My weekend
THURSDAY itself wasn't particularly interesting. I had work, and D&D after. I was a little late to D&D because Steve caught me for a chat RIGHT when I wanted to leave, but it turned out Mike wasn't showing up to D&D anyway so it worked out okay. It was a decent session, Justin made lasagna and our characters levelled up, and I got 5th level spells, so I'm like "Ok, what 2 spells do I want to take?" and of course grabbed Cone of Cold because I'm an evoker-burnmage-badass, and then after looking at the other 5th level spells (not Necromancy or Enchantment since those are my forbidden schools, so no Feeblemind or Magic Jar or Dominate or anything) the only other ones that looked offhand cool were Permanency, Teleport, and Transmute Rock to Jello (well, mud, hehe). Decided to go with Teleport since it means I can teleport the whole party if needed. Of course when preparing my spells for the day I just took 2 Cone of Colds. Whee.
The session itself was just one or two big battles, which were sort of fun, and involved lots of butt-kicking. Because Mike didn't show up (to go help his girlfriend's family move stuff), we kept deciding that his character would go in first to everything and get his butt kicked more. We did have one close call and were kinda like "Man, how are we going to explain to Mike that we not only levelled his half-orc monk with one level of Sorcerer, but that we also got him killed?" It felt almost like that movie The Gamers.
Ah well, D&D went until almost midnight and then I went home and since my flight was at 8am I decided to just stay up the whole night, since to get to the airport "by 6-6:30am" I had to leave "by 5:30-6am" which meant getting up to shower and change "by 4:30-5am" and I still had to pack, so I figured what was the point of going to sleep at 2 or 3am and getting up an hour later. I worked on moving ships on PP for a bit and hung out with Weaver a lot and packed my bags and it was altogether merry, although I got the wrong timing and left my apartment at 6am.
I got to the airport Friday morning at 6:20ish and got a parking spot, and I went to the wrong ticket stand first since I was on a USAirways flight "operated by United" so I wasted like 5-10 minutes there, then went to the United counter and got my ticket. Then there was a huge security line... for some reason they made a ton of us go over to the Gate A/S security station, saying it was quicker, but in reality it meant I had to walk a ton more to get there and back for N gates. Also, what I didn't know was that my ticket had an "SSSS" on it which meant I was randomly chosen to be in the "super security" line, which SUCKED ASS. It moved really slowly, and by the time I got up to the metal detector, my flight was actually BOARDING, at 7:30. I was kinda panicking and they were still searching through all of my bags and metal-scanning and frisking me and whatnot and it was just kinda stressful but I was too tired to really care. Fortunately, I got to my gate around 7:40-5ish and made it to the plane on time.
I fell asleep almost immediately but I woke up when they served food since I was starving. I noticed that Jackie Chan was on the movie screen, so hey, whoa, free headphones, I figured I'd watch whatever movie while I was eating, and it was Around the World in 80 Days, and I ended up watching the whole thing. It was really pretty good, I'd like to watch it again so I can see the whole thing and see it on a better screen. (Carl - you were right - Arrrnold is in it, I just hadn't recognized him, he played the crazy prince guy) It was just kind of a fun movie. Whee. I slept for the rest of the flight after that.
Dulles airport was CRAZY packed, and I called the hotel to be like "Hi shuttle please?" and they were like "Uh.. in like 30-40 mins?" Then the shuttle lady couldn't find me -- I went to where the hotel said to, to the United departures area on the top level by the end... but she was a new driver, oops. So she kept calling me like "I can't find you" until I figured out she was at the ARRIVALS which is a different level. After circling the airport like 3 times she finally got there -- my brother called me at like 4:30 like "Where are you?" and I figured it was the shuttle lady again so I was all like "WHAT NOW?" They were starting the wedding rehearsal right around then.
It took an hour for the shuttle to get to the hotel. Ugh. They were finishing the rehearsal right around then. I get there and my family informs me I have to do all this walking up and down the aisle and I'm like "wait what?" Of course, they were all like "YOU GOT A HAIRCUT WTFOMGDXYB4ULOLOMGOMG!" Hehe, while my mother does read my Livejournal voraciously, this now confirms she doesn't click on LJ-cuts, since she hadn't seen that post. Useful to know.
