Access

Jess on December 16, 2008

Winter break and I’m up to my usual antics.  I have yet to start a new book since finishing The Historian but I have been catching up on my tv-on-dvd marathons.  Kyle and I also have been driving a lot, probably too much, and trying to get out to see a movie here and there.

Last week, we left Lubbock on Wednesday and drove to Topeka.  We got in around 7 or 8 and had some Jimmy Johns with my parents before he headed back to send an email to Joe about grades for the class he TA’d last semester.  I spent some time socializing with Mom and dad and then watched Top Chef with him and James who showed up about 5 or 10 minutes in.  It was nice to get to spend some time hanging out, but the night has seemed to be far more devilish in the grand-scheme of things which have dictated my lief as of late.

Thursday we left for Carbondale, spending an hour in Blue Springs to situate ourselves here before heading out.  We spent Thursday and Friday night in Carbondale with friends.  Duran came in and Adam and Kevin let us stay with them.  Ben was there too which made me happy.  I don’t get to chat with him enough, we’re both so busy… but it’s nice to see familiar faces around.  That’s probably my most favorite thing about being home from break.  We went out for dinners at our favorite places—Don Taco and Fujiyama.  The sushi we had at Fujiyama was really remarkable.  Mind you, we’ve been living in Lubbock, Texas for the past several months where I refuse to eat any sushi not made out of processed, cooked fish unless I made it myself… but we were in Carbondale, Illinois where pickings are usually not quite better.  Every piece of fish I had seemed so fresh and yummy.  The rolls were great, and the albacore sashimi was better.  We also went to see Role Models with Adam and Kathleen which was funny.

The only real stress in Carbondale was my mom flipping out about our plans to be in Blue Springs for a few more days before we returned to Topeka.  Our plan is basically to spend full weeks in places instead of three days here and three days there where we feel stressed out because we’re never in one place and we feel like we no more than get settled and already have to leave.  It also cuts down on long driving trips, and with this winter weather, that can be quite the safety precaution.  Anyway, my mom has somehow decided that we hate staying with them and that we are better off just spending all of our time in Blue Springs.  We’re not going to take this route because we want to see our friends in Topeka and it actually is important to us that we spend time with my family too.  It’s just so hard to reason with her.  I pretty much gave up on it.  I told her Saturday as we headed home that we were going to just do as we had always planned and that we’d be home later this week, so we’ll see how that goes when we get there.

I wish she wasn’t so insecure and hung up on issues which she mostly caused herself before the wedding.  She just keeps claiming that she hardly got the chance to know Kyle and his family because we insisted on getting married so soon.  That is true, to an extent, but a lot of that stemmed from mom and dad’s failure to get to know him when he was in town when I was living in the apartment, and his parents had basically the same amount of time to get to know me when we were dating and they certainly made that effort.  And, since we got married, there is no excuse to not get to know them.

I am not sure what exactly mom expected in terms of knowing her future in-laws before the wedding.   I guess, growing up in a small town with my dad where her parents and his parents had always known each other may have made their marriage a little easier in the beginning, but at some point they need to get past that and begin to forge a relationship.  We have enabled this in anyway we’ve found possible but from cancelled dinners out on non-holidays to refused invitations on both Thanksgiving and Christmas, it seems we are making no progress.

More than anything, it bothers me that she always claims that she doesn’t know Kyle or his family and expresses no interest in taking opportunities to do so because it suggests to me that she still doesn’t believe that this marriage is serious.  That hurts because if she can’t figure that out then she’s not really paying attention to what I tell her about how our first several months of marriage is going.  Also, I did not appreciate the assertion she made in her latest email to me: “I just don’t know what happened to the beautiful wonderful little girl I knew all these years.  I feel like you have just turned on me.”

That is all that I have the energy for now.  I’ll update more on the more-entertaining events of winter break.

we'll have a good time, then

Jess on September 22, 2008

I had a chat with Mei today about my workings in the African Art collection and she’d like me to do a research course or a practicum writing a grant so we can get a conservator and an art historian who can authenticate the collection.  This is pretty awesome news.

My trip to Skooners went really well the other night.  David Trout was funny, as per normal, and I had a good time with Amanda, Heather, Jamie and eventually Amber.  Maybe next time I’ll get gutsy enough to sing a little.

Other than that, I have absolutely nothing to report except that this weekend I proved myself to be good at time management. I managed to balance cleaning, socializing, studying, and all the law and order and svu that my DVR could handle.

