alabama 1

Currently I do not recall what we did last friday, at least not early in the day. We decided to leave about 4pm or so for Mark and Katy's wedding in Alabama.

Of course, Josh wanted to take some shortcut or something over to I-20 through the backwoods. Skeptical as I was, and knowing full well we could get lost in the backwoods forever, we took the shortcut. And to his credit, we only made one or two wrong turns, and it did save us quite a bit of travel time.

After a fairly uneventful drive to Birmingham, well, if you don't count the accident which backed up traffic miles and miles on I20, and the semi-flat tire we had, and maniac that tried to run us over, we made it to the church where the rehearsal dinne/reception was being held. An hour to two early I might add.

There wasn't anyone there yet that we knew, besides Mr. Knicely (and im actualy referring to mr knicely here) that is, with whom we socialized out for some time discussing the finer points of appearing social without socializing, and also the joys just being plain anti-social.

Eventually people started arriving, and I was once again astounded at how many people Josh actually knows. Then more familiar faces began to straggle in. Adrian Cole, Mark and Katy, Liz, Brack and Julie, Emily, Rob.... David and Tiffany showed up fashionably late, Rebekah Palmer, then a few new faces.... Leslie Jackson, Daniel Snyder, and off the top of my head I cannot remember anymore. At least of those who were there Friday night.

Dinner was quite tasty. Chicken, potato salad, baked beans, grits, and cornbread muffiny thingies. With banana pudding for dessert. I heard rumor of some spiked banana pudding, but I'm unsure whether or not there is any truth to that.

We ate with Liz, and a couple other people who's names I dont remember... they were farther down the table. Across from us was Bonnie, and her sister whose name I do not remember. I only remember Bonnie's cuz I saw it in the program the next day. They were quite interesting folk. I dont think they were quite sure what to make of us three.

And then there was a movie all about Mark and Katy, and it was all nice and cute and sweet and thoughtful.... but in my humble opinion is was just a little too long. I kinda started getting bored. Im sorry, but its the truth. Then people got up and talked and cried and talked some more. Then they stopped.

After the festivities were over, tehGroup hung around for awhile chatting waiting for someone to make a decision. Now for the record, I have tried making decisions, but I have discovered through past experiences that my voice doesn't really carry much weight in that group so I have ceased such futile endeavours. Eventually they closed the church so we were forced to leave.

We decided to head back up into Birmingham to Five Points South or some such place. Not be confused with Little Five Points in Atlanta. And SOMEONE wanted sushi, so we ended up at some Japanese restuarant. Nothing on the menu really looked edible, so I orded the Ice Cream Trio. And the lady never asked me which flavors i wanted, something I neglected to realize, so I suppose she just guessed. I ended up with Vanilla, Ginger and Green Tea. Quite a diverse bunch of flavors. I ate them with chopsticks. Because on the chopsticks package it says you can pick up ANYTHING. So i was determined to use them for everything. It worked quite well actually.

I also tried some of Josh's sake. It wasnt bad. I didn't realize sake is served warm. It was quite interesting. But good.

And then it happened.

The sushi.

I DIDN'T ORDER IT.

But Andy and Josh were having some, and they put a piece of my plate. I didn't particularly WANT to partake but I figured I had to try it at least once.

So i picked it up with my chopsticks and proceeded to munch on my sushi, which incidentally was a Californa roll, supposedly a very americanized form of sushi and not TOO extremely flavorful. So I put it in my mouth and started chewing. Then I stopped chewing. And desperately tried to stop myself from throwing up all over the table. It was revolting. VILE. After a few moments, and some water, I managed to force it down.

I'm sorry, but sushi is disgusting. The taste not so much, although it wasn't too great. It was the texture! Absolutely gross.

After eating, we kinda disbanded for the night, and josh, andy, and I decided to find a cheap hotel room for the night rather than drive all the way back to atlanta. It took quite awhile too. We went to at least seven hotels before we found one with a vacancy. We found out later there were like 200 soccer teams in Birmingham over the weekend, so that could have been part of the problem. But we did find one finally.

We dropped Andy off, as he wanted to sleep, and Josh and I headed out to find a Waffle House. Which was not as easy as it sounds. We found one a few minutes later, but it was on the other side of the internet, so we took the exit there, which turned out NOT to lead to the waffle house. So we got to explore a few back roads near there and finally made it there. It was about 3 am now, and the Waffle House was overrun with ethnic not-so-minority minorities, but we didn't really care. As long as we came back out alive, who cares. Those waffles were tasty but they WERE filling.

I think I finally got to sleep around 6am or so, forgetting completely about the fact that you're supposed to leave BEFORE checkout time rather than after, and so the time I had set my alarm to wake up was exactly at checkout time. But that's another story for another day.

In the words of the great Tour Guide Barbie: Bye now!