ROMEO AND JULIET

A love to die for
When you are passionately, purely in love, nothing else matters—not even life itself. Shakespeare’s consummate tragedy of young lovers swept into a catastrophic vortex of misunderstandings, secrets and fate is set in 1840s Alta California—a vibrant and conflicted time in our history. Romeo and Juliet, the son and daughter of two landed families locked in an old feud, are irresistibly drawn to each other. Defying the hatred and distrust surrounding them, they dare to believe they can, and must, be together.


Romeo (Daniel José Molina) and Juliet (Alejandra Escalante) are overjoyed that they are to be married. Photo: Jenny Graham.

When I first heard that the director Laird Williamson had moved the location of Shakespeare’s most popular play to the dying days of Mexican California, when Americans were starting to move in and take control of their newly acquired territory – well, I just wasn’t sure what to think of that choice. As I watched the play, though, I came to appreciate the decision. While I wasn’t crazy about the random insertions of Spanish words and phrases into Shakespeare’s text, the political situation inspired by the new location really helped to humanize Juliet’s father. Instead of being a tyrannical father irrationally insisting that his daughter marry the groom of his choice, as Capulet does in most productions, he’s a little more subtle. He’s a wealthy Mexican ranchero in a new and scary situation – the Americans have come, and he wants to ally himself with them to preserve his family’s status. What better way is there than marrying off his pretty young daughter to the son of the invading American general? I mean, yes, he’s still forcing his daughter to marry against her will, but for the first time I felt like I understand why it’s so urgent to him. Elijah Alexander was just perfect in the role. (Once again, he is paired with Vilma Silva, who played Lady Capulet; in the 2009 season they played Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon. Random trivia for you.)



The California location also meant that the designers could have a lot of fun with the set and the costumes. That was pretty cool, but it did mean that every time Romeo and his friends stepped on the stage, I kept hearing a little song in the back of my head: “We’re three caballeros, three gay caballeros, they say we are birds of a feather! ” But really, it’s a good match to the script and the play looked great.

The two actors for the title characters were both youthful of face and full of boundless energy. It was nice to see a Romeo and a Juliet who could pass for actual teenagers. But something fell flat about them. I’m not sure what. They looked the part, and really threw themselves into their roles. But the grand spark of passion, that sizzling chemistry that makes Romeo and Juliet want to throw everything away in order to be together…I just didn’t feel it. If I tried to read it as intentional, that this love they share is utterly mundane and ordinary, it does make the rest of the story all the more tragic, because if the kids had lived a few more weeks than Romeo would have moved on to his next Epic Crush and Juliet would have cried and wrote angry poetry and moved on. Hmmm.



Romeo (Daniel José Molina) confides to Benvolio (Kevin Fugaro) that he is sad because Rosaline does not return his love. Ten minutes later, he’s like, “Rosaline who?” Photo: Jenny Graham.
As I am writing this, I realize something. I don’t like the characters Romeo or Juliet. Romeo’s an idiot, Juliet’s an idiot, and the two of them deserve their fate because they couldn’t contain their impulses long enough to think things through. Why celebrate the romance of these two Darwin Award-worthy kids? This is not the fault of the actors, but the way that Shakespeare wrote the characters. They’re just annoying to me.

But you know what makes it all better? Epic sword fights. There are plenty of them in the play, all lovingly choreographed for maximum awesome. And I have to admit, the many teenagers in the audience seemed thrilled with this play. It’s a good Romeo and Juliet, and I’d recommend it for sure if you like the play.


Romeo (Daniel José Molina) and Tybalt (Fajer Al-Kaisi) fight for the honor of their families as Benvolio (Kevin Fugaro) watches over the fallen Mercutio (Jason Rojas). Photo: Jenny Graham.

