not a honeymoon blog, but a humorous realization.

these 2 are still too sexy for their....whatevers.

I am reading a book right now, A Prayer for Owen Meany, and the author, John Irving, jumps back and forth between writing about present and past... I have the bad habit of writing like whoever I've been reading recently (a la the Terry Prachett-inspired blog entry), the same way Ro does, and to me this means it ends up being fake. I don't mean to imitate the style of other people, it just happens! So I was sitting here, in my cabin at Takayama, thinking of cool ways of talking about how it snowed up here yesterday, how I found 2 of our 3 cats in a bush outside our river house, how I cut Nelle's hair on our honeymoon, and how amazing our wedding was. And I suppose I've now done that, in a way.

Just because of the kind of person I am, I like to think and write in a conversational style, as if I was in town for a few days, and you called me up and we went out to Palio's for coffee, and stayed there talking over a chessboard until they closed and all the students and philosophers and us got kicked out into a typically
rainy Portland night.

At this moment in reality, though, I'm trying to find that perfect spot where the kerosene heater hits me with the delicious blast of warm air, but doesn't dry my left eyeball out while doing so. I'm now typing with one eye closed, which somehow is making me spell badly.

The wedding. It was amazing. Mostly how everything worked out, and everyone seemed to have a blast. Nelle and me think that it has something to do with the fact that everyone had a job to do, everyone was involved somehow. I think usually at weddings, all the work is done, so all the guests can just sit back in the pews and judge everything. But when everyone is helping out somehow, everyone ends up with a personal interest in how everything's going, and the feeling, the atmosphere is somehow different. A lot like church, actually. Of course, the flip side is that we really did ask for a lot from a lot of people, who, to their credit, were all servants about doing everything. Just yesterday at our thanksgiving dinner, Alanna Foxwell told me the story of How My Pants Got Hemmed. Nelle and I had pinned them, albeit to two different lengths, in anticipation of getting them hemmed by someone, but, with all the details, we had forgotten to follow through. The night before the wedding, one of Nelle's aunts somehow figured this out, (maybe she'd been asked to iron them?) and hemmed them for me. This much I knew, but “The rest of the story”, is that they actually had no thread that matched the color of my pants (they were tannish colored linen), so they cut lengths of white thread into tea and coffee to stain them, and the next morning used the thread that most closely matched the color of my pants.

Stuff like that. I mean, everyone was helping out, everyone was involved. Parents and high school students ended up in the back, going through the trash that had not been thrown into the proper bins, re-sorting it, up to their elbows in gunk. When the 50cc monkey that we made our getaway on ran out of gas, one of the vans driving back stopped for us, and the passengers (laughingly) got out so we could get a ride back to our waiting taxi. Earlier today, Nelle and I wondered out loud who had put the stage back in the chapel, as we certainly didn't, and it took about 4 able-bodied strapping gentlemen to move it out of the chapel. But someone had taken care of it. It was just one detail among thousands that we had overlooked, but some unnamed person (hopefully persons, that thing was heavy! I heard...) fixed it for us. And who put the internet cable back? Who made sure all the high schoolers got spots in the 4-hour car ride back home? Where did the people who were flying back to America stay in Tokyo? I have some idea for some of these, but the point is, it felt like a little bit of heaven to have everyone finding joy in being given responsibility. It's a little sad that all that effort went into our wedding; can you imagine what would be possible in a church filled with so many people sharing both the common vision and the desire to be involved in making that vision a reality?

Of course, I'm romanticizing things a little bit. I'm sure there were people who got a little frustrated by the level of work we were asking them for; I know a huge amount of work fell to the wedding party and our families, and they, as anyone! would rather have spent the time getting reacquainted or surfing or playing scrabble. But the wedding was a huge success! All the way from the bachelor parties (mine will forever be impossible to top: totally deserted beach 30 minutes hiking from the end of a tiny road, a roaring bonfire, a Japanese approach to nudity, a phosphorescent ocean, a seemingly endless supply of bottlerockets, an invented sport of throwing live coals at eachother's naked bodies, live Jonny-Cash-themed music, and the usual debaucherous vices), to the rehearsal dinner (which everyone coming to the wedding was invited to, much to the initial panic of my mother, and involved not only collecting wood for and lighting 4 huge bonfires for cooking and sitting around, but also collecting and lighting an untold number of barbeques, not all of which made it back in one piece. Sorry about that.), to the wedding pictures (which not only was everyone very patient about, but goofy as well! It was a little tiring, as these things seem to be, but, as is evidenced by the pictures, everyone seemed to be having a genuinely good time.), to the weather (the likelyhood of rain was a full 100% for the day of the wedding; our local Japanese friends were coming to offer their condolences a day in advance, while on the actual day of the wedding, they reported to us that the rain, which was pouring in sheets for hundreds of kilometers to the south of us, was mysteriously stopping literally at the horizon from where we were. I have obtained satellite photos of this weather pattern as evidence for those who believe I am exaggerating.) to the ceremony (only the programs were forgotten, and they were retrieved before anyone even missed them, and the only mistake in the ceremony was when I announced to everyone that I both want Nelle and love to be with her, rather thansaying that I love Nelle and want to be with her), to the ceremony pranks (Brent made plans to “accidentally” throw the ring out the window when asked for it; unfortunately he missed the window, which was 2 feet away, and about 3 feet by 6 feet, and had to scramble around on the floor for it; Lydia simply handed Nelle the wrong ring. Nelle didn't even notice), to the ceremony webcast (hi to everyone that was watching from all over the world!), to the reception (outside on a warm night, live music from the stage, and couples dancing in the water), everything was simply wonderful. One of the high school girls in attendance is quoted as sighing, “My quota for romance has been filled for at least the next 3 years”.

***the full blog has already been written, but in order for good
digestion, i'll be posting the next section, titled "the honeymoon!" in a few days. enjoy!***