After my test tomorrow, I plan to reward myself by reworking my layout and site map a bit and relaxing until Thursday.

so happy, together

Jess on September 20, 2008

For perhaps the first time in my life as a blogger, I’ve had a long gap in blogging simply because I am so happy.  Sorry for the lack of updates.  Things with Kyle are totally fantastic.  I’m happier and more in love than i ever have been with him, or anyone, which is great.

My classes are also going well.  I’ve been finding work a little bit boring but I think it’s getting better now that I’m actually working with the african art.  It’s interesting how much work needs to be done on that collection, and it seems to me that I’m plenty encouraged to get to doing it, so that’s neat.  I think next I want to work in education and exhibits to get a feel for those, but I would really enjoy being a curator.  Researching on collections is pretty rad.

I’m also making friends, somewhat slowly.  I am so glad that Amber and Sid moved down here with us because I think I would have gone crazy had I not had someone to hang out with while Kyle was gone for the weekend with debate.  I was supposed to go out for sushi with Rachel and Nancy tonight but Rachel can’t and Nancy got sick so we’re going to do it next weekend instead.  And I texted Amanda and I think I’m going out to Schooners later with her and presumably Heather which should be nice.  I liked them a whole lot when we were all at Chimy’s about two weeks ago.  Chimy’s is pretty badass, by the way.  They have really good happy hour specials from 4-7 and their fish tacos are craveable.

I put in a couple job applications in the last week.  One is for a museum event coordinator position that is part time at a city museum.  Only nights and weekends which would be great.  And the other is for an asistantship in the president’s office.  I think I’m super-qualified for the one in the president’s office so hopefully that works out. Both job searches closed yesterday so I hope to hear back soon.

So far, I’m finding lots of good ways to have adventures and I look forward to continuing to make my niche in Lubbock.

My weekend ends on Monday

Jess on September 8, 2008

And starts on Thursday. Baller.

I think I promised a blog sometime this morning about my weekend and it never arrived when promised, but here it is now! My weekend technically begins Thursday at 5:30 or whenever my class is out. This particular Thursday I had plans with the museum science girls to go to Wild West which is a hip hop and country dance club in the Depot. It was pretty… interesting. I had a good time even though I ended up only really hanging out with Nancy, Mary and Hilary. I really like those three girls though so it was fine. The night started with us meeting at Nancy’s where we pre-drank a little bit and then we got a cab from Hilary’s to Wild West. We watched people dance and got some cheap drinks and eventually met up with the other girls for a few minutes and then headed back to watching people dance. Texas clubs are so overwhelming during country songs because everyone two-steps. And it’s not like during hip-hop where if you have a partner you dance with them and if you don’t then you dance by yourself. Pretty much, you have to be dancing with someone. So my new goal is to make Kyle learn to two-step. We’ll see how that goes. (Hint: probably poorly). Since Kyle was home sick and watching 24 with Sid and Amber, I two-stepped once but mostly just danced during the hip-hop-ish songs.

Friday, Kyle stayed in sick again but mostly just sleeping and Sid and Amber and I went to the First Friday Art Trail. I was so impressed! I was worried that it would be too Georgia O’Keefe and I’m not really her biggest fan, also I don’t like a lot of Southwestish art which narrows out the Taos scene. It turns out there’s a lot of painters who do things that I really do like here and the art gallery selection is pretty huge, especially on first friday. I made a couple lists of artists I was particularly impressed with and plan to return first thing in October! Next time, with Kyle in tow. Also, at the trail, we learned that the Llano winery which is right around here is pretty good at making wines so now we have plans to go on a tasting! I’m excited. I haven’t been wine tasting since last Labor day when Kyle and I went out with Duran and Neely.

Friday, we decided to go to the National Cowboy Symposium on Saturday but instead we went to the Pow-wow which was free. Unfortunately, we showed up right as they took their hour dinner break so we left without seeing much and ended up not returning. The chuckwagon cook-off looked like a lot of fun though. There were all kinds of wagons about and the leftover smell seemed delicious. Hopefully we’ll make it next year before we leave.

Last night, new episodes of Entourage started on HBO and also their new series True Blood aired its first episode. I really liked True Blood and I think Entourage is going to recover from what was a lackluster ending of last season. Hopefully, at least. Jeremy Piven’s character is as appealing as ever and seems a bit snappier than I remembered him, but then, my love of Ari Gold is pretty unfailing in its sincerity. True Blood was really good too. Maybe I just love Anna Paquin. Maybe I just love vampires. Maybe most shows with pilots on HBO are good (though Rome I found not catching). Anyway, I’m excited for the next episode and I’m hoping Anna Paquin ceases to be blonde soon.

