a very merry christmas

jared and i got engaged on 12/20/08!!!!

he got all romantic and asked me on the beach in fort myers, florida. we are really happy and excited and also possibly a little bit overwhelmed by all the crazy things you need to think about when planning a wedding.

this pic was taken just after he asked me on the beach. and yes, he got down on one knee and prior to asking me he went and asked my dad's permission!! to answer the burning question that i keep getting asked, we'd like to have a fall wedding in '09. not sure if that's possible but we are going to try!!

the engagement story:
i arrived on the 20th ready to make holiday cookies with jared and his mom, which we did. i was antsy to get to the beach since when i left nj earlier that day it was 20 degrees and snowing. so we went off to fort myers beach, which is a bit like the jersey shore. we had some pina colada's and chatted up with the other snow birds. then we walked on the beach to catch some rays. after goofing around on the sand and watching a family make a crazy sand castle (you can see the castle behind us in the pic), i jumped up to pack up the towels and get back to the car since we didn't put much change in the meter. when i turned around, jared was still kneeling on his towel. then he reached over to his shoe and said he had to ask me something and, 'you can't say, shut up don't say that' - which is what i affectionately said after he first told me he loved me. he opened up a box and asked me to be his wife. *gush* luckily i didn't say anything stupid (like shut up don't say that) and instead yelled, 'yes!!!' then i started shaking and eventually crying which happened in succession for the days that proceeded.

here's a pic of my gorgeous engagement ring that jared picked out himself!!! i'm one lucky girl!!

and a note to the girls and guys that think love is bs. it totally isn't just hang in there. i had to date a whole lot of jerkimo's before i found a guy that is totally awesome.

any suggestions for a non-traditional super cool wedding site in new jersey/nyc are greatly appreciated!!

xoxo

I went to see Santa at Bloomingdales....

And he was on break, I mean 'feeding the reindeer'.

the wisdom to know the difference

Repost from two thanksgivings ago.

November 30, 2006 - Thursday

the wisdom to know the difference. my dad celebrated 17 years of sobriety last night. it's always a touchy subject. he seems to embody this total dicotomy like no other, maybe it's just a dad thing but he balances this tough-guy badass motorcycle man with a super-softy and sappy underbelly. i know them both well. but he is still an enigma to me. i guess that is the way it is. i mean, as he stood up in front of this room of fellow alcoholics, all of whom had kind words to say about him, he was at once a total stranger and dear friend. there is so much i don't know about him, about his life, about his addictions. but as i heard him talk i realized that in the same way that he doesn't know everything about me and my life and travels, it is ok that i don't know it all about him. i guess it's a defense mechanism of sorts, but you really have to be discriminate about how much you divluge to people, especially those you love. interesting enough, i don't usually assess the impact of my parents sobriety on my life. they have both been sober for the last 17-odd years and so my life has peppered with a myriad of 'celebrations', 'steps','traditions', 'sponsers', al-a-teen and al-a-non. i have gone to a whole hell of a lot of AA meetings as a result, not for my own benefit though they do serve as a reality check for the times when drinking seems to be an escape rather than an enjoyment. but i guess i have to say that i am really lucky that they took care of their shit early on. i was reminded of this just a couple days ago. i was at starbucks the other day and ran into a friend who was cornered by a drunk/prostitute (yes, at the upper montclair starbucks of all places). i decided that since i was there killing time and knitting i would go over and sit by my friend to save her from the torment of this lonely woman. the woman mentioned that she had just turned 50 and it struck a note in me since my mom is turing 50 next week. i studied this woman and as crazy as she was she gave me a good idea of what my mom, and even my dad for that matter, would be like if she had not gotten sober. this woman was hanging at starbucks with her low cut shirt, reeking of smoke and booze, staggering and rambling. her face has sores on it and her hair was dirty and matted. but there was something so sad about her beyond her appearance. she was still a person, longing for something, maybe to feel something, but she was just so broken...talking about her 'husbands drinking problem'. i am reading this book called the gift of pain that explores the idea of how our culture views pain and the extent that we go to to not feel it. it uses examples of people that have leprosy and how the mechanism for the sensation of pain is what they lack. here in america (land of the free, home of the brave) we are filled with different ideas of pain and control. we take anitdepressants so we don't have to feel the pain. and when it comes time to get off them we are too afraid to feel. beyond that there is the whole drug industry that seeks to eliminate pain completely. i am not saying that we should all live with pain, but maybe there is a reason that it is there in the first place. an example from the book showed a man with leprosy who would pick yams out of burning coals who later lost his fingers. if he could feel, he would obviously not have done that and in turn not lost his fingers. the problem is that it's hard to deal with the pain, it involves us taking responsibility for our emotions and actions....and the pain is way beyond physical. but the more we numb ourselves, i think, the further we get from being happy and whole. at the end of my dad's little talk up front he said that 'the program' took away his pain. i think he got that backwards. there was a lot of pain, i remember i lived through it. i felt it too. but the difference was that he was in an environment that fostered facing that pain and reacting to it in a way that didn't just numb it like the drugs an alcohol did before. i am grateful for this, in this time of gratitute and thanksgiving. each day we are faced with decisions to feel or to numb. choose wisely.

obama!!!!

it's totally a historic night. barack obama is president. he's giving his speech right now. when they announced that he was going to be the president i just stood there and shed a tear. i remembered a point during 911 when my friend, chris, took me up to our rooftop to watch buildings smolder and smoke. he looked and me and said very clearly, ' everything in the world just changed, nicole.' i felt that feeling again tonight. but this time it was filled with so much hope. everything did just change. and god, i hope it means that the change will really bring things together.

back in the (knitting) saddle

My trip to DC was a quick one and it totally re-started my knitting. I was on a bit of a hiatus, I guess, from knitting in general (basically, I suck at knitting socks and it totally broke my knitting stride). What was nice about this trip was that the knitting made it go by really fast and calmed my nerves for the meeting that we were about to attend.

