Planning the wedding parties (one in Chicago, one in London) has become my main pastime lately. Be sure to check out our wedding website, and if you have been invited, RSVP!!!

Pretty much everything for the Chicago party is done - we're waiting for the responses to roll in so that we can find out if we estimated the number of attendees correctly. There are several more people we'd like to invite, but the space in the venue is limited, so we can't invite anyone else until we find out how many people are currently planning to attend. I'm not generally an overly patient person - this is no exception. The deadline for RSVPs is September 15, though, so at worst I only have 3 more weeks to wait.

I haven't yet sent out invitations for the London party - I was going to wait until some time in September to do so. But we've found a cake maker, and until/unless the crowd gets too big to be accomodated at Craig and Julie's house, we have a place for the party, too.

The next few paragraphs have been up on this page for a while. I'm going to leave it here a little longer because the question remains relevant to me: do I want to be in the can, or out of the can?

Lynda Barry has recently come out with a new book, called What It Is. I came across a fabulous description/exerpt from the book recently (from http://drawn.ca/2008/06/17/lynda-barry/):

One comic in WHAT IT IS poses this purpose of the book in a conversation between Barry and a genie that emerges from a can of pork and beans:

[In narrative form:] “If a genie offered to free you from a dull, canned life, what would you say?”
[Then LB is pictured asking, genie answering:] “Can you make me rich?” “No.” “Famous?” “No.” “Really cute?” “No.”
[Narrative:]“Would a feeling of aliveness be reason enough?”
[LB asking:]“Well, can I at least make a living from it?” “Probably not.” “Then what’s the point?”
[Narrative:] “A feeling of life being something worth living?”
[Genie answering:] “The point is — in the can or out of the can?”
[WHAT IT IS, p. 140]

I am definitely in the can right now, and I want to get out.

Have you seen my cat? I have posted photos of him on facebook, which are supposed to be publicly viewable...

Last year my front garden was kind of lame, but my allotment was stupendous. This year, those results are reversed, mostly, I think, because I've been working most weekends this summer, and whereas the garden has very low-maintenance plants that don't have to be replanted each year, the allotment really requires regular planting, watering, and weeding.

We started the season with a horrific ruined crop of garlic up at the allotment, but had a good yield of spring rhubarb in my front garden and garlic in the garden at No 24. We we're surprised by a good strawberry harvest from the allotment (the strawberry plants were untended leftovers from the previous tenant). The first crop of raspberries from the from garden was small but delicious. We had a small but satisfying first crop of black currants up at the allotment, too.

The front garden tomatoes are doing really well - we seem to have finally found a way to prevent them from being stolen. I'm growing them in a wide shallow butler sink surrounded by a cold frame that is chained down so it's difficult to steal. The cold frame is covered in pigeon netting and we've propped a piece of old accordion trellis in front of all of that, thus blocking passersby from casually plucking anything. The tomatoes are so yummy that Brock raves about them - and he doesn't usually like tomatoes!

The second crop of front garden raspberries is coming in now, and is looking promising; the rhubarb plant is going through another growth spurt, and we've picked a few quarts of blackberries from the brambles behind No 24. Up at the allotment, we had planted some broadbeans without knowing what we would do with them. It turns out that they are primarily a soil improver, and somewhat low-yield compared to other legumes, but the beans inside (fava beans) are really delicious. We harvested about a quart of shelled fava beans on Saturday, along with enough peas to be about 2 cups, shelled, and ten pounds of ripe plums.

You can see a satellite photo of our allotment (and my house!) on google maps.

Trips planned: Currently, the next trip was have planned is to the US for the wedding stuff in late October. I've been taking as much weekend work as I can stand, to try to pay for the wedding, so there's no time to travel.

Books I have read so far this year: Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, by Jimmy Carter. The End of America, by Naomi Wolf. What I Believe, by Bertrand Russell. Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. Digital Music Wars, by Patrick Burkart and Tom McCourt. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides. Women as Revolutionary Agents of Change by Shere Hite. Why Nuclear Disarmament Matters by Hans Blix. What Next? A Survival Guide to the 21st Century by (my aunt) Linda Schurman. Sex and Bacon: Why I Love Things That Are Very, Very Bad for Me by Sarah Katherine Lewis.

I am missing the following Starbuck's city mugs:
US: Minneapolis/St. Paul, New Orleans, Pittsburgh, Portland (Portlandia)
Northern Europe and Russia: France, Paris(2), Bonn, Braunschweig, Bremen, Potsdam, Stuttgart, Valencia, Basel, Bucharest, Moscow
Greece, Turkey, and Israel: Mykonos, Tel Aviv, Ankara, Aydin, Balikesir, Bursa, Izmir
Mexico, the Bahamas, and South America: Acapulco, Aguascalientes, Bahamas, Brasil, Buenos Aires, Cancun (Red), Cancun (Blue), Ensenada, Merida, Mexicali, Monterrey, Morelia, Playa del Carmen, Puebla, Puerto Vallarta, Queretaro, Saltillo, San Luis Potosi, Tijuana, São Paulo, Chile
China: Chengdu, Chongqing, Dalian, Dong Guan, Foshan, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Ningbo, Qingdao, Shenyang, Wuhan, Wuxi, Xian
the rest of Asia and Australia: Adelaide, Bogor (India), Yogyakarta (Indonesia), Baguio, Cebu(2)
You can see photos of most of these here.