Or, actually, it says that Contra dancing has absolutely nothing to do with country line dancing or the Iran-Contras. The Iran-Contras are a band. I had forgotten. I had also thought that at least one of the members of the band was in Santa Fe, but that shows what I know.
_
respond?
(2)
01:52:30 AM,Thursday 21 February 2002
Contra dancing, according to Andrew and Mr. Naylor's adorable sign, has absolutely NOTHING to do with the Iran-Contra scandal.
_
respond?
(2)
07:11:07 PM,Wednesday 20 February 2002
It would seem that Mr. David has exposed us all to chicken pox.
_
respond?
(3)
12:53:03 PM,Wednesday 20 February 2002
I like Kant, really. I'm just glad he's going away for a bit. Locke sounds like he should be interesting, and Mozart will be lovely.
_
respond?
12:38:33 AM,Tuesday 19 February 2002
Katherine, you know what they say about the cobblers children? You know, how they never have shoes, or they're falling apart. You have the same problem with doctors, being a doctor's child. GO SEE A FUCKING DOCTOR ALREADY.
_
respond?
(1)
06:44:47 PM,Sunday 17 February 2002
Well, I said I would tell the story of how our party for my parents went, and it seems I have much more free time this afternoon than I thought I did, so I'm now typing it all up in Simpletext and will then put it in my bloglet when it's all done. (I have much more free time than I thought I had cause Hiram forgot he had play practice when he scheduled our D&D game and so we are playing later this evening, when he doesn't have play practice.) I'm putting this in so that you read from the top going down, rather than finding the earliest one and going back up that way. So you know. And this one is first. So don't get confused.
_
respond?
03:06:55 PM,Sunday 17 February 2002
So, it started off with me going home on Friday. Except I didn't go home, I stayed at our friends' house up the road a bit, so they wouldn't know I was in town (or my sister, for that matter) so that we could put truffles in boxes and arrange flowers and run off to the hotel to check in and throw flower petals on the bed in the room we'd gotten for them, and throw our stuff generally in our rooms in the hotel, which is all stuff we did on Saturday
_
respond?
03:06:14 PM,Sunday 17 February 2002
On Friday we thought we might stuff chocolates boxes when Jamie and I showed up (Jamie showed up several hours before I did), but then we thought that it would probably be better to keep them in their sealed boxes for as long as possible, and so we did, and stuffed them the next morning. Also, the people we were staying with go to bed early by any standards, and exceptionally early by our standards. So Jamie and I hung out in the room where I was sleeping (it used to be Julia's room, but Julia now lives in San Jose, or at least I think she live in San Jose, so now the bed is still there, but it is mostly the room her mom uses to make beaded earrings. This is Beth's obssession. It's really rather cute. She and Julia put up a website about her earrings, but no one really buys them from the website, and this makes Beth sad. But that's not what this is about) and we talked for a while, about all sorts of things. And then we went to bed.
_
respond?
03:05:55 PM,Sunday 17 February 2002
And we woke up the next morning, and Peg e showed up rather early with William, so as to be out of the house so she wouldn't burst out and tell them what we were doing, cause she was so excited. And so the three of us put the yummy truffles in the boxes in this whole assembly line thing, I put red foil cups down in the boxes, Jamie put the truffles in and Peg e closed the boxes up. It went really quickly, and we had masses of chocolates left over, or that's how it seemed. And then we washed out the vases and put cranberries in them, and then added water, and then added the flowers
_
respond?
03:05:25 PM,Sunday 17 February 2002
And the flowers didn't look nearly as open and beautiful when we put them in as we were hoping they would, and so we got a bit upset and freaked out and didn't know what to do, but they opened over the day, as the water got a bit warmer (the cranberries had been frozen, cause you can no longer by cranberries in Harrisburg at this time of year). We then had someone run off to buy ribbon to tie around the vases, and they were lovely. So about when we were finished with that, we all ate lunch. And then Peg e and I ran off to the hotel, and she had to by beer, cause we hadn't bought the beer yet, and I had to get my brother's suit. His girlfriend had taken it to the dry cleaners and picked it up again and she had it at work with her, so I went in and picked it up, and that was all cool. She said that earlier that day Connor (litle brother) and Chris (stepdad) had come in to eat. (She is a waitress at the restaurant at the health food store) and she got a little nervous that she would mention it.
_
respond?
03:04:51 PM,Sunday 17 February 2002
And so then at this point we were seriously running close to when we were supposed to show up at home and let them know that we were doing something for their wedding, but we weren't telling them what. So Jim very kindly took the flowers and the beer and the chocolates over to the train station (which is where we were having the party) while Jancey (Jancey is Beth and Jim's younger daughter) did our hair. I got all dressed up before she did my hair, cause didn't want to mess it up pulling my dress on. Jamie was going to dress at home, and then as we pulled up at home she realized that her skirt was at Beth and Jim's, so we dropped Peg e off and raced back there and she got dressed there.
_
respond?
03:04:19 PM,Sunday 17 February 2002
And then we went home all over again, and it was time for us to go downstairs and surprise them. We had figured they needed some kind of warning that something special was happening, and so Peg e went down there and gave them this whole speech about how wonderful they are, and how wonderful it is for her and William to be living with us, and how it's so great for William to suddenly have all these older siblings, and so forth, and what could she ever do to repay them? And then she called upstairs (our "basement" and our upstairs are pretty much seperate; to get from one to the other you have to go outside, and there are two phone lines, although that is almost more for the sake of the modems than anything else) and said to Connor, although they didn't know it was Connor until they could hear his voice through the phone "how much for three round trip tickets to Paris?" Which was our cue to come down.
