It was an amazingly beautiful day! We sat outside eating pizza for lunch and relaxing during our final moments before most of the guests arrived.

The rehearsal dinner (which preceded the rehearsal itself due to the Boston traffic) was really nice.  Great food. Great people. Great costumes. Great pumpkin carving (the B + J pumpkin won).

all packed up and ready to go to the wedding! (i was completely packed in up to my waist, and i assume joelle's case back there was similar.)

This is my sister and I showing how much we look alike.  (also, pictured next to my head is my new camera that J just gave me.  thank you!!!)  In the course of the morning, we realized that we have the same shoes, same gloves, and same hat, very similar coats....  She lives in California and I live in New Hampshire, but we somehow still end up with matching wardrobes... 

So yes, it was a lovely day.  We got our nails done today and went shopping for a few last minute things (there are about a million last minute things still left), and J bought me The Joy of Cooking and cooked for us while we were in class and while we were packing.  Then we all stayed up until 2 a.m. making place cards and working on a ceremony program.  I'm exhausted, but excited!!! We'll leave right after class tomorrow for wedding-ing!!!!

I'm pretty sure I thought there was a better picture for today.  But this is what I can find.  Ben was so excited about the new camera my sister brought for me that he took pictures of me as I was walking around the house applying my favorite beauty product.

I spent half the day in the library, feeling like this.  It was so hot in all the indoor spaces and I felt so crappy that I had to go home and miss my evening class.  I hate missing class, but I really just felt so gross.  

I took a picture today to show my sister that I was wearing this sweatshirt that belonged to her many years ago (and had suddenly surfaced in my closet).  I love photobooth, by the way, for making this so easy.  She responded with, "Why is the wall so blue?" and then I realized that you, dear readers, have never seen our cafe.  Well, here it is!  (I suppose the other direction would have given you a better view, but this is what you get...)

See this picture?  No mascara is being worn in this picture.  I went for my facial today and they gave me a free eyelash tint since the wedding is coming up.  Now I look like I'm wearing really fabulous mascara all the time for around 4 weeks.... I think I'm pleased?

My fabulous cousin got us a sushi kit off our registry in May and it took us this long to actually get ourselves together enough to use it!  But it was worth the wait!  

Generally, I only use my computer for good and academic pursuits during class, but for some reason, today, I decided I'd be silly and try to take pictures (using photo booth) of myself and my classmate while she wasn't looking.  Little did I know, she's apparently ALWAYS looking at my screen and kept dodging pictures.  She eventually decided to smile for one while I kept trying to pay attention to the prof.  

Also, during this class, the prof mentioned some McDonald's Hamburger Maker that her daughter had desperately wanted at some point in time, and I HAD TO know what she was talking about, so I started desperately searching on the internet and didn't find anything.  I kept searching for different combinations of words.  M (the friend featured in this photo) suggested that I add in "kid's", which I did.  After I gave up on my sincere search, I typed in "making hamburgers out of kids" and I think she just about lost it.  Ben later suggested that maybe it was a play-doh set that she was talking about.  That was much less exciting than what I had imagined.  Anyway, that is all to say that I usually use my computer for class related things, but today was different.  

this is my triad for my practicum.  we start tomorrow.  each of us will be a counselor for one of the others for the rest of the semester, and the third person will watch... rotate, rinse, repeat... or something.  (photo taken by my new computer)

this was part of our attempt to choose between these two different rings that we bought for ben.  luckily, the one we decided against is returnable.  it's a secret, though - just like our new last name.  you'll have to wait a week and a half for the answers!

it was a pretty abysmal weekend for me, so when ben got home, i did nice things to him, like eating his nose.

Featured in this picture: My computer (whose hinges broke a month or so ago and won't really stay open and doesn't close), Ben's computer (which I've been using since my computer broke, and which died last night), and my external hard drive (which now has my files from Ben's computer on it, 24 hours after the computer died).  Hopefully this combination of technology will help me to finish the presentation that I have due on Tuesday and the wedding info that was due yesterday before I get a new computer (hopefully tomorrow).  This weekend was REALLY REALLY awful.  

speaking of awful technology, this picture won't load right now, I'll try again later.

This is not a picture from my day.  It's a picture that Ben brought home on his camera from his bachelor party.  Notice K's iBen shirt (far right)?  Nice job, boys (and lady).  It sounds like the weekend was a blast. (I'm kind of jealous that I wasn't invited!)

So I just remembered and harassed R for this picture... it was a long time ago, but after paying the parking ticket I got for visiting her (she's worth the $50), I remembered that I had never posted this!!!  So....  since I was away from Ben during autumn, I thought it should be POMEGRANATE TIME!!!  As many of you know, he's very afraid of pomegranates and I love them and can't ever have them in our house.  To him, pomegranates = alien pods... Anyway, the pomegranate was lovely and the visit was lovely.

