Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

over-achievement

a shark for places

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I have now been back from Europe and installed in my house for close to three days.

I’m slightly afraid to go outside. Half because I know I’m going to compare everything here to Paris and London, and here will lose out in every instance. But also because as I surround myself with my city the impressions of those other places will begin to fade.

Prior to (and during) the honeymoon I was eager to grump that I don’t understand the worth of spending money to go places. Even afterward that’s still true – when I tallied our total expenses last night I almost cried, even though they came out almost exactly as what I estimated.

That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy the places. I loved Paris, and I liked what little of London I saw well enough. I just don’t enjoy vacations – being idle. On our slowest days in Paris I hated it, but when we turned Paris into work – multiple museums and neighborhoods to visit in one day – then I enjoyed being in Paris. When we turned London into a scavenger hunt – snapping photos and visiting shops – then I enjoyed London.

I would love to live in Paris – to be able to enjoy Paris while I am at rest. Paris was the one place I’ve ever been where I felt totally in-place, even as I stumbled through their language in every interaction.

Philadelphia can’t be Paris, no matter how many French books and newspapers I stowed in my garment bag. But I can bring that swim or sink vacation mentality back to Philadelphia – move or drown, create or die.

If I move fast enough, the scenery stops being significant.

out with the old, out with the new

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Being a consumate overachiever, I am usually all over “small changes that can yield big success” articles. Like, whoo boy, sign me up for micro adjustments that cause macro improvements!

Except, at this point I have made every micro-tweak I can make. I am fully tweaked.

Take, for example. a CNN article from yesterday that suggests five simple diet changes that result in 500+ saved calories a day.

Here’s what they suggested, in comparison to what I do.

Old: whole milk
New: 1 percent milk
Me: rice milk

Old: whole bagel
New: half a bagel
Me: low fat granola
(occasionally a bagel with non-hydrogenated, light spread)

Old: chocolate ice cream
New: chocolate yogurt or a Popsicle
Me: soy- or rice-based ice cream, fruit chillers, or nuts

Old: latte made with whole milk
New: latte made with skim milk
Me: chai made with soy milk

Old: be a couch potato
New: take a 20-minute walk
Me: walk 1-3 miles a day

I could continue to match them one for one – they’d say, “eat lean meat,” and I’d say, “eat fish.” They’d say, “no more extra cheese,” and I’d say, “no more cheese.”

Articles like this make me feel okay for being thin, because I have clearly eliminated every source of culinary indulgence from my life already, and have largely found replacements that I prefer to the original gluttonous versions.

(I wish that articles like this could also make me feel like I can stop worrying that I’m going to turn into a giant Italian balloon when I turn thirty like half of my family did, but I’m just going to have keep being anxious about that bridge until it’s crossed.)

My total tweakedness isn’t limited to diet, which means I react similarly to “small changes” articles about budgets or goal setting – I’m excited to read them until I realize they’re preaching to the me of 2003. I’ve made most of these adjustments already because they all dovetail with my concept of living marginally. I suppose it’s my personal version of being green – why waste money and time on frivolous things you don’t even care about, when you’d rather waste them on frivolous things you actually enjoy?

So, to CNN readers I say, “If you like your lattes with whole milk, go ahead and drink them.” Micro changes are nice, but it’s a major change of attitude that’s going to make the biggest difference in your life.

invoke the infield fly rule!

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Hmm.

So, in a bit of Philly surfing the other night I stopped by Philly Future, which featured a link to Fork You, a Philly food blog. And, in checking out the personal blog of its proprietor Scott McNulty – Blankbaby – I found myself thinking, Gee, that names sounds awfully familiar. I wonder how long he’s been around?

The answer to that question is two months longer than me. Which presents a conundrum: is Scott the longest-running blogger in Philadelphia?

Technically, yes – he made 11 posts prior to the launch of this fine establishment. However, said flagship posts were made from Yonkers, New York, not Philadelphia.

