DAYS REMAINING: 187
And suddenly, quite out of nowhere, there’s actually quite a bit to do.
With the wedding falling six months from next Saturday, we have taken care of quite a lot: the invitations went out three months ago, the space is booked, the room rate secured. Even the honeymoon is paid for.
But there are a lot of small, time-consuming things we need to figure out. Heck, even the DAYS REMAINING counter at the top of each entry takes, like, a half hour to figure out every time I go a month without posting.
And then there are the things it’s impossible to do until something else is done before it. First thing on the agenda: nailing down a headcount. This week is all about getting the final tally from people we haven’t heard from yet. And for our guests, that leads to some major thinking of their own: can I make it? Can I afford it? Can I bring my one month old? Can I somehow NOT bring my one month old? And, the most terrifying question we've been asked, which happened once yesterday: "What happens if I never got my invitation?" Ooooooh...dear.
And, y’know, we live on this planet, too…I totally know what a tough bit of planning this particular event can be. But once we have that number firmly nailed down, we can move ahead with the following:
*Choosing the menu
*Filling out the actual license paperwork to make sure we’re actually, legally married
*Writing our vows what WHAT?
*Something something cake
*Figuring out if we’ll lose all of our friends if we try and get a wedding announcement into the New York Times. WHY CAN’T WE JUST BE FANCY ONCE IN OUR LIVES?
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Just Married!
DAYS REMAINING: 219
This past Monday, Eric and I got married.
Wait wait! You still have to come to Iceland. Sorry. It’s just how it is.
When Eric and I first got together five years ago, the planet provided even less of a clear path to matrimony for same-sex couples than it does now. The number of states offering domestic partnerships were fewer, and the number of countries offering full marriage equality was comparably non-existent. So back in the dark ages of 2006, we started our relationship by structuring it according to the resources we had available at the time; unsure if marriage was in the cards for us, our progression as a couple was somewhat more incremental. Because when it came to us, what constituted marriage? Co-habitation? Legally changing my last name to Eric’s? The two of us holding the cat down twice a day to give him medicine so that he would one day stop requiring a cone so that he didn’t scratch his face off anymore? Because the responsibility incurred by that last one sure feels a heck of a lot like marriage to me.
When we moved to New York, Eric got a job that provided him membership in the Editors Union. My job as a producer doesn’t allow any such union protection, and for that reason my health insurance premiums have skyrocketed to over $15,000 a year, just for myself. With Eric in a union, he would be provided employer-based health insurance, a benefit that extends to husbands, wives, and, in New York, domestic partners.
So this past Monday morning, we marched on down to the federal building in lower Manhattan and finalized our domestic partnership. We are now 100% as married as a couple can be under the laws of the state of New York. Had we bought each other flowers, it would have been like the DMV with flowers. Except we needed fewer forms of ID to get married than we did to get New York drivers licenses.
But I don’t want to imply that this latest arrangement was just for the insurance. I think it’s another important step in the long evolution of our relationship, the next step of which will be the actual wedding. And if I get to go to the doctor for free once or twice because my union man has been keeping up on his union dues, well, I’ll take it.
Wait wait! You still have to come to Iceland. Sorry. It’s just how it is.
When Eric and I first got together five years ago, the planet provided even less of a clear path to matrimony for same-sex couples than it does now. The number of states offering domestic partnerships were fewer, and the number of countries offering full marriage equality was comparably non-existent. So back in the dark ages of 2006, we started our relationship by structuring it according to the resources we had available at the time; unsure if marriage was in the cards for us, our progression as a couple was somewhat more incremental. Because when it came to us, what constituted marriage? Co-habitation? Legally changing my last name to Eric’s? The two of us holding the cat down twice a day to give him medicine so that he would one day stop requiring a cone so that he didn’t scratch his face off anymore? Because the responsibility incurred by that last one sure feels a heck of a lot like marriage to me.
When we moved to New York, Eric got a job that provided him membership in the Editors Union. My job as a producer doesn’t allow any such union protection, and for that reason my health insurance premiums have skyrocketed to over $15,000 a year, just for myself. With Eric in a union, he would be provided employer-based health insurance, a benefit that extends to husbands, wives, and, in New York, domestic partners.
