Yearly Archives: 2005

Tom And Mel's Wedding

Thumbnail: Boardroom

Thumbnail: Glass of guiness

Thumbnail: Dinner table

Even before the wed­ding began, I had already unfair­ly decid­ed that I was­n’t going to have a good time. Thank god I was wrong. My ini­tial feel­ing was based on the knowl­edge that cer­tain agi­tat­ing peo­ple were going to be there — a very tan­gi­ble reminder of why we moved under cov­er of dark­ness for the last Bancroft farm excur­sion — but there were enough nor­mal peo­ple to dilute any creepi­ness.

The cer­e­mo­ny was short and sweet. The food was the best I’ve had in weeks, although my grad­ual recov­ery from viral gas­troen­teri­tis meant that I could only have half of the por­tions served. The com­pa­ny at the din­ner table was friend­ly and open enough to address every­one sit­ting (Tolstoy wrote well about such a dif­fi­cul­ty in Anna Karenina when he describes “a small table with per­sons present, like the stew­ard and the archi­tect, belong­ing to a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent world, strug­gling not to be over­awed by an ele­gance to which they were unac­cus­tomed, and unable to sus­tain a large share in the gen­er­al con­ver­sa­tion”). Aside from an idi­ot­ic anal­o­gy about aspara­gus, the speech­es were gen­er­al­ly well-writ­ten; not too trite, and all the more poignant from the emo­tion with which they were spo­ken.

Aaron was there as my wing­man, ensur­ing a good time. Jenn was there as my date, mak­ing the guys jeal­ous. I even saw Christine, although we nev­er had a chance to talk. Apparently, I missed every time she waved at us, so she may have thought that I was ignor­ing or avoid­ing her, which may be why she flicked my ear as she was walk­ing by my table. I still feel bad enough about miss­ing her last birth­day par­ty.

Until din­ner there was an open bar, with Corona and even Guinness on tap, as well as a straw­ber­ry mar­gari­ta machine that could make them like smooth­ies. After din­ner was the danc­ing, and by the time the we were through a dozen or so songs, it was already late, so we head­ed home.

It Stopped Raining

It stopped rain­ing, and the grey sky has turned black with the night. The refresh­ing smell of wet pave­ment and grass drifts lazi­ly through my win­dow, while droplets col­lect and fall from the over­hangs of every house, a dif­fer­ent sound with each vary­ing height and tex­ture. Cars dri­ve by, and I imag­ine the spray from their tires ris­ing and falling in the light of the mild, gold­en street lamps.

In per­son, I’m gen­er­al­ly very pri­vate about my life, but I find myself open­ing up to the strangest peo­ple late­ly.

The most unex­pect­ed ones seem to care.

The Power Of Freedom

I have an extreme­ly dif­fi­cult time deal­ing with peo­ple who choose to com­plain about some­thing and do noth­ing about it. These are the peo­ple who gripe about the jobs that feed them, decry the rela­tion­ships they’re too scared to leave, pine for bet­ter lives when a bet­ter life is only a few steps away. Religious doc­trines of pre­des­ti­na­tion aside, as humans we’re the mas­ters of our fate. We con­trol what hap­pens, because we have the respon­si­bil­i­ty — the response abil­i­ty — to make change hap­pen.

When the bad starts to out­weigh the good, then it’s time to shut the fuck up and be active in chang­ing the sit­u­a­tion. When the good is still greater than the bad, then it’s time to shut the fuck up and deal with what­ev­er minor prob­lems there are.

And when life hands you lemons, make lemon­ade, try to find a guy whose life has giv­en him vod­ka, and have a par­ty.

An Odd Mood Lately

I spend my time squar­ing away every­thing in my room so that I’m com­fort­able enough to write. The extra cables are gone, as well as the ran­dom receipts and bus trans­fers that some­how end up on the car­pet. My mir­rors are all in place, mak­ing the room seem twice as big, but I when I look I only see myself, slouched com­fort­ably in my chair, hood over my head. Even Dolly has won­dered in to lay her­self flat on the emp­ty floor. By the time I’m done clean­ing, I’m at a loss for all the things I’ve been try­ing to get into well struc­tured para­graphs.

A new episode of Trailer Park Boys is play­ing on Showcase, and I’m watch­ing it with the sound off because too much infor­ma­tion would ruin the fourth sea­son, some­thing I’m deter­mined to see in order from the begin­ning. Ricky’s in a high school, com­plete­ly out of place as a thir­ty-some­thing man in shop class try­ing to make some hash or grow some weed or har­vest some kind of nar­cot­ic, and this only adds to my amuse­ment.

I’ve been let­ting my hair grow out, à la Matt Heafy in the video for Pull Harder On The Strings Of Your Martyr. Somehow, I’ve only now dis­cov­ered that my hair nat­u­ral­ly grows towards the front, and by brush­ing it for­ward, it still looks respectable when I haven’t had it cut in a month and a half.

I’ve been in an odd mood late­ly. Thoughts branch off in my mind, but noth­ing seems sol­id enough to fol­low through. Inspiration always comes the day after today.