We went to the Tuscarora Mill for dinner. There was an adults table (my dad, mom, stepfather, grandfather, grandfather's girlfriend, emily's parents, and emily's grandmother) and a kids table (danny & emily, best man tim and his wife, maid of honor amanda and her boyfriend, and me). It was kinda fun, I hadn't met Tim before even though he'd been Danny's roomate in college for 4 years or whatever, and he's super-nice, and really everyone at the table was nice although it was a little bit weird, kinda like hanging out with college friends except they weren't MY college friends. (They were all in the same co-ed fraternity at UVA together I think) Still, it was okay. I was just really tired and out of it.
After dinner I came back to the hotel. I wanted to watch the Red Sox game but A) the hotel didn't have ESPN in my room apparently B) it got rained out. So I played PP for an hour or two until exhaustion just totally took over and I conked out around 11 or midnight or whenever. Oh, Jeff got me a super-cool awesome present in PP :) :) He got me a sloop called the Sublime Carp! Woooo! It's so rad since I really wanted to hit sublime in carp and I wanted a ship named that and I guess I just hope Jaina doesn't kill me or him. Yay. I called Laurel (![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shoebox_bird) because I knew she'd just moved to DC and I had her cell number (which is why I didn't call Lawrence, even though it's been forever since I saw him and we could talk baseball... I didn't know how to get in touch!). The funny part is, I called Laurel like "Hey, I'm in VA, wanna hang out tomorrow?" and she goes "Oh, I'm in Pittsburgh! Hee!" It was Chris (dodger)'s birthday party they were all at, so she passed her cellphone around the table and I got to talk to Jensen, Bryan, Neil, George, Barbara, Eric, and I forget who else. It was really neat and totally random.
SATURDAY I woke up around 10am, long sleep, and ran downstairs in my pajamas to grab free hotel breakfast since they only had it from 6-10. Ran back upstairs and started getting ready since we were told to be at the Birkby House at 12:30 for family photographs. The hair dryer in my room ALSO didn't work, ugh (infact the only thing in my room that seemed to work right at all was the wireless, honestly), so I decided to wing it and just put gel in my hair and scrunched it to be curly and didn't bother with barrettes or anything. We went over to the place and it was empty. I got pretty bored and spent a while reading a book, and then they took a bazillion pictures of everyone, and then lots of people showed up. There were only like 40 guests total, actually. It was sort of amusing meeting Emily's relatives that live in Seattle, her aunts and first cousins - apparently the main family lives in Shoreline but their son, who I think is around my age, lives literally 3 blocks away -- it was like "Oh, you guys are from Seattle too?" "Yeah, where do you live?" "I live in Greenwood..." "Oh, we live in Shoreline, but Scott lives in Greenwood!" "Oh, really, where?" "Off 85th, do you know where the Guenivere Apartments are?" "No kidding, that's one of the buildings I looked at. I live at 87th and Greenwood right by the Safeway and Walgreens." "Oh wow! I go to that Safeway all the time..." Small world, I guess.
(This leads me into a random tangent wherein I think about family and in-lawness and how nice Brooke's wacko huge family always was to me and how weird it is that they're not family anymore... I mean, even though it was like my fiance's sister-in-law's aunt's big Thanksgiving dinner it still felt kinda family-like. Weird. So these guys are my now-sister-in-law's first cousins, and I dunno if I'd really feel family-like enough to visit them but it'd still be interesting. Maybe if Danny and Emily come out there.)
Anyway, they had a ceremony, and I walked my grandfather in, and walked back, and also walked my mother in, and I apparently walked WAY too fast but oh well, and the ceremony was short and sweet and my brother put the "Mawwiage" speech from the Princess Bride in their wedding program, and they had their friend James read a passage that was essentially from the graduation speech that the dean of their college made or something, and they put on rings and the rings were really snug so they both had issues putting them on which was kinda funny, and then it was all over and we went into a tent outside for the reception. Except a hurricane or something hit the east coast around then (and closed down 11 miles of I-95) and so it was raining a ton and fortunately the tent had heaters and closed up, but it was kinda scary for a bit there. I sat at the "siblings and cousins" table with my cousin Sarah, and Emily's brother and cousins. None of our first cousins were there except Sarah which was kind of odd. My mom's brother and sister-in-law were there though, and I had NOT seen them in TEN years, no joke. They still live in a little house in Northeast Philly around the corner from my highschool. None of their kids were there though, and the cousins on my dad's side all had excuses not to be there like boarding school and a bat mitzvah and the PSATs. Oi. Oh well.
