June 8-10 my favorite baseball team, the Chicago Cubs will traveling to the Twin cities to play my favorite American league team the Minnesota Twins. Because they play in different leagues, the Cubs and Twins do not play each other very often. And it is even less often that the Cubs play in Minnesota. In fact, this will be the first time the Cubs have played in the Twins new two year old stadium Target Field. 

Target Field is not one of the 14 major league ballparks I have been to, however I have been to the Twins old park the Metrodome but that was not for a Cubs-Twins game. One of my goals in life is to see as many ballparks as I can. And this year, both teams are among the worst in baseball. In fact, before Cubs won their last two games, they had the worst record in all of baseball. But, because the Cubs beat the San Diego Padres the last two games, the Twins now are tied for the worst record in baseball (with the aforementioned Padres, ironically). I was looking on Stubhub for tickets to the Cubs-Twins game on Saturday June 9, but the tickets are not nearly as cheap as I expected. See with Stubhub, fans resell tickets and the prices have been known to drop to jaw dropping low prices. For example, tickets for tomorrow’s Twins-A’s game are going for as low as $3.50 for tickets that are normally sold for $41.00. I do expect as we get closer to June 9 the price should drop.

I’ve got a fairly new car that gets 40 miles to the gallon and have been hankerin to take a road trip ever since I bought the damn thing last September. So as you can see, I’m very tempted to go. If I do this, I will be crazy and spontaneous about it. For example, I don’t expect to get anybody to go with me, so I will probably not tell anybody and just drive to the game and send them a picture showing where I’m at. I want to do this on the cheap, but it is a seven hour drive to the Twin Cities, so I would probably drive up about five or six hours on Friday night after work, get a cheap hotel (probably near Eau Claire, WI), and then go to the game the next day and drive home right after, putting me back home right around midnight. Of course, another option is to go to either Friday night’s game or Sunday’s game, however Friday’s game would require me taking a day off work but not getting a hotel as I could drive home after the game (and get home at like six or seven in the morning). Kinda nuts I know, but hey, I like to do goofy things like this.

Yesterday for the Memorial Day weekend, I had a BBQ at my house. Those of you not located in the midwest, you might not know that it was blistering hot yesterday, in fact I think it was the hottest day of the year so far and honestly, we probably won’t have many days, if any, the rest of the year that were hotter than yesterday. I want to say it got up to about 98 degrees out. All hail the man who invented air conditioning!

As hot as it was though, it didn’t prevent me from doing the stuff I normally do over the holiday weekend. Such as play basketball in my backyard. The first game I played was against my friend’s 17 year old son. You would think he would whip my ass being in far better shape than me and certainly able to handle the heat better than me. But, I actually wound up beating him. When it was over though, I went inside and proceeded to sweat my ever living balls off. It’s amazing how when you play something in the heat how you don’t sweat as hard playing as you do when you are done playing and are in the air conditioning. I’m sure there is a not so healthy reason for this, but all I know is that the AC felt good.

Later on after the sun went down and it wasn’t nearly as hot we played some two on two. Somehow, my team managed to win as well. And I was not nearly as hot or tired after that game as I was after the earlier game. And while I started that game drunk, I ended up sober. I must not have drank enough.

Speaking of drinking, we made something called Rummy Gummies which are exactly what you think they are. See you take a bottle of rum, in this case a bottle of 100 proof Captain Morgan’s spiced rum. You put a shitload of Gummy Bears in a container and you guessed it, add the rum. You then let it sit for five days. We also had some Coca-Cola flavored Gummy Bears which kinda tasted like rum and coke. Good stuff. And after marinating for five days, they were pretty potent. Hell I could have gotten drunk off of those alone.

Every year a bunch of us play baseball on Memorial Day. Today was not as hot as yesterday but it was very windy which caused for quite a bit of sand and dirt to be whipped up for most of the game. It got so bad I felt like I was in the dust bowl back in the 1930s. But I digress. My brother and I are usually the captains and pick teams. Well this year I thought I picked a fairly good team. When we jumped out to a 13-1 after the first inning, I thought we had a very good team. But, unfortunately any team I’m on sadly has me on the team as well. And I spent the better part of the game fucking up right field, left field, and center field so much that I was nearly solely responsible for my team blowing the game.

