Ron's Big Life Update - April 1996 Part 2

"Hello." - Ric Ocasek, from the Cars' "Hello Again".

Well, apparently I survived the wedding in Tucson. Actually, it went much more smoothly than I would've guessed beforehand. Our only big glitch was the first dance, which was atrocious - have you ever danced with someone in a wedding dress before? Hopefully, no one took pictures of that.

Margaret flew out last Tuesday, bought some rugs and junk in Mexico on Wednesday, picked me up at the airport on Thursday, sewed all day on Friday while I visited my former colleagues at school, partied all day Saturday, sent me back to the airport on Sunday, UPS'ed all the gifts on Monday, and flew back here on Tuesday. As you might have imagined, I only played a perfunctory supporting role throughout the whole ordeal. (That was the agreement, and I'm sticking to it.)

The party was a lot of fun. We had a great turnout from the Arizona contingent (thank you all for attending; it was great to see everybody again, and frankly, it would have been pretty dull without you.) The east coast attendance was rather abysmal - a total of four. My parents, my brother, and my friend Steve, who some of you know. It's hard to say whether Steve was fully appreciated by the Tucsonans; in the words of my friend Julie, "Steve thinks he's famous." That pretty well describes him.

I didn't get to sit down or eat very much - it's true that you don't really get to enjoy your own wedding. We hired a great photographer, who took about 100,000,000,000 pictures. Hopefully, some of them will come out.

And I managed to enjoy the whole weekend without missing a minute of work here at Kodak. I only get five vacation days this year, and I didn't want to use any for the wedding. Needless to say, we didn't have much of a honeymoon. (Some might argue that since we got married in December, that our honeymoon was spent at Margaret's parents' house in Yuma, Colorado. Honeymoon in Yuma? If you can use the words Yuma and honeymoon in the same sentence, then you've never been to Yuma.)

I think we made out OK in the gift department. We got a couple of sets of white towels, which we were hoping for. And a nice vase (thank you Tim).

And actually, I haven't seen the rest of the gifts yet (they're in transit), but I did appreciate the nice wrapping paper - Ren & Stimpy (you EEEEDIOT!), diffraction gratings, all the good stuff. Thank-you's will be prompt and courteous, I promise.

In other news, my car still smells like a new car, even though it has 2500 miles on it. I was flipping through the Auto issue of Consumer Reports, just to see what the powers that be think of not only my new car, but everything else on the market. Aside from one model of Cadillac, the Dodge Neon/Plymouth Neon is the most unreliable car on the road. Unless I misunderstood some of their graphics, it looks like 83% of all new Neons have some problem with them. Interesting.

For those of you playing at home who vaguely remember the short-lived supergroup Deth Boat, good news! Jason (my high-school friend in NY who headed Deth Boat and still works in sound in NYC), decided to finally do something with the Deth Boat tapes. He's mastering the tapes with a Sonic Solutions machine at work (!) onto Hi-Fi VCR tape, then sending it to me so I can cut a few write-once CD's. Cool! I'd done something similar to this with a few dozen sound bites that I use for my radio show, but Deth Boat on CD is mind-boggling. Jason even managed to dig up a Deth Boat outtake that was recorded for the "Mutilator II" short film, and a live cut. And only eight years after it was recorded in the studio; even the group Boston can produce an album faster than that...

Crap From The Past plays on, as expected. Monday may be tax day to some, but to me it's Dave Edmunds's birthday! (He'll be 52.) Skip out of work for the day, put on a party sombrero, and celebrate DE's B-Day! Next Wednesday is Michael "Maniac" Sembello's birthday; not quite the same punch...

We're about to plunge headlong into spring. After a whole week of cold, rainy weather, we're about to dive into the mid-60's. I'm just guessing, but I don't think it'll last.

Hope things are well in your respective necks of the woods. Stay warm.

Ron "Can you play something by Barry Manilow?" G