This Must Be the Place

So I know that I always say that a lot has happened since my last post. But this time I got married. And went to Greece (but I think that is for another post...)
It was the most wonderful day. My man and I knew we wanted to get married from early on. We really fell in love fast and ferociously. For various reasons, we decided to wait to get married until now and I am so glad. Like all couples, we debated where we wanted to make it official. Thought on having it back in Montana:
(someplace amazing) or maybe where we got engaged, Glacier National Park... So many choices, Many Glacier, Swiftcurrent Lake, Bowman?

I fought for the ridiculously inconvenient Polebridge, MT. My man talked me out of it, reminding me not only of the fact that it is impossible for anyone to get to, but about the pack of (wild and mangey) dogs that would be in attendance.

Not my photo, but I do know this dog personally. 

 We even considered Vegas and the ever romantic Eugene City Hall. We finally decided on our dream location a little closer to home.

Photo by Joshua Rainey, Wedding Photographer Extraordinaire

We made it a real family affair. Only our immediate families and friends so close we might as well call them immediate family. My brother played little martha and a tune of his own to begin the ceremony. My best friend created and performed the ceremony. My man surprised me with a performance of Naïve Melody (see above) which was the most beautiful thing I have heard.

*Side note: How cool is it that the ONE love song by the Talking Heads is so amazing? I mean, Byrne usually talks about architecture, jobs, businesses, disguises and undercover operations and the like in his songs. And then you come up with this gem? 

“I got plenty of time, I see the light in your eyes, and you’re standing here beside me, I love the passing of time” ?! 

“Home is where I want to be, but I guess I’m already there. I come home – she lifted up her wings, Guess this must be the place” ?! 

Aww, David you old softy. Kind of like Bogey in Casablanca. But more weird. Forgive me, I just got married. And we watched Casablanca last night. I’m in a sentimental mood. 

We wrote our own vows. Man, that was some tough stuff. I love that I stressed over them and momma bird told me, "Catherine, why are you even worried about it now? You know that you will be working on them at 5:15 on Saturday."Who wants to bet that she was right?

Time 5:15pm Photo by A. Loftus, best friend and officiant extraordinaire

The vows were fantastic. We both had to reread the vows again later because we had to disengage a bit to keep it from turning into a cryfest. Frank's sisters did readings - we had to get some Dylan in there somehow! Even Floyd behaved.

Photo by Joshua Rainey
"You know you're in trouble when the dog is more dressed up than you are" 

I think that he may have known he was in for a long "holiday" at the kennel. No American mutts in Greece.

After the ceremony, we went to Territorial and ate and drank and danced. My man predicts that our wedding will forever be known to his family as "the wedding where there was no meat." There were wonderful toasts given by our (friends)families. I can't wait to watch them back because the night is a bit of a blur... We had a fun little bluegrass, oldtimey band called Wahoo! (exclamation point is theirs) and they learned "You Got the Silver" for our first dance.

Anyway, it was perfect.

Photo by Joshua Rainey

And that's Mrs. Pigeon to you.

Sometimes I can't believe it...

So, the new Arcade Fire album came out, ya heard?

The album is great. This is just the first song.... I do have to wonder how my darling music nerd superstar Win got so sweaty, I need to know what they played before this one. I love when the camera pulls back and you can see the home video-esque movie in the background. Nerdy facts - my stepbrother went to see Arcade Fire long ago in Portland and after the show the whole band came out on the street and busted out a whole nother set right there on the sidewalk. I wonder if this was a regular occurrence.
I really love this song, this album, this band.
I really love music.
So we did an anticipation show last night, picking songs from albums that my man or I had been breathlessly awaiting on their respective arrival dates. It was really fun thinking back to those special deliveries, back in the days before the mp3... the preorders, the going to the CD store and listening to it on the way home in the car. Some of the remembrances: Use Your Illusion (that was DJPJ), Kid A and then Amnesiac (both of us), just about every Ween album that was released after Chocolate and Cheese... Icky Thump (all pigeon). And the newer stuff: Sky Blue Sky, Infinite Arms, Attack & Release. Also, momma bird requested a sweet old Beatles song and I LOVED thinking about her as a young girl counting down the days to the release of the 45s....

Ok, so neither of us were thinking about Radiohead or the Beatles at these ages, but you get the idea...

And, really, isn't the anticipation at least half the fun?
And I am not talking just about album releases of course.

Sometimes it hardly seems worth it....

But, man, that soup is good.

I have occasionally considered my tendency to live in anticipation, and lack of ability to "live in the moment" as they say, as a bit of a personality flaw. Then I realize how delicious it can be to look forward to those events that are always coming up on the horizon.

The Well Deserved Nap (coming right up).

The Epic Whiteaker Block Party (tomorrow).

The End of My Summer School Class.

