Weddings and puppies and new apartments!

Life continues to amaze me with its ability to become exponentially more busy and complicated!

Wedding

Wedding planning marches on with much gusto. We met with Robin and Jerry, the owners of Tin Angel Cafe, to show them the Hardware Building and I feel so relieved that we made an AWESOME choice. Not only do we crave their food constantly but they are an organizational power house. Jerry and my mom have already made a deal that Jerry will put her to work in the kitchen "polishing wine bottles". Ohoho.

As we've been talking with wedding vendors, one thing that really bothers both Andrew and I is when vendors will ONLY talk to me. I understand that women tend to be the dominant parties in wedding planning but I am one of the fortunate few to have a significant other who wants it to be OUR day, not MY day. We make it pretty apparent that this is a joint effort but even with that, I don't think that some vendors even know how to talk to guys about these kinds of choices.

"So what's your theme? What are you thinking of for decorations?" They eye me furtively, as though we are sharing in some secret only known to womenkind. Surely Andrew's manly mind has no need or room for concepts such as decorations. He is a fly on the wall. He is the Invisible Man.

"Uuuhhhmmmm. . . " Is what I usually respond with, glancing up and away because I have no idea what to say. Wedding? Paper? Flowers?

This is another reason why we're so thrilled to have Tin Angel. They understand our "Good food, good music, good friends" sentiment. That's our theme, I guess?

I also have small blisters all over my fingers because I am hand-sealing the binding paper strips of the invitations with gold wax. I now know that I should have just done stickers but damnit, they look cool. Invitations will be sent out this week, probably dropped into the mailbox at midnight tonight and sailing on their merry way tomorrow morning.

Tables, chairs and the bartender are being booked. . . uhhhrrr. . . tonight. Or tomorrow.

Puppy

In other news, we have a new puppy! Her name is Lucy (yes, we would have named her Lucy even if Linus had a different name) and she is the most adorable reason to lose sleep I've ever encountered. Here she is:

We don't know what breed she is, but my guess is an Australian Shepherd and some sort of spaniel. She is an amazingly fast learner. She already sits for her food and before going out the door. My youngest sister Rae found her abandoned in a Walmart parking lot and my mom rehabilitated her at home for two days. Apparently she was incredibly dehydrated and my mom wasn't sure if she was going to make it. She pulled through, because she is a little trooper, and when Andrew and I stopped to see my mom on our way back from our LONG haul to Denver Lucy was sitting in my grandmother's lap in the car.

I saw her and blurted out "Uh, we could take her! You know, er, just until she finds another home."

Andrew saw her and BOOM, she went home with us!

While the first week she had to go out twice a night, because she was only 6 weeks old, she is now able to go the whole night without needing to pee and I am excitedly looking forward to the day when I can let her run around the apartment without worrying that she will eat an electrical cord/get her eyes clawed out by Roman/pee or defecate all over the place if I haven't taken her out in the last 45 minutes. She's quickly getting there. I keep reminding myself that I should savor her poop-and-coffee puppy breath and her BOUNDLESS energy. And we are savoring it, but that doesn't stop me from yearning for a nap on the couch without her yowling dejectedly because of her crate training.

Linus loves her and Roman hates her. A lot, in both cases. Linus is doing so much better with a pal. Wa wa wa, more dog talk.

New Apartment
The apartment that I posted pictures of turned into a massive fiasco. Cosmetically it is incredibly cute and should have been really great for us, but I ended up finding black mold encrusted all under the kitchen sink, complemented by a little patch behind the toilet and behind the tub. There was also standing water in the basement. This was two days before our lease was up at our other apartment, which was at the time and has been taken by my close friend Stacy. We had no place to live but a musky, mold-filled apartment that was causing me to wheeze and get a sinus infection.

We told the landlord about it and he and his business partner met us there to see it. They claimed that it had to be black toxic mold to render the apartment uninhabitable and refused to give us our rent and full deposit back. They offered to "wash and repaint" under the kitchen sink.

"Have you turned on the shower in the bathroom?" They asked.

Why yes, I replied, but only once to rinse the bleach out of the tub.

THIS, they said, was what caused the leak, as though my turning on the water put us at fault for the massive water puddle in the basement and the mold around the pipes of the clawfoot tub.

The presence of any mold in a rental property, paired with standing water, is actually what makes a residence uninhabitable and illegal to rent, but they were having none of it. After a five day long fiasco that involved giving them a counter offer of our taking the deposit and their keeping the 2 weeks rent, that getting refused, their responding with their keeping 1/2 the deposit and the 2 weeks rent and our telling them that they would see us in small claims court, they finally caved and gave us the full deposit back. They kept the 2 weeks rent, but that's worth our never having to see or speak to them again.