Now, let it be known that I am not one to hang on to my tagline via imagination or technicality – after all, that’s why I turned against Ms. Clinton earlier this year. At the same time, I don’t know that it’s fair for any carpetbagger with a long-standing blog to just roll into town and usurp me.

I’m really not sure what to make of this development. Have I been legitimately dethroned? Do we share the title, in different capacities? Have I found my nemesis?

I’m thinking I might have to drop by Fork You Live next Saturday to have a little duel showdown thumb war chat with this “Scott.”

Preoccupational Hazards

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Tonight was my one night off for the week, except I wanted to spend it on – do some blogging, maybe start my next Trio.

That wasn’t meant to be. I had some more pressing concerns to attend to, such as washing dishes and laundry. And, I’m not just talking about from a normal “chore” perspective. No. This was a no drinking glasses left and completely out of pants situation.

You might laugh at my situation. Ha!, you might think, he seems to be so together with his podcasts and his Groom Team, but it’s an illusion! You might continue to gloat, Aside from his yuppy job he’s living the slovenly, disorganized life of a lazy bachelor.

Yet, that’s just not the case – and not just because I’m living merrily in sin with Elise. I’m certainly spending time being clean, orderly, and tenacious outside of my yuppy occupation – it’s just that the time is invested in all of my yuppy pre-occupations.

At this point I have so many non-occupational jobs that it’s not unusual for a week to go by without me even finding the time to do a single load of laundry. Take this week, for example.

I spent half the weekend recording and mixing the four songs in the last two posts, and the other half working on an arrangement for Drexel’s all-female acappella group. Monday I spent a few hours cleaning up the back-end CK, and then I went to a concert of someone who is playing at my wedding. Tomorrow night I’ll be co-hosting an open mic with the other half of Arcati Crisis, and on Thursday I’m the artist liaison at our Lyndzapalooza Fall Mixer.

Did you catch all of that? Recording engineer, transcriptionist, network administrator, event planner, rock star, and A&R rep. That’s six hobbies that I’ve turned into part-time jobs. Hobs? Jobbies?

At least with the latter half of wedding, AC, and LP I knew from the start that I was getting into something that was both time-consuming and rewarding. However, the former three – CK, arranging, and DIY recording – all started out as innocent distractions from the rest of my life. I never meant for them to become staying up until 3am, working until I nod off in my chair sorts of engagements. It just turned out that way.

Is this insane or just slightly abnormal? Do you have jobs aside from what you do for a living and taking care of your home and family? If you do, did you choose to make them a priority, or did they sneakily transform into one over time?

Weary, but without wedding woes.

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I am profoundly tired.

The day that preceded that condition included some crazy legwork at the office, as well as three hours of hosting LP’s new Wednesday night open mic @ Intermezzo at 31st and Walnut.

However, the root cause of the weariness extends back several days, during which I have been trying to squeeze in more content than a day can hold. Much of that content has been wedding-related.

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A year ago I said,

I love all the dire wedding warnings that come from every quarter when you first get engaged. I suppose it’s a cultural hazing thing? I just don’t get it. Each of our favorite weddings were relatively lacking in insanity and drama according to the various brides. Also, we’re both OCD project managers with the same taste in everything.

Right. Remind me to come back and read this post in about twelve months and see what I have to say about it.

Well, I’m back a week shy of one year later to report that I still agree with that sentiment. Maybe you should ask me again in two more months.

In the past year I’ve discovered that weddings don’t have to be difficult projects filled with temper tantrums. We’ve certainly had some stressful moments, and we’ve argued and disagreed over a few things. I’m sure that’s true for every couple, no matter how in-sync they are. Yet, on the whole the entire planning process has been … well, mostly just fun.

It helps that we’re both OCD project managers with experience in communications and event planning. Elise methodically steers the critical path of our overall project plan, and I own a subset of tasks – one of which recently resulted in booking the fantastic Alexandra Day to play our cocktail reception. Anything that deviates from the plan is addressed or eliminated. Several cagey or uncooperative vendors have been jettisoned prior to signing a contract. All four sets of parents have been supportive and barely meddlesome. Whenever we get stuck we ask our parties for advice; they have solved every problem we’ve come up with so far.