WHITE SNAKE

Serpent spirits, meddling monks
In a beloved Chinese legend, a snake spirit disguised as a beautiful woman falls in love with a young scholar. White Snake keeps her true identity secret from him, but a disapproving monk persists in unmasking her. With the help of Green Snake, White Snake summons all her magic powers to defeat the spirits and monsters threatening her life and her great love. With live music and beautiful visual metaphors, Tony Award-winning director Mary Zimmerman invites your imagination to her staging of this fantastical transcendent romance.


Green Snake (Tanya McBride) and White Snake (Amy Kim Waschke) ride the clouds to the earth below. Photo: Jenny Graham.

The White Snake was beautiful. Everything about it seemed like a perfect production. I have no complaints.

First, the staging was so clever! It actually reminded me a bit of Disney’s The Lion King musical, no doubt because the human/animal characters seem to have been somewhat inspired by the way that musical is staged. White Snake and Green Snake, while in their animal forms, were sometimes depicted by little puppets controlled by marionette sticks. At other times, their ‘snakiness’ was conveyed by actors lined up in rows holding paper umbrellas that scintillated like the coils of a serpent. This magical versatility extended to the rest of the staging, too. The stage itself was pretty bare, with only minimal set pieces. A billowing piece of silk unrolled could become the clouds or a running river – whatever was needed. The digital background (usually a pet peeve of mine) constantly shifted to match the mood, but for once the technology was unobtrusive and complimented the physical set.


XuXian (Christopher Livingston) and White Snake (Amy Kim Waschke) marry. Photo: Jenny Graham.


White Snake had both the nearly-infinite wisdom of an immortal scholar and magician, but Amy Kim Waschke also brought a touching naïveté to her role as her character leaves behind her mountain home to better understand the humans. A thousand years of studying ancient texts doesn’t always prepare you for dealing with living, breathing people, so White Snake was extremely lucky that Green Snake (Tanya McBride) hadn’t been quite so dedicated. What her feisty, devoted sidekick lacked in learning she more than made up for with her quick wit and enthusiasm to follow White Snake wherever she went. Many of the side characters, even though they appear but briefly, leave quite an impression. Special props go out to Cristofer Jean, who narrates the legend as the play progresses, pausing to point out divergent moments in the legend where variations have cropped up in the story. He also plays the Stag, whom White Snake visits to save her husband’s life, in a performance that recalls his terrifying turn as a forest spirit in 2010’s Throne of Blood. But it’s always the friendship between the two snake-women that hold the story together and keep it spellbinding.


Green Snake (Tanya McBride) entices White Snake (Amy Kim Waschke) to leave the mountain for the world below. Photo: Jenny Graham.

What else can I say? The White Snake is a work of art. Although it is short compared to the festival’s usual Shakespeare – about an hour and a half with no intermission - it doesn’t feel rushed or incomplete. From what I’ve heard, the play’s script was still being written and refined during the final rehearsals were underway, which makes it seem all the more amazing that it came together so well. This is probably the best show I’ve seen at OSF…so far!



Green Snake protects White Snake and her new husband on their wedding night. Photograph by Jamie Francis, The Oregonian

ANIMAL CRACKERS

Hello, I must be going!
Hurrah for Captain Spaulding, the African explorer, skirt chaser and wise-cracking guest of honor at a posh Long Island house party. High jinks meet high society when he and his cronies mix it up with social climbers and stolen paintings. Written for the Marx Brothers, this slapstick madcap musical busts out with zany songs and lavish dance numbers. Released as a film after the 1929 Wall Street crash and recently adapted, it proves that you can’t keep an anarchic comedy full of pungent one-liners down.

I’ve never seen the 1930 Animal Crackers film. In fact, I’ve never seen a Marx Brothers anything. So it may seem odd that this was the first play my fiancé and I saw at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival this year. But Seanie has told me several times over the course of our relationship that I really should give Groucho, so I thought that a play was just the thing.

