Celebrating Seventy

[With all twelve great-grandchildren, together for the first time.]
Yesterday was the party celebrating Dad turning 70, which actually happened last Tuesday but Sherri scheduled the party for 5 days later, August 10. Incidentally, the same thing was done for Dad's 60th birthday party in 2015: he turned 60 on Wednesday, August 5; the party that year was on Sunday, August 9. The key difference between 2015 and 2025 was the 60th birthday party was a surprise; the 70th birthday party was not. Also, the 60th was held under a tent in the yard behind the Mud Bay Shipwreck Cafe, from which Dad and Sherri retired in 2019—so, this party was held at a rented venue, only about a mile north of Dad and Sherri's house in Olympia (as the crow flies; the drive is 2 miles): Huber's Gastaus. There was still a connection to the Shipwreck Cafe, though: this place is apparently owned and operated by one of their longtime customers. Anyway! The event was presented as "indoor / outdoor," I think mostly because the building does not have air conditioning, and it was fucking hot yesterday—it got to nearly 90° in Olympia (and in Seattle, I believe, though Olympia is often slightly hotter in the summer). They had a couple of tents set up on the lawn in front of and to the side of the building, and the shade combined with a fairly pleasant breeze made it surprisingly tolerable the entire day. The building, which is a former private residence converted into an event space, has two levels, but Sherri had a purple linen rope tied across it to keep people from going upstairs. She didn't want any of the kids running around up there and getting into shit or getting into trouble, which seemed reasonable enough. This meant that the event was either out under or near the tents, or on the ground level of the building. Except! Either Angel or Gina, I can't remember which, had the idea of doing a group photo, and the initial idea was to have us all stand on the staircase. I have counted the number of people in the group shot seen at the top of this post multiple times, though—there are forty in that photo. That would have been quite crowded on that single flight of stairs. It might have made for a fun shot anyway, but I was the one who brought up the balcony facing front on the second floor, from which a photo could be taken of all of us standing on the ground. And when I mentioned that we would all be looking up at the camera and thus stretching out our double chins, Beth was like, "I think that settles it!" So that left the question: who should take the photo? Most of us there would want to be in the photo, right? One idea was Ian's girlfriend, Bella—not as any dig against her, but she doesn't yet have the history with the family, broadly speaking. Then it was suggested we ask Eric, Jennifer's ex-husband who Dad and Sherri decided to invite as apparently he and Dad still talk regularly, but he's such a chill guy that it was rightfully assumed that he would not be in the least offended that being asked to take the photo would mean he couldn't be in it. (I am realizing just now, looking at the group shot, that Bella is indeed in the photo, standing right in front of Ian; she is also directly to my left. Shobhit is standing behind me.) So, Eric just crawled under the purple linen rope and went up the stairs and to the balcony (something I did myself much later when most people had left, to check it out for myself and get a few extra photos), and used my phone to take the photos—I really wanted the photos on my phone so I wouldn't have to nag someone else to text them to me. Eric took ten shots, after we assembled everyone there with surprising swiftness and efficiency (and thankfully Ricky's girlfriend didn't hold up the process this time, like she did at the Family Vacation in Leavenworth in 2022—something that contributed to my decision not to push for a group photo at the 2024 Family Vacation because it's too much like herding cats, something I now regret: we should make this happen no matter how herculean the effort). I later narrowed the 10 shots to 3 that I actually kept, largely because of variances in which people had the best smiles. If I had better software and better skills, I would simply edit the best faces together into one shot. The above shot is great as it is, and happened to have the best smiles on Dad and Sherri's faces in particular. This morning I checked my blog post about the 2015 party, and the "Roll Call" I listed abouted to 39 people. The photo above lone indicates a slightly higher number, as 40 are pictured; there are two attendees not in the photo—Eric, who took the photo; and Erin, my cousin Tammy's husband, who had to take their dogs away because there are no dogs allowed at this venue. This was a bit of a thing because Sherri didn't mention this on the invite, but she still signed a contract and nothing could be done. To be fair, I would argue that no pet owner should just assume their pet is welcome someone just because it hasn't been mentioned—it's really on them to ask for clarifcation before bringing a non-human with them somewhere. So anyway, let's do the Dad's 70th Birthday Party Roll Call! 1. Dad
