Wedding Thrashers!

# Hours Awake - 'bout 5
# Cups of Coffee - 1 (yawn)
# Visible bruises - 5.5

So the wedding was this weekend and I have survived (on many levels). But first, an update on the first parts of the trip.

BOSTON:
1. Survived traveling to Glousta for "Chowda."
-The one hitch came from an unfortunate decision to return to Boston at 3:00 in the morning from a house party where we not only knew no one, but also knew not where we were (a fact we realized after leaving the compound). One thing you should know about Glousta is that they don't believe in streetlights but rather in their ability to navigate their Ford F-150's by the stars. It's a fishing town so I guess it makes sense. Nowhere is this more apparent that in the backwoods of Glousta where they have no streetlights, no houses and (as we were to find out) no roads...we quickly backed up, having mistaken a fallen spruce for the center lane...what? It was dark. So, moral of the story, if you're gonna go for some bad ass "chowda," take a map or don't try to leave at 3:00 in the morning, this is where Jason and Freddy summer.

2. Survived traveling to Peabody (pronounced P-B-D...seriously)
Buoyed by our success of the previous evening, we decided that real men neeed neither maps to find cities nor the directions they were given and promptly left at home. I have come to this conclusion, Men are stupid. Not all the time but,...all right fine. Anyway, it seemed relatively simple. PBD is north, so we go north...and north we went. In all of what should have been a 20 minute journey, my favorite part was when we hit a rotary which told us to head up a street where we hit another rotary which said to turn all the way back around and down the same street we had just come from. We did that about three times convinced that the sign would change at some point...it didn't. As a last resort, we stopped at a gas station (yes, I said last resort) where we managed to find the only non-English speaking person in the entire state. His nametag said Jaru and he was most probably Indian (dots, not feathers). When I asked for directions, he nodded yes and beckoned me inside where he was convinced that the one thing that would help me on my journey was a map...of Texas. He proudly held it out to me as I spent the first five minutes wondering why the hell we were out-sourcing all of our jobs to India and the following ten looking for evidence of a camera crew (there was a brief 30 seconds where I started to question why he had a map of Texas but frankly, the issue wasn't that pressing). In my search, I was able to locate a map of the town of PBD which had been behind his head the whole time. After 2 1/2 hours we finally made it to the party. Oh yeah, it was wicked awesome.

NEW YORK:
-New York was very fun and I know this because I remember almost nothing. I do remember that one evening, during a late night food binge, I made the (drunken) mistake of saying "I'll have what he's having" while on a phone conversation and ended up with a chicken cutlet sandwich with lettuce, tomato, jalapeño’s and EXTRA mayo. I hate mayo. Apparently, I ate the sandwich while continuously complaining (much to the chagrin of the cabbie) how terrible it was. Oh, I was also foiled once again in my ability to see an exhibit at a museum which I’ve been trying to do for over a year now. The museum is closed on Monday's AND Tuesday's. Fucking Tuesday's, come on!

For time constraints, I will move on. More on this part of the trip later...when I remember it. :)

THE "FULL CONTACT" WEDDING:
My dad is cool. Not in that uber-cool way reserved for the likes of James Bond but in that Geekey kind of cool. It's easier if I explain. I'll do so in terms of a conventional wedding.

Friday Night: Rehearsal dinner. 30-40 Guests head over to his neighbors house to have lobster, Burgers and Dogs. It is during this time that you begin to notice the 2 multi-colored monstrosities that adorn his neighbor’s lawn. Much too large for lawn ornaments and most probably not the home of wayward gypsies, you realize that you're looking at an adult sized bouncy toy things like the Moonwalk you used to jump on when you were kids. Couple of glasses of wine later, and you're diving head first into the beginning of the gauntlet, serpentining a couple of large obstacles and then climbing up and over the last wall, throwing yourself down the chute to victory. That was the good part; the bad part is when you realize the hard way that alcohol and adult sized bouncy things don't mix for a good reason. It's not the first time that you try to barrel roll down the chute and nail your knee on the plastic which at the speed, combined with my weight was like hitting concrete, no, it was probably when I ran right back and did it again, hitting the same spot and finally realizing that that pain combined with that BAC, usually means trouble. Long story short, I stopped limping late yesterday. Anyway, back to the fun.

Saturday: Wedding prep. Starts with and early boating trip around the harbor. Now if I haven't mentioned it before, half of the people at all of these events are Dutch. Now from what I can gather, the Netherlands is not like Japan where everyone speaks English as a second language. In fact, almost no one spoke more than two or three words of English and there is only so many conversations you can have with someone where an acceptable response is "Hello." That amount can double if you consider "Hi" as a slightly different answer. So we have essentially a large group of people split into two by a massive conversational barrier. The bonus of this situation is that we could discuss the seventeen-year-old niece of the bride...and her 19-month-old daughter with impunity. While we quickly arrived at the age of conception (14 years 8 Mos.) which was then verified by long division by my friend JXXX. Yeah...not really sure why. We all decided that night that our favorite Dutch person was Nino, the 19 month old. Multiple types of cuisine later we had our wedding...Dad was sporting the single most pimping white linen zoot-suit.

gotta go, more later

Note: I have realized upon retrospection that I did not bring the funny in this post; at least not in the Wedding portion. I knew this upon original posting and tried to go back and re-do it but I realized that I quite surprisingly had a really good time this weekend and in my "goings-back," I found my regular sense of humor far too harsh for what was surprisingly a very enjoyable affair.

Have no fear, I will be back on my A-game soon but to the happy couple, congratulations! And to the 17-year-old, here's my number (310) 555-4379.