4:12 p.m. // 04 September 2003

last weekend I went to my friends' wedding in Maine. tomorrow I'm going to two funerals, one the sports editor at work and one my sister's best friend from grade school. That's what I've been up to lately.

d. and I had a good time going to the wedding. I got home from work friday and I was gonna finish packing and cleaning and go to bed for a couple hours and then we'd head to the airport -- and then all of a sudden it was 3:30 a.m., 4 a.m., and the flight time was at 6 a.m. and we had to leave for the airport.

in boston we picked up our rockin' rented impala (an unexpected upgrade that came with a CD player EXCEPT that we only brought like six CDs total) and I got us lost trying to find Kyle.

then we drove to maine and got to the farmhouse late and only a few of brian's relatives were there. they were very kind, actually falling over themselves to be nice to us (asking us if we wanted sodas four times). my friends eventually showed up from the rehearsal dinner and it was good times.

the farmhouse has an estimated eighteen rooms and part of it is 200 years old and part of it is 100 years old and part of it is a party barn that was rebuilt after it burned in the '70s. the second floor of the house is a bedroom connected to a bedroom connected to a bathroom connected to a bedroom connected to a sleeping porch and a bedroom connected to a bedroom. there is no hallway. it made things very intimate, creeping around in the dark around sleeping relatives trying to get to your bed.

the original inhabitants of the house were a farmer/miller and his family, which included six daughters, none of whom ever married. they were very shy and whenever one of the millhands would come by the house to collect his pay, they would hide in the kitchen. if they were ghosts they would never dare to show themselves.

the wedding was very nice and very simple, because the family did a lot of it themselves. brian and sarah wrote their own vows and they included "love you forever" and "like you for always." there was a wedding ring mixup on the altar. avinash's wedding toast was shambolic because he wasn't finished writing it. I ate bar-b-q chicken at the reception and therefore I am not a vegetarian (although I did go like a month without eating meat, not counting fish). some of my friends got very drunk and loud!

on the drive back to boston I made dwayne stop at two produce stands. I bought some just-picked corn because I wanted to eat it raw and I did! it was sweet and then my throat started getting irritated and itchy and that was the end of that. in boston I got us lost even worse than the first time, and we went too farm on the turnpike first, and then we exited too soon and found ourselves in the heart of boston university as freshmen and their families were moving the students in, and the traffic was awful and I didn't know where we were and there were 18-year-olds agog at all of it and THERE WERE TWO SEGWAYS ON THE SIDEWALK and their riders had spilled all their promotional brochures upon the ground. I gave up on trying to find kyle at his school because I hated everything, but then we accidentally found the way as I was trying to direct us back to the airport, and we got to hang out for another hour and eat bad wrap sandwiches.

we flew back home and the answering machine instructed me to call my sister and that's when I found out that jacinda died in a car accident on saturday. she was changing lanes on I-35E. I drove on that road just three hours before she crashed. I want to know, why couldn't I have saved her? I want to go back in time and fix everything.

at work the next day I found out that steve the sports editor died after being discharged from the hospital. He had stomach cancer and was undergoing radiation treatment and everyone thought he was doing better. in the office there's my desk, then a doorway, then there's where steve used to sit. A couple months ago I started printing out a news budget for him at the meeting even though he's sports, because he joked about feeling left out.

I have to go to two funerals tomorrow and I don't do good at funerals. I don't think I've been to one since high school. I will go there and I will want to disappear.

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