It couldn’t have gone better. And Kelsey’s happy too.
Month: June 2007
Weather not exactly what I expected
It was partly cloudy all day, upper 60s, great, until about 5pm it rained, a good pour, that ended quickly. I don’t know if it rained early, but no sign of it at my house at 7am. Gusts of wind, but only one mishap setting up the small tent.
Kelsey’s legendary calling of the weather worked again, and was commented on. I thought even the little shower worked well. Everyone crowded under the tent right after we cut the cake and the I ran out in the rain (having already been dunked in my pinstripe shorts and tux top) and got back on the hot seat. Kelsey followed shortly after in her wedding dress, and we gave everyone wet hugs and left a bit early.
We walked into the Hilton barefoot and dripping, carrying a plastic tub with our changes of clothes (and Kelsey’s bachelorette party gifts) and got upgraded to the Executive floor and a late checkout at 3pm.
It was a great party and we had just the right amount of food. That is, a little bit less than we needed, but that helped signal to people to go home, and saved on the cleanup, which our families and friends did a gracious job for us, only not getting the badminton and croquet set back to the place we rented them and the dunk tank from.
Todd did a great job barbecuing (even though the chicken was still frozen) and though the corn wasn’t great and we could have used more meat, I don’t think anyone complained. I should have brought the ribs.
Kelsey’s mom fussed and generally took the stress off Kelsey and that was a big help too. My mom and sisters, especially Kira who made the cake (which was a hit, Kelsey’s dad raved about it yesterday, and apparently there was none left) took care of a lot of the behind the scenes work, and the men took care of the tents and setup. Gene and Matt held down the fort and were there for the rental deliveries.
All I had to do was pick some flowers on the roadside and show up at the temple, which I did promptly at 11:00 with my dad. I even had time to trim my toenails while he ate breakfast.
The temple ceremony went well, Kelsey was beautiful in her white polka-dot dress, the photography wasn’t too bad, and the only mishap was my dad threw his back out clowning around during pictures trying to pinch me.
I didn’t have much time to have fun at the park, spending most of it trailing Kelsey and shaking hands, but we got a lot of gifts and cards with money, checks or gift-certificates that we unwrapped Sunday evening after bringing a load from my house.
We had chinese take-out for dinner that we ordered after returning the keys for the house we rented for my family to stay in and returning the tuxedo.
Anxious about the weather
Understandable. I think we’ll get a bit of a blow tonight, with heavy rain like this morning, but clearing up after 9am. It will actually start to get warm by noon, but light winds from NW will begin blowing cool air and grey clouds. We might get sprinkles throughout the afternoon, but I think it’s going to be a soaker around 5pm. The dunk tank won’t be necessary and everyone will start using the slip and slide.
I’ll just have to be sure to get out of the rented tux before the rain starts, probably after 3. Enough time for people to feel optimistic about the party. It’ll probably be a bit sticky around noon actually, with the burn off from the morning.
Once the rain starts, the wind will shift SW and the clouds won’t disappear. Who cares what Sunday looks like.
I’m getting married in two days
I have to pack up all my stuff and then throw most of it away. Then I have to cram the rest of it into Kelsey’s tiny shack (with a great view from the deck I built last summer.) And I have to clean.
And my family gets here today. Luckily I’ll have Monday and Tuesday evening to get moved, but that’s cutting it down to the wire. Wednesday we leave on our honeymoon at like 6am.
A Game
War –
You can take the role of:
An individual fighter (infantry, artillery, plane, etc.)
A field commander (varying levels, directing troops, ships, etc.)
A commander (varying levels, strategy, directing attacks, supply, etc.)
A diplomat (varying levels, spy, ambassador, goverment, leader)
A producer (factory, individual)
It’s like MMORPGs but it’s really a strategy game welded to an action game. It might pay to keep it simple. Three aspects — diplomacy, combat, strategy.
With a possible fourth — supply/industry
and fifth — leadership/government.
