it's in the details

i hope that my devoted followers (all three of you) have come to terms with the fact that the posts for the next few months are probably all going to be about the wedding planning process.

let me first say that like any proper southern girl, i may have had a few things thought up before i was actually engaged, or before i had my first boyfriend for that matter. things like the guest list, china pattern and song for the first dance had already been done. it's the details that i'm starting to realize are the harder part.

let's take for example the color of the napkins. i'm willing to bet that you don't remember what color the napkins were at the last wedding you went to; neither do i. but suddenly, this detail is of the utmost importance.

what about the chairs you sat in, remember what those looked like? yeah, me neither. but if you have to rent chairs, they can be around $10.50 a piece! lucky for y'all, i don't have to rent chairs, otherwise the invitation might read, "byoc".

so for now it's on to the next detail. here's to hoping for the best!

peggy post does not = emily post

for those of you that know me, you won't find it surprising that two days after my engagement, i already had a copy of emily post's wedding etiquette book as well as her wedding planner. the fact that neither one of them are first editions made me some what skeptical and after delving into them, i found that my skepticism was right on.

for starters it says that it's perfectly acceptable to give your guest the option of e-mailing in their rsvp for the wedding. well i'm here to tell you that if i get a wedding invitation on thick ivory card stock with pristine calligraphy and there's an e-mail address to rsvp to, i will be judging you.

the wedding planner also says that it's okay for the mother of the bride or groom to wear the same color as the bridesmaids. ummm, no it is not and again, if you do this, i will be judging.

yet another one of her "rules" states that the length of the mother of the bride or grooms dress can be any length, no matter the time of day. again, if i am at an evening wedding and either of these people has on a cocktail length dress, i will be judging.

so dear peggy post (great-grand-daughter-in-law of the dearly departed emily) please stick with tradition the way emily always did. you're not doing anyone any favors by bending the rules for them.

the story

since so many people have asked about the engagement story, i thought it would be easiest to post to my blog, so here goes...

a week ago allan told me he'd just talked to his grandmother and told her that we were thinking of going up (she lives' in little switzerland) to visit her last saturday and meet her somewhere for lunch. i of course said i thought that was a great idea, and our saturday plans were made.

so off we go saturday morning for our drive up. allan told me that meme would be shopping in the biltmore village area of asheville and that she suggested we go to lunch at the grove park inn since they have such a great view from their terrace. it also happened to be 75 and sunny outside, so of course i went along with this idea.

we get there about an hour before our reservation and kind of wander around for a bit before we decide to sit outside on one of the terraces on the backside of the hotel. after about 30 seconds of soaking in the sun, allan gets on his knee and proposes. i was so shocked that all i could respond with at first was, "are you serious?! are you serious?!". needless to say, he was serious.

meme, it turns out, had no idea we were even there. we did still have lunch on the terrace outside though.

i had no idea that allan could be that sneaky. he'd even gotten a key to my apartment from my roommate two weeks before, and snuck in to get my ring size, and snuck in again saturday morning and feverishly packed an overnight bag for me. he, of course, had made reservations for us to spend the night at the grove park inn also.

so there you have it. one last tid bit i'd like to share with you. when i informed my friend, emily crutcher, that i'd already picked out my china pattern, even though she's been living in the sandbox that is dubai for three years now, this is what she responded with:

"Duh you have your china pattern picked out. You'd be a damn Yankee if you didn't have your china and silver patterns picked out by age 13."

there's a time and a place, and it's not in the ymca locker room

public nudity; i've written about this before. maybe it's not technically public because you're in a women's locker room, but it's definitely not private.

i decided to write about this again because the last time i commented, i was in jackson hole and it was regarding the women at the gym there. since jackson is a more socially relaxed town, and a "crunchy" place in general i figured that's just how the people out there are. i optimistically assumed that being in charlotte this would change. however, i would now like to point out that there is more nakedness going on at the y in charlotte than any gym in jackson. i think this is because the naked people have scared the normal people away and forced them into going back home to shower.

a few weeks ago i was telling a friend how i thought the shower curtains needed to be about six inches wider because there's about a two inch gap on each side. she replied to me with, "oh, i never even noticed, i just shower with the curtain opened". clearly, she is one of the naked people that scared the normal people away.

don't get me wrong, obviously you're going to be naked at some point when you're changing clothes or wrapping a towel around you on your way to the shower. my problem is the people who think the locker room is their own private bathroom and wander around naked the whole time. drying their hair - naked. brushing their teeth - naked. gossiping with a friend - naked. in the hot tub - naked.

there are at least four different piles of towels that are constantly being replenished, strategically located throughout the locker room. please, next time you walk by one of those piles, do everyone else a favor and grab a towel.

