{"id":253,"date":"2006-06-08T12:07:00","date_gmt":"2006-06-08T12:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/2006\/06\/08\/wedding-buffett-origmai-dream\/"},"modified":"2006-06-08T12:07:00","modified_gmt":"2006-06-08T12:07:00","slug":"wedding-buffett-origmai-dream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/2006\/06\/08\/wedding-buffett-origmai-dream\/","title":{"rendered":"wedding, buffett, origmai, dream"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This will be a long post, got lots to cover. <\/p>\n<p>First up, some cool news&#8230; my little sister is getting married!   Her boyfriend proposed to her in a hot air balloon and since then it&#8217;s been non-stop wedding maddness.   It won&#8217;t be until november, but she&#8217;s got a lot of stuff to do.   Fortunatly, our mom and her fiance are &#8220;planners&#8221; and should be able to help with much of the arrangements.   I&#8217;ve been asked to be an usher and do some kind of origami for the reception tables.   So, a big blog shout-out to my sister and her future husband.<\/p>\n<p>Next up, a couple of days vacation.  I took a couple of days off to go to Pittsburgh with some friends and see Jimmy Buffett in concert.   Strangely enough, the concert itself wasn&#8217;t as good as the last one I went to, but the events surrouding it were interesting.<\/p>\n<p>1. Parking.   We had to park literally as far away from the entrance as you could get.   The only thing further away was the sewage treatment plant and a field.     Being not a big fan of other humans, I was just as happy to avoid the crowds.<\/p>\n<p>2. This also meant that there were no porta-toilets out there either.  So we, and pretty much everyone else, had to use the field.   Everyone was fairly cool about it.   The women usually went in groups, or had a guy go with them to stand guard.   The guys, myself included, tried to maintain some decorum based on how much alchol in their system.    Since I don&#8217;t drink, I was a perfect gentleman as much as can be possible when peeing in a field.  <\/p>\n<p>2b. There was also a couple that stood in the field for about 15-20 minutes, smoking weed.  I was a little puzzled by this, then realized they&#8217;d &#8220;snuck off to the bathroom&#8221; to get high.     We laughed at them. <\/p>\n<p>2c. A helicopter kept circling the area.   So, I might have made the local news while taking care of business in the field.  Eh, it&#8217;s buffett&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>3. The trek to the entrance wasn&#8217;t bad, but we were stopped at the front gate and checked for digital cameras.   I had to unroll the blanket I was carrying and lift my shirt.   Of course, I could have had a camera in any of the dozen pockets in my pants.   Or I could have, potentially, had a camera phone like everyone else.   I&#8217;d really like to see them stop people from bringing in their cell phones &#8211; the rioting would be hilarious to watch from a safe distance.<\/p>\n<p>4. We found a good spot, but didn&#8217;t realize it was the nexus of all beachballs.   At a buffett concert, it&#8217;s customary to throw around beachballs.  And we got more than our fairshare.   I&#8217;m fairly alert and didn&#8217;t get hit unless I was ready for it, but others in my group tired of it quickly.<\/p>\n<p>5. So the concert starts and then the thing that everyone said wasn&#8217;t going to happen, happened.  It began to rain.   Now, I&#8217;m a big one for being prepared and despite words to the otherwise, I had a rain poncho.  So, when it started to rain, what did I do?   <\/p>\n<p>I left my poncho in my pocket and took off my shirt.   Hey, it&#8217;s buffett &#8211; why would I care about a little rain?   I tucked my shirt into the back of my pants and enjoyed it.    Seems silly, but I had a plan.   A wet poncho would be difficult to deal with the rest of the night and my skin would dry much faster than my shirt.   So, if I got cold later, I could put on a dry shirt and be fine. <\/p>\n<p>After a bit, the rain stopped and I kept my shirt off and enjoyed the weather and the show.<\/p>\n<p>6. Later in the evening, but before it got really dark, I decided to head to the restroom.   I&#8217;m not a fan of public restrooms in general and due to some amazing bladder control and careful fluid intake, I&#8217;ve never had to pee in a trough.<\/p>\n<p>For those that have not seen the inside of a men&#8217;s restroom in a large public venue &#8211; it&#8217;s not pretty.    There was a long line to get into the restroom, then a line to get to the long trough&#8217;s on either side of the room.  I found a spot that was only 2 deep and waited patiently.  One guy couldn&#8217;t wait and was peeing in a sink.    The guy in front of me was having trouble walking and nearly fell over after he lost his balance as he zipped up.   I caught him and helped push him in the general direction of the door. <\/p>\n<p>I took care of my business and made my way to the exit.    Later I heard a fight had broken out just after I left.   Crazy.<\/p>\n<p>7. I got back to the group without much trouble and was in plenty of time for the &#8220;Fins&#8221; song, which is amazing to see, and the &#8220;Volcano&#8221; which is fun to sing along with.<\/p>\n<p>We left before the end of the show and made it out of the parking lot without much trouble &#8211; though our driver insisted on checking his cell-phone messages while trying to dodge pedestrians.   Could have been ugly, but we were okay.<\/p>\n<p>The next day was the drive back and a quiet evening at home.<\/p>\n<p>New topic:  Origami.    Second tier of the project is done, I made good progress on tier three, but I think I&#8217;m going to need to do some more folding.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, I had a dream last night that a system of travel had been created that involved reducing a person to dust, then putting them in a canister that bank tellers use &#8211; then sending then at high speeds through tubes or slower by UPS.   At the other end they were re-hydrated and went about their lives without trouble.   I used the system to move back into a college dorm-room since I was apparently going back to school.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ll that&#8217;s it for now, lots to catch up on.  Back to work&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\"><img width='1' height='1' src='https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/7938355-114977044727870167?l=approximatelyequalto.blogspot.com' alt='' \/><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This will be a long post, got lots to cover. First up, some cool news&#8230; my little sister is getting married! Her boyfriend proposed to her in a hot air balloon and since then it&#8217;s been non-stop wedding maddness. It won&#8217;t be until november, but she&#8217;s got a lot of stuff to do. Fortunatly, our [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_bluesky_dont_syndicate":"","_bluesky_syndication_accounts":"","_bluesky_syndication_text":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}