A Wedding in Omaha...

Here goes the ridiculousness…
First of all, and most importantly the weekend was about the bride, my friend E, and her husband, my new friend M, so don’t let my self-interested egotistical view on the weekend get in the way of that.
I arrived in Omaha and changed into my suit in the Creighton parking lot, in my van, 45 minutes before the ceremony. I nervously paced at the back of the church for awhile until the bride moved from one hiding spot to the next and we happened to greet each other and hug. I will tell you what, she looked AMAZING!
The ceremony was nice, and I got emotional a couple of times, I’m not quite sure why. I mean I have not been that close to E in years. I had a strange moment when the priest was talking about commitment I had images of places I have been and people I have been with that involved commitment. In a church there are a hundred people watching every move but “out there” where it matters there are no spectators, no experienced authority figures, no counselors, and no lying to yourself and each other. I suppose that is a strange response to the wedding service, but I spent a few hundred miles on the bicycle this summer with a divorced friend of mine and I am sure that at the wedding he was totally confident that his marriage would last a lifetime. So many people get divorced that I can’t help but think about it. Just so that I am clear, E and M’s marriage will last a long long time based on what I know about E and her family and the what I know about M and his family.
After the ceremony I wandered around town buying a gift (I know… typical… I am idiot for waiting that long to get a gift and for telling all of you). Then I went to the reception and made the rounds talking to people from my high school experience. It is great to catch up with people. News from around town: one of my class is now a doctor, one of my class has a child with autism, one of my class is married and a nurse, one man I used to ride bicycles with has ALS (Louis Gerig’s disease), the first best-runner-I-know hasn’t ran competitively in years and I think is unemployed, one kid went to Wall Street for a few years until the crash then he wound up in Kansas City, another kid now manages money north of Omaha and has a baby, valedictorians seem to wind up on the five year college plan, everyone else must be in as much debt as I am, and while many things about people do change, many don’t.
One of my former prom dates was the head bridesmaid and she didn’t realize I was even there until I was standing in the buffet line four feet away right in front of her. Hahaha, it was pretty funny! Anyway, she lives in Chicago so I’m planning on visiting this fall. Perhaps Chicago marathon weekend (a new world record please?).
What else happened? Twins… Anything else I say will only dig a hole for me. So I’ll summarize it like this: Hahaha… Yep… haha… Really? …more or less… hahaha
As the party wore down and we left for the hotel I had a conversation with M2 who I vaguely remember from hanging out at KU when I was in high school. It was a great conversation, the kind that uses words like sustainability, protest, and vegan. As I work for a logging company and also spend thousands of hours outdoors my views on sustainability are probably a little different that most people. Having the ability to have a genuine informed conversation about capitalist pigs (those were my words but I got her to laugh because she was thinking it) destroying the environment was a nice change with M2. I'm working on a miniseries about the logging industry right now and trust me you will be informed.
For breakfast I socialized some more and handed out a few business cards. Then I played connector. M2 needed to get to Kansas City for a plane flight in five hours and J and L were driving there and were going to get there in about four hours and since they did not know each other and I was talking to both I found M2 a ride and J and L gas money.

It was a great weekend! I am so happy for my friend who is now married! Seeing all of my friends brought back memories as we created new ones. Life is good.