The Lame Name Game

Since people have started asking, I figured I should say something on the subject of last names--specifically, what mine is now. So here it is, broken out into two easy-to-read (translation: lazy) bullet points:

1) Legally, my name stays the same. I will use that name for all work-related activities, including publication.
2) In all other contexts, I am going by Ross's last name.

I don't have some deep reason for that choice. Basically, it came from piecing together the following three facts (note the bullet points):
1)I have a really really common last name (shared with over 30% of the US population) whereas Ross's name is much less common
2)Having two different names can be inconvenient, especially with kids
3)My name is better professionally, both because I've already published under it, and also because it falls near the front of the alphabet (author order in econ is almost always alphabetical)

I may choose to change the legal aspect eventually, depending on whether it is more irritating to go by a name that is not my legal one socially or professionally. Either way, the outward appearance will remain the same.

Jet lagged in Michigan...

We're back from Hawai'i. It was lovely. We walked on the beach, killed two pairs of hiking boots between us, took a stupid number of pictures (~1500 over two weeks), and avoided contracting Hansen's disease (not too hard, as it turns out). We also both picked up a new useless skill--reading and pronouncing Hawaiian words. Ross also started to learn the grammar and vocabulary because he's amazing like that.

I'm hoping to post about the wedding and honeymoon incrementally over the next few weeks, journal-style. I'll also link to pictures as I get them up.

Dude...we're married.

Now, off to Hawaii. Pictures of both the wedding (perfect in every way) and honeymoon (so excited) as soon as I recover.


Love!

Wedding Insanity...

Two days before the wedding, and Ross and his dad decided to take apart our sink.

Now they're taking apart the door.

That's the spirit!

Same size as your local transvestite...

Today was a wed-ding (pronounced wed - *DING*, as in ding-a-ling) extravaganza. Most of it was terribly boring (did you know that Target is the only place in town that sells tissue paper in attractive colors? neither did I). That is the unfortunate thing about planning a wedding--it makes you incredibly boring.

Kind of like graduate school, really.

So let's talk shoes, instead. I love shoes. This may surprise some of you, since I have only 6-8 pairs that I wear regularly--hardly a shoe lover's collection. Unfortunately, although I would love to give them my money, the shoe industry is apparently uninterested. As I previously mentioned, I am freakishly tall, so it is unsurprising that I have feet to match--a pair of size 11 beauties. Although my shoe size is not particularly out of proportion, given my height (my grandmother, on the other hand, was 5 feet tall with a size 9 shoe--talk about stable!), it does put me squarely outside of the mainstream of women's shoes. How far outside? Well, I was getting pretty tired of my wed-ding extravaganza, and so I happened into a DSW shoe--not because I needed anything, but because I couldn't stand to go to one more store looking for tissue paper. I realized that only the clearance rack was arranged by size, so I went back there to take a look. But then I remembered why I usually don't go into these stores. While there were 2-3 racks of the sizes up to 9, and 1 rack of size 10, the rack called "size 10 and up" contained...come on...take a guess.

Four pairs of size 11 shoes.
Four. Pairs.
All, by the look of them, designed for transvestites.

I should have known--why else would you have a rack of size 10 and a rack of size "10 and up," unless you wanted to hide the fact that you don't actually carry the "and up" part of the equation? Can you tell that this gets a wee bit frustrating at times? Where are the cute green satin heels in my size? The tweed pumps? The fushia ballet flats? The sassy red maryjanes? Nowhere...and so I'm stuck with a selection of orthopedic beige pumps and nurse's flats, looking longingly over at the size 8 rack.

So when you see me wearing the same old, tired pair of shoes, think of them as a trophy--a hard-won pair of (formerly) attractive shoes that I can't bear to part with because, frankly, I would have nothing to wear on my feet.

June just became my least favorite month...

This summer is going to be just a teeeensy bit crazy for me.

May
3rd: get married
5th - 19th: Hawaii
June
1st: Grinnell College Reunion
2nd - 4th: Talk to MAP students at Grinnell about agent-based modeling
6th - 8th: Printer's Row Book Fair (if my folks get a booth)
9th-11th: Resource Economics Conference in Toulouse
14th: High School Reunion (I wouldn't go, except my best friend is going)
21st: Wedding I'm photographing
July
13th-17th: Games 2008 conference
August
8th-?: Wedding in Czech Republic

All of this will be liberally interspersed with work (recall that I'm going on the job market next fall), gardening (R and I have rented a community garden plot this year), and house repairs/renovations (we are going to be selling 2 houses next spring).

At least it will be bookended by vacation!

The long-awaited invite post....

Our invitations are pretty. I like them very very much.

