Sweet, sweet success

Distractions

First things first: I need to exorcise this ridiculousness. Mike sent me a link to a video and it was funny the first time, but now this song has been stuck in my head all day:

So, what else is new, you ask? I'm taking a break from finishing my reading for class tomorrow (luckily I only have to read one more journal article of seven to be discussed in 90 minutes of classtime... who knew neurotransmitter receptor characterization could be so unbelievably boring? Certainly I had never suspected such a thing!)

Wedding: we're down to a little over 6 months of planning time. We still need: caterer/menu, cake, rings, "engagement" photo, menswear, hair/makeup/accessory plans, finalized address list, invitation design, more stuff for which to register, finalized liturgy and music/musicians, song ideas for the reception, hotel block reservations, honeymoon plans... and probably a whole bunch of stuff I'm completely forgetting. Whew. I won't even try to remember and list what we have accomplished so far, but I think that one is at least as long. (That's a good thing, right?)

In other news, I have half of a dining hutch! Certain... difficulties were encountered during assembly, despite the best efforts of the build team. It's a bad sign when the accompanying instruction packet enjoins one to "feel confident that this will go smoothly and give years of enjoyment." Also, "we have designed our furniture with you, the [redacted big-box store... let's call it 'Bullseye'] guest in mind. Our clear, easy to follow, step by step instructions will guide you through the project from start to finish." That's as backhanded a characterization of customer base as I've ever seen. Sadly, it's probably fair... though I do insist that our problems with "back rail bottom=1C" stem from faulty manufacture rather than inherent incompetence of the assemblers. There exists no rotational state for the component such that its hardware actually matches the orientation as depicted in the instructions, and I defy anyone to prove otherwise.

Whew. Ranting doesn't change anything, but at least I feel better. And now I have the energy to read about the structure of the glutamate-receptor ligand-binding core in complex with kainate! That's win-win!

Old news

This is at least a couple of weeks old, but I saved the image and I'm still pretty proud, gosh darn it!

La la la!

Last night was the 15th Annual Messiah Sing-Along at St. Ignatius, a church in my neighborhood, which I attended with a friend from my a cappella group. My sight reading is more than a little rusty, but it was nice to tackle a major choral work... especially in a beautiful 90-year old church with a rich, full acoustic.

The church's concert choir led the way through the more obscure sections, though we in the pews held our own especially in the Hallelujah chorus! The orchestra and soloists were delightful to listen to. I actually worked on the Alto Air "O Thou That Tellest Good Tidings To Zion" in voice lessons in undergrad, but this was the first time I'd heard it performed live, and it was wonderfully done.

In another interesting turn of events, the woman I wound up sitting next to was very personable and we struck up a conversation before the concert got under way. As it turned out, she was born in Germany in a small town not too far from Göttingen, though she was only a couple of years old when her family moved to America. I got to practice my German small talk; always a pleasure!

I'm definitely going back next year!

Christmas came early this year!

Since coming back from Thanksgiving break, something wonderful has happened...

I've recieved my copy of "In Concert," the Kenyon College Chamber Singers CD comprising recordings from junior and senior year ('03-'04 and '04-'05). I've been listening to it pretty much nonstop, because it's wonderful. I'm fairly certain that my fellow public transit passengers wonder why I'm grinning at everybody all the time, and I know the checkout boy at the grocery store felt a bit put upon since I was humming the alto line of Sweelinck's "Gaudete Omnes" with one ear-bud in while he attempted to complete my purchase... but I can't stop! It's intoxicating to relive the music, to anticipate the swell of each familiar crescendo and feel the gentle restraint of 50-odd voices carrying a line pianissi-issi-issimo. It's part of my life that brings me great joy and pride, and having a lasting reminder of our efforts and accomplishments is a boon beyond compare.