Reception for a friend's recent elopement ? eloping ? sweet marriage.   

Trip to Crater Lake.

The Arrival of the Friends & Families... which leads to:

The WEDDING.

The HONEYMOON.

And, then what?

All the rest of it. 

I am so excited.

Video Killed the Radio Star

So, for those readers who were worried, the BETTER THAN SLEEP show will go on. Apparently, the dog-in-the-studio incident was forgiven. We had a great show last night with a Ghost theme. We did turn on automation at midnight last night, so again, at risk. Let's hope we are rewarded for our initiative and decision to not wake the programming director rather than punished for the crime of automating without explicit authorization...

Photo by Momma Bird

In other radio news, we are soon getting a secondhand "Powerbook" to record our shows so they soon will be podcasted here on this site. That's exciting for us, because sometimes 10pm-midnight is too late, even for our pacific time zone friends, nevermind those mountainers and eastern folks. Apparently a powerbook is not a macbook? I don't care - it's donated to this 'good cause.'

We went to an Em's game last night. PK Park is quite a step up from Osprey Staduim in Missoula (sorry!). It was fun, but we had to leave early because of aforementioned radio show. It was 1-1 when we left... never even checked who won, but I love a good baseball game. A bit of a pitching duel. Thirsty Thursday is the night to go too, who can imagine two IPAs for $5 (total) AT A BASEBALL GAME?! That would cost you $23.98 at least at Fenway and that's for Coors Light! Unfortunately, the food at the Em's wasn't as kind to us vegans as the beer options, and we had stadium popcorn for dinner. No wonder that aftershow martini was so delicious. My man ate his olives first and said "What? I'm hungry!" Also, not surprising was the only food we located that was open after the midnight close of the show was called MUNCHEESE. Let's just say it does not cater to vegans.

No wonder intervals felt so great this morning at 8am... only popcorn and martinis as running fuel. Not recommended.

So, things are brewing around here. Lots of creative activity. My man and I are working on a fun semi-collaborative project for the Emerson in Bozeman, Montana called the art project which is our postcard representation(s) of what home means to us.  I'll post a picture before we mail it off. It seems that the other collaboration we were working on (The Elk Whisperer graphic novel) is on hiatus.

There are less pictures on the blog this week because we had moved to moving pictures. Broke out our video camera to participate in this awesome project:

They even use Vampire Weekend in the promos!

 So on the assigned day, July 24th, 2010, we spent the morning finding all the camera accessories and figuring out how to work the damn thing. But then we did go to a going away party, so even though it did not seem out of the ordinary, we did meet some interesting new folks and had a blast. I hope the people who select the bits for inclusion in the movie were looking for people sitting around talking about Salute Your Shorts, Thespian club, getting asked out by carnies, the disappointment that was The Watchmen movie, and salad eating contests, because I really, really want to go to Sundance. You can find all our submissions on youtube under my username soulepigeon. We ended up submitting about 80 minutes. You're welcome, Ridley.

Also, there is a Etsy site in the works for my man's artwork and custom orders. Stay tuned.

Recent commission: Crush 2010 

My other part time job is waiting for packages to arrive, mostly wedding related. 

I recently discovered this lovely site, and no, I do not get paid for this shout out, but I sure wish I did get paid... in shoes! 

I apparently ordered the color MUS(tard) instead of MUSH(room). 

I can't imagine how I made that mistake. Up next - Will I become crazy and decide that mustard goes with champagne?  Regardless, the shoes are gorgeous. The "back up" teal pair I bought are amazing as well. 

Waiting for a cake topper from this talented individual. Which animals do you think we picked? I won't tell here, but I will tell you that I was disappointed that the obvious choice (bird heads) was so ugly not cute. 

Meeting with an electrician in a few minutes to check our wiring and remove the mysterious wires that dangle about eye level in our backyard. Maybe if he can't remove them we could just dangle some white lights from them for the wedding? Instant romance! 

Garden is ready to enter its second phase... Just about everything besides tomatoes and cucs needs to be pulled out. Am I the only idiot who can't grow zucchini? Hot weather planting sounds like a bad idea? I garden on hope alone, no knowledge or skill, so we'll see what happens. 

Between the click of the light and the start of the dream...

So, as many all? of you know, I am a marketing teacher, a job I really love. Yesterday in class, one of my students incredulously asked me "Where do you find all this stuff?" He was specifically referring to this hilarious video I found (offensive language disclaimer) which I geniusly related to the "power of the brand." But generally referring to the (I hope) interesting and diverse examples that I like to use to color the lectures. It's 140 minutes, so I think it can get a little dry eventually. My answer? I  love pop culture. I read blogs and magazines, business and... otherwise?

