A few days ago, another person jumped in front of a Metro train during the last part of rush hour. We’ve had several suicides on the DC metro in the past year. My heart goes out to them for sure but I just really wish they wouldn’t commit suicide by jumping on the tracks. I wish they wouldn’t commit suicide at all but my reasoning for not committing suicide by train is that the trains don’t just run by themselves; there are the drivers to consider, the people standing on the station platform and possibly anyone sitting in the front part of the train. How is the driver going to feel for running someone over because they can’t stop the train that fast? How are the people on the platform going to feel when they can’t help this person?

Does the person jumping in front of the train consider them and how they may be affected? What would compel a person to essentially have an audience or would the person so blinded by their ambition of just ending everything that they aren’t thinking of this audience?

I don’t know the answers to these questions so maybe someone could shed some light on it…

(As a caveat to these thoughts, I don’t believe that suicide is inherently selfish although it may feel that way to loved ones (and in this case, strangers) left behind.)

I read a beautiful story in the paper yesterday about a couple who had been together since 1945 (how many relationships can you think of off the top of your head that have lasted 65+ years???). Both are in their latter 80s now and were finally able to get married in DC as the city council recently decided to allow gay marriage (finally!).

With the way so many relationships seem to go these days, 65 years together with one person seems endless, vast, a real forever. It makes me happy just thinking that there are couples out there who really do have the forever thing seemingly down pat.

We hear way too much about relationships ending and divorces that every time a story like this comes along, it gives me a lot of hope and encouragement that the Architect and I may just be able to attain the same. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

I like the sound of forever…

I stole this from the ever lovely Boureemusique.

1. What subjects do you most enjoy reading about? Politics, history (mostly world and WWII history), historical fiction

2. What television or radio programs do you most enjoy? TV: Glee, History Channel, Discovery Channel, Animal Planet; Radio: NPR’s This American Life and Savage Love

3. What are your favorite types of movies? Really stupid humor movies, romantic comedies, and psychological thrillers.

4. What are your favorite hobbies or pastimes? Reading, writing, swimming, hanging out with friends and family.

5. What type of volunteer activities do you prefer? I really like working with people in any capacity.

6. What subjects do you enjoy discussing with friends? Politics, culture, art, history

7. What subjects come to mind when you daydream? These days, I think a lot about our wedding and moving within the District city limits next year.

8. What have been your favorite jobs? While I love my job now, my very favorite job was the one I had in college. I worked at Caribou Coffee and I worked with some great people (and some very crazy people that if nothing else, made the job interesting). I got to interact with a lot of interesting people and I got all the free coffee/tea that I could drink. What was not to love?

9. What were your favorite school subjects? History, social studies, Spanish

10. What are your pet peeves?  Many, many –isms (racism, sexism, etc.)

11. If you doodle, what do you often draw? I draw really random doodles, mostly just random doodles and designs.

12. If you ran the world, what changes would you make? Where to start, where to start? I’d get serious about the whole alternative energy thing. I would promote microfinance as a means to an end of a lot of the poverty problems that so many places around the world face. I’d support sustainable development.

13. If you won a million bucks, what would you do with it? I would pay off my car and school loans, pay off my parents’ house, pay for the rest of my sisters’ college and put a bit in savings.

14. Who are your favorite kinds of people? I love people who love life and truly are excited about life. I like people who are grounded but have vision and dedication.

15. How would you like to be remembered after your death? Someone who in some small way made an impact on people.

16. What are your favorite toys? I love my laptop, ipod and Kindle. I enjoy electronics

17. How would you describe your political beliefs? I don’t really fit into a neat box. I am socially liberal and fiscally conservative. I believe that everyone should have a right to do what they want as long as it does not adversely impact others. I believe that the government should not protect people from themselves. I believe in state’s rights.

18. Who do you most admire in life and why? I admire people who have dreams and follow through with them.

19. What tasks have brought you the most success? In general, I’m pretty well organized and detail oriented which has helped me with every job that I have ever had.

20. What tasks do you think you could do well that you haven’t yet done? I’d love to do more with international development, I think.

I am mainly interested in…  living a well-balanced, happy life.

I believe most in…  being true to myself and accountable to others.

I most value…  good people, making myself.

I can do the following well… listen, write, read, comprehend.

You (yes, you) should fill this out and then tag me so I can see your answers!

