The nerd cleavage bonanza

I've been to the Renaissance Festival twice before. The first time I was about 14, with my family. I remember my sister crying from how sore her feet got, she even had to get molded inserts for her shoes to help her feet grow correctly after that. The second time, I was 22, and went with some friends. We watched glass blowing for about a half hour. I don't remember much else.

This year, some friends who are die-hard fans of the fest had some free tickets. Fiance needed a day off for herself, so this was the perfect opportunity to have me babysat for the day. My friends get rather decked out for the fest, complete with doublets, feathered leather hat, knee high boots, leather gauntlets, etc. My friend was even asked to have his picture taken by a stranger who said she wanted her fiancé to dress up like him for her wedding.  I have no such accoutrements, and went in my normal clothes. I tried to refer to myself as in full costume as "the Doctor." The joke didn't go over well with them. Le sigh.

Things I learned at Ren Fest:

1.       People in medieval timey England were fond of eating foods like turkey legs, ale, cider, onion rings, cheese curds, pizza, soda, and a rustic treat called "funnel cakes"

2.       The inhabitants of this time in history were likely to wear either chain mail and swords even when not actively participating in combat.

3.       Other inhabitants liked to dress up as if they were pirates from hundreds of years in the future with a liking for eyeliner.

4.       People who sell pickles were often shirtless.

5.       Some people earned a living asking for money to insult the person paying them.

6.       In England during this time period, fairies were often found wandering the streets with flutes or soap bubbles. I imagine they died out from plague or famine, being unable to use English to ask for food or money. It is too bad that fairies do not live yet today.

7.       People in the 1600s really loved pewter things. Especially if it involved dragons.

8.       They also loved staffs, being experts in both walking and in the martial arts.

9.       Ye olden times were known for relaxation, often in suspended canvas chairs that swung from a peg in the ceiling.

10.   The silk-screen shirt began in England.

11.   Outside every village was a sea of vehicles driven by internal combustion engine.

12.   Port a potties were plentiful and well used.

I did have a good time watching the falconer, some vilification tennis where the actors sling ya mamma jokes with devastating acuity, and looking for a nice necklace for the fiancé. While waiting at one of the ye olde timey ATM machines, I overheard the following conversation between what sounded like a 20 something man and his mother.

Mother: What are you doing?

Man: Waiting for the ATM.

Mother: Here, let me be your ATM. Here's 40 bucks.

Man: That's OK. I'll just wait.

Mother: Those things are a rip off. You'll pay 5 dollars to get 20.

Man: That's OK.

Mother: Just take the 40 bucks. Let's go.

Man: I'll just wait here.

Mother: What did you want to get?

Man: A turkey leg.

Mother: I'll get it for you, come on.

Man: You do that. I'll wait here.

This went on for three more escalating minutes until the guy gave up and left.

The weather was wonderful for the day, and by 4, I was extremely tired. The toddler with us got fairy dusted (sprinkled with glitter), which thereafter contaminated the rest of us for a fun education in plague.

Lastly, I'm a nerd myself, so I feel comfortable saying this, but I've never seen so many nerds together at once. It was like a convention of the outcasts from "Wet Hot Crazy Summer." People carried swords with abandon. Women sported outfits that barred midriffs and spilled cleavage without prejudice all over the streets of yore.

Men wore kilts and cloaks without fear of reprisal. People let their nerd flags fly, and it was glorious.

Registering for weddings feels like waxing your scrotum

So this whole registry thing has been a disaster from the get go. Everything about the wedding seems to be wrong according to others. We aren't getting married in the right place, or cheaply enough, or doing anything right. But with registering, at least we could do one thing right. Right?

So we decided to register at Bed Bath and Beyond and Target. Nothing in this process has been easy or right. In my imagination, we would be given a scanner and go around the stores to pick what we would like. Neither place works that way exactly.