_
respond?
03:03:12 PM,Sunday 17 February 2002
And so down we came, and, and my mom was all totally surprised just that Jamie and I were there (Jamie is in college too) and that we were all dressed up. Jyles was looking smashing in brown pants and a brown vest, and Connor was looking dashing in a dark suit and a top hat and a cane, and Jamie and I were in lovely dresses. And we said "surprise, today we're celebrating your wedding!" Chris, being the silly person that he is, had figured earlier this week that something was going on in celebration of their anniversary (their anniversary is Valentine's Day) that weekend, so he wasn't very surprised at all.
_
respond?
03:02:09 PM,Sunday 17 February 2002
But my mom was, and she was very happy. She had thought they were all going to DC for the evening, for dinner, and they were going to spend the night in a hotel, so that they could all drink that evening, so she was dressed for that, which involved a black leather short skirt (not really a mini skirt, cause it wasn't that short) and a silvery top, and then she "Oh, and here's me dressed like a little slut!" And so then Connor went running upstairs to get the dress that had been bought for her out of Peg e's closet, and brought it down stairs and she was shocked and sort of delighted, and wasn't going to wear it at all, except that Peg e was going to wear the dress she had gotten for herself at the same place, and so it was okay. And she was very happy.
_
respond?
03:01:34 PM,Sunday 17 February 2002
And we took lots of pictures of this whole thing, and then we thought we should take a picture of everyone together all dressed up, so we had to find a neighbour, so we went off and found a neighbour, who thought the whole thing was delightful. (The really nice neighbours who I used to babysit weren't home, and the people who are also nice who live across the street from there didn't answer their door, and so Connor and I were feeling a little distressed, cause other than that most of our neighbours aren't very nice at all. But then I remembered that the woman in the house on the corner is very nice, and so we asked her, and she said yes.) _
respond?
03:00:00 PM,Sunday 17 February 2002
(Beth and Jim and Jancey had William so that he could be all fed and dressed and we wouldn't have to worry about him until we got to the party.) And so we were there, and everyone was there or showing up, which was cool. We had like 75 people show up, which was totally awesome, people from all up and down the east coast. it was so exciting. And then William and I went out into the foyer of the trainstation to wait for them, when we figured they would be showing up, and they came in, and he was all totally excited, and I said "we lost Connor, I don't know what happened, but we have to go find him" and while they didn't fall for that at all, they did sort of follow me over to the room where the party was, which had a lot of windows, at which point my mom totally caught on to this (apparently Chris caught on to it when told we had to go to the train station).
_
respond?
02:59:21 PM,Sunday 17 February 2002
She could only really see one of her brothers, I think, when she saw people through the windows. When we went in, she said "holy shit" and the band did a drum roll as they walked in. They were all totally thrilled at who had showed up, and were glad of our invitation list, and wished that some of the people we'd invited had been able to come (a friend of their in San Fransisco was unable to come cause he had a gig that night; a friend of her's from high school who was also very good friends with my uncle David, was his best man in fact, who we saw at both of Dave's kids bar/bat mitzvahs, was unable to come cause he is a lawyer and had a case starting on Monday; none of the Europeans we invited came, cause, well, they couldn't come in from Sweden or Germany or Scotland; and one of mom's friends from elementary school is just being stupid).
_
respond?
02:58:00 PM,Sunday 17 February 2002
We got mom to dance, which isn't something she generally enjoys doing. The food was really good, and so was the champagne. The cake was beautiful and delicious. It was very cute when we got them to cut the cake, and David made a toast for them. David was the only witness to what they had been of a wedding (they went to a courthouse and signed some papers). And it was cute. And the party was lovely. It's delightful to watch little kids and that sort of party. They show up all dressed up, and they at least sort of make friends with each other, enough to run around playing games with each other all evening, in their own little world. We had disposable cameras on all the tables. Apparently William filled up around two of them with pictures of people's backs, cause, well, he is six after all.
_
respond?
02:57:15 PM,Sunday 17 February 2002
After the party, we all headed back to the hotel (the hotel sent shuttles over to pick us up, which was awesome) and most everyone hung out in our room. (Mom and Chris did not.) And my three uncles played beautiful beautiful music, they way they do when they are together, even though Dave was silly and didn't bring his guitar, so he and Walter sort of traded off with Walter's guitar. And then we all went to bed, around 2.
_
respond?
02:56:55 PM,Sunday 17 February 2002
The next morning we had brunch at the hotel, provided by my grandparents, for all out of town guests and family. It was a much more subdued gathering, cause everyone was still pretty tired. And then we went home, taking with us two of my uncles and my grandparents and Chris's mom and two of my mom's friends, and they opened presents, and we ate leftover cake and Peg e made a lovely vegetable soup and bisquits for dinner. They got a lot of presents involving wine. My mom's friend Annie gave them two martini glasses and a mixer and their (se and her husband) favourite martini recipies. They got champagne, and wine, and a decanter (which was very pretty, but it's not really anything they would use). And then Peg e took me home, and that was my weekend last weekend. Oh, and yes, Jamie has put some of the pictures taken with Connor's digital camera up here: http://homepage.mac.com/jamiert/PhotoAlbum1.html If you woud like to see them.
_
respond?
02:53:28 PM,Sunday 17 February 2002