Double J's get hitched

A few more egg nogs and christmas was behind us. But christmas inevitably gives way to Boxing day (at least in some country I cannot get a consensus on) and to celebrate that event I found myself at a cocktail party in Barrington, RI where I was given an invaluable weight-loss tip: checking into a hospital and hooking up to intravenous fluids for 3 days. Eight lbs lighter, guaranteed. I can get you more details on how to check yourself in while avoiding admin. hassles if your interested...and of course if your insurance covers that sort of thing. I think it could be a big hit here in SD...wow.

Anyway, a few days later and certainly NOT lighter, LD and I hit the road south. We pulled into Dutch PA, Lancaster to be specific, at around 4:30pm only to find that the object of this destination would not be free until 9pm. To kill time we shared a pizza and some semi-frozen mozzarella sticks at a local ristorante where the waiter said "what yous guys want" and "yous welcome". Barnes and Noble (not Nobles) supplied our next few hours of fun, browsing the latest prose by Ann Coulter and listening to the check-out guy brag about his new gun with a gleam in his eye to a rosy cheeked younger boy with an equally shiny gleam in his eye. Where were the Amish when you needed them? Apparently not in B&N.

When we met up at the house we found a kitchen full of cousins (one of which graduated with LD from Wheeler, small world), a foosball table, my best friend visiting from Chile and her new man, who is coincidentally from dutch PA. The fact that she and I were seeing each other 4 years later and in the middle of PA was beyond me. We spent the next day eating scrapple and mush with his extended family, walking the dog and drinking my new favorite Pinot (2006 La Crema, Sonoma) over 12 monkies. It was a LONG awaited reunion. Also, I schooled everyone at foosball. Ok so that pic was not taken on this trip or even on this continent and true, I stole it from the photographer, but I swear it will make me no money.

Onward to a night in a very dingy motel somewhere on the border of Ohio where I laid awake all night thinking about bed bugs and the other microscopic critters that were making my body their home for the night. Finally we arrived in Louisville a day before new years eve and the big event of J & J's union in matrimony. Have you been to this booming metropolis? The thing is, I think the people that live there have never even been there. It is empty. Everything is closed and no one is on the street. Being there was like living in the movie "The Night of the Comet" and you're that Eric Estrada look-alike who crawls out of his truck with his dog to find dust piles where people used to be. But the zombies never arrived...well not until an hour before the bourbon bar closed anyway.

Luckily most of our time was spent in the fabulous Hotel 21C, which seemed tailor-made for such a happy, stylish couple. Those two and their families threw one of the best 2 day parties of the year. 21C is literally a museum with art installations all over. There is a real time digital movie of a couple sleeping and smoking in bed on the lobby floor and digital letters fall on top of you as you wait for the elevators making words on your profile. There were also 4 foot tall red plastic penguins everywhere, outside your hotel room, hanging off the roof, waiting at the altar, wrassling with you on the dance floor (and by 'you', I mean Lev, and by 'with' I mean that penguin was molested)...always with the same non-plussed expressions and slight shrug of the wing like they had seen it all before.

Everyone in the wedding party looked fantastic but J & J stole the show with their beaming smiles and emotion at the altar. Even the penguins were taken-in.

And afterwards, nothing says 'I do' like a little hava nagila.

This penguin could not get enough once he had a taste of 'you'.

J's high school sweethearts reminiscing post-bourbon how cbd used to bust them for various school-age debauchery and, oh yeah, how doc abhorred me back in the day. But I'll let it go, especially now that he comes with a super charming wife.

The Docs' rendition of 'luck be a lady tonight' before retiring to bed and to a requisite bourbon hang-over. Not so nice when mixed with an early morning flight.

Not sure what these guys were doing, but somehow they look different. Wait a minute...is that his...? did you...? oh I get it.

Ok, so the nights sorta blended together and I got so little sleep, I cannot even really call them 'nights', more like one continuous breezy afternoon. Our buzzed wanderings took us from the open bar at the Italian place to the hotel bar to the bar down the street which turned out to be a very clandestine gay bar, whose true nature took painstaking observation to detect and where we flipped a table (and by 'we' I mean doc and reality tv as a result of the lack of cbd's supervision) and drank $4 bottles of champagne...always a mistake. Next to the hotel, to the cafe, to the wedding, to the reception, to the bourbon tasting, to the open bar, to the dance floor, back to the open bar, to the lobby, and at every step encountering someone fabulous and a friend of old, hearkening from the Drew days...and then the day finally ended and we had rest.

...and by 'rest' I mean roaming the comet-stricken streets looking for food and derby horses. We found our horse but food was going to have to wait until San Diego. See ya, Kentucky.