Sunday, August 8, 2010

An invite to disaster

Adam and I are getting married in five weeks. I know this because our friends Dan and Abbey are getting married one month before us, and my justification for not planning anything has always been, "Dude, Dan and Abbey aren't even married yet."

So of course I knew I'd have a breakdown right after their ceremony. Others would be crying with elation for the happy couple; I'd be crying because I hadn't locked down anyone to do hair yet. (I also know, from "simultaneously" planning weddings with Abbey, that theirs is going to be kickass in all the ways ours is not. They have a THEME. They have COLORS. I've seen her to-do list. Their wedding is going to be like the Oscars, the time Bjork wore the swan costume. People are going to talk.)

I thought this weekend would be a good time to lock some stuff down, so that we could go away next weekend and actually enjoy the multiple choirs and performance art and dogs in tuxedos and custom-made cakes and all the other awesomeness I'm sure will appear. Also, this is the last weekend before our wedding that Adam and I are actually in town and have nothing to do. AND Paige is going on a walk-through for us on Tuesday, and asked for a timeline of the day in advance. I promised her I'd get it done, because if you're not answering to Paige, you're answering to no one.

I also thought it was relatively perfect timing because we FINALLY have everything we need to get our invitations out. The invitations have been a work in progress for over a month. I had this grandiose idea for them, one that involved me learning calligraphy. Obviously, that didn't pan out. The backup plan was using something called a "computer" to address the envelopes, and since I'm the one with all this administrative experience burning a hole in my ballgown, it was up to me to do the mail merge.

Well, I put it off. Adam designed the envelopes a week ago, but since 40 percent of my guest list has moved since the save-the-dates went out, it took me some time to come up with a decent list. I was frantically texting friends who were obviously out DOING SOMETHING with their Saturday nights, begging them to back away from that guy and text me back a new address, STAT! And then it was 8:45 pm. Time to print. Adam's sore throat meant that he would stay behind, and I'd venture to Kinko's on my own. And Kinko's, my friends, closes at 9 on Saturdays. The guy behind the counter's glare dared me to enter.

But whatever. There's always Sunday. I'd print them at 9 am, when Kinko's opened, and we'd have a restful day stuffing envelopes and drinking tea with honey. But of course I can't leave the house before noon on Sunday. And we get to Kinko's and I announce what we're there to do, and the two guys working there look TOTALLY BAFFLED and then tell me that they only print on 8.5 x 11. I'd really be better off with an ink-jet printer...like the kind people have at home.

Let me say this about this. That Kinko's was totally empty, and paying two adults a salary. MAYBE THAT'S BECAUSE THEY TELL PEOPLE TO GO HOME AND USE THEIR OWN PRINTER.

I have a mini-fit. All I want to do is kill. Or mail some invitations. SOMETHING has to move forward with this wedding, and Lord knows it's not going to be finding a bra that's appropriate for my dress. I want to accomplish something that I can TALK about. (At work, I mean.) (Also, 40 bucks says I never find that bra and just end up skipping it.)

Anyway, Adam and I split up and reunite at home. He arrives after I do, toting the most glorious, lucky find in the entire world: a printer.

He found it on the street. On top of a trash can. It was like God wanted people to receive our invitations on Tuesday.


We're only missing one thing at this point, and that's a cable to connect laptop to printer. Adam has one at work, but that's all the way in Berkeley, and we're COMMITTED to getting these things out this weekend. So we decide to rent a car and swing by the Office Depot on the way to Adam's appointment at Urgent Care.

All is going well. We have a printer, we're able to get a car for enough time to fit everything in, we traipse into Office Depot and immediately find what we need (including almost $60 in black ink) and I get Adam to Kaiser in time.

I'm super-giddy. And even though I know that I'm so so so bad at these things, and even though I'm sure Adam didn't expect I'd ever be able to do it....I tried to hook up that printer.

But you know those plastic cases that computer cables come in? The hard, bendy plastic that you have to cut open? I was JUST THINKING how dumb it was that they put paper over the contents, because who can tell where you're cutting? when...

I cut the damn cable.

I cut the cable in TWO places, because it was looped over.

I can't believe I did that.

And the Office Depot is over a mile away, and it's cold out today, and I already RENTED a car today, and Adam will be home any minute.

So I decide to try to splice it.

Luckily, he got home before I found any electrical tape. I mean, I would have just taped the two ends together. He almost fell on the floor laughing. (And I got out of ever being in charge of a project like this ever again.)

But then, this kid takes out a knife and starts peeling the rubber off the cords, and exposes, like, 100 wires, and then cuts THOSE open and then twists together five wires and came up with this totally hood connection that he swore wouldn't work, but it DID. That damn printer turned on! And it prints!


But it doesn't print envelopes as thick as the ones we have. It gets all the way to the return address, then it chokes and starts mangling it.


So there you have it. Maybe someday, some of you will be invited to our wedding. But it might not be this week. AND NONE OF THAT WAS OUR FAULT.

10 comments:

  1. I'm so sorry for your trauma, but god I got a good laugh out of it. We know when the wedding is, don't worry about the invites - it would take more than that for us to miss it!

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  2. We already have our plane tickets and our hotel reservations. We'll be there. Maybe you should just post your invitations here on your blog. Don't all your friends read it anyway!

    I agree with Gill, I'm sorry for the many disasters, but it makes damn good reading the way you tell it. And I'm so impressed with my baby bro's mad cable skills!!

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  3. Oh god, I am so sorry that I missed your call yesterday.

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  4. Oh Amy! The trials of wedding planning... I hope this week is smooth! Glad to see you back in bloggy world :)

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  5. If this is what it takes to get you blogging again, I wish upon you 100 more spliced wires, cold days, and unhelpful Kinko's employees. Sorry, I'm selfish.

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  6. I'm with Elizabeth - thank god for cable trauma or else I might never get the joy of reading a Stice blog post.

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  7. Ditto, and I'm so happy to read another posting. I'd given up, almost! I'll have to tell uncle Mark, he's one of your biggest fans. Oh, and Annie will want to read this because she's good at computer stuff...love you

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  8. I'm a bit behind, but I loved reading that. If you didn't have a blog or such a wicked sense of humour, I'd have felt more pity instead of just total delight! That is comedy!! Although I'm sure you aged a couple of extra years in the process (this is how I am measuring how stressed I become during specific incidents now, by how many extra months of my life I have depleted)

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