The past week has been especially active because we mailed our invites on Monday. They are definitely amongst the top five most awesome wedding invites I have ever laid hands or eyes on. Not coincidentally, all five invites on my most-awesome list were at least partially self-designed and hand-made, with every aspect of their formats customized to the personality of the couple.

Elise and I started discussing our ideas for invites as early as January. At the time our wedding was still fresh news, rendering it the lead-in topic of every conversation. Since invites were one of the few things already underway I was eager to talk about our ideas to everyone. Surprisingly, I heard a handful of puzzlingly dismissive comments, usually along the lines of the following:

Me: “… and, we’re designing and producing our invites by ourselves!”

Them: “Oh, I guess you’re trying to cut costs, huh?”

Me: “Not really. We both do similar projects all day at work; we thought it would be fun to do one together.”

Them: “Yeah, sure, it’s neat when people find a way save money on their wedding.”

Me: “Actually, it’s more about designing exactly what we want.”

Them: “Yeah, sure, and you can do it really cheaply that way.”

Me: “I don’t think we’ll save very much. It’s just that we’ll have control over the quality.”

Them: “Yeah, sure, but they won’t be as nice as invites you buy out of a book.”

Me: “Um… [bangs head against the counter]”

Ultimately we did save some money on materials compared to “customized” wedding invites available from a book or online. But, that wasn’t the point, and it isn’t even a fair comparison. The definition of “custom” in commercially produced invitations is vastly different from our own, which features unique text and layout, high-end specialty paper, a bevy of custom shapes and die-cuts, and hand-embossing.

To get a better sense of how “cheap” our invites really were, I sought out a more realistic comparison. I showed a final invite to one of the senior designers at work and asked her to quote what she would charge to produce them as a freelance project.

Once she was done calling in other members of her team to marvel at our amazing paper, she conservatively estimated that she would have charged at least $700 for the design (not including costs for comps), $500 or more for the time Elise spent on hand-assembly (some of which she would have sent to a vendor for digital die-cut), and a 10-15% markup on our material costs. And, that doesn’t account for our hours of debate over colors, paper weights, fonts, and content, or our extensive usability testing with a series of prototypes,

Essentially, Elise put in the commercial equivalent of more than $1200 worth of woman-power into our invites. If you also factor in her material costs, we just sent out a fleet of invites valued at over $21 a piece, not including postage. And that’s the conservative estimate.

I haven’t done too much market research, but I don’t think that’s very “cheap” in comparison with the industry average, no matter what your definition of “custom.”

I think that even the cost-cutting crowd from above would appreciate all of the effort … if they received an invite. Which they didn’t. Why? Because I cut their rude asses from the guest list months ago … even before we paid for venues, meals, and dresses they were more interested in how much our wedding cost than in how much it was about us.

(Aside from that alteration, our final guest list was nearly identical to the list we originally drafted a year ago this week. Again, why does this cause people stress? It’s pretty simple. First, when you get engaged write out a list of all of the people who you might like to see when you get married, as well as those who want to see you when you get married – not because they expect to be invited or because they are calculating the tab in their heads, but because they care about you. (If you are me you will supply a draft of this list along with the engagement ring.) Then, check with your parents and close friends to see if you forgot anyone important (and by important I mean important to you). Next, stratify your full list in some way – like, small-wedding vs. large-wedding, must-invite vs. should-invite, A-B-C-D lists, 80/20 rule, or whatever. Once you have established a budget and looked at some venues it will be clear which version of that stratified list you can afford to invite. Finally, send invites to those people. The end. If that means you wound up cutting a cousin in favor of a co-worker, so be it. Life goes on.)

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As part of the invite process Elise built a staggeringly detailed web site that matches the overall look of our wedding “campaign,” and on it she placed the first three entries in my series of ten engagement posts.

Seeing as the wedding quickly approaches, I’m thinking I should write the other seven in pretty short order.

And rent a tuxedo. And buy my wedding band.

And go to sleep.