Something is wrong with my webserver…  It was locked up when I got home from vacation & then this morning it threw some mysterious database error.  Oh well.  I shall ignore it for the time being.

So, odd computer behavior aside, we had quite the long weekend.  We flew out to Albuquerque on Thursday morning for our friend Grant’s wedding.  The wedding wasn’t until Saturday, but we like hanging out with the Ausherman family so we decided to get there early and put some fun time in.  Not that the wedding itself wasn’t fun, you know, but other kinds of fun.  So, anyway, we got into town on Thursday, picked up a rental car, and headed out to Chen’s for some lunch.  Why ever on earth you would go to a Chinese restaurant when you are in NM I cannot even begin to explain.  Something to do with the last time Donette was there with the girls they went and it was really good and blah blah blah.  Whatever;  I just drove there with nary a complaint and enjoyed my pork chow mein.  (It wasn’t too bad either, in all fairness.)  After lunch we headed to the Hyatt downtown and got all checked in.  Thanks to my highly gregarious nature, I struck up a friendly conversation with the guy at the front desk and found out that he also was from KC, and was familiar with several of our favorite haunts.  This somewhat extended conversation wouldn’t really bear mention except for the fact that he comp’d our parking for the entire weekend and hooked us up with a room that had an awesome view of the nearby mountains.  This, while nice, wouldn’t really be worth mentioning either, other than I got no end of entertainment when I found out that David & Jill, (parents of the groom,) who spent money untold at the hotel for rooms, the reception hall, etc, got dinged $12 a night for parking and had a less-than-favorable view of the hotel’s HVAC equipment out their window.  SWEET.  After reveling in this score for a while, we all headed out to Sadie’s for a little dinner.  I had the carne adovada enchiladas myself;  Oh my goodness.  After dinner all the “kids” went out to take care of business, in the form of their respective bachelor/bachelorette parties.  Not being quite up for that action, Donette & I joined David & Jill for a bit “tamer” entertainment before heading back to the hotel to turn in for a relatively early evening.

Friday morning we got up late and sorta hung out at the hotel for a while.  Jill had gone off to do “wedding stuff” (booooo) and David had to run up to the airport to pick up his friend Steve.  Later in the afternoon Donette joined Jill for still more “wedding stuff” (boooo) and David wanted me to meet up with him & his friend to pass some time.  I was a bit apprehensive about this turn of events, not being particularly fond of either meeting strangers or passing an entire afternoon with them.  However, when his friend pulled out a hand-written list of local breweries & brewpubs that he had researched and wanted to visit, I knew everything was gonna be OK.  So while the girls wasted their time on whatever silliness they were up to, we dove into some research of the local brew scene at Kelly’s.  We didn’t stay too long, and then headed back to the hotel pool to discuss what we had learned from our experience.  Our little meeting didn’t last long though before the girls started calling, bothering us with some nonsense about a so-called “rehearsal” and this and that, so we had to cut our pool time short.  We made it through the rehearsal, and then travelled to the mecca of New Mexican Cooking, El Pinto, for the rehearsal dinner.  (Neither Steve or Donette & I were actually in the wedding party, but were quite honored to get invited to the rehearsal & dinner.)  Anyway, El Pinto just may be my favorite restaurant ever.  Bold statement, but quite possibly true.  Man I love that stuff.  They had a buffet set up, and it was as if they had somehow picked all my personal favorite items off the menu for it.  I really don’t remember most of the evening, I think I may have blacked out for a while.  I sort of remember being introduced to a bunch of people and mumbling some kind of gutteral response with my mouth full, and I’m afraid I may have yelled at some lady who I felt was taking too long at the rib tray.  Ohhhh, the red-chile ribs, oh my.  I think I may have been personally responsible for the demise of at least 2 slabs.  Unfortunately I was quite unable to go out with everyone after dinner, as I had to get back to the hotel and suffer through a bad case of the meat sweats, which kept me up most of the night.

Saturday I got up quite early and drove David & Steve to a nearby golf course.  Our obligation for the afternoon was to meet up with several other guys to discuss & finalize the details of the upcoming ceremony over a few holes of golf.  There were twelve of us in all, which would have made for a nice round three foursomes, but I elected not to actually swing any clubs myself.  This was, believe it or not, the first time I had set foot on a golf course in my 43 years, and it was far too much pressure to actually participate.  So, I just drove the cart around with David, Steve, & Grant, fetched errant shots, watched the game, and tried to learn a few things.  (By the second hole I was wishing I had rented some clubs;  It looked fun.  Oh well, live & learn.)  We were on the course for the full 18 holes, then rushed back to the hotel just in time to get dressed and head to the wedding.  The ceremony was at a nearby winery, outside in the scorching Albuquerque sun.  Wow, was it hot, and the dark suit was not helping.  The good news is the actual ceremony only lasted ten minutes;  The bad news was it started forty minutes late.  (You can ask Donette about that part of the story, she likes telling it.)  It was brutally hot.  We survived though, and I probably needed to sweat off a few pounds of those ribs anyway.  After that we headed back to the hotel for the reception;  Good times.  Nice dinner, few hours of dancing;  General wedding reception activities.  (No, I personally did not engage in any dancing, thank you very much.)

Sunday we slept in, then met up with David, Jill & Steve at the pool to wind down and rehash the good, bad & ugly of the day before.  Very relaxing actually.  We got a late checkout from the hotel and just loitered down there all day.  We finally took off around 5 o’clock to head to the airport, stopping by Frontiers on the way for one last green chile fix.  This was a good thing in that it was truly delicious;  A bad thing in that we were so miserably full I was afraid we were gonna blow on the flight home.  We made it though, albeit very late in the evening & still very full.  We picked up Gabe from Aunt Ronda’s house, struggled home, and went straight to bed.  Whew.  Good weekend.  I’ll get back to the gym and take care of the overeating tomorrow.  Or Wednesday.  Thursday at the latest.