Le sigh. I've found a minute

Hello readers. We're hunkered down in the house, it's been snowing like mad here. As you can see from the lead photo. Since I didn't derby tonight, I decided that I needed some good exercise. So, I shoveled. The whole driveway. And the sidewalk. And when I finished, another it had snowed another inch. But I bought some awesome Sorel Joan of Arctic boots and I wore snow pants and my bubble goose and I was set.

This was one of the first days here. This is Tim in the fall courtyard.

I started my new job at Hathaway Brown two about a week and a half ago. It's wonderful. I've already worked on book orders, met with my mentor group a few times, got the Hathaway Book Council excited about the up coming year, will be doing a book talk on Jane Eyre and the creative fiction that came out of it, tomorrow (to two sophomore classes!) and set up some info lit classes with the seniors in the international relations class. And that's about half of what I've done. Much more, but, I'll save it for later. I actually have to go to bed soon because my new hour of wakefulness is around ten of six. But I love my new job. It really was the right choice - even as I hear about more horror stories about budgets at Brooklyn Public Library. Stay strong librarians.

And here is kitty in the fall courtyard - he is doing just great by the way!

I've added random pictures to this blog - sorry, nothing inside the house yet. I don't really want to capture everything on my camera phone.. perhaps santa will bring me a digital camera for Christmas? I'll write more soon, hopefully over the weekend. Oh wait! We'll be decorating THIS:

this weekend! Hooray!

Happy Homeowners!!

My dear readers,

We are homeowners. Tim and I arrived safely last Saturday night in Cleveland Heights. Our drive was really un-eventful. Kitty was awesome, just some meows initially, but he slept or was seething (I don't really know) the rest of the way. We drove across 80 into a beautiful sunset and made it to our (OUR) home (HOME!) in about 8 hours. Our first night here, with our limited supplies, we made grass-fed burgers with Amish cheese and a tiny salad and some Christmas Ale. We sat on the floor of our dining room. It was quite magical.

On Sunday, we drove the rental car to the Home Depot, bought some gloves and a rake and took care of our very leafy yard. We have a giant oak tree in the back yard and it decided to shed all of it's leaves in our driveway and in our gutters. Time to get to work. We cleaned out the gutters (yes, that's me on the roof)
and raked all of the leaves and felt quite happy with ourselves. We met up with Johnny for dinner at the restaurant in Ohio City for dinner and nearly fell asleep on his couch (we still didn't have any furniture). It's still very strange to drive (DRIVE) home (HOME)!

Car shopping was awesome. We test drove two cars - the Hyundai Elantra Touring, a sassy little wagon, and the Toyota Matrix. We ultimately chose the Hyundai, as I felt the Matrix was a bit of a death trap. Here we are with our awesome car salesman Charlie. And below that, a picture of Tim and me with our new car. It's pretty wild.

Totally rocking the wagon

So much more to tell you my dear readers. My parents visited us this weekend and brought a washer and dryer. Tim and I did laundry today, and I snapped this photo of mr. beans when I was walking back upstairs with my lamper (laundry basket/hamper).

We learned a lot about the plumbing in our house when we connected the washer, another trip to Home Depot and Target for laundry supplies, a leveler, and a mop. Our next big purchase will be a shovel, as it is supposed to snow this weekend!

I'm very sleepy tonight readers. We have two more rooms to unpack - Tim's office and my imagination room - the place where I can hide and read, sew, make fun crafty things, and write blogs or attempt NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month).

I will write more soon, but I wanted to share some photos and let you know that we are quite happy. The top photo is of our powder room. It's red. I bought these lovely little dried flowers at the Shaker Square Farmers Market on Saturday. More soon, I promise.

Last day.

Good morning readers...

So, today is my last day of work at Brooklyn Public Library. It's a bittersweet ending - I've been given a lot of opportunities to grow as a librarian at the library and made some lovely friends. But, it's time to go.

Tim and I finished packing yesterday at 4:30 and celebrated with, appropriately enough, Sierra Nevada's Celebration Ale... so super tasty! Then we had a lovely walk to The Vanderbilt, a delicious restaurant in Brooklyn, just about a mile from our apartment. Click on the link to see their menu and go there - awesome happy hour drinks AND noms!

I also took some photos on Wednesday evening just before and after getting my bangs trimmed of some of my favorite places along my walk. Here is my favorite girlie store Flirt!

