Hamden Hill Eco Wedding

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

2009-08-05T10:46:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-21T08:17:00.000-07:00

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

2009-01-16T10:26:00.000-08:00

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

Good news for mom (not wedding related)

2009-01-15T20:06:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-15T19:25:00.000-08:00

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!

2008-12-22T12:24:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-15T21:05:00.000-08:00

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

2008-10-22T09:45:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-15T12:34:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-10-07T06:39:00.000-07:00

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.

We don't have a wedding color...so deal with it!

2008-08-31T20:06:00.000-07:00

Many things take a back seat, especially planning a wedding, when you are unemployed and looking for a new town to settle in. Josh and I are temporarily living on my folk's farmland in the Catskills. This is also where the wedding will take place. You would hardly know we are unemployed since we have been taking time to travel all over the East Coast, especially fitting in some rock climbing at some classic crags. At this time, we are in Baltimore with Josh's folks and hanging out with friends as we prepare for job interviews. We're really hoping to land jobs in Vermont, so cross your fingers and send good energy our way!

(Picture was taken a week ago. At the end of a 3-pitch climb on Lake George in the Adirondacks where we had our fill of drunk boaters watching us from below.)

We have also been busy helping my parents and other activists to inform people in the Catskill region about a fast tracked, horizontal natural gas drilling operation that will have horrible environmental impacts in the near future to the area. Although natural gas is a clean energy, extracting is a dirtier deal that impacts the health, economy, and environment (particularly drinking water and air) of many communities.

Planning the wedding seems to go in the right direction as Josh and I bumped into a tent vendor at the local county fair. Morris Tents seems to have a lot of tents and other event stuff; and it was nice to have a gay guy amidst a rural county to guide us through our planning. We sat with him last week and we made it clear that we were focused on the infrastructure of the wedding (tent, chairs, tables, rental equipment) since the where and when part were taken care of. One thing I said to the guy was, "don't ask me about my colors or my color scheme...frankly I don't care so long as we can make it all work with the landscape."(This is our wedding ceremony and reception site on my parent's farmland)
We showed the pictures of the wedding ceremony and reception site, which are only a few yards apart from one another. We hope to get married by the tree that is next to a pile of huge rocks in the middle of our pasture land. The reception will be on a flat area in the same open field. My family has a long history with the local dairy farmer down the road, who maintains our fields by cutting the grass and fertilizing it in exchange for the hay they produce from our land, which they give to their cows as well as sell. It's a simple exchange or bartering of services and in the end, our meadows look beautiful after a fresh cut. When Josh and I moved up to the farm, Roger came out to ask when our wedding was so that he could plan ahead for cutting our field. And we are deeply appreciative of his services.

We are a bit behind with sending out our Save the Date emails and developing our wedding website. Josh and I are already sketching up ideas for our wedding invitations. I also have my back-up wedding dress...and it is not white! So things are slowly in the works....but getting jobs is our bigger fish to fry.

I'm just looking and not buying...Wedding Dresses Phase 1

2008-07-24T08:19:00.000-07:00

First off a message to the groom from my ladies....Avert your eyes and don't read this post!

A couple weeks ago, I thought to try out different wedding dress styles that would best fit my body. I had stared at so many wedding dress websites that it got me anxious to check things out myself. Well, I filled out an appointment request for David's Bridal and never heard from them. I mentioned this later to my friend, Elaine, who wanted to help me (in lieu of my MOH not being in States, but is in London) check out dresses with me. So she called David's Bridal and made an appointment. It was a rainy Wednesday evening when we stepped into David's Bridal. The occasion was a whirlwind, but I started off with a corset/strapless bra and a petticoat. I was simply sweating under all this stuff and I hadn't put on a single wedding dress. Putting on a wedding dress is a real task and now I can understand why a gal has so many bridesmaids to assist her with getting the darn thing on and zippered up. I don't know how many dresses we checked out, but it was intriguing to try them on. I am a broad shouldered gal, so although the dresses fit tight around my waste the last a couple inches were difficult to zip up the dress.

Anyhoot, I am just looking at styles and have no interest in buying a dress that would only be worn once and not made of sustainable materials. So I felt okay to tell the sales lady that I couldn't make an appointment to make a decision on a dress (it also helps to tell her that we are moving out of town in the next week). One thing I know is that I would melt in these dresses in August because the materials used for these dresses are unbelievably hot. Well, it's just a start.

Wedding plans take a back seat to packing boxes

2008-07-21T13:50:00.000-07:00

Wedding planning has taken a back seat as we are packing boxes to move out of Boston after 4+ years in Beantown. Josh and I are looking for jobs, trying to figure out where we will be living next. We are squeezing in climbing in the Northeast before leaving.

In the meanwhile, my girl friend is helping me look for wedding dress styles that would suit me. Of course, we are checking out one of the big box store bridal behemoth...but only looking and trying....definitely not buying. When we take a break at my family's farm, we will start looking into renting tents, etc.

Till then...

Dealing with food waste via vermicomposting

2008-06-23T11:04:00.000-07:00

This post is from my old Eco Urban Dweller blog, but the topic has tons of relevance to how we will deal with food waste for our wedding:

I love composting...but sometimes I am too lazy to separate my food waste from my trash and yet I feel guilty for putting things in the trash can. The idea of vermicomposting (composting organic materials with worms) came about the time I was working at The Food Project, a sustainable agriculture organization and job program for teens. I would bring bag loads of my compost to our urban gardens, which was nice to do but a pain in the butt nonetheless. The Cambridge recycling director had a workshop on building your worm bin and I was enthused to start one right a way. As usual procrastination got the better of me and my boyfriend convinced me to shop around for worm bins.

