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Directories
Christian’s wedding
Here are a couple pics from the wedding, I’ll put up more when I’m back in Germany.
Vicky and me
Rainer had to stay in Germany, so Vicky came with me to the wedding as my date. We sat with our old neighbors, the Petersons. Karen Peterson was the one who drove us to Emergency when I accidently cut off the end of my brother’s finger and it ends up that her son Preston lives two doors down from Vicky’s old townhouse in Blacksburg. There were a few wedding crashers from the Chantilly High Class of ‘91 fifteen year reunion that was across the hall, but they were easy to spot (white people with beer bottles at a dry Thai/Persian wedding). I can’t blame them for crashing, our party was much cooler.
Nosheen and Christian with the flower girl
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Love and Marriage
Christian and Nosheen are married now. Yay! I have a new sister-in-law! The ceremony was surprisingly casual and unfortunately none of my photos came out because the room wasn’t brightly lit and I wasn’t using a flash so that I wouldn’t interfere with the professional photographer. There was dancing after the ceremony which is supposed to bring good luck and everyone had their photo taken with the new couple.
my brother Christopher, my mom, Nosheen, Christian, me, my aunt Cherie, and my cousin Opp
Some randomness
Fairfax County motorcycle police ride Harleys. The big noisy ones.
A young deer has spent the last two mornings attempting to swallow apples whole from the tree in our backyard while taunting our neighbor’s Dobermans (it prances back and forth just across the invisible fence line - my mom’s dogs are too lazy to care).
A Fox 5 news reporter thought it would be a good idea to invite two Spicoli-clone stoners on live TV to show people how to steal bicycles and freaked out when they decided to pull a “ruse” (since when do stoners use the word “ruse”?). See the clip here. I think the best part is at the end when she points at the guy and says, “That was not cool dude.”
We had lunch with Nosheen’s sisters and mom today at my mom’s restaurant, and I got my hair blow-dryed straight this morning. Nosheen wants me to wear it straight tomorrow, I’ll have to see how it looks in the morning, because once it gets wet, it’s back to curls.
Baha’i and Baha’i
Despite massive disorganization, wedding preparations seem to be going along smoothly now. Christian and Nosheen met with the local Baha’i council Monday, which gave approval for the wedding, there was a minor disaster in that the Persian market they’re getting the cake from didn’t have the right cake stand, but Christian found the stand at a cake supply store for them. Also, the Persian restaurant catering the wedding didn’t send their insurance documents to the hotel in time, but Christian managed to work it out. I’m looking forward to Saturday, it should be pretty fun. There are over 170 people coming. I spent all day yesterday at Fair Oaks mall looking for a wedding present (a Lennox picture frame) and a dress, which I was not very successful at, so I will be heading over to Tyson’s today to continue the search. I did find an outfit for the wedding ceremony, which is at 10am and a more casual family only affair. I’m curious to see what the ceremony will be like.
Christian and Nosheen still need to hollow out and paint some eggs, which are supposed to represent unending bounty, and they need to find some almonds and walnuts still in the shell, which they haven’t been able to do so far. Nothing else is really going on here and I want to get to the mall when it opens, so I’ll head off and hopefully write something more interesting in my next entry. Later!
Safe and sound
Well, I made it just fine and am now writing this blog entry from my mom’s sofa in Virginia on my brand new laptop using WiFi. Oh, rapture!
Speaking of rapture, there was a church group going to Malawi for a three week mission on my flight from Newark to DC that just confirmed once again that organized religion is evil. So these guys were sitting behind me, one was in the church group, the other spent a week on a mission in Russia and was just returning from a trip to Rome (they had just met). Here are some excerpts from their conversation:
- they think that rapture is coming, which they think is wonderful, and they only wish it could be delayed a little so they could watch their kids grow up.
- they discussed how great missionary work is because you know how much your helping out - okay so far, but then - these poor kids are so honored that an American would actually fly 2,000 miles just to visit them, they’ll remember it the rest of their lives! - Aaagh!
- the guy who visited Rome complained that they wouldn’t let him and his wife into the Vatican wearing tank tops. He then said, it’s hot in Rome and it would be ridiculous to wear suits like the Italians do. These Vatican guys should know that that is how Americans dress and adapt! Geesh!
- then the guy complained that there was no air conditioning in the Vatican and when he went through he, and this is a direct quote, “Felt like a jew in a gas oven.” And the other guy laughed and said he knew exactly what the guy was talking about! My jaw just dropped.
They continued on and on like this the entire flight and I just wanted to turn around and yell at them to shut up because they were making my ears bleed, but I just sat quietly grinding my teeth. At least the flight was only an hour.
Back to the US of A
Sorry there’ve been no posts recently, I’ve been quite busy preparing and packing and such stuff for my upcoming trip to the USA. At this time tomorrow I will be in Newark, and a few hours after that I’ll be in NOVA (northern Virginia). Hopefully there will be no accidents or terrorist attacks involving Continental flights. If there is, and I don’t make another blog entry, you can assume the worst I suppose. I’ve never flown Continental or been to Newark, so I get two checks on my “Doing new things” list. Next week I’ll be buried in documents and microfilms at the Pennsylvania State Library. So I’m not sure how much blogging I’ll get to do, but at the latest I should be back to blog something after my brother’s wedding on the 29th (yay!). Still need to get him a present… hmmm… what to get, what to get? I wanted to get him something from German, so Rainer and I went to KaDeWe (Kaufhaus des Westens) in Berlin to look at Meissen porcellan. I thought a coffee service would be a nice gift… the cheapest Meissen coffee service (the plain white one) was €15,000. A little bit out of budget, but I have a new idea of what kind of crazy things people can buy when they have way too much money lying around.
I was just thinking about flying tomorrow and what the Australian couple I met earlier this month said (they were in Israel a few months ago and a bomb hit one of their hangouts on the one day they didn’t stop by for lunch). They said that when it’s your time to go, you go, and it obviously wasn’t their time yet. So, I wonder if God makes mistakes, you know, like the US military. I mean, we have these smart bombs, but they miss sometimes, so does God sometimes miss? Maybe Billy Bob is standing on the corner next to Janice and God looks down,
Gabriel: Hey God, it’s Billy Bob’s time to go.
God: Okay, stand back (hurls lightning bolt)
Gabriel: Oops, looks like it’s Janice having the heart attack instead.
God: Damn this 5% error rate!
Billy Bob: Phew, looks like it just wasn’t my time yet.
Well, hopefully wasn’t too blasphemous. Anyways, I’m off…
Head-liners
Ya know what I don’t get, why is this whole Zidane thing still in the news? And why do so many people have their panties in a bunch over this? I mean, it’s not like there’s much going on in the world, right? Just train bombings in Mumbai, Israel attacking Lebanon, Bush flirting with Angela Merkel over a smoking pile of roasted boar…
So Bush was in Stralsund today, where protestors were apparently not allowed onto the market square for fear that they would disrupt Bush’s happy fest. Then he went to a grill party in Merkel’s political hometown where the German news commentators made much about the fact that he was drinking a beer. I think they went on for a full minute about how the entire Bush cabinet doesn’t drink/he was an alcoholic, why is he drinking/egads! I wonder if the people are really happy to meet Bush or do they just put a big grin on their faces and act the part. While I don’t agree with most anything that comes out of his mouth (and I am disturbed that he seems to think that he’s really funny), I have heard that he’s a cool guy and it’s hard not to like him if you spend any time with him. I wonder if I met Bush, would I come away thinking, “Wow, what a great guy!”?
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