April: Treasure, Toxins, and Titillation

[chaosvizier]

As I mentioned yesterday, this past weekend there was a wedding.



Our crew of four (me, angledge, katieledge, and fizrep) made the fateful journey into central New York to the distant hamlet of Oneonta on Friday afternoon. Oneonta is an Indian word meaning "Middle of nowhere up in mountains but we still have McDonalds and Walmart." It's tricksy because the roads leading to it are populated by hojillions of ten-house towns that occupy a single stretch of road. Having passed so many of them en route, Oneonta seemed like a thriving metropolis in comparison.

The journey was made eventful thanks to fizrep, who broke his foot about five minutes before we left. One minute he was standing there, next minute it was like someone Nancy Kerriganed him and he was screaming "Why me? Why me?" Well, maybe not that bad. But enough that we had to acquire ice and an Ace bandage. angledge spent most of the drive trying not to tickle his feet and make him writhe in agony. She mostly succeeded. Mostly.

The trip was slow, punctuated by overuse of the word "Buffalol" (when something funny happens to, or in, Buffalo), sudden and unexpected fog banks, and analyses of various towns' preparation for the inevitable rise of zombies. If you live in East Windham, NY, get out now. The town occupies a long stretch of road, with a big cemetary on each end of town. Those zombies will execute a perfect pincer movement on the residents on that day. It'll be a massacre. Tragic, really.

Finally we get there to join the Rehearsal Dinner, meeting up with the soon-to-be bride and groom (chrysoberyl and kikimoose), as well as marasca, thereject, vulgarbarbarian and Mrs. vulgarbarbarian, and mshenzi. Drinks and pizza all around! Mmmm, pizza.

fizrep and I later snuck out to buy gin and tonic. Because there's never a wrong time for that. And because the bartenders kept fucking up. Gin and sprite? Gin and seltzer? FIRED!



We were staying at Christopher's Restaurant and Country Lodge, well-placed across from a liquor store and supermarket and immediately adjacent to a Taco Bell and Long John Silver's. vulgarbarbarian later educated me on LJS's coup de grace: batter, dipped in grease, fried in oil. Never has a whole bunch of nothing tasted so good, and yet was so very bad. Impressive.

The lodge is nice- a quaint "natural" feel, with cowboy and indian decor, a love of antlers and animal motifs, and "every room is unique". True, true. The restaurant in particular is noteworthy. Many Bothans died to bring you their interior design, and by Bothans I mean every animal that ever lived in a forest, ever. We'll see more of that shortly.

Of key note is the advertised "Talking Moose". Jokes about kikimoose aside, the website clearly mentions a talking moose, and it was our solemn duty to find said moose. mshenzi finally found him, but alas, Frank The Talking Moose Head was malfunctioning, and just sat there looking goofily at us from his headboard on the wall of the bar. So we ordered drinks instead.


The wedding itself was on Saturday. Funny thing about the weather in Oneonta that week: the four days before the wedding were all partly sunny, moderately warm-ish, light rain on Friday. The four days after the wedding were sunny, clear, light cloud cover, warm. The day of the wedding was 20 degrees cooler than every day around it. This was of consternation to those of us in the wedding parties as we stood outside in a park, revelling in Nature's icy wrath. Groomsmen and bridesmaids huddled like Emperor Penguins in an Antarctic blizzard as the photographer shot up the bride and groom. With a camera, that is.

thereject lost his battle with his tie, and had to call in an air strike to fix it. I lost my battle with the little flower thingy (boutonnier? something?), and only some deft knife and needle work from mshenzi (along with threats of stabnation) saved that day. But nothing could fix mshenzi's lack of bra, which became more and more apparent as the weather took its toll. The groom's mother chided us for laughing, but really, it was marasca who shouted out "NIPPLES!" so that people three blocks away could know what was happening.¹

Others had arrived over the course of the night and morning- perkyczarlet, shepholland, renospalace, ebontigress, dancingsaracen, snigglefritz, Anthony, Ella, Moe, and Nancy. The Hive was nearly complete. In fact, they took up a third of the seats. Now that's a posse.

The ceremony itself was short and sweet, presided over by the bride's mother, a Unitarian minister. I don't know much about Unitarianism, but I know they have a big poster in the church that says "Save Darfur." Too late, guys. Way too late.

Of note during the service:

kikimoose: How will we know which ring is which?
chaosvizier: Just throw them into the fire and see where the Mordor script appears. That one's yours.

katieledge: I never cry at weddings.
Organist: *wedding march*
katieledge: WWAAAAAAHHH!

