have a City Hall wedding in NYC on Tuesday, Dec. 20, with assorted celebrations in NYC/PA to follow as planned next June.

So I got an idea, and I looked at tickets, and I emailed JessMom, and I talked to etrace... and we determined that I could manage coming out by myself on a SAME-DAY flight out and back. 11 hours of travel for 11 hours in NYC, more or less. (This squeaks in under ablock's rule of not visiting anywhere for less time than it takes to get there and back.)

It's on SpiritAir, which is nervous-making, but hey, I am basically their ideal passenger for this because it's the one day in my life I can get away with NO luggage. I would have taken the United shuttle, but their latest return flight was at 8pm and Spirit's is at 10pm. (If it doesn't get delayed or, chas v'shalom, cancelled. But we'll just have to see.)

The thing about the City Hall wedding is that you can't schedule an appointment, you just have to show up (with your festive wedding party in tow if that's your jam) and wait in line until they call you. They open at 8:30am. But the earliest flight lands at 9am (LGA) and it'll easily be 10am until I can make it all the way downtown. JessMom said, "Look, if we get up to the front, we'll let people ahead of us!" I was thinking at first of trying to make it a surprise for Jess, but decided it's easier on logistics if it's out in the open -- plus then she gets the fun of knowing for the last week and a half that I will be with them.

Once I booked the ticket, I noticed a surprising depth of feels around this... I think I'm perfectly calm but it's really more like paralyzing excitement. :-} I'm nervous about the travel logistics (and about being on the run for most of 22 hours), but not as much as I would be if, say, I were trying to bring the fam along. And, while I don't normally think that I miss being in NYC, the prospect of actually walking on its streets for a few hours is mindblowing. But then, it's not like I will be there to Do Things, or see any people other than the JessClan. (Though anyone who's down around City Hall midmorning on Tuesday, you can find me there. ;-)

Plus, I've never used a teleporter before!

Plus, jessruth IS GETTING MARRIED OMG OMG!

So this past Saturday, hahathor was going to be in town, and proposed a get-together to go gallery-hopping in Chelsea. I have not really done this before (last winter, I went once to one gallery in Chelsea for the Demaines' origami exhibition, and as a follow-up, the sweet Jewish guy who picked me up there (!) took me out on a date to the Front Street Galleries on the First Thursday gallery walk in DUMBO... but that's it).

We fortified ourselves with brunch first at Rafaella's (quite charming, and the $14.95 prix fixe includes one brunch cocktail!), then made basically one circuit of 21st-to-22nd St. in the next 2 hours.

Highlights: ( cut for length; geekery abounds within )

Which we declared a good stopping point and went off to lunch at Patsy's for good measure.

I really, REALLY need to do this again.

[posting this "backdated" several days later, so we'll see if that does the right thing on LJ as well as DW.]

Quiet 4th of July, the first one in years I haven't spent in Boston. It being a Wednesday made it a little weirder, as there's just no way to mentally pin it to either "weekend", but that also made it stand out more on its own, in a way.

Slept in, had some good home time, did some good freelance work. Then we went over to watch 1776 (first time I'd ever seen the movie version!) with crewgrrl and mbarr, and paused it near the end to trot down to Riverside Drive and watch the fireworks over the Hudson.

I got a little tipsier than I expected. First it was the "barleywine style" Bigfoot Ale, which I brought and liked (even though justom pronounced it nasty), and fully expected it to hit like a hammer when I chose to have a second one. But only after that did pecunium show up and ply me with rum and homemade mead, so I blame him. ;-) But no ill effects, so whew.

And there were lots of good people there, including shirei_shibolim and terriqat's little one, who has reached new heights of adorable with the stage of "curious look... electrifying grin" and also "sit up... lean forward.... faceplant".

Pro tip: Crossposting from Dreamwidth requires different syntax for LJ user links. But it works, it works!

Anyway.

Ten achievements of 2011: ( 2011 was the year I... )

Ten goals for 2012:

1. Finally replace the Treo 680 with an Android phone
It's coming to be necessary for my professional cred as a web/social media maven.

2. Go contra dancing at least once per calendar month
This represents a sixfold increase over 2011, when I went a total of twice.

3. Establish a habit of walking home from work at least once a week
When I was unemployed on vacation for 2 months, I was walking miles every day and it was great.

4. Implement new website for Ramaz
A professional goal, not a personal one, but then the professional is personal, as they say.

5. Host a Shabbat dinner
With lots of singing. In NYC. Who wants to come?

6. Take (and post) more pictures
Documenting my experience of the city. You see things differently with a camera in your hand.

7. Get net worth up over $100,000
90% of this is locked up in retirement savings, as it should be, but still. It's reachable.

8. Join the Frontstage side of the Blue Hill Troupe
Hoping that next year's shows will be of more interest to me than Utopia. We'll find out this spring!

9. Establish a partnership with the shared goal of having a family
Let's acknowledge that there are lots of possible (and many mutually exclusive) subgoals under this, the exact combination of which will vary highly depending on the chain of circumstances, so I'm not really ready to unpack all of them right now. But I'm naming the intention.

10. Complete a draft of a novel
In some ways this goal feels the farthest away... and reaches the farthest back, since I wanted to Be A Writer from the time I could hold a pencil.