It’d be interesting to see how people are at taking orders, working together, etc. That’s the real interest. RPG guilds are one thing, but they’re really no more complex than chat heirarchies and counterstrike strategy is totally defeated with “respawning” — it becomes a twitch fest
The death of Physics
http://www.wellingtongrey.net/articles/archive/2007-06-07–open-letter-aqa.html
I read this article today about a Physics teacher in England who is lamenting the state of education in their state (or is it a province?) While this stuff us usually a bit skewed to conservative cultural alarmism, a la Theodore Dalrymple, a kind of academic “uphill both ways in the snow” snobbery that has been going on in perpetuem, one note, comes out about the author that perhaps illustrates his point even better than his arguement:
It is first evidenced in the second paragraph:
I am a physics teacher. Or, at least I used to be. My subject is still calledUK Department for Education and the AQA board changed the subject. They took the physics out of physics and replaced it with… something else, something nebulous and ill defined. I worry about this change. I worry about my pupils, I worry about the state of science education in this country, and I worry about the future physics teachers — if there will be any. physics. My pupils will sit an exam and earn a GCSE in physics, but that exam doesn’t cover anything I recognize as physics. Over the past year the
I graduated from a prestigious university with a degree in physics and pursued a lucrative career in economics which I eventually abandoned to teach. Economics and business, though vastly easier than my subject, and more financially rewarding, bored me. I went into teaching to return to the world of science and to, in what extent I could, convey to pupils why one would love a subject so difficult.
Here he pretends phyics is more difficult than economics and business and claims to understand both, but probably neither, and by which, gives evidence that he might not understand other fields over which he claims mastery, e.g., physics.
My point of which is to demonstrate the lack of education among educators in general, by focussing on that of this particular pedant who is admittedly above his peers in identifying his field’s own weaknesses.
Thusly, that if there is a lack of phyics teaching, and that is what he truly loves, that unless the accumulation of sufficent lucre to sustain his hobby so utterly bores him to prevent him for obtaining sustenance therewith, that he should start a business teaching physics, thereby enabling him to accomplish his goal of sharing his joy with students (in a currently still socially acceptable way) and maintaining his integrity, whilst (notice the Britishist slang — it makes me whinge) lining his pockets with lucre that if somnism doesn’t overcome him first, could be spent however he chooses, even in expanding science, or charging his students less.
One more reason to hate the US Post Office
Of course you can’t buy 2 cent stamps to use your old stamps now that the price has gone up. But this is a new low. I go to the stamp machine to buy new stamps, having given up on ever using my old ones (wasn’t it only a few months ago they raised the price last time?) and they have one row of liberty bell “forever” stamps (that will not be honored in 2 years, guaranteed) that is out. But they have all these new stamps. Apparently so new that they can’t even display the stamp or the stamp book cover. They have really poor photocopies — we’re talking Dan Rather quality, I didn’t even know they made photocopiers that poor anymore — of stamp book covers. Lots of new pictures. I get one with vegetables on the cover.
That’s right. They’re 39 cent stamps. Absolutely worthless. Not worth the gum arabic adhesive on their back sides. If you look closely on the photocopy, you can tell there is a denomination, and the first digit might be a 3 or a 5 or an 8, but it’s definitely not a 4.
To top it all off, they don’t even give you real change. Just those fake Suh-CAWG-wee-uh brass coins that you can only spend in Ecuador.
The post office stole $10 from me. Do you really think anyone in that 50 people long line (at 8:15 in the morning) isn’t just there to intimidate real US citizens from getting their money back from the thieves at the post office.
And yes, it is too funded by your taxes. If all stamps were free, there was no commercial mail, they hired twice as many employees at twice the pay, and gave them all Hummers to drive around in, there’d still be plenty of money left over from the federal budget allocated to the post office. All your stamp money is profit that goes to the GOVERNMENT APPOINTED executives.
Fijiaaron 