Currently Reading: The Catcher in the Rye

by J.D. Salinger

And I'm back...

I've spent the past five days traipsing about the Midwest - Cedar Rapids, Marshalltown, Omaha, Kearney. Oh the thrills. Oh the bliss. Seriously though, I had a great time overall. Jen and Maher's wedding was on Saturday - I flew into the flipping ginormous Cedar Rapids airport on Friday afternoon. I almost got lost in that place it was so huge. There had to have been at least, I don't know, FOUR gates or something ridiculous like that. The size difference between airports was fun. Atlanta. Chicago. ...Cedar Rapids...

ANYway, on Friday we did getting ready for the wedding kind of stuff, and rehearsal dinner-y kind of stuff. The dinner was at this cool Greek restaurant where I had filo baked chicken, hummus, flaming cheese (seriously. Flames and everything.), stuffed grape leaves and lemon drop martinis. Mmmmmmm.

Saturday dawned cold and rainy. Like 55 degrees kind of cold. As the high for the day. Brrrrr. Jen and us bridesmaids got our hair done at 10am. I had them do my hair kind of half-up in order to avoid a repeat of the large, Princess-Leia-meets-Elizabeth-Bennet-esque 'do that I ended up sporting for Aunnee and Heath's wedding. This go-round turned out kind of porn star-ish - it was all big and curly and poufy all up in the front. I did some creative flattening and dampening (helped by the pouring rain), and it turned out decent-looking. And after seeing what they did to poor Tasha's hair, I was relieved I'd avoided the full-on updo. Hers was MASSive. Like, a cross between Dolly Parton and that pink-haired tv evangelist lady. She ended up taking it all out and doing it over herself - and she still had to pay the stylist $40 for it.
The wedding was beautiful (of course) with a string quartet for the ceremony and a jazz quartet for the reception. Lots of fun Arabic music and dancing and such (Maher's from Lebanon. You know, the country.). There was a brunch on Sunday at Jen's parents' house in Cedar Rapids. Then I rode home with my parents. We stopped in Marshalltown on the way so I could see my Aunt Becky, Uncle Bill, and cousin Sarah. Then we stopped in Omaha and had dinner with my brother and sister-in-law. We finally made it back to Kearney at about 10pm.

Monday, I packed some stuff. Aunnee, I totally found that bag o' pictures and notes and stuff that you gave me a few years ago. Remember the notes we took in David's history of the Lutheran church class, or whatever it was? The Zinzendorf guy with the powdered wig and the useful words, like "chatecatical" and "hymnity." Oh, and then there was our short story, of course... Wow. There are no words.

Tuesday, I spent the entire DAY at appointments. Dentist at 9:00 (where I learned that because of my crumby (I just finished reading The Catcher in the Rye and he's always spelling that word like that...it just about kills me, it really does (he writes phrases like that all the time, too. Anyway...) wisdom teeth and a certain weakness of tooth enamel, I needed three fillings between my teeth - but they didn't have any openings in their schedule that day). Optometrist at 11:40 (where I shot the breeze with the eye doc for about half an hour...he enjoys a good visit. And I got awesome new glasses.). Doctor at 1:30 (it cracks me up that they measure my height every year...like I'm suddenly going to grow a couple more inches or something, having not grown (in height...) since 8th grade). Then I got a call from the dentist at 2:15 telling me they'd had a slot open up, so it was back to see Dr. Steve and get those fillings put in. I think taking med school classes has made me more paranoid than I normally would be. The whole time he was numbing my mouth, all I could think was "DON'T HIT THE FACIAL NERVE!!! DON'T HIT THE FACIAL NERVE!!!" He didn't.

Had dinner with my wonderful "other" parents last night - Aunnee's mom and dad had me and my parents over for dinner. And of course I didn't leave the house empty handed - I got a loaf of banana bread and the DVD of Aunnee and Heath's wedding. Alton and Cathy are great (Aunnee, you're thinking, "yes, they really are!" right now, aren't you?)

So. Flew out of Kearney at 7 this morning on a teeny tiny little plane, got back to Augusta around 6-ish, played some trivia, Wal-marted a little, and hung out. Now you are updated.