The dinner was buffet and vegetarian and very good. The funny part is that rather than a big wedding cake, they decided to get CUPCAKES instead. That was pretty funny, so there was no cake to cut but they did feed each other the cupcakes, heh. For some reason there was absolutely no ringing on glasses to make the bride and groom kiss, although they did have a first dance and toasts and all that kind of stuff. Nobody was dancing for a long time until my grandpa got up with some people to do YMCA. My grandpa is crazy and everyone at the party totally adored him. I found out that Danny's friend James had done ballroom dancing so we tried to do some dances but we knew different styles so it was kinda funny. We wanted swing music but by the time we found the CD with it, the party ended! doh. Ah well, it was still fun.
Lots of goodbyes, then Dad and I headed back to the hotel... it was around 7:30-8pm at that point. I changed out of my dress and stuff and then called Laurel again and she came over to Leesburg to pick me up. We looked all over the place for somewhere that was open past 10pm, and the guy at Starbucks told us where an IHOP was. So we went to IHOP and sat there talking for like 3 hours and had dessert and stuff. Around 11pm-midnight about a hundred teenagers filtered into IHOP - looking all dressed up like they'd all come from Homecoming or something. Oi. So we left around midnightish. It was good to hang out with Laurel again.
I ended up playing PP for a few hours because Silverdawg and Kuibbles and Gigza wanted me to enter some brawl tournament with them. Arr. I also went sailing with Carl for a while. I guess I went to sleep at like 4am. Which felt like 1am, of course.
SUNDAY I got up at 10ish and grabbed food and then went to get ready to check out. We hit the road at 11am. I've actually been sitting in the car writing this on my laptop. I think it's kinda funny, I was thinking about wanderlust and howmrpeck used to call me a Natural Born Kender, and something surreal about being on a roadtrip with my dad and my grandfather and my grandfather's girlfriend just made me think that wow, I'm really just totally into travelling in all various forms... heh... ah well, we're about 30 miles out of Philly right now, so I'm gonna switch off the laptop. Not sure if I'll post this entry as is or add the rest of Sunday later.
The session itself was just one or two big battles, which were sort of fun, and involved lots of butt-kicking. Because Mike didn't show up (to go help his girlfriend's family move stuff), we kept deciding that his character would go in first to everything and get his butt kicked more. We did have one close call and were kinda like "Man, how are we going to explain to Mike that we not only levelled his half-orc monk with one level of Sorcerer, but that we also got him killed?" It felt almost like that movie The Gamers.
Ah well, D&D went until almost midnight and then I went home and since my flight was at 8am I decided to just stay up the whole night, since to get to the airport "by 6-6:30am" I had to leave "by 5:30-6am" which meant getting up to shower and change "by 4:30-5am" and I still had to pack, so I figured what was the point of going to sleep at 2 or 3am and getting up an hour later. I worked on moving ships on PP for a bit and hung out with Weaver a lot and packed my bags and it was altogether merry, although I got the wrong timing and left my apartment at 6am.
I got to the airport Friday morning at 6:20ish and got a parking spot, and I went to the wrong ticket stand first since I was on a USAirways flight "operated by United" so I wasted like 5-10 minutes there, then went to the United counter and got my ticket. Then there was a huge security line... for some reason they made a ton of us go over to the Gate A/S security station, saying it was quicker, but in reality it meant I had to walk a ton more to get there and back for N gates. Also, what I didn't know was that my ticket had an "SSSS" on it which meant I was randomly chosen to be in the "super security" line, which SUCKED ASS. It moved really slowly, and by the time I got up to the metal detector, my flight was actually BOARDING, at 7:30. I was kinda panicking and they were still searching through all of my bags and metal-scanning and frisking me and whatnot and it was just kinda stressful but I was too tired to really care. Fortunately, I got to my gate around 7:40-5ish and made it to the plane on time.
