Thanksgiving To The Extreme

Yesterday I had to get up at around 5:30am so I could meet the adoption people up at the store at 7:00 so they could feed and clean the cats. I fell asleep at the desk waiting for them and at 9:00 she wakes me up and we leave. I am supposed to meet my parents at The Browns' house in Garland around noon to have lunch and catch up with everyone. Some of you may have met The Browns at the wedding. They were dressed as the Bushes and find a way to make most conversations a little uncomfortable. They are perfectly nice people, and they mean well, but if you don't know them as well as I do, a visit with them can be close to dental surgery.

So, it's 9:00 and I have three hours to kill. I go to Starbucks and grab a coffee and a newspaper and sit down to do the crossword. I get done with that and look at my watch. 9:30. I decide to say 'fuck it' and go ahead and start my way over to The Browns' house. I stop and pick up some beer and a bottle of wine to show thanks for their hospitality and arrive at their door a little after 10:00. I helped a little in the kitchen, we went through some wedding pictures I had brought, and finally my parents arrived.

Lunch was nice; traditional Thanksgiving spread with polite conversation. Afterwards I went to the couch and fell asleep sitting up whilst my dad and Mr. Brown watched the game on television. After I woke up, I spent a few hours talking with my parents and then started my way over to the wife's parents' house for round two. The dinner conversation was completly different than what I experienced with lunch. Lunch had talks of world issues and Christianity, where dinner had discussions of bi-sexuality and movies. After dinner I watched a little bit of Boyz N Tha Hood until the wife came in and put in Mystery Date. We made it about twenty minutes past the Gwar scene when we decided to call it a night.

Today, we are going to the mall. We'll see how that goes.

Honeymoon part 2

Well, the wife covered the honeymoon pretty well, so I won't get too much further into it. The shops around town were quite interesting, as all of their signs seemed to be hand written and mostly clever. There was an ice cream shop called "Amy's" that had a crudely drawn robot on a chalkboard outside that said, "I'll kill those zombies with my laser beams", followed by "Zombies Vs. Robot" written on the front door. We went into a store called "Toy Joy", which to my disappointment was not a sex shop, but an actual toy store. They had some really cool things, though, from a ninja clock with flying ninja pendulum, to a 'crazy cat lady' action figure and an 'albino bowler' action figure. There was also a shop that was filled with nothing but hot sauce. We went in there for some change for the meter at first. The guy seemed really put out that I interrupted his magazine reading to get some quarters. After I fed the meter, we went back inside and the first thing I did was knock a bottle of sauce off the top shelf and watched it in slow motion as it shattered on the floor. I resisted my impulse to run and instead apologized and offered to pay for the broken bottle. He went to get the broom and dust pan, muttering something under his breath the whole time. He probably put some kind of voodoo curse on me that I don't know about yet. Oh well. Fuck him, he sucks.

Other than that, it's the same old thing. We are getting ready for Christmas at the store, so we are cluttering up the aisles with even more crap than usual. People actually buy their damn pets Christmas presents. Christmas squeaky toys, Christmas rawhide, and Christmas scratching posts for cats in the shape of reindeer. I'm not kidding. Buying that stuff is just going to make your pet feel bad for not getting you anything.

Honeymoon Part 1

Now that there is no wedding looming and the housework can slow down a little, I am going to have a chance to write a bit more regular here. Anyways, here's the honeymoon.

Sunday we got up from our overnight stay at the very nice Adolphus hotel in downtown Dallas and drove down to Austin. We got there a little too early to check in, so we pulled into one of the wife's historic barbecue places for lunch. I go and use the bathroom and there's a customer in there inching his way to the door as there is a strange man at the sink talking to him. The customer breaks free, and as I go to wash my hands the guy starts in on me. Something about how the restaurant is short handed and this is his seventh day straight working and he might just have to quit if they don't respect him. "Sounds great!" I say and dash out the door to the table. I tell the wife about my new friend, we order our food and some beer, and she goes to use the facilities herself. While she's away, the guy comes out of the bathroom, spots me, and walks over and starts talking sports. "Uh-huh." I reply to whatever it is he just said and stare really hard at the local newspaper we grabbed on the way inside. He gives up, realizing that I am not the "someone new" his psychic friend told him about and he pushes his cart of bathroom stocking gear away from me and out of my sight.

After lunch we go and check into the motel. The sign above the main office looks like a giant penis with the words "Austin Motel" going across it. We get our room, which was small but cozy, and hang out for a little while to relax and watch a little bit of Beetlejuice on television.

