For my part I provided a couple of loaves of crusty bread. It should be noted that I really enjoy baking, as unlike cooking it is very scientific. In this sense baking reminds me high school chemistry lab – if you veer from the instructions by even an iota, you will most likely get a inedible mess. Occasionally however you will do even worse, like the time in tenth grade when the school was evacuated because we made hydrochloric acid by (sort of) accident. Even more rarely, there is a truly serendipitous moment when you make something entirely new, AND it is edible, AND it won’t kill you. I have only read about these baking moments. Anyway, I did not aim for this rarefied moment of baking, but I did want to try out something that required a couple of days of carefully orchestrated agents, reagents, actions, and reactions to perhaps engender any modicum of success. So I took the weekend and made a some half-whole-wheat rustic bread. From everything that I read about one’s first attempt at baking, I was steeled for abject failure. Surprisingly, my first foray into bread baking from scratch was instead just successful enough as to leave me most likely thoroughly disappointed with my next attempt. We will see soon enough.

After dinner, Margaret, Raigan and Eric introduced the rest of us to a fun card game called “Oh, Hell” “Aw, Shit” “Tarter Sauce” in which you get points by not winning any points, lose points by not winning enough points, and the dinner hostess gets points each round just by virtue of being score keeper. It was an all around nice close to a fun weekend. Like always, click the thumbnail above to see the pics.

When I got home my plan for the afternoon was to take a good, long nap, and then maybe watch a little Olympics before getting back to work. This is always the worst at the beginning of training season, when a little ride like this can wreck your whole day by making you pretty much worthless for anything else. So, instead of napping, I decided to do some yard work that has been outstanding for way too long: raking up the remainder of our leaves. For those of you who are familiar with where we live, you know we have quite a number of very large oaks on our property that keep us busy throughout the year. During the fall we usually have to rake about 5 times before the leaves are done for the year. Unfortunately up until now we have only raked four times as it has been raining so much. Tired as I was, I hustled through the chore, finishing up both the front and back yards in about three hours. There were enough leaves to practically fill our compost pen. It was exhausting day, but in the end I cannot imagine anything that would have been more satisfying. Work and play: there are really not many things more lovely that a freshly raked yard, especially after a good hard workout. With the leaves all cleaned up the first tentative perennials can be seen just beginning to peak up above the surface of the ground. in about ten more days we should have beds full of Jonquils and Daffodils. While it does not exactly feel like spring is around the corner, at least this makes it look a little more like it is. And in my book, that counts.

So why “70 miles?” Well it seems that I remember reading some years ago in Runner’s World that one pound of fat contains approximately 7 miles of arterial capillaries. So ten pounds of fat  means that the ticker has 70 extra miles through which to push blood on its round trip circuit. As you might imagine this this can create a dramatic increase in head pressure on the ol’ cardiovascular system, which really showed on the road today. OK, so “70 miles” does make for a dramatic and motivational image and all, but is it really true? well, a quick Google search turns up this bit of scientific blargity-blargity, in which Dr. Ed Friedlander, M.D. and Pathologist states:

“How many miles of blood vessels are there in a pound of fat?” People write me about this every once in a while. Let’s figure it out. Assume an adipocyte is 50 microns across; it’ll vary from 10-100 depending on how fat the person is. The fatter you are, the less vascular is your fat, which is one more reason that this whole inquiry is silly. In a section of body fat, which I examine often enough under the microscope, the capillary (there has to be at least one) that supplies each fat cell is not usually visible, so I’ll assume one per adipocyte, and all going in the same direction. Put a single capillary between each pair of fat cells and that’s about 20 capillaries per millimeter, or about 500 capillaries per inch, or 250,000 capillaries per square inch. Assume a pound of fat is a cube 4″ on a side, which is good enough for junk science, or 16 square inches, and that is 4,000,000 capillaries running through the cube, 16,000,000 inches. There are 12 inches in a foot and 5280 feet in a mile, so if you get 500 miles you did the arithmetic the same way that I did. If you prefer 100 miles as in other estimates, simply assume that there’s a capillary between every other pair of adipocytes, rather than every pair. That this question is fundamentally wrong-headed can be understood by anyone who considers whether moving a certain total number of cars through Kansas City would be easier with more highways or fewer highways. Further, the vast majority of these capillaries are completely closed at any moment during your life, and not carrying any blood. At autopsy, blood usually dribbles from other organs but not from fat. At surgery, other organs bleed plenty but fat barely bleeds. The real question isn’t, “How many extra miles of blood vessels?”, but “How much rougher is it on my heart to be fat?” Think about walking around carrying 100 lb of weights everywhere you go.

Well just blah. I still prefer to think that it is the 70 miles of blood vessels that are slowing me down, rather than a dramatic loss of fitness. I mean that is something that a little liposuction can take care of. If it is indeed the fitness, it seems that I am actually going to have to get back on a regular training regimen again. Rats.

All that said (and needless to say), on my recent trip to Cancun I sampled quite a few cocktails. Piña Coladas, Margaritas, Mai Tais, Bahama Mamas, Mojitos, and of course the eponymous three-layered Riviera Maya. I even made up my own drink, called a “God Bless America.” Like the Riviera Maya, it also has three layers: the first is Blue Curacao, the second is a Piña Colada, and the third is a Strawberry Margarita. I suggest you drink it with a straw. The bartender renamed it the “Toby Keith,” ’cause what’s more American than that? I am embarrassed to say “Yum.” When in Rome…

Unfortunately i now have the overwhelming love of

getting caught in the rain,
and a penchant for making love at midnight,
but NOT in the dunes at the cape.
That would be too much sand in the privates;
I mean,  I HAVE half a brain…

Following are the notes I used for the ceremony, or what we in the biz like to refer to as:
“The Order of Service.”