Speaking of blondes… I dyed my hair lighter. In bright lights it is the color of honey and it makes my eyes look pretty. Kyle seems to like it quite a bit and I figure that in six or so weeks I’ll go red so I’d rather go from already-lighter to red so my natural hair color doesn’t suck most of the luster out of the red. Or something. Anyway, I like how it looks.

Pictures are up at pulse of the new furniture in the house and stuff from the rehearsal dinner!

We all need a little more room to live.

Jess on July 7, 2008

I’ve spent this weekend in Blue Springs with Kyle.  Mostly, we needed to get stuff done for the wedding.  IE, we had to finish printing our invitations which we are very close to being done with.  All we have to do is print the response cards and then we are done, done, done.  We had to delay it because I needed to buy more gold paint from paper-source to get going on that.  As long as I was ordering something over the internet, I figured I should probably order some extra bulbs and extra screens, so now i’m good to go for any future gocco projects.  hooray!  i’d really like to maybe try some screen printing projects that involve more complex design.  i really like some of the digital art i’ve created over the years and i bet i could create screen prints of that without too much difficulty.  i’ve always worked with layers, and that’s basically what gocco printing is.  just layers, and layers, and layers.  i should try it out soon.

i’d also like to start taking photographs.  i’ve been lusting after some cameras that are somewhere between what I have now and an actual digital slr.  the thing is, i know that i wouldn’t take classes or at least, i know that i would not want to put the effort into having an actual slr until i have a good feeling about a regular camera that’s just nice.  i don’t want to think that i could see things a certain way and take photos a certain way and then get a camera and find out that i’m not that good at it.  so i think it’s probably worth just an investment in a really good “slr-like” camera, that’s the newegg classification.

other than that, i’ve just been enjoying the weekend.  the fourth was good.  we had a bunch of people over and partied.  mostly, kyle stayed sober and i partied.  and duker was going to fight a cow but then got inebriated and did not fight the cow, which is too bad.  because i wanted to see him verbally berate a cow.  instead, he yelled about buck o’neill on the back deck for a while.  hopefully, the neighbors aren’t too upset.  luckily, this is the suburbs and everyone goes to sleep early even on the fourth.  even us.

saturday, we slept in a bit and then printed the rest of the invitations and then kyle cleaned the house and we went out with shaw and phil and rachel to the power and light district.  it was nice and there were bright lights which were pretty. and i guess i get that it should be a hot-spot of kansas city.  especially if you’re from out of town.  but i’m telling you, it’s like a power suck, draining all of the idiots out of the places in kansas city where i would really want to go.  so that’s cool.  and the brewery and restaurants and whatever are fine.  but if i’m going to spend that kind of money on a night out, i’m going to dave and busters.  skee ball + trivia + alcohol.  delicious.

i think the best thing about this weekend is that it really calmed a lot of my recent fears about us living together, i know it will be fine. but i think i felt a little bit better about the idea last summer.  mostly because all of the semi-living together that we do now is in the context of being guests in our parents houses and that’s just stressful.  so this weekend we had the chance to hang out and live our lives with some space outside of the room we share when we’re here.  i’m sure it will change, hopefully, but i don’t always feel incredibly comfortable just wandering around his house, esp. as i’m only here a few days a week.  i need a lot of room to live and sometimes i feel like i’m being too antisocial or like it’s weird if i just hang out downstairs while he sleeps.  and othertimes i feel incredibly awkward being forced to socialize because he’s still downstairs.  i’m not sure i can fully explain it, but basically, i’m just very, very ready for us to have our own space.  and this weekend confirmed, for me, that the only thing i want is a place to live with him.

we watched definitely, maybe tonight.  it was pretty good.  as i said to a friend, “it wasn’t THAT predictable.” and that’s true.  i didn’t necessarily see the ending coming until twenty-five or so minutes before it got to the ending.  i also think it got me thinking.  mostly about some things that i’ll only share in a poem or to myself.  i guess i just think it’s weird that someone would marry someone who was not the great love of their life.  i mean, whatever, it’s a movie and a romantic comedy and whatever.  (spoiler alert?:) but for sure, if i thought there was anyone else who i would rather be with if they would just have me, i would not be marrying kyle. and i sort of think the movie made it seem like there was someone else he would have preferred to be with. it also got me thinking about the things that we keep so that we can keep just one piece of someone.  but that’s what the private entry or the poem will be about.  and it will be obvious that that is what it’s about, if i ever get around to writing it or thinking about it.

i’m back at the internship grind tomorrow.  woo.  excitement-time.  the thing is, i think tomorrow i’m just doing sort of odd jobs and tying up some projects i worked on earlier in my internship.  and unplanned days aren’t really my favorite part.  but it’s not like two weeks ago we could really sit down and make a long plan of what i may or may not be doing today.  and i had last week off because everyone in my office was gone.

