THE LAST FIVE ...

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Monday, Nov. 10, 2003 - 8:07 p.m.

And there was only one Bonnie Tyler reference

First Travis, now Fountains of Wayne -- does everyone have to cover "Hit Me Baby One More Time"?

On Saturday, my older cousin Donna got married. She's five years older than me, so our relationship has been much closer in the past few years than it ever was as kids, and I'm not saying we're lunch buddies now or anything. Basically, we are able to talk more -- more often, longer, more easily -- at family gatherings than when I was 11 and she was 16 and heading out to movies on Christmas night with her friends while we stayed behind at their house with the rest of the family. At the reception, I thought back to one of those nights when Matt and I would go to the Shore Regional football game when his dad was the coach and we'd get to toss footballs on the field before the game and stay on the sidelines for it. Donna spotted us at one and said hi to me at halftime, and that was pretty cool. Scott may or may not have been playing for the team at that time. I suppose he was, because most of the games I remember being on the sideline for he played in. I always thought seeing our family name stitched across the back of a football jersey was pretty neat, but not in the way that pot-bellied 40-year-old Giants fans get their surnames on the back of blue jerseys with Jeremy Shockey's number on them. That's just wrong. Come to think of it, it's kind of cool to see my family name stitched across the back of a jersey on the fake Bucknell team I created on my Xbox. I'm the quarterback wearing #2; Casey (with a conveniently ambiguous first name) is the running back, #42.

The wedding fell on the same day as a total lunar eclipse, and with the reception beginning at 5 p.m. at a hotel resort right on the beach, the guests took frequent breaks out on the terrace overlooking the ocean. It was a perfectly clear night and we had a fabulous view of the eclipse, seeing the red/brown tinting of it with the naked eye. It would've been more fabulous if we'd remembered Mom's binoculars.

It was a fun day, though cold. We shivered outside the church waiting for them to emerge, then went home for two hours (the wedding was at 1, so we had a break before the reception) and watched Notre Dame while Mom, Jess and Casey all changed out of their dresses into more comfortable clothes. At the reception we drank gimlets and got a CD of nice love songs and filled up on our favorite selections from the buffett dinner. Buffett is the way to go -- you can eat as much penne with vodka sauce as you'd like and avoid the mystery chicken or steamed vegetables. Ahem.

The coffee bar during desert was set up right near our table, and the overwhelming scent of cinnamon made it feel like Christmas. I think I'm getting into the spirit early. I'll probably have the CDs out of the box next week, after we get back from Seattle. I've just borrowed the Elf soundtrack from someone at work and have two Fountains of Wayne B-sides already uploaded. Picking up Casey's pants at Nordstrom last week, I felt like it should be the holiday shopping season (not that I'm rushing it), and I think that was partly due to the red sale banners advertising the women's and children's department sales. Plus, the commercials are beginning to pop up -- and we're already sick of that Hallmark singing snowmen commercials.

After two years now, Casey and I will have come full-circle with the holidays. We'll have spent a Thanksgiving and a Christmas each in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. We've been together for both of my older cousins' weddings, and now, apparently, I'm the one the family talks about for the next in line. At Scott's wedding two years ago, a drunken Uncle C told me he expected me to be next. I figured Donna -- who had been seeing Shawn a little longer and was older -- would be, and she proved me right. On Saturday, he asked me, "So when's your turn?" or something like that. He was drunk, I think, as he should've been. Don't worry, Unc, it'll happen.

Unfortunately, a pretty decent weekend (it seemed rather long, too, what with the concert, a late night at Ichabod's with Dave and his new lady, the wedding, Lost In Translation yesterday and then dinner before coming home) went sour with the continuing struggle between two well-educated 20-somethings and our boneheaded landlord. He tried to tell me last night, after he'd "fixed" our kitchen faucet that, with this style of faucet, you're supposed to turn it on by pulling the lever up, but you have to turn it off by pushing down on the center of the cylinder, not the lever. Technically, he did "fix" one thing: an interior plastic part was cracked, but it still doesn't work properly. On top of that, to get hot water you now turn the handle to the right, turn left for cold (that's backwards, pal) AND you can't turn it off all the way without twisting it left and spinning yourself around three times. Or something. I'm tempted to leave it drip-drip-dripping while we're away just to tell him it's broken ... and because we don't pay the water bill. Just to be sure, I called the company that made the faucet (a model so old it's no longer in the catalog) to make sure that the lever should be able to both turn on and off the faucet. When we return next week, I'm calling and writing the landlord to explain his idiocy and get us a working faucet. But I've already spent more time on this crap than I'd planned. We're about to go away for a wonderful week in the Northwest for what I'm sure will be a spectacularly good time at Matt's wedding on Saturday and I'm looking forward to leaving apartment and work issues behind for a full week.

Don't worry, your Maddenuendo will still be here tomorrow morning (we fly out at noon), and there may be an update or two from the West Coast.

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