First, Bed Bath and Beyond, they sit you down in a small office with someone who goes through many books of stuff with you. None of this stuff has prices by it, so you tend to go with what you like. Then you get home and find out the crystal glasses you chose are 60 bucks a glass, which is utter bullshit. Then your mother tells you that no one is going to want to get you anything on your list, particularly the china that fiancé has dreamed about owning for her whole life.

So you go back online and find shit that is a bit more reasonable, yet compromises what you originally wanted so you feel like you are just giving up.

Then you go to target to register for stuff, but your body rejects it and craps while in the store and you leave. When you try again another day, their wedding registry is down. So then you decide to just go online and pick stuff. You spend hours and hours on it, partly because of the amount of stuff, partly because every time you pick something, the system takes a couple minutes and button clicks to put it on your list.

So at long last, you are done.

Except you're not.

If you are lucky, a friend informs you that pretty much everything on your list is only found online and has Target's ungodly shipping charge involved.

Son of a bitch.

After Fiance quits crying about yet another failure in wedding plans and how nothing is ever good enough for anyone as we prepare to get hitched, you go to the nearest target with your list in hand and get the scanner yet again. This time, you have to do it alone because Fiance is at work and can't handle yet another trip to the soulless behemoth to correct another "mistake." People in the store ask you questions like you work there because you have a scanner even though you don't wear red.

You finally pick out some things that are somewhat close to what you wanted, again compromising your hopes and desires. You get home and spend another 2 hours deleting the old stuff that is only online, then find out that even some things you scanned are out of stock. Fiance finds some of the stuff we wanted is actually in WalMart stores, and we debate whether to add another registry just for the dishes we want.

At this point, you decide to find the nearest knife and start cutting some veins, because at least that is something you can do right.

It seems that so much of wedding planning is trying to please others that won't have any of it, and we hoped the registry would be a bit of fun to focus on ourselves and what would make us happy. Unfortunately, it has done the opposite and made us unhappy.

What has made us happy is fiance's new job and benefits. She finally met with HR and in short we will be saving 10,000 a year on healthcare alone in this new job.

Last rambling sentence in this stream of consciousness blog entry to mention the squirrel and blue jay outside the apartment who seem to be having a gentleman's disagreement.

First grand day out in the cities

Saturday was our first big day out in the cities. We left the hovel of an apartment that still looks like it's been ransacked by the Nazi's who overturned Indiana Jones' room to find his father's journal.

Three months until the wedding, so we are now on full throttle to get shit done. Our first stop was Midway Rental to get some items for table decorations. Fiance got a bit weepy at the stuff we chose. 

We drove over to Yum! For lunch. As I pulled into the nearly full parking lot, there was a spot right up front that required a very good turning radius on the car. I couldn't make it on the first attempt, but as I started to back up to get a better angle on it, the guy behind me began to honk his horn.

"What the hell?" I said.

"Lets just move out of the way so he can get into the lot," fiancé said.

I moved the car down the way a bit, and the fucker took my spot. I found one other empty spot in the lot, but hulk me was starting to break out of the cage. My attuned fiancé soothed me by pleading not to start some shit. I settled down.

After lunch, where I kept eyeing the room on the look out for the jerk in order to, I don't know, glare at him or something, we went off to pick out groom attire.

"This is all you, now, so you get what you want," fiance said.

I knew that this just meant I would get to sort of pick stuff. The attendant was very helpful and we put together a spiffy black pinstriped suit jacket with a silver/black patterned vest, black tie and silver pocket square. Every time the person asked for a decision, fiancé was very happy to make it. I put in my two cents. But my favorite thing was when we had to decide between to similar looking pocket squares and fiancé would turn to me "it's your decision." 

Me: "It is?"

"Yes."

"Huh."

I'm a shit.

So with that done we went to a jewelry shop and got an amber necklace and ring for Fiance's something old. Amber is more than 100 million years old, so that should about do it.