2. Sherri
3. Angel
4. Brandi
5. Nick
6. Jaycee
7. Gianni
8. Enzo
9. Ricky
10. Reyna
11. Raiden
12. Ruby
13. Britni
14. Carlos
15. Alex
16. Caitlyn
17. Amira
18. Alaina
17. Gina
18. Beth
19. David
20. Jackie
21. Georgia
22. Emmy
23. Nikki
24. TJ
25. Cheyanna
26. Elijah
27. Becca
28. Kayvaan [pronounced "Kay-van"]
29. Matthew
30. Shobhit
31. Jennifer
32. Matthew
33. Hope
34. Chase
35. Ian
36. Bella
37. Aunt Roxanne
38. Aunt Arliss
39. Aunt Penny
40. Tammy
41. Erin [not pictured]
42. Tobin [not pictured]
43. Eric [not pictured] Some key absences this year who were present at Dad's 60th in 2025 would include several people who have since passed away: Auntie Rose and Uncle Imre; Grandpa McQuilkin and his siblings Uncle Lynn and Auntie Dean; Aunt Raenae. A couple of exes of both Angel and Gina were there in 2025: Dave, Gina's ex-husband and his wife Heather; Rick, Angel's long-ago ex-husband, who was actually mentioned yesterday and Dad noted that they haven't talked to him in several years. There would also be a key absence this year even though he wasn't at Dad's 60th either—but, he was at Sherri 70th birthday party, which happened on the same day as Easter, three years ago, in 2022: my brother, Christopher. Sherri told me recently she had told Christopher she expected him to be at that one (she sort of pulled a Grandma McQuilkin there), and in the end, he was—also bringing the boys, Tristen, Christian, and Braeden. Even Becca came to that one; it was Nikki and TJ who missed that one, but came this time—and they've been coming to stuff with surprising regularity the past couple of years, including Dad and Sherri's 40th Anniversary Party in March of last year (13 in attendance), and even the Third Biannual Family Vacation in Tokeland in August of last year (25 in attendance). Either Gina or Beth, I forget which, did comment, with some empathy, that its a long drive over from Wallace, Idaho—granted, Nikki and TJ made it from Spokane, but Wallace is another 80 miles on top of that each way, and Nikki and TJ clearly have more reliable transportation. Should I get into some family drama? To be clear, there really wasn't any—Tammy and Erin being slightly put out by not being able to bring the dogs they treat like children was probably the closest thing to drama at the event itself, so that was nice and good. There's some drama that still exists behind the scenes, really just bits of drama that certain people are aware of going on that, at worst, got some gossipy discussion here and there at the party. Some of it, I would be insane to detail here. Jennifer and Tammy were the only ones of my immediate cousins to attend; Toni Marie was planning to come, which with her family would have added something like five or six to the Roll Call. But, one of the kids was apparently not feeling well, so they didn't come after all. I guess James had asked if it was okay for them to come if they just stayed outside, but he was told it was probably best not for them to come with potentially viral infection among the lot of them (I fully support this). Jennifer, for her part, came with her entire family in tow: Matthew, her boyfriend; all three of her kids, Hope (who came even though she lives in Portland now, which I thought was sweet of her to do) and Chase and Ian; and even Ian's girlfriend from Alaska, Bella, who had come along with them when they came to stay the night over New Year's Eve. Later during the party, Shobhit brought out the Yahtzee game we brought, and Chase and Ian played a game with us. They all left right after that game was done. When Jennifer arrived, she walked up to me and said, "You're not as cute as me." I laughed and said, "That was new." I think she was referring to our outfits. I was wearing a pink polo shirt and white pants; she had an orange-ish blouse and blue jeans. I would say we both looked good, though! Jennifer seemed slightly unsure about sharing a table with Eric, who is her ex-husband—Sherri loves to tell people things like, "They don't become our exes!" In the end, Eric sat at the table with Jennifer, Matthew, and all the kids they had brought. It