They were also a gigantic pain in the arse.

This post is basically an excuse to a) demonstrate what a gigantic pain in the arse they were and b) post some glamour shots of the finished product, which I am almost deliriously (read: delusionally) proud of.








So here we go:
The basic design is an accordion-folded interior leaf with two covers made of a heavier material. Design-wise, we had several things we were drawing from.


The cover is a riff on the art nouveau posters that Ross and I like so much--especially the designs of
Mackintosh.

I wish that I had pictures of us making these covers. A local print shop, Hollander's, will create a letterpress plate from your image, and let you use their equipment to print the image. It was perfect for us. We had a grand time.

The insides of the invite are based around the profile of Little Costilla, the mountain where Ross proposed to me. We had them printed at Partner's Press, a local independent printer, who charged us less than half of what Kinkos would have charged us.


The assembly was...ahem...trying. But in photographic form, it becomes fairly simple.

Step 1: 4 glue dots and 2 glue lines (intended for scrap booking) on the front and back of the accordion.













Step 2: Stick two ribbons to each side.













Step 3: Attach the back cover...flip...attach the front cover.















Step 4: Tie 'em up.















And done!






This is the map of the Arb on the back (you have to untie the ribbons to find it). We hadn't intended it to be a puzzle, but we're not sure what fraction of people will find it. Too bad! I'm pretty proud of it...

If that didn't seem so bad, consider that we did about 90 of these...which meant cutting 360 pieces of ribbon, sticking down over 1000 glue dots, and tying 180 bows. But I think it was worth it (at least now that it's over).

By the way...

A long post on the invite process is coming. I've received enough compliments on them that I figured I should put one together.

Eh, who am I kidding? I just want an excuse to illustrate the amount of sweat that went into them. Not to mention getting to take some glamour shots of the invites.

You can't escape...the nuptual industrial complex

Getting married comes with many new, and mostly unpleasant experiences. As soon as you set a date, you are suddenly exposed to the most ruthless, well-oiled commercial machine in the world: the nuptual-industrial complex.

I am truly amazed at the thoroughness of their attack. We started receiving wedding-related junk mail almost immediately after I bought my dress (coincidence? um...no). I wish that I had saved some of it and scanned it, because there were some real gems. My favorite was the chair cover brochure. Did you know that this was a thing? I mean, it never occurred to me that chair covers were a wedding accessory(tm), much less than there would be an entire company devoted to renting them out. The most amazing part was the cost--$2 per chair cover. That is the same amount I'm paying to rent chairs. And man oh man, are they terrible looking. If there is something fuglier than a chair cover, I'd like to know what it is.

Anyway...I have no idea whether this junk mail will ever stop. I mean, they apparently have no idea when my wedding date is, because they keep sending me information about venues--despite the fact that any self-respecting snooty country club event planner would laugh in my face if I expected to rent their space one month before my "event". Maybe I'll lose them when I move.

By the way, by far the creepiest part of the wedding industrial complex is on facebook (of all places). The instant I changed my relationship status to "engaged," I started getting ads for wedding junk in my sidebar, and even in my news feed.

Facebook is watching me.

I'm thinking of "facebook eloping" just to put an end to the visual spam.

My Goals This Year...

I know that March 31st != January 1st, but I figure that there is nothing special about the first of the year, goal-wise. In fact, spring seems like a much more appropriate time for goals than the depths of winter. In January, my list of goals looked something like this:

-Perfect down-blanket-and-pillow cocoon

-Finish watching all available episodes of "Good Eats" on You Tube

-Complete research project entitled "Interactions between conflicting cracks in the ceiling above my bed"

March, on the other hand, is when Michigan transitions from more than 12 hours of dark to more than 12 hours of light. The crocuses and daffodils are peeking out of the ground, and my goals turn to something slightly more ambitious than finding a service willing to deliver me cookies in bed. So here, in no particular order, are my goals for the year:

run/swim/bike a triathlon: I just learned to run this last year (as an aside: was anyone else aware that you had to learn to run? isn't that one of those bipedal things that should come naturally? apparently not) and I have transitioned from an initial, burning hatred of it to something bordering on enjoyment. Since my basic failure at bipedal locomotion was all that was standing between me and completing a triathlon, I should get my butt in gear and do it. The goal is a sprint triathlon. Bonus points for something longer.

take all of my (important) pills: I've been really good (read: less stupid) about this lately, but it bears repeating. Some pills are more important than others. I had a painful lesson recently in what happens when I don't take my pills. I will strive to be even less stupid this year than last year. I don't know how to quantify this--maybe Ross will have to award me an appropriate number of points.