I once received a great skirtificate and designed a skirt! They have amazing clothes and accessories. I still have a wallet that I bought in 2005 - granted, it's taped up with library tape now, but I cannot let go of it. There is a little shop on Coventry in Cleveland Heights that appears to have a similar philosophy and style to Flirt called Blush Boutique... ah, so girlie.

Here is a delicious little food shop that I will be visiting for the last time today - Blue Apron Foods. I think I've spent more money here over the last 4 or 5 years than any other place in Brooklyn. A great selection of olives, charcuterie, breads, desserts, cheeses. And everyone in the store is super friendly. I hope I can find a place just like them in Cleveland.

And I'm really going to miss my DerbyFit girls - I'll definitely keep you updated and hopefully will send updates on my quest to become a Burning River Roller Girl... we'll see.

It's hard to say goodbye to Brooklyn. But I'm ready. Thank you Brooklyn for a mostly wonderful 5 years. Unless anything ultra exciting happens in the next 24 hours, like kitty growing an awesome afro with chops, I'll next be posting from our new home. Let the excitement begin!

Back and Taking Off

Hello dear readers. Much news since the last post... way back in who knows when. I hope I haven't lost you. You'll be better kept informed of the life in the Geaghan house from now on - hopefully on a more regular basis. One last relaxing day shown above back in June with Tim and Lana lounging on the beach after the Mermaid Day Parade.

We'll do the news first. As many of you know, my library spoke of lay-offs back in May. I decided that it was time to seek employment elsewhere. Tim and I have lived in Brooklyn for 5 years now and the lay-offs were just a sign to nudge us along onto our next adventure. I applied for several jobs and several nibbled. But I found one that I liked a lot and hey, they liked me too. I will now be an upper school librarian at an independent school in the lovely state of Ohio. Tim and I bought a house and we will be packing up the wagons this weekend and heading west (well, west of Brooklyn, NY!) next weekend.

So, the focus of the blog will change - as our life did. For those of you who know us well, we've been traveling along like molasses for the past 12 years... and year 13 basically slammed it's foot down on the gas pedal. Marriage and now a new home. I'll have more details on that in the next post - but as a teaser - the new background here is our courtyard. Yes, our new house has a courtyard.

For now, I'll leave you with some of my favorite pics from the Coney Island Mermaid Day Parade (n.b. I donated these photos to the Brooklyn Public Library - so there will be an Olivia Geaghan photo collection there). I'll be in touch again soon!

Prof. Photos part deux!

Hello everyone! Again, I've been super busy, but I work late tonight so I thought I would take a few minutes and post some more silly wedding photos. Busy with what? Well, lots of stuff. The NYC and NYS budgets are really getting down to the wire and I've been given a possible pink slip so, many discussions about job hunting are happening in the Geaghan house. Since our write up in the Knot said that we would add a wedding at the ESB to our chapter in Brooklyn, as it may have been our last chapter, it may actually come true. You can read about the budget cuts in any of our daily newspapers . So, Tim and I are running around the city and doing lots of fun things - like going to Coney Island's Mermaid Parade!! I'll post pics once I get them developed. The blog will probably turn away from the whole wedding thing and turn into a photo blog or something. I don't know. Big changes coming - with Las Vegas lettering!

Anyway, here are some more photos of the wedding. Really, at some point, we'll be going through them all and printing them and sending them to family. We love how patient you all are! Enjoy.So a little late happy father's day here. Here is my tiny dad for all of you who have wondered what he looks like. When Tim first met my dad, he expected a speedy gonzalez voice to come out of him. Or maybe a sombraro on his head. I don't know. Tim definitely didn't expect the Upstate New York accent flow out below the moustache.

Here, I've transformed into a pokemon character.

So, yay, Tim didn't run away screaming. My dandy of honor happily holds my bouquet. Doesn't he look handsome. Mind you, we didn't know what the color scheme was until the day before and Tim and Dave look lovely in their coordinating pink. I think they've known each other so long that their brain waves traveled to each other and said PINK!

Here we see Tim reading his vows. His voice cracked which was super cute. But then again, he was looking at glassy eyed John-o - see exhibit A below:
Well, not the best example of Johnny's teary bauble-esque eyes. But Tim was also facing Liz and Megan - some of my toughest lady friends! Aren't they lovely!


And here is my new linder-in law! Tim thought she looked like some awesome super hero and I have to agree. Here is part of my happy family - library ladies, Liz, my parents, and my brother - as I often see him, hiding behind a camera.
And the Geaghan side - so happy!
Ok. I think that's enough for now. More to come. Now I must get ready for work!

