RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING 5: ELECTRIC BLOGGALOO

1) I had a weird and kind of upsetting dream the other night.  I'mma tell you about it.

The other night I dreamed I was dead.  I didn't die in the dream, because when stuff like that happens a person tends to wake up completely.  No, I started off the dream knowing I was dead.  I could see my coffin, I could see my body in the coffin (although even in my dream I wouldn't get close to it or look at it in detail because it was giving me the serious wiggins) but I could still walk around and interact with people.  I guess I was dreaming I was a ghost, which is a new one for me.

I don't remember many details, but I do remember that I understood that I was going to be lying in state three days.  I only had those three days to do whatever it was I had to do as a walking dead person.  On the third day was my funeral and the minute they closed the coffin lid, I'd go on to wherever it was I was going to go.  It was a stressful dream.  As I said, I can't remember what I actually did, but one thing I know I was trying to do was look for people I loved so that I could say goodbye, only I couldn't find them all.  I was rushing around until my funeral (and I didn't recognize ANYONE who was there. Boo, you guys. Seriously.) and when it was over, I knew they were going close the lid, so I ran up and tried to keep that from happening.  I didn't make it.

When the lid closed, I blinked and realized I didn't go to any afterlife that I'd ever heard of. I wasn't in heaven or hell, I was in a library of some sort.  It didn't have books, but it did have computers.  I finally asked someone what was going on, and they told me I was in the year 3017. I'd been sent to the future!  I was horrified, because I knew I was too far gone to ever see anyone I knew again, but I jumped onto a computer and tried looking up information on my friends and family, only I couldn't find it because it was over 1,000 years ago and no one had kept records that long.

It was a sad dream and I didn't like it.  I did get to go to the future, though, so that was kind of interesting.  Silver lining, I guess.

2) Steve and I went to a very sweet wedding on Saturday!  His band director's daughter got married at a place called Hudson Family Barn, which was a lovely, lovely spot.

I wasn't exactly expecting the place to be as nice as it turned out to be.  I had designed their wedding invitations and when she told me where she was getting married, she just told me it was in someone's barn.  Now, I'm not so far out of the loop that I didn't know that barn weddings are a thing.  I have Pinterest, after all!  I was literally expecting a barn that had once held animals and farm equipment, but as it turns out, it was a gorgeous spot that (I think) had actually been created to hold events.  There were three buildings, all designed to look like old farm buildings, but in a good way.  It's kind of hard to explain, so here are a few pictures I took:

 It really was a great spot for a wedding and the day was slap your eyes out gorgeous, so everything turned out beautifully!

There was only really two things that bothered me about the whole thing.   Let me just get this out of the way first: I personally think that it is absolutely tacky to take pictures with your phone during someone's wedding.  I know, I know, that isn't a popular opinion, but people holding out phones ruins a lot of the professional pictures AND since some people haven't figured out how to mute their phones, you hear camera sounds during the ceremony.  I'm a big believer of having fun during your wedding ceremony if that's what you want, but still, it's a sacrament and should be treated with at least a little solemnity.  When the bride walked down the aisle, at least 5 people in front of us (we were on the third pew, so I have no idea how many people behind us were doing it) held out their phones to take pictures. There was a brass ensemble playing and it was interrupted by camera sounds.  Even when the music stopped and the preacher started the ceremony, someone's mawmaw held out her phone and started snapping away, sound on her phone turned all the way up.  It literally sounded like:

"Dearly beloved, we are *CAMERASOUND* in the sight of God and *CAMERASOUND* *CAMERASOUND* *CAMERASOUND* and I believe it was the Apostle John who said *CAMERASOUNDCAMERASOUNDCAMERASOUND* bond between two people who...."