was all fine, and although they were hardly acting like buddies, Matthew and Eric even said a few things to each other during certain conversations, particularly about wildfires happening on the Olympic Peninsula near where they live. Who was it, I can't remember who—Nikki, maybe? I think it was Nikki who mistook Eric for Rick (Angel's ex-husband) for a brief moment. If you haven't been around all that often the last thirty years, that's actually a pretty easy mistake to make. They're both exes who have come to family gatherings well after their respective divorces, in any case. I suppose it's possible Hope drove from the furthest away for this party. Gina's son David and his family (Jackie, and the kids Georgia and Emmy) live in Vancouver, WA, though, which is just across the river from Portland, so their distance was pretty close. I don't remember where Aunt Roxanne or Aunt Arliss live, but I'm guessing not any farther than Shelton. Once again at a family gathering, Aunt Arliss's son Tobin came, the Family Felon. I think that was Tobin, anyway. The same guy who was at Tammy and Erin's wedding. It's easy to confuse him and Les and Larry, all within a few years of my age even though they are my dad's first cousins. They have a mix of biological parents versus aunts or uncles who raised them, though, that I am rarely able to track, certainly by memory anyway. I was slightly surprised Valerie wasn't there; I see on the Facebook event that she was invited but it looks like she didn't respond. She wasn't at the 60th birthday party in 2015 either—Oh! Sherri's sister, Wendy, came to the 60th as well, but was not there yesterday. Her husband Steve was there in 2015 as well but he has also since passed away, so that's at least seven people who came ten years ago but are now dead. That's kind of a bummer to think about, let's move on! I did make a 10-minute tribue video, which some of you might reasonably have guessed from my otherwise "vague" references in recent posts to a "video project" I was working on. I got a text from Sherri a couple of weeks ago asking if I was putting a "video collage" together for Dad's birthday, and I kind of thought: I guess I am now! I honestly hadn't even thought about it. I had just made one for Dad and Sherri's 40th anniversary last year, after all, and naturally that meant there was a fair amount of overlap. There's a number of photos and clips in the video I made this year that were also in the video I made last year, but that's okay; this one still works separately as one focused more on Dad individually. I found some fun stuff in my sifting through archives that I hadn't even found when I made the last one. The hope was that I could play it at the party for everyone to watch. And I did, although the setup was sub-optimal to say the least. I even emailed the venue to ask if they had any TV or screen I could hook up my laptop to. I did get a response, saying "People usually use the wall." Sherri showed me the location inside where it was "set up" for me—but, it quickly became apparent that they assumed I would be bringing a projector with me. I did not have a projector. It would have been a good alternative if they just had a TV screen I could connect to, but they didn't even have that. Gina had a large speaker she was using Bluetooth to play music on from her phone, and she showed me the bluetooth network to connect to, but none of my devices showed that network. I'd have loved to at least get it hooked up to the speaker so everyone could hear it even though they had to look at my tiny laptop screen, but in the end I just set the laptop on a pedestal and put the sound as high as I could, so maybe ten or 15 attendees could gather at nearby tables and watch. Between the fan that was running (no air conditioning, remember), other ambient noise with doors open, and the inevitable chatting among the group, almost none of anything actually spoken on the video was heard by anyone. They seemed to enjoy it as well as they could, but when Sherri asked if I was going to post the video later to the Family Vacation group on Facebook, I said of course I would. I was unable to do that until I got the video uploaded to Flickr right after Shobhit and I got home late last night, and that's also what is embedded below at the bottom of this post. I don't have a lot of time to write much more today, but I should mention Becca, my niece, who just a couple of weekends ago moved to Olympia, kind of by coincidence considering so much of the rest of the family lives there. I kind of feel like Shobhit has a real soft spot for Becca in particular—she and Nikki were the only ones of my brother's