So I got married earlier this month. And there’s lots of amazing fun things to share from the incredible day. But this, well this makes my eyes well up and my heart just hurt from how much I love it so. I think I will probably watch it every day forever.

Janelle and Tim from Kate Headley on Vimeo.

I’m so glad my photographer, the amazing Kate Headley, convinced me to do it (not that I needed much convincing, as her other videos are beautiful). She had it shot using an old 8mm camera, and sped up the developing of the film, to give it that jumpy shot-by-your-grandfather look that I adore. And I can’t believe that she chose Regina Spektor’s amazing song, “Us,” to set it to. The song had been weaving its way through my head throughout the planning process, yet it seemed too much for a first dance. But to have everything tied together and this music playing in the background just about blew my mind. Incredible.

[Janelle and Tim: The 8mm]

I’m still kind of shocked at myself for not posting anything on either this or my work blog about my trip to Morocco (it was in November!) and I really realized this was ridiculous when I had the pleasure of sitting next to a new Moroccan friend on my bus trip up to New York. As he and I discussed our love for Essaouria, I wanted to go back and look through all of my pictures again and relive my trip. And today I was listening to the audio clips I took in Djemmaa el Fna, Marrakech’s main square, wanting to drop everything and head back.

Perhaps it was the simple need for a bit of privacy, as I was starting to feel like every step I took became a blog post. But I realize that means I’m keeping a lot of really great stuff all to myself. So I swear I’ll get some of the posts and videos I’ve started up at Intelligent Travel soon, and in the meantime, here are some photos of lovely Essaouria.

Blue is the color of this city. All of the boats and doors are in varying shades.

Beneath our fish lunch, one of the country’s many stray cats enjoyed his own.

There are entire books of photos devoted to the doors of this city,  I’m sure.

This little guy was bawling when we saw him in the street.

One of the woodworkers who carved the thulia wood, traditional to the region.

The wall that surrounds the city can be a bit desolate in places.

A scene from our cooking class at l’Altier Madada.

My new post up on UrbanTurf.com is about the frustrations of not having cell phone service in your apartment, and asks whether management companies should disclose information about the availability of phone service in their listings.

[Can You Hear Me Now?]

I may not ever get a Pulitzer (you don’t get those for magazines anyway, I realize), but these Peep portraits are now apparently part of my journalistic legacy. Our second annual Peeps in Places contest went off with a little less fanfare than last year (apparently you just don’t book the Today Show and Good Morning America on the same day two years in a row). But plugs from ABC News, NPR, Jezebel, Black Book and a few other places doesn’t hurt. Dear god they’re cute.

Photo: Leslie Kuba

I’ve already mentioned my obsession with the old trolley tickets that were issued weekly in D.C. during the 1930s-50s. (We used one of the designs for our Save the Date card for our wedding.) But I adore the ones issued during the cherry blossom season in the 1930s. And since I’m gearing up for the Cherry Blossom run and the trees are starting to bloom in the city (hooray spring!), I thought I’d gather a sampling of them here. Aren’t they gorgeous?

You can find hundreds of old tickets online at Richard Cook’s fabulous Glen Echo/Cabin John history page.

The lovely and wonderful Anne, whose Prêt à Voyager blog has always fed my appetite for all things design and wanderlust, was kind enough to ask me to contribute to her Boarding Pass series of interviews with travelers a few weeks ago. Well after I dawdled a bit with getting her everything (sorry! I wanted it to be good!) it went up today and she did a lovely job with the photo selection, don’t you think?

Thanks so much to Anne for her constant stream of thoughtful posts, and for including me in such great company.

[Boarding Pass: Janelle Nanos]

Lately I feel like all I’ve been doing is making checklists. Wedding stuff, work stuff, life stuff; all of it important, but some of it not so fun. So here’s a list of fun stuff.

• I went to Ottawa for a gorgeous wedding, and also ate my first BeaverTail. Oh-so-yummy maple goodness. I am also the proud new owner of red Olympic mittens, which are amazingly warm and just wonderful.
• I watched the Best Man I know give a terrific speech for his brother and his new bride.
• I talked about Mardi Gras with my pal Jason Boog for MediaBistro’s Morning Media Menu (listen here).
• I got contemplative about taking group tours with Mike Barish over at his very funny blog. Seriously, if you need a pick-me-up, go click on his gallery of SkyRest Tests.  (Mike also wrote quoted me about tours over at Gadling).
• I wrote about Skeeball becoming the urban hipster throwback sport for DC Modern Luxury. (See the story here.)
• I dipped my toe into the real estate market with two features for UrbanTurf.com: One on the lack of housing inventory in D.C. and the other profiling a young buyer in the city.
• I blogged about the very cool website Kickstarter, and my friend Charyn’s impressive Global Citizen Project at Intelligent Travel.
• I swelled with pride as my pal Andrew made his way–by bus–to Antarctica. He did a fantastic job, and he makes my job easy. And now he’s tweeting penguin pics!
• I braved snowpocalypse to mail my save the dates, and put up the wedding website that my brother built for us. Um. I love both so much. And Darren is so obviously talented in so many ways (check out this article on his band and the Long Island music scene.)
• I was asked by the lovely Anne of the amazing Prêt a Voyager blog to write up a Boarding Pass report. I’m so flattered! Need to work on that next. Add it to the checklist!

