[This is Part 8 in the multi-part epic describing the wedding I attended at the beginning of August 2002. Previous episodes: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7]

Saturday, August 3, 2002. In the afternoon, I returned to the Stone Estate from my epic journies on foot. I found it filled with all sorts of people, most of whom I didn't recognize, but a few I did. I noticed that Nemo was present. I hadn't seen him for several years. bouncing had also arrived.

Kiesa's mom showed me to the haystacks. Having managed to work up a very healthy appetite during my long walk, I proceeded to consume the delicious lunch, and helped myself to seconds. They also gave me ice cream afterwards, which really hit the spot.

After eating, I met up with Nemo, and we discussed jobs, companies, and the demise of the HP calculator.

When I told Nemo about the recent layoffs at my company, which had me fairly bummed out about the state of my job, Nemo replied that he thought if management at companies were truly creative, layoffs could almost always be avoided, provided that the people involved really cared about keeping the company together. As an example, he told me about HP. Prior to being bought by Compaq, they had managed to weather economic downturns without ever laying off any staff, using a combination of saving money from the "good years", and in the most dire times, instituting across-the-board temporary salary cuts. i.e. Keeping everybody on with lower pay, rather than axing productive workers who would prove useful during the next upswing.

I contemplated whether I would have preferred such a solution, given that up to that point, I had been one of the "lucky" ones at my company. Would I have preferred a temporary salary cut, if it would have meant not losing a bunch of coworkers? Had a salary cut been instituted, would I have even believed management if they told us it would be "temporary"?

(Having heard lots of stories before, many of which ended up amounting to a load of BS, I had to conclude that I probably wouldn't have trusted them anyway. Talking about it with Nemo and others during the trip made me realize that whatever respect I once held for the management at my company had mostly evaporated away after the last round of layoffs. I had to admit to myself that the only reason I was even coming back to work now was because I thought I might be able to collect paychecks for a few more months until the next apple fell, and that apple would likely be me. This realization troubled me, but I filed it away for later handling.)

Jaeger and Yanthor joined us, and we discussed possible implementations of Content Solutions 2.0. As I recall, the plan is to implement multple redundand databases on disparate hosts, each maintaining its own independently aquired data, which would occassionally be synchronized to other hosts. There was also talk of a master server, which would keep an authoritative database of the content. It's kind of fuzzy now, but I'm sure we can think of it all again from scratch if necessary. :)

Nemo had brought his laptop along, and proceeded to give the assembled geeks a demo of BeOS in the bedroom temporarily assigned to Jaeger. This demonstration involved a live comparison of the modified BeOS Asteroids game with the X11 version running on Ziyal. bouncing had never witnessed the BeOS interface before, and Nemo was happy to demonstrate its capabilities.

The fact that I needed to get the bachelor party together was never too far from the forefront my mind. When I noticed the bride's younger brother in the crowd, I asked him if he knew where I could find a phone book for the Portland area. He showed me to Dr. Stone's office, where I found a page listing many bowling alleys. Having no idea which Portland bowling alley would be the best, or easiest to get to, I used the conveniently handy equipment to make a photocopy of the phone book page, and put it in my pocket.

As I discretely made my way out of the office, I noticed a crowd gathering in the kitchen. On the viewscreen, Captain Logan was showing recently shot footage featuring scottgalvin.com licking bees on "The Nature Channel". Absolutely hilarious. Classic stuff.

Armed with a list of the Portland bowling alleys and their respective phone numbers, I searched for the other person I had been advised would be able to help me on my quest: $bridesmaids[2] (also known as the bride's cousin). Since she was reputed to be knowledgable about the Portland area, I figured that she would be able to help me narrow my search, and give some driving directions to a good bowling alley. Maybe if I was really lucky, she could even recommend a specific one from experience. (Transportation to the party was still something that I wasn't sure about, but I decided I could only solve one problem at a time.)

I found $bridesmaids[2] was hanging out in the front of the Stone Estate with @best_maids.