I'm going to miss this

Jess on July 1, 2008

Kyle was in Topeka this weekend and on Sunday we had a barbecue with brandon, reanne, James, Lauren and David.  It was a lot of fun and the food was all very good.  ReAnne brought a pasta salad that was good as I have been craving Kidney beans but they are really too boring to eat or even find a basic purpose for in most of my daily eating… and then I made a German potato salad and a napa cabbage salad with ramen noodles and things in it, mom devilled some eggs and Kyle cooked turkey burgers and hamburgers plus a catfish filet for me.  It was fun getting to prepare a big meal all day which is one of my favorite things and to get to sit around with good friends and eat it.  I hope we can do another before the end of the summer because I really like getting together with people and I think my parents enjoyed it, too.

While Kyle was in town we also picked out tuxedos for the wedding.  The one he decided on is lapelless and I think will look really good on all of the groomsmen.  Plus, I think lapelless tuxedos just look neat and pretty much always  have.  I’m also very glad to have that done.

Everything is progressing smoothly

Jess on March 17, 2008

So I’m the best wedding planner ever and had everything booked within three weeks of getting engaged. The only thing I have yet to do is officially order flowers to make our bouquets, go shopping with my bridesmaids, and get a ceremony musician. Also, Kyle has a short list of things that need to get done (like blocking hotel rooms, picking out tuxes, et cetera et cetera) and he can now focus on that (or in a few weeks he can) as his debate season is almost complete.

If you’ve been playing the home version of Jess and Kyle’s wedding planning, you’ll notice that I’ve changed the layout of the website. Now that we’ve picked out colors, and they aren’t latte, I thought I’d go for a different theme and move stuff around to make it more wedding-website like and make the blog a little more secretive. I know our friends will read it, and I would love it if our families would read it when they stop by, but I also think guests probably want to read about us and our relationship rather than a criticism of the wedding industrial complex levied one entry at a time. 🙂

If any of our friends are reading this, I’d like to thank them for all of their help. So many people have volunteered to relieve the financial burden of having a wedding in their own way and Kyle and I are ever grateful for their efforts.

The Wedding Date

Jess on February 13, 2008

When Kyle and I initially talked about getting engaged we made mental plans to have a short engagement and aim for August or December of 2008 based on what the church could do. When mom initially gave permission for the proposal, she was under the assumption that we’d wait to get married for four or five years, basically, until I was done with grad school. Obviously, this is causing a bit of tension at the earliest stages of the planning process. So I thought I’d make a list of some of the reasons that I want to have a wedding now rather than later… in no particular order of importance to me.

1. When Kyle and I discussed whether or when we would get married before the engagement, Kyle said he would rather get married before we start our lives together because he feels like it’s something we just wouldn’t get around to doing if we already experience the benefits of married life, less the tax incentives.

2. I don’t like long engagements. I think they’re silly and they ruin the fun and the excitement. Also, friends who have had long engagements seem to forever postpone their eventual wedding. I think engagement is like a strange purgatory where it’s a little better than dating but not as great as marriage. Engagement exists for two reasons: 1) marriage is something people must spiritually and emotionally prepare for and 2) weddings take plannings.

3. I’m looking forward to a marriage. I want that.

4. Very few friends will have to rearrange their schedules or their position in life to attend a wedding in Topeka this summer or winter. Only two members of the proposed bridal party live out of the Way Greater Kansas City area. This is not exactly the case of the proposed groom’s party but their is currently a massive potential for carpooling from the St. Louis area where Kyle goes to college which will not exist in four or five years. Even if it can be argued that we are likely to fall out of touch with some of our guests in the future, the majority of the people who will be invited in the future will probably be from wherever we relocate. Therefore, instead of having a massive number of guests forced to buy plane tickets to attend the wedding of a local couple (if the wedding were still to be held in Kansas) would be inconviencing and unnecessary. It’s good that the wedding is in-town or a short drive for most of our guests right now.

5. It is paramount to me that I get married in a church I actually attend. For the past three years, I have regularly attended mass at Assumption in Topeka. It is certainly the parrish in which I feel most at home. As Kyle and I relocate in the fall, we will inevitably attend services and become a part of the community of a church in the area of our relocation. Likewise, I will request that a wedding four or five years from now occur at that church outside of Topeka.