I took this shot this weekend in New York, pausing to snap it with my iPhone before dashing across the street, ducking into Grand Central, hopping on the six, riding uptown, changing my clothes, grabbing in a cab, eating dinner with a friend in SoHo, then grabbing another cab to the Lower East Side where I went into an unmarked bar–with a list–to celebrate my friend’s birthday. That’s after an already full day (eight hours!) of bridesmaid dress shopping, plus some brunch and beers tossed in. And you know what? As overwhelming as it was, I was completely calm. And this photo absolutely captured it.

When I first moved away from New York, I found that when I came back I’d feel slightly overwhelmed. The buildings were so tall and the streets so dirty compared to D.C. It was as much about the differences between the two places as it was about the shock of not being there, I realize. But now, after being gone for a while, I find myself on autopilot when I’m back. Subways make sense, and my own sensibilities get pushed back to where I’d left them. Yes, it’s still ridiculous to wander through SoHo and see price tags that could cover my rent for two or three months, but it’s also a relief to be able to sit down amongst friends feeling completely overwhelmed and know that you’re in a place where everyone struggles and fights to make a name for themselves. And you can tap back into that collective sense of pride that yes, often manifests itself in the ugly ways, but also makes you feel so lucky to be there, in the midst of it all.

So yeah, I’m feeling a little homesick. And I’m not going to lie, the song Empire State of Mind hasn’t been helping it at all. And just when I want to go and get mad at Alicia Keyes and Jay-Z for making me a nostalgic mess, the kids of P.S. 22 have to go and make my heart burst with longing for home. Oh New York.

Dear Sir,

I don’t want this to come off as ridiculously rude, but goddamnit, stop stealing my Sunday paper.

Ok, actually, step back and let me introduce myself. I’m a journalist, and your neighbor, and while I get the Washington Post delivered on my doorstep every day, I only get the New York Times on Sunday, and when it arrives it gets put in a little basket in the lobby. That’s where you come in. Each Sunday, depending on when I come down to get my paper, I find it, or one of its cousins, rifled through. That is if I find it at all. If I do, I’ve come to accept that you’ve taken its neatly folded pages and peeled them back as if you were making a tissue paper flower, and left your black thumb and fingerprints–evidence!–all over its pages. Occasionally, you attempt to put the sections back in some semblance of order, but you end up leaving the paper looking rumpled, like it’s been caught cheating, lipstick on its collar. This typically drives me nuts.

But this morning,  you were actually there, sitting on the lobby couch, enjoying a leisurely read. “I’m just reading it,” you said nonchalantly, looking up  from the business section as I reached for the basket. You seemed completely unperturbed by the fact that you were caught in the act. And alas, the sticker which typically identifies my paper was missing, and the papers were each stuffed into blue plastic bags. So I grabbed one of the other ones in the basket, and may have yelled something at you as I let the front door of our building slam behind me. I apologize for that, because you deserve to have this said to your face: You suck.

I realize I’m doing the passive aggressive twentysomething internet thing and taking my beef to the web, but frankly the web is exactly the place you could go if you wanted to read the New York Times, for free, every Sunday. It’s a huge problem facing my line of work, and I do small things like subscribe to magazines and newspapers to keep journalism afloat, and to ensure that myself and my coworkers will have jobs to go to in the coming years. So there’s one option for you. The other is for you to subscribe yourself. Obviously there are about five other people in the building who have managed to figure out this byzantine process, and who expect to reap the rewards of their dedication to the printed page by finding it there, untrammeled, on the weekends. There’s also the library (where rumor has it the books are also free), or you might even be able to snag the Style section at the Starbucks nearby if you get there early enough. But let me be clear, our apartment lobby is not your personal reading nook, and you’re lucky I didn’t snatch that paper from your hands.

Oh, and it was also very thoughtful of you to stuff the paper you read back in the blue bag it came in once you were done with it. I’m sure our other neighbors hardly noticed.