wedding'd!

I'm back. Whew! First off, as predicted, Benjamin Lown was born while we were gone, so yay them.

Thursday: Took off work early. Went to La Esperanza, the place that used to be Los Copreales, which was our former favorite mexican joint in town. Esperanza got their liquor license, so they're now our favorite, narrowly beating out Ramon's on food quality. Anyway, stuffed selves, went home to pack, with aspirations of getting to bed very early so we could be alive on Friday. Our flight was at 6a, so figured on waking up around 3ish in order to get to Lambert with enough time to navigate their constantly-fucked security situation. Ellen told me she was going to to do some laundry, which I thought she had already started since I kept hearing what I thought was the washing machine cycling downstairs.

Turns out, it was the sump pump constantly cycling because of the flooding in the basement. Fuck.

After moving things to higher ground, we tried to move all the water towards the sump, which we thought had come in under the poorly-sealed door. After clearing all the water, it was back a minute later. After some more CSI-work, I spotted bubbles coming from a crack in the floor. Awesome. Turns out the ground was so coimpletely saturated from our record rainfall, that the latest storm just pushed things over the edge, and water was flowing up through the ground.

Anyway, after screwing with that, it was a restless night of barely sleeping between worrying about the basement getting worse and have the rattly sump pump kick on every 5 minutes just as I was falling asleep. 3am came pretty fast.

Friday: dragged ass outta bed, did the airport shuffle, even getting their 2 hours early we made it to the gate with 15 minutes to spare. I hate Lambert. We had a connecting flight in Pittsburgh, with a 30 minute layover. Flight out was on-time, but of course we sat at the gate for 30 minutes waiting for 'paperwork' before we could take off. Got to PA and over to our other flight with -1 minutes, luckily we had 9 people on our flight that were heading to richmond, 3 of which were pilots, so they waited for us.

Got the Richmond without incident. C&C picked us up, and we went and checked into the hotel. Headed over to Pam's parents for leftover BBQ from thursday. Met the parents, both totally awesome. Girls went to get nails done, we drank beer with pam's dad for a little bit, then hit the cigar shop for accountrements. Went to the hotel again, hung out while we waited for ben & same, then headed over to get our tuxes. I wound up with a 40 coat instead of a 44, and a medium vest instead of a large, so they had to overnight my shit. Back to the hotel, changed, and did the rehersal thing, then over to this awesome italian joint for awesome italian food. Pam's dad gave an amazing speech, gifts in the form of booze were given (yay scotch), then it was back to the hotel for drinks. We bowed out halfway early due to death via tiredness. Then Nate dragged us out for cigars. Wound up in bed around midnight or 1 i guess.

Saturday: did the wedding thing. Played a lot of hangman on the whiteboard waiting for pictures. Good times. Wedding went off without a hitch, and even being an hour long Catholic wedding, it seemed to fly by. More pictures, then back to the hotel for vodka shots, and cocktail hour. Reception followed. Nate and Pam's entrance was awesome, with dancing and whatnot. Maid of honor Lauren started the speeches and did hers to the theme from the Fresh Prince, with groomsmen providing backup beat-box skeeelz. I'm sure it was horrible, but I couldn't hear the whole effect over my funky beats. I followed up with a haphazard nervous speech that was received much better than it sounded coming out of my mouth at the time. I actually got a lot of compliments on it through the night, so I guess it didn't suck. Standard reception revelry commenced, with video proof of jigs, Steve Perry powerslides, Schweighart dances and all sorts of other dorky white-person wedding shit. Awesome. Oh, there was an interpretive dance for American Pie, which was random and very confusing. But awesome.

After party commenced around 10, pizzas were ordered, cigars were smoked, scotch was drank, good times were had, $100+ bar tab was ran up. In bed by... 2? 1? Not sure.

Sunday: Woke up at some point, dragged ass out of the hotel, got to the airport, slept on the flight to PA, had an hour and a half layover this time, got to experience the incredible-ness that is the Pittsburgh airport. Seriously. Mall environment, had EVERYTHING. Great food court, Sbarro and all. Had a slice, ellen poked around the Gap, it was just bizarre. Grabbed plane to STL, slept more. Was greeted with 40* windy shit and snow spits, after being in 80* VA, we of course didn't bring coats. Got car, stopped by schnucks for randoms foods, grabbed tacobell, and went home. Watched I Am Legend, in bed by 8. My body is still completely beat to shit from boozery and wearing rental shoes and being on my feet for 16 hours Saturday. I think I'm still catching up from my lack of sleep Thursday as well. Jacuzzi heals all wounds. And coffee. And evil/awesome baked egg souffles from Panera. So good.