Crazy Busy but Awesome Weekend
This weekend has been completely awesome. It started with a day off of work for both Jenny and me so that we could head to her sister Annie’s wedding. I had to leave on Sunday to go to Vancouver for work, and we needed to be out to Somerset in the early afternoon to get into our hotel and then get over to the rehearsal, so we figured we’d just take the day off so that we could handle all of the logistics in a non-crazy way. Since I had to leave early on Sunday morning to get to the airport, we decided to rent a car for me to drive to the wedding and then to the airport. I am coming back on the train, so there was no easy way to retrieve a car left at the airport. Besides that little issue, Jenny wanted to spend some time with her family on Sunday, and I didn’t want her to have to drive me all the way to the airport, then get herself home, and then wake up the next morning and drive back out to Somerset. The rental car was really the way to go here. Yes, it was a bit of an extra expense, but it was completely worth it.
Jenny and I got our stuff ready in the morning. I was nervous the night before, so I had already packed most of my stuff. On Thursday, I had also cleaned-up and decorated the birdcage for the wedding, so it was ready to go. After Jenny had her stuff ready, we loaded the car and took off for Monroeville. I had to do a little hunting to locate a decent rental car company that would do a one-way rental to the airport. Hertz, with whom I’ve had good experiences in the past, got the honors this time. They had an office in Monroeville. I still needed to stop at Men’s Warehouse to pick up a shirt and tie that would go with Jenny’s dress, and we were going to use the turnpike to head to Somerset, so Monroeville seemed like a good location.
We picked-up the rental car first, then headed up to John Harvard’s for lunch. We were going to do CiCi’s Pizza, but a busload of little kids arrived as we were looking across the street at the place, so we decided to do John Harvard’s instead. Of course, on the way up there, we encountered crazy traffic because there had been an accident involving a pedestrian at the intersection with the plaza where John Harvard’s is located, so that added to the excitement a bit. We had a good lunch there, then headed to the mall. Jenny had to make a stop at JC Penney’s for something, so she did that while I walked up to Men’s Warehouse. We both thought that her stop was going to be short and mine long, so she planned to come up to meet me to help me pick a tie. When I got into the store, though, the guys worked their color-matching magic, and I almost instantly found a tie that looked close to “lettuce” (that was the name of the color of the bridesmaids’ dresses, if you’re wondering–I usually just called it “green #2”). I couldn’t imagine a better match all-around for the tie and shirt, so I just picked it up and started to walk back towards where Jenny was. We met about half-way in between the two stores. She had a crazy time getting what she needed, and she liked the tie, so we were pretty much finished.
We’ll skip the turnpike ride part of the story. It was, overall, pretty standard stuff. We ran through a few crazy downpours along the way, but it was all fine. We checked-in to the hotel and relaxed for a bit before heading to the rehearsal at the Somerset Country Club. The rehearsal went quickly, and then it was off to dinner at The Georgian Place, which is an old Georgian-style (guess where they got the name? 🙂 ) mansion at the top of a hill in Somerset. It was restored a number of years ago and turned into a bed-and-breakfast. Some of Andrew’s (now Annie’s husband 🙂 ) family were staying there for the wedding, and they also hosted the rehearsal dinner there. We all had a lot of fun there. The food was great, and we got to visit with people and talk, and then we had some entertainment courtesy of some of Andrew’s family and a friend of the family who is a pianist. He was there to play for the wedding, so he also played some after-dinner entertainment for all of us (think piano bar on a beautiful old piano in a Georgian-style parlor, and you get the picture). Jenny and I had a great time. We were starting to get pretty tired at the end of the night, though, so it was good to get back to the hotel and get to sleep.
Saturday morning we woke up to get ready for the wedding. Jenny was meeting her sisters for a hair appointment at 11:00 or so. She left for that, and I made sure all of my suit stuff was in order. I went out to catch a bit of lunch for myself, too, as I hadn’t eaten yet and wanted to make sure I had something before the wedding. That taken care of, I came back to the hotel and used the time I had to check-in to my flights the next morning, and to start to get my stuff re-packed for leaving the next morning.
I was to get to the country club a bit before 3:30PM so that they could take family pictures. It felt awesome to be included in those pictures. Jenny’s family is sooooo nice to me! With the pictures finished, the guests began to arrive and were seated. The weather held-off until later that night, so the ceremony was outside. It was a beautiful day. Annie was beautiful. All of her sisters were beautiful. Jenny was especially beautiful (but I suppose I’m biased 🙂 ). It was great.
when the ceremony was finished, they had some more pictures to take, and the rest of us non-wedding-party people went inside to find our tables and enjoy cheese and fruit and a full-service open bar. Yum. Everyone had a great time at the reception–at least everyone we talked to did! I took a pile of pictures (somewhere around 150 or so, I think). I went to pull them off of the camera just a little bit ago and found that the battery was nearly flat, so I tossed it on the charger and will have to do that later. I had intended to post some of the pictures in this entry, but that will have to wait a little bit.
