Quite a surprise

Apparently, my little piece o' blog-estate has been noticed readers and a panel of 5 judges*, who have determined that it is one of the Top 50 Wedding Blogs**.

Wow.  Thanks, folks.  I'm honored that someone took time to notice this little blog, and commend it... 'specially since I haven't been so on top of posting lately.

I've added a neat-o badge over there on the right to commemorate this auspicious day in the life of my blog. (We're growing up, honey.  Survived that first year, got past the post-wedding doldrums.  And now our persistence and pluckiness has been recognized. The sky's the limit!)

This is good motivation to get back onto a regular posting schedule, too.  After all, we can't rest on our laurels.  Got to live up to our new rep.  With that in mind, I've got an awesome oh-so-sustainable wedding to share with you, as well as some updates about my jaunts this summer (you can see a lot of the world when you're not obsessed with wedding planning!).

*This award is given by Online Schools, which appears to be a clearinghouse for information about what we in the academic world call "distance education," a topic about which I have mixed feelings, as my department considers how we might expand in this area.  Online Schools also sees "individual blogs as classes, and the posts as courses, and the bloggers as professors."  So, welcome to class!  Although academia doesn't tend to value this kind of informal writing (heaven forefend if my department knew I blogged about something as commonplace as weddings), the Intertubes do, and I'm glad to have this outlet.


**Yeah, even your personally-biased author here knows that's a bit of a stretch, but it's nice to be mentioned in the same breath with the big girls, like A Practical Wedding, Wedding Cabaret, Offbeat Bride and SMP. Holy cow!  Thanks again!

Sometimes, you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't

Just popping in to let you know that I seem to have run out of words this week. (I know that, by saying that, I have proven that I still have a few words left, but mostly they seem to be used up.)

Graduation weekend was fun, exhilarating and exhausting. I have been quite a solitary being for the last several months, as I've tried to pound out my dissertation in the shortest time humanly possible (only to miss the May filing deadline. argh!).

To suddenly join a weekend-long whirl of parties - followed by a half-day retreat at my new job - was a bit of a (delicious) shock to the system. I think all my words went into the conversations that have been held in abeyance these last several months. The rest are going into the revised chapter due to my advisor by the end of the month.

I've kind of lost the thread on wedding planning, too. Once we secured our DJ (which I need to write about) and started working with the lovely Kimi (who was featured in one of the first wedding blogs I ever read, and immediately caused me to fall in love) at Printable Press on our invitation designs (oh yeah, I owe her an email), the wind kinda went out of my sails.

We have all the big things in place... well, except for the ceremony that we're writing ourselves, and the officiant(s), and the wedding entourage, and the dinner menu, and the rings (which I am petrified of forgetting), and a zillion other things that I surely have forgotten.

But for now, my words are dedicated to my chapters. (hmm, looks like there were a lot more words lurking around than I suspected!)

I'll be back soon, I promise, with photos and the rest of the story of the wedding of Data Monkey and Mountain Man.

'til then...

In praise of WILB

Leave it to a social scientist to give you a fancy acronym for internet surfing.

Researchers at Australian University have identified Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing, or WILB, as a source of - get this! - increased productivity when confined to 20% or less of the workday.

Seventy percent of the office employees studies used the internet for personal business during the workday. Of those, 9% were more productive than workers who didn't surf.

The researchers defined WILB as "browsing the web for information and reviews of products, reading online news sites, playing online games, keeping up-to-date with friends activities on social networking sites." Though they singled out Facebook and Twitter as possible sources of improved productivity, I'm pretty sure that reading wedding blogs and websites falls under "browsing the web for information."

They noted that workers need micro-breaks to re-set their concentration. This restoration of concentration could lead to improved productivity.

There you have it: your free pass for reading blogs! Happy Monday!

