Frying pans, fires, and double boilers

Ah, the long awaited Texas wedding saga.

It turns out that Central Valley weather took a turn for the hellishly worse right about when I had to go to Anni-banani's wedding. Fantastic, I thought. Perfect timing for me to be getting several thousand miles away. Grim reality struck in several minutes later. Oh yeah, I groaned. I'm going to Texas. Yes, that old adage about frying pans, fires and leaping between them hearkens instantly to mind. As it turns out, however, there was a cold front moving through Texas. So it was actually relatively pleasant. I say relatively, because despite tolerable temperatures, the air was a little too thick and embracing for my arid, Californian aloofness. So it seems that our adage requries a little modification. Instead of forsaking the frying pan for the fire, I was making the somewhat better trade-in of the fire for a double boiler. And by the time I flew back, California had had a chance to rethink its weather, and had reformed to mere frying pan status. Huzzah! I missed the 110 degree weather!

Well, enough of these formalities. You, my dear reader, and I are on much more intimate terms than to be restricted to discussions solely of the weather. What about Texas?

Well, Texas was alright. It started out with my travel nightmare. I don't mind traveling. Don't mind flying, have never been afraid of airplanes. What quickens my heart and churns my stomach, however, is airports. I hate airports! They really stress me out. At least I didn't have to check any baggage for a weekend wedding. That's the worst. I get so paranoid about my luggage getting lost or stolen or whatever. So that's out of the way, thankfully. Which leaves me just to worry about transportation. Getting to and from the airport and making sure I get on my plane at the airport and it doesn't switch gates and leave me behind or go somewhere entirely unexpected. So I had John take me to the airport. And he was nice enough to oblige. I guess he doesn't want to subject me to the extreme stress that taking the bus would entail. Yeah, I have issues... And getting to the gate and getting on the plane and flying to Texas progressed uneventfully. That part's never been too big of a concern for me. So far, so good.

Unfortunately, things fell apart at the last step: reuniting with Ann at the Houston airport. Let me just proclaim right now that the Houston airport sucks. And alas, Ann wasn't so familiar with it. She was under the impression that it had only one baggage claim, since she herself had only ever flown into one terminal. Needless to say, there was not only one terminal. There are four. And the one I flew into was not Ann's. Unfortunately, Ann's cell phone did not get reception inside the airport. I didn't have a cell (though my mom has since forced me to get one. d'oh), but it wouldn't've mattered, given the reception issues. And people are nice, and generally will let you borrow theirs to make a quick call to check up on an airport rendezvous. To no avail, given the lack of reception. So I gave up on trying to call and squatted out on the curb, peering at all the cars that drove past. I must admit, I cried a little. Which eventually led to my salvation (after over an hour feeling abandoned in Texas). A police officer came over and tried calling Ann again. This time she actually picked up! (It turns out that she was in tears too. And wouldn't you be? Airports are scary, godforsaken places!).

Ok, so all's well that ends well, and the airport trauma is well and safely behind us. Then I had dinner with Ann's entire family (with me as the lone unrelated interloper), which wasn't as scary as I was expecting.

The next day we had the "bachelorette party" at a nearby spa. Ann, the moms, and the bridesmaids all got manicures and pedicures. As all of you probably know, I am a nail-care-virgin. I was not looking forward to having my first mani/pedicure experience in Texas... It wasn't all that scary, though it did hurt. Having your nails filed is not an altogether pleasant experience. And having your cuticles mauled into submission is downright painful. But I came out of it relatively unscathed. She only caused one cuticle to bleed, and I now have blister on the bottom of my foot (they scrape off the top layer of skin, I guess to deter callouses. I needed that skin!)

Rehearsal and rehearsal dinner were that night. Ann and Matt (her groom) were conspicuously late to rehearsal, but it turns out they were just running late, and not that they'd decided to elope at the last minute, as I suspected. I'm not a very good bridesmaid, however. I'm apparently much too tense (good old ballet!), and I kept trying to lead the groomsman down the aisle, instead of letting him lead me. I see no problem in that! =D But that's why they rehearse these things. And I'm happy to say that I did not trip in my heels once!

Finally the day of the wedding arrived. We had to get up early that morning to have our hair and make up professionally done. I wasn't aware that there were places to have your make up done, but apparently there are. At least in Texas. I looked 10 years older with that get up! 10 years older than I normally look, not 10 years older than I actually am (recently someone asked me if I was over 18... ha!). Everyone kept commenting on how subtly they had done my eye make up. Clearly Texans do not know the meaning of "subtle", at least, not with respect to make up.

The wedding itself went very well (no tripping). It was a nice ceremony, in a beautiful cathedral in downtown Houston. And the reception was also very nice, though unfortunately the pianist was not at all conducive to dancing. (Cracks me up: Ann & Matt took dance lessons to prepare for their first dance as a married couple. Entirely commonplace. The funny part is that the dance they were taught was "slow dancing." heehee! Matt's apparently rhythmically impaired. Not Ann, of course, she's an old ballet buddy of mine.)

And then (the next day) I came back to California! Yay! No more make up or living with sorority girls or anything! (Dawn, Ann's maid of honor, is very very nice, but she and I are so extremely different... You know that while we get along fine, we're talking about each other behind our respective backs...). And of course, it's hot here. Hot hot hot, though I luckily missed the worst of it. And I hooched up my wardrobe at Target. Tank tops should help, right?

Over and out!