If any of you are as woefully ignorant as me, here’s a quick rundown of the plot: Wealthy Mrs. Rittenhouse (K. T. Vogt), is hosting a gala to unveil a famous painting in her home. Her rival in society, Mrs. Whitehead (Kate Mulligan), wishes to humiliate Mrs. Rittenhouse, so with her sister Grace (Laura Griffith) she plots to replace the painting with an imitation. Meanwhile, a painter named John Parker (Eddie Lopez) and his reporter girlfriend Mary (also played by Griffith) wish to substitute their own copy of the famous image to promote his skill and give Mary something fresh to write about.


Ravelli (John Tufts) and The Professor (Brent Hinkley) do some sparring. Photo: Jenny Graham.

If this seems complicated and confusing, don’t worry. The plot is actually pretty unimportant, a minor framework housing the wacky shenanigans of the cast. After all, these aren’t merely actors playing characters. Mark Bedard is Groucho Marx playing Captain Spaulding, John Tufts is Chico playing Ravelli, etc. But really, once the cast has sung “Hooray for Captain Spaulding!” the audience forgets all about him and Ravelli and the Professor anyway. All that matters is that Groucho, Chico and Harpo (Brent Hinkley) are up on stage once again, riffing off each other and shooting one-liners in rapid succession.

Since the Marx Brothers were originally a vaudeville act, there are many nods to the traditional staging of those shows. Some of them are pretty cool! For example, in two scenes a line of life-size marionettes are suspended from a frame worn by an actor. When he lifts his arm, they all lift their arms. When he kick-steps, they kick-step. It’s a perfect chorus line. When used at the opening of the show, it really set the mood of the play as something zany and silly.

But some aspects of the play didn’t seem to translate so well . The play is nearing ninety years old, and some of the humor is no longer in vogue. Ravelli’s over-the-top Italian stereotype isn’t exactly PC, and if you remove the nostalgic “Oh, he’s one of the Marxes!” factor it isn’t that funny. Don’t get me wrong, he’s got some very good lines, but when taken as a whole that kind of character in comedy just seems old-fashioned and a little past its expiration date. But as I said before, I had no previous Marx experience. I’m sure that for fans of the brothers, these little quibbles will make no difference.


Captain Spaulding (Mark Bedard) entertains at the Rittenhouse home. (Ensemble). Photo: Jenny Graham.

Today, Seanie and I drove up to Ashland, Oregon on our annual pilgrimage to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. (If all goes according to plan, it is the first of two trips this year.) As we traveled north through California, we listened to Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys.

Over the next few days, we plan to see three plays: Animal Crackers, The White Snake, and Romeo and Juliet. Tonight, though, the theaters are all dark, but that's just as well, as Seanie had to work. So he and I settled into our room at Coolidge House Bed & Breakfast to do blogging and homework.

The Coolidge House is beautiful. Built in 1875, the building is a historic home of Ashland. It's Victorian, with charming floral wallpaper and furniture of wicker or bronze. There are only four or five rooms, so there won't be a ton of guests, which will be nice, too. Our room is called the Rose Room, and you can see why:


The Rose Room

The bedroom is cozy and dominated by the bed, but the photographer of the above picture was standing in a sitting room that had two wicker chairs and a small wicker table. It was a good workspace for Seanie, although he keeps moving onto the bed so maybe he doesn't like it so much.

The bathroom has just been remodeled, so there is a brand new tub and shower. Very exciting, right? We might be the first guests to use it! There's only one problem, really...the door for the bathroom is glass and completely transparent. Worse, if you're sitting on the bed or standing in the main room, you look directly at the toilet!!! Awkward, to say the least. At first, Seanie and I weren't sure what to do, but there was a blanket in the closet that was just the right size for covering the doorway. There were little gold hooks at the top of the doorway, so I assume the intention is to drape the blanket on the hooks, thus obscuring the view of the toilet? I sure hope that is what we're meant to do - at any rate, it is what we'll do. I may love Seanie deeply and soulfully, but that doesn't mean I want to EVER see him taking a dump. Eeew.