Not once during this whole day did I do my typical whining or grumpy gus stuff. I was a doll. A doll! But fiancé apparently wanted more. She asked why I wasn't having a good time.

"I'm having a good time."

"I can't tell."

"I'm just fine. I'm not hating this, but I'm not going to start being a cheerleader either."

"But can't you be excited?"

"I am."

"You don't show it."

"Sorry. I just don't know how to do that. Have I once been crabby today?"

"No. Now that you say that, it's pretty amazing."

"I know! I feel like I've been a peach! An absolute peach!"

This conversation repeated about four times during the day.

So after all this, we rewarded ourselves with Cinematic Titanic, an event where many of the people from Mystery Science Theater 3000 do their riffing over a movie. Saturday's movie was Rattlers, where some snakes get highly aggressive due to military experiments. It's set up as a mystery as we follow the main guy, a snake expert from the local university who sounds exactly like Jimmy Stewart in the Jimmy Stewart role, yet he was no Jimmy Stewart.

Fiance had gotten stage side seats for an extra couple bucks, which meant we were in fold out chairs that we constantly worried we would break, and next to a woman who just wouldn't. shut. Up. During the opening section of the evening where each cast member came out and did a bit of stand up. It's very hard to enjoy Frank Conniff when the bitch next to us keeps whining about not having four seats together when they were late to the show, then fiddle dicking around with money to get more drinks, then even turning to fiancé and asking her a question. I apologize here to Frank, but during this time, I decide to just turn my whole body and watch this woman's show, glare at full speed, until she settled down again.

The people on our other side were nice enough, and we had a pre-show chat about moving to the cities, weddings, the theater we were in, and so on. The woman stole fiance's popcorn at the end of the night. Just grabbed it and walked out of the theater.

An odd highlight of the evening was during the break between the stand up and the show, we went to the bathroom. the theater bathrooms were packed, so fiance and I went next door to the mexican restaurant where I did my business in a hurry. I came out of the stall after nearly passing out from the smell of digested Yum, and there was Frank Conniff at the urinal. I did not say hi. I don't believe in invading a man's privacy in a restroom.

The show itself was wonderful, once one was able to forget the neighbors and the seats that seemed on the verge of breaking to the point that I had several  battle scenarios ready in case it happened during the movie. The movie was perfectly chosen for the riffing. It was even taped for a DVD release. Not sure how they frame it, but I wonder if I'll be able to pick out my laugh, or fiance's "oh my god" during a scene where a snake crawls into a bathtub.

We plan to do one fun thing a month in the cities, show-wise, and cinematic titanic was our first winning out over John Oliver and Ani DeFranco. It was well worth it.

Life in a 1970s crack den squatter's house

It's been a week since we moved to Plymouth. My days are filled with boxes. Each one a bit of a surprise with things we may not have seen for 9 months. We're shedding clothes for donations and have 4 large boxes ready for a garage sale. I've been unpacking for a week now and the place still looks like this:

We've cooked one meal so far in the apartment. Tacos.

Fiance said two people have told her to get me blogging again.

Me: But, there hasn't been a whole lot to talk about. Plus I'm rather happy.

Fiance: I guess it must be hard to blog when you're happy.

Me: You don't understand.

There are a pile of things to worry about still. The house still hasn't sold. I'm still jobless. I can't rent the house, or the bank will want their money right away. I can't go much lower in price or I'll be paying to sell it. My racist, horrible neighbor is calling my realtor to complain about a sump pump that I've never touched ever but now it's a problem where it drains. She also seems to be complaining about the leaves falling on her lawn.

If I wanted to get easily metaphorical, I'd make some comparison to these life problems and the boxes that surround me and invade my dreams. They are still there. I unpack them, but they don't go away.

But that's just freshman creative non-fiction. Not gonna do it.