I found the Can-O-Worms set-up at the Happy D-Ranch site and saw how practical the set-up was. First, it had a stackable tray system that allowed me to dump my compost in and allowed the worms to eat at their own pace. Also it had a spout that can be opened and closed to release the composting tea. Second, it was deemed an environmentally responsible product because it is built from recycled plastic and the packaging material could be used to start the composting bin.

When I got the Can-O-Worms, it was easy to set-up and then I waited for my 1 pound of worms to arrive from Georgia. It was so cute to get a small priority box, marked "Live Worms." Before I put the worms in the bin, I had cut up newspapers and the coir (a compressed block of coconut hairs) to establish the bedding.

Then I carefully cut open the bag of worms and let them settle into the bedding. Worms don't like bright light and so they dived down into the bedding as soon as possible. The moist, shredded newspaper was added to the bin and then another bin layer was added. On this empty level, I added the food scraps I had saved up.

In the first month, I learned that you have to empty the compost tea as often as possible and that egg shells should be dried and crushed before it is added to the bin. Too much moisture creates a sulfurous smell in the bin. My roommates got use composting in the apartment. The nice part about the Can-O-Worms is that all you have to do is lift the lid and dump the food scraps in. The worms take care of the rest.

Two years later, I have rich compost and many gallons of compost tea which I use on my plants. My fiance and I are on our third layer of the Can and I am thinking of getting another because we compost a lot of vegetable matter. This is especially true of the harvest season because we have a Community Support Agriculture (CSA) share with Red Fire Farm. It's a wonderful deal to get our food from a CSA. We pick up our share next to our food co-op. Last year, we had a delivery from Bay End Farm which was a great deal because we god flowers, herbs, and fresh bread from a locally bakery with our veggies. Our worm population has tripled as they consume all our food waste.

The wedding concept-Part 1

2008-06-23T11:00:00.000-07:00

From my other blog:

It's been a long while since I blogged and I've been a pure bum about writing...but a lot of things have preoccupied my time. It's been one year since I moved in with my boyfriend and that relationship status has changed because....we got engaged and are planning to get hitched on my parent's farm land next summer!

So begins the journey to plan an eco-conscious wedding, defying the wedding industries standards, and creating a two day outdoor festival that resembles our values. We had started brainstorming this event prior to him surprising me with the ring (platinum band with a blue sapphire) in VT after a day of climbing in NH. Our plans will have to span three cultural traditions: Judaism, Chinese, and Japanese. Our focus is on family, friends, and community and respecting nature. We are asking many of our friends to bring their talent and skills to this wedding and simplified our wedding party to one maid of honor and one groomsman (both our best friends).

Our engagement was kicked off with a party that we threw and the main feature was the Hamden Hill Porter that we brewed (6 cases) at Barleycorn's Craft Brew (a winter gift for the fiance) and slapped our own save-the-date label on the bottles. I was a little disappointed to find out that a friend and my former Outward Bound instructor, Brian Wedge, was not available to take our wedding photos. Looking at his portfolio, I have been impressed by the breadth and artistry of his images.

More to come on Eco-wedding planning. But here is a start from the NY Times "How Green Was My Wedding"

How we met...growing together organically

2008-06-20T11:35:00.000-07:00

Seven years ago, J and I met at Eagle Rock School & Professional Development Center (ERS) in Estes Park, CO when we both started a one-year teaching internship. Our experience living and working at ERS was intense, especially in such an environment focused on turning around high school drop outs to life long learners and leaders through a close-knit community of caring students and staff. This experience was the seed to our relationship, which is not perfect but ever growing.

There is a four year age difference between the two of us (ominously good according to Chinese astrology) and there could have been a slim possibility that our paths would have crossed prior to ERS. J and I went to colleges, 45 minutes apart in Western NY, but he graduated when I entered college. Completely driven by our individual interests in experiential education and our outside the box thinking, we somehow manage to work and live under the same roof (with 12 other interns) on a high altitude campus in Colorado back in 2001. J took a road trip out West searching for a change from software programming and looking for an innovative school to work at before landing at ERS. I, on the other hand, was going on a career path that began with an Outward Bound course I took before starting college and in between jobs working outdoors leading trips. My parent's mailed me a NY Times article about Eagle Rock and 4 years later, I was blown away by meeting students from the school at a conference and found myself working there 8 months later.

When we met, we were just friends. I flirted with possibilities, as I was the youngest in our intern class and just out of college. By mid-year of our internship, his flirtation with me made me curious. Curiosity can sometimes get one in trouble, but some times you have to take risks to figure things out. I thought one kiss would set us straight as friends and well that was the beginning of a long journey toward becoming a couple. If any of you are Sex in the City fans, I can simply say that I relate with Carrie's love story with Mr. Big. It was a ride to get here and not your typical boy meets girl story.

J and I parted ways for a year and a half after our time at ERS ended, once in a while spending a little time together and occasional emails, while I attended graduate school on a retrofitted school bus traveling all over North America. By my third semester, I was determined to settle in a town for a while and get out of a life style living out of my backpack. I chose to take internship in Boston and live in Cambridge for three reasons: 1) get back into rowing (what better place than the Charles, 2) innovative environmental organizations, and 3) the boy.

Simply moving to town did not make building a relationship easy and to say the least, we both dated other people before we both grew up and realized how we fit one another. Flash forward three years and now we have been living together for over a year.

Word to the wise: Relationships are not instant and its okay to struggle to get to that point. Becoming secure as individuals and letting a relationship take seed on its own is OK.