The Professional Photos Part 1

I'm waking up to a beautiful June morning readers. The coffee is spectacular, I can hear the mourning doves and hear the wind in the trees (some rare moments in loud Brooklyn). The heat finally broke and it feels like a summertime from my youth (oh, I'm getting 19th century!) So I'll share it with you. I've been having trouble sleeping since there is so much up in the air right now, but more about that in a post down the road. (In my head, I just pictured a dusty old road lined with green grass where if I squint hard enough, I see a post down the road! Will there be answers at this post? Will it give me some clues as to what to do next? Jane Eyre sees a post, takes a chance and follows one of the signs and it leads her to a long lost family.) Way off topic.

So tonight is the Cake Boss episode in which the 13 couples that won the Empire State Building weddings appear. So far it's scheduled for 9:30pm on TLC. Tim and I will get a copy of the show after it airs which should be fun since we don't have cable and will probably be watching a movie. I do hope the Cake Boss is entertaining. No guarantee that we'll actually be in the episode - maybe a flash here or there. Hopefully they will catch Timmy saying "Yeah! Cake Boss!" with two thumbs up. Hi-Larious!

In other news, we received our photos from the Knot. I didn't want to use the word "professional" photos because so many of your pictures were wonderful! But these kids actually get paid for their photography, so I want to give them credit. We are slowly going through about 1660 images and I'm uploading just a small sample here. I'm thinking that I might just upload a chunk of the images to my Snapfish account and let people pick them out there? I'll think of something. Also, I think that this will have to be presented in chapters (I'm realizing this as I'm editing the blog because I don't want it to be too long and I'm realizing that my comments on each photo are really long. ) So, here is all the leading up to the actual ceremony, something many of you missed because of all the restrictions and time restraints. I should also mention that the photos were taken by the very nice people at STAK photography. Great job! Enjoy!

Let's start the day with a healthy breakfast - as our adorable nephew Nicolas would suggest we start the day with lots of nutritious food! He's so cute! This was my breakfast -well brunch by the time I was eating it- I think I had some pineapple slices and some grapes to go with my chai tea. I was pretty nervous and when someone is straightening your hair (the rats nest of tangles that I have) it's kind of hard to eat. But I managed to get some food down between winces of pain and waves of butterflies.
Poor Timmy. He's lucky he didn't see me before the wedding or he may have had second thoughts. I've added some of these photos of the prep for all the ladies in my life that didn't get to participate in the getting ready part. I half imagined that my own mother wanted a prep something like My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Sorry mom.
My stylist Liz suggested that I go with false eyelashes. So they are being applied here. Sorry Liz, I don't think I'll ever wear them again. I'm a picker - as in if something isn't supposed to be on my body, I have a tendency to pick it off. It was really hard not to just pluck the eyelashes off... and then when they did start falling off, I thought I was infected with the zombie bug and imagined that limbs would start falling off and eyes would start falling out and I would ooze green. Eek.
The finishing touches. I'm not really sure why I have this weird chunk of hair sticking out. It's like a fish hook. Is that symbolic? Since I didn't see myself until dinner, I didn't even realize it was there. Maybe it adds sass?
And the obligatory putting on the dress. As you can see, there is this whole strapping in mechanism on the inside of the dress. Like an uber mega bra on the inside of the bodice. No, I love corsets as much as the next 19th century woman, and I'm thankful that it kept my dress up all day and into the night, but when you interfere with my dinner - as in I couldn't finish my dinner because it was not letting the belly grow, well, then I have a problem. Or maybe I was just too tired and happy to eat. Nope, I eat at Thanksgiving after cooking and entertaining. Oh well. At least it was pretty.
More tomorrow or later in the week. Next step - walking. I do hope you are waiting on the edge of your seats readers, for the next installment of photos and comments.

It's been too long.

Hello dear readers. I'm not sure if you're still out there. I do hope you are. Things have been busy around the apartment and at work and reading. The season changed and the flowers as well as the allergies are out in full effect. I can't resist having fresh flowers all around the house, yet, I also have some sort of allergy sleeping sickness where I'm exhausted for the first two weeks of spring. No big deal.

So, Tim has recovered from his food poisoning. Yay. His poet sensei pointed and laughed at him when he found out that I hadn't gotten sick but Tim had! HEHE!