We also tried a new restaurant tonight. Taroko Pan-Pacific Bistro/Sushi Bar is only a black or two away from the B&B, and the menu was pretty interesting. I ordered the 'Taroko Fried Rice' which mixes multigrain rice with different fruits like cantaloupe, honeydew melon, apples, candied walnuts...it sounds weird, doesn't it? But it was SOOOOO GOOD! The rice was a firm texture, so it was chewy, and this complemented the soft fruit very well. A very sweet-savory taste. It was prepared just like regular fried rice, near as I can tell, with visible bits of egg. I want to try to replicate it, which is unusual - usually, I don't want to step anywhere near a kitchen!

Today is the first Saturday in ages that I've had off from both work (RHA) and work (internship).

IT IS GLORIOUS.
I shall do nothing but be lazy and perhaps study a little. 

GLORIOUS!!!

The Wizard of Oz!!!

Let me explain that, as I can already hear you sighing, "Dude, there is a movie for that.  It's kinda famous!!!"

I wish that they would go back and make a series of movies, each one a separate book from the Wizard of Oz series, using the same actors for continuity.  Think Harry Potter!  It would just be so cool to see some of the other Oz stories, like Ozma of Oz or The Patchwork Girl of Oz,  up on the big screen utilizing today's technology to bring the characters to life.  They wouldn't have to do every book in the series, naturally - there must be hundreds by now and even the L. Frank Baum ones get repetitious after a while - but if some film producer would choose a half dozen or so Oz stories and make some movies, I think the end result could be awesome.

Obviously, someone's on the same page as me, because there are at least three Oz-related movies coming out in the next year: The Witches of Oz, Dorothy of Oz, and Oz: The Great and Powerful.  Maybe, if these new stories do well at the box office, someone will decide to go back and look to the older books for inspiration.

Who spaced on the fact that she has a midterm on Wednesday?

Yup, that would be me. I've got a lot of slides to memorize before 10:30 Wednesday morning. Plus, y'know, several essays to finish up and a few archaeology projects to polish off, too.

School is so much fun.

Thank goodness Spring Break is just around the corner.

Kitty posted the photos that she and Taitai took during Andi's wedding this morning. So these all come from the matron-of-honor, who is probably the last person that I'll be getting pictures from...until the professional photographs hit the Internet.



This is the only photograph I know of that captures the hairstyle I had. Basically, the stylist pinned all that hair up, sprayed it 'til it wouldn't move a millimeter and then prayed it would last until evening. It did, and was a pain in the butt to take down.



All of us waiting to enter at the start of the ceremony. Bandaid's mom is tottering in six-inch heels, which is probably why she looks so nervous.




The weather was gorgeous, so it was the perfect day for an outdoor wedding.




Kitty's concentrating on not following. There was a slight decline as we walked down the aisle, and it nearly took her down.




Oh man, that smile looks forced. (And frankly, in this image that makeup looks terrible.)




Husband and wife!







Taitai & Kitty.







My nose always makes a shadow that makes me look like my front teeth have been knocked out.



Taitai's got a nice camera; his pictures turned out really crisp!






The cake toppers look like those Gwen Stefani Harajuku girls...



So, for favors, they had little rubber duckies. Some of them were dinosaur rubber duckies. I made all my friends take pictures with a dinosaur ducky.



Seanie & rubber dinoducks.



Kitty and pteroduck.



Kero and triceraduck.



Taitai and green dinoduck. (I couldn't tell what kind it was.)



Other Sean and...dinoduck rex?



She looks so demure and pretty.



Asian pose.



In line by height. I don't know why we do that, but it happens in a lot of our group photos.

I saw this poem on queencallipygos' blog and had to re-post it, as it pretty much sums up my feelings on St. Patrick's Day.

