catching up: recent trips, upcoming visits

I'll try to do larger entries on all these, but...

June 19th: Coworker M's wedding.

June 25th: Flew to Chicago with deliriumdreams for shechemist's wedding to T. Stayed with C and A, caused their house to explode, saw a bunch of old friends...

July 1st-4th: Flew to Denver for a gathering of the tribe; went to Ren Faire, nursed a cold, drove back (18 hours!) with deliriumdreams and two of her kids in tow (!!). Currently enjoying their visit, wishing I had more time and energy.

Upcoming visits:

July 13th - 22st: J visits from Seattle.
July 18th - ?: A visits from Las Cruces.
July 23rd - ?: K visits from Las Cruces.

September 10th: Stone 9th Anniversary Festival (deliriumdreams is coming out...)

September 24th: Ojai Pirate Faire.

Maybe other stuff. We'll see. Hope everyone is doing well...

weddings: san diego, chicago

Went to a bunch of weddings in the last 12 months:

June, 2004: J+S in Denver, D+B in San Diego
July, 2004: L+C in San Luis Obispo
November, 2004: T+B in Albuquerque
March, 2005: B+N in San Diego (had another coworker get married same day; congrats, S+N!)
April, 2005: A+B in Denver
June 2005: M+E in San Diego, S+T in Chicago

The wedding here in San Diego was interesting. My coworker M came to the USA with his family when he was about 15, from Russia; his bride is also Russian. Between the fact that it's only the third Jewish wedding I've ever been to, and that the reception was mostly done in Russian, it was a fascinating time.

He does have many very cute relations and friends, though ... so even if I couldn't understand what they were saying, there were lots of beautiful people to look at. And there were a few of my coworkers there, too, so we could all be bemused together.

The next weekend, my friends shechemist and T got married in Chicago. deliriumdreams and I flew out, staying at the MonkeyHouse, and meeting with many old friends, including nirikrss.

I met S and T at New Mexico State University years ago; interestingly, they never knew each other back then -- they just had quite a few friends in common. Fast forward ten years, and many of those mutual friends are spending time hanging out on an IRC channel together. One night (I think in December 2003 or so?), both S and T were online and bored; one of them mentioned getting some sushi, the other asked where, and before we knew it...

It was a great time, and it was wonderful to see old friends again. deliriumdreams and I also enjoyed getting to spend lots of quality time with SG and MG, even if we did seem to cause their house to start falling apart spontaneously. (AC blower going out on the hottest day of the summer? Check! Coming home from a wedding reception to a couple inches of water in the basement? Yuppers! Trying to find a 24 hour plumber that is actually available at 2a on a Sunday morning? Ain't happening...)

deliriumdreams had to leave on Sunday, but I stuck around until Monday. At a BBQ on Sunday, I was walking back from dropping her off when someone biking by stopped and started talking to me. (I freaked out a little, because I am very solidly in the "if a stranger is talking to me in a city, run away" mode.) Turns out that he recognized me from NMSU ten years ago. We chatted for a bit, and I dragged him back to the BBQ to see if he recognized anyone else there. He didn't, but we exchanged contact info. He ended up calling me a bit later with more names and such -- turns out we both went to the regional SIGGRAPH conference in Albuquerque in 1994 or 1995; I drove, I should be able to remember it, but oh well. Anyway -- damned small world.

Flying back wasn't a big deal, except that I don't sleep all that well on planes -- but I was dog tired. So I was slipping in and out of dozing, having some extraordinarily freaky dreams. I blame those on my iPod, which was helpfully serving up Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds' Murder Ballads...