Shit, even on the bases I fucked up as well. One of the times when I managed to get a hit, the ball got away from the guy I hit it to and I decided to run to second. When I got there, I was greeted with a “what the fuck are you doing” from my teammate. So then I got caught in a run down which eventually wound up with me being safe at second but not before I fell and scrapped up my shoulder. Fortunately I did not land on the shoulder I separated some 11 years ago. Also during the game at one point I must have landed awkwardly on my left heel because now it is sore as hell and I don’t know what I did to it.

This evening I had a wake to go to for my friend’s grandma. Spring/summer wakes are usually a showcase of just how socially fucking clueless people can be. I say this because when you go to a warm weather wake, you are always bound to see assholes who wear shorts. In this case, I saw a few wearing shorts and even flip flops. Hell one guy I saw was even wearing a fucking Budweiser shirt. Although it was a button down shirt, seriously, a Budweiser shirt? Come on people do you think so little of the departed that you can’t even bring yourself to put on a pair of pants no matter how fucking hot it is out. And it wasn’t even like it was teenagers or younger people who did it, hell the people that were dressed like this were at least in their 30s. Hell, I’m pretty damn socially clueless myself most of the time, but even I know to dress up for a wake.

Anywho, I hope you all had a good weekend.

Have you heard about this “pastor” in North Carolina who wants to lock away gays from the rest of society until they all die off and in his brilliant brain, do away with gays forever? In his words, if you isolated all of the gays from the rest of society they can not reproduce so therefore soon they will all die off. Oh, sure we would drop food off from above via helicopter, I mean we can’t risk interacting with the gays, after all you might catch gay from them. But eventually they will die off and the world will never have to deal with another gay person again. They will become extinct rendering the world safe from the deadly scourge that is homosexuality. As we know, it is just not possible for more gays to come into the world after all of them die off.

Now I think this pastor might be onto something. I mean why stop at gays. See, it kind of reminds me of old people. They really need to do the same thing with old people. You slowly gather them all up, since old people never do anything quick, and put them all on an isolated island to live out their lives. We could drop food, laxatives, hearing aides and dental cream off via helicopter every now and then until they are all dead. After that, we will never have to deal with another old person again; the world will permanently be devoid of the elderly for the rest of humanity. No longer will we have to deal with cars driving 10 miles under in the left lane with their turn signal on for hundreds of miles. No longer will we have to put up with having to wait in line behind a senior citizen as they try to pick an ice cream at 31 Flavors. And as for social security? Problem solved!

It is also kind of how we have solved America’s crime problems by creating prisons and locking away all of our prisons. I don’t know about you but have you noticed that crime has completely vanished since America opened it’s first prison in Philadelphia just a few short years ago, back in 1790. I mean if locking away criminals works for crime, than certainly it has to work for ending homosexuality, right?

And speaking of locking people away, remember mental illnesses and insane people? I know, so do I mean I haven’t had to deal with one in at least four and a half hours all thanks to the institutionalization of the mentally unhealthy.

Wow what a concept; isolating the least liked people from the rest of society until they all die. I mean this pastor is so brilliant, it’s a wonder why nobody has ever heard of him before. Here he is preaching in front of what sounded like a TON of people, at least 10 or 20………….people. I guess now that he has solved many of society’s problems we should be hearing how is going to find a cure for cancer, global climate change, the national debt, oh the list goes on and on. Thank you, Pastor Shit for Fucking Brains, the world owes you a debt of gratitude. I’m thinking the only way we can pay you back for all you have done for us is to separate you from the rest of the world and keep you isolated from any other human being so you can reproduce and create more of your kind.

As you probably know, the NATO summit was held yesterday and today in Chicago. I live in a town about a half hour southwest of the city without traffic. With traffic it’s like two weeks. So as you might expect, I heard a lot about the summit for the past week or so. And with the summit, comes the inevitable protesters that come with every NATO summit. And being that Chicago is also the home of President Barack Obama the security seemed to be tighter and the protesters larger in number.

Last week, Chicago police foiled a plot of a few guys who were planning to set off bombs at Obama’s reelection headquarters and the mayor’s home. And then over the weekend, another couple of people were arrested for plotting more attacks. We knew the potential for out of control protests and riots were possible. Saturday night there were some protests but nothing too out of hand. When Sunday rolled around, the summit started without much incident. But as the day went on and it got hotter and hotter out, well things started to get more heated in downtown Chicago. By late afternoon, the city was a tinderbox waiting to blow.

I turned on the news right about 5P.M. to find a group of over a thousand protesters going against hundreds, no probably thousands of police in riot gear. The police had ordered the people to disperse on multiple occasions and now were trying to push the protesters back as far as possible. It was then that they started to hit the people with clubs to try and push them back. A few minutes later, the cops started to put on their tear gas suits. They had a very large group of people cornered against a two-three story brick building.

