Thursday, June 09, 2005

Purty Flower, UNC-Chapel Hill

Wedding adventures

A picture of a flower I took while strolling through the UNC Chapel Hill Campus. Since I’m not good with flower names or remembering things, I will call this purdy flower.

The wedding I went to last weekend was very nice and elegant. Quite the classy affair. The ceremony was wonderful as the pastor lady actually focused the ceremony on the couple and said wonderful things.

Imagine that huh. It’s one of my big peeves when a wedding ceremony focuses almost exclusive on God and how great s/he is. Listen, you have at least one day every week all year long just for you, back on up off this one buddy. It’s not about you right now. Sit here with the rest of us and celebrate the couple.

I’m sure it’s the person conducting the ceremony’s fault when it happens. I’m just saying.

Anyway, the wedding and reception were both outdoors and while it was pretty hot earlier in the day, the temperature was perfect by the time the wedding rolled around. The band was especially great. It was this 4 person jazz ensemble and they played and sang wonderfully and at the perfect volumes. As a bonus, at no time did any songs I detest hearing at weddings were even considered (i.e., Celebration, She’s a brick house, any line-dancing songs, etc.).

One strange thing about the wedding was that I noticed no one was drinking. This is quite odd to me as all other weddings I’ve attended involved lots and lots of alcohol (even one where there wasn’t alcohol at the wedding but we managed to sneak in several bottles of liquor). There was plenty of alcohol available at the wedding, but just no one drank. Weird.

I had time in between wedding activities to drive and walk around Duke and UNC that weekend and man, those are gorgeous campuses. I was especially impressed with the Duke campus. The buildings were spectacular. Old Oxford-looking, and everything just looking so perfect. Makes me wish I studied during high school.

During the flight there and back, I was at constant odds with mother nature. There was a delay on my way there, and a delay on the way back. The delay back was much more interesting though. We were 6 miles from the Atlanta airport when we were put on a holding pattern. I knew it was 6 miles cause that’s what it said on the little map thing on the screen. If you don’t know what I’m talking about you’re missing out on this cool thing they have on planes now.

We circled around the city 2 or 3 times and we started flying into the storm. I think lightening storms are spectacular on the ground, and in the air, it’s even more awesome. There were lightening all around the plane. We were being bumped and several times almost thrown out of our chairs from the rough turbulence. It’s good that I think it’s fun, cause there were lots of screaming all over the place. Good times.

The pilot eventually came on the speaker and told us that we had to fly to Columbia, SC to refuel because we can’t land in Atlanta, and we don’t have any more fuel. I suggested they let me jump out of the plane (since we’re actually almost on top of my parent’s house), but I thought I’d have to wait for my luggage anyway, so that wouldn’t save me any time.

When we finally got to Atlanta, we were 2.5 hours late so of course I missed my flight. Luckily, they were able to get me on the standby for the next flight. Of course, that flight was delayed as well.

I was secretly hoping they’d offer some free flight vouchers. I would’ve taken that in a sec. Need a voucher to take a free trip with the Puppett! That’d be a good time.

So I was in the airport or on a plane for over 11 hours. A trip that would have otherwise taken about 4. I’m fine though, the weather for the wedding was perfect and that was much more important.

On a more exciting note, Ultimate Frisbee summer league starts tonight! Time for the Pup to step up and lead the team to victory! I’ll sure you’re all dying to know how it went so I’ll post some play-by-play accounts of the action later.

BTW, those of you that wanted to be interviewed, I haven’t forgotten you, I’ll have those questions tomorrow.

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