Else what's a heaven for?

The nice thing about having 3 nights in a row of parties is that I took out my makeup case on Thursday and didn't put it back again until Sunday. I even shhhhh wore the same dress twice. Economies of scale! woohoo! ( I took a level in eye shadow )

Thurs night was an astronomy talk by Michael Shara at the AMNH. I adore talks/articles/books by scientists about current research. It turns out that since I took Honors Astronomy in hs, they've started viewing novas and supernovas as branches of Linnaean-type tree. As a dedicated analogist, I love it. He talked about how, if butterflies lived on a geologic timescale, would we recognize that pupae, caterpillars, and butterflies are all the same creatures? I would take his analogies further and note that, just as in paleontology we can only observe the creatures that happened to be preserved, a non-random sample, so too in astronomy. I found it particularly fascinating that as a random aside, he noted we will likely find life in the universe soon, probably on Mars. This wasn't part of his talk or even something worth discussing; it was just a thing he mentioned. HOW COOL IS THAT? ( more frivolity )

Fri evening, I went to Jon's firm's summer party at the Boathouse. It was sparsely attended: most of the people there were interns or staff who were being acknowledged for years of service. I got there late, after picking up our race packets, so we didn't get to go for a gondola ride. However, I was really shocked that everyone we talked to congratulated us on our engagement: how weird to work somewhere with so many thoughtful people. They had a magician and I met two of the name partners. I also had seconds of dessert, bc that's how I roll.

Sat morning, we ran the NYC Pride Run. Bc I haven't run a sub-half marathon race with NYRR in 4 years, they only had a slow time for me, so I was seeded far back and wasted a lot of energy dodging slow people. I definitely lacked zest in the third and fourth miles. Jon may not have trained, but at the four mile mark, he went to a port-a-potty -- and still caught me a mile later, at the finish. I decided a week or two ago that I need to either train or stop running, bc this in between is driving me nuts. Oh well, at least I have a faster seed time now.

We met a subset of the hens for brunch at a restaurant I've been meaning to try in my old nabe. I'm glad I did: there's tons of gossip from our old firm; Evil English gave us the 411 on her Southern roadtrip to Savannah, Beaufort, and Charleston; and we exchanged career advice.

Alas, I was a bit late for that night's wedding, largely bc it took forever to find a bra that would fit under my dress: I ended up wearing a slip to keep it modest, despite the heat. The groom's father finished the ceremony with a speech about the importance of "like"; Julian gave a terrific toast. I knew no one other than the GOHs and my date, but after a while, I realized that all? those young people who said they knew the couple through "mutual friends" were giving the same line I give when people ask how I know Boymeat or Jon. There was one cute guy who was chatting me up who said that: I can't have seen him at one of those parties, bc I'd've remembered =him=. The DJ played everything from the Duck Tales theme to Hedwig and the Angry Inch, but Julian found a few runs of songs to dance to, our first time dancing NOT in white tie.

I probably would've had more fun at the party if I'd drunk less water, but it meant I wasn't hung over the next day. I worked on my Himalayan photo book and showed the results to Julian for feedback. Then I headed to the climbing gym with Jon. SR claims my elven shoes will stretch if I keep wearing them, so I brought those. I made the mistake of noting that I was doing much better than expected in them (having little trouble with a 5.9). Then I climbed a 5.8 roof and while I made it to the top, I couldn't reclip the directional and ended up getting a long lecture from the staff member, who finished with, "This is a very important skill for when you're on lead some day." Gee, thanks. I only made it to the top of one more climb that day before we agreed we were toastified.

We'd planned our gym outing around going to Star Trek Into Darkness after, but when we got to the theater, they wanted $14.50/ticket, which seemed like too much. Instead we bought a cupcake from Crumbs to share. Jon bought ingredients for meatloaf and cooked it and then we watched the second to last episode of Downton Abbey s3, which was so full of fan service, I don't want to watch the last episode.