That was a whirlwind weekend. Friday, we spent about nine hours driving thanks to a construction project along the Merritt Parkway, the wedding Saturday, and driving home (much more quickly, thankfully) on Sunday.
The wedding was in Newbury Port, Massachusetts, a cute little town on the coast, just south of New Hampshire. The wedding coincided with Yankee Homecoming Days, a big street festival about three blocks away from the church and reception site. We arrived early (the happy couple had warned everyone that parking was tight at the site even without the festival) and got to see a bit of the festival before heading in to the wedding. I toyed with the idea of getting some big pink and blue dolphin balloons to release during the ceremony, but Evelin talked me out of it. If only they'd had penguin balloons. I don't think I could have been dissuaded if there were penguin balloons... While the Yankee Homecoming Days did mean a lot of traffic trying to leave town about the same time the reception broke up, it was cool because the town fireworks were visible through the windows of the reception hall. It was a pretty good display.
Evelin's family is pretty large. Her mother is one of nine children and Evelin's generation has 25 (maybe more, I'm sure I'm miscounting) people, including spouses and long-term significant others. During the wedding, when the minister asked the family members to stand to affirm their support for the couple and their marriage, our side of the church would have tipped on its side had we been in some sort of cartoon (I'm not sure that metaphor works, but the basic idea is there were a LOT of family members on that side of the aisle).
On Saturday, before leaving for the wedding, we ran around Evelin's hometown a little bit, visiting family and friends, and we got to stop at the grocery store to pick up some Wachusett Summer Breeze. I know I'm supposed to be off beer, whisky, wine, et al., until we have a pregnancy that sticks, but this beer is sooooooooo gooooood and it's only available in Central Massachusetts (or at least only available in New England, according to their website, it looks like they've increased production a bit since I lived up there). I did have a few drinks at the wedding (just doing my duty to throw off any suspicious aunts and uncles), including a Summer Breeze, but, for now, the case is sitting in the cellar, aging alongside a bunch of other bottles.
When we got home on Sunday, I had a little surprise in Dave Barry's column, a mention of my old boss. Neil Barnard is president of Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, which is where Evelin and I met a decade ago, and while Barry does make him sound a bit goofy, it's always neat to run across him in the news or elsewhere. I may not still be vegan (cheese is tasty, even if it is full of fat, and I'm as fascinated by artisan cheesemaking as I am with artisan winemaking), but my time at PCRM really did help me get a good understanding of nutrition and I support what the committee is trying to do.
Now it's just a week of waiting for Evelin's beta (the official blood test for pregnancy) on Friday. She took a home test this morning and called to say it was negative, but then she called back later saying that there was a faint line. At this point, she doesn't feel like she has any symptoms, but it's still early (12 days post ovulation), I think, and she's been doing so much (acupuncture, dietary changes, homeopathy, meditation, etc.) to strengthen her body since the last miscarriage that I don't think she can count on feeling the same symptoms as the previous pregnancies. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, and if it didn't work this time, then we still have next cycle...
Funny language observation: I may be an editor, but I tend to be a fairly sloppy speller, particularly when I'm focused on writing (as opposed to editing). In spellchecking this entry, I had to doublecheck myself over the word "dissuaded." My instinct was to use "disswayed" meaning that I could not be swayed in the decision to get penguin balloons. "Sway" does work if I were being influence to do something or I could say that "I could not be swayed from" getting the balloons, but dissuade seems more natural. The root for sway, according to my Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, is of uncertain origin, but it could come from Old Norse sveigja, Dutch zwaaien, or Low German swājen, all of which mean (roughly) "swinging." Dissuade, on the other hand, is clearly from the Latin dissuadere, meaning to advise against. Even if dissway is not an established word, I like the homophone/synonym possibilities for dissway/dissuade, and googling dissway does yield a few hits (although googling for neologisms can be a dangerous hobby).
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