A Quick Trip East

I’ve been mean­ing to post this for a while, but I kept get­ting dis­tract­ed…

Hav­ing found my wed­ding ring I hopped a plane to Bal­ti­more to serve in Jer­ry’s wed­ding.

I met Jer­ry back in col­lege, when he had real­ly long hair. He’s gone on to get his Ph.D. in sta­tis­tics and now works for the Cen­sus Bureau. He now has much short­er hair.

Any­way, I flew in to Bal­ti­more (arriv­ing at some ungod­ly hour), tried to check into the wrong hotel, and final­ly got set­tled in some­time around 2 or 3 AM, if I remem­ber cor­rect­ly. It’s all a bit of a blur.

The next morn­ing I vis­it­ed the Edgar Allen Poe house, which was in the hood (this was some­what fit­ting, as Poe wrote dis­turb­ing fic­tion and I was great­ly dis­turbed after hav­ing had sev­er­al peo­ple ask me if I was sure I want­ed to be walk­ing down the street). Inter­est­ing­ly enough, even I had to duck to get up the stairs. Poe must have been one short (or lim­ber) dude.

After that I had the best crab cake I’ve ever had in my life at Fai­d­ley Seafood.

Then I head­ed down to DC. I looked at tons of his­tor­i­cal and inspi­ra­tional buildings/monuments/memorials. By far the coolest was the Library of Con­gress. No, real­ly. If you’ve nev­er gone on the guid­ed tour you have to go and check out the read­ing room. It’s astound­ing!

Added to my before-I-die list: do research in the Library of Con­gress (any­one can do it, you just need to make time in your sched­ule).

By for­tu­nate hap­pen­stance, Siew Ying (one of our Chi Alpha stu­dents) was in D.C. at the same time I was, so we got to hang out togeth­er for a bit.

I also had a chance to meet with Mark Bat­ter­son, pas­tor of Nation­al Com­mu­ni­ty Church. He’s one of the most inter­est­ing and well-read pas­tors I’ve ever met (which is say­ing some­thing). Props to Scott Aught­mon for hook­ing me up with the meet­ing!

Any­way, I head­ed down to Wal­dorf, MD to con­nect with Jer­ry and Elvi­ra (his bride-to-be). I helped Jer­ry, Elvi­ra, their familes, and Tina (the maid of hon­or) do some dec­o­rat­ing for the recep­tion. I also relearned how to tie a slip­knot, which was an unex­pect­ed bonus.

The high­light for me was meet­ing Jer­ry’s friends (espe­cial­ly my fel­low servers Daniel, Tina, and Bethany). Bethany put some pho­tos online, so if you’d like to see me in a tux this is your big chance!

Inci­den­tal­ly, I have to take full respon­si­bil­i­ty for this shot of Bethany plant­i­ng her face in the cake. Drunk peo­ple are so much fun to be around–they’ll do any­thing!

Side note: the recep­tion was pret­ty fun, but I was remind­ed of how sil­ly the Assem­blies of God can look to some peo­ple. Peo­ple were fine with me not drink­ing, but the whole not danc­ing thing was hard for them to wrap their brains around. For the record, I think our pol­i­cy is a bit quirky (and not in an endear­ing way).

On a relat­ed note, I enjoyed meet­ing the ECLA pas­tor who was con­duct­ing the cer­e­mo­ny. Nice guy. He and I are light-years apart the­o­log­i­cal­ly, but I real­ly enjoyed chat­ting with him.

Any­way, the wed­ding went off with­out a hitch (except the hitch that’s the point of the whole thing), and good times were had by all. I did make one faux pas, I did­n’t real­ize that Elvi­ra was­n’t chang­ing her last name to Maples and said some­thing like “How does it feel to be Mrs. Elvi­ra Maples?” Oh well, worse mis­takes have been made.

Before fly­ing out I got to swing by D.C. again, vis­it the Daedalus Books Ware­house, and eat some more crab cakes in Bal­ti­more.

Spe­cial thanks to Jer­ry for invit­ing me to share in his wed­ding, to Elvi­ra for mar­ry­ing Jer­ry, to Daniel for let­ting me stay with him, to Tina for doing such a great job with the dec­o­ra­tions, and to Bethany for being such an enter­tain­ing per­son (even more­so when she’s sober). And a big thanks to Paula for let­ting me galla­vant around the East coast like that.

Oh, while trav­el­ing I saw both Dodge­ball and Har­ry Pot­ter 3. They were both much bet­ter than I thought they would be.