Adventures With Furniture

Heart-Stopping Moment of the Week, ladies and gentlemen: on Saturday, I push my trolley mere inches away from the checkout line at IKEA, only to see all my boxes fall to the floor in an unhappy heap. And the young girl scanning my purchases, who has just been apologizing non-stop for taking so long at it...really doesn't do anything.

But that's part of the magic of IKEA. Everything is so tightly packed up that apart from a few tiny holes in the cardboard boxes, there's no signs of damage whatsoever! (And if something is wrong, they have a heck of a good return policy.)

The fact that I was able to get to IKEA in the first place is due to that great blessing of this year, my friendship with the Earth Mother and the GameMaster. They love IKEA, and they love taking people to IKEA in their very nice car, and browisng at IKEA and finding things to gather for their own new home and lunching on Swedish goodness (I had an open-faced shrimp sandwich, by the way).

My goal was to acquire furniture sufficient to last me several years, and in this, I believe I succeeded. Two tables, two lamps, two chairs (office and easy), a 5x5 bookshelf set, a television stand/coffee table hybrid, a shelving unit, and a very good large writing desk, plus assorted odds and ends...the latter included a very colorful housewarming gift for the Wolverine and the Russian Warrior Princess.

Unfortunately, the Earth Mother and the GameMaster also took a spill, and they were not as lucky as I appeared to be. They bought a lovely TV stand/cabinet set of their own from the as-is department. In moving it, after the Earth Mother took out the glass shelves, I suggested we remove the drawers as well, but the GameMaster said that was not necessary. Of course, guess what fell out and got dented? (I take a chunk of the blame since I was helping to carry it.)

My entire Swedish haul, including delivery, lunch, and the always delightful dollar ice cream, came to under $700. Buying a bed in Hyde Park is a different proposition. It turns out that one store on 53rd Street which shall remain nameless misquotes their box spring prices, charges for frames, and has a $55 delivery fee even when you live just four blocks away! Then the manager looked really, really serious, we're talking Blaxploitation-detective serious, when I decided I did not want to buy a mattress today. Now on the other hand, there's ANOTHER mattress store on 53rd Street where the mattress and springs come together for the same price as a mattress alone at the other store! And frames are sturdy and cheap! And the manager also could not give me free delivery, but now I only have to pay twenty bucks! Needless to say, after testing a comfy Serta (which I flopped right down on to his approval), I was sold.

Furniture is nice. Mine may not have the history yet (the S.O.'s rug has been in the family ever since her parents got together) or the otherworldly aura (Superman and the Hardest Working Girl in Hollywood own the comfiest couch ever), but it will get there.

Siddhartha (1922) by Herman Hesse

I am writing this in some haste because I do not want to let the thoughts and emotions in my mind leave me.

Today at church I was very distracted with care and worry, much more than usual. An encounter with a friend on the walk to church today left me realizing how I have committed myself to a path which it will be hard to move back from…to stay in Chicago with no job and no idea what is to come next, to commit my remaining money and energy to this time. I am ashamed to say that though the teachings today were good and the hymns moving to the soul, I did not put the concentration into them which I should have.

Feeling spiritually neglectful and somewhat lonely, I decided to spend some time in meditation. I put a Miles Davis record on the stereo and began reading a book I once purchased for a dollar at the Melrose Avenue Sunday swap meet at Adam Strauss’s recommendation: Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha.

By the time I reached the final chapter, I had turned off the music, forgotten about the clothes in the laundry, and was reading in nervous, excited concentration.

What I found warmed my heart.

For those of you who have not read it, Siddhartha is not about the Buddha but another man named Siddhartha, who desires to find the true Self, and after an encounter with the Buddha (called Gotoma), he begins a journey in which he exchanges his spiritual life for the purely secular life, then casts that off to learn from a good ferryman named Vasudeva…and in old age, he makes an extraordinary discovery.

Hesse is a great writer, and in his structure he perfectly mirrors Siddhartha’s quest. Everything Siddhartha learns at the time is presented as a great truth, but as the story continues each truth is either proven to be the basis for another truth or is flatly contradicted. The culmination of these truths is in the final chapter, when Siddhartha is reunited with his oldest and dearest friend, Govinda, in the days of the Buddha’s passing.

“”The potential Buddha always exists in the sinner; his future already there. The potential hidden Buddha must be recognized in him, in you, in everybody. The world is not imperfect or slowly evolving along a long path to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment; every sin already carries grace within it, all small children are potential old men, all sucklings have death within them, all dying people–eternal life.