I grabbed this great olive/gold yarn from my stash. It was a chunky adrienne vittadini skein that I got from WEBS when we visited Sage and Brian over the summer. I got two hanks (there is something cooler about the word hank than skein) for two bucks each -- quite the deal! I adapted a pattern for a luxe neck warmer from Knit-2-Together, and I think it came out pretty nice. 54 stitches on size 10 needles -- the pattern was an alternation of feather and fan which looks so pretty and is relatively easy for even the most basic of knitters. The entire thing was done on the ride down from Newark Airport to Silver Spring, Maryland! The pic doesn't do it justice, especially the color; I will have to get a pic of me wearing it. It will serve as a proto-type for my christmas presents this year. I already started on one in Noro Silk Garden this morning when I sat next to a fellow knitter on the train -- gotta love a stitch-n-bitch commute.

Road trip: DC with my boss in the snow!

We're off to meet with the FDA tomorrow. I can't believe that it's
snowing or that we are actually listening to the Village People
singing along.

Luckily I brought my knitting and a book. Maybe I should have brought
some music. We are actually listening I why whole album. Yikes!!

Up the Mountain

There's nothing like a fall day, an outside party up the mountain
and a bonfire. Jared and I are just hanging out trying to stay warm and live it up mountain-style. We're up at Jamie's parents house celebrating she and Steve's engagement. There are lots of activities besides wine drinking and eating. Earlier, we ran down to the lake (UGL!) and hung out on the docks throwing rocks to our hearts content! Then there was the whole bonfire and knife throwing (yes, I am serious. I threw the knife over the fence -- oops).

Congrats to Jamie and Steve on your engagement!

be the change.

i totally freaking love this ad and not just because it's obama. i actually used it as a theme in my yoga classes this week. what i love is that it's a pic of him at the most awkward age, yet it's steeped with optimism.

i believe the be the change mantra comes from gandhi's famous line, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” -- pretty profound, if you ask me.

you may ask, how does something like this apply to yoga philosophy?? well, it's not that you have to change and become something totally different. change can come in the form of totally being you no matter how awkward you think you are. i mean, think about what you were like as a seven year old. probably missing front teeth, sort of annoying, ansty, goofy, nerdy -- but you were still you. there were mannerisms and nuances that carried through to your adult life, they are the things that are so endearing and specific to you.

at my dad's house we have this wall of pics that chronicle years of our lives. you can see this arc of awkwardness that makes way for beauty (i was a pretty nerdy kid/ adolescent). the physical appearance definitely changed, but it was also a change in the way i viewed myself and got more comfortable being me. that's where the yoga comes in. nothing is going to come and wipe out your identity to make you something/someone new. the change comes as you get better at being who you already are. that is change i can believe in.

get the cool shoe shine

I have a horrible cold and got sent home early. Unfortunately my next
train to Montclair doesn't leave for thirty minutes. Stuck in Penn I
decided to get my boots shined up. This is the first time I'm doing
this while they are on my feet -- just like the boys do. They really
needed a shining!! They had the remnants of last winters snow and salt.

I'll be done in time to catch my train and sleep the rest of my day.
And holy cow are these thing shiney now!! Shinier than when I bought
them.

the 'how-to change a tire' experiment

so we called AAA and as per their protocol it would be 45 minutes before they showed up or at least thought about it. luckily, neal and matty-big-hair showed up for moral support. as we stood around at the gas station and watched the goings-on of the evening we decided that we could probably just change the tire on our own -- which we ended up doing.it was interesting to me that as independent as i am, i had no freaking idea or desire to know how to change a tire up until this point. but stranded at the exxon station, my interest was peaked. out of the three of us, only matt had changed a tire and that was once.

so here's how/what i learned are the most important steps to changing a tire:

1. first check to see if you have a: jack, spare and tire iron. this should be in your trunk. in my car, they were hidden in the trunk underneath the trunk space. that is, i had to pull up the floor of the trunk to find the tire changing goods.
2. loosen the lug nuts on the tire. we did this wrong. you are really supposed to loosen them before you jack the car up. luckily we didn't push the car off the jack by trying to loosen them while the car was mid-air. also, you are going to need to use force. we found that using our foot to apply the force on the iron worked well
   
3. use the jack to lift the tire off the ground. no real explanation needed here -- there was a diagram on the jack to show where it was supposed to go.
4. take the lug nuts completely off and pull off the tire. you may want to make sure all the lugs are in one place, those suckers roll around.
   
5. place spare where you just took the old tire off. you may have a 'donut' as i did, don't be alarmed that it looks like a tire from the short bus. just note, as almost everyone that i told about the donut retorted to me -- don't drive over 50mph with that thing!!
   
6. attach the lug nuts loosely. just enough to keep the tire on, make sure tire is on straight.
7. lower jack. make sure there is nothing/no one under the car before you do this.
8. tighten lug nuts. use force for this, you don't want to be driving around and have those bad boys fall off.
9. revel in the fact that you just changed your own tire. woo hoo!!
   

all-in-all this was not how i wanted to spend my friday night. AAA didn't make it in time for us to change the tire so we canceled them all together. it did feel pretty damn good to change it and it was good to learn. while i was waiting for the guys to show up, i witnessed a mini-van back up with the pump still in it's tank and pull the pump right off! that was funny.