For any fellow CS alums who have not yet purchased a copy, do so! Here's the track list to whet your appetite:

1. How Can I Keep From Singing? -arr. Ronald Staheli
2. Gaudete omnes -Jan Pieterzsoon Sweelinck
3. Ave Maria -Jean Mouton
4. Adonai ro'i -Judith Shatin
5. I will sing of life -Adolphus Hailstork
6. To His Music -Andrew Rindfleisch
7. Sometimes I Feel -arr. Robert Shaw and Alice Parker
8. Mundi renovatio [Renewal of the Earth] -György Orbàn
9. Lux aetera -Steven Bartek '04
   
10. Gaudeamus igitur -Jetse Bremer
11. In beauty may I walk -Jonathan Dove
12. Warum ist das Licht gegeben den Mühseligen -Johannes Brahms
13. Véñiki [Brooms] -arr. F. Rubtsov
14. Mata del anima sola -Antonio Estévez
15. I love my love -arr. Gustav Holst
16. Umahlalela [The Loafer] -arr. Mzilikazi Khumalo
17. Kokosing Farewell -arr. Benjamin "Doc" Locke

I'll admit to a slight twinge of dissapointment that our 2005 rendition of Bach's "Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied" didn't make the cut, but given the quality of what made it in I can see how devoting 15 minutes of the CD to a single piece when combining two years' worth of material would have been impractical. (Luckily for me I've gotten used to singing along to the '96-'97 choir's version on "As Torrents in Summer!")

In other awesome news, here's hard proof of my vocabulo-rifficness, via FreeRice:

This screen cap is a bit small, but look carefully... that's right, a natural 49! I actually got the two subsequent questions right as well and came within a single answer of the much-coveted 50 before missing and losing it! For those of you playing at home, the correct answer is freeze-dry
(Highlight above to reveal! Ooooh, special effects!)

Everybody should go play some more, especially with the new tracking features. Maybe someday they'll also add a "your most frequent level" category... I still spend lots of time at 44, but 45s and 46s are becoming more prevalent, and it would be nice to track my progress.

Word games and a good cause, oh my!

Try the FreeRice vocabulary game! According to the site, it's rare for anyone to get beyond level 48 (of 50). Two thousand grains in with no dictionary and I'm consistently hitting level 44 and occasionally making a run all the way up to 46, only to hit a string of toughies. Can you do better?

Fancy dress!

***Disclaimer: I've made a bargain with Mike that he WILL NOT peek if I provide a link to photos of the dress. I trust him, so I'm going to post it. (Plus, I'll know. Sitemeter generates a record of outclicks. But mostly, I trust him.)***

I was back home in St. Louis for the weekend, with a single goal: find the dress.

I expected the process to be at least moderately difficult. After all, there are quintillions of options, and so many of them are lovely in different ways. I had gotten some ideas from the "fashion show" portion of the St. Louis Bridal Expo a few weeks earlier, such as useful terminology: drop waist, gathering and ruching, various neckline, skirt, and train styles, taffeta vs. chiffon vs. a bunch of other fabrics... I also had the sketch that my friend and eventual roommate Grace had made for me waaaaay back in our freshman year at Kenyon. Of course I knew it was silly to show up with a sketch for a dress that doesn't exist and ask for the closest thing, but it wound up in my "wedding stuff" filing folder nonetheless, between pamphlets for DJs and information on photographers.

It wound up being a whole group of us at the shops, which I had anticipated. My maternal grandma, mom, my aunt Kristin and her kids... Justin, who was understandably bored, and flower girl Kailyn, who amused herself by trying on dresses of her own... until (horror of horrors!) she learned that she didn't get to take each and every one of them home with her that very day.

Aside from that unfortunate moment, I did find a potential winner at the first shop; a beautiful chiffon dress with spaghetti straps, a ruched corseted bodice feeding into a crystal-edged split-front overlay skirt that was very flattering, and an absolutely gorgeous crystal-studded train (which we didn't even notice until the dress was on!) The design company was called Impressions. It was a different style but the same fabric as my mother's own dress, and very light and airy for a summer wedding.