So I realize that I haven’t written about my bachelorette party yet. It’s been pretty busy around here but I definitely wanted to write about it because piano bars are a blast! I had never been to a piano bar before my bachelorette party so when my sisters told me that was where we were going for the bachelorette party, I was excited.

After dinner at P.F. Chang’s, we walked over to the piano bar in downtown Baltimore. Now I expected that the piano bar would play pretty typical popular piano music (read: Billy Joel or something like that) so I was very surprised when the musicians started playing. Basically the piano men would play anything you wanted. They played Iron Maiden and Jay-Z and anything else anyone wanted to be played. The musicians were not the best singers but they made some of the songs very funny by inserting different lyrics and dancing while playing the piano. There were lots of people who were singing along with the music (myself included). We also did plenty of dancing. It was so much fun!

Now of course, I was all dressed up in my bachelorette gear. I had my sash, a bouquet of fake flowers and two crowns (I’m just that fancy, guys). I wore my sash (but not the crown as I didn’t want to make anyone too jealous) to dinner and on the way to both dinner and the piano bar, I had a lot of people to stop and congratulate me. I also had a lot of seemingly bitter men stop me and tell me something along the lines of “not to do it.” Seriously? I’m sorry that your marriages are apparently so bad that you would warn a mere stranger against getting married. That’s just really weird. I had several guys come up to me throughout the night to tell me how bad their marriages/divorces are/were. If you are unhappy in your marriage, get divorced. If you’re divorced, let it go. To me, it’s just ridiculous to try and give relationship advice to someone that you don’t really know.

Not to worry, all that all did not ruin my night. I was more amused (as I often am by other people) that someone would have the audacity to come up to a stranger and share some of the innermost details of their sh*tacular marriages/divorces and believe me, I got a lot of details. Over-sharing anyone?

The bottom line is that I enjoy piano bars and that I enjoy wearing crowns

This weekend, I got a scary email from The Knot that I only have three months until the wedding! What??? Three months is still a lot of time but it just doesn’t sound like it. It’s less than 100 days! For the first time throughout this whole wedding planning process, I felt myself panic just the tiniest bit not about the marriage itself (I’m more than ready for that) but about the wedding ceremony.

I guess another thing that I’ve sort of been thinking a lot about (and therefore getting a little overwhelmed by) is changing my last name. It’s not that I don’t want to change my name; I definitely do want to change my name. I’m more worried about all of the legal and work stuff that I will have to do in order to go from a Miss Meg Plain to a Mrs. Meg Architect. It’s more the work stuff that worries me. I’ve been working for the same company for the past three years and I deal with tons of people on a day to day basis and they all know me as Meg Plain. I don’t really know how to gracefully deal with getting everyone that I deal with used to the new name as I try to keep my personal life and work life completely separate.

I guess I’ll have to reintroduce myself. I don’t know a really elegant way to let everyone know that my name has changed and this may be important because without my last name, no one will be able to look up my phone or email address should they need to contact me. It’s frustrating.  Although, if everything goes according to plan, this will be the first and last time I change my name.

Ladies: Did you or will you change your names after marriage? How did or will you deal with getting the message out that your name has changed?

Gentlemen: Did your wife change her name after marriage? Would you be offended if your wife didn’t change her name? If you aren’t married, would you be offended if your betrothed didn’t want to change her name?

The past few days in bullets:

- On Friday, I had the day off.

- I went to go get a facial. It was absolutely amazing and just what I needed.

- I decided to be responsible and get my oil changed. I’m sitting in my car in the auto bay and the guy working on my car pulls two other mechanics over to look at something under my hood. I’m thinking to myself, “Oh crap, what the heck is wrong with my car??? How much is this going to cost???” I was totally miffed and scared as my car is a mere three years old. The mechanic comes over to my window and says, “Ma’am, if you were wondering why we were looking under the hood of your car, there was a dead rat!” The mechanic quickly became my hero of the day as he removed the intruder. I don’t do all that well with rodents (dead or alive) and couldn’t watch them throw the ratty away.

- On Saturday, the Architect and I ventured to the C&O Canal and Great Falls, MD to take a walk/hike. We brought the Architect’s new-ish toy along and took a lot of pictures. I actually took my first sort of artsy photos (I shall post them later). Great Falls is truly one of the prettiest places in this area and I unfortunately hadn’t been there since I was pretty young. There are some gorgeous overlooks over the Potomac. Many visitors to DC only get to see the fairly slow moving water near the actual city. It amazes me how different the water is just several miles up river. We’ll definitely be going back.