take care of my back: Hyper-mobility of the lower back (aka "noodle spine") runs in my family. Last summer/fall I got it under control via a strict regime of core strengthening exercises, but this winter's blobification (it turns out that hibernation leaves remarkably little time for weight-bearing exercise) has left me basically back where I started. Since I do much better when I have a routine, my goal will be a core-strengthening session every morning before work. Hopefully, the routine will be enough to carry me through my final (!) Michigan winter. Goal is something (anything) every morning and a full set of reps at least once a week. Bonus points if I start doing a full set more than once a week.

bike a century: I've done this before, but this is really representative of a recommitment to cycling. My bike has been in bad shape, and without my usual goal of RAGBRAI, I rode less than 100 miles total last summer! Subgoals include: fix my bike (replace the cassette, rear dérailleur, chain, cables, tape), attend at least one race clinic, and start riding at least once a week. Options include One Helluva Ride, The Apple Cider Century, Evanston Century, or The Holland Hundred.

climb a 5.10: For the non-climbers in the audience, in the US, climbing routes are rated according to a universal (though basically subjective) system. Any route below a 5.0 is (supposedly) "walkable", but most people (myself included) would feel uncomfortable climbing a 4.x route without a rope. Almost all routes that I climb are a 5.x. I can currently "flash" (climb without falling) all 5.7 routes, and almost all 5.8 routes. I can climb all 5.9 routes (and flash some of them). Five months ago, I was starting to climb 5.10 routes (note that it isn't exactly a decimal...5.10>5.9) but hurt my shoulder. Goal is ability to climb most 5.10a and b routes (the rankings start subdividing into a/b/c around 5.10). Bonus points for climbing a 5.10c.

show my photos in a gallery in Ann Arbor: Currently, I'm showing at a coffee shop around the corner from me. I like the place, but it is probably doomed (I'll probably write about their often-hilarious business plan later). The goal is Sweetwaters Gallery, which is attached to the ritzy coffee shop in town. Bonus points for a gallery not attached to a coffee shop. Double bonus points if I actually sell something.

finish a second paper: I have 3 candidate papers in the works. The goal is to finish one this summer. Bonus points for finishing two. Unfortunately, I need at least one more paper to...

go on the job market: Not really so much a goal as a necessity.

get married: If I don't manage this one, then I am so screwed.

Weddin'in--aka: Lovefest 2008

So Ross and I are getting married this May. We were engaged last August, which qualifies us as having a "short" engagement. However, on this end, it seems to have dragged on for-freaking-ever. I've officially crossed "wedding planner" off of my list of potential careers when I grow up. 8 months ago, Ross told me that he wanted a real wedding. 4 months ago, he decided that maybe a trip to Vegas might have been more fun.

But we have reached the home stretch, and it is starting to feel almost "fun" (not so much that I feel like removing the quotation marks, but more fun than it has been). Six months ago, everything was far far away and entirely hypothetical, so it was difficult to really get excited about preparing for it. But now that the time line is measured in weeks (5 of them) rather than months, it is much easier to think of the endless errands in terms of planning a party (a big party...with beer...and tamales) rather than an abstract THING that sucks up big chunks of time with no reward. That is not to say that life is all skittles and beer--I spent most of the day Thursday driving to a dress fitting on the other side of Detroit (those words make me shudder, truly), and last night was spent cutting, gluing, and tying teeny-tiny pieces of ribbon (more on that later). But the end is in sight--and it looks like a rockin' good time.

In which I enter the so-called "blogo-tubes"

Hi all! Welcome to my blog.

First things first--why moot point tango? Well, it is a combination of words that is infrequently taken, and thus it is my default for many titles--including my photography "business" (so-called, because I have a tax number, not because it actually makes money). I also happen to like the way it sounds--so there.

I intended this blog as a way for my friends and family (most of whom live far from me) to find out what I'm up to. Thus, I'm probably just going to run the gambit topic-wise. Some entries will be work-related--things that I'm thinking about, research problems I'm having, and interesting bits of things that I've read. But hopefully those will be liberally interspersed with the other parts of my life. At the beginning, I'll probably write quite a lot about impending wedding items--because that has taken over my life like a bad b-movie monster--but in a month or so that will be over, and we'll be back to my regular life, full of fast cars, cat acrobatics, and secret ninja-stuff.

Or maybe I made that last part up.

I'm not particularly good at this informal writing thing--so I expect that this will be a rough start. But bear with me! Hopefully, it will get better as I go along. And if not--well, I apologize in advance. Oh--you should also be aware of my affinity for the double-dash, ellipses, and lengthy parenthetical. I'll try to rein that in, but it will be very difficult. Also, I'm not nearly as funny as certain other people we all know--so I won't try!