I wanted to look at another shop that carried a specific gown I'd noticed at the bridal show, just to be sure. The gown in mind was unique in that it had a colored ribbon (with many color choices) underlaid behind the beadwork in the bodice and that continued down and made up the inside of a split train. I found it again, but the cut of the dress didn't suit my body shape. I tried on a few others while we were there, and one of them fit amazingly. It was by design company Sophia Tolli, and it had lace straps, ruching and lace applique on the corset-back bodice, and a fuller skirt with an interesting pouf of bustling to one side. The pouf was pretty, but located right at hand height where it could be constantly smashed and fiddled with, knowing me. Still, the fit was so flattering that I thought it warranted further consideration.

Grandma and mom and I wanted to have a look, for comparison's sake, at the selection at a chain store that has been described by friends as "the Wal-Mart of bridal stores." Unsurprisingly, they were right. While I'm sure that I'd be able to find a beautiful dress there with some effort, our initial try-ons weren't promising. The store attendant insisted on measuring me (since "most women wear the wrong bra size") and proclaimed me a B-cup. (Not since high school!) She brought me a strapless undergarment in that size, and true to the saying, they ranneth over. She also insisted that the styles in the store were "french designs" and thus ran small. If I fit in a 10 in another store, I'd definitely need a 12 here. Pretty much every dress she brought out was oversized, so I had to look past the crappy fit and try to imagine every dress in my own size. The helpful feedback consisted of pressing me to list what I liked/did not like for each dress I tried on. Some features that I was interested in, like corseting instead of zippers, were "going out of style," which was why they didn't have much of a selection with that detail. (This was patently untrue based on the selections at the previous stores.) We didn't stay very long, and didn't add any dresses to our list.

Since the following day was Saturday and shops get busy, we tried to plan ahead and call to reserve a fitting room for yet another store. It turns out that only two stores in the St. Louis area carry Sophia Tolli designs, and this second store also carried the first dress from Impressions that I had liked. I could compare them back-to-back at a single location.

We arrived soon after opening, and it was full of brides-to-be and their friends and family, so we got started on our own and I had to wait a bit for mirror time to look at the dresses. We looked around for other options as well, and I did find a fairly simple two-tone strapless satin dress that everybody liked, but I thought satin would be too heavy for early August. I found the Impressions dress and a couple of other dresses from that company, none of which were as good as the first one. Then we figured out that they didn't have the specific Sophia Tolli gown I had tried on the day before, but they had a selection of others from the collection, which I decided to try.

By then it was late morning and the store had started to clear out, so we had more space and assistance from the staff, which was very nice. Both of the Sophia Tolli dresses were beautiful. The second one that I tried on was my grandmother's favorite... when I pointed out that it was more expensive, she wanted to pay the difference herself! It was a beautiful full A-line dress with beaded straps and crisscrossed taffeta draping from the fitted bodice to partway down the skirt, which gave way to a tulle underskirt at the front. The back of the dress was also very distinctive, again corset-style at the top while the taffeta draping from the front continued into drapey bustling with a crystal accent partway down the skirt and leading into the train.

That was a gorgeous dress, but as soon as I saw it on I wanted to get back into the dress I had tried on just before! I think Kara and I both knew it was special, since she commented on it in the dressing room (before I saw it in the mirror) and we definitely shared a look once I had a chance to see the whole thing. I felt that it made me look like an elegant piece of statuary, or the figurine on some kind of fancy award... but in a good way. It's just me, I guess. The funny thing is that of all the dresses I tried, it was the closest in overall shape to the sketch that Grace drew way back when. She was really on to something! When I had asked at the other stores to try on dresses in that shape, and I had been told that it only flatters very tall and thin girls, so I shouldn't even try it. So much for that!

We ordered it in diamond white, which is like a pale ivory. Here's the link that Mike isn't allowed to click!