That night we go to a really nice little restaurant called Hudson's on the Bend, which is famous for their odd selection of meat entrees. We started with an appetizer called the Creature Feature, which was five different animals on one plate each served with it's own dipping sauce. There was salmon, duck pate, venison sausage, alligator, and kangaroo. All of these animals died for a tasty purpose except for the kangaroo. It was like beef jerky that was spit on, dipped in a bag of salt and served. Absolutely horrible. The rest of the evening, on the other hand was excellent. The wife had venison and I had lamb, after which we drove back to the motel to call it an evening.

More on the honeymoon to come.

Oh, and yesterday I shaved my head. I'll have to ask Skincarver where to get my membership card.

Ball N' Chain

I am officially married now. I am a husband. I have a wife. I can now say things like, "I'm waiting for my wife", "Let me ask the wife", "The wife won't let me", and "It's the wife's fault." Let me run down the past week for you.

Saturday, the day of the wedding, I get up, do a few minor touchings up around the house as we are going to be having a wedding in the living room in the next few hours. The things on my list of things to do this day are take Lady M's friend, Nell, to go get a costume, pick up the boar meat from our friend in Lewisville, and come back and get hitched. Easy enough.

I get Kiwi Derek and Nell in the car and we go off to the Halloween store to find her costume. We go in and it's an absolute mad house. Nell is overwhelmed by the selection of costumes to be had. I guess in Canada they don't take Halloween as seriously as we do. As we are browsing around Derek and I are commenting on the women's costumes, in that all the costumes for the ladies were slutty as hell. Slutty Alice in Wonderland, slutty Red Riding Hood, slutty nurse, slutty devil, etc. God forbid a woman wants to wear something that covers her ass on this holiday. Derek looks over and sees that the wait to check out is getting to be longer than a Six Flags roller coaster line so he jumps in to save a spot while she finds something. I go find Nell to see how she's doing. She wanted a Cleopatra style costume but couldn't find anything on a budget so I suggest she get something with wings. They have plenty of slutty fairy costumes, after all. We find a Tinkerbell outfit that works to her satisfaction just as Derek gets to the head of the line. She pays and we go. They are starving, so we stop at a Sonic as they had both never been. No Sonics in Canada or New Zealand? Weird. Nell is stunned that she can get a breakfast burrito at 1:00 in the afternoon and Derek takes full advantage of their milkshake selection. I, on the other hand, can't eat as my stomach is starting to get an army of butterflies in it. They finish eating and we jump in the car to go to Lewisville. In good traffic, this entire trip to get the food should take about two hours. We get there around 3:00 and Brandon is just finishing up. He did a fantastic job and went above and beyond what I was expecting, especially since he had his own Halloween bash going on later that evening that he had to get ready for. We get the food loaded up and find out that we have to make a stop at Wal Mart to get some burner things to keep the food warm. This pleases Nell because she needs to find some stockings for her costume and we should also pick up some ice now that we're thinking about it. We race off as time is getting to be an issue. Traffic was good except for the bed that had fallen off somebody's truck and exploded as it hit the street. Luckily, only smart people were driving that day and it wasn't an issue to get around. We get a call from Lady M asking us to pick up her friends Michael and Emily on the way back. It's on the way, so we swing by, they cram in, and we are off to Wall Mart. The place is worse than the costume store. Bastard kids crying in the middle of aisles, worthless employees standing in your way, huge lines at every register with cashiers that don't give a fuck about anything. I can't blame them, though, I'd be acting the same way for $5.75 an hour. We split up to get the shit faster and we meet up in the hunting section. They don't have the burner things we came for. It is now less than a hour before I'll be saying my vows. I start to panic a little. Luckily I had four people there with clear heads to help me through it. They suggested we just keep the food in the oven and it'll stay warm and everything will be fine. We go to the checkout line and slowly get through. We get to the house with about twenty minutes till the wedding starts so I can pay the Reverend, get changed, throw up, and get married.

I fight through the crowd of family and friends wishing I had time to greet them properly, and open the drawer to find the marriage license to find it's not there. I am two seconds away from seriously freaking out. After a few minutes of digging, the Reverend tells me to worry about it later and to get changed. Mob and Rob join me in the spare bedroom to help me get dressed as Derek runs back and forth from us to the master bedroom where Lady M is getting ready gathering bits and pieces of my costume until it is complete. We run out and begin the ceremony. I'm worried that I'll miss my cue to say something as my train of thought is something like, "Pretty girl in front of me. People staring at me. Kid playing with a pumpkin. This guy is talking about love. Did I eat anything today? Pay attention. What was that about the rings?" The whole thing was over about that quick. After the vows and rings and kissing we got to tend to the guests. I run around and greet everyone that I wasn't able to before. I find my mother and tell her that we can't find the license to which she tells me that they found it and are filling it out as we speak. That was the last of my worries. I am free to enjoy the evening.

I'll get into the honeymoon later. This filled up more space than I thought. Thanks to everyone who helped and attended. To those that couldn't make it, there will be pictures soon.