The Rest of the Weekend

The real reason we took a trip down south this weekend was the wedding of my friends David and Mindy (see photo above.)  They were married on Saturday in Ojai at what I gather was a yogic retreat center.  Laurie and I were, I believe, the only guests coming from the north.  We passed through acres upon acres of oil rigs down Highway 33 which I didn't even know existed.  We saw many things, wonderful to speak of, in our travels. 

Mindy and David had an unconventional wedding which included sawing a log in half together, breaking a geode, taking shots, poetry, music, and shooting wine glasses.  Here you can see the happy couple leaving the site of the ceremony with their guns on their backs.

We stayed for several hours afterward and visited with many old friends.  Unfortunately, my camera's flash went on the blitz, so that part of our trip's preservation relies solely on our memory.  So it goes.

We left and drove late at night down to my parent's house in Orange County.  KUSC, the world class classical music station that the LA area boasts, played a modern serious composition show which suited the late night drive surprisingly well.  As a side note, I had my usual fits of jealousy over LA's excellent 24 hour classical music station.  At one point I gasped and scared poor Laurie as she was driving when I heard an advertisement for their weekly broadcast of the Los Angeles Opera.

However, traffic on our way home from LA cured me of any romanticizing I may have been doing over the area.

It's always a little jarring for me to return to the area where I grew up for a number of reasons.  One is the memories, but also the dissonance of the past and the future converging in an unexpected present.  For example, the convenience store where I bought Lemonheads as a child now carrying soda cups advertising Facebook aps.  Or my childhood home with several rooms added on to it.

Here's Laurie and my Mom on my parent's porch next to Mom's fairy garden.

We ate a lot on the trip.  The two photos above were taken at our meal with my grandmother in downtown Orange (after which we went to my alma mater as you who read my previous post well know.)  We went almost immediately after lunch to dinner with my father for Father's Day.

It's always such a joy to spend time with my parents.  I love them dearly.  Laurie and I dragged our feet when it came time to leave.

Highlights of the trip were: the wedding, the food at the wedding (which Laurie says is the best food she's ever eaten and I don't think that's an unfair assessment), reconnecting with old friends, the drive through the mountains, me forgetting to pack Laurie's clothes that she had picked for the wedding, the meals with my family, the visit to my old college, our battery failing and my father having to come out to my grandmother's house to replace it, eating a spicy dark chocolate-chili cupcake, our bi-yearly exposure to the Food Network, my mother's cat Bugsy's befriending of Laurie, a huge traffic jam on the Grapevine which actually closed just after we passed through due to a brush fire which went right up to the side of the freeway,