Without realizing the soon-to-be-apparent subtleties of the situation into which I was walking, I made what could have been considered a tactical mistake (or upon further reflection, maybe not?). Time being of the essence, and opportunity scarce, I walked right up to the group, and asked $bridemaids[2] whether she could recommend any Portland bowling alleys. I explained that we, the groomsmen, intended to take the groom bowling for his bachelor party, so we needed to figure out where a bowling alley might be.

$bridesmaids[2] replied that we wouldn't need to go all the way to Portland for a bowling alley. Bowling alleys could be found in Longview, despite its small size. She proceeded to give me directions to a bowling alley in Longview whose precice location she knew.

Had I been wise, I would have procured a pen to write down the exact street names of every intersection and turn. Based on the way she said it though, it sounded like the place couldn't be too hard to find. "Just cross such-and-such bridge (there are only 2 in the town), go a couple blocks, and it will be on the right, and such-and-such corner. Can't miss it." Or something like that. After asking about a couple of things that would probably be obvious to anyone remotely familiar with the town (i.e. "Ocean View Parkway? Where's that?"), I decided that I would probably be able to figure it out.

Now, the possible tactical mistake: I hadn't been prepared for the reaction of @best_maids. As they listened to the conversation, they proceeded to offer other suggestions. $best_maids[0] theorized that bowling sounded like a less than ideal bachelor party, and suggested that we take a totally non-traditional route, and have the entire wedding party embark on a co-ed laser tag expedition extravaganza in Portland.

I conceded that generally speaking, I would agree that bowling would be a strange activity for a bachelor party, but in the case of this group, a significant percentage of us groomsmen had a bowling tradition dating back to our years at ucollege.edu, and going bowling would be a way of connecting us with those memories, as well as creating new ones. (Also, since we had already planned and agreed up on it, I felt an obligation to stick with the promises I had made to my fellow groomsmen.)

After I explained this reasoning, $best_maids[0] agreed that if it was our tradition, then maybe it would be a good idea for us to go bowling.

During the conversation, the fact that I had discussed the plans for the "surprise" party with the groom came up. Somehow, word (or rumor) had gotten around. One or more of them knew I had told Jaeger about the bowling. Though I didn't say anything initially, $bridesmaids[2] accurately read my facial reaction (perhaps she observed a growing red in my cheeks), and said, "You did tell him, didn't you?"

Well, ok then. Obviously, the breach of information had been discovered, and there was no point in denying it at this point. I conceded that I had consulted with the groom in an effort to make sure we gave him the bachelor party he wanted. So much for secrets.

I hung out with @bridesmaids for a few more minutes, as they teased the bride relentlessly through her bedroom window. ("Reality tv at its finest.") I even joined them in it for a brief bit, and found it most amusing, even though I felt completely out of my element. Being the only male in a group larger than 3 people, in one way, can be quite fun, and in another way, can also be very unsettling.

After exchanging pleasantries and another mind game or two, I left @bridesmaids to plot their devious secrets.

I wandered aimlessly around the Stone Estate for a while, bumping into various random individuals. Things appeared to have reached a point of non-activity, with various people scattering in different directions.

Eventually, a mass migration back to the Longview Luxury Suite occurred. I honestly don't remember which car I rode in during this particular expedition. (Such is the consequence of writing about it months after the fact.)

Back at the Longview Luxury Suite, Yanthor, Nemo, Humblik, and I took the opportunity to explore the gigantic back yard. Still slightly unnerved after the conversation with @best_maids[0..2], I pulled Yanthor aside and discussed the situation with him, perhaps in an attempt to resolve my own anxieties.

Short version: Wedding politics suck.

Slightly longer (but still semi-abridged) version: I was annoyed by what I saw as an attempt by @best_maids to meddle in the planning of the bachelor party. As far as I was concerned, that was an event that was strictly for the guys. We didn't try to tell them (or ask) what they were going to do during their wedding-eve party, so why should they worry about ours?

My second annoyance stemmed from the fact that they knew what I had told Jaeger in private. Putting it together, I concluded that Jaeger had told his bride (understandable), and she had most likely told her best friends (also understandable), and nobody had intended any harm by any of it, nor had any significant harm been done. Still, it bothered me to think that any knowledge I shared with Jaeger could potentially follow a transitive property.