five kids who ran the full cycle of eight summer weekend visits as they grew up, as I intended for all of them, but life got in the way of any of the boys getting eight visits (Tristen got four in the end; Christian got two; and Braeden got one). Shobhit really leaned in on the idea of family as a support system for Becca especially now that she's in Olympia, which is a little more complicated a prospect, I think, than he realizes—largely because she grew up in Spokane and just doesn't have the same bonded history with Dad and Sherri or with my sisters as all the nieces and nephrews who grew up in Olympia do. Also, and I aboslutely will not get into detail here, but Becca has adopted a lifestyle that people in general do not understand, and I think it creates a further distancing with people, which she arguably does not deserve. I feel like people's lack of understanding here is analagous to where society was in general with homosexuality thirty or forty years ago, which at the time created some distancing with me. So I have a bit of empathy here. But, there are other nuances here that are directly related to Becca herself, her own history with her immediate family, and some quasi-estrangements there. I wouldn't say she was estranged from Nikki, exactly—that's too strong a word—but I know it had been a few years since they had even seen each other. Becca's toddler, Kayvaan, is two years old, and this was the first time Nikki and TJ had seen him; I can't remember how old Elijah, Nikki and TJ's youngest, is—three, maybe?—but Becca commented on how she was going to be seeing Elijah for the first time as well. I think this has generally been the deal with Becca ever since she moved to the Everett area and then Lake Stevens with Tyler, and she became the first (and still the only) person in her immediate family to move from Eastern Washington to Western Washington. Shobhit spoke to Becca several times yesterday about connecting with Dad and Sherri, or with Gina and Beth, as potential support systems as she settles into a new living situation in Olympia. And he wasn't meaning anything like monetary support, but things like possible help with how or where to find a job, that kind of thing. The party was officially from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. Knowing that Becca was now in Olympia, we offered to pick her and Kayvaan up and bring her to the party. We aimed to get to Becca's apartment at 1:00, and we got there closer to 1:15, which was fine. It took us several minutes to figure which of the buildings at her apartment complex was hers, but once we did, Becca was already standing outside with Kayvaan and the carseat we made sure she would have before we even agreed to pick them up. When the party was winding down, Dad asked me if we were going to come to the house to visit for a bit. I wasn't sure whether we would do that, but when Dad basically indicated he would like us to, I said yes we would. I then asked Becca if she wanted to come visit at the house for a bit or if she wanted us to take her home first; she said she'd like to come visit. Only shortly after that did I discover that Nikki and TJ were already planning to do the same. So, after we helped load some supplies back into Dad and Sherri's car, we all headed to the house—Shobhit, Becca, Kayvaan and I arrived first, but then Nikki and TJ pulled in right behind us only second later. I have a key to the house, so I let us all in. Dad and Sherri got there maybe ten minutes later, coming in to a living room with three children playing with all of the cat toys. I'd say we were at the house about an hour and 45 minutes, maybe. Given our hour drive home and my desire to get photos edited before I went to bed, this wound up being a rare case of me wanting to get going before Shobhit did, which was a strange flip. We finally said our goodbyes, though, after another odd thing happened: Shobhit went outside with Kayvaan into the front yard, Becca followed, and when Shobhit came back inside he said Becca already had Kayvaan strapped into the carseat. Huh? Oh, okay. After that, everyone came outside to say goodbye. Once we were in the car and I thought we were about to drive Becca and Kayvaan home, Shobhit asked Becca what her plans were for dinner. I can't remember the exact exchange now, escept that within about a minute he was offering to take her out to get something to eat. At first he was asking me to look up nearby restaurants on Yelp, an incredibly frustrating ask because "restaurant" is so broad and we're already headed out in the car—but, then Becca said Kayvaan loves pizza, and that made it much easier to