Appreciating things, including my health.

I don’t want to jinx myself by saying that I appreciate my health, but after seeing so much destruction caused by this hurricane, and being completely unscathed its hard not to appreciate an awful lot of things. But one in particular that gets special notice today is my health. I just cringe to think of all of those affected by this hurricane even more they are confined to their own poor health. I appreciate my body. I appreciate my legs that can run away from scary things and my arms that can swim/paddle/move heavy objects. I appreciate my lungs that breathe unaided, and my blood that keeps its glucose levels and cholesterol levels on auto-pilot without a trip to the pharmacy. My eyes don’t even need contacts lenses (and associated accoutrements) to see clearly. I am appreciating the fact that maybe I should keep at least one day’s worth of food in my house… (which is difficult when Daphne eats it all at once on the rare occasion that I forget to lock the fridge!). I suppose my biggest take home messages to myself on all of this have been:1) take care of your body, keep it in good, working condition 2) Breastfeed your babies. I want to throw-up when I think about all of those babies that are starving in the absence of formula and/or clean water to mix it with 3)_________________________. Still working on a third. I know its in there, but it hasn’t set yet.

Man Alive.


And all this on top of a great Labor Day weekend. I’m not going to apologize for having a great time this weekend at Beth’s wedding. In wedding-land, the biggest disaster was the 4:00 shuttle to the Winery never showing at the Hotel to pick up half of the wedding guests. But the biggest triumph was getting the operations manager of Le Grande Affaire (yes, there really were that many “e’s” ) on the horn and assertively telling him that I didn’t give a rat’s ass what the contract did or didn’t specify, that he needed to make a 28-passenger shuttle magically appear at the San Jose Fairmont to bring said 28 passengers to the Winery…. 20 minutes ago!!!! So, while we can’t say that the wedding got off without a hitch, we CAN say that the wedding, while getting started a few minutes late, was FABULOUS in its entirety. Okay, I don’t think I used the term “rat’s ass.” I think I said something more to the effect of: “Sir, the language of the contract at this point, or who’s misinterpretation of it is causing this problem, is really NOT of interest to me. What I need are wedding guest. Here. Now.”

Other than that, I just did what I was told to do which required a delicious non-existent amount of leadership on my part. Its super easy to be a bride’s maid when the bride is as on-the-ball as Beth.

To protect the innocent, I am not going to post photos here, but if you want to the link to my album, I’d be glad to e-mail it to you. I will however, post some of the nicer shots of yours truly on wedding eve…

But here is one from the rehearsal dinner. I don’t normally like to exploit children, but his hair was growing in with a Mohawk flair, and I have to give the kid credit for pulling off the look almost as well as David Beckham himself.
and I’ve always wanted to black out people’s eyes….

After the rehearsal dinner, and after several bottles of wine were shared among our tablemates, we went out in San Jose. Here is Kelly trying to fill me with the love of Jesus by baptizing me in a fountain in town. I heard that Beth’s friends Laura and John go to that church where you go all the way in the water. In your underpants. For Jesus of course. But I didn’t get any photos of that. Sorry Erik.

Here we are after my conversion.


Ah, good times.