Sehti.com -

Scott Pilgrim

Susan — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 20:06:55 -0600

Has anyone else gone out to see Scott Pilgrim vs. the World yet? Tom & I just got to go see it last night (thanks to my mom being in town to babysit!) and it was super fun. Definitely recommend. Seems like just the sort of thing all ye Sehti-ites would dig.

Wedding Photos

May — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 15:12:40 -0600

Anyone have photo-sharing tips? I've put up some links to guests' Picasa albums on our wedding website, though we're trying to figure out the best way to host the various photos that doesn't require people signing up for a service or downloading Picasa. Flickr's user interface drives me crazy, and I'm also not a fan of Shutterfly - after signing up for it I couldn't actually download any files, though their photo-to-product services are lauded. Oooh, C just told me about smugmug...trying them now...

(I tried combining them all into one album, but that was like 52-card shuffle because some timestamps were off of the cameras, though the idea of real-time many-camera angles seems cool. Also, if you've got a set of photos I'm happy to add them to the list.)

Seating Charts

May — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 15:37:40 -0600

Of all the wedding-related stuff that's going on, the one that I'm the most worried about and has been the most time-consuming is the table seating. I keep revising it, thinking that people would prefer to sit with people they know rather than strangers, but then what's the point of having everyone together if they don't mingle with each other and start dating each other and then have babies? Yeah babies! In any case, it's been like one of those word puzzles where Tom is to the left of Jack but then Suzy needs to be in the middle of them and Jane and Suzy will fight if together but not if Bob is around.

Rules that I should have come up with a spreadsheet for and made C script:
Certain exes can't sit next to each other. I mean heck, certain family members can't sit next to each other.
Family and friends should mostly be kept separate.
As even of a male to female ratio as possible.
Everyone should each have someone that they know and feel comfortable with, but also someone they don't know that they may enjoy talking to.
Conversely, the people that have travelled the most probably want to sit with the people they know because they get to so rarely.
Parents sit with kids.
Singles sit with at least 2 people they know.
At least 1 outgoing person per table.
People that don't like kids can't sit next to them.
Commonalities sit together: entrepreneurs, climbers, athletes, geographic locales, etc.

But then I get side-tracked trying to figure out whether people would rather get to know other people in their same geo or ones that kayak, and it all gets overwhelming again.

So, the new optimization rule is this: you all get at least one person you know, and up to 7 you don't. I hope you still end up having fun! (If you don't, don't tell me because I'll feel personally responsible and then miserable.)

Limbo

Grayce — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 13:33:35 -0600

For those of you who played Braid, you may want to consider Limbo. Michael and I finished it last week. I don't like Limbo as much as Braid because I thought it lacked a story and the components of the puzzles became stale after a while. I don't think it deserves the perfect ratings it has been receiving but it's a 4 out of 5.

Want to feel better about High School?

May — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 14:00:30 -0600

C found this thread on Reddit, and wow, self esteem +10 indeed! I also now realize that what I thought were obvious signals were not nearly as bold as I thought they were.

Tik Tok Star Trek!

May — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 10:57:07 -0600

OMG, I love this. Ke$ha haters like Patrick probably should stay away.

On Marriage

May — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 17:42:14 -0600

A big stack of invitations (but not all of them) is sitting on our dining room table and freaking me out. It is freaking me out because:
1. They're addressed, stamped, and sealed. Now we have to finish the rest of them - the handwritten ones and the foreign postage ones. Our chicken scratch handwriting - blah.
2. I'm pretty sure the name/address aggregator script that C wrote to print out the address labels may or may not have disregarded some individuals choice in their married names. So, if you are a married person, and your address label says your "maiden" name + partner's name, or says Mrs. HisName, and that is wrong, I apologize. It certainly wasn't intentional, or even thought out. Proper address grammar blows.

I also just found this blog, which is amazing, and the specific post linked to back there may have my new strategy on married name changing. I don't think I am going to change it. Yet. But our kids may have some spanish patralineal/matrilineal system that I think is genius. The blog also has this post and another on money matters and marriage, in which it is nice to know that other people wonder how the hell this is going to work too. Oh, and my last link for the day is this article in the NYT, which is a crazy account into the world of marriage-counseling-before-you-need-counseling.

