UMTravels

Yes, both this and the next post are tagged Friday… that tricky International Date Line.

Guess the day started when I woke up from my Ambien/Bourbon nap in time for the third and final meal service of the day. Slept through the 2^nd service, though I found some in the galley.

So, what amused me (apparently I’m amusing myself a lot this trip) was during the flight I realized that I have a massive layover in San Francisco – which I remember thinking about when I booked the trip months ago that it would be a great excuse to take BART to Berkeley and hang with the boys.

Arrived and texted them with a lunch date request – sure – they were planning on going to the courthouse to get their marriage license for getting hitched sometime within the next 90 days.

Synchronicity Number 1.

Here is Lunetta filling out the application:

Where the choices were:

• Groom
• Bride
• Neither

Both chose Neither… guess that makes them Mr. & Mr. Neither.

Here are the boys listening for the fourth time how to NOT screw up filling out the witness and preacher section:

The boys on the courthouse steps after getting their license to legally wed in the state of California:

And then we started thinking about lunch – that little omelet on the plane was long gone and was starting to get that blood sugar thing goin’. It was decided, GREEK! But a glint showed up in Lunetta’s eyes… “Wonder if Fang (the officiate) is available this afternoon.” Turns out Fang had cancelled an afternoon meeting… and was free.

Synchronicity Number 2.

One more in the car headed to the Greek Restaurant – Troy, in Berkeley. Table for four upstairs, please…. The wedding was on in all its spontaneous glory.

What started out as going for a license turned into the whole ball of wax… five hours start to finish.

The Bachelor Party – appetizers with a nice Italian Pinot Grigio – which when it arrived at the table I read the back label and this quote was on it:

Bivio: [Italian] N. : A fork in the road.
Bivio Italia celebrates the joy of exploring life’s many forks in the road with spontaneity and style.

Synchronicity Number 3.

The ceremony. We needed a piece of cake and three candles. The dessert menu had two items – baklava (hard to put a candle in) and TUXEDO Cake.

Synchronicity Number 4.

And for the 1:01 minute ceremony (my favorite is the Akbar and Jeff moment):

The ceremony was something like, “Do you promise to do what you’ve been doing over the past 16 years and stop doing it when it no longer works?”

And for those of you not familiar with Akbar and Jeff, here is a little illustration by Matt Groening of Simpson’s fame:

With the ceremony over, it’s time for the wedding banquet – and all four of order the same item: The Gyros Platter which has beef and lamb gyros, tzatziki, grilled vegetable and horitiaki salad.

Synchronicity Number 5.

After it’s all over, we drop Fang off, and I pick up from the free box a lovely red saloon girl outfit, sorry, no photos. Wish I’d had that at the wedding – I could have been the “flower girl” in addition to the “wurst man”, “made of honour”, “cock ring bearer” – whoops, weren’t any of those.

As the boys said – the two of us are the ones that they’ve know the longest and really wanted us to be the ones in an intimate ceremony.

Mission accomplished – even if it wasn’t planned at the time.

The boys dropped me off at the house for a nap (turned out to be 2.5 hours) while they went back to the courthouse to get the official stamps. Done and done.

Onyx was a jewel and took me to the airport – I felt bad looking at the traffic for his return commute.

As for me – half a dozen oysters on the half shell, a cup of chowder, a little bourbon, a little shopping the discount rack at the book store… and onto the plan am I – upgraded to Seat 1E, bulkhead aisle on United. I loves my Bulkhead Aisle – nobody putting their seat down into your space and you can brace against the bulkhead wall on impact.

And for our last moment of Synchronicity… so, June Cleaver (I kid you not, that’s what her apron said, though I’m guessing it’s not true) is serving me drinks while I’m watching old reruns on the television system. Here is June:

So, there I am watching an old episode of Parks and Recreation, a sitcom about a Midwestern (Indiana, I believe) Parks and Recreation Department. A humorous sitcom about bureaucracy. What happens in this episode? Amy Poehler’s characters boss grabs the woman he’s been seeing, goes upstairs (it is a county office building after all), gets the license, has the judge do the ceremony – though theirs was more like 5 minutes.

Synchronicity Number 6.

I’m done for the night. Got in at 1am to Seattle, was up until 3am, and had to be at work at 1:30 the next afternoon.

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