I feel like summer can officially start.  It certainly was late in coming, what with snow, and a late Labor Day pushing school well past the second week of June.  Then for teachers there’s the in-service, and then the summer school.

But finally the end arrived and I could focus on the tasks ahead in the role of Best Man in my brother’s wedding.

• We did some tailgating and a Phillies game for the bachelor party (his choice, not mine).
• We picked up the tuxes.  Lord knows what the various municipal authorities are thinking in northern Montgomery County, but the tux shop, which sits at the meeting of 3 major roads, was nearly inaccessible because 2 of the 3 were closed for construction.  I’m sure they don’t all need to be closed at the same time.  However, major detours were not the most inconvenient part of the tuxes, it was the group of people there before, during, and after we were there.  Make no mistake, it was the same group.  At first glance, the chauvinist would say their problem was bringing the bride.  However, the groom was worse!  He demanded to inspect each guy in their tux (compare that to my brother who wasn’t even there when I tried mine on).  There was one guy that was in the fitting room the entire 45 minutes I was there.  He tried on at least 3 different shirts, 2 jackets and 2 pairs of pants and still wasn’t convinced that they were right.  Personally, I’m not in to clothes.  I put on the tux, let the haberdasher make adjustments, trusted his judgment, and was gone.
• Then it was the rehearsal.  I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t been there myself, but the rehearsal was twice as long as the ceremony (which was a full Catholic mass).  Only part of the delay was my sister-in-law’s desire to practice precessing with the music (played wonderfully by my Aunt, Uncle, Cousin and her husband on a pair of violins and a pair of cellos).  The bigger delay was the woman my dad called the major domo.  She would NOT stop talking about the most inane trivia.  Literally, the practice was so long, that most in the wedding party forgot the few things we were to remember.
• Fortunately, once it was go time, we didn’t look too bad, and it was probably a case of only those that were in the wedding knew the screw ups.  I didn’t lose the rings, the full Catholic mass was just under an hour, there was no insipid receiving line (woo hoo!!!!) and the photographer was the greatest photographer I have ever worked with.  No lie, family pictures took less than 10 minutes for both sides, and she pulled the trigger so fast she got good pictures of my kids; they didn’t have time to get antsy.
• Wedding party pictures were in a fancy garden.  Again, the photographer was terribly efficient.  My favorite part was the other wedding at the fancy garden.  Clearly a high class affair, we saw a car drive past with a bridesmaid riding shotgun and the driver not wearing a shirt.  It is unknown whether he had the T-shirt tux in the back seat.
• The reception had this awesome back room for the wedding party to use and stay out of the main hall.  The girls were incredibly patient at the guys crowded around a radio listening to USA-Ghana (sigh).  We hung out there for over an hour, and were incredibly relaxed and calm by the time we had to do introductions (major credit to groomsman Scott for being introduced as ‘Doctor’).
• Before I knew it, it was time for my most important job:  the toast.  With a nod to my friend the Laziest Gnome, here’s an approximate transcript of the toast:

Thanks to Steve for the honor of serving as best man, and to both of you for asking the boys to be ring bearers.  And for those playing along, the over-under on the number of cookies each of them eats is 20.
Thanks to Mom and Dad for the great rehearsal dinner.
Thanks to Fr. Brownholtz for a beautiful ceremony.
Thanks to Mr. and Mrs. L for the great party that is just getting started.

Now, I want to mark an occasion, they didn’t want to but Steve and Ange did.  Tomorrow is Mom and Dad’s 40th wedding anniversary, congratulations Mom and Dad.
I should also say Happy Anniversary to my wife on, coming up on Tuesday.
So that’s Steve and Ange on the 26th, Mom and Dad on the 27th, Theresa and I on the 29th:  Amy, June 28th 2014 is a Saturday.  Just sayin’

Ange and Steve:  You two are certainly very active, and research is starting to show that married couples that enjoy the same physical activity together are likely to stay together.  So, keep running together, although in marriage there is no race and no finish line.  However, with the way you guys run, that just means you’ll have to keep holding hands longer.  Keep marching together, although in marriage there’s no guy with a tape recorder walking around on the field trying to not to get run over by a bass drum.

And Steve you’d best get that Buccaneers itch out of your system now before you have kids.  I know it takes up a lot of time now, and I understand why Steve wanted to do it.  You may say it’s because you wanted to be able to better instruct kids how to drill.  But I think it was an old man seeking one last shot at glory before he settled down, taking that one last crack at a title, that trip to championships that eluded you with Glassmen.
Although wouldn’t it have just been easier to ask Ange what it was like to Bluecoats?

