polymania

I'm finally home.

I just drove home from work. I'll be taking the next 11 days off. Big wedding this weekend, doncha know.

Family members will be arriving in Santa Cruz starting tomorrow afternoon. The final wedding details - seating arrangements, wedding helpers, coordinating precise event schedules, are just about done. Everything else is locked in and set to go.

This thing has been 10 months in the planning. And it sure as hell feels like it too. I must say, I completely underestimated the amount of mental exhaustion this whole wedding planning business would bring about. It's hard to say exactly why it was so tiring, but unmistakeably it was.

Months ago Cindy and I planned the honeymoon to start a full 5 weeks after the ceremony. The thinking was that we didn't want to deal with the frenzy of having to shove off somewhere shortly after the wedding. I suppose that was in fact a wise choice. But as it is I ended up asking for all of next week off anyway, just to recoup and perhaps do a few things that I didn't allow myself the pleasure of doing all summer....like maybe go to Yosemite for a couple days....or organize my ever-burgeoning files and papers....or think about replacing my computer. Or go birdwatching.

The wedding will be great. Lots of people rolling into town, family, friends - it'll be a trip. But I think Cindy would agree that we can't wait for all this to be over. She's got a PhD to earn.... and I've got plenty of blogging to do.

Let the Austrian-accent craze begin....

Well, both my teams have tanked - the Royals in the last month of the regular season, and the Giants in the first round of the NL playoffs. The Giants were of course the bigger disappointment, since I honestly thought they were going to go far, and perhaps win it all. But what can I say - the Marlins definitely played better. The Giants defense was what really did them in....and before the season is fully over I'll take a little more time to pontificate as to why the Giants really folded.

In any case, who am I pulling for now? Boston. Yeah, you have to wonder why I'm hitching my wagon to perhaps the most questionable of the remaining of playoff teams. But the thing is that I now have a very soft spot in my heart for Fenway and their faithful, having visited there just last year - besides, whoever said that allegiances in sports had to be rational?

I get plenty of the "Are you nervous" questions as of late. Of course, I'm actually not, partly because I am (and I've been) too busy to really think about it much. There's been so much planning involved, even for our relatively low-key affair, that I always find a way to put off deep thoughts about the meaning of the whole thing.

But I also think another reason is just the nature of our relationship. Before we became lovers, we were friends, and that friendship keeps us on an even keel. Perhaps sometimes I think that it might be more "thrilling" to have that deeply passionate dizziness during the whole event, but in the end I think that's just not the way either of us are. We have strong emotions as it is, and I think we're better off not subjecting ourselves (or our guests!) to too much schmaltz. We've learned over time how we really are deep down, and I think in the end our more laid-back approach to the wedding events, and to how we treat each other, does us a big favor by setting us up for the long haul.