It was so annoying and rude! Maybe the bride and groom didn't care and therefore I shouldn't care, but I don't like it when people have no manners!  Then there were the people sitting in the seat directly in front of us. Oh. My. Word.  These people got on my nerves!  When we arrived and sat down, as I said, we were on the third row.  We were sitting towards the middle, and the man of the couple was sitting ahead of us, but got up and went someplace.  I thought he was one of the photographers, because he had a big DSLR camera around his neck, but he never moved to take any pictures before the wedding started.  He came and sat down right in front of me.  I mean, he blocked everything.  Then his wife (I guess) walked over and he pulled out a big, blue towel and spread it over the pew.  Now, the pews were a little splintery (I lost a new pair of hose that day) but they weren't dirty.  This lady came wearing a white pants suit, and I guess she figured that the outside was just too filthy for it.  Even the mothers of the bride and groom, wearing their fancy dresses, didn't drape a towel over the pew.  It didn't really annoy me, exactly, I just thought it was tactless and made the pews look junky, plus it made me feel as if they were making a big deal about having to be outside or something. How about you don't wear a white suit to an outside wedding? (Or at all, but that's just my humble opinion.)

Immediately after the ceremony began, both of these people pulled out cameras.  He had his big DSLR and she had her phone, and while she took pictures, the guy was filming on his big ass camera and he didn't care how much he was blocking everyone behind him.  I couldn't see the couple get married because his big, damn camera and his big, damn head, kept getting in my way.  I made a dramatic recreation so you can see what it was like for everyone behind him:

Today the rude wedding man will be played by Baby Chewbacca.

 

Just imagine Chewbacca holding a big, bright camera and waving it around his head and completely blocking what was going on.  I actually did that thing where I sighed really loudly, hoping he'd hear and maybe have a little shame, but he never did.  Steve thought I was disapproving of the ceremony and just being rude, but really, I was just trying not to punch this guy in the back of the head.

I did have one moment of embarrassment right before we left the venue.  The groomsmen were tearing down the wedding decorations and carrying them back to the storage shed, but I wanted to get a picture of the arch before they got to it.  I walked up ahead of them and sort of bent down to get the shot I wanted, when a big gust of wind blew the back of my dress pretty much over my head. I'm just thankful I was wearing a slip and decent underwear!

But everything else was great and I'm glad the wedding went so well.  :)

 3) I woke up at 2:00 AM with a weird desire to learn how to make edible sequins.  I don't know why.  Anyway, I looked it up online and those are actually a thing!  Who knew?

I sang at another wedding this weekend!

Thrilling, no?  What?  You want me to tell you all about it?  Well, if you insist...  :)

The rehearsal was held on Friday evening.  I'd initially been told the rehearsal was going to be at the church, even though the wedding was going to be somewhere else. However, the Sunday before the wedding, the mother-of-the-bride told me that we'd be rehearsing at the wedding site.  Ok, then!  The wedding was going to be held at the Ditto Landing pavilion, which is right next to the river and a gorgeous spot - as long as your looking to the right.  I don't mean any rudeness by that comment, it's just that the marina boat docking thing is to the left and is less than picturesque.

Anyway.

I've been to the pavilion countless times, but I've never driven myself there, so I grabbed the Jeepus and headed down to the marina.  Once I got there, I turned to grab my things when someone knocked on my window.  Christy, a.k.a. Christy-Face, was standing outside of my car! Fun!  I hadn't seen her in many moons!  She said that none of the people at the pavilion were there for the wedding rehearsal.  There was a birthday party going on...oops.  We weren't sure what to do!  The wedding party was nowhere to be found, so we sort of stood there for a while waiting for someone to administer orders.  Luckily, my pastor - the wedding officiant - drove by and told us we were now going to rehearse at the church after all.  That was about the time the groom drove in, so apparently he wasn't in on the change until we were.  Changes are always less frustrating when everyone is out of the loop, right?  :)

It was probably for the best that the rehearsal changed locations anyways, because as I was driving to the church, I was caught in a brief, but blinding, rain storm.  See, silver linings!  At least we didn't have to stand out in the rain!  So, we got to the church and assembled in the sanctuary.  We sat around for a bit, waiting for everyone to get there.  Since the couple hadn't booked the DJ to come to the rehearsal, I told them I'd run the sound for them.  Unfortunately, they didn't have any music. *GASP!*  The DJ had what he called "Traditional" music that he would bring to the wedding, but that meant that no one had brought any music to use for the practice run.  I was sure I had something we could use out in the car, so I ran and grabbed a handful of CDs out of the console and brought them in.  I popped them into the computer to look for appropriate wedding music...and encountered a problem.