The whole time, I kept thinking back to the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle. For those of you not familiar, there were protests that eventually started to turn violent. Police decided to use tear gas to help control the tens of thousands of protesters with disastrous results. Soon there were riots on the streets and mass chaos in the city.

The city of Chicago was thinking about the same thing as well. They instructed police to be very careful and to show restraint. While I certainly do not condone the action of the police who were swinging those clubs, I admire their discipline and patience in holding back from doing something rash. Both Saturday and Sunday there were protesters who were yelling and swearing at police who just stood there and took it. Even when people started to throw things, the police held their ground and did not resort to tear gas or anything more than the clubs.

I’ve always had mixed feelings about police and protesters. On one hand, the people have a right to peacefully protest. If they are not causing a problem, than why should they not be allowed to protest. On the other hand, if the police tell people to disperse than why aren’t they leaving? When it gets to the level that it got to yesterday, if you haven’t left after the police have told you multiple times to leave, well than you can’t be too surprised if the police arrest you.

After it was all said and done though, the protests and threats came and went without serious incident. But, there was a time there for a couple of hours yesterday when I thought we were going to have another Seattle on our hands. Cooler heads prevailed and for that we can all be thankful.

For the most part, nobody who reads this on a semi regular basis is going to have much interest in reading this post, but I wanted to write it anyway. As you may or may not know, I’m a huge Chicago Cubs fan and my favorite current baseball player, Kerry Wood retired a couple of days ago. The funny part is that he wasn’t my favorite player so much for his performance on the field as much as it was for who he is as person.

Wood started with the Cubs in 1998. In just his fifth big league start, he tied the all time major league record for strikeouts in a game when he struck out 20 Houston Astros on May 6, 1998. I can still remember watching that game on my tiny t.v. in my bedroom on that damp and cold early May day. I turned the game on in about the fifth inning and he had 10 strikeouts which was good, but nothing too unheard of. As the game went on though he never slowed down. Soon it was the ninth inning and myself and I’m sure everybody at the game was nervous with excitement at the potential of his accomplishment. What made it even more amazing was that he was only 20 years old at the time. In fact, he became the first player in history to have as many strikeouts as his age.

After that season, the injuries started. He missed the entire 1999 season with elbow surgery. The rest of his career was sadly plagued by injuries filled in with pockets of brilliance such as the 2003 season when he helped pitch the Cubs to the National League Championship Series. The Cubs won their first playoff series since 1908 that year when they beat the Atlanta Braves in the National League Division Series and I remember being giddy with excitement at what the future held for him and this team. Sadly (and equally as frustrating) though, they have not even won a single playoff game since that year.

Off the field though Wood remained a class act. After losing the deciding game seven of the NLCS in 2003, he stood in front of his locker with tears in his eyes and blamed himself for the loss. As the years went by and the injuries piled up, he felt more and more like he owed it to the Cubs to keep playing for them out of a sense of loyalty for them sticking by him through the injuries. After the 2008 season though, the Cubs general manager, Jim Hendry  told him that he could get more money elsewhere and he should leave. So he signed with the Cleveland Indians.

In December 2010, Cubs legend Ron Santo died. Even though he was not on the team, Wood still went to the funeral. It was there that he and Hendry struck up a conversation and Wood agreed to come back to the Cubs for about nine million dollars less than he could have gotten from other teams. He said he loved it here, for him Chicago was home in spite of being born and raised in Texas. He also started a foundation here and said he would be spending a lot of time here working with the foundation anyway so he might as well play here too.

This year was a rough year for him, not just rough but awful to be honest. So Friday word leaked that he would retire after his next game. Fittingly enough, after striking out the only hitter he faced, he was taken out of the game to a rousing, standing ovation. Just as he got right in front of the dugout, his six year old son ran out and gave him  a hug in which was one of the more touching and better moments in all my years of watching the Cubs.

Wood in many respects, represented everything that it means to be a Cub or a Cub fan. Lots of promise and hope that melted into heartbreak and unfulfilled potential. Through it all though, he never gave up. He kept fighting and battling through all those injuries to keep coming back to the Cubs. He loved being a Cub and wanted to be here more than anything, which in sports these days is pretty damn rare. For him it truly wasn’t about money. Farewell Kid K, hope to see you around town.