During deep meditation it is possible to dispel time, to see simultaneously all the past, present, and future, and then everything is good, everything is present, everything is Brahman. Therefore, it seems to me that everything that exists is good–death as well as life, sin as well as holiness, wisdom as well as folly. Everything is necessary, everything needs only my agreement, my assent, my loving understanding; then all is well with me and nothing can harm me. I learned through my body and soul that it was necessary for me to sin, that I needed lust, that I had to strive for property and experience nausea and the depths of the stair in order to learn not to resist them, in order to learn to love the world, and no longer compare it with some kind of desired imaginary world, some imaginary vision of perfection, but to leave it as it is, to love it and be glad to belong to it.

Love is the most important thing in the world. It may be important to great thinkers to examine the world, to explain and despise it. But I think it is only important to love the world, not to despise it, not for us to hate each other, but to be able to regard the world and ourselves and all beings with love, admiration, and respect.”

My parents, my mentors, my friends, have all told me time and time again that God puts nothing in our way which we can’t handle, that everything happens for a reason, that there is such a thing as karma. And though I have tried to believe it, I have especially as of late, with age and responsibility settling in on me, looked back and felt nervous about my choices, felt wrong, felt that my past has been marked by foolishness and consumption and squandering. And I think of myself so often as a sinner who does not use the gifts God gave him, who falls over and over again into the same dark corners, who is not good enough, who does not try at time to be good enough and who feels when he tries that it is futile. Why did I study the Humanities, I ask myself, instead of that which could prepare me for a career in the modern economy? Why was I not more careful with the money I won? Why do I enjoy good food, good wine, books, etc. as I do when I should be thankful to have a roof, clothes, and simple food, when there are so many with less in the world? This question always makes me afraid that someday I shall have nothing and no one and be a desolated, ignored man…and writing this I feel so ashamed, ashamed that I shall break my parents’ hearts that I have not listened and that I feel wrong by the goodness they have showered on me, that I further wrong the Lord by not trusting in Him, that I pain my friends and my girlfriend by saying that I regret the decisions I made which enabled them to come into my life. Knowing all this, I have long persisted in such a manner of thinking, wanting to reject my past, feeling lesser than everyone else, that my choices and attitudes will shatter me.

But in reading and absorbing Siddhartha, I begin to recognize the error of this way of thinknig, an error which no one ever quite put into words I could understand as Hesse does. Like Siddhartha, I compared myself and set myself up against an imaginary world, an ideal to live up to where there are certain choices which bring you peace and prosperity both worldly and spiritual.

I begin to see there is no such world, that in the multitude of humankind, people I pray for every night when I ask God to bestow justice on sinners and comfort those who are hurt by sin and who repent, there are so many paths to follow, and I have long believed that the way to faith is to follow your own path.

Now I see the next step: the way to the best life is to follow your own path. But NOT a self-centered path. Following your own path means that to do what you know is right, you must absorb all that is happening around you, make your choice, and make both your actions and those of others fit in with what you value and what you believe.

Then…in studying the Humanities, I have learned how to see with clear, true eyes the world I live in, to find pattern and meaning in the most unlikely places, and now to embark on a mission to share those meanings with others.

And at the same time, because I live in the secular world, my careers must be ones in which I subordinate myself to the needs of others, to work hard for other ends which will feed my own end.

If I have learned to appreciate the good life, it has also helped me appreciate the simple life. And if all is the same, then I know in times of strict, lean living as I shall be embarking on now, there will be moments to come of richness and joy, that the simple pleasures of a glass of cold water and a good book and a little electricity give me as much contentment as a great meal.

If I have moved too much and spent money on social occasions, the places where I have been always lead me to people I have met who are now true, caring friends who listen and help and share and with whom I listen, help, and share. This is a treasure beyond the worldly which I know will sustain me if an hour of need ever truly arises.

And if I cannot approach the ideal I set myself before my bountiful God and my loving parents, God above all, they are aware that every misstep is actually a step on the path to wisdom, where I must learn in my own way what all humans must learn, and to use that knowledge not in the way of regret but in the way of change. I have told my parents these words before, but I never understood their full meaning. I thought the change had to come to approach the ideal. The change only has to come to give me what I need to satsify myself in the context of the world that I live in, to bring me into unity with my surroundings.

There I will experience peace. There I will find hope and love. There I will be home.