One-hundred pushups

May — Wed, 26 May 2010 19:32:27 -0600

I've been doing this one-hundred pushups and two-hundred situps thing with a group of college people, and today is the 2nd day of it. I'm sore! But I think it's a fun, easy way to fight the never-ending battle of staying in shape, and definitely being held accountable is good motivation for me.

I have a built in excuse to stop though - if I stop fitting into my dress because my pecs get too big it is soooo off. Or if my goods start shrinking a la a certain girl we knew in high school that benched a bit too much. I'm definitely not willing to risk my bff(plural friends) for the sake of fitness. That would be crazy-talk.

Portal for Free

Aang — Fri, 14 May 2010 13:20:35 -0600

Portal is a free download on Steam right now.

Clutter and my make-up box

May — Thu, 13 May 2010 15:39:10 -0600

I was throwing things away earlier today, and I realized how much I've changed in the past 10 years. I used to find so much joy in buying things and bringing them home, and now I think it's awesome when I find something I can throw/give away.

When I was dating J, I really struggled with the shopping aspect of our relationship. We loved finding things on sale, which meant shopping more, which meant both buying and then giving things to Goodwill. A lot of girls would kill for a boyfriend who wants to go shopping with them and give them fashion advice, and at first I really enjoyed being pushed to be fashionable. For once in my life, I had all the right shoes and jackets for different occasions! But eventually I started resenting the superficial and commercial aspect of it. He was unhappy with my weight(which has been relatively stable for the past 10 years, so he was the only one unhappy with it), and we both were spending ridiculous amounts of money - money that he as a student shouldn't have had, and me knowing better shouldn't have spent. I remembered too well the days of my bio-lab dishwasher salary and living off of 20k pre-tax easily, and I was burning through my engineering salary. It didn't make any sense at all. (I am really lucky that I've always contributed at least 10% to a 401k, so at least I saved some money out of the 3 years we dated.) In any case, by the time the relationship ended, I was Done with shopping. I still enjoy finding cute things and buying them when necessary, but I don't ever want it to be the way I spend quality time in a relationship again. And I really don't want to be pushed to be more girly ever again.

I love that growing older has giving me this understanding of relationships. Sometimes you can enjoy someone, but need to go in different directions with your lives. Of course, I didn't know that was what was happening with J, I just knew I was unhappy.

One of the things that I immediately connected with C over was the lack of Things in our lives. I really liked the fact that he was not emotionally attached to Stuff, and didn't own much. He is a bit of the polar opposite of J in that sense, and I find it much easier to live with. As my dad says, "You can't have two spenders." (Aside: I hate grammar rules regarding punctuation, parenthesis, and especially addressing cards because it's outdated. Mr. and Mrs. John Smith? Bite me. Why does the female lose her name?) I worry so much less about us combining our finances than I used to with J, because I know and trust C's spending habits. There are none, and necessary items come from a drugstore/Amazon. It's awesome, and I've tried to adopt a similar mentality. I'll never be as austere as C, and my kitchen breaks all of the rules, but for the past two years I've been a saver and not a spender.

Today I was reading Unclutterer and found an article on how often you should throw away make-up, mostly because bacteria grows in it. I didn't want to read the time limits they listed, because I knew everything I had was over the limit. And when I look through my big red make-up box, I like seeing the pretty colors and shades in it. Even though I rarely wear anything inside it, my make-up box makes me feel feminine. Besides C and various emotional tendencies, my make-up box is the only other thing in my life that does this. I've known make-up goes bad since I was 16, and today was the first time I was ready to act on that knowledge.

So I took out the big red box, and pulled out everything that I haven't worn in years, and played dress-up with it. For the record, 5+ year old lip gloss and lipstick taste really f-ing foul. But green eyeshadow is still fun. And wow, I can't believe my friend bought me that Chanel make-up so long ago, with it's fancy velvet pouches and shiny compacts. And then there was that MAC kick I went on...this stuff is expensive!

And then I threw it all away.