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I dreamed last night about the wedding.

It was completely unlike the plans we have for our ceremony: it was early summer (rather than September), in a tiny country church with only about 10 rows of pews (not the large, elegant Provincial Chapel we've actually booked). It was very pretty - the church doors were open, and I could see out into a field of golden wheat.

Apparently I had woken up late and in the rush to get ready, my hair hadn't been done, so I was trying to fluff it up a bit, and someone was telling me encouraging things about how good it looked, but I was dubious. We had hired a photographer who was sort of screwing up taking portraits of me. He was extremely close to my face, and i felt uncomfortable, especially since all the guests were there and were waiting for us to finish taking photos so the ceremony could get underway.

At some point, Will approached me and put a sizeable box in my hand, which I opened as he said, "It's another engagement ring!" It was a hideous tear-shaped purple monstrosity which covered half my hand when I put it on. I told him I didn't like it, but I think he wanted me to wear it anyway, that he would give me another ring after the ceremony, one I'd like better.

We started the procession into the chapel for the ceremony, but I realized I didn't know what I was doing and sort of fumbled to find my place, where I was supposed to stand, which wasn't the traditional spot in the center, next to the groom. It was off to the right, near this gazebo thing.

I didn't dream the vows, it simply skipped to the part where we were leaving the church, married, and somehow the purple ring had turned into a smaller, beautiful, multi-diamond ring like this:

I was surprised, because I hadn't wanted another ring (except the wedding band, which he also now gave me).

I guess this dream is just a jumble of wedding-related happy thoughts and worries. Kind of scary, isn't it, that 7 months out, I am already having wedding-unpreparedness dreams? :)

It's been about five months since I last updated, and about two weeks since the last big piece of news, and I thought today (Valentine's Day) would be a good time to break the news: I'm getting married. :) :)

Will proposed to me the morning of Friday, February 1. It was about 8:00 in the morning and there was a knock on the door, which Will answered as I continued to doze. He came back to bed and we started having a brief conversation about FDIC and the improbability of bank runs in the U.S., until there was a pause, and he said, "Becky, I have something I want to talk to you about."

I asked what it was, and he presented me with a small box, which I opened...

I looked at him, and he said, "Will you marry me?" I think I smiled at him and put the ring (originally his Gram's and then his mom's) on my finger and said yes and kissed him about one million times. We lay there in our PJs, all cozy and happy, and snuggled and enjoyed the moment for a few minutes, but then it was time to get up and start calling family to tell them the good news. Everyone was very happy for us, and then I went to teach my class at 10:30.

I was bursting with the news, and when I was using the document camera while teaching, I wondered to myself if any of my students were looking at my ring, but I think they were all busy learning accounting. :)

The next morning we (Will and Tyler and I) got up REALLY REALLY early to go to St. Louis to check out the chapel, where we decided to have the ceremony. Will was pretty pooped when we got there and while we were waiting for the coordinator to show up, but then he perked right up when we got inside the chapel. It's really so beautiful, with all this golden light, and .. I had been hoping for some time that Will would ask me to marry him, so the fact that he had asked me, and that we were starting the planning process.. it was all kind of moving and just lovely for me.

The next day (Sunday), Will and I trekked out to the 9th Street Abbey in Soulard, to see whether it would be a good place for a reception. We looked at it the day after a Mardi Gras party so it was a little cluttered, but here are some photos: (this is on a grey day so the light isn't the best)

So basically we thought it was beautiful. I went back and visited with my parents the next Friday and met with Susie from Patty Long Catering, and loved it, so we booked it. By the way, the wedding will be September 12, 2008, in the afternoon, with the reception in the evening. We're planning to have breakfast for dinner, but there will also be chicken in a white wine caper sauce for those people who are offended by the idea of breakfast in the PM. We're still setting the menu, but wouldn't mini-waffles just be an adorable 'horse doover' (as Grandpa K once called it)?

Then, last Saturday, Will and I went to The Enchanted Bride bridal shop, on Olive. People (Mom included) were scandalized that I brought him with me, since there's that superstition about it being bad luck for him to see me in the dress before the wedding day, but.. nevertheless, we found The One there. It was only the third dress I tried on, and it fit like a dream, and I felt like one million dollars in it, especially with Will looking at me with love and admiration in his eyes.

So those are the big things we've done so far. We've set the color palette as ivory, dark red (crimson/burgundy, not wine/purple), and gold. I've also basically designed the invitation. I also have found some ideas on flowers and stuff from theknot.com, and my favorite so far is:

Any other information you want about our wedding will (eventually) be found at www.willandbecky.org, which my dad bought for us so that we could share information and details about planning and the actual big day with all the guests. :) So go there and check back often.

