Miscellaneous

[mrissa]

I've scheduled my wisdom teeth extraction for a week from tomorrow, though I have to make sure no one has a conflict or problem with that. (On e-mail, please.) I then started going through my to-do list for next week and pruning: if I get these things done, well and good, but I'm not going to have expectations that I should go springing forth good as new immediately. If I do, great; I'm good at finding projects, and I can always attack the to-do list for the following week. But it's best not to set it up in my head that I have to go straight from the chair to vim and vigor, especially given how I react to drugs. (Answer: strongly.)

Specifically, I have not yet committed to giving beta readers Thermionic Night before I leave the country, though I still think it would be a good think to do.

Still, this thing seems like maybe a good thing to do, as my new wisdom tooth continues to bother me.

I have finally gotten a landscaper to agree to come look at the front planter. Calloo callay, and how freakin' hard should this have been in the first place?

My desk has been visited by a plague of Post-It notes. They say which sofas we liked, what food I should think of cooking, which stories I should finish soon, what I should do to Thermionic Night, and which books I should buy in England. Like other items, they are on my desk to remind me to take care of them and get them off my desk. As such, they drive me nuts. They are designed to drive me nuts. Still.

I'm really tired of spam claiming to be from one of my domain name addresses. It isn't worrisome (I've consulted markgritter), it's just annoying.

The Pledge pre-moistened dustcloths are actually not really easier than spraying a rag with Pledge. Why are so many of these "labor-saving" things really not labor-saving at all? Why would we want to have more trash without any actual benefit? I'm confused.

If I could teach people -- just people, universally -- one thing, it would be what constitutes belief vs. evidence vs. proof. I think the proper and improper uses of anecdotal evidence would fall into this category. The application of statistics is probably too broad to count as just one thing, but it's also pretty high on my list.

(Normal distributions in a large population mean lots more "freakish" coincidences in the middle, where that guy looks just like your cousin Ted, and lots more "freakish" incidences on the outer edges, where something that affects a mere 1% of the population affects 10 kids (or more) in a high school. It's not just the fringes that make things look a little weird in a large population. It's coincidences in the middle, too. The future is a very strange place to be living.)

I attempted dress shopping at Bigdale Macy's. I will wear bright orange, leaf green, or dark purple. I will not wear them together. There was a color-blocked halter dress that would have been lovely if they hadn't done it in three close shades of green. I suspect I may be the only woman in this country whose apparel for her own wedding was infinitely easier to shop for than her apparel for other people's. Perhaps not the only one. Still.

Comments

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

On the one hand, I've only been invited to four weddings thus far. I have had more friends get married, I just wasn't invited to the wedding. Which could be sad, except, you know, I love the idea that my friends have found someone to spend the rest of their lives with, but I'm just as glad not to have dress up for their weddings. :) Of the four weddings I can think of, I was supposed to be in two of them (and would have actually worn the same dress for both, since I couldn't afford a new blue dress, how sad), and the other two were basically casual. (I just realised I'm wearing the skirt I wore to both of them--it worked so well for the first, I wore it to the second as well. And Torcon. And to work when I'm in a skirt mood.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes, the glory of bridesmaid-ing is not having to pick out your own dress.

Of course, of the three weddings I've been in, not one of the brides has had the same view of the matter, or at least not entirely.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

Well, we sort of got to/had to pick our own dress, but it was a guided choice--the bride found pictures, we said 'yes,' 'no,' 'oh god no!' and thus limited the options down to a handful, and the bride and a close (geographical) friend went and looked at them in person and picked the best of the batch.

Can I just say how many horrifying bridesmaids dresses there are out there?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

You can, but under the circumstances I'm not sure you have to.

That's what we ended up doing with gaaldine (dress shown in the icon): she picked out a bunch of dresses she liked all right, has us all rate them or at least group them into preference regions, and kind of took the one we collectively liked best.

seagrit picked the color and skirt and let us pick the tops. Then, of course, we picked the same top anyway.

[scottjames.livejournal.com]

I suspect I may be the only woman in this country whose apparel for her own wedding was infinitely easier to shop for than her apparel for other people's. Perhaps not the only one. Still.

If the time spent shopping is any indication of difficulty, you are indeed not the only one. Not even the only one I know.

But I'm sorry you're having so much difficulty finding a reasonable dress.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It's my refusal to be an accidental Goth, is what. I just need to give in to my accidental Goth nature.