So this past Monday morning, we marched on down to the federal building in lower Manhattan and finalized our domestic partnership. We are now 100% as married as a couple can be under the laws of the state of New York. Had we bought each other flowers, it would have been like the DMV with flowers. Except we needed fewer forms of ID to get married than we did to get New York drivers licenses.
But I don’t want to imply that this latest arrangement was just for the insurance. I think it’s another important step in the long evolution of our relationship, the next step of which will be the actual wedding. And if I get to go to the doctor for free once or twice because my union man has been keeping up on his union dues, well, I’ll take it.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Friday, December 10, 2010
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Neykjavik
DAYS REMAINING: 254
We’ve been getting a bit of good-natured flack from some friends for a bit of wording on our invitations. We called a visit to one of Iceland’s geothermal pools “the most quintessential of Icelandic activities,” an admitted bit of lingual flourish in an invitation which otherwise just includes information like, "The cocktail hour starts at 5pm." But, having now visited those pools and seen them with my own eyes, I have to say I stand by that wording. They don't have outdoor geothermal volcanic hot tubs on Long Island.
Having arrived on two separate red eyes first thing on Friday morning, Tracie and I experienced the customary nine-or-so minutes of sleep one manages to cobble together when trying to curl up for the night on an airplane. Icelandair is a great airline, but there was a strange feeling of party-like raucousness I haven’t experienced on any red eye I’ve taken between New York and LA. There were numerous beverage offers, snack services, and I swear I remember waking up in the middle of the night and seeing a cart of gaudy Skymall-type merchandise on a cart rolling down the aisle, replete with a huge blond wig on a mannequin head. For Tracie’s part, she swears she woke up in the night on her flight with a tray of cookies under her nose and a flight attendant demanding in a thick Icelandic accent, “YOU WANT SOME COOKIES.” She did not. And I didn't want all of these seat back TVs on all night, either. I didn’t fly into the Arctic Circle so I could watch everyone around me watching ten year old episodes of “Family Guy.”
Anyway, all that this “blah blah blah airplane peanuts” rant boils down to is that we were DAMN tired when we landed in Reykjavik at around 7am. (Though, interesting side note: within seconds of meeting one another in a foreign country we’d never been in before, the very first thing Tracie and I did was start talking about Burlesque.) We spent the day meeting with Anna, seeing the hotel, meeting with the lady priestess who will perform our ceremony, eating twee Icelandic lunches and drinking strong Icelandic coffee. But it was just after dark (y'know, at 3:30) that we decided to embark upon the most mysterious errand on our itinerary, where we hoped we could relax away the flight we'd still yet to wash off us: the geothermal pools.
Because, seriously, what the hell? I mean, lots of towns have community pools, but these places are all over the city and they are a daily part of life for many people in the country. On Friday night, people of all ages were there -- families, couples, groups of all ages -- hanging out in heated pools while the outside temperature hovered around twenty degrees. It’s crazy. There are pools for lap swimming. There are four hot tubs. There’s a water slide in the summer. And because Iceland is not a warm country (duh forever), people do not just walk around all Frenchie and topless or anything like that. It’s a family place!
Except for the time you have to be totally naked for a minute.
Because the water from these pools comes directly up from the center of the earth, they do not add chlorine, as it would dampen the deeply soul-restoring properties the water is supposed to contain. It’s filtered and circulated, sure, so that you’re not just sitting in a still petri pool of Icelandic germs, but the water lacks the harsh chemicals of your typical American pool. You pee in the geothermal pool? It’s part of their ecosystem now.
For this reason, right after one pays to enter the facility and right before one enters the pool area, one is expected to clean oneself thoroughly in the showers. The locker rooms are not coed, and there are individual changing rooms, so there is a certain modicum of privacy afforded...except in the actual showers. There are stalls -- kind of -- but the walls do not extend out far enough to block every part of you from the person next to you, which means vice versa. But then, after like nine seconds, you finish showering, you put your bathing suit back on, you leave the locker room, you race through the dark, icy night (if you're there in December), and you sit comfortably for hours enjoying a weather/water paradox that will make you reflexively refer to Skandinavian types as “hearty” for the rest of your life.