In the end we really lucked out because the apartment across the hall from us opened up and I was able to negotiate it down to the price that we were going to pay for the duplex. It's a 1 bedroom, so just the space we need, and its utilities should be ridiculously low. Plus, we love our house and it's in a GREAT location. Our lives wont change much, just improve. I'm ok with that.

Other Stuff
Lastly, I guess, work is going a million miles an hour. I am now a Senior Education Specialist and am learning how to handle our Aplomado falcon, Phoenix, who has been hand reared by my Bird Programs Manager since he was 22 weeks old. Andrew is gearing up for grad school in the fall and generally things are crazy but good.

C'est tout :)

New Apartment

I am deep cleaning our new apartment! (Which you can see more pictures of by going here). My weekends have been strange (Tuesday/Wednesday), so I spent yesterday and today scouring the place. I LOVE it. It is really vintage and cute. But the person who lived there before us must have been pretty messy. Yesterday I took apart the whole stove and found tons of food underneath, so I had to scrape that all out and de-grease all of the parts to get the burners to work properly. Even now, only two of them light without being lit with a match. Today I've been scrubbing everything with ammonia to make sure it's actually clean. Still need to do the floors.

I REALLY disliked the cupboards:

I found a blog post online talking about how to use fabric as a temporary solution for ugly cupboards and ran with it. I'll be scotch guarding them as soon as I get the chance, to help keep the fabric clean. A lot of people seemed to think this was a really gross thing to do in a kitchen, but the people who have actually done it say that if you are mindful of what you are doing, it actually doesn't get all greasy and stained. We'll see :) If it doesn't work out, I'll just buckle down and ask for permission to paint them.

This is what they are looking like as of now:

Not so bad! I would like to add knobs to them. The ones that are still ugly wood will be covered with cream fabric and then will have elastic strapped across them so they can be used as sort of bulletin boards. That's the plan, anyway.

I'm not a terribly crafty person and I've never made a real effort to interior decorate before, so I am overwhelmingly proud of Andrew and I for this. I'm really excited to see it when it's all done.

Exciting things have happened!

First. . .*drumroll*  Andrew got into the U of U's Philosophy graduate program! Somehow all of the applications he sent off to grad schools ended up getting messed up one way or another (misentered names and addresses, professors not sending their recommendation letters to all of the schools, etc). But after wading through the confusion, the U has offered one of their Masters program slots to Andrew and he will be starting up there in the fall. This is particularly exciting because one of the professors there specializes in Ancient Philosophy, which is what Andrew would like to focus on right now.

Second, we are officially moving! Not out of state, of course, but we are leaving our endearing-but-too-expensive apartment in Sugarhouse and moving into a nice one bedroom duplex a few blocks away. It has a little shared backyard, is two blocks from the TRAX station that runs right up to the U and is a 2 minute bike ride away from the Aviary. It is still within our trend of vintage-y places and should work out really well for us. Pictures pending :)

Other than that, Andrew got a raise at work, my job is currently incredibly hectic and wedding planning marches on to the beat of its own drummer. It's shaping up to be everything we've been hoping-- heartfelt and a damn good time. Sue and Will, Andrew's parents, came into town to meet up with my parents this weekend and we had several awesome meals and covered a lot of ground in terms of wedding logistics. I feel a lot better about everything now that the 6 of us have hashed out details that have been stressing me out up until now. And even though I actually worked Friday, Saturday and Sunday, it has been a really, really awesome weekend.

Difference between structural color and pigmentation

Bare with me. I've been typing up this HUGE document at work that tells you everything you would ever want to know about feathers, and probably more. Part of this document discusses different types of feather color in birds. So here I am, getting ready to leave work, and I look across from me and see this BEAUTIFUL example of the difference between structural and pigmentation color right before my very eyes:

The feather on the left is a turkey vulture feather, which is colored by melanin (the very same melanin that colors darker skin or freckles). As a pigment, melanin functions to protect against UV light and in birds makes their feathers more durable. The melanin pigment itself is what creates the color (blackish brown, in this case) in the feather.

The feather on the right is a macaw feather, and the blue is a 'structural color'. There actually aren't any naturally occurring blue pigments in birds. The blue is caused by only the blue wavelength of light reflecting (refracting?) off of microscopic air pockets in the structure of the feather (air pockets in the keratin to be precise--feathers are made of the same material our fingernails and hair are made out of), which reach our eyes and make the feather appear blue to us. So you can see where parts of the feather AREN'T blue, but instead are a brownish color, because for whatever reason the blue wavelength of light isn't reflecting into the camera lens at that angle. So all you are seeing is the very thin layer of melanin under the air pockets, making the feather appear brown.

Tada!

To make this a real blog post, though, (*SIGH* I GUESS so), Andrew and I worked all day, debated some politics and then had Wendy's for dinner while watching the newest Glee episode. Also, over the past couple of days I have really noticed how skinny Roman is now. Skinny and affectionate. I'm sure she is plotting to kill us. She just must first figure out how to achieve a constant supply of sustenance without us, and then we're gone. Maybe the dog is the key to it all...hmmm...

