B&B United

Margarine married Big Emma on Saturday. It was a wonderful weekend shared with wonderful people. I don't have a picture of the new man and wife, but when I do, I'll post it. Until then, it's worth knowing that Baleen beat me in that other event, the speech.

She spoke on Friday at the rehearsal dinner and told Big Emma what it's like to be married to our family. She made sure to make fun of Wood Duck, gently, and brought the house down when she told Big Emma that she'd need fluency in a second language, military jargon, to be able to understand Grizzly's emails. There's MRE for Meals Ready to Eat and AO for Areas of Operation, both of which she found in Grizzly's emails, and the third one that Grizzly doesn't use, that she put in there for all of us but especially for Grizzly was CAPE, Corrective Action through Physical Exertion.

I spoke the next day in front of a wider audience, and only one person told me that my speech just might have been better than Baleen's, which made me feel pretty good for a second, until his wife shouted as he was speaking to me, "William, you're drunk! Get back over here and stop standing in the bushes."

Margarine's Final Wedding Week Preview

Tomorrow Margarine's getting married. S2B can look forward to a lifetime of ski forecasts. Nothing gets Margarine talking quite like talk about winter weather. Ask him about the moisture content of Utah snow, but don't do it when you're waiting for an elevator because the answer will last a whole lot longer than that.

I think he gets it from our maternal grandfather, Pop, the Alabama corn and tomato farmer. Back when we were tiny things we'd head to Jasper, Alabama, having saved up all our McDonald's happy meal toys and little made in China figurines which then turned into target practice for Pop's 22. While that's what all the boys shared when we got together, the women staying inside, fretting a little and making ice tea, but letting us go for all the wise adults with us, what just Pop and Margarine shared was the weather.

They'd talk about it first thing in the morning and just before bed and a little in between. Pop had a rain gauge on the fence behind the house. He and Margarine would head out there to see how much it had rained during the night, Margarine reporting that it had rained 1/2 of an inch, the most of our trip so far. I can't predict where he and S2B will end up and where they'll in between, but I do know that she'll hear what the weather's gonna be like.

Margarine's Wedding Week Preview: Day 4

The first taxi I ever took was with Margarine, Shrimp Jr and Wood Duck. It was in Calais, France. The four of us had taken the ferry from the White Cliffs of Dover to Calais for a Continental two weeks with Grizzly, who had skipped our British Isles adventure to keep working. This was way back before cell phones and internet connections and ATMs and when you still had to do math when crossing borders, in addition to bringing your passport, and find banks to exchange your American Express Travellers' Cheques for local francs, lira or deutschmarks, so the plan was to meet in the ferry terminal in Calais on that Wednesday morning.

What we didn't know, and what none of the friendly French told us, was that only ticketed passengers were allowed at the docks. Apparently, there was another passenger terminal a few miles away that a bus went back and forth from. That's what we found out afterwards when we were figuring out why Grizzly wasn't there to meet us and Grizzly was wondering why we didn't get off the bus.

When we finally got our luggage and found ourselves on an abandoned dock, some Frenchman pointed off in the distance to the ferry terminal. There was nothing to do except walk. Each of us shouldered our bags except for Shrimp Jr, still just Shrimp Jr and not yet Jumbo Shrimp, who took my small backpack and I took her bag. We were two weeks into a four week trip with bags full of things for soccer, beach and the Alps, so Margarine's bag weighed nearly as much as he did. About a half mile into our dockyard hike, Margarine started falling behind. Then further behind. And further still. He got louder, too, telling us we were all morons. There was about ten seconds of silence, and ten seconds of progress for the rest of us until we heard a shout, "Hey," and saw Margarine stepping into a taxi, saying he was coming to pick us up.

Margarine's Wedding Week Preview: Day 3

Back before Baleen and S2B came along it was a family of five. We went most places together, usually in a minivan, but sometimes in a C-151, which would generally get you close to where you wanted to go in less time than if you rowed there, but more than if you flew coach.

For my sixteenth birthday we spent a few weeks in Maine, where we ate our first lobsters, marveled that McDonald's had it on the menu and dared each other to go in the ocean. We also took a family hike to Mt. Washington, the tallest mountain in the NorthEast. About 3/4 of the way to the top, we stopped at a hut for some food and drink, and a discussion of whether we should push for the peak. It was getting late, the fog was rolling in, and it's not like the first 3/4 of the mountain had gone quickly and easily. We settled on a vote.

Grizzly and I rose our hands. Wood Duck's was down and was staying down. Those votes were guaranteed, like Texas and New York in the presidential elections. It's the swing states that matter. Shrimp Jr. looked around. She thought about it. She thought some more. Margarine sat to Shrimp Jr's left, facing forward but with his eyes looking left. Just as Shrimp Jr. capitulated and she started to raise her hand, Margarine's shot up like GMO corn. Four to one. We were headed to the top*.

* Postscript: we made it about twenty more steps up the mountain, long enough to pass a group of 4 boys in Dartmouth sweatshirts asking where we were headed, then saying "No way!" when we said the top, but not nearly long enough to make it anywhere near the top as the fog really rolled in and we could barely see the family member in front of us

Margarine's Wedding Week Preview: Day 2

I was outclassed on the hill this morning and too late on the sprint. 1:10 into the 1:45 sprint I kept telling myself, patience, patience, patience, then when I made my move, it was too late. I had waited because patience was something I hadn't shown much of on earlier rides, and something I didn't need to show much of for my first fifteen years in any competitions against Margarine. 