- Saturday evening, we had some friends over for dinner. Our menu included chili lime marinated brisket, baby red potatoes, a salad that had corn, arugula, cilantro, red onion, diced tomatoes and a dressing made of lime juice, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper. For dessert, we had PA Dutch style strawberry shortcake.

- Sunday, I was able to Skype with my friend in Ukraine.

- We went on a picnic with my family in a state park up by where my parents live. It was hot but we set up our site right by a creek, which kept things cool.

How was your weekend?

A recent situation that I have encountered (and one in which I will not go into too much detail with for the sake of focusing on my current thought at hand) has me thinking about apologies. Apologies are something that I think most people wish that they never have to make. Apologies are incredibly difficult. It’s hard to know what to say and I believe that there is a great tendency to believe that we can “make up” for our shortcomings with our friends, family, and others.

I really don’t get this whole idea for “making up” for something. Is that even possible?

To me, the past is simply the past. You can’t go back and change anything and therefore, I really don’t believe that it’s possible to make up for something that has been done in the past. I’m very much a make do with what you have currently have going on and therefore, there really isn’t any way to make up for the past. You can promise not to do something again or promise to change your behavior.

Is there ever a way to actually make up for something you’ve done wrong?

Last night, the Architect was out at a function, so I took it upon myself to run a couple of much needed errands. I also took myself out to dinner after dropping up and picking up books at the library. Dining alone has always been strange for me. I’m a social person and I really like being around other people and if I’m being completely honest, I feel self-conscious when I’m alone. I’ve always had a complex about going places alone (it took me until college to be able to go to the movies by myself). I’m fine to go out and grab a cup of coffee or run errands. Furthermore, unlike some girls, I like going to the restroom by myself much better than going in a pack (thankyouverymuch).

Dining alone is different. A lot of people don’t do it. What do you do while the waiter isn’t talking to you? Is it appropriate to read? And then for myself, there is the inevitable thought of what others think of me when they see me sitting alone (self-centered, yes but I do have these thoughts). In fact, I think last night was really the first time that I had ever gone to a sit down restaurant alone.

Armed with a PostSecret book, I ate my noodles in peace. It was kind of nice to just get lost in my own thoughts for a bit while I ate dinner. I’m good company for myself.

So what about you, does doing things alone make you nervous?

So this weekend is my bachelorette party. I’m really excited about it. Now I’m doing something a little atypical for a bachelorette party: we’re going to a dueling piano bar. Last night I had coffee with a fellow Xangan and he asked me why I wasn’t going to do the normal stripper/Chippendales foray when I told him about my bachelorette party. While I don’t have a problem with strippers at all (I was all for the Architect going to see strippers if he wanted for his bachelor party and they did), I just don’t think that guy strippers are all that attractive and the very thought of having some sweaty guy giving me a lap dance or something does not appeal to me in the least. While I enjoy guys a lot, I’m too picky to have just anyone “all up on me” (that phrase is hilarious to me)

As I was telling Scrooge, I think in general, it takes women a lot more to get excited over than just a visual display. While guys are very, very visual, women need to have more of the senses involved in order to be excited in that certain way. And really, I’d rather just hang with friends; I’m a pretty low key girl. Therefore, the piano bar sounds much more down my alley!!!

What do you think about strippers?

Veteran White House journalist, Helen Thomas, made some controversial comments regarding the Israel/Palestine situation and saying that the Israelis should “get the hell out of Palestine” and go back to places like Poland, Germany, and the United States (referencing some of the countries that current Israelis came from after the creation of the Israeli state after World War II). Obviously, there are many people who do not agree with this sentiment.

On our way to work this morning, the Architect and I got into a discussion about public figures being able to express their true feelings. I do believe that everyone is entitled to their own opinion (even if I don’t agree with that opinion) but that public figures must be diplomatic when answering the tough questions like that because if not, they will inevitably draw the ire of critics and that criticism will then become a big deal. In this case, Helen Thomas was uninvited to speak at a local high school’s commencement and is facing huge criticism from many people.  The Architect, on the other hand, believes that public figures shouldn’t have to sugar coat their opinions. I believe that too but public figures must realize that if they are going to put out an opinion that may be the least bit controversial, they are going to become fodder for critics.

What are your thoughts on this event? On free speech in general?