May 2006 Archives

An excellent combination. One last picture from the wedding.

"Did you have another bagel this morning?"
"Yeah, they're really good."
"Oh, you had the scallion cream cheese? I thought you didn't like it."
"No, not really, but it's okay."
"Why are you making such sacrifices for me?"
"You are carrying my child. I can live with letting you have the regular cream cheese."

During an office move about nine months ago, I was in an unfamiliar part of our building and just about to leave for the night when the custodian popped his head in to inform me that he'd turned off the hall lights, so to be careful when I was leaving. I turned off the lights in the room and was immediately plunged into darkness. Then, in an attempt to simply feel my way out into the hall, I immediately plunged my head into a brick wall. Bang, scrape, scratch - I get a nice little cut in my forehead, my glasses frames get slightly dented, and there's a nice little half-inch gouge in the left lens.

But everything is so rushrushrunrunhurryhurry at work that there's simply no time for me to schedule a new eye exam (well, that and I don't have insurance to cover said exam...oops). Months go by, I fly to Mexico to get the durn thing done, the project finally winds down and life is normally-paced again. I get my exam, find out my right eye has changed a half-point, and there's that "whoa!" moment when the doctor compares what my prescription used to be to what it should be. That thing's so powerful I'm surprised I couldn't see into the future.

So almost a year later, here I am, finally with the new specs. The streets are safe again. And yes, I really am so blind that my glasses appear to distort the shape of my head.

Last night was pretty much the perfect storm of television watching - such that Mrs. Dave even took it upon herself to send me an email around midday:

ABC: 8-9 - Oprah's Legends Ball; 9-11 - Alias Series Finale
FOX: 8-10 - 24 Season Finale

Which should we watch???

Since I was born with testicles, the choice was obvious - record ABC from 8-10, watch 24, then switch over to TiVo and rewind Alias to the beginning and watch until 11:30. "Oh, and I'm going out to dinner at 6:30, but I'll be home in time," she said later.

"In time" is such a flexible beast.

Of course, I shouldn't complain, because by the time she waltzed in at 8:15 (one of her companions' entrees was somehow forgotten, so they all waited around until it was ready and ate together), I'd also managed to watch a full 75 minutes of the Red Sox-Yankees game and see a four-run rally, including Manny thwacking one into the center-field bleachers. At around 7:59, I decided Oprah just wasn't making it onto our TiVo (not like she doesn't have a serious amount of real estate occupied on the ol' hard drive anyway) - and started recording 24 while continuing to watch baseball on the alternate input.

Once she arrived, though, it was down to business. No bathroom breaks, no phone breaks, no getting up for drinks - we were 15 minutes into the show and needed to catch up before Alias began at 9, necessitating its own TiVo session (sadly, our box can only record one show at a time). So with my thumb poised on the 30-second-skip button (and if you don't have this set up on your TiVo, what are you DOING with your life?!), we buckled in for the ride. No mercy for ads, slow camera pans or split-screen intros. And at exactly 8:59, we caught up to real time, 24 fweep-fweeped over to 9:00:00, I fweep-fweeped over to ABC, started the recording, and fweep-fweeped back to FOX and the alternate input just in time for 24's continuation. I feel like I should get the TiVo remote bronzed after that one.

And for the record...24 finale, hells fuckin' yeah. Alias finale...meh.

More adventures from the road...driving back from work today, I got stuck behind a car from New England. How did I know it was from New England? It wasn't the license plate...it wasn't any bumper stickers...not even the inspection sticker. No, I knew because this was a Camry...but the M-R-Y had fallen off. That's right, the woman in front of me was driving her CA.

That's Roget's entry for "wet". As in, the state of our neighborhood, our town, our county, and the surrounding three-hundred-mile radius.

Watching the news last night, we've gotten over 11 inches of rain since the heavens opened on Friday, and with very few exceptions, it hasn't stopped since. And even though it happened before, it hadn't happened in THIS apartment - yes, our basement flooded. Of course, the way we found out was quite amusing. The dryer in our basement is broken, so one of the girls in our dorm thought she'd sneak a little freeloading action and ask to use our washing machine AND dryer. Mrs. Dave saw right through it and said that if the washing machine was still working, she should use that, and THEN she could use our dryer. Outsmarted, the girl traipsed down to the basement, came up, said "Um...there's two inches of water in the basement. NOW can I use your washing machine?"

Oy.

Ah. Right you are.

Venturing into the basement

Luggage rescued from the water

Irony!

The damage. Fortunately, two of those three wet dish packs are empty.

Our sump pump, chugging away. One bucketful every ten seconds or so.

Slightly better use of the sign.

