Sunshine

I can't believe another month has flown by. Where does the time go, gentle reader? Well, I've certainly been busy. I had my first exam a couple of weeks ago. It didn't go as well as I had hoped by I'm harshly marking myself down do who knows? It just goes to show how much time I need to study! This is what has consumed most of my time, gentle reader, and made me a dull fairy indeed. I hope you can forgive em...

In celebration of fairyness Fella and I went to Brighton last weekend. The gayest town on Eurovision, the gayest holiday... Fella, who loathes Eurovision, was not amused! But we had a great time and somehow manged to get sunburn on the back of my left leg and nowhere else.

Unfortunately news on the job front has been less good. I know my organisation is shutting down but it seems they are in the process of merging some departments and my job is going to be cut early. As I'm out on secondment I'm not quite sure how it works. I am ready to move on to my next career move... but I was looking at next year, not this. My adopted team like me and want to keep me so are looking at how I can stay until March (if not longer) but it's a bit of a difficult situation.

The secondment itself is keeping me super busy - another reason why time to blog is in short supply. But I'm enjoying it, very much. I know I need to apply for something new soon, but it will have to wait until my exams are finished and that will be late June.

The really good news is that my dissertation survey is going double plus well. I got my 250th respondent today! I'm really keen to get as many as possible, natch, so after a positive experience leafleting in Brighton for a while I'm looking forward to doing the same at Pride in July. In my heart of heart I want 1000 responses but I think as it goes I'll get 500. However, that's still a huge response compared to some of the other surveys on which other research I've seen has been based.

So there we have it. Strumpetville is sunny and hot and life continues with its typical ups and downs. I hope your life is mostly up!

Booked it!

Well, gentle reader, we’ve done it: the venue is booked and we are well and truly in civil-partnership planning mode.

The 15 May marks our third anniversary and one year exactly until the ceremony itself. As I’m in the middle of exam preparation and dissertation research it has been difficult to find time to even post about it, let alone do anything but this is progress at last.

The next steps for us are to set up our marriage website (some friends of ours set one up and it really helps with RSVPs, telling people about the venue etc), and organise some save the date cards. And perhaps figure out where the mind-bubbling amount of money it’s going to cost us will come from. My initial estimate was less than half of what it will really cost and our reserve fund is looking stretched-thin.

Personally I have no real objection to just trotting down to the town hall, filling in the relevant paperwork, and taking all of our friends out for a massive party in town for about half the money but needs must when Fella is all romantically minded.

That of course makes him out to be Bridezilla which couldn’t be further from the truth; and I think we are very lucky to have a venue that is enthusiastic and helpful and will take on a fair bit of the organising (but, importantly, not decision making) itself.

We have a friend making the rings and another friend making the cake. Fella delegated these tasks without really discussing it with me, which is OK to a point, but fortunately I had a chat with the friend making the rings this weekend and she is very sound about making something appropriate and that we both like rather than going off in a creative frenzy. Cake lady is next!

The ceremony will be on a Wednesday so I am keen to get ‘save the date’ cards out to people sooner rather than later, particularly as his family will be travelling from Scotland and mine from Germany. There will be a fair bit of organising around accommodation and transport, which will be quite a large part of the budget – our plan is for any family staying over to be put up that night at our expense at a hotel close to the venue.

One other idea that occurred to me was also around the ‘theme’ of the wedding. One of the things important to me about it is that everyone has a good time and it is as relaxed as possible. This means, for example, that we won’t have ‘day’ and ‘evening’ invitations but people can come and go as they please (which also helps get around the work-day problem).

My idea is to theme it around all the fun times Fella and I have had with the invitees – photos and momentos of holidays, nights out, places we been and various adventures we’ve had together.  A good idea, don’t you think?