The Mandelbear's Musings

Yesterday's wedding was wonderful -- outdoors on the top of a hill, with a stunning view and perfect weather. The site, the couple's new home, will be opening as a winery in 2010. For now the "winery" is a huge metal barn, which is where they held the dinner. They rolled up the door on the west side for a perfect view of the sunset.

The bride's parents are old friends. Dave Uggla, who graduated from Carleton College the year before me, is probably the only person in California whe remembers me without a beard. I met Joyce folkdancing at Stanford, and we shared an apartment for a couple of years before Dave moved in (and I moved in with Colleen). Joyce and their son Jordan are members of Tres Gique. Their daughter, Linea, is less than a year younger than our daughter chaoswolf.

We got lost getting there. Twice. Turns out that the big sign welcoming you to Fairplay, California is not on Fairplay Road but on Grizzly Flat. There's a house at the same address as the winery. Oops. I remarked at one point, after tempers had cooled a little, that the whole thing would probably have been highly enjoyable as someone else's LJ post.

In the morning after breakfast we decided to explore in that direction; I got thrown off by the fact that the directions we had from Google Maps, while accurate and suitable for coming from the motel (West on US50), were highly misleading when coming East from Placerville. We tried to go back from Fairplay by unwinding the directions, when I discovered that both Kat and Colleen had totally misunderstood my unwinding request, but in totally different ways. We ended up far off course and in bad temper; I'll get into that under the cut in case you want to skip it.

We were coming from Placerville because we went there for breakfast (or brunch). We were looking for someplace to have Hangtown Fry, and wound up at the Buttercup Pantry, which advertizes itself as the "Home of the Hangtown Fry". Never mind that they also advertize themselves as having opened about a century after that dish was invented, for a miner who ordered the most expensive items on the menu after striking it rich. He got oysters, eggs, and bacon. Yum. I don't think that smoked oysters are strictly authentic, but the total effect was definitely made of yum.

We'll be back at Buttercup this morning, though I'll probably try something else.

I'm probably never going to get this "being human" thing right, am I?

Well, it was a good wedding, and we ended the day contented and safe. I'll take that any time.

... in about an hour. The plan is for me to load the van, then stay here while Colleen plays truck-driver. I get to accept delivery of packages, reload the van whenever it shows up, search for the missing con suite supplies, collect the Y.D. at school, and finally end up at the hotel in time for the rehearsal dinner.

(11:00 all supplies found, including the large coffeepot, which finally turned up under the dining table behind a case of wine. I still have to hard-boil a big pile of eggs, and of course pack, but I'm not actually moving in to the hotel until tomorrow.)

The real insanity starts tomorrow.

I got a little less than I expected done yesterday at work, but only a little. The little CGI side-project got sidelined, but the main rush job (also a CGI) was brought to a workable state in time for the other group needing it. It was down to the wire: I was sending pessimistic status emails right up until 5:15, when it finally worked. All hail Perl, the Swiss army chainsaw of programming languages.

A lot of things have fallen through the cracks. I don't think any of my songs made it into the CD-ROM "songbook", for example, and no work to speak of has been done on the next album or the collaboration/subscription website that is intended to serve in lieu of pre-orders. And taxes? Hah!

This comic strip by ohiblather is, unfortunately, right on target for me.

Walkies in the morning (just down to the Rose Garden and once around -- I was feeling strapped for time). Left-over Chinese for lunch -- I seem to be the only one eating it, but that's fine with me. Trip to Fry's with selkit and the chaoswolf for them to look at a replacement for his dead laptop. I picked up a alarm clock with huge, easy-to-read numbers for Colleen, plus a combination phone and clock radio that, as it turned out, Colleen didn't want. Then over to Central for comparison shopping. I hadn't realized there was a local dealer for Lenovo. Hmmm.

Side trip to OSH for 9v batteries, coat-hooks (actually for Colleen's bathrobe and nightgown), and angle brackets.

Dinner was lambburgers, asparagus, and butternut squash. Yum.

Then over to Dave and Joyce's for a quick run-through of "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine", and an extended cut-and-paste job piecing together a wedding ceremony. Anyone out there not know that selkit and the chaoswolf are getting married at Consonance? Consider yourself informed. Less than a week!

Our annual March "It's Green!" party is the Saturday after Consonance, i.e., two weeks from yesterday.

Woke up about 4am. Realized by 4:30 that I wasn't going to get back to sleep any time soon, so came out to the office, read some LJ, and worked a little bit on "Ferret Went A-Courtin'".

Tried again briefly at about 5am, but succeeded only in rousing the Cat enough for her to request a shoulder rub. She went back to sleep and I didn't, so I came out and finished "Ferret". Still possibly some rough edges.

Good morning!