[redbird]

I made an attempt to shop for clothing this morning, and concluded that the bright orange stuff was there to try to reconcile me to pink. Nope. Sorry. I'll call Lands End and buy more boring jeans, and tank tops in whatever of their color selection fits my taste.

I may have you beaten on the wedding shopping thing: I didn't actually shop for clothing for my wedding, I wore a really nice silk top I'd picked up the previous Wiscon, and wool trousers with it. Of course, we went down to the Municipal Building (they don't actually perform weddings at City Hall here, it's across the street in a bigger building) in February with all of seven guests. But I have had to do the bridesmaid dress thing. Never again.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I didn't shop for clothes for my wedding at all. I didn't even shop for the clothes I wore at my wedding for some other event. I wore my mother's dress, altered for fit but not for style.

[toolittletime.livejournal.com]

Pledge, et al - these new labor savers _must_ be created to keep the economy from failing! If new products aren't constantly being created, people will just buy the cheaper, more useful, time-tested items (and less often because they work & last), and then where would all those corporations be? And the terrorists would win then, wouldn't they? Are you trying to cause the downfall of western civilization or sumpin'?

Never having had the experience of purchasing (let alone wearing) a bridesmaid dress - lucky me & my gender, I have to amuse myself with viewing them from afar - like on this site: http://www.uglydress.com/ Some serious ugliness and amusement there.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I didn't ask why they made them, I asked why we would buy them, which is somewhat different.

I prefer to prevent the downfall of western civilization with odd cheeses.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I think there's a virus that attacks many brides and causes them to lose all taste. The one time I was a bridesmaid, the bride, who was normally a fairly together girl, picked out a horrendous number featuring a butt-bow that required heavy alteration for all three of us to actually fit, and then she actually said the words that prove that some sort of alien being had landed and sucked all common sense out of her brain: "You can wear that again!"

The dress in question was very, very close to this one (http://www.uglydress.com/greenpairmis.html), only with an uneven hem that touched the floor in back, in royal blue with a floral pattern embossed into the fabric, and, of course, with that butt-bow.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I believe that "you can wear that again" has become code in some circles for "that doesn't look half bad, for a bridesmaid's dress."

I really could wear the one from gaaldine and the_overqual's wedding again, if I ever agreed to go to a formal banquet. Alas, but I keep skipping out on the formal parts of cons, so I can't. seagrit's choice was also lovely, but it's plum-colored taffeta, so one would have to choose the event carefully.

When I asked them (and my two other bridesmaids) to be in my wedding, the phrase I used was, "If I promise you don't have to wear a bow on your butt, will you be in my wedding?"

[telophase.livejournal.com]

The summer I was a cashier at a museum that rented out its grounds for weddings in San Antonio, I got to see some truly tacky weddings, including one that had a giant purple and white balloon arch, and a Caribbean-themed one that had live fish in bowls as part of the centerpieces on the tables.

Back in 1995 or so, I was lurking on one of the weddings newsgroups for the funny stories, and one of the aprticipants said when she was a bridesmaid, the day of the wedding the bride was panicking and obsessing over small things, and started worrying that the backs of the bridesmaids' dresses weren't elaborate or interesting enough. She turned to the poster and asked her to think of something to dress them up. The poster suggested a sticker with the words "WIDE LOAD." The bride didn't talk to her for weeks afterwards, apparently.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

My mom and I designated my cousin Kari the dress-shopping bridesmaid, since she lived in the same city as my mother at the time. And every dress we saw Kars in, my mom would look at and say, "I don't know...it's nice, but...I just think there should be something interesting about the back." (It was a Prot wedding, so people were going to spend a lot of time staring at the bridesmaids' backsides.) So for the rehearsal, Kars brought string, a hole-punch, paper, and markers, so that each bridesmaid could make a sign reading, "This is Something Interesting..." and then a "fun fact" about themselves and/or me.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I would pay money to go to a wedding if someone actually that. :)

My backside didn't get stared at much, because as the maid of honor I was able to arrange myself so that my profile was to the audience, er, congregation.

My other wedding story that has nothing to do with bridesmaids' dresses, because there were no bridesmaids, was when a friend got married in a small chapel in Georgetwon, TX. It was the weekend after 9/11 and the bride's family were all New Yorkers, so only her parents, brother, and sister were able to scam transportation and get there. The JP forgot that he had a wedding to preside at and was at a charity barbecue, so while we were waiting the 45 minutes for him to show up, the bride said "The hell with this, it's hot, and I'm getting ice cream" and fluttered off down the road, veil streaming in the wind, to an ice-cream parlor a block down from the chapel. The entire wedding party, including the guests, ended up eating ice cream there, much to the surprise and amusement of the employees. They gave the bride free ice cream, and I took a picture of her and the employees so they could put it up on the wall.