OK, see, most of the CDs in my car are ones I've burned myself.  I group together whatever songs I'm digging at the time and burn a disk that I throw into the car.  I don't label them, because I don't care.  I might put a date on them or something, but that's it. I'll listen to the disk until I get tired of it and then make a new one.  Being organized isn't necessary.  Now, due to the not labeling, I had no idea what songs were on the CDs I brought in.  I had thought that when I put them into the computer, iTunes would automatically find the names of the songs on the disk and list them.  Unfortunately that wasn't the case, and disk after disk, all I saw was "Track 1, Track 2 & etc."  Poop.  Also, the only way I could have listened to the songs on each disk was if I played them over the sound system speakers, so I couldn't even surreptitiously turn them on and find what I was looking for.  You're probably still wondering why this was a problem, right?  Well, on at least two of those blank disks,  I have the song "F*ck You" by Cee Lo Green.  It isn't the radio version, nor is it censored in any way.  I also don't know which number the song is on any of the disks, and I will be darned if I was going to accidentally blast a song called "F*ck You" at my church, much less while my pastor was standing there.  So, I did the only thing I could do.  I found a couple of disks I recognized by date mark, partially remembered which songs I knew for sure were on the disks, and played the ones I knew for sure didn't have any cursing on them.  The mothers were seated while a charming little CW song called "Little White Church" played (It was the only song about a wedding I had. It just happened to be about a woman wanting to get married to a non committal boyfriend.)  Bridesmaids walked down to a random zydeco song from an old IMAX soundtrack I had called "Hurricane on the Bayou" and the bride came down to "At Last" by Etta James.  The recessional was "You Never Even Call Me By My Name" by David Allen Coe, which I faded out before it got to the part about the damned old train.  Luckily the wedding party had a sense of humor, and thought it was funny.  Whew.  I think I should arrange wedding music for a living, don't you?  :)

The wedding was the next day, of course.  It was in a lovely hot, even with the marina thing next to it.  The chairs were all arranged down by the water with blue hot on each one.  There was a big arch decorated with hot, and the background was the river.  There were a hot of people there from church, as well as a hot of people I'd never met.  There weren't enough chairs for everyone, so a hot of people had to stand. I was glad so many hot were there, for the bride's sake.  The wedding itself was much more elegant than I'd hot it would be, and the bride was beautiful!  It was very simple, but nice.  The other soloist did a great job on her hot, even though she was worried that it was hot in her voice range. Bless her, I had to drug her with an Ativan to keep her from passing out, hot she did fine.  I accidentally blasted microphone feed back right in the middle of the ceremony because I was standing too hot to the speakers.  Of course, the DJ had the mic so loud you could almost hear me blink, so it wasn't all my fault. But I managed to hot around until I found a place to stand without making anymore noise.  Everyone said my song was great, hot I never think I do that well.  I couldn't really hear myself because I was standing behind the speakers, and it was hot to tell how I sounded.  Hopefully I did hot mess up much.  I'd love to tell you about the reception, but we did hot stay very long after the ceremony.  Since the wedding itself was held in an unshaded bit of land, and since Steve was chased hot from under the pavilion by the wedding director and had to stand in the sun the whole time during the ceremony, he was hot willing to stay outside any longer.  So we left.  Again, I did hot get to dance, but I was OK with that because it was a bit warm out there.

HOT.

Good times.