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I am just so happy not only for Chris and Charlie, but because I didn’t screw up!! I experimented with the video option on my camera and got a little bit of Charlie’s vows and a little bit of Chris’s. This is compressed for YouTube, and the quality is a better without the compression. In the first one, Chris laughs at the end which gets mostly lost in the compression.

So, here are Chris and Charlie getting ready.

This is my personal favorite. Charlie is leaning in for a kiss and Chris has this great smile, full of mischief.

I liked Charlie in this one. It’s so hard to get shots where both people look good. Usually one person looks good, but the other is blinking, and Charlie in particular, turned out to be quite the blinker.

Here they are, at the altar.

Another altar shot!

It figures that at the moment of truth, IT’S OUT OF FOCUS. I remembered that the “night” option is flattering, something about the coloring, so I switched to that at the end. But every one with that option came out out of focus! It doesn’t matter. I got a lot of shots, this is just a taste, and Charlie’s brother was taking pictures too, so I’m sure between the two of us they’re covered.

Chris, I’ve got hi-res versions of everything for you, so you can do what you like with them, make prints, and so on. And there are more shots than this.

It was great to be there on your wedding day, and thanks for coming back to wait with me at the train station. (The train was late and Chris and Charlie and his brother Danny came back to wait with me. Chris threw the bouquet, and I dropped it so we did a do-over. It still counts. Universe, you are on notice.)

I raise my coffee cup to you both!!

I lit a sparkler in the kitchen. Surprisingly, the cats didn’t run but watched.

In a couple of hours I’m heading out to Long Island, WAY WAY WAY out on Long Island to be there when my oldest and dearest friend Chris gets MARRIED. Charlie proposed a few days before Christmas and they decided to just do it. I have nothing decent to wear because, I just realized, for years all my dressy occasions have been during warm weather. Thank God it doesn’t really matter what I wear. The pressure is on Chris, not me! She bought an off white suit, which I should have pictures of by tomorrow.

Which reminds me. Chris asked me to take pictures. Here’s the thing — when I started out in life I was a photographer. And I didn’t completely suck, but I worked with a view camera and took forever on each shot. Quick, candid shots, not so much. PLUS, most of the shots I’ve been taking lately have been coming out out of focus, and I don’t know why. (You’ll see when I post this funny picture I took of a bunch of firemen the other day. Totally out of focus, but I’m going to post it anyway, because it’s just too good even with the out of focus.)

So I’m terrified that any pictures I take will suck AND be out of focus. And there’s no do-overs on occasions like this.

Anyway, HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!

How can you not be a cat lady with cats like this in the world, I ask you?? They look like little gremlins. I’ll take the whole pack. I got a great day of writing and the gym in on Thursday and then didn’t do a thing yesterday. So today it’s write, write, write again.

[Video removed because the link no longer works.]

Anyone who has cats knows that they love to sit on your work. And two cats, of course, are better able to cover all the possible work piles. Here are Finney and Buddy, limiting my access the best they can, but as you can see I’ve got one free area left. I have foiled their evil plans.

Today is back to work day, I think. No gym, no reading, no TV. Writing. I also want to tinker with my bio on my web page. I don’t think it really says much about me. Howard wrote a bio for his new web pages and it really communicates who he is.

There are a couple of griffins flanking a door on Perry Street, and someone put very undignified Christmas bows on them. For shame, Christmas decorator! The ribbon was pretty, though, I’ll give you that.

I got a bunch of great gifts this year, so yay! Thank you, everyone!

What shall I do today? It almost feels like it’s too soon to work. Like we need a day to recover from all the holiday build-up. I’ve got a bunch of phone calls to make, but the very thought of making them feels intrusive and rude. There must be some kind of quiet work I could do. Ha. I suppose I could always … WRITE.

Or, I could go to the movies.

I’m tv’ed out.

I’ve been working my way through everything Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child have written together. Right now I’m reading Reliquary. Not as great as some of their others, but still good. I wish these guys were my friends so I could ask them questions.

Bottomline: The holidays are over and we can all go back to our mostly normal selves, whatever that was (I just fixed a typo — I spelled “mostly” closer to “monsterly”).