narrow down. I found a place called Old School Pizzeria in downtown Olympia only about a mile from Dad and Sherri's, so that's where we went. I didn't mind doing this, for the record. It was just a slight challenge being such a last-minute decision, when I thought we were headed home. We weren't there that long, but it was well after 9:00 before we even started driving home after finally dropping Becca off—luckily, I was able to use my phone as a mobile wifi network for my laptop, which allowed me to process and even upload the day's photos to Flickr from the passenger seat in the car. The drive was a little over an hour, but I got nearly all I needed to get done there during the drive. I still got to bed much later than preferable in the end, but at least I didn't have all that shit to do still after getting home. Thank god for that mobile network function, it makes it much easier to be efficient with my time. We had taken two leftover slices of pizza for Becca to take home, and as she had to carry both Kayvaan and the carseat, I walked the bag with the plate of pizza inside it (it was very annoying that Old School Pizzeria asked that we take food home that way as opposed to in an actual box) behind her. But, she turned in the doorway to take the bag and give us hugs goodbye; she clearly didn't want us to come inside. That was fine, I guess. We talked about getting together again sometime when we happen to be back in town, and maybe we will—although we are rarely in Olympia when it's not for a holiday family gathering. So, we'll see. In any case, overall it was a lovely day. I think Dad had a pretty good time, which was the whole goal. [posted 12:40pm]

Tammy and Erin's Wedding

I just realized that, as of yesterday, I have attended one wedding per year for the past three years: Lynn and Zephyr in 2023; Gabriel and Lea in 2024; Tammy and Erin in 2025. Side note: these three couples could not possibly be more different from each other. Well, among White Americans, anyway. Prior to 2023, I hadn't been to a wedding since Britni and David's in 2019, and not only are those two already divorced, Britni is now engaged to Carlos. To be fair, there were no weddings at all for a couple of years there because of covid; it's fairly likely there'd be one or two more I've attended without a pandemic occurring. Tammy is my paternal cousin. Aunt Penny is my dad's sister, the fourth-born out of five where my dad was the youngest. Tammy is the only child Aunt Penny ever had, and she was born in 1974, if I recall correctly. My memory is that she was two years older than me. And when we were kids, for a couple of years there I declared Tammy my favorite cousin, before Jennifer overtook that spot and ever left it. Tammy and I are Facebook friends, and we see each other at family events—she and Erin come to family holidays at Dad and Sherri's now more than they even used to, especially things like the New Year's Day gathering that they extend to the extended family. In our adult lives, though, Tammy and I have hardly ever been close. But! We've still been around each other once or twice a year for most of our adult lives. And Erin is an interesting figure, a really tall, huge guy who would be easy to stereotype as some kind of redneck buffoon on sight—he doesn't even have teeth. He literally went through the ceremony yesterday without teeth in his mouth (as did Aunt Penny, who, back when she did bother wearing her false teeth, used to suck them in and out of her mouth just to gross me out). But Erin in particular really challenges stereotypes, particularly of the uneducated working class. Erin, having married into a family (as in, my extended family) that is broadly very conservative, has been wildly outspoken against President Fuckwit on social media, constantly posted in support of Kamala Harris and how important it was to vote for her, and not only has been nothing but incredibly kind and friendly to Shobhit and me, but even outspoken in support of queer rights—he and Tammy came down to Seattle to watch the Pride Parade (we did not meet up). All of this made me feel very supported by them, which was what made it feel important to me that we show up for them, at their wedding. I'm not sure it would have been all that important to me otherwise, just because, as I just illustrated, we simply have never been all that close. It turns out I was not the only one to feel so supported by them, and thus felt it important to return the support: they asked Valerie (quick recap: Valerie is the late Auntie Rose's daughter, Auntie Rose having been Grandma McQuilkin's sister, making Valerie my dad's first cousin) to take the