The JP eventually showed up, and the wedding went off fine after that. Except when the bride's sister and brother, who were providing music, went on a little too long and the bride stuck her head in the door and said "Hey - can you guys play 'Here Comes the Bride' now?"

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

People actually play "Here Comes the Bride" at weddings? I think I've only been at one or two that did.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

They did at this one. The one I was the maid of honor at, the bride *wanted* "Here Comes the Bride," but the chapel on campus didn't allow it, for some reason, and offered "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" instead.

I've photographed a couple of weddings for friends in the past year or two, and for the life of me I can't remember what any of the music was - I was too focused on getting the best pictures I could without being obnoxious or in the way of anyone, so I wasn't paying the slightest bit of attention to the music.

[gaaldine.livejournal.com]

Y'know, I did have bridesmaids keep bringing up this observation about "you can wear it again" as if that was my goal. I tended to keep mum about it, figuring that that might be a nice side effect, but I always thought the idea was a bit silly. I mean, it was a *bridesmaid's* dress. I knew I would do my best to keep it from being ugly but a.) my taste is not everyone's (and I don't think there is a single person in the world whose taste would please absolutely everyone) b.) the choices for bridesmaid's dresses seemed to be (1) boring dress no one would ever tell it was a bridesmaid's dress 'cause it was so boring or (2) the bridesmaid's dress that is obviously a bridesmaid's dress (I do hope I found a dress that defied those categories, but in some ways the black dress was still A Bridesmaid's Dress, I'm afraid) and c.) there are so many freakin' hideously ugly bridesmaid's and other dresses out there.

My goal for the bridesmaid's dress was this: find one that the bridesmaids would like enough (but that I also liked enough to live with the required photographs) so that they wouldn't hold it against me for the rest of our lives, or claim that I was some sort of bride-zilla. But part of my wedding experience taught me that if you are going to be a bride and you plan a wedding, (some) people already assume that you are going to be a bride-zilla and that you NATURALLY want to do such things as find the most hideous dresses possible for your bridesmaid.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

And I knew you weren't a bridezilla and was willing to kick the asses of anyone who suggested otherwise in my presence.

Possibly this makes me a bridesmaidzilla. As scottjames used to say, look at this face and see if it cares.

[songwind.livejournal.com]

I think the labor savings come from not having to launder dust rags. :P

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

We are no longer beating our laundry on rocks, so just tossing a dust rag in with the vast quantities of other towels doesn't seem like much of a hardship.

[songwind.livejournal.com]

I agree, personally. Just trying to find sense in the vast wilderness of senselessness that is Other People.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

Is Pledge flammable? Some used-with-rags products have warnings about putting the rags in washers, because of that. I've never heard of an exploding waherload of rags, though.

[sraun]

The Pledge wipes do have one advantage - you just have to find the one box. As opposed to finding the can of spray Pledge, and then a rag to go with it.

I won't claim this is a good reason - but it is a reason!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Store the rags next to the Pledge. Problem solved.

[toolittletime.livejournal.com]

My mistake. But of course if they're going to all that trouble to make them, we must buy them.

Hooray for odd cheeses!

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

The one wedding I was in had an invitation on the order of, "Can you and Ted meet us at the City Court at 4:00 today? We've decided to get married then." I did put on a skirt, but I don't think they expected me to.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

If I could teach people -- just people, universally -- one thing, it would be what constitutes belief vs. evidence vs. proof. I think the proper and improper uses of anecdotal evidence would fall into this category.

Oh dear yes. Some while ago I posted an article that asked scientists what bit of 'science' everyone should know, and a vast number of them said what the scientific method actually means. If only.

[mmerriam.livejournal.com]

I suspect I may be the only woman in this country whose apparel for her own wedding was infinitely easier to shop for than her apparel for other people's. Perhaps not the only one.

I can think of one other.

cynical kev speaks:

[greykev.livejournal.com]

Why would we want to have more trash without any actual benefit?

Silly m'rissa, didn't you know that the illusion of choice is what keeps America great and free? If we didn't have bread and circuses all these products to choose from we might actually have to spend time thinking about things that matter and make a significant, tangible difference in our lives. Besides, the nazis, communists, terrorists FNORDs of choice want you to use Pledge rags. Oh, and to promote the greenhouse effect. Yup, definately bad to use cans, always. No exceptions.