Clearly Margaret and I were thrilled with the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Not only was it a beautiful venue for our wedding, but the staff was fantastic.

Today I was able to give them a little publicity in a post I wrote for Gridskipper:

DC Museums Worth the Price of Admission

I also reviewed The Phillips Collection and International Spy Museum, which Margaret and I recommended on our To Do in DC page.

Apparently several of you asked my mother this question during our wedding weekend. Her answer: “I’m not sure, but as he doesn’t ask us for money, I’m not worried.”

Well played, Mom, well played.

I am a freelance writer, editor, and consultant (an intentionally vague term). If you’re interested in specifics, check out the services page on my website.

As for who pays me, I just got a new freelance gig writing for Gridskipper, “the decadent urban travel guide; scouring the globe for chic hotels, hot restaurants, sweet nightlife, and pretty people.”

You can read my posts at http://gridskipper.com/travel/zach-everson/. Please remember they can be “decadent” (it’s a job requirement).

Other recent clients include:

• the Canadian government and Microsoft, which hired me to help convert a book into a website
• Stoney Creek Farm, a bed and breakfast in Maryland,which hired me to help improve its website’s standing in search-engine results
• Backstreets magazine, which published my article “A long, long way from home: Trust, faith, and fear on Veterans Day in Norfolk” (PDF)
• Brandon Green & associates, a real estate agency in Washington, DC; Maryland, and Northern Virginia hired me to rework its website

And Mom: you can send me money anytime you want.

We have a guest poster today: Margaret’s mother, Jessica.

Margaret has always had a flair for color, design, and texture. She delights in distinctive details. Why, then, should I have been surprised when she brought a 12-inch, square slate slab with her when I met her at Party Cloths to decide upon the table settings for the wedding reception?

The piece of slate was a mottled combination of gray, amber, and brown—the perfect complement to the other tableware colors she had chosen and a unique idea for a charger. It sounded like a great idea; it looked oddly elegant; it was a definite keeper in the grand scheme of things.

A couple days later, Margaret stopped by Home Depot and loaded 13 boxes of slate slabs, 10 in a box, into the back of her car. I say Margaret loaded them, but in truth she had substantial help from a well-dressed, portly gentleman who would not allow a young woman to lift all those boxes by herself. “I hope you have a prince charming at home to unload these,” he commented. Of course, Margaret, stars in her eyes, answered in the affirmative, thinking of a smiling Zach welcoming her in the doorway.

Midway through the lifting and loading, however, Margaret began to doubt the whole idea of slate slabs, albeit the prospect of using them later to create a patio might have been a good plan. In addition to offering to pay the dry-cleaning bill for the helpful gentleman, and noting that her own ensemble was a grimy shamble, Margaret realized the reality of the weight of all those boxes.

How could she ask anyone to heft them from here to there and back again? No, that would be insensitive and ridiculous. So on the drive back from Home Depot she made the decision to return the would-be chargers and choose more traditional ones for the table. Naturally it will be Zach who does the returning; Prince Charming must be a loving, patient man.