My summer is officially full

I just made arrangements to go to New York for a couple of days with a friend next week. Eeek!!! I have never been to New York before, but this time-limited opportunity (with free lodging in Newark, which isn't so bad a commute, or so I'm told) was too good to miss. Plus, I get to see my whip-smart, well-read friend Melissa, which is awesome.

(I have to take a break here and tell you a story about Melissa, because this is a good one. Melissa and I met in Korea, but the first Memorial Day Weekend after 9/11, I visited her and her husband and infant son in Washington, D.C. They showed me as much of this GORGEOUS city as they could in a long weekend, and then on the way back to the airport, Melissa and I started talking about Bush and American politics. This was before Iraq. And folks, she KNEW that Bush would fuck it up. [Sorry, I can't even ---- it out.] She fretted that he would fuck it up, said she was inconsolable the first time Bush was "elected", and I told her that no, it wouldn't be so bad after all, not because Bush is basically an okay guy [because, DUDE, the writing was on the wall], but I sincerely believed that there would be other politicians and bureaucrats and world leaders who'd be able to keep things from going into the pisser. Well, y'all [Melissa's from Virginia], we all know how THAT'S turned out, right?)

Anyway, after New York, there is a stag and doe that I will attend as the official photographer (please, gods, just a few photographs that I can be proud of), then a family reunion the next weekend, then zoom! I'm off to Seattle for a visit with my brother, sister-in-law, and my niece and nephew. Friends and Internet vagabonds, I can't tell you how much I am looking forward to this! This may involve some middle-of-the-night helping because there are only so many months you can go with a few hours of sleep a night, y'all (okay, I'm getting carried away, I know), and so I will don my SuperAuntie! cape (DA TA DA DA!!!) and insist on helping. Needless to say, the first weekend back in Toronto will have NOTHING SCHEDULED.

And then, the last weekend of August, I have my very first stint as a wedding photographer. So the weekend before THAT will be spent nervously trying to anticipate every possible thing that could go wrong. Folks, please keep your fingers crossed for me, or at least for the poor fools who thought I could photograph their wedding. (I tried to dissuade them, I really did!) Just thinking about this makes my stomach lodge in my throat.

And then Labour Day weekend - which I may need to recuperate from my boss being on vacation the last two weeks of August + the wedding. (This past week was the first time my boss was on vacation that I didn't get sick from the stress of doing my job + whatever I could of his, but I think that's because I slept so much the weekend before and after.)

And sometime in mid-August, songbird migration begins again ...

HOLY CRAP I'M GOING TO BE BUSY!