bleh

I'd planned to write a nice little post about Christmas, New Year's, my brother's wedding, and possibly the awesomeness of the Sherlocke Holmes movie.

But the minor sore throat that I was fighting down over the wedding has now blossomed into a full-blown nasty head cold. I spent most of last night trying desperately not to cough so that Chuckro at least could get enough sleep to function at his first day of intensives today. I don't think I'm going to get through my big list of chores I wanted to get done today. I'm going back to bed.

At least the really yucky part didn't kick in until after the wedding. Thank goodness.

On Christmas and weddings

Rather than ramble for two pages at random, you're getting bullet points.

- The snowpocalypse ended up not causing us all that much inconvenience, all told (except stupid hairdresser who yelled at me for going out in the snow after she did my hair). It kept being off the roads by the time we were on them. Instead, mostly just pretty.

- The annual Christmas wine dinner went smashingly well, I think. Shrimp stuffed with bacon, beet and goat cheese salad, tuna crusted with garlic-honey-mustard-butter with mashed potatoes and peas with leeks, and goat cheese cheesecake with ginger-pear compote (paired with a chardonnay, Sancerre, pinot noir, and muscat, respectively.)

- My mom gave me a steampunk locket and Chuckro clockwork cufflinks for Christmas. Squee!

- The rehearsal dinner had some of the better veal marsala I've ever had.

- The wedding ceremony went very well, I think - my brother J and his wife A both looked fabulous (he in his dress blues, she in a fantastic gown), her uncle (a bishop) gave a lovely homily that actually told me a lot about their courtship I hadn't known, and the church was very pretty.

- The inn where the reception was was lovely and the staff very attentive.

- It's totally conceited, but my mom and I did a kickass job on the flowers. She learned a new technique for doing hand-tied bouquets that worked a lot better than the more traditional way. And she also got these skeletal leaves (dried, with just the veins left) that were white for the bridesmaids and gold for the bride that looked amazing. Wintery and delicate and just gorgeous.

- I had way too much fun with a plastic top hat that I must say, I looked totally adorable in.

- I managed to snag a bunch of the "cool" relatives at my table, which made for entertaining conversation.

- No one hurt themselves on the icy ramp of doom between buildings. (It was a near thing, really. It took half the guys in the wedding party to get A safely out of the limo and into the reception. She's no wallflower - she's a tough Army girl herself. But in a gown with a train and heels, she was having a lot of trouble with the five feet of ice. I myself was really grateful for the hand down.)

- Speaking of the guys in the wedding party - my brother's friends are hilarious. It's a shame that I'm unlikely to see most of them again - really good guys, in a really irreverent way.