Distractions

I have been a bit distracted lately.

I hope you'll forgive me.

I was busy with this:

And eating lots of this:

Crunch Time

With a week until the wedding, and (probably) just over a month before we set off for Denmark, we've officially reached crunch time.

While our move date is still up in the air a bit, we've been mostly focused on finishing up final wedding details.  With friends and family coming from all over America (Oregon, Ohio, Florida, and more), as well as all over the world (England, Ireland, Denmark, Australia and Mexico will be represented), there are a lot of final details to hammer out to make sure that it's a fun party for everyone.

This, valued reader, is why I've been lax with the blog posts lately.  It's not because I don't love you!  I do!

Thing is, I've never planned anything this big.  I'm not much of a planner in general, actually.  I much prefer to make plans on the fly, based on how I feel in that moment.

So, I've been putting a lot of pressure on myself to get this right.

And with that, I'm off to work on our ceremony programs.

I may post a wedding picture or two within the next couple of weeks.  If you're good.

Panic Mode

You would think, after all of the planning and obsessing about getting everything done early or at least on time, that I would be fully aware of how close to the wedding we are.

But with 2 1/2 weeks to go, and only a week and a half until in-laws from all corners of the globe hit town...

I just realized how much I've forgotten.

COMMENCE PANIC MODE!

I thought all I had to do this morning was to was call up the company we're getting our favors from to freak out about why they haven't been shipped yet... But while taking a moment to relax, I had a horrifying lightbulb:

CAKE!

Normally lightbulbs about cake would be nice, but I realized that I hadn't heard a word from our bakers since our consultation, and I'd put it completely out of my mind.  Good thing I called to, as I hadn't spoken to them since well before the hotel name chance debacle.

Tomorrow, we go to get our marriage license, I go for my up-do hair consultation try-out thing, and then I have my final fitting (Will I fit into my dress?  Only time will tell).

It's only noon, but I could sure use a cocktail.

Getting Personal

In general, when applying for a job in Europe, you're expected to submit a CV (curriculum vitae), as opposed to a simple resume that most American companies expect.

Until now, I've never been in a situation where I've needed to write up a CV, so I've been asking around for some advice.  There are some basic differences that I was already pretty clear on, like including more thorough detail in job descriptions and education, as well as some details about hobbies and interests.

I also learned, however, that Danish employers expect you to get fairly personal on your CV.  Along with details like age and nationality, they expect to see marital status as well.  They even expect you to include a photo when you apply for a job.

Not only that, it seems to be fairly common practice to be asked in an interview if you have children.  If so, they'll ask how many.  If not, they will ask if you're planning on having children.

Let's be honest: I'm clearly a bit of an open book.  I keep a public blog.  I'm not actually personally concerned about answering the personal questions, as I don't think my honest answers will hurt my chances at getting a job.

I do find it surprising, though.  As well as an extraordinarily unsubtle discriminatory tactic.

I wonder if they think we don't know...

Shuffling Off to Buffalo

I'm sitting in the JetBlue terminal at Boston Logan International Airport, waiting patiently for my short flight to Buffalo.

I'm sort of fascinated by airports.  Before last year, I never really spent much time in them.  In fact, before last year, I hadn't flown at all since 2001.  It wasn't a 9/11 related break from flying.  Just circumstance.

They're like casinos.  Little self-contained citied that try to make you feel at home, but completely miss the mark.  For example, there's a Boston themed bar at the Copenhagen airport.  Who decided that was going to be a big draw for Danes or folks traveling in Denmark?

And I always get flustered going through security, but only because I feel like I need an extra set of hands to get all of my stuff into the little buckets, and then to get them back out in time to avoid pissing off everyone behind me.  I imagine frequent flyers have that whole thing down to an art, but I certainly don't.

Now that I'm at the gate, though, and only have to sit and wait for boarding, I've started to get a bit nostalgic.  I'm heading to Buffalo for what might be the last time for a while.  Buffalo is one of the places I've lived that always felt like home.  The people are nice, there's always something to do, and with such a depressed economy, everything is reasonably priced.

This trip is a special one.  Yes, it's my bachelorette party weekend, but I see it as a bittersweet goodbye to a city that has meant a lot to me.

I Want to Go to There

I go back and forth between being seriously stressed about the move to Denmark, and being seriously excited.

Maybe it's the magic of a good night's sleep and a sunny day, but today I feel really positive about the whole thing.

I've gone through a few of the things that I'll miss when we move, but I thought I'd go through a few of the things I'm looking forward to.

1.  Home ownership - My fiance's spent much of the last year or so insisting that what's his is mine, and I've had a tough time really wrapping my head around it.  But I've finally started referring to the flat that he owns in Copenhagen as "our" flat.  I'm looking forward to getting my hands dirty and making it feel like home.

2.  Change of scene - New England just isn't for me.  It never has been.  I've met wonderful people here, but it's never felt right.  I'm excited to find out if Denmark feels more right.

3.  Learning Danish - For real this time.  I've made some minor strides to learn it on my own, but once I'm a legal resident, I can start taking official Danish classes provided by the Danish government.  I'm looking forward to having some structure to my Danish lessons, and classes where everyone is at the same level as I am, so that I don't feel like I'm holding everyone back.

4.  Proximity to history - Europeans love to chuckle at us Americans for being so awed by anything that's older than 50 years old.  Eddie Izzard sums it up beautifully in this clip:

Last year, we stayed in Roskilde, Denmark for a couple of days, and I was amazed by Roskilde Cathedral.  Built in a 12th and 13th centuries, it houses the sarcophagi of hundreds of years of Danish royalty, and was just steps away.  It's one of the most breathtaking places I've seen.  And I look forward to seeing far more.

There is quite a bit more that I'm looking forward to, but now that I've started thinking about how beautiful Roskilde Cathedral is, I figure I'll end this post with a few photos from our visit there.

Be Cool - Go Back to School

I apologize for slacking on posts this month.  So much on my mind right now, but it's been tough to gather all of those thoughts and put them together into a coherent post.

Not that this one will be any more coherent than the rest.  But it's always a goal.

So, apart from the wedding and the move and everything that goes along with those endeavors, the most daunting thing on my mind right now is the prospect of trying to go back to school, once we move and I've learned Danish well enough to be admitted into a program.

It's complicated, both logistically and psychologically, for me to take this plunge.

Logistically, it's a matter of finding out what I qualify for financially.  This has brought up the somewhat controversial question of SU.  SU is a government agency/program that provides a stipend for Danish students attending university in Denmark.  That bit isn't all that controversial in Denmark.  The Danes pay high taxes, and this (on top of free tuition) is a benefit that they see from those taxes.  It becomes controversial when you're a foreigner who is potentially also eligible.  According to the SU website, I may be able to receive this stipend as well, since my fiance is an EU citizen.  If I am given "equal status" to that of a Dane because of my marriage to him, then I would be eligible to receive all (or most) of the benefits that a tax-paying Dane would receive, without having grown up there and paid taxes there my whole life.  That being said, we will be living and paying taxes there starting this summer, and have no specific plans to leave, so this issue is far less controversial in my mind than it is for many Danes and expats.

The psychological complications with this school thing are far more complex and irritating.  It's all about insecurity.

Worrying about whether or not I would even get into a music program makes me scared to try.  Truth is, I realized recently that I'm the musical version of the jock whose career peaked in high school.  All of my major musical accomplishments happened when I was a junior and senior, with some minor overflow into my first 2 years of college.  Most of the friends that I've met in the last 10 years have never even heard me sing (bad karaoke doesn't count).

The logistical issues are issues that I can deal with through research and patience.

The insecurities will take a bit more to get past.