We are back! I hope you are well and life has been treating you to even just a little of the joy that we have had over the last few weeks.
I promise you will hear all about our adventures both from the wedding and our adventures in the US of A shortly. The 14+ hr flight has really done a number on us today but I wanted to say hi and to share this little video with you. It seemed appropriate somehow when we were watching it earlier today that I share it – since we just came back from the US and today we bought tickets to this.
The whole video just made me laugh so hard. Have a fabulous weekend
So this is happening today! Let the celebration of our love begin.
Richard,
If in the morning when you wake,
If the sun does not appear,
I will be here.
If in the dark we lose sight of love,
Hold my hand and have no fear,
I will be here.
I will be here,
When you feel like being quiet,
When you need to speak your mind
I will listen.
Through the winning, losing,
and trying we’ll be together,
And I will be here.
If in the morning when you wake,
If the future is unclear,
I will be here.
As sure as seasons were made for change,
Our lifetimes were made for years,
I will be here.
I will be here,
And you can cry on my shoulder,
When the mirror tells us we’re older.
I will hold you,
to watch you grow in beauty,
And tell you all the things you are to me.
We’ll be together and I will be here.
I will be true to the promises I’ve made,
To you and to the one who gave you to me.
I will be here.
What a gorgeous poem by Steven Curtis Chapman, just perfect for how I feel right now.
Bruno Mars I love this song but it will not feature today …. as it is feels like it is featuring in every wedding this year. Oh and marrying Richard is the smartest thing I have ever or will ever do with my life. But I love your song, its so joyful.
When I look ahead at August 2012 I see 3 major events happening:
After four years my very last day working at FIA on 21 August
Our wedding on 25 August
We get on a plane and head off to the US of A for the most incredible honeymoon 28 August (arrive home 21 September)
What more can a girl say. It’s going to be an huge, emotional month and I pray for the patience and sense to not miss a moment of it. Here’s to the closing of one chapter and the opening up to all of the possibilities of life as Alys Holz.
Don’t forget to follow my Photo a Day adventure where I try to capture some of the fun.
Have you found Fat Mum Slim’s Photo a Day challenge? Its a simple as it sounds – Fat Mum Slim shares the prompt list and then every day you take the prompt and take a cool photo.
To keep track of the month leading up to the wedding I am going to partake this August. I’ll share them daily on Instagram and weekly here on the blog. Join in or follow #photoadayaug on Twitter.
I think its a good idea to get you taking photos of randomness. Just looking through the list there are some really cool prompts and some that are honestly quite scary. I mean how do I take an interesting photo of a hole?
Head over and visit Fat Mum Slim to read more of the story.
I missed the Sydney markets in June and if we hadn’t just been away I would be begging Richard for us to get on a plane to Brisbane for this weekends Finders Keepers markets. If you are in the area why not head on over to The Old Museum, Cnr Bowen Bridge Road & Gregory Terrace, Herston. 10am – 4pm Sat 7 and Sun 8 July.
Isn’t that image amazing!!!! Designed by Amy Borrell over at Cake With Giants. Is it just me or would that make an amazing tattoo? It could work, I love that story.
This past weekend saw Melbourne’s first Comic-Con, a name synonymous with nerds, cosplay, guest stars and (to an ever decreasing margin) comics. To attend one of these for the first time is an experience unlike any other, but it is not one that is perfect, idyllic or in certain circumstances, even enjoyable.
The Melbourne Oz Comic-Con had its fair share of problems, and if you were to follow its Facebook page you would see some world class “nerd rage” over what some people perceived as a mismanaged event. While those displeased are clearly the loudest, it is unclear if they are the majority, so in the sake of fairness we present the Top 5 and Bottom 5 of Oz Comic-Con.
Top 5
5.) Exhibitors
One thing Oz Comic-Con had that was similar to almost any exhibition, conference or show was people out to sell their wares. Which can range from great – where you find a company you knew nothing about that fills a need you didn’t even know you had – to “gouging” price wise. Oz Comic-Con leaned more to the former, and while the latter was present, none of the sellers ever felt particularly pushy. Most were content on letting the flow of traffic browse their wares with a passing conversation and not an attitude of “buy it or GTFO”.
