Trivia of the first order

When we met for the shower, Jenni asked people trivia questions to learn more about us, or to embarrass us, or I don't know, to see if we knew anything about each other. Regardless, now you can play, too.


And see how players are doing at the trivia scoreboard.

They Came from Municipalities Far, Far Away

Thanks to all of you who traveled, got baby sitters, left kids with spouses, got on planes, took hotel rooms, ate too much at restaurants around town and spent some part of the weekend lost and looking for the next meeting place or gathering point.

To see a map of places shower guests came from, click the title of this post.

Look at You!

I've added a link to flickr where you can view shower pictures. See the changing tiny pictures at the right? Click that, which will display a page like this:

See those smiling faces? That's my brother in law Mike Ferro and my sister Ellen.

Now, look at the red rectangle at the right. You can scroll through a filmstrip of the photos by using the left and right arrows (shown in gray). If you click on word "browse" (also in gray) between the arrows, you'll see all the shower photographs that we thought were worth posting.

If you send me your photos, I'll be happy to add them to wedding shower group at flickr. And soon you'll hear from Jenni, the matron of honor (oh, that sounds so wrong) about where you can find photos from the same event and have them printed to your local Target or Walgreen's stores.

Not Just Another Day

Lovely, sweet and thoughtful. These are the kinds of things people say about showers. But nobody warned me that the horizon would tip thirty degrees and the contents of our lives slide into one corner. To everyone else, it's lovely. To us, we're overwhelmed by - well - all we could come up with yesterday was "weird."

Over pasta, of all things, the people you dance with meet the people you've known since high school and the people from work meet the people who gave you life and birth. And they are uniformly delighted and curious about one another. All their good wishes are aimed at you. All their curiosity is aimed at uncovering a bit of you in the lives of the other people you love.

Somewhere between the speechlessness and the nervous darting of the eyes and the sudden realization that you have no idea where you fiancee has gotten to, it dawns on you: This wedding has the power to draw all the matter of life into one place. that queasy feeling is the shock of all the little slices of yourself that you shaved off and spread around to these two or those four come together with a clap.

All you can do is stand still and try to take it in, like powerful black hole that is drawing light from everywhere within range. And the best they can do is call it a shower! We'll be lucky if we don't explode on the wedding day.

Singing in the Shower

The Bridal Shower, according to sources, is part of a tradition of helping the bride make up her own dowery with gifts from among friends. Without it, a woman was obliged to marry the man that would have her. With it, she could marry a man of her choice. Friends made up for her poverty in the name of love and sisterhood. It's a good story.

I'm inclined to believe the version of its origin that upper class Americans started the tradition in the age of robber barons. All America wanted what they wanted and the tradition spread unchecked in the last century, the way some girls will choose Paris Hilton's brand of jailhouse pumps. Regardless, it's here and the families have descended on Somerville like axis powers at Versailles.

Near-crisis one. A Certain Parent was delayed by the airline. The devil you say? Impossible! So Frank's Steak House got the first call of the evening from TWIL, "...Could we push that reservation back a bit? Oh, thanks and what's your name....?" In time, the plane landed.

Cellphones vibrated to a white hot heat. The rental car of a Certain Parent had been given away by Avis. Near crisis two. Not just any car. A car that would allow the favorite step dad to pack a wheelchair in the trunk and still swing into his seat. Amazing guy. No, the Ford Focus will not work as a substitute. "Hello, I'm sorry, what's your name again....? We'd like to push that reservation back a bit. Yes." And TWIL and I are thinking, this is good, as long as the ad hoc cocktail hour doesn't go on too long. Rochester and his wife are arriving; they can join us.

Near-crisis three. At the AmeriSuites in Medford, the hotel staff had given away a Certain Parent's room. Now, if you're me, and a so-called customer Service Person is politely telling you that the thing you paid for and reserved weeks ahead is gone and that they want to help you but, they're sorry, there are limited options, you're beginning to bemoan the scarcity of block ice as cooling method, because not that long ago, ice picks were a common commodity in any hotel and restaurant. And I've imagined many times how neatly a little justice might be served up with three or four perforations of the thorax of a smiling, powerless Service Person. But it was not me, gods be praised. Rooms were found, composure was regained, peace flowed like a river, and Frank's did not see a Certain Parent and Favorite Stepdad because they had too much sense to go out again looking for calamity to strike. In fairness to the hotel, whatever they did wrong, they more than made up for, by all accounts.

In the meantime, Ellen and Mike (my sister and brother in law, or BIL) landed in time to join us for the second half of the meal. That is, the part that is commonly known as eating. Joan, our waitress, was unfailingly great to us.

Go to Frank's. If not for the food, which was good, then to wait while crises pass over.