Eighty days ago, I set a weight loss goal of 25 lbs. Today I met that goal, with a combination of diet, exercise, and overactive thyroid hormones.

Six days ago, I began a relationship with a wonderful person named Will, who just so happens to be the big brother of my best friend from undergrad, Olivia. :) I visited him last weekend in Chicago (where he's a PhD student in the Classics department at the University of Chicago), and even though we were both anticipating a lot of awkwardness and weird times, there was none of it. There was a quiet pause every now and then (especially when I had just gotten there and we were sitting out on the balcony and I was overly excited and having heart palpitations), but mostly I just felt comfortable and happy to be there. I love talking to him and even just listening to him talk, because no one talks like him. He uses words I didn't even know existed. He communicates thoughtful, well-articulated ideas (something I struggle with, these days). He incorporates references to opera and literature into conversation, for Pete's sake! But for all his intellect, he's not stuffy -- he cracks me up when he gets idioms wrong, or sings Johnny Cash, or imitates Sean Connery, or really most potently, when he's blabbering out of exhaustion.

"I think there are one L in 'balloon'."

So it's probably pretty clear that I'm enthusiastic about it, and one reason for it, is that it doesn't feel like dating. It feels like what dating OUGHT to be like -- an enjoyable process of getting to know a wonderful person.

Other than that, I've just been teaching and trying to keep up with my classes, which is tough with my Financial Reporting Theory & Practice class, but easier with others. I'm going to get an iodine uptake test next week to figure out what is going on with that, so I'll try to update with the results on that. Hasta luego.

I just got back from a lovely evening out at Dave & Buster's with Kristen and her boyfriend Wes. It was my first time seeing her in almost a year, and it was great to see her again, and I really am glad she's happy. Wes seems like a good guy, so I hope everything goes well with that. On our way back from D&B, we blasted Tenacious D songs and sung along. Quite lovely.

Longer update to talk about the summer in general, later on.

Well, I'm sitting in a hotel in Iowa City, getting ready to do a practice run-through of the Accounts Receivable/Bad Debts lecture I have to give tomorrow for the TA-ship interview. I forgot to pack pajama pants, so I'm not wearing any.

I graduated last Saturday (the 13th), so that's something. BA in Business Administration, cum laude (0.01 points short of magna cum laude), Phi Beta Kappa. Mom and Dad came, of course, along with Grammy and Ed. We went out to Ruth's Chris Steakhouse for celebration dinner and stuffed ourselves.

This weekend is Grandma K's memorial in Nebraska, so I'll drive back home to St. Louis tomorrow after the interview activities, and we'll fly there on Friday. I don't know if I'll say anything at the service, but I think about her a lot. After graduation, Mom and Dad gave me the savings bond she got me when I was born. I don't think I'm going to cash it in right away.

So next week will be my first real week of summer, which means workouts and seeing friends and making doctors appointments (dentist, dermatologist, ugh). Hopefully this will be a good summer.

Time to go practice this lecture. Hasta banana, folks.

Maybe some of you are wondering if I've vanished off the face of the earth or what, it's been so long since I last posted. And I've honestly got a good excuse for that: I've been trying to live. This has several meanings: 1.) survive school, 2.) enjoy life. I've done a good amount of the latter in the last week, which was my spring break.

Friday (3/9), Matt and I drove to Nashville to see the Shins at the Ryman Auditorium -- it was quite possibly the finest hour and half of my life, that set. The stupid pews were kind of crowded, but we still managed to dance and sing and scream. There's really only one word to describe us as we left: slack. It was endorphins and stuff, and it made my body so relaxed (probably as well as the two hours of walking around the city we did before the concert), and I slept really well that night.

I was a bra-burner in a previous life.
Hey Batman!
Andrew Jackson rockin that tricorner or whatever.
The stupidest monument in all of Nashville.
Matt being a lush.

Saturday was Mom's birthday and I am pretty sure she had a good one. Dad gave her the World Series DVDs, and we watched Games 1 - 4 during the week. Mom's getting into scoring the games, and it takes about 10% longer to watch a game than it usually would, because we have to pause every time there's a double play or someone advances the runner or anything.

My birthday was Wednesday. I got a haircut in the morning: I wanted something like this, but she took 2 inches off my length and didn't cut the bangs short enough, so it's just kind of weird. In the afternoon, I opened my presents, and spent the remainder of the afternoon fiddling with them (especially the phone and iPod), until I went out with Joey and Rob in the evening. We ate at the Spaghetti Factory in Chesterfield and saw 300. That Wehrenberg out in Chesterfield is pretty weird.