I was, and always will be, seventeen months older. At the beginning, that meant I was a whole lot taller, faster, and stronger. Margarine, whose favorite book for a while was, [When I'm Six], I'll Fix Anthony, thought he'd catch up to me, if not in age, then those other things. So he kept swinging long after his cause was lost, then quit in a huff when it didn't turn out as he'd envisioned. 

Just after the summer of '84, when Carl Lewis and Mary Lou Retton got all those medals and the country was covered in red white and blue, every event between us became the Olympics. A race to the school bus, a sprint to the car out of the supermarket, first one to the bedroom after dinner; they all became a race for gold. Except by the end of 1984, becuase Margarine had quit our Olymipcs in a huff five times, before he was awarded gold he'd have to say, I'm playing, I'm playing, I'm playing, I'm playing, I'm playing, gold. A little patience and he would have had a few more gold medals.   

Margarine's Wedding Week Preview: Day 1

Margarine's getting married on Saturday in Austin, Texas. I've known him for thirty-one years. This weekend I wrote my Best Man speech, trying to entertain a little, but also to bridge the gap with a few anecdotes. Six and a half minutes can't make up for the twenty-seven year head start I have on S2B. So here's to a week of what I couldn't fit in there, starting with a little crabbing off a dock in Hampton, Virginia.

We had just moved there a few weeks before. It was summer, school hadn't started and we were living on B.O.Q., military speak for Bachelor Officer Quarters, on Ft. Monroe, Virginia. I was going into fifth grade and the three of us kids spent most of our time together, learning to back flip off the side of the pool and playing soccer against the locals, including soon to be best soccer buddy Matt Neely.

What we really loved, as we'd never done it before, was dropping a chicken leg tied to a string off the dock. When we'd check the lines and find a tug, we'd slowly pull it up to the surface then out of the water, the crab holding on like he thought he was getting a ride to the whole bird. Then we'd drop it on the dock and dare each other to pick it up from the back. We didn't always win, and sometimes they'd scurry off the dock before we could get them in the bucket or pick them up for a look. A big one took a chunk out of my finger when I was trying to separate him from the chicken. Margarine, seeing the blood pouring out of my finger, shouted, You make my brother bleed, you Die! and kicked the crab about to North Carolina while Shrimp Jr. almost fell off the dock laughing.

Chicken Curry

Baleen cooked up a chicken curry last night as Jimmy O told us that Sao Paulo has the world's worst traffic, at least of places he'd been. I listened and listened as he and Baleen talked about shopping in Igautemi, Jimmy O having walked down it, Baleen having studied it and its demographics for work, before I interrupted.

I would like to try my speech for my brother's wedding, I said. I had written it that afternoon in a flash and wanted to see both how long it was and get some first impressions. I read it, and got worried when they didn't laugh when I thought they would, and laughed at a part I hadn't expected. I've got some tinkering to do, which I'll do this weekend, but they both agreed that the one part should go. My icebreaker.

It would have been, I've been told that all wedding speeches must do one thing if they're to be a success: flatter the bride and groom while not offending anybody, least of all the two you're meant to flatter. But in Texas, I've been told the rules are a little different. It's still important to mind that first rule, but a truly successful speech mentions Texas as much as possible, and depending on the audience, the great University of Texas plenty, too. So here goes...

Toast Masters

Our soccer team had our end of year banquet tonight to celebrate our enormous amount of ties and they gave me this shirt for being the tallest player on the team. There was a microphone and I was up there standing in front of everybody so I felt like I had to say something.

It's not like here at the computer where I get to delete misspellings or whole phrases, it's impromptu and I can't take anything back. Put on the spot, I feel like I did okay, but if I had it do over again, and with these last two hours to have intermittently thought of what to say, I think I would have added this intro, said what I said as the middle, and then followed with some sort of closer.

[Leaning on the lectern into the mic] Wow, it's great to be here in front of all these familiar faces. [Step back. Reach in my navy blue sport coat]. Wait, my brother's getting married in Austin next weekend and I'm going to be wearing this jacket, we're wearing sport coats and khakis, and this feels about like that might, everybody nicely dressed and looking at me, so do you mind if I practice my wedding speech? I've got it right here with me...

Kelp!

There's green stuff in the Bay. It's better than the dive bombing pelicans or the shark that a pro surfer saw out at Ocean Beach, but it's always a wee bit startling whenever your arm finds anything but water.

The green stuff gives me a chance to look backwards, a favorite here, and remember surfing in Santa Cruz circa 2002 with Mother of Abigail and Father of Dario. We weren't any good. We sometimes rode what the O'Neil guys didn't like, "If you're on a foamie, you're not my homie," but we ate huge burritos and found a little Northern California sun.

What we did well was float on our boards, looking just like the others in the line-up as we gazed out west for the next wave. We liked it best in the lull between sets, at least M.o.A. and I did, I think, and when it got really slow, we'd wander off to the underwater forest, get ourselves all tangled up and yell, Kelp!

Deja Veux

There were non-stick pans of fury a flying at 236 tonight. On the right was Baleen with the Williams-Sonoma all clad wondrousness; on the left, Hopalong with maybe the last remaining durable good from when he lived in a small one-bedroom apartment with a rickety bed and postcards from multiple zip codes on the wall. It was like it was October 19th all over again. 

Baleen, imitating her unborn son, had a meltdown after finding out Jacques Pepin still had the edge despite his forty year head start while accusing my omelet of being better not because of technique or anything I did, but because my pan was already hot from having cooked the leeks. Maybe she's right.