If you can be naked in front of your friends for about thirty seconds.
We’ve been getting a bit of good-natured flack from some friends for a bit of wording on our invitations. We called a visit to one of Iceland’s geothermal pools “the most quintessential of Icelandic activities,” an admitted bit of lingual flourish in an invitation which otherwise just includes information like, "The cocktail hour starts at 5pm." But, having now visited those pools and seen them with my own eyes, I have to say I stand by that wording. They don't have outdoor geothermal volcanic hot tubs on Long Island.
Having arrived on two separate red eyes first thing on Friday morning, Tracie and I experienced the customary nine-or-so minutes of sleep one manages to cobble together when trying to curl up for the night on an airplane. Icelandair is a great airline, but there was a strange feeling of party-like raucousness I haven’t experienced on any red eye I’ve taken between New York and LA. There were numerous beverage offers, snack services, and I swear I remember waking up in the middle of the night and seeing a cart of gaudy Skymall-type merchandise on a cart rolling down the aisle, replete with a huge blond wig on a mannequin head. For Tracie’s part, she swears she woke up in the night on her flight with a tray of cookies under her nose and a flight attendant demanding in a thick Icelandic accent, “YOU WANT SOME COOKIES.” She did not. And I didn't want all of these seat back TVs on all night, either. I didn’t fly into the Arctic Circle so I could watch everyone around me watching ten year old episodes of “Family Guy.”
Anyway, all that this “blah blah blah airplane peanuts” rant boils down to is that we were DAMN tired when we landed in Reykjavik at around 7am. (Though, interesting side note: within seconds of meeting one another in a foreign country we’d never been in before, the very first thing Tracie and I did was start talking about Burlesque.) We spent the day meeting with Anna, seeing the hotel, meeting with the lady priestess who will perform our ceremony, eating twee Icelandic lunches and drinking strong Icelandic coffee. But it was just after dark (y'know, at 3:30) that we decided to embark upon the most mysterious errand on our itinerary, where we hoped we could relax away the flight we'd still yet to wash off us: the geothermal pools.
Because, seriously, what the hell? I mean, lots of towns have community pools, but these places are all over the city and they are a daily part of life for many people in the country. On Friday night, people of all ages were there -- families, couples, groups of all ages -- hanging out in heated pools while the outside temperature hovered around twenty degrees. It’s crazy. There are pools for lap swimming. There are four hot tubs. There’s a water slide in the summer. And because Iceland is not a warm country (duh forever), people do not just walk around all Frenchie and topless or anything like that. It’s a family place!
Except for the time you have to be totally naked for a minute.
Because the water from these pools comes directly up from the center of the earth, they do not add chlorine, as it would dampen the deeply soul-restoring properties the water is supposed to contain. It’s filtered and circulated, sure, so that you’re not just sitting in a still petri pool of Icelandic germs, but the water lacks the harsh chemicals of your typical American pool. You pee in the geothermal pool? It’s part of their ecosystem now.
For this reason, right after one pays to enter the facility and right before one enters the pool area, one is expected to clean oneself thoroughly in the showers. The locker rooms are not coed, and there are individual changing rooms, so there is a certain modicum of privacy afforded...except in the actual showers. There are stalls -- kind of -- but the walls do not extend out far enough to block every part of you from the person next to you, which means vice versa. But then, after like nine seconds, you finish showering, you put your bathing suit back on, you leave the locker room, you race through the dark, icy night (if you're there in December), and you sit comfortably for hours enjoying a weather/water paradox that will make you reflexively refer to Skandinavian types as “hearty” for the rest of your life.
If you can be naked in front of your friends for about thirty seconds.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Iceland in the Stream
DAYS REMAINING: 255
I mean, you have GOT to be kidding me. First dance, anyone?
I mean, you have GOT to be kidding me. First dance, anyone?
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