Yearly Archives: 2008

Trolley and Steph's Wedding

Changing groomsmen

Not only the day that Trolley got hitched, but a chance to see Adam and Tomasini and Eric and Nick and Alison; the peo­ple I only get to hang out with when camp­ing or par­ty­ing at the farm. I missed Adam and his ever ebul­lient atti­tude most of all, some­thing that nev­er fails to buoy the spir­its. Even though we did­n’t get a chance to talk much through all the prepa­ra­tion, it was enough to hear his voice and laugh­ter.

Handshake

Thumbnail: Wedding handshake
Thumbnail: Wedding handshake
Thumbnail: Taking cell phone photos
Thumbnail: Walking to the aisle
Thumbnail: Just married
 

It was back to Stanley’s Maple Farm1 for the out­door wed­ding. The rain con­tin­ued up to half an hour before the cer­e­mo­ny then stopped com­plete­ly, as if god him­self had a hand in ordain­ment.

You just need to look at the smile on Trolley’s face to under­stand how hap­py he is.

The recep­tion was open bar, with prime rib and a dessert buf­fet at the end. I had been wait­ing over a year to have the prime rib din­ner, as I was going through an undi­ag­nosed case of IBS at Aaron’s wed­ding and was left eat­ing bread. Even Pat, my gour­mand friend, said that it was cooked to per­fec­tion, and found out that the venue has a deal with the farm up the road to get the best cuts of meat.

We sur­prised the new­ly wed­ded cou­ple with the shoe game, where they answer a series of ques­tions with­out know­ing how the oth­er one will answer. They sur­prised us with how many they answered in sync. A good sign for the new­ly wed.

Thumbnail: Wedding guestbook
Thumbnail: Center piece
Thumbnail: Photographer sticks his tongue out
Thumbnail: Aaron drinks
Thumbnail: Wedding favour
 

Nick humourous­ly not­ed that there weren’t many sin­gle girls around, but being able to hang out with Aaron in the MC booth made me feel much less awk­ward and aban­doned than the last wed­ding I went to.

At one point, Trolley came up to me and asked me _____ __ _________ ____ _____. It was his wed­ding, but he was con­cerned about me. I could­n’t believe it even entered his mind with every­thing going on around him, and it was cer­tain­ly the part I’ll remem­ber most about that night.

  1. The same place Aaron got mar­ried. [↩]

Life After Now

When you get to my age and most of your best years are behind you instead of ahead of you… it is a lit­tle eas­i­er to both appre­ci­ate what you have and to regret what you will nev­er have again.

—Michael on Randomness and Disconnection

In this cul­ture, we’re bred to believe that every step of our lives will affect the next one with dire con­se­quences. If you don’t choose the right class­es in grade 10, you’ll be stuck in some­thing you don’t like in grade 11, and end up scor­ing poor­ly. If you score poor­ly in grade 11, you’ll lim­it your options for grade 12. If you don’t have the right class­es in grade 12, you’ll have few­er uni­ver­si­ties from which to choose. So on and so on, until the C+ you got in his­to­ry class means you’ll be mow­ing lawns for the rest of your life.

Maybe this is why I always feel like it’s too late.

I wish I nev­er stopped learn­ing piano, so I could have anoth­er medi­um to express myself. I wish I grew up learn­ing Tai Chi, so it’d be more nat­ur­al to me. I wish I bought a house soon­er, so I could have cap­i­tal­ized on amor­ti­za­tion in the ris­ing hous­ing mar­ket. I wish I had start­ed con­tribut­ing to my RRSPs at a younger age, so I could retire at the age I want. I wish I paid more atten­tion in French class, so I could still use it as a lan­guage. I wish I had gone to ther­a­py ear­li­er, so I would­n’t have messed up the rela­tion­ships that mat­tered.

All these sit­u­a­tions where I feel like I’m too old and passed the point where I can achieve some­thing effi­cient­ly, or max­i­mize my gains.

But then I see how hap­py some peo­ple are, who are twice my age, and haven’t planned for retire­ment yet. Or some who still live in an apart­ment, with­out a house or car for equi­ty. Some are new­ly sin­gle at fifty, and dat­ing, and hap­pi­er than they’ve ever been (and here I am, think­ing that I’ll be sin­gle for the rest of my life because every­one my age is already mar­ried). Even Lloyd, who just obtained his doc­tor­ate last year at 36, told me that one’s skills can take them any­where, and that age is nev­er a mat­ter. I’m not sure if I believe that yet, but I’d sure like to.

It all makes me won­der: is it real­ly too late? Are my best years real­ly behind me?

Perhaps they’re not.

Design Itch

Web design is a fre­quent itch for me, as inspi­ra­tion comes from every­where. Quite often, I come across a beau­ti­ful site that has a clever ele­ment here or an inter­est­ing pat­tern there, and get the urge to redesign my own.

But as there’s no such thing as a per­fect ath­lete, there’s no such thing as a per­fect design. Minimalism, while func­tion­al and acces­si­ble, tends to lack per­son­al­i­ty. Style — while beau­ti­ful and full of char­ac­ter — tends to be biased and stag­nant. I find myself in a con­stant state of flux between the two ideals.

Right now, I’d love to have a big­ger can­vas, some­thing like Days With my Father, where I can dis­play my pho­tos in a much larg­er for­mat (because, real­ly, the impact of a pho­to­graph is lost when it’s small). I’d love to have items orga­nized by columns fit that per­fect­ly in a grid, aligned along nat­ur­al ver­ti­cal rules. I’d love to have some­thing a lit­tle more com­plex, some­thing that invites a view­er to explore fur­ther.

But I’m hap­py with this one. It does what I want. It looks right, no mat­ter what day or mood I’m in.

Having a design that match­es my sit­u­a­tion is impor­tant to me, which means they gen­er­al­ly don’t last longer than a few months, as I tend to evolve with­in that time. There have been many times that I’ve writ­ten, “This is the last redesign for a while”, only to be unsat­is­fied in some way and to change it with­in a few months. I unveiled the cur­rent one at the begin­ning of the year, and it’s prob­a­bly the one I’ve been most sat­is­fied with. Whenever the itch strikes me, I browse through the archives and admire how clean every­thing is, and how dif­fer­ent types of con­tent seems to work in the same area. Then I real­ize how hard it would be to come up with some­thing bet­ter, and the itch goes away.

So no redesign for a while.

Promise.