Eid Ka Chand - The Crescent Moon

I've been back from North America for a week that's been chock full of events, which is partly why I'd set my return date for August - a bachelorette party and birthdays and goodbye parties and my dad's 60th bday (which, thank you for all of you who helped me either record messages or cajole strangers across the US and Canada to record birthday messages for him!).

And I am posting to mark for posterity and with great happiness that tomorrow evening my cousin is getting married, and it's a combination of strange and exciting and emotional. This is my cousin from my mom's side of the family, which is the side we grew up close with, in neighboring towns. My cousins from my dad's side are all older than me and have been married for a while now, and my sisters and I have always had a more distant relationship to them due to age differences and geography. (This is the part where you guys are allowed to laugh, since the ones who live farthest away are still less than a two-hour drive away from my hometown; just over an hour with the new roads, really. But my mom's side live ten minutes away! So. An hour drive is far okay everyone [here] knows this.)

Anyway - O, the bride, is a few years younger than me, the fifth youngest of us six cousins, and the first on this side to get married, which means my 86-year-old grandmother gets to be in at least one of her grandchildren's weddings, which just by default makes me happy, that she'll get to experience that. I don't think she's ever put pressure on any of us to get married - certainly not on me, and I'm the oldest - but I'm really glad she'll get to have that experience anyway.

Weirdly, I guess I'm kind of used to the fact that my cousin's not a baby anymore - I guess at some point you just get used to all these milestones in people's lives happening. The last time I mentioned her was in this post from almost ten years ago where I was clearly shocked she was, like, almost a grown up or something, but it has since sunk in.

It's going to be a Friday night wedding, which already tells you it's not very religious here (and not, technically, legally binding; they'll fly to Cyprus to get married over the weekend for the legal part), and it's going to be at a music club and involve some kind of concert. Which means two concerts for me this weekend, since sisters and I are also taking my dad to Regina Spektor for his birthday, a day later.

And that, I believe, will cap my August of, uh, Things Happening.

MEANWHILE, I've been spending the past few weeks on and off (mostly on) listening to The West Wing Weekly podcast and I am 1) in love with it, 2) specifically in love with Hrishi Hirway's voice and entire being, and 3) highly recommend any West Wing fans (and esp if you were in the fandom) to listen because it will give you feelings, man. Starting at the beginning is pretty great, but you can also listen to episode 1.6 (Mr Willis of Ohio) for Josh/Donna feels, episode 1.10 (In Excelsis Deo) for Richard Schiff crying feels, and episode 2.22 part II (Two Cathedrals) for a little bit of Sorkin talking about the Passover Sports Night episode which I know is of interest to some of you :-) Anyway, it is a lovely podcast with great banter and both love and criticism of the show and I just want Hrishi to narrate my entire life basically.

Also I filled some prompts yesterday for a meme! It was basically 'send me a ship and a line and I'll write the next five' meme, but more importantly it was the first writing prompts I've actually filled since, I want to say, 2015 or something, so yay for that. Writing something at least! Fills are here (MCU, DCU, GK). Now if only I could translate that to actual decently sized fic hmmmmmmmmm.