Ok, Joe was right when he said that blogging was what suffered when you worked a long week. This month is the last month of the fiscal year for the University I work at. That means that all the bills have to be paid and since I technically was hired to work in Accounts Payable this is the time of year they pull me off the shelf, dust me off, and see if I remember what I'm doing. So, I've been working 12-15 hour days since last Tuesday and have 5 more days to go. Anyway, I'll try and finish up the events of two weekends ago, last week, the past weekend, and this week, so it's probably going to be wordy.

So I last left off with the reception. I made a few phone calls, sent a few text messages, and just generally alerted people that it actually happened, which no one was sure of anyway. When I called my buddy Mark he gave me some great news. He got a new job and was able to leave the company that he despised. This was the company that I used to work for. I'm sure I've blogged about it before, but I'm too lazy to look it up in the archives, so I'll give a banana peel to anyone that actually finds it. Anyway, when I went back to the reception we started to drink at the cocktail hour. I drink Stoli Screwdrivers. It's my drink of choice. Bond had Martini's--shaken not stirred. I have Stoli Screwdriver's very little ice. However, when I got up to the bar I found out that they only had Stoli Razberi. I wasn't quite sure how that was going to mix with orange juice. Turns out, it's fantastic. When I get my life back in July, I'm going to have to pick a bottle of Razberi up. I only have about a shot left in the bottle I have. Anyway, as we were waiting to go into the reception hall, we noticed a relative of Dave's getting a coke. I'm guessing he had to be somewhere between 12-14, but I'm not certain. Matt caught a glimpse of him and said, "Look it's Mini-Dave." None of us could argue with that. He was wearing a suit jacket that was so long it made him look like a midget. A fat midget, but a midget none the less. We figured that in order to get a jacket that would go around his considerable girth, he had to order it way big. From there we got in to the reception hall where we met the people that we would be sitting with for the evening. There were a trio of people from Jessica's side of things that seemed nice, but they were all vegetarians, so I'll hold that against them. After Pat's attempt at a toast (I've seen much better) Dave grabbed the microphone and thanked everyone for coming and a couple other of pleasantries that no one really listened to. Then a strange thing happened. The band started to play, "It had to be you." I immediately grabbed my phone and sent a text message to Tom..."Oh, my god. He's singing." He, of course, could not remember all the words and didn't quite make it through the whole thing, but I've seen very little stop Dave from making a fool of himself. Of course he had help. The Band was pretty bad. They play at the bar where Dave and Jessica met, but I get the feeling that the band at the wedding was all his idea. She didn't seem real thrilled with it. The lead singer (and I use that term loosely) looked like Elvis Costello, but didn't have one tenth his talent. The only thing that we liked from him all evening was his rendition of The Rainbow Connection in a Kermit the Frog voice. We thought he should sing all of his songs in that voice. But that's getting ahead of myself. Dave and Jessica had not devised any sort of plan for alerting the wait staff to which meal people had ordered. I couldn't even remember what choices there had been let alone which I had chosen. So, the wait staff hated us. So, after dinner they began to play some music to dance to, or at least that's what they said. At one point they had played, "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" and "I Will Survive" and they began to play something that soundly oddly familiar. That had been our game all evening trying to guess which song was going to be slaughtered next. So we were trying to figure out which song it might be when it hit us...it was Billie Jean by Michael Jackson. Taylor (another CMU individual at our table) leaned over and said, "Perhaps the song about an illegitimate child is not the most appropriate song for a wedding." The rest of the evening had it's ups and downs. We danced when we could stand the music. And we got to catch up with some people we hadn't seen for a while. Since Adam had been studying in Rome his internal clock was all screwed up. He was starting to fade out quite quickly. And, when Adam gets tired it's always funny. As we were walking back into the hall he said, "Maybe they'll (the band) play something I like, or, I might slit my wrists." Knowing Adam as we do he's not prone to making comments like that.
Dave's photographer was using a pretty elaborate digital set-up. We figured he must have come from CMU as well. There was a great big party going on, lots of liquor and food, and he was sitting in the back corner of the room hunched over a computer. We sat and heckled everything around us a bit more and I finally decided that when we all got to hell I didn't want the rest of them celling with me. They were a bad influence. Ok, we were all being fairly mean, but if we didn't heckle who would? I went out with Pat and Matt in the hallway to catch up and while we were gone, Phil, a true sales weenie, decided that he was going to hit on our wives. As we were walking into the hall again he had drug Alison out on to the dance floor and was basically holding her hostage. We watched for a while and then Matt felt bad and went to rescue his wife. Phil then went to Terri and I also watched and laughed for a little and then went over to rescue her as well. When we got back to the table they said that he had walked over to them and asked if they were with anyone. They both said that their husbands had just stepped out. He said, "That's ok. I'm married too. So, it's ok."
About halfway through the evening we noticed one of the guests looked exactly like John Cusack. We spent the next half hour or so spouting our favorite quotes from his movies. "I want my two dollars." "I killed the President of Paraguay with a fork, how have you been?" At about this time they brought out a bunch of desserts in addition to the cake. There were several big bowls of chocolate pudding that were left when we decided to head back to our rooms. We were fairly certain that we could get out of the ballroom with one, but realized that we would have to hum the Mission: Impossible theme song. So, we gave up on that. As we were walking up the hallway generally making fun of the band we noticed the lead singer standing in front of the Mac machine. Quickly we ducked around the corner to the elevator hoping he hadn't heard us. But then again, I'll most likely never end up in his piano bar so what do I care. As we got onto the elevator an older couple that had been at the wedding got on as well. They made polite small talk and ended with, "That band was phenomenal for people of all ages. Don't you think?" We had no words. We had spent the better part of the evening making fun of the band and my mom always said, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all." This was one of the times that I listened.
When we got upstairs we played a game of cards and somehow Alison won. I'm pretty sure there was trickery involved, but I'm not sure how.
The next morning we set off for home. After following Matt's warped sense of direction we finally got on the way home. We stopped at a donut shop (there seems to be one every five feet in New England). The donut shop was a drive-thru only basically. But we didn't want to drive through so we tried to go around and almost ended up in the McDonald's drive-thru. We finally got to the shop, but they didn't take credit cards and we didn't have much cash. So we had to trek across the parking lot to the Mac machine. We made it back to Matt and Alison's house eventually and after a few more leans from Susie we headed for home. And, I'll pick it up there later. Gee now I'm only 9 days or so behind.