You might want to know why Tim and I look so happy in the above photo. Well, we are in what is, I think, one of our happiest places in the world: Maine. We have plan that involves someday buying a piece of land in Maine and living there over the summer. That's a little way down the road. But we fell in love with Maine last summer, I think one of our happiest vacations together - come to think of it, we haven't really had any unhappy vacations - we just haven't had many vacations in our 13 years period. We visited Tim's family for 3 or 4 days and then spent the rest of the week with our lovely friends Tim, Amy, Roxy, Daisy (the dog), Sam and Lynn.

We've been getting a trickle of wedding presents in the mail (got one today from my side of the family from my Aunt Mary Lou and her family - these beautiful wooden flowers! I can have flowers all year round - they are amazing!). A few weeks ago we got this fantastic gift from Uncle Pete and Aunt Cynthia- who we love so much!

The Maine Atlas. I think that they are hinting that they would like us to live in Maine. We opened the atlas and looked over the trip that we took last summer. We found some purple post-it notes on another page which led us to a national park. It's a little place near Hay Brook Falls. I'm guessing there is awesome camping and hiking and just Maine. Uncle Pete is one of the most relaxed people I know. He is a very happy man and I love it - and him. Ooh - I'm gushing. I better watch out - Tim may think I have a wandering eye.

But what is better than getting a Maine atlas, finding where Bangor and Brewer grace the pages, turning to Ellsworth, and Trenton, and thinking back to the lobster pounds that we visited. And the kind people and the woods. I was so happy there. But, what was really great about this gift was, not just the memories it conjured up for me and Tim, but also a sticky note that says: I want to take you here! He wants us back and I hope we can return to Brewer Lake this summer - life plans will hopefully let us visit one of our homes. Even kitty got a gift from Uncle Pete and Aunt Cynthia. Thanks to you both. We miss you.

In sickness and in health...

Well, this weekend in married life, we had a little bit of both.

First, great weekend of poetry and seeing friends. We were invited to the Haiku Society of America meeting in Manhattan on Saturday. Enta Kusakabe was giving a talk about Gogyohka and we were invited. We also saw a very interesting lunar dance and listened to and were encouraged to write some haiku. It was oodles of fun.

I really liked it. I was having a grumpy day - a grumpy few days really. And this was just what I needed. I tried to shed my problems through doing things that made me happy - like plant this fantastic little bulb garden in my window box.

Worked for just a few minutes, but head ache came back and the anxiety was still there. But then, at the meeting, I was surrounded by some of my favorite things - words. And then I could process all the feelings and thoughts that I was having and felt better. And I met and spoke with lots of poets and got to see Enta and watch Tim and Enta and Peter and many other Gogyohkans - sorry Golda.

After the presentation of the society, we had a, well, I don't really know what to call it. Cocktail hour? that works. A cocktail hour at the home of Hiro and Nancy Sato. I won't go into how fun this was but, it was great. The apartment had a fantastic view of the Empire State Building. This was only the second time I've ever been in a Manhattan apartment. So it was pretty exciting! I loved it because both sides of the living room were book shelves. And they were covered with books.

After the cocktail party we went to dinner at this little restaurant called Bar 6. A scene from Julie & Julia was filmed here. Dinner was oodles of fun, we had a steamed artichoke with citrus aioli, moules frites, hummas, and a roasted pear and roquefort salad. Delicious. I watched poor Enta (who had just flown in on Thursday from Japan - and he is not the youngest of bucks) fall asleep into his tiny hand. But perked up after a giant hamburger.

Tim and I arrived home to sort laundry (the laundromat is empty on Sunday mornings) and get some sorely need sleep. However, here comes the in sickness part. We had such a mentally healthy day that what happens next is all the more shocking. Poor Tim. I've known him for almost 13 years. And I've had 3 nights like this with him before (possibly 4, he may have had food poisoning twice). Anyway, it was a night of pain as I woke up to hear these whimpers next to me in bed. Tim had stabbing pains in his stomach. Mind you, we ate exactly the same things last night. But poor Tim got the food poisoning. We had a really rough night - I think I've had maybe 2 hours of sleep total. I had horrible flashbacks of when he was super sick and we had to go to the hospital. But, Nurse Stimpy to the rescue. He is much better today after some pedialite, and homemade chicken noodle soup.

So, I guess I should re-arrange the title so that is says in health and in sickness for yesterday, but, I guess today, we went the more traditional route. Tim is better - that's all that matters. Here are just a few more wedding pics - these are from the Empire State Building photographer - sorry readers if you are tired of these - but I have lots of families in lots of different places. This just seems like more fun than emailing them. Enjoy.

Twirling
Twirling
Twirling