Oh shit. We just woke up to discover another attack in London. Thank god it seems to have been ineffective. We fly to Heathrow tonight. We’ll be in London until Monday.
After the last attack in London, I wasn’t scared for our own safety. After all, I lived in Arlington, the site of a 9-11 attack, for years afterward, and wasn’t scared for my safety. But lightning didn’t strike twice there. Sigh. Now I’m going to be very nervous on public transportation.
I wonder if any of our guests are going to decide not to come. I don’t know.
We got the most amazing wedding gift from my aunt today. She has been working since October to compile our family histories, in written stories, audio recordings, and photographs. She has worked with members of both sides of my family and Mike’s family to collect written stories and other contributions. She laid out all the contents into two huge and beautiful bound volumes. It has stories in our relatives’ own words about their families, childhoods, and memories. The audio CD even includes a recording of my grandfather talking about his dad. My grandfather died ten years ago.
I burst into tears. It is the most precious and perfect gift anyone could ever give us. I can’t believe how much work she and the rest of our families have put into it. I am choking up now, just thinking about it. I am so overwhelmed with gratitude that I don’t know what to say.
We leave for the wedding first thing in the morning. I am so tired.
My cat Roger is missing again. I haven’t seen him in hours, and he doesn’t come when I go outside and call him. I need him to come home before we leave. I’m starting to get upset. This is only the second time he has vanished from our house, and of course he chose to do it the night before we leave. At least our friend is housesitting while we’re gone, and will be here to retrieve the cat if we don’t find him first. But I’ll be distraught if I get on an airplane without knowing where Roger is.
Our other cat, Janie, has a nasty open wound on her neck, about two inches long and one inch wide. I had to take her to the vet yesterday. Thank goodness it’s nothing serious, just some kind of heat irritation, but I really hope our housesitter keeps an eye on it while we’re gone. My poor kitty has had a rough few months lately.
We had to say goodbye to Ally dog tonight. We decided that it would be best for her to go away to stay with a friend instead of asking our housesitter to take care of her. Ally is going to go stay with a family that breeds German shepherds, so she is going to have lots of doggie and puppy playmates for the next couple weeks. They even have a little swimming pool for the dogs. She is going to have a great time, which puts my mind at ease. Still it was terribly depressing to say goodbye to her. I’m going to miss her so much!
So the house is taken care of. The dog is taken care of.
One of the cats is wounded, and the other is missing.
I’m going to have a hard time leaving tomorrow!
I’m a few steps closer to finishing our wedding preparation! Here are our programs, menu cards, and hotel room welcome baskets.
Our programs
The programs consist of four pages that I designed in Photoshop and had printed and cut at Kinkos. Each page is 1 inch longer than the page before it, which create the tabs at the bottom of the program. We fasted the pages by punching a hole in the top center, wrapping a ribbon through the hole, and then tying a small knot in the back.
Page 1 of the program.
Page 2
Page 3
Page 4
We will be putting these gift bags in each of our guests’ hotel rooms to greet them when they get to town. We’ll fill the gift bags with information about local attractions, local snacks and goodies, and a bottle of wine.
I bought the blue bags at Michael’s, and I created the label in Photoshop and printed it at Kinkos on adhesive paper. The cathedral on the label is directly across from the hotel, and it’s a photo that I took myself last year. 
Our menu cards, which we’ll put on each table at dinner.
I leave for one second to answer a phone call… This is how it works in my zoo, I mean house.
Argh! I did a two-hour portrait shoot outside this morning. Stupid, white, pasty-skinned me… I forgot sunscreen. I hope this burn disappears in the next two weeks, or else I’m going to have a nasty farmer’s tan with my strapless gown. Niiiiiice. That will look gorgeous.
Kinkos screwed up my order again today–twice this afternoon! But now we have everything and it will be ok.
My main camera isn’t working. I’m going to have to send it to Canon to fix. I’m so disappointed! I was fine this morning at the photo shoot, because I had two backup cameras on me, but I’m really upset that I won’t have my main camera for our wedding trip and honeymoon. Not very good timing for a camera malfunction. That means that I have bumped up my next camera purchase a month ahead of schedule. I’ll be buying another 20D today. I really hope I start making a profit soon.
I bought Harry Potter 6 this morning at Safeway. I won’t let myself read it until I finish all my work. That beautiful, shiny green book is almost impossible for me to resist.
Hello CO Springs people!
Mike and I are meeting up with a couple LJ buddies tonight at Jose Muldoon’s on Tejon at 7:00pm. Who wants to come with us? 
I loved Charlie and the Chocolate Factory! It was my favorite book as a child, and this movie was everything I hoped it could be. How many people can say that they loved the movie that was based on their favorite book? The movie never quite adds up. Well this one did!
I never particularly liked the first version of the movie–that cheesy one from the 70s. It was just so unnecessarily corny that it eliminated the magical feel of the book. The book was just plain cool and funny, and that’s what Tim Burton managed to do with his film. Bravo.
Oh my god, I couldn’t stop giggling at the dude that played ALL of the Oompa Loompas. He was brilliant. He must have worked five times harder than any other actor in the movie. Just imagine how many times he had to shoot each scene! Hilarious stuff.
After the movie, Mike said, “Let’s go see Harry Potter tomorrow on its opening night!”
I looked at him in disbelief. “Mike, you do realize that tomorrow’s Harry Potter 6 is a book, right?”
He didn’t get it. He said, “You mean people are making such a fuss over a book going on sale?”
“Mike, where have you been in the last several years? Every two years another Harry Potter book comes out, and there are lines around the block for it. Surely you know that, right?”
“You mean that many people actually read the books?” He still didn’t get it.
I couldn’t believe he had never seen the Time magazine covers or endless news coverage. “The books are brilliant. Dude, you’re British. You looked like Harry Potter as a kid. You should know all about this.”
“Hmmm, maybe I should read them after all. Or I could just wait for the movie to come out.”
I’m so tempted to take him to Barnes and Noble at midnight tonight, just so he can see the madness for himself. Maybe he can get a lightning bolt painted on his forehead.
