Aside from a floss mishap, I had a really good day. After meeting with the Garden’s wedding coordinator last weekend, my two major concerns were the DJ and hair/makeup person. Dwaine and I have an old German class schoolmate who’s gotten into DJ equipment as a hobby. He DJed Dwaine’s birthday a couple of years ago and did a great job. I figured if he were willing, he could DJ the wedding and I’d save like $800/hour. I spoke to him and he was willing, although he had some concerns because he didn’t have a microphone, had never DJed professionally, and didn’t have his own speakers. Turned out he’d simply wired his turntable and equipment to Dwaine’s home speakers. The Garden charges $400 to borrow their speakers, we don’t know if our friend’s equipment is compatible with the Garden’s speakers or the quality of their speakers, doesn’t allow our friend to go in with his stuff to test out the compatibility before the wedding, and our friend isn’t comfortable MCing so we’ll still need someone to introduce the wedding party and guide the reception events. This week I have a new courtroom assistant filling in for my regular one who’s on vacation, and she mentioned the huge party she was throwing for her daughter next month and talked about how great the DJ was she’d found, how affordable, what a total package he was. Instantly I perked up and asked for his contact number. Today, I booked him. Because DJing is his professional hobby (not his day job) and because we knew people in common, he charged me a flat rate of $500 for the night, and he comes with all the equipment and music we could possibly conceive of, not to mention professional experience DJing and MCing! He came highly recommended, does research on the location, its rules and setup beforehand, seems very confident and flexible, and has a great work ethic. What luck! Now I can let our German class friend off the hook.

As for the hair/makeup person, the girl that childhood friend Lily recommended quoted me $699 for my hair/makeup. Yow. Yet she quoted Lily’s soon-to-be sister-in-law in the $300s, and was also in the $300s for Lily’s wedding makeup. I mentioned that to bridesmaid Sandy, who is now looking into another hair/makeup artist that she and her family had used before. Sandy’s girl is an award-winning makeup artist and should be more affordable than $699. Hopefully Sandy gets back to me soon with good news that the girl is available my wedding day and will do affordable bridal party hair and makeup, so I can cancel my $120 trial/consultation with Lily’s girl at the end of this month.

The wedding isn’t the only front where I felt lucky to have friends today. I got an email from Mike (“wilco”) telling me that he’d written an email program such that if I sent an email to a particular address with the URL of a website, his program would email me back a text version of that website. He developed the program because I’ve lost internet access at work and can’t keep up with anyone’s blogs anymore. I was so touched, and so impressed at Mike’s techie skills! I had no idea an email-linked program like that could even be written.

I even got Mr. W a connection. He’s been complaining about sciatica pain for awhile, and massages only help temporarily. He attributes the problem to sitting on his wallet for too many years. In our phone conversation after work today, he told me that he’d gone to 99 Ranch Market last night looking for those fobby car seat covers made of wooden beads in hopes that the accupressure would relieve his pain. Luckily for him, though, he didn’t find the covers. I suddenly thought to ask bridesmaid Sandy if her chiropractor boyfriend treated sciatica, and his response was “Of course!” Yay!

Are you guys wondering about the “floss mishap”? Let’s just say that I’ve got a psychotically tight space between two back teeth. So tight that regular floss, sewing thread, titanium wire shred and break instantly in there, leaving uncomfortable high-pressure residue in between the teeth. Expensive thick no-shred floss (from my judge) either shreds and breaks too, or is just too thick to even go in between those two teeth. All the attempts only ripped up the corner of my mouth, some knuckles that had to rub against my teeth, fingertips that had to push the floss to no avail. I was thinking I had to wait hours with that pain to get off work, drive home, and use my normal floss that’s always worked. Finally, my court reporter dug out of her cabinet some sample new-age floss that’s apparently been blessed by fairies and the love-induced tears of a unicorn, because that finally went in between my teeth and despite breaking two or three times, there was still enough left of that sample to get in there and dig out the broken first floss and thread, all bloody and balled up.

I’m grateful for good friends and all the things they do for me.