I watch tv, I go to movies, I rent movies. I just calculated that I have paid Netflix about $1700 in the last eight years. I think I am going to claim that it was worth it. I've been with Netflix longer than (like more than double) my entire relationship with my man. That I am marrying in a month(!!!)
I listen to the radio, I watch videos on youtube. When people recommend music to me I go to Grooveshark and check it out. I'm a media junkie.
But the one thing I haven't done for about six months is this - read a book for pleasure. I have been binging a bit now that school is out (taking classes that is. Teaching class is much easier than taking class)

I went to my nightstand to take this picture and thought, this is really representative.
1) I am finishing up Bicycle Diaries.... Here is me working on it back in March (in Florida, obviously not Oregon since it would have been raining).

Anyway, it's a pretty cool book written by David Byrne (yes, that David Byrne and, yes, that is why I bought it. If you haven't seen Stop Making Sense, DO IT. It's really fun to make "calls to action" on my blog because I am not allowed to do that on the radio. Keep reading to learn more about what I can't do on the radio...) about biking in cities. He apparently loves to bike and has one of those foldable bikes that he packs up and takes all around the world and talks about the view from the bike in all these different countries. Really interesting, but why have I been reading it since March? And why is it on the bottom of that stack? I think I only have New York left. And the appendix about these special bike racks that he designed. That's right. Not only a musical genius, but also a city planner and small scale architect. And a pretty damn good writer and photographer. I remembering seeing that the racks won some sort of award even.

2) A Good and Happy Child. I was into this book until I found my new love, to be discussed in a bit, and it was subsequently tossed to the wayside. I bought it at Powell's (THE BEST BOOKSTORE EVER) because I liked the cover. It claims to be a "literary thriller of the first order" which I have to disagree. It's about this guy who has a baby and then he is scared that he will hurt the baby. So scared he can't touch it and, all you moms can imagine, this causes some problems in his marriage. It flashes back most of the time to his childhood where we learn he was possessed by a demon that had to be exorcised. I haven't gotten to the exorcism yet. It's a bit tedious.

3) So.... Stori Telling. No comment.

Except that I got it from paperbackswap.com and my Man saw it when it arrived and said "What could you possibly get out of this book?" Oh, I don't know, gossip?

4) GEEK LOVE! This book is a treasure. I am trying to pace myself so I don't get done with it too soon.

When I went to buy this book after reading a rec from some random friend of a friend on Facebook, the lady at the bookstore thought I was looking for Eat, Pray, Love. Oh lady, you don't even know how far off you are. Anyway, the book's about carnies. A family that purposefully breeds its own freakshow. But  the writing is incredible. And it's even set in Portland. Katherine Dunn was said to be inspired by the Jonestown Massacre and the test rose garden in Portland. Friends, the very rose garden I just went to in June!

There is so much to love about this book I can't even go into it here, because I am trying to get to the point and explain the title of this post. So i guess you should just take my word for it and buy it. If you like weird stuff. Unless your name is Ally because then you *might* already be getting a copy. My only complaint is that I WISH I could have found the printing with this cover:

Sweet little Oly Binewski....

5) And, just in case you needed more proof, I am a nerd through and through. Priceless by Poundstone has my head buzzing with ideas for research. I just did an experiment from the book on my students and it worked!

So that's it for the book review for now. But in slightly-related news, I saw Inception this week. Believe the hype, it was fantastic. I am a HUGE fan of the movie Momento - I mean I REMEMBER Sammie Jenkis for god sake. I went to see it at the Wilma back when it came out, 2001 maybe? Same director. Inception was beautiful and suspenseful and different. One of the best movies I have seen in ages, and like I told you, I watch a lot of movies. So hence the dream theme. We did a dream radio show this week too, mainly built around this little gem:


In some sad news, we may or may not be getting fired from our radio show. Apparently DJ Floyd is not welcome in the station. Who would've thought?

If he apologizes can we keep our show?

Summertime means more cooking time and again I have a great recipe from digthischick. So what if it's meant for the fall? Don't worry sticklers. We've been eating the appropriate gazpacho too. 

I love cooking with beets. 

Murder scene:

Apparently, I am not the only person in the world getting married this fall. Surprising... The most important other person getting married this fall, my brother, has the fantastic date 10.10.10. I skyped in to his bride-to-be's shower. 

Ok, back to me and my wedding. I found a wonderful hair artist. She is going to make me look like a "glamorous 40's pin-up." Sounds good to me. Is it freaky that I brought a picture of Dita von Teese to show her what I wanted?

 Can we all just try to forget that she was married to Marilyn Manson please??

For those of you (mom) who were worried that my passport wouldn't come in time for my GRECIAN honeymoon, don't sweat it! I am now legal to leave the country. 

Now all I need to do is plan the trip......