I must not scorn what I did before, for all of it was the loved, the valuable, the holy, and from it I shall find the lovelier, the thoughts and deeds of greater value, and the true holiness of being at one with the great plan of life. Of being at one with my past, present, and future, of all leading into each other and all flowing to the spirit.

A Memory of Two Nights

This morning at 2:00, the Tall Guy, the Legal Girl, and I were on the Red Line train pulling out of Addison. We had just watched, in the company of the Wolverine, the season premiere of Jersey Shore and The Room, so our views of human nature were already at a low ebb. The train was empty when we embarked, but one stop later, a crowd of loud young men with a case of Heineken Light got on the train accompanied by two drunken middle-aged black men in Cubs paraphernalia. The young men, all white, when not encouraging their newfound friends to drink more and sit on various laps, were laughing at one of the party who was getting married on the 14^th, declaring this was the last week he would ever be alive. I felt sorry for his fiancée.

Believe it or not, the night was not yet over…at 2:45 we managed to catch the No. 4 bus back to Hyde Park. All very tired, we could only watch in horror as a 65 year-old woman began arguing with the bus driver when a pass she had was not accepted. Refusing to get off the bus, she alternately declared that she had been interacting with this particular driver either forever or only just in the last two weeks and that she would not be thrown off the bus. She begged us for a dollar, all the while declaring that she had seen this driver be disrespectful to an equally elderly man and was not going to let her get away with it again. At this point, I broke Marc's cardinal rule and gave her a dollar because I just wanted to go home and sleep. For the rest of her trip, the woman, when not telling me that God would bless me, moaned continually about her treatment, and a smart-looking man sitting next to us offered to help her write a formal complaint.

Sometimes I think my life is miserable. I have a series of great responsibilities to live up to and no job as yet to help me fulfill them. It is easier than I would like to admit for me to feel terribly down and believe that the Lord's grace and my self-confidence, self-esteem, and perseverance will not be sufficient to secure me work.

Then I think of nights like Thursday, when went over to the Earth Mother and the Gamemaster's apartment for Game Night, and a crowd of eleven crammed in. This included the S.O., whom I had just watched bake a triple-chocolate pecan pie from scratch, the Connoisseur, who has just returned from Germany (he brought chocolate, had some fun stories, and in one hilarious moment I observed, poked his finger at the Princess's backside and made her already wide eyes go wider) and the Dancer, accompanied by her delightful new roommates and friends from her ballroom activities. We played Interview, Celebrities, Telephone Oracle, and Improv Freeze Tag, I got slightly tipsy, and all of us had a wonderful time, the S.O. more than most as she happily told me later…though the joy on the Earth Mother's face at seeing her friends in one room was a sight to behold.

And I think about Thursday night and the people I saw on Saturday night and know that my life is not miserable, that there are so many people whom I care about and who care about me, that there is so much positive energy and grace surrounding me, that I am definitely going to succeed at some point soon.

Developed Thoughts on Proposition 8

I don't think anything has made my entire circle of friends automatically post on Facebook as much as Judge Vaughan Walker's ruling that Prop 8 was unconstitutional. In my own happiness over the decision, I made a comment which I think was misunderstood by some people and which I wished to elaborate on.

As someone who was living in Los Angeles in November 2008 and who knew so many people actively campaigning against the measure, I can honestly say that the euphoria surrounding Obama's election was heavily tempered by Prop 8. A few years before I wouldn't have cared, but knowing and befriending so many members of the LGBT community through Emerson, the film industry, and St. James in the City made me share in the outrage...particularly when, writing a short essay as a contribution to a pro-gay marriage website, I discovered 1,138 legal rights which are denied to gay couples because they are not married. There's a reason I am happy today to call myself a regular contributor to the Human Rights Campaign.

However, my attitude towards gay MARRIAGE has undergone an evolution. The spark came from the Wise Old Man, my great octogenarian friend and dining and drinking campaign from L.A., who told me he didn't vote against Prop 8 because he asked all of his homosexual acquaintances what marriage would change for them and nobody could give him a good answer. I remembered that a few weeks ago on the day of the Chicago PRIDE parade, when one of the ministers at St. Paul the Redeemer in Hyde Park gave an inspiring sermon. An openly gay man, he preached with emotion and resonance on why it is our Christian duty to fight for equal rights for gays and lesbians, but he was very reluctant about fighting for gay marriage. The trouble, he said, is that same-sex couples are trying to assimilate to a straight norm. Why not, he asked, embrace what makes them unique and come up with a procedure of commitment which isn't called marriage? The great advantage is that by celebrating and emphasizing their differences, they make straight people look harder at their own differences, their own separateness...and hopefully what values they bring to the changing institution of matrimony and how they can better commit to them.

