Brief notes on a wedding
For two days in a row I've left directly from work for a social engagement and not gotten home until late-ish. Both were related to the wedding of Andi Schechter and Stu Shiffman, which was held yesterday.
Amongst the group of people who came to town for the wedding were Rich Coad and Stacy Scott. On Tuesday I met them at John Berry's house (which I walked to from work because it's "just up the hill" from there), and we all went out for a beer and then to a Greek restaurant for dinner. It was a lovely, relaxed evening of stories and wisecracks and good cheer. Rich and I drank ouzo, and I reminisced about the time my brother and I were on Corfu in 1980 and met a bunch of guys from Lubbock, Texas, who bought a bottle of ouzo one night and invited us to join the party. We declined, but the next day we found the almost untouched bottle of ouzo at our hotel door. We drank it happily ourselves. Good times. Rich complained about the political correctness of modern fandom, and Stacy verbally rolled her eyes. John and I reminisced about the days when his street had only one restaurant, called the Surrogate Hostess and now long gone. Now the street is chockablock with restaurants and cafes and new condos. I got a ride back home from Rich and Stacy, and they came in to say howdy to Denys as well. They had never been to our house before, and of course talk turned to comic books once they saw Denys' massive collection. Fan talk.
Wednesday was the wedding itself, and it was at Burke Museum on the UW campus, so I just walked up there after work. Lots of folks were there, of course, including the winners of the Far Traveller Award, Mark and Priscilla Olson, who came all the way from Massachusetts. spikeiowa had brought badge ribbons in case there were badges, but we didn't need no stinking badges. Everybody was given a blue yarmulke, and most of us wore it during the ceremony. (akirlu was impressed that mine stayed on despite not being pinned to my non-existent hair.) It was the first Jewish wedding ceremony that I recall ever being to, so it was refreshingly different from past wedding experiences. A female rabbi presided over the lovely ceremony. I heard someone to my right entoning the Hebrew prayers along with her, and discovered later that it had been kalimac, remembering them from his own wedding twenty years ago. Carrie Root was in tears, and kate_schaefer eventually gave her a tissue. Afterward, Carrie thanked holyoutlaw for the tissue, much to his confusion. She hadn't seen who gave it to her, but thought it was him.
The meal afterwards was fantastic. I sat at a table with Denys and various old friends, but on my right was a woman I'd never met. It turned out that she has been Andi's massage therapist for twenty-odd years. I joked that most of the people at the wedding were either science fiction fans or therapists of some kind or another, since a number of Stu's therapists were there as well. In that aging crowd there were a number of other people who suffered from serious physical ailments of various sorts, and yet here we were celebrating a ceremony of connection and commitment against the tide of entropy, surrounded by the Burke's collection of fossils from ancient days indeed. There was music, and many smiling faces.
Amongst the group of people who came to town for the wedding were Rich Coad and Stacy Scott. On Tuesday I met them at John Berry's house (which I walked to from work because it's "just up the hill" from there), and we all went out for a beer and then to a Greek restaurant for dinner. It was a lovely, relaxed evening of stories and wisecracks and good cheer. Rich and I drank ouzo, and I reminisced about the time my brother and I were on Corfu in 1980 and met a bunch of guys from Lubbock, Texas, who bought a bottle of ouzo one night and invited us to join the party. We declined, but the next day we found the almost untouched bottle of ouzo at our hotel door. We drank it happily ourselves. Good times. Rich complained about the political correctness of modern fandom, and Stacy verbally rolled her eyes. John and I reminisced about the days when his street had only one restaurant, called the Surrogate Hostess and now long gone. Now the street is chockablock with restaurants and cafes and new condos. I got a ride back home from Rich and Stacy, and they came in to say howdy to Denys as well. They had never been to our house before, and of course talk turned to comic books once they saw Denys' massive collection. Fan talk.
Wednesday was the wedding itself, and it was at Burke Museum on the UW campus, so I just walked up there after work. Lots of folks were there, of course, including the winners of the Far Traveller Award, Mark and Priscilla Olson, who came all the way from Massachusetts. spikeiowa had brought badge ribbons in case there were badges, but we didn't need no stinking badges. Everybody was given a blue yarmulke, and most of us wore it during the ceremony. (akirlu was impressed that mine stayed on despite not being pinned to my non-existent hair.) It was the first Jewish wedding ceremony that I recall ever being to, so it was refreshingly different from past wedding experiences. A female rabbi presided over the lovely ceremony. I heard someone to my right entoning the Hebrew prayers along with her, and discovered later that it had been kalimac, remembering them from his own wedding twenty years ago. Carrie Root was in tears, and kate_schaefer eventually gave her a tissue. Afterward, Carrie thanked holyoutlaw for the tissue, much to his confusion. She hadn't seen who gave it to her, but thought it was him.
The meal afterwards was fantastic. I sat at a table with Denys and various old friends, but on my right was a woman I'd never met. It turned out that she has been Andi's massage therapist for twenty-odd years. I joked that most of the people at the wedding were either science fiction fans or therapists of some kind or another, since a number of Stu's therapists were there as well. In that aging crowd there were a number of other people who suffered from serious physical ailments of various sorts, and yet here we were celebrating a ceremony of connection and commitment against the tide of entropy, surrounded by the Burke's collection of fossils from ancient days indeed. There was music, and many smiling faces.