FORMIDABLE FORMICIDAE

I've been a terribly inconsistent blogger - more prone to feeling guilt for not writing, than I am to actually writing. BUT - this past week I got messages from 2 people who said they'd been reading the blog, which amazes, delights, and inspires me.

So hey there Esther Matus and Karen Neuberg.
I hope you are still reading and I hope you like ant stories!

It's summer in LA.

It's always sunny here, but you can tell when it's properly summer in Los Angeles because the ants reappear. Salinger and Soprano worried where the ducks go in the winter. In LA, ducks are year round. It's the ants that disappear - but nobody thinks about them until the heat comes and they organize into black ribbon superhighways and invade our homes looking for water.

The ants in the house haven't been too bad this year and over the weekend we figured out why.
We've unwittingly filled our backyard with hand crafted oversized ant farms.

Sure, we thought that the 4 foot by 4 foot loosely packed enriched soil filled boxes were for the exclusive domain of our carefully tended veggies and herbs - but as Seamus watered the strawberry plants on Sunday, a disturbing number of panicked ants came clamoring to the surface carrying their larvae to higher ground.

This may also explain why so little grows in the garden. Have we been cultivating leafy greens only to ave them carried away piece by piece?

Since we can't borax our food (ah how my appreciation of farmers and their judicious use of pesticides grows), we resorted to the medieval tactic of boiling water and scorching the refugees. Our other tactic follows Seamus' hypothesis that ants hate baby powder - so we followed the dousing with a thorough dusting of talc.

It might be too many animated ant movies, but I think somewhere underground - inside the herb garden? under the succulents? - the ants are regrouping and laughing at us. We may have to deconstruct the boxes, which breaks my heart - but I don't want the ants thinking we're suckers.

OTHER HIGHLIGHTS SINCE I LAST BLOGGED
I won a home poker tournament and it was as saisfying and psycologically fascinating as Dan Abram's always described.
We hired a cleaning lady recommended by the fastidious Alicia Good and in Seamus' words "our house no longer looks like crazy monkey children live here".
We have completed the 10 week project of unpacking, assembling and staining our backyard furniture.
Ice cream madness continues. That's right. I can't manage to write, clean or get the backyard furniture stained - but I do manage to make 6 quarts of ice cream a week.
The Break Up vs The Transformers (more on that in a later post).
Uncle Jack took us to an ungodly delicious meal at CHOP.

4th of July

Seamus has been installing the dishwasher this week - which means that "Watch out for the saw!" is a neccesary and recurring warning each time I walk to the sink.

Because he is never one to shy away from a challenge, it wasn't enough for Seamus to take on the plumbing, electrical and carpentry of dishwasher installation. He felt the need to further test his skills by imposing crippling financial constraints.

Working from the logic that a licensed electrician would cost $500, and an unlicensed plumber might cost $200 - Seamus decided that the only way to make this worthwhile, would be to bring the project in under $200. And the only way to do that was to forgo the reciprocating saw and do the work with hand tools and a drill.

I absolutely adore this man.

Simultaneously, I have developed an ice cream making habit which means that I'm happily churning away in a 1/4 inch of sawdust. So far I've made italian ices based on the Basil Aliyah (white grapes, basil and lime juice), also a banana coffee frozen yogurt and a lemon mint ice cream. My personal challenge has been to incorporate as many wedding gifts into the ice cream prep - so the blender, juicer, stand mixer, coffeemaker, cuisinart and ice cream maker are all in on the fun. The appliances and I are REALLY looking forward to the new dishwasher which will be our slave.

If you've been to our house, you know the kitchen is tiny.
In fact, you might think it was ill advised for us to both take up kitchen based hobbies but we are still happy newlyweds - so until I trip on the saw, it's all good.

This is Seamus at 3 AM calling it a night on the dishwasher.

Two Week Anniversary - Saturday June 30th

I know we are married because today I am going to Sears to buy a dishwasher and later we are assembling backyard furniture. I am so excited to buy a dishwasher that I woke up what turned out to be 3 hours before the store opens.

Seamus is going to install the dishwasher which I am hoping turns out to have been a great idea since the alternatives are flooding the house or electrocuting himself.

Two packages arrived last night.
One was the cordless tubscrubber that I broke down and ordered off the registry (evidently - nobody thought it was romantic to buy us a gift associated with tub scum).

The other was a disk of photos from Uncle Mike.
We are amazed. These shots are inconceivable comprehensive - starting with Seamus and his mom Betsy practicing the dance and ending with the last goodbyes. Mike somehow simultaneously made it to 8 AM yoga, archery, and early risers breakfast & still managed to get everyone's first ride on the zipline. If he knows how to bend time and space, I'm only grateful he used his powers to get us these great shots.

Highlights include a shot where Liam appears to be walking on water, a few kickball shots where I actually look as sporty as I imagine I am, shots of the israeli dance class that look as fun as it was, and killer shots of couples.

Seriously, if you are a couple - the best photo you've ever seen of yourselves may be in this batch.

Inspired by pro-photographers Matt Weinstein and Toby Morris, we got a smugmug account and we are putting six hundred and five of Uncle Mike's photos up there.
All of the photos posted there can be grabbed at high res or for free - so that's where we'll be posting photos from now on.

UNCLE MIKE'S PHOTOS (and more!)
http://aliyahandseamus.smugmug.com/

Thanks Uncle Mike!

One Week Anniversary - Saturday June 23rd, 2007

We're back in LA and finally catching up on our sleep.
What a fantastic weekend!

Seamus' cousin Mike may have said it best.
"Congratulations on throwing the coolest party to include a wedding." That was exactly what we were aiming for.

LA is abuzz (at least within our small circle) about the East coast celebration, and now the pressure is on to put together something equally awesome. Our feelers are out - Chinese banquet hall? Pig roast on the beach? We're not sure what we are doing - but there's likely to be a bouncy house.

We did get photos from our photographer and a few other folks.
There are THOUSANDS! And that's without Deb or Uncle Mike - who were snapping away all weekend.

If we get ambitious enough, we'll put everything on flickr with tags so y'all can just search for the sexiest, most flattering photos of yourselves. But until that day, you'll just have to search.
We've already found dead sexy shots of Nancy, Liam and Abrams (Stay away from my cousin!).

TOBY MORRIS PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER
The edited picks can be seen HERE and the password is lake.

The complete take can be seen HERE and the password is turtle.

Finally the pictures from the PHOTO BOOTH can be seen HERE.
They are some of the funniest photos I've ever seen.

PHOTOS TAKEN WITH ALIYAH'S CAMERA
CLICK HERE

PHOTOS FROM FRIEND AND EXPERT PHOTOGRAPHER MATTHEW WEINSTEIN
(These are gorgeous - and even captioned).
Link to Matt's SmugMug Acct




COUSIN SUESAN'S PHOTOS
CLICK HERE

COUSIN CATHIE'S PHOTOS
CLICK HERE

DOUG HART'S PHOTOS
http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8CYuWzdw1cuig

ALICIA GOOD'S PHOTOS (2 books)
http://homepage.mac.com/alitexas/PhotoAlbum47.html

LISA ULLMANN'S PHOTOS
Click Here

If you want to post your photos - send the link to us!
Or better yet, mail us a DVD and we'll post them.

And if you have photos of the lapdances, the Friday night chairlift, Seamus on the zipline or Saturday night lawn sledding - we REALLY want to see your photos!