This week is not a week for worrying about the financial burden of the house in Fargo, the debts we've piled up from a year of unemployment, the fear that I won't find something soon or be eligible for unemployment. This week is for taking things one box at a time, putting the apartment in order, slowly and thoroughly, sending out emails to job contacts, enjoying the indoor pool at the apartment building, enjoying the sudden fall temperatures where you can leave a window open rather than run the air conditioner.

This week is a week for enjoying the fact that this business exists along the I94 corridor on the way to the Cities. The fourth-grader in me sheds a tear of joy each time he sees this.

To paraphrase Rogue Lieutenant's blog tag - this week is a week to enjoy your life.

New life so far

So we are officially in the cities, a nice apartment in Plymouth. It's been a rough start working, but I'm proud of her. It's tough to begin a new job in a new town when you spend 30 minutes looking for a bra by ripping open boxes with keys because you packed the knives somewhere and your hands hurt from moving boxes. All the moving worries are amplified - did we do the right thing, are things going to work out here, will we ever get everything put away and start feeling like we're at home? After living in Fargo for 8 years, I'd say half of them I felt at home, the last I felt like an outsider just waiting to leave. Now it's happened, and I don't know what next week will bring, and I'm still tired-drunk from moving and sleeping in a new place, mattress on the floor with the sleeping bag on top of it. The wedding is 100 days away, we've got a lot to learn, do, and figure out before then.

The best thing is I've been able to reach out to people that I couldn't before because I didn't want to tip my hand that I was looking for jobs. Now that I have, the network system is hard at work. I have an open invitation from a Pioneer Press editor to call her for a drive by coffee. I have other people in companies that may be able to hook up a position. It's exciting to have so much to do, but I have to find tomorrow's change of clothes somewhere in the boxes first.

This will be short. Not as fluid as the other posts. A full day of moving can drain a person.

Why Me (with jokes!)

It’s amazing how you can imagine so many things going well, and even when some of those things happen, they happen in such a way that makes you hate life a little more. Been a soul-sucking couple weeks in Fargo. We are so close to the finish line, but it has never seemed so far away.

1.     Fiance got a verbal job offer. What does it pay? No idea until “HR gets back to me.” When does it start? “Sometime next week.” When will we have anything in writing for this job that starts next week? Who the fuck knows.

2.     So we have an apartment to move into, movers ready, we’re a bit past the point of no return, yet still have no fucking clue what fiancé will be making, which makes it exceedingly difficult for me to fully assess the “I can leave my job and we’ll be fine with whatever I find in the cities” vs. “I might need to stay in Fargo to chop off a bit more of my soul until things settle down.” Or, they let me do my job with a computer and phone from the cities for a while.

3.     Guess my parents still don’t understand why we are moving, why we are getting married in the cities as opposed to my hometown despite our having told them several times how unhappy I am here and that we haven’t lived in our hometowns for more than 10 years. They seem to think that I should be grateful to have a job at all and just stick it out and be miserable for the next 30 years. Beyond that, they seem to feel I’m making a mistake getting married, since they don’t see us as a couple. As long as their son has a job, fiancé can remain unemployed and we can slowly sink further into debt and depression. My dad has called me twice because he “worries about us.” And is now talking to one of our friends about his concerns.

4.     My car is near the end of its 150000 lifespan, and has little metal bits that may be making their way through the engine like a mechanical sickle cell disease. Can’t do much about it until we both are securely employed. Still owe parents a few thousand on it.

5.     House continues to sit around, and just mild interest from time to time. Don’t know how I can escape until that’s taken care of.

Here’s how all this feels. I’m like that guy in a Mrs. Butterworth’s commercial, with this steaming pile of buttery pancakes sitting in front of me bathed in a ray of morning sunshine. I reach for the syrup, but Mrs. Butterworth starts screaming at me and stabbing my hand with a fork. Meanwhile, the Pillsbury Doughboy ninja jumps onto my back and lassos his scarf around my neck to start choking me. Butterworth pins my hands to the table with a knife and holds the pancakes just out of reach as I suffocate. The bitch.