wedding photos for them. Valerie has far better camera equipment than any of the rest of us put together—which is to say, the rest of us just have our phones; Valerie has a large camera, an adjustable flash on top of it, a tripod, the works. I must say, she worked harder than anyone else at that wedding yesterday, and was truly on top of it when it came to getting requisite wedding photos. She was so busy it was exhausting just watching her; I think I saw her take a break only briefly once, to sit for a few minutes at our table to have some food. It was kind of hard to tell how Erin and Tammy thought the whole day went. Erin spent a lot of time helping put things together before the ceremony, as they were clearly relying on friends and family to put this all on—it was a low-key affair compared to most weddings, no readily identifiable hired professionals (Valerie was the one who kind of stood out on that front, and I would bet she did it on a volunteer basis). Tammy was in a room behind a closed door until the ceremony started, of course, although the door was often open and I could see Valerie just inside it, taking tons of pictures of Tammy who was around the corner behind the wall and out of sight. When she did finally come out, her gown actually was quite beautiful. Anyway, it's pretty clear Tammy and Erin love each other very much—they've actually been together ten years, and they got married the first time in April of 2015. I overheard Aunt Penny later, saying that the first wedding was "more for friends and less for family." But, within a couple of years they legally divorced for no reason other than being married barely put them over the threshold for getting state medical coverage for the medical condition Erin has. (I forget what it is, but he posts every once in a while about infusion appointments, I think maybe in some way cancer related. I should ask him to clarify sometime; I'm certain he'd happily tell me.) It seems they both have relatively decent jobs now, and I suppose that must mean they can get health insurance as a married couple, because being in a better financial position again is what made them decide to get remarried, and this time have a bigger wedding ceremony. It sounds like Erin works for a towing company. A coworker friend was there, I forget his name, but it turned out he was the one driving the tow truck ahead of us as Shobhit and I were driving up the road toward Floral Hall in Forest Park, in Everett—which we had driven to from Mimi and Steve's house in Mount Vernon yesterday morning. We had no idea the tow truck was actually a wedding guest. When we saw it, I joked, "Maybe Tammy's getting towed!" Something else I learned yesterday is that apparently Aunt Penny is living with Tammy and Erin—and, apparently, Tammy and Erin don't get along very well. Sherri kind of amused herself by baiting Aunt Penny into complaining about him, which appeared to be very easy to do. Shortly after the cutting of the cake, Aunt Penny came up to me and said, "Handsome husband!" I wasn't certain who she was talking about, and I said, "Who?" She pointed to Shobhit and said, "Him!" I laughed. "Oh, thanks." But then I added: "I wasn't sure if you were talking about him or Erin." Aunt Penny immediately said, "Oh god no! He's a pain in the ass!" I'm not sure what being a pain in the ass has to do with whether or not someone is handsome—and of course at a wedding, it's pretty typical for such talk to be about the groom—but it still cracked me up. To be fair, Shobhit was wearing a tie and a suit jacket, making him probably the most formally dressed of all the wedding guests. Earlier, I had a conversation with Dad and Sherri about how Tammy had married her first husband on the beach during the 2009 Family Reunion. Dad and Sherri were misremembering, thinking it was then that Tammy had married Erin, but as already noted, there was no extended family at Tammy and Erin's first wedding, which was ten years ago. The wedding to the first guy, which clearly did not last long, was 16 years ago. And I figured out from my Flickr tags that the first husband, who I remembered was much older than Tammy, was named Ed. Aunt Penny confirmed this, and then said, "He was an idiot!" Okay, then. Ed was an idiot and Erin is a pain in the ass. Got it! We also met Erin's two young sons, apparently from different mothers (neither of them Tammy, who has no children), I forget their names but you could sure see from their faces they were related to Erin. Ditto his sister, who went out of her way to show Shobhit and me a wedding photo on her phone of her lesbian daughter's wedding. It was a little bit of that typical thing of someone saying "Oh you're gay, I also know a gay person!"