Despite the idyllic setting and oh-isn't-that-cute-inducing details that any wedding guest will invariably notice and comment on, there has yet to be a wedding in the history of the galaxy that hasn't gone off without some stressful behind-the-scenes maneuvering. L'Affair Soule-Ettawageshik of this past weekend was no exception. We were in Virginia for three and a half days, but allow me to regale you with an approximately six-hour span of time and the events that happened therein...

9am: Mrs. Dave and I return from the local bagelry with a dozen bagels (to feed six people, three of which need to fit into bridesmaids dresses, and one of which needs to fit into a bridal gown), along with various and sundry caffeine-laden beverages to make sure everyone remains conscious and snappy after some late-night festivities the evening prior.

10am: I depart in search of the Grooming Lounge, where I am due to have a seven-towel treatment and luxurious shave. Six of us in all will be getting the treatment, including the Chris troika (S, G and C), the father of the groom, me, and groomsman Tony; four of us have 10:30 appointments, and by 10:25, three of us were there, and Tony was hopelessly lost.

"Tony, I think you're in the wrong mall."
"The wrong mall?!"
"Yeah, there are two malls in Tyson's corner."
"What kind of stupid town has two malls?"
"You're in the wrong mall."
"I'm in the right mall; where the fuck is the Grooming Lounge?"
"It's on the third floor."
"There IS no third floor here!!"
"YOU'RE IN THE WRONG MALL."

Tony finally appears at 10:50, and the rest of us are still sitting there, chuckling amongst ourselves. So of course, he's the first one invited in. The other three soon follow and our faces are soon swaddled in hot towels, rubbed up, down, and sideways with all sorts of creams, lotions, gels and other concoctions, and then shaved to within a nanometer of our capillaries, leaving us clean, smooth, and refreshed.

12:30pm: We're done exchanging pleasantries (and narrowly avoiding overpriced shaving kits and accessories), grab a quick lunch, and head out back to the wedding site to start setting up the chairs. Chris G and Chris S head out to Chris C's car to grab the PA and speakers (for their band's two-song performance later that evening); I head right back, hit Route 66, and immediately run into traffic. Heavy traffic. Major accident traffic. By the time two ambulances and a fire truck have gone screaming past me in the breakdown lane, I've already fielded two calls from my panicked wife, who is AT the wedding site and has the bad news that the grass hasn't been mowed yet (they're the first wedding of the season, and the grass was supposed to be cut - for the first time all spring - on Friday), and made two calls to the drivers of the speaker-mobile, who are just now pulling out of the garage. Just in time to skirt the accident and make their way back to the venue. I plow through another mile of traffic before seeing that it's a simple rear-ending - no flames, no broken glass, no jackknifed double-tanker, just SUV-on-SUV crime. Dumbasses.

1:00pm: We finally arrive at the venue. It's hot, hazy, and the grass is still a foot long, which means we basically can't set up the chairs, can't set up the arch, can't set up the podium, can't set up the speakers for the processional music. Mrs. Dave had even tried to pry a hand mower loose from the hotel staff (how she would have gotten it to the venue, I have no idea, but she wins my undying admiration for trying). Unbeknownst to me, she's also browbeaten the site coordinator for Cabell's Mill into calling not only the private contractor who was supposed to mow the grass the previous day, but also into calling someone from the Fairfax County Park Authority to get a mower here. We have no idea who will get there first, and then with a fanfare of trumpets (well, not really), the private contractor arrives with no fewer than six mowers, and they proceed to buzz the place in a half-hour (or at least, the part we needed, after I prevailed upon them in Spanish to mow the 500 square feet we needed to clear for chairs et al). Instead of wrapping up by 1:30, as was the plan, we're done by 2:30. I haul ass back to the hotel, shower, put on my tux, and I'm back at the place by 3 to start ushing, since of course, the guests show up early...but we finally get to breathe again.

Congratulations to my friend Chris and his lovely bride Marissa - more wedding stories to follow, but a selection of pictures in the meantime...

The ushers (Joe & me), groomsman #1 (Chris G), the groom (Chris S), the best man (Chris C), and groomsman #2 (Tony)

The ceremony

Just married!

Goofing around

At the reception

Here comes the airplane, into the hangar...

THE BAND! (Jake & Elwood not included)

Now two married couples

Champagne, water, Altoids and Tylenol. The ending to a perfect day.

*grab*
"Could you not do that? I'm not really feeling my best."
"As your husband, and an expert in the field, I happen to disagree."

"Do you have an extra set of earplugs?"
"I left the other nice ones at home, but I have the foam ones."
"Okay. Did you get that other pair for me or for you?"
"Well, both...in case one pair gets nasty, or if I lose one."
"Oh, ok."
"Of course, if we only had three, you could stick two in your ears and one in your belly button."
"My belly button?!"
"Sure, to protect the hearing of our future child..."