After the reception, we stayed to help clean-up a few things. The country club was awesome about everything–they even told us to just leave whatever we wanted and to come back on Sunday to clean-up the rest. That was really cool. We still were able to clean-up a lot of stuff there that night, but it meant that we could all leave at a reasonable time. I think everyone was pretty tired at that point, but it was that kind of tired that one gets after participating in an event that was simply a lot of fun.
Jenny and I left for the hotel probably somewhere around 11:45PM or so, I think. I was going to have to leave the hotel at 2:00AM in order to make a 6:00AM flight from Pittsburgh to Atlanta, then an 8:30AM flight from Atlanta to Vancouver, BC. Since it was already around 12:30AM by the time I was finished with organizing my suit and stuff for Jenny to take home and taking a shower, I decided that I would just finish packing and take-off whenever I was done. I was still wide awake, and figured that I could catch some sleep on the planes and at the gate in Pittsburgh.
I hit the road a little after 1:00AM, after stopping to get a giant cup of Mountain Dew and a sandwich to snack on for the drive. I arrived at the airport at around 3:00AM, hitting the two-hour trip mark almost exactly. I returned the rental car to the unattended drop-off thing, came happily up the escalators to ticketing and baggage, and…
… discovered that the ticketing and baggage check-in kiosks for Delta wouldn’t open until at least 4:15AM (and slightly later for the attended check-in and baggage check-in). I had already checked-in to both of my flights, and registered that I was checking one bag. However, I was unable to print my boarding passes from the hotel, and I also still had to wait for an attendant to accept the checked bag. Argh. So I found a chair on that level and waited for a while. At around 3:45AM, the line for the Delta kiosks started to get pretty long, so I grabbed a spot. It just so happens that this flight I was on to Atlanta was 100% booked (well, more like 125% booked, but 100% filled). There were people connecting to all over the place from there–a group of older folks going to Las Vegas, a few families on their way to Orlando, and some people coming with me to Vancouver to leave on a cruise. There were others, too, but almost everyone was connecting to some other destination. We filled a MD-88.
After the mess with the baggage check-in, and the associated mess with security (“Please remove everything that you may have on your body and place it into one of the grey plastic bins. Place the bins onto the conveyor, then step through the metal detector. Oops, you set it off. Please shave all of your body hair and rip off all of your toe and finger nails. Still not working? Please use this knife to disembowel yourself. Make sure that all of your guts fit into a plastic bin without sticking out over the side. Also be sure to place the knife into one of our patented ‘Amnesty Boxes’, which are things that we use to make you feel like you are stepping on our civil rights, rather than the other way around. Thank you for flying in the USA. We promise to be more hateful next time, since if you come back, you obviously think we’re not doing a good enough job.”), I finally got to the gate at around 5:15AM. No sleep for me there. We boarded just a short while later.
Other than that, the flights were uneventful. The crew on the Atlanta to Vancouver flight was awesome. They were just funny and made everyone feel happy to be on that plane together, even though we had all recently been molested by various people trying to keep our airways safe. Or trying to make people even more angry, bitter, and apathetic towards government agencies. I’m not sure which it is. Anyway, we actually landed ahead of schedule in Vancouver. Customs entering Canada were easy (we seem to be developing a pattern here–go to another country, customs are easy and make sense; re-enter the USA, and things are often a different story). I declared my gadgets, and they told me to have a nice day. Woot.
The shuttle trip from the airport to the hotel took a huge amount of time, but that was easy and relatively inexpensive. That’s a good thing, too, since US currency is worth about $0.92 USD to $1.00 CAN. Argh. Per-diem is high for this area, and this is why. After getting to the hotel (at around 1:00PM local time), I was told that I’d have to wait until probably 6:00PM for them to have a room ready for me. Or, I could take a $25/night upgrade and get a better room. I was exhausted and just couldn’t argue anymore, so I took the upgrade. Even if I have to pay for it out of my per-diem for this trip, I’ll do it–I just couldn’t stand up any more. I came up to the room and crashed for a while, and it was nice.
I wandered out to get some dinner and catch the end of one of the Euro 2008 soccer games at a Red Robin near the hotel here. I also wanted to stop at a 7-11 to get some drinks for the room and a few small snacks. Jenny hooked me up with two giant boxes of Good ‘n’ Plenty’s, which are awesome. I needed some crackers or something, too, but those are a little bulky to take along on a plane (and they might be mistaken for some sort of explosive device or something).
Now I’m back in my room, sitting at a desk that is in front of a giant window that overlooks part of the bay and a snow-capped mountain. I think that I’ll be able to do a little bit of exploring tomorrow and Tuesday, so hopefully the great weather will hold and I’ll be able to get some good pictures.
jonathan
