bermudaful!

We got back from Bermuda this afternoon, and it was amazing. My sister is a married woman! We have a whole new wing to our family. My ears are still blocked from the plane landing. I'm still finding super-fine grains of sand in our luggage. It's hard to put it all down now; photos & commentary are up at flickr.com. We didn't do very much of what we wanted, but Bermuda is gorgeous and I want to go back. A 1-gig photocard is a wonderful thing. The cat is fine and very happy to see us.

After getting wrapped up in packing & wedding prep last week, I don't think I mentioned how awesome Loreena McKennit was in concert. She did a wide variety of her music, and "The Highwayman" gave me chills. There were about 7 other musicians on the stage. She was incredible live and is so talented. The Wang Center is a great place to see music, because it's such a beautiful hall.

wedding countdown

There's a little over a week to my sister's wedding. I still have some things to do (get luggage, clean the house, make appointments, finish husband/son shopping, lose 3-5 lbs.). At least I have my dress, shoes, and some of the little things.

Oddly enough, one of my landmarks to my sister's wedding was the wedding of one of my best friends from high school on Saturday night. Michelle & Darren came to our wedding in Vegas, that's how long they've been together. Michelle looked beautiful, and Darren is so sweet. They make a great couple and I'm so happy for them. They've been dating for almost 10 years and it's nice to see them finally married. Stacy, our 3rd amiga, was there too, and it was awesome to hang out with her. It was also fantastic that my favorite teacher in high school was also there, Ms. V.; I ended up talking to her quite a bit. My parents were invited, and the oddest twist is that Tak & I ended up getting a ride with them, both to and from the wedding.

With the torrential downpour we've had with the Nor'easter this weekend, Morrisey Boulevard was the most flooded I've ever seen it. On even a small rain day, Morrisey Blvd. gets flooded, and walking to Shaw's from the JFK T stop involves navigating puddles that go into a whole lane of traffic. Down by the beach, it so bad they were closing the road off, but were just doing it at 10:30 this morning. Owen & I found out the hard way by suddenly driving into two massive puddles on the way to Ikea this morning. Luckily, our side of the road was farther away from the beach; the other side was completely overtaken by the tide. There was no beach.

Owen's quote of the day: We read our first few of Shel Silverstein poems tonight. Owen loved the "Ickle me, Tickle Me..." poem from Where the Sidewalk Ends. His reaction: "Is there a silly poem about a froggie and a duck? It's called 'Take me to the water and I'll swim.'"

nature shock

Tonight at my parents' house, a big fox came trotting through the yard, and across the field next door. It was sudden, and had just caught something. Sometimes I forget how closely these creatures live to us. When it snowed Monday night, I saw--maybe it was even this same fox--animal prints close to the house before the tracks went towards the woods. All of us just watched the fox in the twilight.

On an odd note, I have weird memories from childhood--I must have been 5ish--of checking books out of the library where we lived in upstate NJ that had color photos of teddy bears doing stuff outside. Although I might be getting them mixed up with the Leo Lionni books, I feel like some of them may have been mice in the (real) grass.

Owen has been asking for his own library card, but I have to find out what the minimum age is. We are currently reading George & Martha, and he loves them.
I am reading Stolen by Kelley Armstrong, the follow-up to Bitten. Since I'm on my parents' computer, I don't want to download anything that I won't be able to figure out how to delete later. It's amazing how much I've forgotten about using PCs since I've been back on a Mac for the last few years. It was bad enough that I had to explain to my mom what a blog was and that I had to tell her I had one.

We're in the home stretch for my sister's wedding. The shower & bachelorette are this weekend. Should be a treat!