—but, it was also sweet, especially as it was one of her own children, and she was clearly very proud of her. She also was apparently just happy that her daughter found someone who makes her after a marriage to a husband who apparently sucked. I expected the ceremony to be brief, as Valerie had told me they were supposed to be out of the venue by 3:00—and the ceremony started at 1:00. And the ceremony was indeed brief, as was just about everything else. We were sitting to eat by around 2:00, and Dad and Sherri and Shobhit and I were all called outside in the middle of that by Valerie when she was ready to get photos of Tammy with the bride's side of the family—Aunt Penny, Dad, Sherri, Shobhit and me being the only ones of whom who made it. I had expected to see Jennifer there but she told me she "didn't RSVP soon enough" and so was going to visit Matthew's parents on Anderson Island instead. This made me think the wedding guest list had been all booked up, but it appears Jennier just used that as an excuse to do this other thing instead, largely because she usually has to say no to that invite due to having other plans. But, There couldn't have been more than 50 guests, and there was a lot of empty chairs. Shobhit and I helped collapse them and stack them to return to the venue shortly after 3:00. In fact, at some point during the ceremony, someone decided the front row of chairs was too close to the podium, and picked up all the front-row chairs and moved them to the back. This was clearly unbeknownst to the wedding party, who had hidden the rings under two chairs, one on each side of the aisle, for someone to find and become an impromptu "wedding bearer" during the ceremony. Someone found the ring on the other side pretty quickly, but it took a couple of minutes for the one on our side to be found. It got to a point where we were told the ring should be in the second row, which was where Dad, Sherri, Shobhit and I were all sitting. We lifted up all the chairs and there was no ring. But then Dad lifted the chair in front of him—which was right next to where Aunt Penny was sitting, the only one in that row—and it was there. It was actually now in the first row, because people had previously moved the front row to the back. Anyway, this was why Dad got up and handed Erin the box with the ring in it, which is what you see happening in the photo at the top of this post. As for the food, this was a little bit tricky too: prepared sandwiches as well as platters with meat slices, cheese and grapes were set out, and I helped in setting out some of them. All of them had meat, so Shobhit didn't touch any of them. I took some of the cheese cubes and grapes, just taking some that hadn't touched meat. Having meat anywhere on the tray makes it a no-go for Shobhit. They also had tamales, though, which had been getting heated in the kitchen ovens; Shobhit helped take those out. There were three kinds of those: chicken, pork, and cheese. So, Shobhit and I did have cheese and vegetable tamales to eat. I had three of them and Shobhit had four. They were from a local bakery (it seemed odd that a bakery would be making tamales) and they were quite good, probably better than any of the few other tamales I have ever had. The cake was all right. Nice raspberry filling. Shobhit resisted getting a slice because of the points, and when he asked me if it was worth it, I said, "Not really." If it had been amazing, I would have said yes. As it was, it was fine, but nothing to write home about. Better was the design itself: the cake was undeniably very pretty. Shortly before we left, I signed the wedding guest book—the second guest book I had signed in the same day, actually; as Mimi keeps a guest book in their guest room in Mount Vernon. Shobhit and I headed out not long after 3:00. It was probably around 3:30, I would guess; getting everyone out of the venue by 3:00 was clearly not happening. The biggest reason we arrived as early as we did was because Valerie had texted to ask, and said she might rope me into helping her with the photography stuff. That never happened, although I also never explicitly asked if she'd like help with anything, which I should have done. I feel a little bad about that. And we could have stayed a bit longer, but Shobhit was ready to go, and for once I kind of was at the same time he was—we're about to see Dad and Sherri again today for Easter anyway. I'll also see Valerie again on Tuesday next week, when we hike up Tiger Mountain for my Birth Week. The wedding, overall, was lovely. I'm glad we went. [posted 10:02am]