Ange, you are a wonderful addition to our family, we couldn’t be happier.  A girl after my own heart, although even I didn’t use a spreadsheet to generate the guest list.  That’s only because google docs didn’t exist 8 years ago.  You’re a great aunt, the boys are so excited about their Aunt Angie (ang ee).  And you’ll make a great Yoder. I’ve already seen you fall asleep after a big meal.  One thing you will have to learn, when you host a big family meal:  don’t forget the dressing.  It’s not hard to make, its just macaroni salad without the macaroni but don’t forget it.

Steve, I remember once asking about one of your school concerts early in your career.  Your comment was, ‘we started together and ended together.’  Marriage is a lot of the same.  Obviously this is the down beat.  You are starting together.  In between you’ll play different tempos, different time signatures, different keys to say nothing of different songs.  The key is to end correctly and hit the cut off at the same time.

So we raise our glasses:  to many productive miles, to always being in tune, to a fermata at the end that never gets cut off, to Ange and Steve.

• With the toast out of the way (incidentally, special thanks to Mr. Gumble for the help with the Glassmen/Blue Coats joke.  It killed, especially after I explained it later to the people that don’t know what DCI is), I was able to relax.  This was easily one of the best receptions I’ve been to, and not just because I was in the wedding.  The food was great, the DJ was competent and we were booted out at a respectable 9:30.  With the help of my wife, we got the excess 60+ pounds of groom’s cake on to my parent’s kitchen table, and I was asleep by 11.

I’ll give you one guess as to where we found the boys when they woke up.

This past Saturday was a fantastic day.  I bought some great compost, US tied England, and I made my first trip of the season to Oriole Park at Camden Yards.

First, the compost.  Maryland has this awesome leaf composting program and then they will sell you the results at $5 a bag.  On my way to Baltimore, I stopped and picked up a few bags.  Sunday I had the chance to spread some in the garden around my corn and peppers.  The corn was looking fine to begin with, the peppers looked to be having some bacterial spot issues because of all the rain.  However, I swear the peppers looked better after just a few hours with the compost on the ground.

Upon arriving in Baltimore, I made my way to Inner Harbor and the ESPN Zone.  I got there around 2, looking forward to the 2:30 start of the USA-England match.  I was on my feet for the entire match, but I never felt a thing.  The crowd there was awesome, high fives all around with complete strangers.  I hope the US side takes a great deal of confidence out of that match.  Tim Howard had a great game, despite the mauling he received from Heskey (should have been a straight red card for that).  Coming out with a draw was nice, although to see Altidore put that shot past Robert Green into the net, instead of off Green’s desperate hand and onto the post, would have been outstanding.  Green does deserve Man of the Match honors for bungling a simple ground ball that any Little League shortstop could have handled.

From ESPN Zone I headed west to Oriole Park for an evening game against the Mets.  Yes, my O’s are abysmal.  But when you are in the Picnic Perch, things feel better.  And it was nice to have a pretty full house, even if most of the orange was accompanied by the blue of the Mets.  The all you can eat tally:  6 dogs, 2 plates of nachos, 1 bag peanuts, 5 cups ice cream and 4 sodas.  It’s amazing how much a little variety pays off as I felt much better after that than after the 10 dog night at the Phillies game.

As for the game, another notch in the win column for an O’s opponent, although Matusz pitched another great game.  I’m getting a little fed up with Luke Scott, he spends more time playing half way and complaining to the umps than hustling.  That is not the Oriole Way.  To be fair, no one has played the Oriole Way for about 20 years now.

I’m going to blatantly steal Rick Reilly’s idea of ‘Too Short for a Column’ and combine a few thoughts.

• It goes without saying the Bud Selig is an idiot, and it also goes without saying that Armando Galarraga threw a perfect game.  Using his ‘In the Best Interests of the Game’ superpower, Bud should have declared it a perfect game.  However, it seems he can only ever use that when his decision clearly is NOT in the best interests of the game.  It reminds me of the old baseball story:  After a particularly bad call, a player turns to the ump and says ‘everyone in the stadium knows that was a bad call,’ and the ump says, ‘but mine is the only opinion that matters.’  I guess it is only Bud’s opinion that matters in this case.  For Mac users, the end is in sight, however.
• Last weekend my wife made a really cool birthday cake for my youngest son:
• I recently finished The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan.  It took me forever both to read it and to start reading it.  I was a bit scared of a double digit series of 600+ page books that wasn’t done because the author died of cancer.  There’s a guy finishing it, which is good.  I’m looking forward to the second book after a break.
• Right after Eye of the World I read Outcast by Aaron Allston.  It is a book in the Fate of the Jedi series and felt so short in comparison, it was like I blinked and missed it.  It was a good book, didn’t require too much thought and only addressed a pair of plot lines.  I really enjoy the interaction between Luke and his son Ben.  I’m currently engaged in Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, but I look forward to reading the next book in Fate of the Jedi, Allies, soon.  Maybe that way I can remember what happened in Outcast.