"Even though my beer is empty, my heart is not."

Suddenly the summer is over. It was eaten up completely by post-wedding and post-grad school hurdles and organization. We found homes in our tiny apartment for our wedding gifts and stuffed our wedding clothes in the back of the closet. I changed my name (at least the first dozen steps) though not as much as I wanted. The social security office said that getting married isn't a legal reason to change your first name. Fair enough, so I am Amanda Dunn Sampson. Though to treat myself, I am only using Amanda when I absolutely need to. I'm still very attached to Dunn, so in most cases I am Mandy Dunn Sampson. It's a mouthful, but when I was younger I marveled a bit when I overheard old ladies introducing themselves, "Oh hello, I'm Margaret Lastname Lastname." How did they get two last names? Do you get more when you're older? Yes!

We finally watched the wedding videos taken by the Weavers. The night before the wedding they had dinner, and everybody was forced to make a toast to us. The toasts are so funny and so touching, and I don't have to feel awkward because I'm not in the video. It's wonderful, and my favorite thing said has been a metaphor for the whole summer: "Even though my beer is empty, my heart is not."

In exciting news, we got a camera upgrade! It's a Canon Rebel T1i, not a quality-warp from my last one, but remarkably better and it's not so expensive that I'm afraid to take it most places. I genuinely needed the upgrade for better art images, though it will mostly be used on moustaches and pets.

We are for sure staying in Philadelphia for at least one more year, so when it came time to move out my studio from school I flexed my organization muscles and dug in. Everything fit (as Ian would describe) "miraculously," though it was no miracle. It was me, and new shelving units. Now the apartment is much more studio than living/bedroom, but I am agreeable to that. We genuinely want to produce a lot of work in the next year, so feng shui will just have to feng wait. 

This is what Ian Control Center and Mandy Control Center look like, respectively:

The nicest thing about staying in Philadelphia for a bit is being close to Delaware. Two weeks ago we got to go to Nikki's baby shower, and today we are going to Laura's birthday party. 

On the day-to-day front, the promotion that Ian has been looking for (for forever) might finally be coming. I'm job hunting and trying to organize/market all of the skills I gained in school (Conservation Portfolio/Printing Portfolio/Teaching Portfolio). SPX is in one month, though, so most of my energy is devoted to that. Those developments are detailed on our art blogs.

Now that we are officially a family and I have a little more time, I've been wanting to keep a family blog with frequent updates about our lives and activities that aren't art related. I've missed public journaling a bit, and especially since we are still away from Virginia, I am going to treat this blog as Notes From the Field, or Our Trip At Sea, or as it truly is: North of the Mason-Dixon. 

Finally, May was jokingly called "The Month of Mandy" around here. Really, it was "The Two Years of Mandy" so I'm paying Ian back with "The Summer of Ian." This mostly requires doing all of the dishes, and extra baking. A few nights ago I made southwest corn chowder and a Tuscan garlic loaf.