Mr. W and I attended a coworker’s daughter’s wedding on Saturday. The coworker had the reception for 200+ people in her home, and the spacious backyard was decked out in strings of light and rustic hand-made decorations that made it look like a fairyland. The mom of the bride went all out — there was a dance floor and DJ at one end, clothed tables throughout the house, yard, patio, front yard, garage-turned-recreation-room, catering from a local rib restaurant, commercial heat lamp torchieres, fancy flushing port-o-potties, a free photo booth, and shuttle service between their home and the church. I don’t know if scanning a long strip of photos would turn out for the purposes of posting, but the first strip of 4 photos Mr. W and I had, we did the cutsie 1) smile at the camera; 2) him kissing my cheek; 3) me kissing his cheek; 4) him doing a goofy expression with a peace sign as I stuck out my tongue. And then I had the brilliant idea of acting out a word with each of the frames, and then seeing if people could guess the word. Our words were 1) suspicion; 2) innocence; 3) horror; 4) exhaustion. As soon as I saw the photos, my formerly “brilliant idea” shattered and I announced my new revelation, “We’re dorks.” =P But other guests at our table thought our idea was brilliant, and they took our list and did the same thing, so we got good laughs passing around each others’ photos and seeing others’ interpretations of the words.

Sunday morning, we again got all dolled up after hitting the gym for a 4-mile run, this time to attend my old friend Edgar’s 31st birthday party. When I say “old,” I mean simply that he and I have been friends since we were 14, with a stint of maybe 4 years in college of being “best friends.” We were excited to see the champagne brunch location, a hilltop venue called Coco Palm, because it could be a wedding possibility for us. We were SO excited, in fact, that it turns out we got there super early…
At the front hostess stand, we were informed that there was no reservation for a party under the name of either Edgar or his girlfriend Ruby, who I know made the reservation. I stepped outside to call Ruby, and looking at my cell hone, it hit me. Edgar’s birthday, and thus appropriately his birthday brunch, is next Sunday. I don’t know what I was thinking. It’s a good thing Edgar has proclaimed long ago to not like blogs, or I’d surely not hear the end of this one. Ack. The venue is indeed exotic with flowing water, waterfalls and koi fish (and a pair of parrots named “Ricky” and “Lucy”), and I think it could be a beautiful place to host our wedding reception.

Brunchless, Mr. W and I sought out my parents to see if they had lunch yet. I knew that they were out fishing at Redondo Beach with relatives visiting from Minneapolis this weekend. Mom said they were on their way back for lunch, so Mr. W and I killed a little bit of time having great pastries and coffee at a new French patisserie I’d stumbled on some time ago, Vanille, and were so impressed by the creative fondant cakes on display that we think we may have found our wedding cake makers.
Lunch was at a muslim restaurant where I enjoyed the kosher dishes but had to choke down what tasted like rancid goat meat soup. The relatives’ two young sons were very well behaved at the dinner table. I thought about how when I was their age (approximately 6 years or so), if I decided I was done eating, I’d be under the table annoying my dad’s feet.

After lunch everyone dispersed and Mr. W and I went back to his place to watch some more “Buffy” and “2 and a Half Men” on DVD.
Halfway through our viewing, we noticed huge yellow-brown smoke plumes covering the sky when we look out the window. And then we flipped to the news and saw the Southland on fire. The dry, hot Santa Ana winds this weekend was apparently too much for some arsonists to resist lighting some fires, and even now, schools are shut down and hundreds of thousands of acres, and hundreds of homes, are burning and destroyed in Canyon Country, Malibu, Orange, and San Diego. The wind changed direction at one point and the brown smoke rolled over Mr. W’s area, making me gag as I ran around his house trying to figure out where the smoke was entering from. Turned out it was the chimney flue. Today, I excused one of plaintiff’s two attorneys from having to come in for trial because her home was ordered to be evacuated this weekend being 100 yards away from the Malibu fire and in the fire’s path. And today’s her birthday, too.