Hearing a clearly outspoken member of the gay community speak like this was enough to make me think. As a committed Christian who believes in Christ's decree that we love one another, I myself rejoice in the diversity, dignity, and individuality of my fellow human beings, and I wonder if there should be something a little different, some new procedure, new ceremony, new guidelines, so that same-sex couples and heterosexual couples don't have it exactly the same way, that their unique places in the world can stay unique. Don't call it marriage. I don't know what you'd call it...as long as, in accordance with the Walker verdict, those 1,138 rights can apply to them.

Because in the end, a word and a process are not as important as a sentiment. As being able to love and commit to and work at a relationship with your partner without ANYONE contradicting you, without ANYTHING you should be sharing denied to you. That, and not the semantics of marriage, is why I celebrate the blow against Prop 8 and human inequality.

(And by the way, as the New York Times pointed out, the brilliance of the opinion is that it is rooted in quantifiable fact as much as law, which will make it a bit harder to argue against. Well done!)

Couples

I know a lot of couples...and now I'm part of a couple, which is something in itself. Lately, as anyone following this blog knows, I've been going to one wedding after another, so newlyweds are sticking out in my mind above all. But there are plenty of other couples in this world.

For instance, the couple-who-have-been-together-longer-than-the-S.O.-and-me-but-aren't-quite-ready-for-marriage-yet. Yesterday, I saw the Nice Guy for the first time since Campus Days, accompanied by his own young lady, La Chinoise. They got a firsthand look at the apartment, which he loved and more importantly she liked, and then I took them downtown for what was ultimately a riotous, delicious Tapas dinner with the S.O. It was nothing but enjoyable to see them bounce ideas off each other, casually slip body parts around each other, obviously know each other well enough to keep a superb conversational rhythm going between themselves and with us...and it's obvious they factor each other into their decisions. They're natural.

Then there's anniversary couples. The Earth Mother and the GameMaster celebrated their first last week, and in her words, "I can't believe it's been a whole year. Also, life is awesome." I know the marriage statistics these days, but I'd wager all my money they'll make it to the end. Having known them for ten of the twelve months of their married life, I have never seen them even slightly annoyed with each other, and I know that the honeymoon period is gone...they're two people my age with financial worries and new jobs and a small apartment. But again...they don't care. They love it and they love each other and we all can see it. They're going to make it.

Like Mommy and Daddy. Today is their...wait for it...31st. 31st. They are my great livign example of how couplehood is half affection and half work. Probably more than half-work. Over the years I have discovered what opposites they are in so many ways, but through difficulties and less-than-happy moments, they have stayed together. Through driving each other crazy, they stay together, and both of them have told me there's no one else they'd rather be with. When I see him holding her at the end of a long day when dinner's on the stove, or her giving an exasperated sigh when he cracks a joke, or them dancing together at a Rostan party, I can only wish that someday I'll be in those shoes.

And then there's all the couples who are celebrating today as, after two years, somebody in power finally figured out that Prop 8 was unconstitutional. I'm still not sure how I feel about gay marriage, having heard convincing arguments against it from gay clergy whom I deeply respect, but what I love about this decision is that it makes so many people happy who have made Mommy and Daddy's decision, made the Earth Mother and the GameMaster's decision, not to marry but to commit and work and love, to put someone else first and acknowledge that such a place will be first now and forever.

I take my couplehood one step at a time...Mommy and Daddy still leave me in awe...but it's great to take those steps with the S.O. Even if she did propose a new nickname for me last night which is too damned similar to that of a certain 1960s supermodel.

The Dancer Moves Out

Today I spent ninety minutes of activity, sweat, and a lingering bittersweet air helping the Dancer move her furniture out of her apartment. This was the home of the first potluck in September on the same day as the Hyde Park Jazz Festival, when we played Celebrities for the first time and thus kick-started an entire year of amazing guesswork and motion...culminating in the Corset Party, where the Wolverine and I failed to interpret the Princess's impersonation of Curious George, which she will rightly never let us live down. And we had game nights there, and I made mead there, and I shared a great New Year's Eve dinner with the Dancer, her mother, the Connoisseur, and his friend there...of course, I'm leaving my apartment too with its many memories, but I knew from the start it was only temporary. Her place felt like a home. Which makes me think her new place will be equally homey.