sing alongs aren't just for raffi

i love a good road trip. i especially love a good road trip driving by myself when i've made a new mixed cd. (that's right, i still make mixed cd's because my ipod adapter broke.) my most recent concoction involves songs by the glee cast, bruce hornsby, ludacris, bonnie raitt, fleetwood mac and jason aldean and i believe it's one of my better mixes in recent years.

the best part about being alone with your favorite music is that you can turn it up as loud as it will go and sing along, not worried that the passenger's eardrums will be blown, just your own, which i'm okay with.

another part of the sing along process is the false impression that yes, you do sound just like stevie nicks. even though i know that as soon as i turn the music down, the quality level of my singing voice will go down with it, i still tend to build up false hope along the drive. as my confidence level goes up, i eventually decide to turn down the music just to check and see if some kind of miracle has occurred and i have suddenly acquired an enviable singing voice. inevitably, i have not, so back up the music goes, and the sing along continues until i have reached my destination.

the biebs

i think justin bieber is precious. i love his songs, i want to go see his movie and i follow him on twitter (he posts something every seven minutes and seems to be addicted). would i go see him in concert as well? obvi. however, the prices of his concert tickets appal me. they seem to start in the $100 range and go up to $500 and more for one ticket. now if this were someone like u2 or the rolling stones, bands whose audience's median age is let's say, 45, it would be more understandable. but i'm going to go ahead and say the median age of any given justin bieber concert is 25, and it's only that high because a parent or babysitter has to take the tweens. this means that there are tweens occupying seats at these concerts that are sometimes $500. my thought process here is: either your dad is bill gates or he's a sucker. what parent is going to buy their 11-year-old a $500 concert ticket? this is an early start to creating a child that will one day appear on mtv's "my super sweet 16," spending $300,000 for their 16th birthday party while you are taking out a second mortgage on your house.

my other concern with this situation is the price of the nosebleed seats, and this really goes for almost any concert in an arena. you're telling me that i'm going to pay $100/seat to watch the jumbotron? i don't think so. the biebs has a 3-d movie out where you can watch the same show and guess what, a movie ticket is $10, saving you a total of $90.

on that note, if anyone has an extra ticket to justin beiber (or usher for that matter) and would like for me to join them, i'd be delighted.

the only road biker anyone likes is lance armstrong

before i get started on my tangent here, let me first say that i'm sure it's a small percentage that ruin it for the many, but nevertheless, that small percentage is who i seem to come in contact with so here goes...

i got flicked off by a road biker. he blew right through the stop sign on camden road in front of pike's soda shop without so much as slowing down so i beeped my horn at him to let him know that i knew he just broke the law and i hate road bikers. he then proceeded to give me the finger and i honked back and it continued that way until my sister told me to keep driving already.

this seems to be the norm, road bikers disregarding all rules that allow them to ride their skinny-tired bikes on the road with my car. at stop lights they pass all the cars in line to get to the front, only to have all the cars piled up behind them after the light, waiting for the right moment to pass them again. they ride two, three, sometimes four wide making it impossible to pass them unless you run them over which i have to admit has tempted me on more than one occasion. they pull up beside you just as you're about to make a right hand turn making you slam on the breaks to avoid hitting them. sneaky bike ninjas.

the moral of this story, if you're a road biker and we're friends, don't tell me.

twitter

for inspiration to keep up my blog postings, i went back and visited my first blog that depressingly, hasn't had a new post in two years. i laughed to myself as i was reading my last post that was a rant about how ridiculous i thought twitter was. i guess never say never would be a good slogan here because about a month ago i caved and created a twitter account.

originally i did it so that i could follow tennessee athletics since we seem to have so many ncaa investigations going on at the moment. i want to make sure i'm in the know and that lane kiffin is being properly disciplined. but my twitter profile quickly morphed from just a tennessee fan into following the likes of khloe kardashian, ellen degeneres, robert randolph and yes, even justin bieber. i can't help it, it's my natural curiosity and yearning to be as in the know as possible.

obviously my twittering hasn't stopped there. soon enough i was posting my own tweets. not anything about what i had for breakfast or other posts that i still think are ridiculous, more along the lines of, "punch brothers tonight at neighborhood theatre!" or, "g love's new album out today!". did i also post a photo of myself while skiing in big sky? absolutely. did i also tweet several times last night commenting on the new american idol contestants? of course.

for now, i'll think of my twitter account as a lazy version of my blog. but since i'm also doing a blog, i'm not going to consider myself lazy. feel free to take a look for yourselves, judge away: http://twitter.com/#!/simpburl