Drowning The Shamrock
- By Frank Delaney

"Hail glorious Saint Patrick dear saint of our isle
On us thy poor children look down with a smile —"
But I'm not singing hymns and I'm not saying prayers
No, I'm gritting my teeth as I walk down the stairs
And into the street with these louts fiercely drinking
And screeching and lurching, and here's what I'm thinking —
They're using a stereotype, a narrow example,
A fraction, not even a marketing sample
To imitate Ireland, from which they don't come!
So unless that's just stupid, unless it's plain dumb,
All these kids from New Jersey and the five boroughs
And hundreds of cities, all drowning their sorrows,
With bottles and glasses and heads getting broken
(Believe me, just ask the mayor of Hoboken)
All that mindlessness, shouting and getting plain stocious —
That isn't Irish, that's simply atrocious.
I've another word too for it, this one's more stinging
I call it "racism." See, just 'cause you're singing
Some drunken old ballad on Saint Patrick's Day
Does that make you Irish? Oh, no — no way.
Nor does a tee-shirt that asks you to kiss them —
If they never come back I surely won't miss them
Or their beer cans and badges and wild maudlin bawling
And hammered and out of it, bodies all sprawling.

They're not of Joyce or of Yeats, Wilde, or Shaw.
How many Nobel Laureates does Dublin have? Four!
Think of this as you wince through Saint Patrick's guano —
Not every Italian is Tony Soprano.

I'm neither Irish nor Catholic, so the original holiday doesn't mean much to me.  If I want to wear green, eat corned beef or go out drinking, I don't need the excuse of St. Patrick's to do it.  Heck, San Jose isn't exactly a haven of the Irish - I don't think I even know an Irish person.  (My fiancé may have some Irish blood in him, but it's highly debatable.)  So I just don't see any reason to give this holiday a second thought.

Yesterday, Court turned in her two weeks' notice at RHA, so it looks like I'm once again without a coworker. She lasted almost six months, so I guess that isn't too bad. I have mixed feelings about her leaving, though. On the one hand, she was a delightful person and I enjoyed talking to her. I like to think that we could have been friends if our schedules weren't always uberpacked.

But her departure means that the boss will have to hire someone new, and I hope that the next employee might be someone with no life, so that whenever I want to make a random schedule change for school or work or vacations, they'll accommodate me. I mean, that is a terribly selfish way to look at things, but one of the nice things about some of my past coworkers was that they had very little going on in their lives, so they could take an extra shift with no problem.

Court had other jobs, and she was a student, and she was a bit of a party girl - so she always had something else going on. More problematic for me, she never could get back to me right away about specific dates - I'd ask, usually a couple of weeks to a month in advance, "Can you work on such-and-such a day?" and it would take her several days (and several reminders) to get back to me. I mean, I don't mind if the answer is 'no' - I just don't like to be left in planning limbo waiting for an answer.

But anyway. New coworker will be coming onboard soon.

In a fit of stupid, I skipped school today. I'll go in for the Japanese art class at night, but this morning I just couldn't get moving. My brain just feels overwhelmed. Too full? Something like that. I wish I knew a good way to clean it out or detox it or something, so that school could be easier again.

If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple.  But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.

So if you have an apple and I have an apple and I steal your apple, I will have two apples and you will have no apples.  Sucks for you.
But if you have an idea and I have an idea and I steal your idea, then I will have two ideas and you will still have one idea, so really, you aren't any worse off than before.

I wonder if I can use that for a justification of online piracy...

This round of photographs come courtesy of the bride's mother. So many pictures, and I haven't even gotten the professional ones yet :D


Bandaid still in her scrubby, pre-wedding clothes. We sure looked weird with our pajamas and makeup covered shirts.



Groom and his best man waiting before the ceremony.



Mother of the bride.



Photographer getting some photos before the ceremony.



Here we are, dressed and ready to go out.



Kisses for the bride!