Not *just* a bride

Reading Sara Cotner's thoughtful response to Hortense's tirade about becoming an Officially Engaged Person inspired me to come out of the closet as an Ambivalent Bride. Don't get me wrong: I am thrilled to be marrying the spectacular Mr. Barefoot who is as fun and talented and fascinating as they come. But the whole bride thing has had me tied up in knots for weeks. It's good to know that others share my distaste for the Wedding Industrial Complex, as well as the societal message that this is the Most Important Thing You've Ever Done.

Sara said it so perfectly, I just have to quote her verbatim:

It's sad to me that a person can do all sorts of meaningful and important things with their lives and yet getting engaged seems to trump them all.... . Over the years, I've announced amazing job offers, my decision to go on a self-subsidized sabbatical and travel for a year, awards I've won, etc. When I announced that I was getting married, I received more responses than I ever had before.

I had the same experience. By the responses I got, getting engaged seemed to top all my other professional accomplishments, which include winning prizes, research grants and awards, and being invited to present at international conferences. In the societal eye, these matter little next to Hooking the Guy. Whatever comes next will no doubt be better, now that I have someone to share it with, but I hate the society discounts our single life, implying all that was preliminary to finding the Right Guy. My single life was just as important to me as my newly coupled life, and entirely gratifying in different ways. Maybe I was able to accomplish all that I did because I was single, pouring my focus and attention into my work and personal pursuits.

I can certainly see the converse: now that I'm engaged, my attention is split between my professional work and planning a big blowout party. Which I am very excited about, but neither the party, wedding or ring is the be all and end all. The much more significant and meaningful moment was that one that was just the two of us on the beach when we decided to get married.

A few more hours, and I should have this whole thing planned

Now that the dress and shoes are taken care of, I'm thinking about accessories. This silk flower from Psalm 117 would be great with my dress.


I pulled a marathon 15 hour day at my computer working on the dissertation today. Which means I had to take lots of mini-breaks (no getting up or talking to people allowed, lest I lose my concentration) during which I looked at lots of pretty wedding stuff, and added some content to our wedding website (that makes three blogs, which is probably three too many for getting the diss. done...).

How it went down

Amazing to find that Jorge Cham of Piled Higher and Deeper (PhD) Comics was listening in after I got engaged.

He aptly intuited my adviser's response to the news.

Her congratulatory gift to me: an end-of-February deadline for three dissertation chapters.

I long for those days when women took six months off work to plan their weddings. Much as I would like to revel in the thrill of being engaged and the beautiful intricate details of wedding planning, academia prefers that I be a brain on a stick.

Good advice that I totally ignored

Planning a wedding - and writing a blog - are not my only creative projects right now. I'm supposed to be finishing my PhD dissertation, in environmental policy and management (hence the 'green' theme of my wedding). It's shockingly easy to avoid coding interviews and writing chapters by perusing wedding websites and shopping for a dress!

When preparing to start writing the dissertation, I read a book on the topic that suggested minimizing distractions in one's life during the dissertation year. This is the time to turn down unwanted social obligations, it said. The key piece of advice I remember from that book was not to move houses during the diss year.

Well, Mr. Barefoot and I moved in together right before Christmas, in our newly purchased house. Combining two households turned out to be a bit of a challenge, as both of us have lots of stuff -- kitchen stuff, outdoor gear, books, souvenirs from travels, etc. We're still settling in, and the newness of the place makes it hard for me to focus sometimes (make that: often).

Another good piece of advice I remember from my first days in my graduate program came from another student, several years ahead of me, who was trying to graduate. "Don't try to finish your dissertation and plan your wedding at the same time," she said, as she struggled with the printer and looked totally frazzled. The image of her standing there, waiting for her huge document to print is seared in my brain.

Who knew that shred of advice would be so important someday?

But what to do? One can't put one's life on hold indefinitely, and there's never a perfect time for these big life transitions, much as we try to plan them.

Now, I'll try to keep track of the third piece of advice I received, again from another grad student: Don't get pregnant while you're finishing your dissertation! Use birth control!