Interesting theater decoration #1, interesting theater decoration #2.
Boys impersonating theater decor.
Rob, not pretending to be a woman or anything.

Oh yeah, the Monday before my birthday I had an interview with a couple people at Wash U, and I was kind of put off because of the cold/distant demeanor they had. It made me really insecure about my chances: I felt like they didn't want me, but in my heart, I just said to myself, "Okay, they don't know Rhodes very well, and they don't know me very well, but if they let me in, they'll recognize almost immediately how freaking awesome I am. And if they don't, that won't be my fault."

But in the end, they let me in. So yay!

This has turned out to be a pretty upbeat journal entry, which isn't how it started out in my mind. I'm really extremely tired of school and working and everything. But I'm also tired of complaining so I'll just stop here.

It's only February. Last Friday was the 100 Days to Graduation party for seniors, but I was at First Light's big concert and eating French toast afterward. So there's only 92 days until graduation now, but that seems both extremely far off and strangely near. 3 months, to the day.

I'm already exhausted. I feel like I've been working extremely hard on everything, and it's still not enough. Planchon expressed disgust at our Senior Sem class, saying that we (the class, not my group specifically) hadn't done anything, that we knew we needed some sort of quantitative analysis. I pretty much felt like crying.

That was Thursday. I felt so extraordinarily discouraged and tired that I basically took off Thursday night from doing any work, as well as yesterday morning (and of course, evening). And now it's Saturday, and I need to start getting stuff in gear, but I'm sick now. Sore throat, exhaustion.

And to think that one week ago, I was elated. Prof. Birnbaum wrote me a letter of recommendation, which you can read here, and I felt really pleased with all the effort I've put forth over the years. Like finally it was all going to pay off. And I guess it still will. Being yelled at is discouraging though.

I guess I'm off to do a little gentle reading and/or a nap.

A lot of things have happened since I last wrote, not many of them are positive, though we're doing our best. I go back to work at FCI tomorrow and am nervous about it. I'm not sure why, I spent 6 weeks there this summer and I know and like these people. I think I am more nervous about returning there than I was about my first day there this summer. I guess the prospect of trying to re-enter this community and find my niche in there is a little daunting, but I'm just being a whiner. There are bigger things to worry about at this point.

I miss my Grandma K.

Just checking in. I went to my last Managerial Econ class today, opted out of the final exam, too, since I'll have an A- without it; so that's that. Have Accounting and Marketing on Tuesday, and that's it before finals. I'll take the Business Law final on Wednesday night (it's open book), and then the Accounting and Marketing finals on Friday, but then I'll be finished.

The stress definitely has taken its toll on my mental and physical health. I caught a cold at the tail end of Thanksgiving break (thanks to Kristen and Rob, giving me The Hybrid), and I think today is my last real day of dealing with it. I'm very tired of sneezing.

The mental health issues have been both worrisome and amusing. Yesterday I lost a span of about 5 minutes: I couldn't remember walking from lunch to work, as hard as I thought about it. I called Drew to ask him what happened, because I didn't remember any of it. Very strange. Another strange thing, I ordered a cheeseburger yesterday and started eating it, and had taken several bites before I saw a tomato sticking out. I was horrified at having consumed part of a real tomato and not having noticed! Other smaller things, like trouble speaking and arranging thoughts, can be chalked up to lack of sleep.

But I'm okay. Or I will be very soon!

Yesterday, after weeks of preparation, I went to take the GMAT. I felt nervous beforehand, but was mostly just tired of thinking about it, so I got focused and determined and just attacked it. I used every second allotted to me for the Writing and Math sections (but not the Verbal), and when it was over, the program offers you an unofficial result.

I am pretty satisfied with this result. It could've been anything; my practice GMATs ranged from 550 to 680, my diagnostic test (the test we took on the very first day of Kaplan to give us a benchmark of where we began and where we finished) was 650, so I kind of wonder if I really accomplished that much.. But anyway, onwards to the application process, which will probably be just as grueling as the test preparation.

Besides all that grad stuff, I've got regular school work, and with registration coming up, it's been hectic. Fortunately I don't have any tests this week, so I can get some non-school things done, like call Dr Martin's office to ask about/schedule the laser skin treatments, and contact Franchise Concepts to make sure they'll have me back over break for closing entries (!!) (ok, that was nerdy), etc. So, yay.

And hopefully I'll be able to write more on here: I know I have a small but loyal readership and they like to have new material every now and then. :)