my sister got hitched

That's right, my wee sister is now a married woman. This is a good thing in my mind, as the young man she married was an excellent choice of man so far as I can tell. It's also a good thing because it means I'm done having to deal with all this wedding crap. I wasn't even getting married and I got sucked into so much random drama even I was starting to wonder who was getting married. Anyway, that's all over, and oh the stories to tell!

The bachelor party in Atlantic City was fun, and while I will keep a majority of the details away from the public eye, I will report that I, in typical me style, managed to carefully set out my drugs, get everything I'd need for the weekend together, and then promptly leave without any of my drugs. This did not interfere with my Friday, wherein I did have a better time than I was anticipating having with a group of guys I did not know well for fun and profit (read: I lost money gambling). However, being without any of my drugs, I then did not sleep at all. Not one wink. So I was wide awake on Saturday when we started out the second day's festivities. All things considered, I felt fairly good, and we had another fun day. I managed to be awake for over 40 straight hours before blissfully falling asleep for about ten minutes before the night's drama began. All in all, I slept for maybe four hours that night. I have been happier, I assure you. I still think I'm recovering from that.

Fast Forward to the next week on Thursday when I went to see Blue Man Group! A great time was had by most, and two distinct sets of my friends actually got along! Good for me. I woke up late on Friday, but just in time for the pre-wedding rehersal luncheon/bruncheon that, had I not gone to, my sister might have killed me. Then, somewhat later, we made it to the church (hiss!) and rehearsed as best we could. There were some minor glitches, some mistakes here and there, but we left that church confident, nay certain, that we would fuck everything up the next day. At least we got a fantastic dinner before the next day's horrors were upon us.

The wedding at last. Thankfully we managed not only not to fuck anything up at all, but we even all looked good while we muddled through the half remembered instructions of a confused priest. Wedding over! Now, after many pictures, we piled into some limos and drank the champain (champagne) that was there, thus starting our evening in the right direction.

Our arrival at the reception hall was marked by being hurriedly escorted up a back stairway to a private room wherein we got to eat our own special food and drink free drinks whilst we waited for the guests and our entrance music. We certainly did not help my new brother-in-law's (BIL) sister get her hands on drinks, nor did I find myself impressed with her ability to knock back the burbon I was drinking. Moving right along, we all walked in to our entrance music, and though there were minor glitches here and there, everything went well. Sistero's maid of honor gave a nice speech and BIL's best man had a wonderful toast, and everything generally went well.

I think the thing that marked the night of this particular wedding was the total and complete lack of drama. Everything that could have gone badly didn't! People no one was expecting to get along got along great, families members expected to be annoying turned out to be having fun and thus sharing fun all around. All in all it was a great reception. I got drunk and danced for hours! I don't dance nearly enough, so I got in quite a lot of dancing while I could. One entertaining detail was when I was off to dance with my wedding party dance partner, that being the far too hot to be 20 sister of the groom, her father told me to "watch it buddy" on my way to the dance floor. I gave him a big wink before our dance began.

Following being kicked out of the reception hall, most of the younger people and, for some odd reason, the parents of the groom and my father, found the bar and kept drinking till they kicked us out of there. The bridesmaids were drinking long island iced teas, which turned out to be a bad idea in the long run, while I stuck to burbon.

Now I will tell the story of the best cockblock I have seen in many years. My partner in the wedding party and I had fun regardless of the too youngitude and too sorta now relateditude. Certiain people had given me some japes about the sister and me, but I ignored them as no, god no, no. When the flowers and garter hurling scenarios happened, luck would have it that the younger brother and sister of m BIL caught both thrown items of wedding luck which is slightly creep considering where that garter is supposed to end up. So younger bother handed off the garter to a willing friend of all involved. When we ended up in the bar, much later, said willing friend was busy talking to she who I suppose is my sister in law (SIL) which did not sit well with BIL whatsoever. When the two in question left the bar BIL and the best man stormed after them.

Our sister seeking friend was, it turns out, well known for cockblocking his way through college. Every one of the grooms college friends who had joined us that evening confirmed this particular phenomenon. So when he and SIL went off to the bathroom because SIL had been drinking a bit too heavily, BIL said, and I quote, "No fucking way. Anyone but him."