Now, since I'm posting this now, November 15, almost a month later, I have another story to tag on.  At our food meeting for the wedding, we got into a discussion about the fruit platter, and I teased Ben about his fear of pomegranates.  I didn't really think that there was any chance that they would put pomegranates on a food platter, but I said something like "no pomegranates" and then we had to explain why.  Of course, the answer was, "Oh. That's good information to have.  We usually wouldn't do pomegranates, but it will be fall, and so it's a good thing to note that you don't want any pomegranates."  Then we watched him write down "NO POMEGRANATES."  So, at the wedding, we were walking around to different tables to say hi and noticed that one of our guests had a half a pomegranate on her plate sliced right down the middle, so you could see all the "alien pods."  I was shocked, and really kind of thought that she had brought it or something to be celebratory. (I dunno. We know intersting people.)  I said something like, "Oh my goodness! Where did that pomegranate come from?"  and was soon informed that they were all over the fruit display and that it was quite lovely.  Since we had spent cocktail hour with the wedding party in the bridal suite, we hadn't seen it.  But then I looked to see that, there were, in fact, open pomegranates everywhere on the fruit display.  I suppose that someone read the notes and read "POMEGRANATES" instead of "NO POMEGRANATES."  It's really quite hilarious to think about the fact that there were pomegranates (a fruit that Ben won't even go near in the supermarket, even when they're not open) at our wedding!  I really hope that someone got pictures of them, because THAT'S something I want to remember.  Oh, also, Ben thought it was funny too. Not traumatized.  At least not visibly.  

There's a series of very funny faced Janine pictures from this day.  I decided to go with the possibly accidental picture. I didn't actually know what this picture was of until Ben pointed out my hair and shoulder... 

There was a great series of dancing pictures of this day too, but I liked this picture of me so much that you get this instead of crazy kung fu dancing.

The bags have been getting more and more friends.  

I wanted to get a picture of me with my new contacts on.  When Ben takes pictures these days, he likes to put the camera on a crazy rapid fire setting and then I get silly and dance around.  Here is the evidence.

I love trying on Ben's shoes!

Cutting corks for place card holders.  Ben's role in the wedding preparations.  We watched the West Wing, so that we could pair a positive stimulus with the monotonous task.  Unfortunately, neither of us has wanted to finish them up.  I guess the classical conditioning didn't work.... 

Those of you who have visited our house probably know this as our guest room.  I just wanted you to get a chance to see what it looks like when you're not here. The secret is that it's really mostly a gear room.  The stuff runs away and hides when we need to make room for people.  Notice Ben's huge boots in the bottom left corner... 

Today is Yom Kippur, and my family traditionally spends at least part of the day on Yom Kippur at the beach.  So I found a pretty beach nearby and sat and walked for a couple hours.  It was really lovely, and a great place for reflection and atonement?? atoning??  Anyway, it's been a fairly easy fast an I get to eat in half an hour, so here's hoping that we all got sealed in the book of life and that the next year is as lovely as this past one has been.  

I got a new computer bag!  It's a crumpler luncheon.  (Notice the cool orange colored inside?  I didn't even know about that when I ordered it!!!)  When crumpler made a bag called the crippy duck, a few years ago, I really wanted it, but never got it.  It's a sad story, really... Anyway, My shoulder bag just wasn't doing it because of the way I had to carry it, and I'd been using a backpack that I was putting way too much in, and it made me nervous about the safety of the computer, so I found this bag on big sale at sierra trading post and went for it.  I'm very happy with it.  It is, of course, a messenger bag, which means that it puts pressure on one or the other shoulder, and I hate that because I can never figure out if I'm carrying it evenly throughout the day/week/month.  But some of my new friends from my graduate program helped me decide that I was going to monitor how much it's on each shoulder by assigning each day to a shoulder.  Mondays and Wednesdays are right and Tuesdays and Thursdays are left.  Those are my school days... We'll see how it goes.  

We went to watch the VP debate at our friends' house and played with kittens again - this time two of them!  We came very close to taking Alta (the littler one, who really loves Ben) home with us..... This is Chaco (the bigger one).  She really liked the camera cord:)

This was the first morning that I looked at these on my way out the door and wondered when we would get rid of them. (It definitely won't be the last.) Ben and I went through our dressers and closets and tried to get rid of some clothes. I think we prevailed

Ben has gone a little camera crazy recently, discovering new and weird things his camera can do... So this is a picture of me just after making a latte, getting ready to transport it to the living room...

I went to an AANE conference today. Two exciting things happened: I paid $3.03 for gas in the morning (when I came home in the afternoon, it was actually $2.99) and I got to spend a big chunk of the day with C, whoM I miss so much!!!

We went to our wedding venue for our final detail meeting, and Ben took some pictures. This is the dance floor, but also may end up being where we hold the ceremony. I'm VERY excited about that idea....

We changed our Thursday night dinner location this week so we could watch the debate. We got to play with a cute little kitten, eat green chili, and play Palin Bingo....

These are the massive mushrooms at the bus stop (I ended up spending some time with them, since I narrowly missed a bus and didn't realize it until I'd been there 10 minutes... and then I came back for the next bus...). I don't know if other people have experienced it, but around here, the wet summer seems to have brought tons of different varieties of mushrooms everywhere I look...