The Pursuit of Happiness

Patriotic? Yes, also so happens to be in my head constantly... I may or may not be responsible for about 4,000 of those 9 million views. I can most definitely claim number 9,077,220.

Anyway, although I don't make that big a deal out of celebrating the fourth of July, I love it. I have lived in Maine, Tennessee, Montana and now Oregon. I like that I have moved around a bit and really know different locations in this great country. (This country sure has a lot of different landscapes and climates... that's for you lofus). I have truly loved each place I have lived and thought that they each were beautiful in their own ways. I have always felt hugely lucky to be an American. Yesterday, I thought about where I was last year on independence day.

I went to my man's family reunion in Michigan. I had never been to Michigan before.  Likewise to ME, TN, and MT, it was a beautiful place. His mom and dad are high school sweethearts from Detroit and it was special to see their family history. I had just gotten engaged. I was thinking about my new life with my new man and moving to a new place. I got into grad school and we had just sold our house in Montana. It was an exciting time for me. Then I thought about the year before.

It was a girlfriend's wedding weekend extravaganza. What a fantastic group of girls. I had just decided to end my first marriage. It felt so wonderful to be surrounded with special girlfriends and be a part of this beautiful experience. I never remember being sad or scared. Just excited about how different my future would now be from what I had been sadly resigned to only months before. Anything was possible and that felt very exhilarating. Then I thought about the year before.

In Utah, visiting friends. Meeting new baby. Hiking in Zion. These friends are spread out far across the country now (and then too, although in different places). The year before it was one of these ladies' weddings, although this is cheating because it wasn't on the fourth, but it was pretty damn close to that.

Before this I can't remember.... But now here's what I did this year:

Being a Mainer at heart (hey. it's the way life should be!), I convinced my man to go blueberry picking.

My man and I have different pickin styles. Those who know me can guess which bucket is his and which is mine.... We picked almost 4 pounds.

Then I was feeling a mite domestic.

Recipe for filling from digthischick. I had to change the crust to make it vegan and it was the first time I have made a crust with Crisco.

So tsps and TBs are quite different! I am a kind of haphazard cooker anyway... it turned out fine. What's more American then pie? I should have went all out and made apple pie, but the rhubarb at farmer's market looked so good. After dinner, we went to check out the fireworks. First time in ages (see above) that I had attempted to take in an actual city firework display.

All this reminiscing. So the short story is that my pursuit of happiness has been maybe more windy (not full of wind, but full of winds pronounced like what you do to a watch....) than others, but it's bringing me to the right place. My best friend said to me the other day, something to the extent of "doesn't it feel like things are just in place for you? Like for a couple years there you were on this weird, wrong track, but now everything is in its right place?" And she is right. Everything in it's right place.
I can't wait to see where I'll be next year.

The idiot wind, blowing through the letters that we wrote

Warning: The title of this post is way too cool for the content.
We all agree Craigslist is really cool, right? (except for that casual encounters area, that is creepy).
Here's what I've got so far when I put out the call for calligraphy for the wedding invites.
*Names hidden to protect the dumb.

First off, it's June lady. Second, why would I pay you $3 for something that should take you about 10 seconds and I could do it better.

Same comments as above, but at least the price is moving in the right direction.

This was actually the best sample I got, but interesting word choice for a wedding invitation sample, don't you think? The other one says "Suicide Victim." 

I can't.

In other, unrelated news, we were not able to attend the Ms. Whiteaker pageant which I was so excited about because it was sold out.

Apparently, there were pretty serious restrictions on capacity... The fire marshal was mentioned. I think my man felt bad because earlier in the evening we went to the Crapple to buy some beer and, let me tell you, the 'hood was out representing in full effect. I saw two young guys in a banana and a bugs bunny costume, respectively, which both looked vintage (and NOT gently worn). I said "Hey banana, are you going to the pageant tonight?" He got very defensive and eventually replied that he "might be." They were buying juice. I think there were hallucinogens involved. Anyway, when I got back to the car I mentioned the (slight) increase in characters and said maybe we should go pick up our tickets before we go to the rum tasting, power tools and lash party (oh yeah, that was what we were doing first). But we didn't and we got denied. It was very un-Whiteaker-like I must say. I thought we were all about punk rock over here! Who listens to the fire marshal anyway! So we licked our wounds at Tiny's where we caught the tail end of happy hour with $1.50 PBRs. It wasn't so bad.

~Tiny's - my new Silver Dollar of Eugene. The cash only part kind of sucks, but check out the record player~

Turn me loose, set me free, somewhere in the middle of Montana...

Or, more accurately, somewhere in the middle of Missoula.

*snow!

It was so good to see my friends and their fresh little babies.

In other news, my man was trying on suits today. We're planning to lock this thing down soon.

He cleans up nice.

This is what he wants for a wedding gift. Just C3PO, not R2D2.