Where to begin?

While I seriously doubt that I'm the busiest person on the planet, it sometimes feels that way!

First, a note on using italics. I just finished reading "The 8th Confession" by James Patterson. It was my first JP book, and I must say, I was not all that impressed. I think the older I get, the more...snobby might not be the right word...particular, perhaps?...the older I get, the more particular I become about what I read. JP used italics a lot, and while I always thought they were for emphasis, I couldn't always figure out what he was emphasizing. Although, perhaps I was too hung up on all of the incomplete sentences to fully understand the nuances of his writing! Regardless, English teachers everywhere must be cringing!

Right. Back to what's really been keeping me busy...

A few weekends ago, I attended the wedding of some friends up in Oregon. It was a wonderful affair, I had a fabulous time, and, of course, I left totally exhausted. My husband and I had been invited to eight weddings this year (we're not going to manage to attend all of them...in fact we're done attending weddings for the year). We're really, really happy that all of our friends keep falling in love and being blissfully happy. We just wish they'd spread the celebrations out over the next 10 or 20 years. Of course, this doesn't look promising...we already have 4 weddings next year...and we're not running out of friends, either! Of course, next summer we're not planning on buying a house, which brings me to busyness point 2...

Among the other adventures on which we've embarked this summer, we bought our first home. Yay us! We literally signed the paper work, handed over a HUGE check, and drove to the airport to catch a flight to Oregon (for the first wedding of the season, back in June). This was after months of looking, making offers, and being rejected, all on the heels of me graduating from my MBA program, starting a new job, and taking a fabulous trip to Egypt, but I digress.

So we bought a home, which prompted a more-or-less month of painting before we moved in (the "more-or-less month" bit being that we weren't actually in California the entire month). Our idea was that it would be easier to paint before we filled the place up with stuff. Sounds reasonable, right? Well, it's easier to paint, if you have time to paint. The first weekend in July (which was the first time I went to the house after we bought it), my husband spent painting, and I spent cleaning. We bought the house from the children of the original owner...cue ominous music...the owner died in the house. DunDunDunnn!

Ok, so a potentially haunted house isn't nearly as scary to me as the fact that the house, which was built in 1958, has 51 years of someone else's dirt in it. YUCK! So, like I said, my husband and I spent the first weekend in July, after buying said house at the end of June, painting and cleaning, respectively.

The second weekend in July we attended my cousin's wedding, which was in Southern California, but not quite SoCal enough for it to not take up the entire weekend. The third weekend in July, my husband attended a wedding solo (I'm pretty sure he had more fun that way) while I, meanwhile, continued to clean. As for the fourth weekend in July? Well, we had to move in because we had only paid rent on our apartment until July 31. Meanwhile, after work, my husband continued painting the place.

Well, now we're in August, which more or less catches us up with the start of the blog, but in short, two more weddings were attended, a week was spent based in NJ, with excursions to elsewhere on the Eastern Seaboard, and my father graciously drove down from his home in northern California to continue the painting adventure and install wainscoting in our kitchen.

Whew! Well, I'm due for a nap before I regale you with tales of September.