When BIL kicked in the door of the ladies bathroom he found his sister puking her guts out, her hair being held back by the aforementioned friend. Said friend's hair holding duties were replaced by the maid of honor and he was dragged out of the bathroom by the best man, and even though he did manage to sleep in the same room as SIL, all of the other bridesmaids were in there too at the behest of the groom, thus cockblocking to what really is a bit of an extreme. The important detail is that the cockblock worked like a charm. I shall remember it fondly forever. :)

There was some drama the next day what with my sister's passport going missing mere hours before needing to get on a plane to go on the honeymoon, but in the end all worked out. It was a good weekend and hopefully has been a good week for my newly married sister and BIL. Next week they will both live a block away from me and I will see what chores I can con them into doing for me. :)

I hate phones

The title is fairly self explanatory, but as I am not one to make a point without then expounding upon that point at great length, I'ma talk more now. Phones have long been my nemesis. I was never happy with phones, not since I was young. I only spoke on them when I had to and then only for brief and terse converations. This has not improved. My goal for any phone call is to make sure it is as short as humanly possible, and currently my average phone call length is well under a minute per. That's far too long in my book, but there's only so much one can do when someone who likes to chat on phones calls and there's no polite way to tell them to fuck off.

There are many factors that led to me disliking phones, not the least of which being my painfully long lived career in phone tech support. Working as a phone support technician was probably a mistake, since I didn't like phones even before I started that job. Not that I was bad at my job, mind you. I was actually reasonably good at what I did, not only by being technologically knowledgeable, but also because of my thick skin when it came to angry callers. I had exactly one incident where I lost my temper with a client, and while that was a rather spectacularly inflamatory incident it was still the only one of its kind and my boss really didn't give me any shit for it, which was nice of him.

The problem with phone support (other than the assholes) is keeping up with the calls at one moment while desperately staving off boredom at the next. Of course, when you're like me and you spend most every second of your boredom dreading the next time the goddamn phone rings, that makes your day long and your hatred for phones grow. So those four years spent manning phones really didn't do much for me other than make me bitter and even more short tempered.

In case you're wondering, I revile phones as much now as ever. I vastly prefer text messages, emails, and the like to do my communicating. So if you call me and wonder why I seem so hurried or even impolite, it's not because I don't like you (well, probably anyway), it's because I don't want to be on the phone. Best way to use a phone with me? Use the phone to set up impromptu in person meetings; use email or texts for everything else. Yeah, I know it's weird, but it's just one of the many things that make me a very singular man.

on nail biting and weird techniques

I bite my nails. I don't like it, but nail biting has been a fact of my life for a very long time. At times I have been a light nail biter, only biting them when they grew past a certain length. At other times I have been an utterly obsessed nail biter, often biting till they bled. Right now I'm somewhere in the middle as I haven't bled for my nails in some time, but really it's a nasty habit and it really has to stop. I have tried to stop it by wearing band aids on the most damaged fingers, and that seems to stop the biting for the most part, but while wearing the band aid I pick at it constantly.

The working theory is that I bite my nails because I have a constant need to feel a texture with my fingers. Biting my nails grinds my fingers against my teeth, thus texture. My therapist came up with the idea that if my fingers were constantly feeling some other texture that it might lessen my interest in the nail biting. Thus my keyboard is now topped with braille keybord stickers. Now, I don't think I'm going to be learning braille out of this, but that each of the keys I touch has a slightly different texture to it seems to affect my interest in biting my nails. It hasn't wiped it out entirely, but I find myself with my fingers on my keyboard more often than being chewed upon.

It's difficult, for some, to admit that they cannot control every aspect of their lives. I am not exactly happy that I can't just stop biting my nails, but clearly I cannot simply decide to stop and I'm not too proud to admit that. It's much like being depressed; one cannot just simply stop being depressed at a whim so I would hope a depressed person would not let their pride stand in the way of getting help.

On the one hand it's kind of sad that I need to take such odd steps to try to retrain my brain, but on the other hand, I'm getting to experience some very strange things all in the efforts of gaining more control and normalcy in my own head. It may be weird, but it does lead to a very singular set of life experiences that few are like to match. Gotta take what you can get, no?