I'm up late finishing drawings with Andrew keeping me company. I am SO not a night owl anymore.

Here is what I'm currently working on:

It's displaying the brood patch that a scarlet ibis has while raising chicks. I'm slooooowly getting there.

New York

We're back from New York! What a BLAST! I'm now working on more artwork for work while watching the third season of Doctor Who after having devoured the second season yesterday night and this morning.

But back to New York. I think I can speak for Andrew and say that we had a magnificent time. It was full of phenomenal new sites, extraordinary food (including tongue, chicken's feet and oysters), excellent plays and lots and lots and lots of walking. Since I'm 3 weeks post-surgery, it forced me to really exercise my knee, which was much needed.

Some of my favorite parts of the trip that I don't have pictures of:
+Lend Me A Tenor. It's one of the funniest plays I've ever seen and it was incredibly well done (which I guess is to be expected since it was on Broadway)
+The Marina Abramovic "The Artist is Present" exhibit at the Moma. An incredibly powerful experience.
+An artist at Union Square who was selling little slips of paper with a message written on them "especially for you", and whichever one you chose was "meant for you". Mine said:
"The power and the force is with you my love...whenever things in your life get too stressful or confusing, go home and into a quiet place or room with no cell phones, no TV, no iPod and no computer. When ready, close your eyes, listen to your breath, feel your heartbeat. Listen to your breath and feel your heartbeat. In that moment, you will find peace and clarity you need * I will support you...be well."
+The BLT restaurant. Holy crap. Not only was the food amazing, but they took ALL of my silverware away after each course. I liked the sea bass best, as well as the haricot verts. I tried raw oysters (definitely not awful but, um, more of an experience) and mussels (REALLY good) and the Red Snapper looked terrifying when it was brought out. Totally awesome.
+Literally running through the middle of a pillow fight in Union Square.
+The Greek halls of the Met, where Andrew and I spent most of Saturday.
+The Donut Factory. I had a vanilla bean donut filled with blackberry jelly. Oh. MAN. Amazing!
+Having a squirrel walk right up to me, paws outstretched, and then look HORRIBLY disgruntled when I had no food to give it. New York squirrels. Geeze.

\

The rest of our photos are here: New York 2010 Photos

Fantastic weekend :) Now it's back to work!

Whew! Andrew and I are in New York right now having a BLAST. I'm exhausted, but before I go to bed I wanted to post my favorites of our engagement photo shoot with Anginet, our wedding photographer:

I've been working my butt off the past few days trying to get my illustrations finished for the aviary's new exhibit that will be opening some time at the end of the summer. I have to complete 8 total and 4 are nearly done. I had desperately hoped that I would have at least six totally done by the time we leave tomorrow afternoon, but I think that is wishful thinking. We'll see!

Here's one I'm nearly done with:
The colors aren't QUITE right for the chest and head yet (a little too fluorescent) and obviously the coloring for the chicks on the left isn't completed yet, but I'm geting close. Phew :)

Second walk

On our second walk today, I remembered my telephoto lense:

It makes me believe that maybe spring is ACTUALLY here!

And then, of course, it snows.

(Knock on wood).

First post

So, I know I beat Andrew to our blog purely by virtue of my having just MADE the blog, but it still stands:
First!

This morning we took Linus, who is looking really sleepy right now, on a walk to the grocery store and did some good urban bird watching. I'm teaching 'Birding 101' to my AVES 4th graders right now, meaning I'm learning a ton myself and teaching Andrew everything I'm learning too. We saw lesser goldfinches for the first time:

My guess is that it was a male and a female, but the male had less distinct coloring than they usually do, so hopefully the ID is right. The female was plucking fuzz from these dangly bits of the tree:

I totally forgot my telephoto lense, so the photos are a bit hard to make out, but the female is behind one of these fuzzy dangly bits, pulling the fluff out of another one. Spring is here! Nest building has begun!

And needless to say, Linus had a lovely walk as well.

It's been a busy week (looong days for both Andrew and I) and a good weekend.  Friday morning we had our Super Date engagement photo shoot with Anginet, our wedding photographer. She was SO COOL! We had a phenomenal time. We woke up to snow, which cleared to sun for just long enough to get the park portion of the shoot done, and then we had nice, diffuse lighting in the downtown library when it got a little stormy again. Anginet was really talented and we can't wait to see the photos in another week or two, when she is done editing them.

Then later that night we went to get food at a local pub with some friends as a post-birthday celebration for me, and have relaxed for the rest of the weekend.

In other news, I've been practicing origami flowers, which may or may not find a place in the wedding. They've certainly found places around our apartment, in an effort to save them from finding their way to the recycling:

Now for another three days of work, and then OFF TO NEW YORK! Woohoo!