Minister: We are gathered here today to join this man and this woman... *sniff* *BREAKDOWN*
Crowd: *sporfle*

Minister: Do you take this man to be... blah blah, the father of your children...
chrysoberyl: *SNORT GIGGLE*

Blah blah, HUSBAND AND WIFE, you may all get drunk now.

A coup de champagne followed the service, upon which I performed a coup d'etat of my own and stored three bottles of champagne in my belly. Champagne is tasty. Almost as tasty as those brownies. Then it was noted that renospalace was wearing a dress of similar color to the brownies. fizrep and I had to be physically restrained from gnawing on her.

vulgarbarbarian gave a short and sweet best man's toast. He did not go with my proposed script, "It's hard to believe that a girl who once splattered our porch with blueberry puke and a guy who once had sex with a tree got married, but that's the magic of college, isn't it?"² This is probably why I was not best man. Wise choice, I suppose.



Previously, I mentioned us buying plastic bling and chocolate coins. What was that about?

Well, the bride and groom have been living together for years. They have a house. They have everything in the house. They want for nothing, house-wise. What kind of gift does one get? angledge hit on the perfect solution: Cash, but not in its crude paper format. Make cash look shiny and intriguing. Her genius idea was a pirate's treasure chest, filled with treasure in the form of, among other things, $1 Sacajawea coins, which are gold and shiny. Filling the chest with other tidbits- the chocolate gold coins for filler, a fine cloth bag with liquor, a "message" in an antique bottle courtesy of ladybugbutt, a crumpled and "damaged" scroll of parchment signed by all the "pirate" participants, and some fake bling and shiny strings for color and flavor- makes it look like a chest full of booty. Behold:


It was pretty damn impressive. Surprise!



And much fun was had by all. It was good to get most of the Hive Core together:

We never dress this well normally. Believe me.

The grooms' party looked pretty good all suited up and stuff. But nice clothes do not hide the fact that, really, we're just a bunch of savages.


thereject tried to make new friends...

...but they were more interested in fizrep's gimpy foot...

...and the bride and groom:


And, despite being liquored up like no tomorrow, I still managed to snap a self-portrait with chrysoberyl:




After the wedding, we retired to the lodge to continue the celebrations with gin and stuff. It's a testament to the coolness of the newlyweds that they came out to join us for the evening. Party time.

At some point, fizrep and katieledge decided that they needed Taco Bell's savory goodness. An easy walk next door, and off we go. But the dining room is closed; only the drive through is open, they tell us. So we walk up to the drive through station, but no one replies. We even make car noises and everything. So we walk all the way around to the serving window, where they tell us they can't serve us if we're not in a car.

Shenanigans!

We return to the party.

fizrep: Is anyone sober enough to drive?
perkyczarlet: Where are you going?
fizrep: We need to get to Taco Bell.
vulgarbarbarian: IT'S RIGHT NEXT DOOR YOU LAZY FUCKER!

After explanations were given, chrysoberyl indicated that she was, in fact, sober. Once again, her coolness defies all bounds: on her wedding night, she still drove her friends 100' to Taco Bell's drive through because they had the munchies. Now that's fifteen shades of awesome.



Alas, all good things must come to an end, and the next day we said our goodbyes (after the post-wedding breakfast of coffee and yummy donuts) and went along our merry way.

Except for this part. We're sitting around in the bride's mother's home, eating donuts and bagels and drinking coffee by the gallon, while watching The Weather Channel. Along comes a feature on the recent tornadoes that smashed into the south recently. One gentleman was being interviewed in front of a pile of wreckage which might have been his home, and was looking a bit bedraggled and disheveled.

fizrep: This little piggy built his house out of straw!
thereject: *is ded from tasteless hysteria*

vulgarbarbarian pimped the ways of World of Warcraft long and hard, but I am resolute in my resistance. Besides, I like running over people in cars. Go play Auto Assault and you'll see what I mean.

And then we left. Well, sort of. We stopped over at renospalace's apartment en route, just because. Surprise! We're here! We had lunch in the happening town of New Paltz. "Paltz" is a word that I believe means "holy crap there are a lot of hippies here". It's "New" because San Francisco is the old one. I think, pound for pound (and I don't use the term lightly), New Paltz has a higher hippie density than San Fran. Impressive.

Ok, now we're really done. Besides the part where I said goodbye to marasca and angledge as I dropped them off at the airport so they could return from whence they came.

Ok, NOW we're done.

Exeunt.



¹She didn't say it in so many words, of course...
²He didn't really sex up a tree. It just looked that way. But the blueberry puke was all too real.