Friday, April 13, 2007

PRAY FOR ME...

After the rehearsal dinner and the rehearsal, Boys Night Out began.

The boys in questions were the Groom, the Groom's Dad, Me -- Best Man -- and Norbert, the Bride's brother, Dave, and Elmer, a friend of the Groom's Dad.

These are not party people.

The wild and crazy evening was spent bowling at the Christian Center in Peoria, Illinois. I'm pretty sure I was the first unrepentant Jew to ever set foot in the place.

During that evening of raucous hijinks I learned a few things:

1. These are not my people.

2. Even when they bowl a strike, Mormon Elder's don't smile. Which is funny, since everyone else seemed to smile entirely too much. Made me worry they were pod people planning to eat my spleen or something.

3. I was not meant to spend time in a place where the soda stand closes at 9:00 p.m.


I kind of wonder what would have happened if I had sat at the back of the lane and knit lace. I'm picturing Christian heads exploding left and right.

The two weddings have gone off with nary a hitch and my Best Man duties discharged to the best of my ability. Frequent meditation on my limitless love for Myfanwe allowed me to suppress every impulse to throw her mother in front of a moving truck. Not that she didn't deserve it. 134 times, if my count is correct. I resisted the urge -- though I still maintain that there is nothing wrong with Myfanwe's mother that a diuretic and a public whipping wouldn't cure.

I'm going to my happy place now.

Norbert, Myfanwe and I are looking forward to getting back home where any insanity is ours and is generally quieter and less drama-driven.

P.S. I've got to find a book of lace patterns -- I'll write more on the circumstances, but I suddenly have enough fine lace-weight merino/cashmere to knit a shawl for the Florida State Athletic Department. I was thinking Arctic Lace. Any suggestions?

7 comments:

Diane said...

Pod people spleen eatting and mother in law shoving ..... sounds like my kind of weekend. My Dad was just saying today that he needed to get a couple books out of the library to read about Mormons because he didn't know anything about the religion. I'll steer him away from your blog and let him make his own judgments.

Anonymous said...

Mmmm... I have this favorite episode of South Park...

Never mind.

Dude, I want to know how you will keep your giant critter-fiber shawl -- which will be absolutely beautiful -- from being ingested by crawlies. If that is to be the specific problem of the lucky recipient, how will you keep this from befalling the lace-weight stash during the years you will work on the project? (I'm kind of working up to doing some lace myself, but am worried.)

I hear all over the place that 'Victorian Lace Today' by Jane Sowerby and Alexis Xenakis is a wonderful book; but have not yet examined a copy. It's purported to be kind of old designs created using updated techniques. I see that one may purchase both that one and 'Arctic Lace' at Amazon for the low low price of the regular price of both books, added together.

Roggey said...

I'm a fan of "Victorian Lace Today"...

Leslie said...

You gave me such a chuckle with the m-i-l comment. Amazing how such a tartar could raise such a lovely woman as your wife, no? One can only hope the genes remain recessive in Norbert.

Anonymous said...

I have both Arctic and Victorian books, and I'll be honest and say that prefer the *Victorian Lace Today.* The Arctic book doesn't have as many patterns as I'd have liked, and they're all very straight and geometrical. I find my own preference runs to the floral and curved shapes in lace. The advantage to the Arctic book is that a large percentage of the patterns are designed for luxury fiber (quiviut) so really aren't large projects. (Of course, that might defeat your purpose . . . )

But I had to laugh . . . If you mean that you have enough yarn for a shawl to figuratively cover that entire department, then old son, you've got a ton of yarn and you're looking for something monstrously huge. :-) I'm looking forward to seeing what you finally decide on. :-)

Aidan said...

Rhonna: I've got about 10,000 yards of a fine lace-weight, 85% merino, 15% cashmere in cream.

Anonymous said...

LOL! Ok, Aidan, you've got enough for a 1200-yard shawl for each of 8 linebackers--which is a massive amount of yarn. Coming from FSU and knowing the depth of their athletic program, however, I simply cannot tell you how relieved I am to know that you're not drowning in enough yarn to cover just the 100+ (?) players on the football team! (grin)

Hm. Cream. Will you dye it or leave it in cream?