One Last Thing...for Michael and Kate and Eric and Sarah (and what the hell, Chelsea and Mark could use it, too.)

The exhortation from the wedding reception:

As you take each other for richer or pooer, in sickness and in health, for better or worse...

May all your ups and downs be in bed.

Holy Matrimony, Part II: The 22 Articles

Michael Koren is my cousin, and when I was little we would be at Aunt Nancy and Uncle Joe's house in Hubbard...we would play kickball and baseball and wading pool in the backyard and Nintendo in the basement and build LEGOs (he still does) and go trick-or-treating and see Indians games...until Marc got old enough, he was the closest male relative of mine I had fun with. And when we got older, there were several occasions where he would give me some crucial wisdom, such as how to think about and talk to your parents, how to look at life with confidence, and (this was done with Smashing Pumpkins as the key example) how to move beyond the cultural tastes older generations instill in you. In these senses, he has always been in an ultra-general way a sort of older brother, and conversely in his eyes I often feel like I am still the little Andrew who's behind in things...and that's alright. Now...Mike saw a few girls in his life, how many I don't know because I only saw the ones who were here at family gatherings, but after he graduated from OSU he met Kate Martin, who was a classmate of his sister Michelle. Kate is very pretty, very delightful, very smart intellectually and emotionally (I have never seen her lose her cool or respond in situations without total diplomacy), equipped with a great sense of humor, and...is the most extraordinary creator of baked goods I've ever met. If I had met Kate in some circumstances and gotten as close to her as Mike did, I would have fallen for her, so there was absolutely no surprise when Mike DID fall hard for her, and yesterday they were married in Columbus, with almost the entire Rostan family, including Grandma and her eight children, present.

All the men wore pink socks because Grandpa loved to wear pink socks...it was our spiritual tribute to him. Rarely have I wished more that I could have known him, and we said a prayer for him at our table before dinner.

Marc picked me up at the airport...he's more handsome than ever with his very well-cut facial hair. He ushered and we had to go pick up his tuxedo, which turned into a two-day process and a stressful try-on involving tails, suspenders, vest, the works.

I had ice cream every day in Columbus at either lunch or breakfast...Jeni's, purveyors of the Buckeye State and Sweet Corn with Black Raspberry flavors, is the finest in Ohio that isn't Handel's.

We stayed at the Blackwell Hotel on OSU's campus. Marc gave me a tour of the Short North district, which is like the best neighborhoods in L.A., and his favorite Ohio State locales, including the renovated library which I would never leave to the point of sleeping, the student union, and University Hall, which was modeled after Independence Hall in Philadelphia and on the oval sits next to OSU's Independence Hall, which was modeled after nothing. (His words.)

Mommy and Daddy arrived on Thursday and we caravaned with John (who seems a happier man than the last tiem I saw him and is working on the long-awaited follow-up to "The Quest for Just and Pure Law"), his date Kris, a very, very nice woman who teaches Roman History and was born in Chicago (we had plenty to talk about), Aunt Mary, Beth (the loveliest pregnant woman in the world), Bonnie and Mark, Uncle Richard and Aunt Jodi, and...

I'll catch hell for this because I'm almost sure Uncle Bill and Aunt Candy rounded out the party but I'm not. I lost brain cells this weekend. In three days I drank an infinite variety of beer, wine (red and white), champagne, screwdrivers, vodka and tonic, gin and tonic, whiskey sour, Diet Coke with rum and Southern Comfort, and bourbon. Continually. Until 1 a.m. every night. Weight gained: no idea. Do I care? Not at all.

Anyway, we drove through downtown (which I'd never seen before) and ended up at Thurman Cafe, featured on "Man Versus Food," and had fried pretzels, fried brownies, and the most awesome 3/4 pound burgers I've had in forever. As John said, when you go to Columbus, you go on the Thurman diet.

The Blackwell is next to Ohio Stadium, and down the street is the Varsity Club. Every night featured the Varsity Club at some point. The drinks are cheap, the patio allows cigars to be smoked, and the jukebox is full of country music and whatever you want.

Friday morning, breakfast at the hotel where Dylan the waiter told us right off the bat he was tired and then proceeded to bear out that statement with some incompetent, inattentive waiting.

