a very important date!

what could be a better start to my monday, than to hear that we are officially booked for our wedding venue?!?! ten pages of contract, four days, and one $2000 deposit later -- we are in business!

looks like the BIG DAY will be friday, september 21, 2012 -- also known as polotek's last chance to make a run for the hills.

at this point, the race is well underway. schniz and i have been joking that at the pace we've been planning this thing, it may be ready by december.

aside from the venue, caterer, and invite list, the wedding decisions and discussions are fun and easypeasey -- so excited to share it with y'all. speaking of sharing, this seems like a nice point to introduce the story of polotek and operaqueenie's first date.

first off, i'll have you know that we were fixed up by a mutual friend, and went on a sort of blind date. i say "sort of" because we did see each other's facebook pages first. in fact, that was the first contact...

so, i'm over a friend's house -- who i lovingly call my "jewish aunt" or "tante" -- and we are watching american idol {not that i'm a fan of that show, i just like to make fun of the contestants}. i start going on and on about how one of the singers, a white boy with dreadlocks, on the show is such a product, and how they were manufacturing some "unique" cookie-cutter template of a singer blah blah blah, and she jumps in blurting out that i had to meet this guy from her job who has dreadlocks. she works as a recruiter for a software company, and after being thrown off by her interruption, the first thing that i say is:

  "so he's a nerd?"
  "well, he's kind of nerdy, but he's a nice guy."
  "he's a nice guy...so...he's ugly?"
  "he's not ugly, but he's probably shorter than you."
  "well, almost everyone is shorter than me."
  "he's on facebook -- we can look him up!"

...she pulls up his facebook page...

malcolm-jamal warner, anyone??

  "ok, he's not bad looking..."
  "at the very least, you could make a new friend." {i had just moved to the dc area}

...my jewish aunt matchmaker then proceeded to send polotek a message on facebook, saying that he should meet her niece who is new to the area {he was definitely surprised to find that she had a black "niece"}, and that we should get together sometime. then she made me change my profile picture to one she approved.

from this...

she wasn't a fan of the open mouth photo.

to this.

yay! mouth closed.

then i went home.

when i got back to my craptastic apartment {i'll save that story for another time}, i had a facebook message from polotek titled "the definition of awkward is...", and in the body it said, "this." but then he went on to say that my jewish aunt is pretty cool, and since she has vouched for me like she did, i must be worth meeting.

so we set up a date.

we met at my fave sushi place of the moment and had dinner. hit it off right from the start. decided to catch a movie with a couple of his friends afterward. they didn't hate me. when i got back home and dished to my roomie, i was all googly.

aaaand the rest is history {in the making}.