I think bride + father pictures are always my favorite.












I feel like I've seen these pictures so many times, but I haven't seen the professional ones yet, so I still don't know what the intended image composition is.









Bride & Groom's table



Guest tables



She was starving; she had eaten anything since 4:00 am!



Man, those dresses were pretty awesome. Looked good on chestless me AND uber-preggo Kitty!



Everyone from both families together in one photo!



The wedding was at a golf course, and there were deer everywhere.



Cake!!!



She's pinching his cheeks! That's so cute.



Dancing <3



Me: So can we go sit down yet?
Sean: I dunno!



Apparently we were the only ones dancing. I didn't notice!

Although Bandaid's wedding was awesome, tons of fun, life went right back to normal the very next day.  I spent both Saturday and today at the Egyptian Museum, doing my best to help keep everything running during a very tumultuous weekend.

On Saturday, the front door receptionist was out sick, which meant that the intern director had to sit at the front desk all day and sell tickets.  It worked out great for us; if he can't leave the desk, he can't watch us and make sure we're being good little interns.  Not that we wasted all that time goofing around.  But my fellow intern Adam had a talk to give on cosmetics, and he hadn't learned it all that well, so he spent the entire morning studying and practicing it.  Through osmosis, I think I knew the talk nearly as well as he did when it came time to present it.  He stumbled through the talk, hitting all the major points, but right after he finished a group of about a half-dozen girls came up eager to hear it.  They were all dressed up in Egyptian costumes, and the reason they missed the talk was because they'd been putting their makeup on.  I felt sorry for them, so Adam and I decided that I'd run through the talk a second time for the kids.  So I went from knowing nothing about the cosmetics talk on Saturday morning, to giving it by early in the afternoon.  Go me!

I also had to give the tomb tour twice because we had so many people in the museum.  That was fun.  When I do the tomb tours, I tend to think of myself as a Jungle Cruise operator - so I try to smile and slip little jokes in, just to make sure people are listening.  The first group was great; they laughed at the stupid jokes ("Why did the Ancient Egyptians paint the sky goddess on the ceilings of their tombs?  Because she does a stellar job of protecting them!") and were respectful listeners the rest of the time.  At the end, the kids even had some pretty good questions.  The second group wasn't as much fun.  A couple of the adults were whispering in the back the entire time, and since the tomb echoes dreadfully it was difficult to ignore them.  They also didn't laugh at my jokes, which I realize are corny and not exactly hilarious, but if I don't at least get a pity laugh by the fourth or fifth one I start to suspect no one's really paying attention.

Today was just as challenging.  This time, Gee the intern boss was out sick (which made sense; yesterday he looked like he wanted to curl up in a ball and die) so once more, there wasn't a lot of oversight on what we interns were doing.  There were only three of us anyway: me, Adam and Bren.  Bren was meant to give the perfume workshop, but he didn't realize it until he walked in (an hour late to his shift, thanks to daylight savings) and so he only had about an hour to memorize the whole thing.  Adam and I helped as best we could, but neither of us had done the workshop before either.  Luckily, I don't think anyone caught on to our collective ignorance.

I also had to do the dreaded hieroglyphic workshop - my second time doing it - and it was sloppy.  I don't think it was bad enough that the audience could tell, but then again there were only three people so who knows?  I got through it, at any rate, but my debut performance with the workshop was much better.