The great tradition of me caddying for Daddy continued when we played a fine course in the Columbus MetroParks, arriving after two wrong turns and an old man out for a stroll giving us directions and telling us "You can't miss it." Obviously we could. We played with Kate's father Robert (he who closed the hay sale on the seventeenth tee) and uncle Jim, who both do not golf. It was still a more-than-fun morning. Lunch was a hot dog and a hot fudge sundae, the latter being consumed when Uncle Frank decided we had to stop at Graeter's, a very old-school ice cream maker.

Dinner that night was a very fun cocktail party at Woody's, where the Ohio-style pizza and banana pepper salad were uniformly superb.

People arrived all through the weekend. Andrew caught a red-eye from a very frustrating meeting in Los Angeles and immediately joined the golf game. (I gave him a list of movies for nights when he and Beth will take care of the baby. He gave me some excellent financial advice.) Frank, who is honorably serving the country, arrived right before the actual ceremony. I saw Ron and Danielle for the first time since Mike's college graduation and met their adorable children. And Cathy showed up in the middle of the cocktail party and stunned me with a short, very attractive haircut. Indeed, all of my female cousins looked absolutely beautiful, causing Mommy and the other Aunts to point out that we have the best-looking third generation of them all, capable of doing a photo shoot.

The night went back and forth between the hospitality suite and the Varsity Club. I debated musical merits with Uncle Richard and John, bought six-packs with Marc, and danced with Cathy, who grew more and more...fun, the way Mommy can...as the night went on. I remember vaguely going to bed. Or vaguely remember.

Saturday Mommy, Daddy, and I had breakfast at Northstar, which makes an egg-sweet potato-black bean-cheese-onion-and-tomato burrito which is TO DIE FOR, plus biscuits and ricotta pancakes of equal powers. We were joined by Cathy, who we ran into searching her car for her phone and kept her shades on almost the entire morning. It was a lovely way to start the day.

The wedding was at St. Andrew's Church, and what stands out so much from that afternoon...
...the church program coordinator, who dragged the rehearsal on Friday to two hours, pushing everyone out of the entrance hall
...Bonnie single-handedly sewing the Maid of Honor's split dress back together
...Marc walking Grandma down the aisle
...the solo vocalist waving her hand at us like a cheesy variety-show star during the responsorial songs
...the priest ordering the photographer off to the side and preaching a very heartfelt sermon about the Beatitudes, with baseball analogies!
...Julie, the next Rostan to be married, gently leading the prayers
...Mike's eyes lighting up as Kate walked down the aisle looking like a princess, pure Audrey Hepburn or Jean Simmons...but no, unmistakably Kate...maybe I've never seen a bride so lovely...
...the Maid of Honor running around to pick up Kate's three-foot train
...the entire church laughing when the bridal couple's hands got misplaced during the exchange of rings
...the bridal couple's euphoria, which never ended

Dinner: soup and salad in cups and glasses, pasta, smoked turkey, roast beef, Kate's cakes, homemade cookies...somehow I still was standing at the end

Dances: plenty of jumping up and down for Lady GaGa and Ke$ha and Katy Perry, riotous country turns, a classic-rock finale where Uncle Donald shook Uncle Frank around during AC/DC, an impromptu Script Ohio, and all of us surrounding Mike and Kate for a final "Piano Man" sing-along, closing in, a mass of loving humanity, including so many great people from Kate's family and their circle of friends whom I never knew existed. "If I don't see you again, I'm glad you saw me."

We took pictures with Grandma. The grandchildren drank a shot of Crown Royal.

There were no arguments that lasted longer than 30 seconds...at least none witnessed by me or which I was part of. Mommy and Daddy and Marc and I...we were so exuberantly happy, we all were, as the conversation flowed endlessly and the storytelling kept up at a marathon pace. And we all hugged. We all let each other know (as Mike and Kate separately did with me at one point at Woody's when they obviously had far more important things to think about) how happy we were to be there together, that we all could make it and wear pink socks and drink and eat and laugh and love.

This proves the personal axiom that you can basically drink ceaselessly for three days and, if you're in the GREATEST of company, the company who will give everyone the best they can give and believe in everything you do, you'll never get drunk. I pray that all the world could feel as loved as we feel. I pray that Mike and Kate share lives of shared work, shared hopes and fears, and undying love.

And I have to get a job now to go back for Thanksgiving. Kate's orders. And in the words of Ken the best man in his toast, Kate is always right.