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Last night I went to Debbie and Tracy’s house.

They’re getting married.  Susie and I helped Debbie glue little wrapped paper flowers and little bows onto bottles of sparkling apple cider.  There were 100 bottles, and it took all evening, though we were distracted by the tele—OK, fine, *I* was distracted by the television for some of that time.

Sounds like a lot of work, eh?  Well, get this: The bows weren’t prepared, we made them from ribbon.  Sounds like more work now, eh?  Well there’s more: The flowers were bought separately, and then sorted by color and wrapped up with cloth tape, along with little pearl bead strands.  And the bottles had their labels soaked off—but not the gold label at the top, which weren’t soaked off so that there would be some place to glue the flowers and bows.

Oh, and they’re making custom labels to replace the ones they soaked off.

Weddings make people do crazy things.

For our wedding, Susie and I wanted all the invitations to smell like strawberries.  So we drove around the city every day for three weekends, looking for strawberry scent it every new-age-y incense store we could think of, and when we finally found some, it was strawberry oil, which stained the invitations, so finally we got the idea to scent the envelope under where the glue would stick, and we had an entire apartment filled with envelopes propped up to dry, on little stands made from folded paper clips, all this done on envelopes that Susie herself hand-calligraphied to save money.

I think two people mentioned that the envelopes smelled lovely and that it was so nice we had a theme to our wedding (i.e. strawberries), and one person said the envelope smelled funny and one other person said her dog ate it.  Glad we went through all the trouble.

But it was nice that we got to help Debbie and Tracy, nice to see them, nice to think we contributed to their special day in a way that was more than just buying a casserole pan.  Ooops, I wasn’t supposed to tell them what we got… oh well.

Overheard

“The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.”

...who said it?

“Almost every American I know does trade large portions of his life for entertainment, hour by weeknight hour, binge by Saturday binge, Facebook check by Facebook check. I’m one of them. In the course of writing this I’ve watched all 13 episodes of House of Cards and who knows how many more West Wing episodes, and I’ve spent any number of blurred hours falling down internet rabbit holes. All instead of reading, or writing, or working, or spending real time with people I love.”

...who said it?

“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”

...who said it?

“I play with variables constantly.”

...who said it?

“Only the person who has learned Continual Love coming from a heart of Gratitude/Worship can effectively deal with the problem of loneliness.”

...who said it?

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