My daughter's wedding is in three weeks. We had her shower at my house today, and it was a smashing success. Much fun was had by all. Then ronebofh and I drove the girls to downtown San Jose, all dressed up in boas and frou frou, for the bachelorette party. As I was driving, I overheard one of the bride's maids tell Rachel, "Rachel, when you were 16 and you thought about how your bachelorette party would go, did you ever think that it would be your mom who would be driving you and your friends downtown to get drunk all night?" That made me chuckle.

So in three weeks, my second-eldest daughter will be the first of my children to marry. I'm very excited about this day. And I know we're going to have a lot of fun.

I will post pictures of the shower when I can get them from the people who took them. I was too busy to take pictures.

I passed the PHR exam!

Boy, I'm glad that's over with.

Inspired by ronebofh's latest post, I went an looked back at all my previous anniversary posts. Some I hadn't tagged, as they were written before LJ offered tagging. So now they are all organized with tags. A fun trip down memory lane.

Ronny and I have been married for 11 years as of today. We don't have any plans, because my son's graduation and my daughter's upcoming wedding are keeping us pretty busy. Elaborate celebration plans or not, it is still a very special day, and we're still an extremely happy couple. I'm amazed every day at how lucky I am to have met and married such a wonderful man.

Congratulations to elmuchacho for graduating from San Francisco State with his BA degree! He worked very hard, and we're very proud of him.

After going to a graduation reading put on by his department, we went to Espetus Brazilian Churrascaria. Really great food, and we had a really great time.

My youngest child just graduated from college. Hooray!

( I guess I need to destress )

Origins: The practice of using gasoline (or kerosene, naptha, benzine, or turpentine) to kill head and body lice...

[...]

In September 1995, 12-year-old Tabitha Kalvas and her 40-year-old mother, Alma Homea, of Fort Worth, Texas, were both ignited by the gasoline used in the home remedy. The child had burns to 80 percent of her body, and the mother had burns to 70 percent. It's possible the mother was smoking while pouring the gasoline on her daughter's head to rid her of lice.

From snopes.com.

I used to watch Star Trek TOS reruns back in high school. It was the only TV show I liked. As far as I was concerned, most TV sucked, but I watched Star Trek every day. As with a lot of things I liked in high school, I knew nobody else who shared my passion. (I also like jazz and R&B during a time when all my friends were really into rock and metal.) As far as I knew, I was a lone trekker. I did not know Star Trek conventions existed, and by the time they became popular enough to be in the news, I was too busy raising my children and I viewed such things as a waste of time and money. However, I still liked the series, and would catch reruns when I had time. The Next Generation came out in the late 80's, but it took me a few years to warm up to it. Eventually I enjoyed both TNG and DS9. Voyager and Enterprise were just OK in my opinion.

Ronny and I went to see the Star Trek film tonight, and I thought it was really good. I love it that Nimoy is still around and was in the film. Chris Pine did a great job playing Kirk, and I loved Zachary Quinto as Spock. (But then I've always loved the Spock character. I had a big crush on Leonard Nimoy as a teen.) I really enjoyed the film, so much so, I'd like to see it again. It is very rare that I'll watch a movie twice.

If someone had told teen-age me that Star Trek would still be around when I was 50, I don't think I would have believed them. Not only is it still around, but it still sucks me in like it used to. I'm very glad that the new movie didn't disappoint me.

My first real boyfriend was a young man from the Philippines by the name of Louie Gonzales. We dated for some months, I can't remember how long to be exact. Then he left to meet his family in Brazil, and the family ended up in Canada. We went our separate ways.

He showed up again in 1994. We remained in contact after that. As a matter of fact, Ronny and I visited Louie on our honeymoon to Montreal and Quebec. We'd talk every few months on the phone, and I would always call him on his birthday. Until about five years ago, when he dropped off the face of the earth.

I've tried to find him, his wife, and his children many times. I've called every person with his name in the Montreal phone book. I google for him every now and then, without any luck. I don't know what happened to him. Today, on his birthday, I mourn the loss of a good friend.

Happy birthday Louie, wherever you are.

I'm making the dresses for the bride's maids and flower girls in my daughter Rachel's wedding. I have had the last two days off. I managed to get one bride's maid dress almost finished yesterday. It is now waiting a first fitting. Today I'm cutting out the dresses for the two adorable flower girls. These will be much more complicated than the big girl dresses, as they are fully lined and have petticoats underneath. The wedding is July 11, so I have plenty of time to finish these dresses, but I'll not be doing much else over the next several weekends, and I'll likely need to take more vacation days before the wedding to wrap things up.

I ordered fabric today from JoAnn's to use as accents on the tables. It's a sheer light aqua blue with darker aqua glittery stars. It's very pretty, and the Ikebana style center pieces I made at the studio will look really nice on them. Rachel wants to have light orange Asiatic lilies for her flowers. At some point I'll post pictures of all this fun!

I'm looking forward to the wedding. My daughter is going to make a beautiful bride. She deserves a beautiful wedding.