Growing up, my little brother used to clap in the house. He started when I was around ten years old, and he was six. He'd enter a room and clap clap clap.

Drove me nuts.

I told him to stop it. I told him to stop with the clapping already. I yelled at him. I did everything I could to get him to stop with the GD clapping, but he continued until he just grew out of it.

Around the same time he grew out of it, I grew into it. I randomly clap when I'm walking. When I don't have anything on my shoulders, and my arms are swinging free, I'll clap and make other percussion noises with my hands.

Last night, after Kris and I crawled into bed, but before either of were really settled down to go to sleep, I got back up and wandered to the bathroom. After doing my business, I returned and crawled back into bed.

"Do you think you might have Tourette's?"

"No."

"Wait a minute. You have every other disease known to man. Why not Tourette's?"

It was then I realized I had announced my return to the room with a single clap.

"Well, maybe."

Andy volunteered to watch the girls while we were in Boston. I though he was fairly insane when he offered to bring them over to his house for a slumber party.

Turns out, he was only partly insane. He let us know:

Sleep was a commodity in short supply Saturday night, although we had fun.

Blue and Annie ran around in circles in the back yard a bit, while I held
Bella and Shadow so they wouldn't bark. Annie seemed to be having fun, but
might have been a bit stressed about the whole thing. There was one tussle
at feeding time. Later, she spent a long time licking Blue's face (Blue
licked back--it was cute but weird), and then she tried to spend a while
licking my face, which was cute for a minute or two. Dogs will be dogs.

We had one group outing: to Whole Foods Sat evening. When we got there, we
had a vote and elected one person to go in and buy the goods while everyone
else waited in the truck. Luckily I was the only one that voted.

Annie, Bella, and Blue all wanted to sleep pressed up against me. Bella had
at least one spell of howling in the middle of the night. It's a little
hazy--there might have been two incidents. She finally settled down for good
around 4AM when she figured out how to get under the covers with just her
schnoz poking out.

Sunday, I couldn't come up with any plan to take everybody to the park that
I was happy with, so I decided to drop off Annie and Bella on the way around
10am. When I gathered everybody up in the truck, I had to search for Annie,
and realized she had found a hole in my doggie defenses: she was attempting
to consume a bag of mulch that was made from cocoa bean husks. They do smell
nice. Blue went at them a little bit, then gave up the day I got them. I
don't think she was at it long, but it was a little scary. There are no
warnings about dogs on the bag, but I really don't know whether it had any
properties of chocolate. I stopped back to check on her after the park trip
around 11am, and surprised Heather. Annie seemed fine, and I told Heather
what had happened. (I probably didn't surprise her as much as Crystal did
when she squirmed through the dog door to pick up the cones and white
board.)

Anyway, I think everybody had fun--including me--and I don't regret it a
bit.

Practice was very productive. Lots of women this time--we went 4-women about
half the time. Once, the defense ran 4-women by accident, and since they
were playing zone, no one noticed until the turnover. We had a scrimage, and
two games. Dark won the scrimmage 5-4, light won the two games 7-6 and 5-4.

Onto the reason why Kris and I were in Boston in the first place: the wedding!

Kris' cousin and best man at our wedding, Mike P, was married, and Kris was in the wedding party (yeah, I think I mentioned that before, when I was trying to figure out if he was in the groomal party, the bridal party or the wedding party). The wedding was supposed to be outside, along the shore next to a light house, with the bride arriving by trolley and a band leading the wedding guests in a minstral march behind the pied piper (or trombonist, as the case was) back to the reception.

The weather didn't cooperate, and the wedding wasn't close to what they planned. Unless, of course, you ignore the frantic wedding planners, the musicians playing in a too-small space, the puking kids and mistaken accents. Do that, and the wedding was exactly what they planned.

Since the weather decided to be crappy, and rain the entire weekend, the wedding moved from the lighthouse grass to the local yacht club. The dance floor was transformed into a squashed theatre, and every crammed into the seats as the wedding planners frantically put up decorations that, had the weather cooperated, would have been out six hours before we arrived. Even as the bridesmaids were lining up, and the music adjusted for the wedding processional, the runner was being laid for everyone to walk up.

The background music when we were waiting for the wedding to start was played by a guitarist and a (snare) drummer. The music was light and pleasant. The bridal processional, however, included a trombonist. Now, as a former euphonist/baritone player, I can say definitively the instrument is not a quiet instrument. Neither is the trombone, many of which I sat next to in band or marched next to at some band competition. Playing a trombone softly is like trying to throw a disc with no spin: it ends disastrously.

The trombonist managed maybe a third of the notes he was supposed to play. Not because he couldn't play them, clearly he had enough experience to play each note with gusto and skill, but rather because he couldn't play softly enough. Brass instruments aren't made for playing softly, and it showed. As he was missing note after note after note, I cringed, feeling bad for him even as he turned red, presumably from embarrassment.

Fortunately, the bride was able to walk down the aisle without musical accompaniment.

The ceremony started with the officiant, I think Rachel's (the bride) uncle. Some of his first words were, "We're not here to mock the start of this relationship..."

At his words, the room gasped. What? What did he say? Well, d'uh, of COURSE we're not here to mock the start of this relationship, are you crazy? We're here to CELEBRATE the start of this relationship, we're excited for them!