Anything said to Jaeger, Kiesa would know. This would be fine with me 99.99% of the time. However, anything Kiesa would know could also be passed on to @best_maids. Therefore, anything shared with Jaeger would likely be accessible to @best_maids. Given that I did not know @best_maids very well at this point, I was not comfortable with this conclusion. It deeply distrurbed me to the core of my soul.

(We will ignore for a moment the fact that any knowledge entering the realm of Jaeger or Bitscape is potentially game for any stranger who happens to be surfing the web -- specifically around the festing.org domain. That's just a minor detail.)

Yanthor empathized with my situation. In a way, it felt good just to talk about it with someone I trusted.

After a bit of reflection, I concluded that there was nothing to be angry about, and no one to be angry with. Everyone involved was doing their best to make the wedding a success. Actually, after I considered about it a bit, the thought of a co-ed laser tag session the night before a wedding could be a really fun thing. Tradition be damned.

Still, I was glad I had stuck to my guns with bowling, because this was something the groomsmen and I had planned. In addition to a celebration for the groom, it would be a gathering of old friends renewing bonds. I was looking forward to it.

As the afternoon passed, pretty much the entire wedding entourage congregated in the backyard of the Longview Luxury Suite. scottgalvin.com found a bee bee gun, and used it to shoot green apples off the tree in the backyard. This morphed into an apple shooting contest of magnificant proportions.

I pulled some apples off the tree and attempted to juggle them. Having received a few juggling lessons from a coworker, my juggling skills were infinitely better than they had been two years ago, but still horribly klutzy. It's the fun that counts.

Nemo had brought his digital camera along, and was using it to shoot pictures of the yard. He gave me a quick tour of the features, and I got to take a few pictures, which he would later upload to his laptop in Be as I observed the process.

At one point, $best_maids[0] and I got into a conversation which led to a discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of a company (which could be any company) having stock deregistered from the publicly traded market.

I detected what looked like eyes glazing over, though she was attempting to be politely interested. I ceased discussion of the subject. A thought entered and left my brain in the span of a millisecond. Don't I know it. I'm as bored with this company line BS as she is. What have I been doing with my life for the past 2.5 years, anyway?

As the crowds dispersed, I hung out with Nemo at his car, as he plugged his Be laptop in, uploaded photos, and showed me some pictures he had shot recently. I also got to look at a battery he had been building as part of his senior project. We were joined by Yanthor and Jaeger.

Jaeger's mom invited us into the house for supper. As we ate, $supermodel_cousin entertained those gathered at the table with tales of being hit on by rock stars in Las Vegas. Members a band known as Blink 182, despite being chased by hoards of adolescent girls, found it more interesting to pursue $supermodel_cousin (though she did not find out until later that they were celebrities). Though the story would have been outlandish coming from most people, somehow, watching her tell it, one could detect that $supermodel_cousin was neither lying nor boasting. This was simply something that had happened. The Slayer, herself an aspiring boy-magnet, listened in awe.

After dinner, I caught scottgalvin.com and bouncing sneaking off behind a building like a couple of vagrants. When he realized that I had detected their presence, scottgalvin.com offered to show me pictures of his new girlfriend.

I queried, "These pictures aren't X rated, are they?"

For a moment, just a brief moment, I had him, holding a straight face. Then we both burst out laughing, and bouncing joined.

scottgalvin.com showed us the pictures taken during his trip to California.

As darkness approached, the time to depart the Longview Luxury Suite for the evening activities drew near.

As people prepared, I had another discussion with Yanthor regarding matters we didn't particularly want to bring up in front of everyone else. I wished we could have had 10 times as long to talk, but there simply wasn't time. This seems to be a commonly recurring theme.

At the urging of the schedule, all the people filed out of the house, and piled into the minivan, C3PO. The sky had darkened. Saturday night was beginning.

[Coming: Part 9 -- The Worst Wedding Eve Ever.]