So it goes...

This June 16th my wife and I will celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary. It is hard to fathom that time has gone by this quickly. While I say that, I can't imagine that both of us will be around for our 50th, but hey, never say never. Our wedding day was such a big event in our lives, that I think it deserves some reflection. So, I'm dedicating the next couple of posts to it. At the time, I was living in a large victorian home that my roommate was in the middle of renovating. We lived upstairs while he gutted - and I mean, down to the lathe gutted - the downstairs. Donna was back in New York, so most of our planning was done by letter (snail mail) or long distance phone calls. She took on most of the planning, while I was in charge of getting the groomsmen tux sizes and securing a rental station wagon to haul her stuff back from NY to Milwaukee. I was also in charge of making a map from the church to the reception, but more about that later. I managed to work it out so...

I spent last weekend in Hudson, Wisconsin with my family. We went to watch my niece and her fiance' get married. They have been engaged for over two years and have been planning the wedding ever since the engagement. It was a beautiful wedding, carefully attended to by many family members working in advance and "in the wings" during. My niece, bless her heart, threw her all into the preparations. By the time she got to the wedding she had every detail mapped out, and it paid off. She was able to relax the day of the wedding and enjoy the attention she and her husband deserved. It was really cool to be part of their day. My role up front was to put together a photo montage of the two of them. Then on the day before, I helped with the decorating and some other minor details. The whole family worked hard to make sure it was a special day for the couple, and it was. By the time the reception rolled around, everyone was ready to let down their hair. After dinner and the vi...

I am slightly more than 25 hours back from Cozumel, Mexico. I was there to celebrate my nephew (and godson) Nick's wedding. There were a number of amazing and awesome moments with my family, both immediate and extended. I'll summarize our experience along with some editorial comments about my first Mexican cultural experience. Our flight down was good. After our initial disrobing and full body scan, pat-down and humiliation, it came off without a hitch. We did end up sprinting through the Houston airport to make our connection and were literally 4 of the last 6 to get on the plane. If we had missed it, we would have missed a whole day of the trip. The customs experience in Cozumel was not too bad, although a bit chaotic and slow. The airline had run out of forms for entry, so in customs, virtually everyone on the whole flight was looking for a pen. The cab ride to the hotel was an education in aggressive driving, near misses, and lawless driving. That is really the onl...