PS – Still recovering from Board Games Night with Andrew and Kathleen last night. At least both my teams – Pictionary and Scrabble – were victorious. I think “Treasure tits!” ranks up there with “Baby fish mouth!” in terms of all-time bad Pictionary guesses, though…

Cancel the hog trough.
As the news should’ve reached most of our immediate family by now, I guess it’s safe to let the cat out of the bag. It didn’t seem to come as a surprise to most people, so I doubt it’ll shock you folks… but for the record, yes, the Snook and I will be getting married in Las Vegas in two months. By Elvis. And yes, it’ll be broadcast live on the Internet so you’ll all get to watch. Fun, huh?

Addendum: I forgot to add a HUGE thank you to my sister Amy, who kindly consented to let her thunder be stolen a little bit so we could get married on the way to her wedding. She’s the bomb, yo.Now for those of you wanting romantic details, there are none. No one “proposed” to anybody else, and no jewelry has changed hands. I mean, eww. That just isn’t us. So here’s the story: We first discussed getting married three years ago when we were planning the move to Australia. It was along the lines of a, “Hmm, you wanna stop in Vegas? Well, I will if you will,” kinda thing. It turned out that we didn’t need to do it for the visa, so we didn’t. The issue was always kinda out there though, especially as my family kept asking us why we didn’t. Basically it was because we didn’t have any good reason. We’re not religious. Our “defacto” status (which basically means “common-law marriage”) in Australia pretty much ensures us the same legal rights as if we were married. Politically, I find it despicable that the government (of both the US and Australia) wants to restrict marriages to heterosexuals. Every time John Howard or George Bush starts talking about the sanctity of marriage and the importance of procreation I start to see red and dry heave. I don’t have any desire to be the shiny princess in a white dress and get handed to a husband like a piece of property. (Just my take; no offense to those who want the fairytale.) So why the change of heart?

Really, I think it was at Rodd’s Aunt Linda’s birthday party a few weeks ago. Her girlfriend Sue made a speech and then proposed to her in front of all their family and friends. I kept thinking about it for days. I mean, they can’t legally get married. So what was the point of proposing? Obviously it was a big moment for them. Why? Eventually I came to the conclusion that it was the fact of making it all public. We knew they’d been off-and-on for years, but now Sue was telling everyone that she intended to be there for the long haul, that she was making a public commitment to be with this person from now on. And I saw the good in that. Linda knew that Sue was willing and unembarrassed to tell the world how she felt about her. They also knew that by making their relationship “public property” in a way, that there was now the pressure to make it work. We know how they stand. That’s a good thing. And I decided that if it’s good for them, it’d be good for us.

So that was pretty much it. I told the Snook what I’d been thinking about, and that I felt I’d finally reached a reason that I could live with. He agreed. And since we always said that we’d only do it if we could get married by Elvis in Vegas… the rest sorta fell into place. So no, no proposal on bended knee or shiny three-months-worth-of-salary blood diamond. Just a shy decision inspired by a couple of lesbians. That’s one to tell the grandkids, huh?

Many thanks to Mary-Helen for stopping by in the shop today to say “hello.” Some days a friendly face really makes a big difference!

Ack. I forgot that Roald Dahl‘s birthday was on Monday! If any of you Sydneysiders are interested, Amy has put together a Dahl exhibit at the Mosman Public Library using a lot of my Dahl materials. (Memo to Self: Get down there and take a picture…)

For, uh, no special reason or anything (*cough cough*), I’ve been doing some research on knitting cables without a cable needle. I guess I’ll give that a shot tomorrow. Can’t go any slower than I am now, huh?

Good: Schlubby Vince Vaughan in a flannel shirt. Hummina!
Bad: Snookums (jokingly) making me do ten squats before I could have some gelato, thus causing me to strain my hip because I’m disgustingly weak.

Can I just say that our “TiFaux” has officially changed my life? Now when I watch TV, I have a whole backlog of shows that I actually want to watch! Time-shifting is the bomb. This allows me to watch a lot more TV in less time, which gives me additional good feelings because I feel, like, efficient. Recent TV thoughts:

• Days of Our Lives – Oh my, could I have picked a better week to re-start watching Days? The Australian version has always been about four years behind the US one, which is convenient since that’s about when I stopped watching. Yet for some reason Channel 9 has decided to fast-forward through, like, 1200 episodes to catch us up to the US timeline. Thus yesterday we had Drake Hogestyn (with some nameless Aussie tart) hosting a special where they filled us in on all the storylines we’ll be missing. It was awesome. Kate married Roman? Austin jilted Sami? John and Marlena and Bo and Hope and Jack and Jen got married again? (Talk about 80’s redux.) Sheesh. At the end they filled us in on the whole “Salem Stalker” storyline that’s been going on for the past year, as well as revealing – dun, dun, dunnn – who the killer is. Shocking! I love it. I’m sad that they killed off some nice characters, but really, Maggie Horton hasn’t done anything but annoy me since Mike left. But hey, what’s up with the new Mickey? And who’s this “Bonnie” that he’s hanging out with? Isn’t she “Adrienne”, who used to play Patch’s sister back in the 80’s? Good grief, I can’t believe I knew that.
• The O.C. – This show is so great. The Snook and I actually high-fived during the big “Luke’s gay dad” reveal. How can they be cramming all the best teen drama cliches into the first year of episodes? Where the hell can they go next? We actually get two episodes this week, which makes me hope that Channel 10 is burning through them in time to get us relatively caught up with the US for the second season. (Secret confession: I prefer Anna to Summer, but I have a sinking feeling that Seth’s going to end up with the hoochie-mama. Smart girls always lose out.)
• Australian Idol – I haven’t really been paying much attention to the show this year but I happened to catch the live show last Sunday. Holy crap, everyone on it is really good! At least last year there were a couple definitively “evil” people to root against (like Cosima and Shannon). This year they’re all really nice and talented! I was actually worried going into last night’s verdict show. My favorite is Marty (for his bald head and geeky song choice) but there aren’t many that I think deserve to leave. Thank God it was Dan. I would have preferred Hayley – who seems a little Cosima-like in her ambition and cool demeanor – but Dan sunk himself when he dared to sing Creed. What was he thinking? Ideally, next to go will be Hayley and then Daniel (the opera minger with chimpanzee hair). Everyone else is too good!

Now I’m off to indulge in yet some more low-brow entertainment. The Snook and I are going to see Dodgeball and we plan to laugh ourselves silly! (Don’t tell the intelligentsia, but we find people getting whacked in the nuts pretty funny.)

Huh. So this is what everybody in Chippendale is going to look like in ten years. Neat.

Oh, Spike. *sob* I feel like Drusilla when she realized how lame you were for liking Buffy.

Kevin pointed me to this excellent review of the new Star Wars original trilogy DVD box set. I especially liked the shots showing exactly what George has changed from the original. Greedo still shoots first (but only barely), Jabba looks better in the new scenes, Ian McDiarmid has been inserted as the emperor, and (yuck) Hayden Christensen appears as Anakin’s ghost. It’s going on the wish list…