I was trying to leave for Raleigh somewhat early this morning, the plan being that I’d find a place there to settle in and work, such as a Panera, which is something, as much as I love this town, Wilmington sorely lacks. As it was, Scott called me up right as I was about to walk out the door and had me take care of a few things first. I’d planned on taking care of them once I got to Raleigh, but I guess it did make more sense to go ahead and get on them.
On the way out I picked up five X-Men tickets for the night’s latest show at 10:50. It’s a good thing I did, too, because even that show, we learned after we were seated, was sold out.
In the car I called several of our clients who needed some following up. It felt pretty good to conduct as much business as Iwas able to that way. It also helped the time pass. Unfortuantely, it also ended up draining my battery pretty severely. I suppose part of that is that I spent a bit of time on the phone talking to my friends Annie Titus and Jason Revill.
It sounds like Annie and Rick are doing pretty well. Their baby, Charlie (six months old this coming Wednesday, Annie said) seems to be doing well too. He has casts on his legs to straighten up his legs and he’s got two more weeks of that. Annie said they’ve put a helmet on him now too; he’s been favoring one side when he leans and that side of his head was getting flattened out. She said the helmet has helped that quite a bit. Sounds like Rick is doing fine in his job at the registrar’s office at UNC Greensboro. He’s getting things together to enter the master’s program and they’re tentatively thinking of buying a house. They’ve been doing a fair bit of travel lately, but they want to come down and check out the new house sometime. I told her my door is always open to them. They’re very good friends. I actually stayed with them in Greensboro for a couple weeks before in between moving out of the dorms at the end of a semester before moving into the first apartment I was ever in.
Jason I talk to pretty regularly, so there wasn’t anything really new with him.
Once in Raleigh I decided to stop by my old place of work; the Capitol Boulevard Best Buy. Store 821. Ed Stone happened to be there. He’s an older guy who I helped train. It was really good to see him and he was glad to see me. He’s doing something with a startup software company on the side. Or maybe Best Buy is his on the side. Other than Ed I saw a few people I recognized, but I didn’t really know them so I didn’t run around talking to all of them.
While I was at the Beast I got a call from Josh Gitlin, our programming manager. I’d told him I ‘d be in Raleigh sometime around 2:00, so we met up at the Brier Creek Panera along with his partner, Matt. We had a nice time talking about business and non-business things. Matt apparently has a love of history and old things like I do, so we talked a little about coins and swords and old places.
After they left I brushed up on some support tickets then crossed over 70 to the other side of Brier Creek. I talked to Amanda for a minute and got some candy for the movie tonight; Gobstoppers for me (I was in a Sweetarts mood, but couldn’t find any of the movie sized boxes) and Milk Duds for Amanda. After that I changed inthe car (I parked away from the rest of the cars) and headed over to Rob’s wedding.
I actually took a very long route to get where I Was going. I didn’t know exactly where the Brier Creek Country Club was, so instead of just going past Brier Creek, I took followed the directions. Time was getting short and I wanted to make sure I wasn’t late. I got there a few minutes before the ceremony started and sat with Courtney and Jeff Arnold and his finacee Kylie, who introduced herself to me. I said, “I know who you are; we’ve met.” I think she was a little embarassed about that. I was never a prominent person in our group though (compared to some of the out-there people like Jaime, Jason and others), and we’ve probably only met a couple handfuls of times. Plus I now have glasses, my hair is longer now than it was and I was in a suit. It’s excuseable.
Anyway, the ceremony was outside and it was very pretty. The forecast had called for thunderstorms, and we heard a little thunder but the skies were clear and there was not a drop of rain. It was actually rather warm and the sun was in a greast angle to shine in my eyes until the end of the ceremony when a cloud came and gave some relief. The ceremony seemed to be a hodge podge of traditions new and old; a female officiant in robes, a Jewsih breaking of the glass, modern-sounding prayers and a sand ceremony. I thought the sand ceremony was a nice idea. It was the same idea as the unity candle, but involved mixing sand, which I think is much more suited for an outdoor ceremony like this one.
Jason and Joel arrived just as people were starting to come down the aisle, but they stayed out away from the ceremony the whole time and never came over to sit down, reasoning that as soon as they did they’d get in front of somebody and mess things up.
After the ceremony we headed inside (I took a golf cart being used as a shuttle service with Jason) and mingled a little. We ate some hors d’oeuvres , but the lady with the quiche never came back around and meat stick girl never came near us. Joel told me I should go to her and I told him that’s not how I do. I left not long after, during the first dance. I needed time to get back to Wilmington (since I had everyone’s movie tickets). See, I had thought the wedding was at 5:00, not 6:00, which would have given me quite a bit more time to hang out with everyone. It turned out to be a good thing that I left when I did as I had two things hold me up.
The first thing that held me up was something that always irritates me. Traffic was slowed to a crawl (although not quite stopped) because there was a car onthe other side of the highway that was turned on its side. Don’t get me wrong; I always feel concern for the people who are in these accidents, but I hate when people cause traffic delays because they feel the need to slow down and look. I mean, sure, I took a picture with my trusty little Sony P-10, but I did it without looking and without slowing down.
The other thing was the nice light show that was put on for my viewing pleasure. The storm that was supposed to interfere with Rob’s wedding apparently went off course and decided to intercept me on the way back to Wilmington. For a long time there was nothing but some really cool lightning. Sometimes it would seem to creep through the clouds and other times there would be straight, bold forks stretching to the ground. I was amazed and entertained by it. However, about 30 miles outside of Wilmington, it started to pour. I mean, it really poured. A lot of people pulled off the side of the road and nobody who stayed on it (I was one of these) went over 35 miles per hour. This lasted for a good while and put me back about 15 minutes.
After the storm I called Amanda to tell her where I was but the phone died while I was talking to her. I tried turning the phone on and tried to power it through for a quick call. It got far enough to ring once then it died again. When Igot home I didn’t get anything to the effect of “I was worried” or “I’m glad you’re okay.” I got “I’m glad you left when you did because we need to go right now.” I was a little irritated by that, but after a minute Amanda kissed me and told me she was glad I was home.
So we went to see X-Men: The Last Stand with Allison and Jen, who work with Amanda, and Jen’s husband, Matt. The manager came in and asked everybody to scoot together because the movie had sold out, so I got to meet the couple on my left. The guy was really looking forward to the new SUperman movie that come sout later this summer and the girl was a huge X-Men fan. We got to talking and she said she wished Gambit was in the movie. I told her about how Lost’s Josh Holloway had been offered a part as Gambit if he wanted it, but he turned it down, saying the character was too similar to Sawyer. I thought he’d make a great Gambit, but the girl said he wasn’t even good-looking enough to play Gambit. It was about that time I noticed she was a little intense. She even cried a few times in the movie. At the end of it she said she effin’ hated it. To sum up my thoughts (I’ll try to do a review later), I feel like I shouldn’t have liked it, and it certainly didn’t stand up to the first two, but there were enough parts for the comic geek in me to enjoy.