Welcome
Welcome, family, friends and loved ones. We gather here today to celebrate the wedding of Irene and Jason. You have all come here to share in this formal commitment they make to one another, to offer your love and support to this union, and to allow Irene and Jason to start their married life together surrounded by the people dearest and most important to them.

So welcome one and all. Irene and Jason thank you for your presence here today, and now ask for your blessing, encouragement, and lifelong support in their decision to be married.

Definition of Marriage
Jason’s sister Jennifer often tells me that she never really knew what true happiness was until the two of us got married; then she usually goes on to say that the problem with this arrangement is that by that point it was too late for her to do anything about it.

I for one love being married to Jennifer – Jason and Irene, If nothing else I can promise you this: after searching and searching and searching it is indeed the greatest fortune of all to finally find that one special person to whom you want to aggravate and annoy for the rest of your life.

Now it is true that marriage is perhaps the greatest and most challenging adventure of all human relationships. No ceremony can create your marriage; only you Jason and Irene can do that – through love and patience; through dedication and perseverance; through talking and listening, through helping and supporting and believing in each other; through tenderness and laughter; through learning to forgive, through learning to appreciate your differences, and by learning to make the important things matter, and letting go of all the rest. What this ceremony can do is to witness and affirm the choice you make to stand together as life-long partners in marriage.

Declaration of Intent
Rusty:
Will you, Jason, take Irene to be your wedded wife?

Jason:
I will

Rusty:
Will you, Irene, take Jason to be your wedded husband?

Irene:
I will

Wedding Vows
Irene and Jason, this is the part of the ceremony where you’re going to say your vows to one another. But before you do that, I ask you to remember that love – which is rooted in faith, trust, and acceptance – is the foundation of an abiding and deepening relationship. No other ties are more tender, and no other vows more sacred than those you are about to assume. If you are able to keep the vows you take here today, not because of any spiritual or civic law, but rather out of a desire to love and be loved by one another fully, without limitation, then your life will have joy and the home you establish together will be a place in which you both will find the direction of your growth, your freedom, and your responsibility.

(Just as a reminder, an appropriate response to each of the following questions might be “I do” or “I will”)

Irene and Jason, do you vow to take each other as wife and husband, to be each other’s constant friend and partner, and each other’s only true love?

Will you work together to create a bond of honesty, respect, and trust, one that withstands the tides of time and change, and that grows only stronger along with each other?

Do you both vow to honor and respect each other for all that you are now as well as all that you will become, taking pride in who you are, both separately and together?

Do you promise to challenge each other, and to accept each other’s challenges in return?

Above all, do you promise to give each other your love freely and unconditionally for all the days of your life?

Sand Ceremony
Irene and Jason, today you join your separate lives together. These two individual bottles of sand symbolize your separate lives, separate families and separate friends – they represent all that you are and all that you will ever be as an individual.

They also represent your lives before today. As these two containers of sand are poured into the third container, the individual containers of sand will no longer exist, but rather will be joined together as one.

Just as these grains of sand can never be separated and poured again into their individual containers, so will your marriage be.

Rings / Support of the Community
May I have the rings, please?

It is an old and time-honored tradition that there are three rings in any marriage:
First there is the engagement ring, next there is the wedding ring, and finally comes the suffering. In other words, almost all marriages are happy ones – it is most often the living together afterwards that causes all the trouble.

That may or may not actually be true, and only time will tell with Jason and Irene, but there are certainly three pillars of strength upon which their marriage can depend upon for support in times of need.

The first two anchors of any marriage are obvious – and currently they are in the news almost daily: The first are the secular laws that define a marriage in legal terms. The second is of course our spiritual beliefs that are driven by our faith in a universe of order that is larger than our individual selves.

We are all gathered here today most specifically to address publicly the third and perhaps most important of these anchor points: That of the Familial and Convivial, or more simply put, the eternal bond of friends and family as we too join together with Irene and Jason in their marriage.

Fortunately two people in love do not simply marry and live on in isolation. Their love is of course a source of strength with which they may nourish not only each other but also the world around them. In turn, we, their community of friends and family, also have a life-long responsibility to Irene and Jason. By our steadfast care, respect, and love, we can support their marriage and the new family they are together creating today.

The precious metal of these rings symbolize that love is the most precious element in a marriage. The ring has no beginning and no ending, which symbolizes that the love between Irene and Jason will never cease. Forever onward Irene and Jason will wear these rings as a visible sign of the vows that make them husband and wife. Before they share their final vow, I ask that you take a moment through your touch to imbue each ring with the love and support that you have for Irene and Jason, so that these rings may also symbolize the unceasing love and support that we all share for them as well.

Will everyone please rise?

Rusty:
Will you who are present here today both friends and family, forever surround Jason and Irene in love, offering them the joys of your friendship, and supporting them in their marriage?

All:
We will. (be seated)

Rusty:
Now, Irene and Jason please repeat after me:

Jason & Irene (first Jason):
Irene, I give you this ring, as a daily reminder of my eternal and everlasting love.

(now Irene):
Jason, I give you this ring, as a daily reminder of my eternal and everlasting love.

Pronouncement
By the power of your love and commitment, and the power vested in me, I now pronounce you husband and wife! You may now kiss each other!

I am pleased to be the first to publicly introduce to everyone the married couple of Irene and Jason Treter.

Exchange the Peace
In closing before we go, Jason and Irene would like to me remind you all that Happiness and Peace are ways of travel through life – they are by no means merely a final destination.

May Peace be with you all; we now ask that you share this peace with each other.

Recessional

All in all, I think it went pretty well. If you get a hankering for me to perform a service for you and your true love feel free to ask, but I will warn you – now that I know how much work it is it will not be cheap, unless of course you fly me to Mexico in January. Then we can talk.