Pics - Wedding Weekend and D.C.

Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania

First things first - Happy Birthday Dad!

Sorry it's been so long, but it's taken me a little while to get back into the swing of things. It's quite an odd sensation to go from a weekend of drunken debauchery with all of your friends to sitting in a van by yourself in the middle of Pennsylvania Dutch country. And don't get me wrong - by the end of the weekend I was very excited to go back to the life where I could eat and sleep and live on my own schedule. Walking around Los Gatos with between 5 and 20 people every time we wanted a meal and trying to decide who wanted what and what place could actually take us - it was like high school all over again. The whole weekend was great - I really miss all of my friends and it was nice to get together as a group in a celebratory manor. Line of the weekend, and there were many, came by Sam at the wedding when at the table next to us these kids had huge plates of Challah and they were tearing into it, crumbs flying everywhere, and Sam cracks "It's like the Challahcaust." Good times.

Although, it was hard to pick just one good line, because during the wedding speeches it turned into a night at the Friar's Club. Usually the family of the bride is the more sentimental, but not the Resnicks...they got up and proceeded to roast the shit out of Rebecca. It started with her dad, Jeff, who's giving his speech, and you're not quite sure where he's going, and then he breaks out with "I was trying to think of some funny stories to tell about Rebecca, things she's said or done that were funny....but the truth is, Rebecca's just not that funny." There was cautious laughter there, because people weren't sure if it was okay to laugh at the bride during her own wedding, but then he just kept zinging her - it was great. Gabe's family would get up and say something sweet or sentimental, and then another one of Bec's brothers or sister would get up and kill. It was the easiest 7 speeches I've ever sat through at a wedding, and I actually can't wait to see the video.

I've posted all the wedding pics here (by the way, the flash on my camera wasn't working, which explains the dark nature of a lot of my pictures. I wasn't trying to be artsy, or make a statement about the darkness of marriage or anything like that)
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=gyqcbgn.6ysb63lj&x=0&y=-3klpzj
(it will ask you to sign in, but you can click "View Photos" to bypass that step)

I'd post some photos directly on the blog, but Blogger is once again being a little bitch.

All the pics of D.C. are up too.
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=gyqcbgn.cgz87nzr&x=0&y=-r4x6i4

I know I never posted about that part of the trip, and I'm not going to do so in detail now, but it was great. I stayed with my cousin Josh and his girlfriend Michelle in Alexandria, and I was Mr. Tourist the whole time. Since all the Smithsonian museums were closed due to the rain, as well as the National Archives, I spent most of my time just walking around. I saw most of the monuments, as well as the very moving Holocaust museum, where I think I took some of my best pictures. I met another cousin, Seth, and his wife Susie for lunch on Thursday, and then Josh got us a tour of the Capitol. He's knows a guy who went to college with majority leader Bill Frist, so we got the extra special tour, allowing us to sit in the gallery for over an hour. I got to see every Senator in person, from Hilary to Kennedy to my personal favorite, Robert Byrd. I'll definitely have to go back and see all the things I missed...next year? (by the way, the picture I teased a while back never happened. It was supposed to be with Frist, but when he heard it was going to be with two Jews from California, he backed out. I can't blame him - it makes no sense for him to take pictures with voters who aren't from Tennessee. Still, I think he was worried about the intellectual smackdown he was about to receive - he must have heard The Random Show before. The promised pic with a powerful person wasn't a complete lie, however - I did get one with House Speaker Denny Hastert. Sort of. That's me standing next to him on the floor of the Senate hall of statues - he doesn't actually know he's in the picture with me)

Right now I'm in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, on my way to Gettysburg and to see some Amish. I've heard they're really good at fixing cars. It really is very beautiful in this part of the country, torrential rain aside, and I'm thoroughly enjoying driving around the backroads. There were a ton of fireflies last night, as opposed to the one I saw in Alabama, and I sat there for about 45 minutes just mesmerized. It's the little things.