2 days till legally married and 11 days till the big weekend

I'm ready to get married and not ready for this wedding. It has simply exhausted me to plan it and I feel my partner is not focusing on this event as equally as I am. I am overcompensating for his lack of energy. And yet at the end of the day I get blamed for being such a stress ball. My immune system feels down. I am not cut out for planning such a crazy event of convention.

56 Days to go....and so much to do

Things are beginning to ramp up as we wait to hear from friends and family on whether they are coming for the wedding weekend. Finding a place to stay near my parent's house is getting difficult as we hear back from friends about the lack of accommodations. Others are pretty set with camping out on the land...so we've got a bit to do in terms of setting that up for folks.

We're pulling things together and it is a lot of work when we're doing all the planning. Lots of website updates have been happening. I have been shopping on Etsy a lot for all kinds of goodies for the wedding. We're working on our ketubah and a unique way of doing our guest sign in. I'm pretty much set with dress, accessories, jewelry, sandals...now have to focus on dressing up the groom. Indeed this is a no heels, dress casual and comfortable kind of wedding.
My parents have planted crops and helped us prep the area where we are getting married.

Got to get going....have to buy a generator, get a dress shirt for Josh, and well everything else.

Take 2 with cake memos

And our Energy Manager received one more cake this afternoon....yum.

Good news for mom (not wedding related)

My mom, Jane Ozeki, got promoted to 7th Dan in Aikido by Hombu Dojo, Aikido headquarters in Japan. This means she still is the highest ranking woman internationally in this martial art. I know my father would be proud of her. When he passed away over 10 years ago, he was promoted to 6th Dan posthumously.

Here are a couple pictures from a seminar she taught a couple years ago for Harvard's Aikido
Club.

Check this video from a 2007 seminar she taught for Harvard's Aikido Club.

A side note

So the funniest thing happen this morning....

My supervisor and I were walking into our offices at Physical Plant when the Energy Manager from work came up to us and told us to check out the surprise in the lunchroom. He thought our Office bought
cakes for him because last week he chided us to get baked goods from a top notch bakery in Burlington for an open house we threw to introduce our department. Anyhow, we figured out that the cakes was a memo to him from a vendor to get energy data from him. I know a few people who work for this vendor in Boston and they are coming up to hang out and ski with us over the MLK weekend.

Our entire physical plant thought it was funny way to send a memo because: 1) the energy manager loves the bakery the vendor got the cakes and 2) originality. Our compliments to the vendor...and we expect because the cake had "..." a third cake is on the way.

The cakes were delicious! They were chocolate and caramel.

Tents, chairs, linens, porta-johns...check!

It has been snowing for several days and our backyard (see above) is beautifully blanketed with the powdery white stuff. Josh got me a new pair of x-c skis as an early holiday present and yesterday afternoon we went skied in the backyard. We got some exercise considering we had to break in some tracks. Then Josh got to try out his new snowshoes, which I got as a holiday gift for him. We are set for winter sports....Now on to wedding stuff.

Good news is that we worked out a contract and a price quote with Morris Tents and this morning I put down a deposit for tents, chairs, linens, tables, and porta-johns. Yes, I said porta johns. Given the state of my parent's house (under constant construction and renovation), we knew that the household plumbing could only handle a couple more people to the system. But we also knew we have friends and family who are okay with this arrangement since the birthday party, ceremony, and reception will be in the middle of a field on the farm. We promise to change up the decor of the porta-john for our guests.

My mother called me about a NY Times article on how the economy has affected wedding planning. See "Recession? Time to Slash the Flower Budget". It mentions couples who planned their ideal weddings (i.e. ostentatious...which spells out to early divorce) above the average amount spent on weddings (in this case$29,000). Brides had to "pair down" their budgets, some from $35,000 to $25,000, in order to pay for other real life expenses (i.e. loans, credit card bills...the stuff outside the one day of celebration). When I read this, I felt more sane because we have been planning this wedding rationally and bare bones while remaining in the black. I don't have any sympathy for these couples because even if we weren't in a recession...wouldn't it be better to put their money in better things (i.e. a down payment on a home, etc.)

On another note, Josh and I just joined a winter bread CSA called Good Companion Bakery about 10 miles from our home. The wheat is grown, harvested, and milled for flour on the farm/bakery. The owner makes the bread (including croissants and artisan breads) on the premises in a wood fired oven. To say the very least Josh and I feel spoiled, but definitely committed to buying local and organic.

Wedding stuff on hold while jumpstarting our jobs

Our view from our bedroom window.

Josh and I have been preoccupied with our new jobs. Its been one month since we moved to New Haven and we are still trying to get ourselves settled in. This hasn't been easy because I have been traveling to conferences on behalf of UVM's Office of Sustainability and recently returned from Raleigh, NC after attending the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education conference. As soon as I returned to work the next day, we went straight into working with Rocky Mountain Institute on their research project involving case studies of campus sustainability. I have a workshop to attend on green purchasing before heading to Boston to the USGBC's GreenBuild Conference in the next couple of days. This traveling, along with fitting in time to do my coursework for Harvard and getting time to spend with Josh, is making me road weary and put things on hold. I have a lot ahead of me with my work at UVM and so I am convinced that simplifying wedding plans is key to keeping my sanity.

