The last few days were wonderful. Had a nice dinner with Jed and his friend Laura -- Ethiopian at Cafe Colucci (Telegraph and Alcatraz), yum. I really like meeting all these people that Jed's been mentioning for years. Laura's another of the Swarthmore crowd -- there's a lot of them! It gets a little hard to keep track. But I think she'll be a little easier to remember than most -- she's a genetic researcher -- how cool is that? Seriously cool. And she reads this journal at least occasionally, so now I have a genetic-researcher-journal-reader. This pleases me.
Saturday morning Jed and I got up early-ish and got dressed for the wedding. The next paragraph is all clothes and appearance stuff, so feel free to skip it.
I wore the lilac shantung silk skirt I made with a fitted white blouse (with three-quarter French cuffs), and a matching little silk bag. I'm not normally a little bag person, but a) this one was very cool, since at Roshani's instigation, I used a long necklace Elise Mattheson made for me as the handles (threaded through on both sides), and b) I actually needed one to carry eyeglasses, contact lens case and some eye drops. Because, ta da, I was wearing contacts, for the first time in at least a decade. Mostly I bought them to make my mother happy -- it drives her crazy when I wear my glasses to weddings and such. But I figured I could at least try wearing them for this wedding (even though my mother wouldn't be attending). Not bad, though I did a fair bit of eye-dropping at first. Certainly not going to bother for every day, but for special occasions, it's not so bad. I cut my hair even shorter a few days ago (it's just below my shoulders now, and almost curly) and shaved the back of my head (under most of the hair) so it wouldn't be so thick. Much cooler for summer! (Actually, I just chopped off the hair at the back, but I got Jed to use his beard trimmer on it this morning, so it's much closer to actually shaved. Feels weird!) I wore a little make-up and put a bunch of sparkly barettes in my hair -- all in all, I think I really startled some people at the wedding. The whole thing was a very different look for me! Strange, but fun.
The wedding itself was just lovely. We picked up Rob on the way, and once there, met up with all kinds of friends: Kam and Sarah and Simon and Mya and Greg and Jerry and Jeremy and Amy and and Jed B. and Beth and Casey and Mykle and Gesine and their munchkin and more and more and more. It's really nice that at this point a lot of Jed's friends are my friends too. I likes it. Arthur and Pam looked splendid, of course -- really nervous, but in a good way. In a taking-it-seriously-deeply-overjoyed sort of way. Just perfect for a wedding. The food was lovely, the music was lovely (the Cats & Jammers live, and there was much swing dancing), the house and grounds were lovely (the River House, in Ben Lomond, CA), and all the people were lovely. The hours just sped by, and before we knew it, it was late and time to go.
You would think that would be the end of the day, but no. Jed and I drove back up to Mountainview, had pizza with Kam, and then joined Mykle and Gesine (sans munchkin) to go see a movie, Minority Report, a sci-fi flick based on a P.K. Dick story. Well worth seeing -- some of the structural cleverness of a Memento, with some of the darkness of a Brazil, and only a bearable amount of the typical Spielberg schmaltz. Nits could be picked all over the place if one wanted (and we did), but nonetheless, really enjoyed it. Crashed hard sometime around one or two a.m. Still managed to get up and swing by Arthur's folks' house for a brief brunch before heading off to the airport.
I have to admit, I felt a tiny bit wistful at the ceremony. You may remember that Arthur and I dated once, for a few months. I certainly think we were right to break up, and I think he and Pam are just wonderful for each other, and will do splendidly. I'm really happy for them -- delighted and joyous in the way one hopes one can be at weddings, the way you feel when you're really quite sure that these two people will take good care of each other. But weddings are also, I think, inevitably designed you make you admire and desire the participants, just a little bit. Two iconic figures, dressed to the nines, full of hope and trust and love -- and they both looked so happy! You'll forgive me an occasional sigh, I'm sure.
Mostly, I was busy dancing. :-)