The Howards and The Simpsons

Leading Off – It’s been a very busy two and a half weeks, filled with travel, family, a wedding, getting sick, a broken air conditioning unit, Rez Week and one wicked party. Where to begin?

Presenting Mr. & Mrs. Jeremy Howard – The Thursday before St Patrick’s Day I traveled from Florida to Nashville for my cousin Beka’s wedding. I had been eagerly looking forward to this trip for weeks. My wanderlust peaked when all the students left to go on spring break. I really needed a vacation.

Incidentally I was traveling on my sister’s birthday. It was the first time I got to see Alison on her birthday since she turned fourteen back in 2002. It’s weird to think about things like that, measuring time based on milestones missed. Since I arrived at around 9 PM central time I didn’t spend too much time with her on her actual birthday, but I did get to give her a gift in person. Strangely, she also gave me a gift. You’d think after nineteen birthdays she would have figured out how the process works.

Friday we met up with the rest of the family. My mom is the oldest of six children, so there’s lots of little ones. Or at least they used to be little. The youngest one is eight now. It never ceases to amaze me how fast kids grow, especially when you don’t see them everyday. Since we were in Nashville and since my mom, four of her siblings and some of their spouses (including my dad) all went to Vanderbilt we spent the day on campus. We’re all sports nuts so we found the sports bar in the student union and watched some NCAA tournament basketball while catching up with one another.

Friday afternoon each individual family went and did their own thing. Mine met up with one of my parents’ old friends who is now a professor of engineering at Vanderbilt. It was fun to hear some old stories, a few of which I’ve heard before but only from the perspective of my mom and dad. It makes me wonder how many of my friends from college I’ll be able to stay in touch with thirty years from now.

Friday night my grandmother and the parents of the bride went to the rehearsal dinner. The rest of the family went out to a fancy restaurant near campus. For the last two or three reunions I’ve been eagerly awaiting an invite to join the adult table, but once again I was told to head up the kids table. And it only makes it worse when they try to tell you that it’s not the kids table, that it’s actually just the under forty table or the second generation table. As if that would change the company or the level of conversation. And I don’t mean to insult my cousins. It was still fun eating with them, and the overall maturity level has increased a good bit since the last reunion, but there were still a couple of moments during dinner where I wished I could crawl under the table for a minute or two.

Saturday was the day of the wedding. These next few sentences are going to be a bit tricky. I need to say a word about what my feelings were towards weddings before going on this trip. Without going into too much detail, I didn’t think much of them. They seemed fake. People commit to a feeling and not to a person. Some are even taking the words “until death do us part” out in favor of “until love fades,” which I suppose is more honest but doesn’t reflect what a marriage should be. I wish more people would just elope and spare us the farce. Now, I didn’t believe my cousin was going to end up as one of these statistics, and I still don’t, but it’s still difficult to not be cynical.

I can say without any hesitation that none of these feelings were evoked during this wedding. From the very start you could tell this wasn’t going to be a cookie cutter wedding. They first ran a slide show of old photos, first of Beka, then Jeremy, then the two of them together. After everyone walked down the aisle and took their places my Uncle Chuck, the father of the bride, began to perform the service. I had heard they wanted to make the ceremony fun, but I had no idea just how great it was going to be. The service was essentially a roast of both the bride and groom. This struck me as being what was missing in other weddings. Not that each wedding needed the participants to be embarrassed in front of their family and friends before saying “I do.” But this roast did a great job of exposing each person. Here were the things they might not tell just anyone, now out in the open. The commitment they were making, it was to this person with these idiosyncrasies. Despite how difficult it might seem to combine these two lives – any two lives – in a marriage, they were committing to the challenge for life. I left knowing they were committed to each other and not just a feeling, which is something I can’t always say.

The reception had a picnic theme. All the table clothes were a checkered red and white. The catering was by Loveless and was fried chicken with all the fixings. Neither Jeremy nor Beka like cake, so they had wedding pie instead. There was some music and some dancing, but before you knew it the reception was over and the newlyweds were running out to their car amidst a barrage of silver confetti.