We have been preparing for the winter and were happy to get two full cords of kiln dried firewood from a local company in Bristol. Josh and I stacked wood for many hours and now starting to burn it in our woodstove. The start of this post shows the view from our bedroom window and I will end with the same view, which looks out to the Adirondack Mountains in NY.

The Good News

As temperatures drop in Vermont while typing with freezing fingers on this keyboard, I breath a sigh of relief bearing some good news on the job front. After about of a month from my first phone interview to now, UVM's director of sustainability was authorized by the powers that be to tell me that I got the Sustainability Projects Coordinator position. I have to wait one more day for things to be official, but things will be starting immediately as I attend some sustainability conferences starting next week.

Josh and I just got back from Bioneers, which was a bit of an adventure. First, we drove down from VT to Boston to fly out of Logan on Thursday. The flight was uneventful but we got screwed out of our room at the Marin Headlands Hostel because we were not able to check in on time (we arrived at Oakland Airport late in the evening) and they canceled our reservation even though we intended to stay for the rest of the weekend. They had the audacity to charge my card because it was their policy. Long story short...we had to spend double and stay at an airport hotel. At Bioneers, my friend and former busmate, Cori, from the Audubon Expedition Institute helped us out by inviting us to her and her partner's apartment in San Francisco. It worked out for the better because we got to hang out with Cori and another busmate Elana, and hung out with our best man to be, Pincus, in San Francisco for a night of high price drinks at the Top of the Mark.

The plenary speeches at Bioneers were awesome with Bill McKibben, Ray Anderson, Janine Benyus, Naomi Klein, etc. and some of the workshops were interesting with Annie Leonard (creator of the web film "The Story of Stuff") and Andy Revkin (NY Times writer of Dot Earth blog). The only difficulty I had was with the hypocrisy of the event...no public transit (people had to drive there), and tons of vendors with new agey stuff (alkaline water, purifying foot baths, etc.) that represented unnecessary consumption. Plus the hippie dippie liberal liberals were a bit much as they fawned over and idealized indigenous people and Asians, searching for answers on how to change individually in light of climate change. Something I appreciate about Annie Leonard is that she said that individual change is good and all, but we really need systemic change in how the stuff we consume is made and distributed.

Nonetheless, I am in rush to get all my ducks in a row. Josh and I returned from our trip tired and sick, but we are gradually getting some much need rest and on our way to going full force with our careers.

Moved in and wishing the boxes would unpack themselves

Our move up to New Haven, VT went relatively smoothly for two people who had to drive late into the night to Cambridge and pick up a huge 16' truck the next morning. We are so thankful that our friend Elaine was so helpful by letting us sleep on her floor that night. Our "change oil" went on the night before and so we had to get our car serviced before going on with unloading our storage unit. We were tired after 6 hours of unloading and drove up in two separate vehicles at slower speed to our new abode.

My mother and stepfather had arrived at our house an hour before from NYC...and we were all tired. The next morning we unloaded boxes. It was a fun weekend with my parents and our friend Drew as we cleaned, unpacked, fixed things in the house. It's a big house for us...but it's a great rental for us and one can't beat the view from our window. We wake to beautiful scenery...looking out to the Adirondack mountains. The sunsets are even better.

You be the judge of it....

We're moving to Vermont!

At long last one of us got a job! Josh landed a job as Director of Technology for a school district in Vermont, and we are in a mad rush to get our stuff out of storage in Cambridge and get all our ducks in a row before Josh starts his job. Funny thing is that a month ago, Josh and I both had interviews for awesome jobs at the same time and in different towns. I was one of 93 applicants for the Sustainability Projects Coordinator at UVM, which whittled down to 1 of 6 for a screening call and 1 of 3 for a four and a half hour interview on campus.

I didn't know I would have the in person interview, but was prepared with my interview suit and portfolio. Josh took the car to his interview, while I managed to reserve a Zipcar in Middlebury (the only place with Zipcar service) to head up to Burlington. The interview was awesome and it made me desire the position more because, like Goldilocks, it was just right and a great fit toward supporting and implementing sustainability initiatives. College campuses are an interesting microcosm to implement social and environmental change at an institution. I have to thank my friend Jesse from Green Mountain College for suggesting this job.

So now, I am one of the top 2 candidates for the position and have anxiously waited to hear about the hire. Unfortunately, UVM and a thousand other colleges are feeling the effects from the banking crisis. Check out the NY Times article. So I haven't heard any news from UVM for over a week because the Office Sustainability is having a difficult time getting through administrative bureaucracy (and it is sure thing that with $79 million of their operation funds partially frozen, they are running around picking up to pieces from Wachovia's pull out from the Common Fund). So there is nothing I can do but be patient and just move forward with moving to our house, which we are renting from a couple of professors who took the house off the market till next spring. Also, next weekend we are heading out to San Francisco bay area for the Bioneers Conference and I am excited about going.