4.) The guest photos and signings
Disclaimer – This does not refer to the organisation, lines or waiting associated to the photos and signings but for the guests themselves. All the guests were great, willing to make brief banter with guests who had been waiting hours to see them, and extra props to Patrick Stewart and Stan Lee in particular, who crammed as many photos and signings as humanly possible, even after the organisers oversold their ability to do so. They exuded professionalism, even under pressure and duress.
3.) Guest panels
Some guests treated the panels like acting jobs, others like a personal Q&A session, but every one of them brought something fun and entertaining to the table. The Australian attendees may not be as chatty question-wise as their American counterparts, but the guests took it in their stride and were always gracious and thorough in their answers.
2.) Prepurchase of VIP and Platinum Tickets
There were a lot of things that Oz Comic-Con did wrong ticket wise – overselling, mismanaged lines and many more things that belong in the second part of this article – however one good thing they had was the ability to buy a bypass for the queues under the title of “VIP” and “Platinum” tickets. While far more expensive, and having to be bought well in advance, these VIP and Platinum passes were worth their weight in gold, if you are someone who considers time to be money. Being able to sleep in until 10am and then make your way straight in, as well as the ability to walk out mid-day and come back without having to re-queue makes a world of difference.
1.) The people and cosplayers
Regardless of being a regular or VIP attendee, if you went to Oz Comic-Con, you would have spent at least an hour waiting in a queue for something. Being able to watch cosplayers and try to guess who they were dressing up as, and how they found the time to make such extravagant costumes (as well as in some special cases, what degree of sneeze intensity would send them flying out of their costume) made lining up that much more bearable.
In the same regard, standing next to the same person for hours on end often opened the floodgates to conversation, and easily the best thing about Oz Comic-Con were the people who attended it. Brought together by a common interest, the conversations that arose were just as interesting and enjoyable as anything the organisers came up with.
Bottom 5
5.) People
Normally as a rule, I’m against murder. However when facing the prospect of having the person in front of you drop dead meaning that there’s one less person between yourself and your goal – only 5 metres away, but a twenty minute wait – you begin to see the perks. As stated above, when in a queue you can normally generate a rapport with those around you, yet when you’re just trying to get through a queue blocking an entrance (as often faced by the VIP and Platinum ticket holders) people just become a mass of angry, rude and pushy bodies. If you are somewhat of the “meeker” temperament (as many nerds are) you may find having to push people to the side to simply get to where you need to be a quite dehumanising experience. We did.
4.) Branding
Simply put, the branding looked cheap. The website went down at a the drop of a hat, the social media control was nearly non-existent and the whole lead up felt like it was being winged one day at a time. Some would say “oh it’s their first time” and that excuse goes a little way, but as someone in the advertising field, I can say the logic in successful companies is “If I don’t know how to really do it, hire, find or ask someone who does”. It comes across as cheap, arrogant or greedy if you don’t.
For all the condemning, this really is constructive criticism; it’s an area that can be improved. Don’t just use mates who can use iMovie or give you a freebee website – Rebrand, get better servers and hire a marketing person or company to just deal with this aspect and the event will only grow.
3.) Treatment of VIPs
The pre-bought VIP tickets were a wonder for queue jumping, the exclusive sessions and in theory were a great idea. The problem came with the execution of those ideas – no effort was made to separate VIP queues from regular admission and the instruction given to all VIPs of “Just go to the front of the queue and talk to the volunteer there” is at best not thought out and at its worst actually a worse experience than just lining up normally, as there was no way to get to the “front” of the queue without pushing all the way from the back against people who had no intention of letting you through (See: 5.) People).
2.) The dinners
At Oz Comic-Con there was an opportunity to have dinner with a celebrity. This option was not cheap and engendered certain expectations. Our guests (Sir Patrick Stewart and his son, Daniel) were much like the ride at the beginning of Jurassic Park – one no-show and one who felt ill and couldn’t stay long. Much like the dinosaurs in that film, I had no hard feelings towards the men who didn’t come or couldn’t stay long; they are humans who were jetlagged and had worked a very long day.
The distain here fell to the organisers who came across as simply greedy. They put as many people on two tables as physically possible so it was often difficult to hear or see the celebrity. The event was not cheap and yet something as simple as drinks were not included (this surprised even Sir Patrick Stewart, who at the beginning of the evening when asked if he wanted a drink exclaimed “We ALL need drinks here!”). A round table with drinks, a private room, fewer people, not making the celebrity work a 12 hour day (and if necessary up the price to compensate) would have resulted in 12 glowing reviews instead of 30 negative ones.