I fell asleep almost immediately but I woke up when they served food since I was starving. I noticed that Jackie Chan was on the movie screen, so hey, whoa, free headphones, I figured I'd watch whatever movie while I was eating, and it was Around the World in 80 Days, and I ended up watching the whole thing. It was really pretty good, I'd like to watch it again so I can see the whole thing and see it on a better screen. (Carl - you were right - Arrrnold is in it, I just hadn't recognized him, he played the crazy prince guy) It was just kind of a fun movie. Whee. I slept for the rest of the flight after that.
Dulles airport was CRAZY packed, and I called the hotel to be like "Hi shuttle please?" and they were like "Uh.. in like 30-40 mins?" Then the shuttle lady couldn't find me -- I went to where the hotel said to, to the United departures area on the top level by the end... but she was a new driver, oops. So she kept calling me like "I can't find you" until I figured out she was at the ARRIVALS which is a different level. After circling the airport like 3 times she finally got there -- my brother called me at like 4:30 like "Where are you?" and I figured it was the shuttle lady again so I was all like "WHAT NOW?" They were starting the wedding rehearsal right around then.
It took an hour for the shuttle to get to the hotel. Ugh. They were finishing the rehearsal right around then. I get there and my family informs me I have to do all this walking up and down the aisle and I'm like "wait what?" Of course, they were all like "YOU GOT A HAIRCUT WTFOMGDXYB4ULOLOMGOMG!" Hehe, while my mother does read my Livejournal voraciously, this now confirms she doesn't click on LJ-cuts, since she hadn't seen that post. Useful to know.
We went to the Tuscarora Mill for dinner. There was an adults table (my dad, mom, stepfather, grandfather, grandfather's girlfriend, emily's parents, and emily's grandmother) and a kids table (danny & emily, best man tim and his wife, maid of honor amanda and her boyfriend, and me). It was kinda fun, I hadn't met Tim before even though he'd been Danny's roomate in college for 4 years or whatever, and he's super-nice, and really everyone at the table was nice although it was a little bit weird, kinda like hanging out with college friends except they weren't MY college friends. (They were all in the same co-ed fraternity at UVA together I think) Still, it was okay. I was just really tired and out of it.
After dinner I came back to the hotel. I wanted to watch the Red Sox game but A) the hotel didn't have ESPN in my room apparently B) it got rained out. So I played PP for an hour or two until exhaustion just totally took over and I conked out around 11 or midnight or whenever. Oh, Jeff got me a super-cool awesome present in PP :) :) He got me a sloop called the Sublime Carp! Woooo! It's so rad since I really wanted to hit sublime in carp and I wanted a ship named that and I guess I just hope Jaina doesn't kill me or him. Yay. I called Laurel (
shoebox_bird) because I knew she'd just moved to DC and I had her cell number (which is why I didn't call Lawrence, even though it's been forever since I saw him and we could talk baseball... I didn't know how to get in touch!). The funny part is, I called Laurel like "Hey, I'm in VA, wanna hang out tomorrow?" and she goes "Oh, I'm in Pittsburgh! Hee!" It was Chris (dodger)'s birthday party they were all at, so she passed her cellphone around the table and I got to talk to Jensen, Bryan, Neil, George, Barbara, Eric, and I forget who else. It was really neat and totally random.SATURDAY I woke up around 10am, long sleep, and ran downstairs in my pajamas to grab free hotel breakfast since they only had it from 6-10. Ran back upstairs and started getting ready since we were told to be at the Birkby House at 12:30 for family photographs. The hair dryer in my room ALSO didn't work, ugh (infact the only thing in my room that seemed to work right at all was the wireless, honestly), so I decided to wing it and just put gel in my hair and scrunched it to be curly and didn't bother with barrettes or anything. We went over to the place and it was empty. I got pretty bored and spent a while reading a book, and then they took a bazillion pictures of everyone, and then lots of people showed up. There were only like 40 guests total, actually. It was sort of amusing meeting Emily's relatives that live in Seattle, her aunts and first cousins - apparently the main family lives in Shoreline but their son, who I think is around my age, lives literally 3 blocks away -- it was like "Oh, you guys are from Seattle too?" "Yeah, where do you live?" "I live in Greenwood..." "Oh, we live in Shoreline, but Scott lives in Greenwood!" "Oh, really, where?" "Off 85th, do you know where the Guenivere Apartments are?" "No kidding, that's one of the buildings I looked at. I live at 87th and Greenwood right by the Safeway and Walgreens." "Oh wow! I go to that Safeway all the time..." Small world, I guess.