Now, the Egyptian Museum doesn't have ramps or elevators, because it's an ancient building.  To be ADA compliant, they have a mechanical chair lift that is, frankly, a butt to deal with.  Whenever someone with a walker or a wheelchair comes in, we have to explain the machine to them.  I was explaining its use to a trio of elderly people. After telling the woman (probably in her 60s) that only the person sitting in the chair lift could operate it, she helped her father in.  Fine.  Then, she reaches across him and presses the green button that moves the lift.  WHACK!  The arm of the chair lift, which lifts up whenever it has stopped, comes crashing down onto her head.  She looks at me accusingly, and I repeat my directions that only the person sitting in the lift can operate it, as I previously explained.  I then turn to the old man - who I suspect was a stroke victim - sitting in the lift and try to explain that he needs to push the button, but he can't hear/understand me.  It isn't until his daughter literally shouts instructions into his ear that he gets it, and the lift moves to the bottom.  As it is nearing the ground level, the daughter again reaches over into the lift, and her father takes his hand off the operation button.  WHACK!  She is smacked again.
(Since the father can walk, they decide to forgo using the lift when they returned up the stairs.)

By early afternoon, the museum had started to slow down, so I ended up redesigning the "Junior Archaeologist" display at the front of the museum.  I made it much more colorful - it was previously just a black and white layout, very dull and easy to miss - and added pictures of different museum artifacts.  Hopefully, it'll attract some attention to the program.

As more and more wedding photos get posted on Facebook, I'll probably just keep cross-posting them here, so sorry guys. You'll be suffering through a lot of wedding pictures over the next week or so.  These were all taken by the bride's sister.


Here comes the bride...



Ceremony starts...



Sister of the bride and her husband



The two families




It totally looks like the mother of the bride is being led off to prison or something!
Actually, she was wearing these crazy shoes with six-inch heels, and literally couldn't walk without assistance. It was pretty funny.



Blurry bridal party.



I wish I knew what Kitty had heard to make that face.






Bandaid's hair, beneath the veil



Bride with her sister and mother. You can definitely see the family resemblance.



Oh, awkward. I got caught adjusting my dress.



Bride with her nieces.

Aaaaw, Bandaid got married today! I was a bridesmaid in her wedding - the bridesmaid, actually; she had me and a matron of honor, and that was it for her half of the bridal party! - and it was so much fun.

Yesterday was the rehearsal dinner, so we stuffed ourselves silly with sushi. Then, Kitty, Bandaid and I all went to Kitty's house and had a sleepover, just like we did back in junior high and high school. Ah, the nostalgia. <3

This morning, Kitty got us out of bed at 3:30 am so that we would have plenty of time to be primped and preened before the ceremony started at 11:00am. Good thing, too - it turns out that we needed every single one of those moments.

When the makeup artist was working on Kitty's face, I was a little concerned because she was going really dark with the eye color. Was I going to end up looking like I had two black eyes? That would suck. It definitely looked like too much when I was still wearing my pajamas, which I hadn't bothered to change out of because it was WAY TOO EARLY IN THE MORNING to be bothered. But once the three of us were in our pretty dresses and out in the sunlight, the makeup looked great.


Here I come, down the aisle.


Kitty looked so pretty <3


The two of us with the bride.

The ceremony was really short. It felt like it was less than fifteen minutes! It was a small group - maybe about thirty people total, which was a nice, intimate gathering. We stood around for a while getting all the official pictures taken (I can't wait to see how those turn out; they were shot by one of my friends from SJSU) and then it was off to the reception.


Did I mention they're both gamers?


Uber cute favors.


Grand entrance with Jerome, my groomsman counterpart


Kitty and the best man


Mr. & Mrs. Flores


First dance <3


Cake-cutting


Attack of the photographers!


Group photo of me, Kero, Bandaid and Kitty
(Which, as I look at it, confirms to me that the make-up really was too heavy for indoors.  Looked great out in the sunshine, tho'.)

"If we all tried to make other people's paths easy, our own feet would have a smooth even place to walk on."
All I know about Myrtle Reed is what I read on Wikipedia; apparently she committed suicide in her thirties with an overdose of sleeping powder.  She seems to have been a well-known philanthropist and author, yet all I can think after reading her brief biography is "Did she kill herself because not enough people made her path easy, or was she tired of constantly clearing the paths of others?"  Probably neither, I suspect.

Just happened to see this quote in my day planner and liked it.