(As a side note, to anyone at that dinner, all I can say is thank you – the conversations with you all during and after dinner made the whole event a good learning experience, rather than a massive disappointment.)
1.) Signage
Recently humanity came up with an amazing machine that could help with relaying instructions. You should look into it.
Thinking about: all of the things that need doing before the wedding. The amount of work to do both at home for the wedding/honeymoon and at work is mind numbing. Sometimes, when it all gets too much, I just have to sit with my head in my hands and stop. My parents used to say to me “how do you eat an elephant?” the answer “One bite at a time”. While I know this logic works sometimes it can be hard to not chew on that elephant and think Ï will never finish eating all this before it goes off”. A lot of people (including Richard who has been unbelievable) have been so helpful to us in getting us organised and I am so grateful to them. To be completely honest with you though I wouldn’t have it any other way and I would genuinely regret it later in life if I hadn’t been a driving force in pulling the day together, it will be a proper celebration of us because we did it. I would never give that up.
Motivation: that at the end of all of this work I will be Mrs Alys Holz! It is really important to remember that, because it is the MOST IMPORTANT THING! Everything else that seems so important right now really isn’t, what matters is that by the end of August we will be married.
Watching:it tends to be in the background but we are still working our way through House MD (8 seasons takes a long time to get through). There are also new episodes of Once Upon a Time, Big Bang Theory, Colbert Report, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Conan for our viewing pleasure. Not really focusing on any one thing at the moment but and I look forward to a marathon of something once the wedding is over and we get our weekends back.
Obsessing over: the little details for the wedding. We’ve done all the big things so now everything is about the little details. With two months to go now is the time to order any supplies we need online and to start making the rest of them ourselves. I am so glad that we have a venue with a planner and decided to invest in a decorator. Not only does it mean that we have professionals looking after us but it also means at the end we aren’t going to have a room full of wax lanterns.
A good cause: I adore our Rorschach, he really is our first child, and I cannot imagine ever hurting him. I know though that he is lucky. Not every animal is treated with love the way he is. There are a few charities out there working hard to protect animals but I personally support the RSPCA. I am attracted to the fact that they run both on the ground, practicial programmes to care for and protect animals. As well as the national campaigns around public and government awareness of animal cruelty and protection. I am not a vegetarian though I do believe in trying, where I can, to buy from suppliers who care about animals too. The RSPCA’s Shop Humane campaign around humane foods is a great one, find out more on their website.
Praying for: good weather for the wedding. It doesn’t have to be dry as our venue is indoors (but not) and I think rain in wedding photos can look good. But I really don’t want to walk along George St in my dress with the risk of it getting wet. I am already having to line up my entire family to carry my dress so it doesn’t touch the ground – it cannot be dirty before I even arrive – adding rain to the mix just makes me nervous. So here is to a gorgeous day with plenty of sunshine and that lovely nearly spring weather you so often get at the end of August.
Wishing: scientists had figured out how to clone people, I could really use 3 of me rught now. They need to be clones of me rather than assistants for the simple fact that I don’t have time to supervise more people, I just need bodies to get the work done. At least if they were all me I would know that they would think/react/purchase the same way as I would. As long as there was a clear plan of who was looking after what for work/wedding/honeymoon/life we would get it done and be a great team.
Listening to/Reading: Enders Game by Orson Scott Card but as an audio book. The book itself is fantastic. I barely believe that it was originally written in the 80s, it really could be set now the story is so relevant to now. Audio books are something to get used to, and I am still working on it.
Quote of the week goes to Crown Princess Mary of Denmark at one appearance this week in Sydney. Watch the little video, sound is terrible but it did crack me up.
Just hoping that this weekend neither of us have to work. Doesn’t sound like much to ask but it sort of is at the moment.
A few blogs I follow have linked to this article. I figured that was the universe telling me to read it. Now I think you should too – heartbreaking and inspiring.
HM Queen Elizabeth II and HRH Prince Philip have been in Australia this week, wish I’d gone to see her in Sydney but hope colleagues in Perth enjoy the public holiday
Photo taken by Richard on his lunchbreak recently from Milsons Point. I used to work in MP as well and remember the view well.