(This leads me into a random tangent wherein I think about family and in-lawness and how nice Brooke's wacko huge family always was to me and how weird it is that they're not family anymore... I mean, even though it was like my fiance's sister-in-law's aunt's big Thanksgiving dinner it still felt kinda family-like. Weird. So these guys are my now-sister-in-law's first cousins, and I dunno if I'd really feel family-like enough to visit them but it'd still be interesting. Maybe if Danny and Emily come out there.)
Anyway, they had a ceremony, and I walked my grandfather in, and walked back, and also walked my mother in, and I apparently walked WAY too fast but oh well, and the ceremony was short and sweet and my brother put the "Mawwiage" speech from the Princess Bride in their wedding program, and they had their friend James read a passage that was essentially from the graduation speech that the dean of their college made or something, and they put on rings and the rings were really snug so they both had issues putting them on which was kinda funny, and then it was all over and we went into a tent outside for the reception. Except a hurricane or something hit the east coast around then (and closed down 11 miles of I-95) and so it was raining a ton and fortunately the tent had heaters and closed up, but it was kinda scary for a bit there. I sat at the "siblings and cousins" table with my cousin Sarah, and Emily's brother and cousins. None of our first cousins were there except Sarah which was kind of odd. My mom's brother and sister-in-law were there though, and I had NOT seen them in TEN years, no joke. They still live in a little house in Northeast Philly around the corner from my highschool. None of their kids were there though, and the cousins on my dad's side all had excuses not to be there like boarding school and a bat mitzvah and the PSATs. Oi. Oh well.
The dinner was buffet and vegetarian and very good. The funny part is that rather than a big wedding cake, they decided to get CUPCAKES instead. That was pretty funny, so there was no cake to cut but they did feed each other the cupcakes, heh. For some reason there was absolutely no ringing on glasses to make the bride and groom kiss, although they did have a first dance and toasts and all that kind of stuff. Nobody was dancing for a long time until my grandpa got up with some people to do YMCA. My grandpa is crazy and everyone at the party totally adored him. I found out that Danny's friend James had done ballroom dancing so we tried to do some dances but we knew different styles so it was kinda funny. We wanted swing music but by the time we found the CD with it, the party ended! doh. Ah well, it was still fun.
Lots of goodbyes, then Dad and I headed back to the hotel... it was around 7:30-8pm at that point. I changed out of my dress and stuff and then called Laurel again and she came over to Leesburg to pick me up. We looked all over the place for somewhere that was open past 10pm, and the guy at Starbucks told us where an IHOP was. So we went to IHOP and sat there talking for like 3 hours and had dessert and stuff. Around 11pm-midnight about a hundred teenagers filtered into IHOP - looking all dressed up like they'd all come from Homecoming or something. Oi. So we left around midnightish. It was good to hang out with Laurel again.
I ended up playing PP for a few hours because Silverdawg and Kuibbles and Gigza wanted me to enter some brawl tournament with them. Arr. I also went sailing with Carl for a while. I guess I went to sleep at like 4am. Which felt like 1am, of course.
SUNDAY I got up at 10ish and grabbed food and then went to get ready to check out. We hit the road at 11am. I've actually been sitting in the car writing this on my laptop. I think it's kinda funny, I was thinking about wanderlust and how
mrpeck used to call me a Natural Born Kender, and something surreal about being on a roadtrip with my dad and my grandfather and my grandfather's girlfriend just made me think that wow, I'm really just totally into travelling in all various forms... heh... ah well, we're about 30 miles out of Philly right now, so I'm gonna switch off the laptop. Not sure if I'll post this entry as is or add the rest of Sunday later.
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Point in favour of driving.
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would love to see pictures of you all spiffed up in your dress and hair and stuff.