well i think i've just finished the first chapter of my crazy wedding stories, i'm sure it won't be the last. i guess everyone has these kinds of stories, the priest that shows up drunk, the wedding dress that gets "lost", the dj who plays inappropriate songs. anyway, here's mine:

so we've been trying to figure out who will perform our wedding right in kauai. our first thought was to fly out one of the rabbis we know from l.a. to perform the ceremony but that's really expensive because you have to pay for their flight, hotel, etc. but we found out there's a cantor on the island who can perform jewish weddings, so we thought we'd check him out first. i mean why pay all that extra if you can use someone local?

so daniel emailed him about month ago, saying hi, we're so and so, natalie's converting, blah blah we'd like to find out if you can perform weddings, etc. it was a very respectful, and friendly email. and the reply we got back was, get this: a HUGE big block of text that he's cut and pasted of a sample ceremony he can give with "enter bride's name here" in it kind of thing. not evn a hello, not a thank you for contacting me, not a i'm happy to do this, nothing. just a big slab of text.

we were totally taken aback by that impersonal response and said well just forget it, we'll figure something else out. but then as time progressed, and we got prices on some other things for the wedding, we realized we were rapidly going over budget. i wanted to cut out flying the rabbi in and see if we could try this cantor again, give him another chance. and since we are going to kauai next week i thought we should at least plan on meeting with him and see if we like him once we see him in person. not everyone comes across well in a digital format, i know that.

so i send a super nice email and said hi, remember me, we got your sample ceremony email, thank you so much (even though i'm thinking, thank you for what). we're both coming to hawaii between feb 14-17 and would love to meet with you if possible and discuss the ceremony. and by the way what is your fee, and where does it go? (most rabbis don't charge a fee, but they ask that you donate what you can afford to the synagogue). and then thank you very much, look forward to meeting you, etc. i mean it was a really nice email.

and he writes back. : My fee for performing a wedding is $300. which basically covers my time to set things up, get to the wedding site and back and handle the paper work. Because of my work schedule I do not as a rule meet with the couple as I really don't have the time and I would prefer to not have to charge the couples more for my time. The money goes to me so it is not tax deductible." that is his entire email.

i emailed him back, really short and just said "sorry for using up your valuable time. we won't be using your services. i can't imagine being married by someone who won't take the time to meet with us first. good luck to you." and i could have said SO much more but i held back. i thought this guy is a jerk, he doesn't deserve more of my time, forget about him. we'll figure something else out.

and just when you thought it was over...last night, he emailed DANIEL! as daniel and sent him the first email originally from his own email account. and said, i think you should see this correspondence from natalie, i don't think her behaviour is called for, etc. i was SO LIVID when i saw that i was practically bouncing off the walls.

so what, all of a sudden his ego is bruised so he needs to go to DANIEL and starts acting all surprised, like hey, what is this misunderstanding when really i'm such a nice guy? please!

and you know what makes me more mad than anything, more than his incredible rudeness, more than the way he treats the people he is going to marry as insignificant and mere irritants? is that he wrote to DANIEL. behind my back! as if Daniel is my keeper! like, you know, control your crazy emotional woman. where does he get off?

anyway, here comes what i hope is the end of this story. daniel wrote him a response last night that we hope will be the last of our correspondence with him. he was really calm about it but he stated really clearly that he and i feel the same way, he was completely aware of my email and we are on the same page about the reasons why we don't want him to perform our wedding. and that what he did was wrong, and we have come to expect more from someone who is a representative of the jewish religious faith.

end of chapter one.


  posted by natalie @ 10:04:00 AM

 



sea dragons! they're so cool. i know the photo doesn't really do it justice, but it has this amazing trumpet like snout, and these fairy wings stemming from it's back and it's belly. so beautiful and strange. we saw a bunch of sea dragons at the Aquarium of the Pacific yesterday, where we battled the hordes of stampeding children and wandered around for a few hours. definitely worth the drive down the long beach. we got to touch bat rays, and leopard sharks, and got to see all kinds of scary sharks and playful seals and clever otters and and and. it was really amazing.

  posted by natalie @ 11:42:00 AM

 
"The unfortunate thing is it had to be decided by them," O'Neal said of the officials. "A whole bunch of people who paid a lot of money had to see a game that was decided by someone who doesn't make a lot of money. That's unfortunate."

this is exactly why i don't like the lakers. i know it's about the most uncouth thing a girl who lives in l.a. can say but it's true, i root for the rockets (oh no!), the clippers (shut up!) and more than any other team, the kings (blasphemy!). i like confidence, but arrogance isn't attractive.

  posted by natalie @ 11:24:00 PM

 
natalie hearts daniel.

it's official, we're getting married! and chances are, if you are visiting sugarchicken, you're invited. so bust out the flip flops and spf 45, we're heading to hawai'i.

  posted by natalie @ 2:24:00 PM

 
"Someday, there'll be no Americans left in the NBA," said 12-year-old Xing Tao, who joined his school's team two weeks ago after watching Shanghai's own Yao in a televised NBA game.

