Cicadas Keeping Counterpoint to Matrimony

I've been to a couple of weddings in my lifetime. I've seen uniformed grooms emerge from chapels with giddy brides on one arm and a ceiling of swords held aloft above them. I've seen humble couples leave churches with cars dragging shoes and cans loudly behind them. I've even participated as a main character in a wedding. But this afternoon I attended a wedding I think I'll fondly remember for a long time. In a modest but lovingly decorated chapel in Catonsville, my friends Jen Lockard and Bill Dugan exchanged vows and began their lives as man and wife. Jen was lovely as she came down the aisle with brimming eyes. Bill was handsome and proud as he watched his bride approaching. The priest who performed the ceremony was affable and down-to-earth. He presented the couple with a heartfelt homily that compared them to a royal couple wed earlier that day halfway around the world and reminded them that their vows were just as sacred and valuable to God as any exchanged in a wedding of royals.

It is cicada season here. Bill and Jen have embraced that fact in planning their wedding. The invitations, their blog entries, and even the wedding programs and table favors included cicadas as an inevitable part of their wedding experience. And so they were. But the tent erected in their front yard for the reception had mesh side panels, a plastic and artificial turf floor, and was connected to the house. In the time we spent at the reception, only a few cicadas participated in the festivities. A couple of those became appetizers.

What was meaningful to me was the size of the wedding. It was less than one hundred people. And Joan and I were included. We are honored and blessed to have witnessed this celebration and to have met even more of the Lockardugan circle of friends.

God bless, Jen and Bill. We love you and look forward to spending more time with you.

Precious in the Spotlight

Pookums had her dance recital tonight. She had a cheering section of family and friends representing four states and five towns. In three numbers she displayed the fruits of her practice in tap, jazz, and ballet. It was quite a show. The entire dance company at her high school is impressive and the dance teacher deftly combined the various skill levels to create a spectacle of movement.

After the show, our young dancer was gifted with bouquets and brought home to a heroine's welcome of lasagna that she was not quite prepared to dine on before the performance. I've got to tell you, Dadhood notwithstanding, I was and am very proud of her. She's put a lot of work into her dancing and she did well.

The Fam is In the House

Mom and Dad got here early this afternoon. They have successfully negotiated the roadways between Wilmington, DE and Ellicott City, MD. That is no mean feat when you consider that congestion in my hometown occurs when the high school football or basketball game lets out or when your neighbor is pulling his combine across the road to get to the next field over. Oh yeah, sometimes a train will back up things for a few yards too.

We've dropped Pookums off at the face fairy to get her stage makeup done. We've taken her to dress rehearsal (now in process) and stopped by two important places on the way home. The first was Crossroads Pub in downtown Dayton, MD. There Dad dined on crab cakes while I had fried oysters. A love pat for our tummies. Next was the quaint store at the corner of Triadelphia and Ten Oaks. There we stocked up on the elixirs of life: Jim Beam Black, a local wine, and a Belgian ale. Did I mention that Pops happily sprung for the chow and the provisions. Family is important. Family is good. Generous family is beyond words!

Tomorrow, a little rest, a little visiting, and the arrival of the sistas. Susie flies in from Orlando and Beth and kids drive in from Pennsylvania. Mrs. C (the one I married, not the one who married my father) is downstairs even now preparing the lasagna. Then we take our stuffed selves to the high school auditorium to watch Pookums and Crew step lively.

Saturday we had something planned ... and there is a present in the back seat of the truck I need to wrap. The two are somehow related. ... It will come to me.

Be well.

Put Away the Brush, Doff the Tack

They liked us! The demo went nicely and the audience could easily see the value of the software solution. Hooray for our team!

Brush the Dog, Saddle the Pony

My boss came to me late last week and told me that I'd be demonstrating some software to the customer bigwig tomorrow (the 19th). So tonight I'm going over everything one last time. We dry run for our folks in the morning to make sure we don't step on anything that might bring tears to our eyes.

Meanwhile, it's two day to family (folks start trickling in on Thursday) and, coincidentally, a scheduling snafu has moved my mother-in-law's surgery to Thursday. All that is to say that it is a better time to be me than it is to be my wife. She's finding things a little stressful. Pookums is taking it all in stride and is closely monitoring the television so the rest of us are not distracted. I picked up the dance tights for her peformance tonight.

I'm just a little pudgy to be taken seriously in a dancewear store. The staff there cocked one well-plucked eyebrow each when they saw me walk through the door. That did not stop them from running my credit card through their little machine, but I'm sure they are trying very diligently to erase the mental image of me in flesh-colored transitional tights from their collective imagination.

The ripping good time continues. The pace is, well, let's just say that glaciers and such could probably lap me. I'm now into the Ks. Sixty-one discs left in this binder and then it's one more binder of ~125 and whatever discs are just laying around the house (including the Emerson, Lake & Palmer box set and a couple of others. Mom and Dad Puzzini have a couple of operas and discs by the Ink Spots and the Mills Brothers I want to get as well. And so it goes ...