After the reception was a late night of watching more basketball with the family. This is where I expected to be asked when I was going to be getting married. But it turns out that my family is more sensitive than that. Or at least that’s one explanation. I found out on this trip that literally everyone in my family reads my blog. Even my grandmother, who doesn’t have a computer, has one of her kids fax the entries to her. So I may have created a reverse self-fulling prophesy. Whatever. I’m just glad I didn’t have to field any awkward questions. Early the next morning I made my way to the airport. I was the first of all the family to leave. I didn’t get nearly enough time with anyone. Sadly the next reunion probably won’t be for another three years, unless someone gets married before then. The day of traveling took a lot out of me. I wasn’t feeling all that good by the end of the day, but I figured I was just tired. All in all I had a fantastic trip. If you’d like to see some photos from the weekend I’ve got an album right here.

Somebody Please Kill Me – Okay, so maybe I wasn’t just tired. I had to leave work early on Monday and didn’t go back to work until Thursday due to a case of food poisoning. Wow, how’s that for a reality check? I’ll spare you further details. I probably came down with it after eating the the Charlotte airport, but it could have been just about anything I ate on Sunday.

90s Party – I did everything I could to get well because on Saturday my friends James, Joe and JD were hosting their Annual Decades Dance party. This year the decade of choice was the 1990s. Before you say that not enough time has passed please consider this: everyone in attendance lived through this decade. People got really creative with their attire. Most people, rather than dressing like they did in the 90s, chose to dress like a famous person from the 90s. Who did I dress as? Only the most influential man from that decade: Homer Simpson. My friends Anna and Brandon came as Marge and Bart. We were amongst those nominated for best costume, though we did not get first or second prize. Those honors went to Carrie for Edward Scissorhands and Rob for Al Borlin (Tim Allen’s tool show co-host on Home Improvement). The entranceway to the party was themed after Jurassic Park, complete with an authentic-looking homemade sign. The music, which James put weeks of effort into preparing, was fantastic. There were two unexpected highlights to the evening. The first was that a number of girls came as jazzercisers. They actually led a jazzercise workout for everyone. I’ve got the YouTube video linked down below. The second is something is evidently a time-honored tradition in the Chandler household. That is, of course, making your own Hammer pants out of white trash bags. Hysterical. The funny thing is that most everyone got into both of these. Lots of people were jazzercising and even more were doing their best Hammer dance. You have to realize that I don’t really like parties all that much. The fact that I would say I liked this party is saying a lot. But this was by far the best party I’ve ever been to. James and company will have a very hard time living up to this next year.

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It’s Like a Snow Day, Only Hot – This past week on both Tuesday and Wednesday everyone at work was sent home at 3pm because the air conditioning in our building was broken. It got pretty sticking hot those two days, and I’m sort of surprised they didn’t send us home on Thursday. Since I’m an OPS employee I won’t get paid for those hours. Combine that with the fact that the week before I missed two and a half days due to being sick and I’m looking at a financially thin month.

Rez Week – This past week was Rez Week at FSU. For those who don’t know, Resurrection Week is a week each spring where all the campus ministries (or most of them, at least) cancel their normal schedule and come together for corporate worship events. Though traditionally it has been held the week before Easter, this year it was pushed up so that the Catholic Student Union would be free to participate. This year’s theme was to turn away selfish idols and pursue God and community with other believers. I did not attend the first meeting on Tuesday when Mario, the Chi Alpha leader, gave the message. But Wednesday Brent gave a message that can be summoned up in one word: repent. It was a very passionate and forceful message that we all needed to hear. After he finished the people present spent hours praying together. Thursday Dave spoke about community within the Trinity, how God is a community unto Himself. He challenged us to through John 17:20-26 saying that we needed to be as close to each other as the Father is to the Son. We spent time praying for the other three campuses having Rez Week this week: Appalachian State, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and University of Texas at Austin, that God would move on their campuses as well as our own. Soon I’ll have the audio of all three messages and will make it available on my site.

The rest – I can’t believe we’ve already reached April. It’s so much harder to judge the passage of time when you’re not a student. Weeks turn into months much more easily when you’re doing the same thing over and over again. I have to admit, I’m looking forward to the end of the spring semester. I’ll be able to drop my student-related activities for a couple of months and concentrate on some things that I haven’t been able to give the proper time, most notably writing. But there’s still one more month to go. I think it will be a good one.