"The players will all be Chinese, like Yao!"

  posted by natalie @ 9:20:00 AM

 
i learned something kind of interesting this weekend at our Shabbaton (shabbaton = sabbath + marathon x way 2 long). do you remember the vulcan hand gesture that spock used to make on star trek, with his hand held up, palm out, ring finger and pinkie together, index finger and middle finger together, and then those are held apart in a vee? leonard nimoy, the actor who played spock, grew up in an orthodox Jewish family and first saw this sign in his synagogue. the gesture represents the hebrew letter "shin" and has been used for about 3 thousand years by descendants of the Kohainim tribe as a blessing over the congregation. there are all these funny things i'm discovering that make me psyched about becoming Jewish.

nimoy, on choosing the oldest known gang sign as part of his spock character: “Actors are always looking for something personal to bring to their professional lives…Maybe, in a way, I can call that salute my Vulcan shalom, my greeting of peace, my yearning for the blessing of peace—the age-old quest of the Jewish people, my people.”

  posted by natalie @ 5:06:00 PM

 
someone reminded me today of a trip i once took to jamaica with my mom when i was 5. there are a couple things i remember from that trip:
1) there was a nice family we used to meet down around the pool, a mother and father and these 2 twins they adopted from sri lanka, a boy and a girl. they won their trip to jamaica off a box of corn flakes.
2) the twins were great swimmers, they were like fish in the water and i was always jealous. so my mom made a pact with me, if i could swim the full length of the pool by the end of our holiday she would buy me set of dominos which i had been coveting. on the last day of our trip, about 15 minutes before we had to get on our bus to get to the airport to fly home, i did it. i think i used the dominos for a couple of weeks.
3) the resort we went to had this weird money system where you would exchange dollars for these plastic bananas and then you'd just pay with bananas all over the resort. the bananas hooked into each other so you could wear them around your neck or wrist. the first night we got there i asked my mom if i could wear some and she said yes. but then she freaked out because i wanted to wear like 500 dollars worth of bananas or something and i really didn't get what the problem was with that.
4) somehow, one night i ended up off on my own, sitting in a circle with a bunch of adults playing a drinking game. i remember someone wrote my name on my leg in blue paint and that they let me skip my turn when i was supposed to drink.
5) one little excursion we took was to hike up a waterfall. but i bailed out after only a couple hundred feet, well below the top because i was bawling like well, like a kid, and i was afraid i would either get swept away by the rushing water which for the adults was up to their knees but on me was up to my armpits, and i thought i was going to step on a frog.
6) i entered a seashell contest at the resort and won a certificate for "Smallest Shell Collection". we have a photo of that momentous occasion where i'm sitting looking very forlornly at about 6 shells on a table that's eye-level to me.
7) i learned how to play shuffleboard and LOVED it. my mom kept making retiree in florida jokes, but i didn't care. that shit was addictive.

and my mom thinks all our trips were wasted because i can't remember anything important. come on mom! this is formative stuff.

  posted by natalie @ 5:08:00 PM

 
for those of you who may happen to be in london, u.k. tomorrow, you can take in the first public autopsy since 1830. that is, unless scotland yard caves into all the pressure from an outraged public and decides to stop it from happening. if they decide to let it happen though, you can watch as professor gunther van hagens dissects the preserved body of a 72 year old man and then passes his organs around the operating theatre. you probably want to skip on the fish n'chips and pint of bitter until after the show is over.

dear daniel will miss this event but are planning on seeing gunther's BodyWorlds exhibit when we get to london in the first week of december. lucky for us they extended the show dates, otherwise we were going to just squeak in before closing on the last day of the show. we're pretty excited to see it - partly because we're both fascinated by the way the body works (and how it sometimes doesn't), and also in large part because our friend chris saw it recently and came home just raving about it. i'll be sure to post about it when i return from our hop over to the otherside of the pond. pip pip.

oh and i just emailed a friend/old-coworker who lives in london now and she has the BEST email address. it's somecowtookmyname@blahblah.com. she's a writer, and she's funny.

  posted by natalie @ 2:00:00 PM