The officiant looked up at the crowd, puzzled, found his place in his speech and started again. "We are not here to mock the start ..."

What the heck? No, no we're not.

Oh, wait.

You're from Boston. We're in Boston. You're saying mark. We're not here to MARK the start of this relationship.

Gotcha.

With you now.

The ceremony was fun, with some inside jokes in the vows, as well as other entertainment. Since we were rained out, we weren't able to follow the band from the light house to the yacht club, site of the reception, since we were already at the yacht club. There were other details like that which were lost. Following the band was supposed to take up some time, so that the food was ready once the ceremony was over and we had moved. Unfortunately, we were a half hour too early, and did the usual stand around and wait for the pictures to be taken.

The wedding party and photographers were HIGHLY efficient with their picture taking. I recall being surprised when Kris came up to me and asked what I was up to, and thinking, waiting for you to finish taking pictures.

At the reception, the kids were shuffled off to another room. The main dining room didn't have enough space for the adults and the kids, so sitters were hired to watch the kids while the adults had fun at the wedding.

Well, as Kris says, there's always drama in his family, and today was no exception. His nephew was sick, and ended up vomiting in the middle of the reception. I don't think either Jenn or Shaun had a particularly good time at the reception, which is unfortunate, because it was lovely.

Kris' parents and I went to Mike P.'s welcome barbeque directly from the airport. I met Mike P.'s bride, Rachel, her family and various friends. Lots and lots of people, making the event overwhelming, though having vegetables at the dinner was really really refreshing. Yay, cole slaw and lightly vinegared cucumbers!

We left the barbeque relatively early, around 10 pm, to drive by hotel number one to pick up Kris' clothes. Before we knew what was going on hotel-wise, Kris made reservations at an inexpensive hotel a few towns over from a more expensive hotel where many of the wedding guests were staying.

Kris had crashed in the inexpensive, what am I saying, the cheap-ass hotel when he first arrived in Boston, and hadn't been back. So, when I arrived, he was in the clothes he had been in for the last 28 hours, through sleep, meals, a baseball game, a bachelor party and two trips to the side of the road to puke. Or something like that.

So, we drove to the cheap-ass hotel to check him out of the hotel and gather his clothes, not necessarily in that order.

Getting there was a problem.

With directions that seemed straight-forward, we went out to the cheap-ass hotel. We managed three mis-turns, getting lost, making U-turns. The maps Kris had were woefully unhelpful and detail-less, and we managed to tour a dozen different routes along the way.

The driving experience was completely on par for the day. The drive to the barbeque involved driving 4 miles through bad traffic to find out a bridge was out, and we had to backtrack along a road where, if the road workers had just put up a big detour sign telling us to turn left instead of right for the detour instead of letting us drive 8 miles out of the way and wasting a half hour each, we would have been way less frustrated.

Well, Kris and I had the same experience, driving along roads that were poorly marked: either not marked at all or marked with signs that were 30° off where we turned 75° to the right instead of 45° to the right and ended up driving off in the complete wrong direction.

"I think kids steal signs and put them up on other streets just for fun," was a Kris comment.

"I think they just steal them."

After driving for about 90 minutes to go 8 miles, we concluded the reason why Boston drivers suck, is because they're all frustrated that they, too, can't figure out how to get anywhere, and take out their frustration on the other drivers.

That, and Massachusetts is a no-fault state.

Especially OSBFs.

When Bob and Lil finally found me at the airport, a cluster formed in front of me at the airport passenger pickup curb. Directly in front of me was a parked car, with no passengers loading. Next to that car was another car that was loading passengers. Now, this car was in the "No stopping. No loading" lane, where you really weren't supposed to stop or load passengers. Not that any of the five cars loading passengers in that lane really cared.

Now, behind this loading car was Bob in his rental van. He had just spotted me. He stopped his van rather than rear-end the stopped car in front of him and kill the people trying to load their luggage into the trunk of said stopped car. Clearly Bob is not from Boston.

The car next to him, behind the car directly in front of the non-loading car parked in front of me next to the car, however, clearly had a Boston driver behind the wheel. Not only a Boston driver, but an old, senile fuck that shouldn't be driving at all.

As Bob stopped his car to avoid the parked car in front of him, OSBF (short for old, senile Boston fuck) laid on the horn. He was done loading is OSF friends and was readly to leave the curb, and everyone else better move out of the way. He honked and honked and honked and gestured. He gestured and honked and started cursing at my father-in-law.

I'm clearly not from Boston. This pissed me off.

I went up to the car and slammed my hand down on the hood. "Stop honking!" I yelled. I continued to hit the hood of the car. "He can't move, or are you too blind to see that?"

The driver's reaction?

He pulled forward to hit me. Then started gesturing at me. The other OSBFs in the car continued to gesture at me when the car pulled away.

Lil in the meantime has walked away. Oh, my! My daughter-in-law is causing a scene. Well, it's not like I'm going to see any of these people again.

At least I didn't gesture the middle finger at the guy. I wish I had kicked his car, though. Or managed to get his license plate number.

Bob later commented to me that Boston is rated the worst city in the United States for driver courtesies. Way to go, Boston! You completely suck, and you're proud of it. Be sure to pat all your OSBFs on the back when you see them. They like hitting Hoosiers with their cars, I hear.