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Day’s Verse:
Sing to the LORD, you saints of his;
praise his holy name.

For his anger lasts only a moment,
but his favor lasts a lifetime;
weeping may remain for a night,
but rejoicing comes in the morning.

Psalm 30:4-5
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Please help me raise money for the MS Bike Tour Cape Cod Getaway. Donate today on my MS Participant page.
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Because my safety is their priority, the TSA diligently confiscated this forbidden item from my bag in Logan airport:

Yogurt

But in two X-ray scans and one bag check, they cleverly missed this fine item, which I had forgotten about:

Knife
I carry it around in my bike bag because sometimes I do have to cut stuff. It slipped my mind during packing the previous night. That it went through twice — they put it through the X-ray machine again after confiscating the dangerous yogurt — really bolsters my confidence in their usefulness. Frankly, this knife is sharp and somewhat scary; much more dangerous than a Swiss Army knife, if less so than a buck knife, and I could have caused a great deal of harm with it if I had so chosen. Instead, I discreetly showed it to Ian and we marveled at it quietly, taking care to draw no attention to ourselves, and I focused on looking innocent.

On the uneventful but long and uncomfortable flight to LA, I read My Uncle Oswald, by Roald Dahl. Little did I know that the famed children’s author also wrote some shockingly adult books. Let’s just say that I’ve read romance novels less explicit than this, and leave it at that. We had all carry-on bags, so our exit from LAX took no time. After some waiting we caught the Alamo shuttle; more waiting in line ensued, but eventually Ian signed paperwork and we got our car, a real sporty little number. Driving from LA to Pasadena took some time, mainly because we took the simplest route, straight up through the downtown area, which had heavy traffic.

Arriving at the hotel, we quickly realized that we had beaten everybody else there. So we took a walk down Colorado Boulevard, which was tree-lined where we started but quickly became barren and lined with strip malls, fast-food restaurants, and car dealerships. After three-quarters of a mile we turned around and headed back the other way, passing our hotel and going on to the Vons, which we found out was a grocery store. There we purchased snack-lunch foods, including some delicious strawberries. We ate lunch, read our books, and waited for other people. That evening everybody who was there, including Nana and Grandpa and Colleen, met at Twohey’s Restaurant for dinner. Their food is good, but you really go there for the sundaes. Mmmmm.

After that Ian and I went to sleep, since we had been up since 1:30 PST. Of course, this meant that we woke up at 4:15 am feeling perky and awake. Eventually I went and took pictures, including the motion blur one of the bus I posted yesterday. After a while, Ian and I hooked up with my parents and John, the best man, and we all ate free continental breakfast. We spent much of that day sitting outside by the pool talking, going for walks, and generally killing time until the 5:30 rehearsal started. I did obtain white shoes to wear under my dress ($15 at Old Navy — if anybody wants a once-worn pair of size 6 Old Navy shoes, let me know. You can have them for the price of postage) and we hit up a party store for car-decorating items.

That evening everybody involved met at Trinity Lutheran Church for the rehearsal. This went fairly smoothly; I liked Jordan’s groomsmen, and we got to meet Jordan’s parents, which was nice. We rehearsed about three times but it still took something like two hours, thanks to many questions and decisions having to be made at the last minute. Also the church lady was a control freak and bossed everybody around something terrible, making me inordinately grateful we only had to deal with her for two days. We finally left the church about 7:30 — which felt really late to me — and went to a Chinese place (Panda Inn, I think) for dinner. This was nice, but I spent most of the time zoned out and exhausted. We enjoyed quite a variety of delicious food, had some interesting conversation with people, and received our gifts from Colleen and Jordan. Colleen very thoughtfully gave me a fountain pen, which I appreciated. That evening we got to bed at some seemingly exorbitantly late hour, but alas, Ian mis-set the alarm and it went off at 3:30 am (instead of 6:30 as planned, presumably due to time zone issues with the watch). This felt close enough to actual waking-up time that I never really got back to sleep, and simply compounded more exhaustion on top of my already heaping collection. Fortunately, adrenaline serves when true rest fails, so I got through the remaining 24 hours decently well.

That’s all I’m going to cover for now. Next post: The wedding day and the flight back.

A note on today: In the morning we found out that Ian is now on 3rd shift at work. This means that he will leave for work about the time I go to bed, and come home when I wake up. This did not make for happy or welcome news.

We went to Landry’s and obtained a spring-tuned Artemis. I went for a 40-mile ride on her leaving from Landry’s and arriving at home 3 hours later. I hoped the transition from studded tires to slicks would help speed me up, but I rode with a 15-mph headwind 75% of the time, with gusts into the 25-mph zone. This, plus a temperature around 27°F, made for very cold, very difficult riding.

When I got home, I recovered in a bath for a bit. Then we walked out to the Marlborough Library, where we got five books — all for free! I love libraries and never really use ours. This sad fact is about to change, I can tell you.

KF quality

5 thoughts on “California Trip, Part I

  1. Norah – Yeah…I’m resigning myself to having a nocturnal husband for the next six months or so.

    Deborah – I really didn’t like the shoes. They’re not very formal, so I couldn’t wear them for a different formal event, and since they’re not very comfortable (and don’t fit very well), I’d be happy to see them hit the road.

  2. Deborah – +3 network is a place where I upload routes from my GPS and it gets mapped in Google maps. I hoped that you’d be able to see the maps if I linked to them without you having to sign up for an account, but if not, you’re not missing a lot. It’s just maps of the routes we took.

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