6. Even if we were to get married in a Topeka church, we’re not going to live in Topeka at the time that the wedding would be planned. This would mean that my mom would have to take on the bulk of the wedding planning with the fun things like picking out dresses and the like being done from a distance without her involvement. I cherish the opportunity to spend several afternoons at different bridal stores with my mom until we find the perfect dress for me on my wedding day. I think that being apart means that this will be unlikely if not impossible. Both because my mom will not want to take on the role of wedding planning due to her already too busy schedule and because I would feel bad placing that burden on her, Kyle and I would almost have to do what my other friends who got married in Kansas when they lived elsewhere and hire a wedding planner. That adds a lot of cost. Cost is bad.

7. When I’m four or five years older, most of Kyle and my friends will be professionals with actual jobs and incomes while Kyle and I are likely to remain in our financial situation until we’re both out of grad/law school and employed. However, our friends who are not in similar economic situations are likely to appreciate the corners we cut in terms of cost as much. Further, I’ll feel a lot of pressure to add things to the wedding that I wouldn’t have now both because I’ll have been thinking about what I want the wedding to be like and because I will feel like I need to impress people who are well off.

8. Kyle and I want to own property together and it’s easier and safer to do that when we are legally recognized as married.

9. I do not want to cohabitate. I think it’s bad for a relationship when done outside of marriage.

10. I would rather not continue to flirt with the risk of a shotgun wedding.

11. One of the ways Kyle and I plan to save money on this wedding is by cutting costs on things like engagement photos and dj-ing by employing the efforts of friends looking to build work experience or a portfolio or who are just interested in helping us out.  We’re likely to not have this diversity of connections when we’re not fresh out of undergrad.

didn't even have to use my a.k.

Jess on February 1, 2008

I feel very productive today. I woke up early to take my mom to work and then I came home and finished my night’s sleep. I moved all of my stuff out of the van (I’m finally, finally, finally all the way out of the apartment which is a huge stress off my back. It’s great. I never want to move again, basically. But I will… in four-six months. Ugggh.) Then I brushed all of the loose fur out of Bear’s coat. He’s such a good dog. He just wouldn’t sit still for me to finish the whole coat. 🙂 After that, I went to campus for my afternoon swim. I’m hoping to really get in the habit of an afternoon swim. I think it would be really good for me to do that so the plan is to continue that into next week. I also had a meeting for the history department hiring committee. It went well. I still need to write my meeting summary so that I remember what happened in it next time I go. When I got home, I cleaned my room… now I’m finishing season 1 of desperate housewives. It’s probably not as good as most of the other shows I watch. Which is sort of sad.

It’s better than LOST though. Lost sucks.

Oh, I went to see James the other day. We went to Paolucci’s which was alright but not as good as the cost. It was really good to see him! I feel a lot better about things after that, i think. David moves into his new apartment next weekend probably! How exciting. Apparently it’s in the downtown CoreFirst building and the rent is not nearly as high as i would’ve expected. Awesome.

sunday, bloody sunday

Jess on December 14, 2007

I’m officially done with the semester, thank God. I’m so happy that it’s over, and next semester should be relatively relaxing. It’ll just be a lot of writing and editing paper and not a lot of going to class, something that I can really look forward to, let me tell you.

Kyle’s on his way into town tonight which I’m excited about. I haven’t seen him since November 27 in the morning, which is not fun at all. I generally like to go less than two full weekends without seeing my boyfriend, and its worse when we sandwich full work weeks around them. agh. but we’re both done with the semester and get to spend a few weeks together, including some time in albuquerque in the beginning of January.

Overall, I have to say there isn’t that much new going on in my life. I’m not really stressed out about anything except that I work too much and don’t have time to just get away (the weekend is a brilliant invention). I got my application in to Minnesota and as of today they have all the materials that go along with that, long story about the graduate school admissions office being two weeks behind on processing mail could go here but instead i’ll just leave out the details and say its all taken care of which is the important part. Now, I’m focusing on getting my apps in to Boston and Iowa or wherever else I decide to apply whose deadline hasn’t already passed. Honestly, i’m just really focused on Boston and Minnesota. If I don’t get those, I don’t really want a whole lot of anything else. And that’s just how it is..

James is seeing a girl. Her name is Lauren. He’s pretty smitten in a way that I haven’t really seen him in a few years which is really nice. I mean, he’s a great guy and he deserved to have a doting female at his side, and I really like this one. It puts me in that weird place where it’s hard to be good friends with exes again because Emily is taking the news about as well as one would expect, but they’ve always been good about not making me be in the middle. Mostly, I’m just glad to have James back. He’d sort of disappeared there for a while and this girl seems to keep him up during the day (lol, and up at night being all giddy talking about her). It’s a nice change.