Today I took part in one of them Adopt a Highway things in which you go out and pick up trash along side of the road. It is always amazing to me the type of things you find on the side of the road and also the fact that there are just so many inconsiderate fucking assholes who think it is a good idea to throw their shit out the window as they drive. You know, because leaving that empty bottle in the car until you get to where you are going is too much to ask. It’s actually funny though because when you think about it, taking the time to unroll the window and pick the trash up and throw it out the window is probably more work than actually carrying it to the garbage after you get out of the car, assuming the garbage is on your way into the building or house.

But this shit you find while doing something like this is nuts. Of course, you have your run of the mill things like bottles, cups, wrappers and stuff like that. But what is really amazing are things like shoes or gloves. And it is never a pair of shoes or a pair of gloves. It is always just one shoe. Seriously, who the fuck loses one shoe? And why don’t they take the time to pull over and get it. I dunno, but if I spent $100 for a pair of Nikes if I lose one of them out the damn car window the first thing I would do is probably sit there dumbfounded as to how the fuck I lost a shoe out the window. Next I would pull the fuck over and get the damn shoe. But that does bring up a good point. How the hell does somebody lose a shoe out the window anyway? 

There are other things you find too. Like car parts. Or signs. Or wires. Or all different sorts of things. I would imagine some of the things fall off the back of trucks while in transit but it still doesn’t mean that it is not a bit odd to find and old brake pad on the side of the road. I’ve got to wonder what these people think when they get to their destination and discover that half the shit they had in the back of the pickup truck is missing.

Now losing something in transit is an accident. What really pisses me right the fuck off is the people who litter. Seriously, what the fuck type of people are these? Did mommy not teach them how to clean up after themselves? Do they just not give a rat’s dick about the poor SOB who has to clean up after them? Do they not have any pride in how their local roads look? These are the type of people who probably don’t shower on a regular basis. They probably have no fucking manners and when they eat out at a restaurant leave the table a total fucking mess because, hey, “cleaning up after me is somebody else’s problem.” They probably routinely take a shit in public restrooms and don’t bother to flush afterwards. You know how sometimes public bathrooms are a disgusting mess with piss and shit on the floors and toilet seat? Well I’m sure it is these fuckers who are doing it. And if you are one of those assholes that throw shit out the window, well fuck you. And stop damnit, you are an adult and we are trying to run a society here.

On the other hand, for volunteering, I now get to commit one free misdemenor anywhere in DuPage County! Hello public indecency, here I come!

From May 2 to May 9 I was in Jamaica for a wedding. As you might expect, it was held at a beautiful four or five star resort. The wedding, reception, and resort could not have been anymore beautiful. And the staff treats you like royalty. You felt as if you were the most important person in the world. I did have a chance to make it off the resort twice for a couple of excursions, but most of that time was spent on boats. I don’t feel that I had a chance to see a lot of the real Jamaica.

Of course, to get to and from the resort we had to take a shuttle bus which gave us a chance to see a bit of Montego Bay. While the resort was like living in luxury, the rest of what we could see was every bit the third world country it appeared to be. Here in America there is much talk about the shrinking middle class and the divide between the upper class and the lower class. Well, from what I could tell, in Jamaica there is no middle class. There is a small upper class and a vast, poor, destitute, lower class. As our shuttle took us to and from the airport and to and from one of our excursions, I gazed out the windows wondering what life must be like for the people of Jamaica.

In the distance especially in along the mountainside, you could see expansive, beautiful houses that I imagine belonged to the country’s rich. But, along the roadside and just beyond lay run down houses, shacks and other poorly constructed buildings. Although the resort was safe and luxurious, there was a tiny little, for lack of a better term, shanty town which was right next to a pier that was on the resort. Shortly after we arrived, I walked along the pier and somebody from the shanty town wandered over and offered me pot. When I turned him down, he then asked me if I wanted cocaine. While I’m pro pot, I found it a little bit disturbing that the drug dealer was so physically close to the resort, while at the same time metaphorically so far away. Although I was very curious about wanting to walk through the shanty town, I was warned on several occasions to stay clear of that area.

While I was down there I read a book about Jamaica’s most famous native son, Bob Marley written by his manager, Don Taylor. His story was uplifting, yet sad, inspiring, yet demoralizing. While Bob overcame so much to become what he was, I was very sad and disappointed to find out that he loathed gays. So much that he refused to consider Mick Jagger a friend because he sometimes wore feminine clothes on stage. I also learned that Marley reportedly beat his wife/girlfriend on several occasions. Being a book, one has to wonder what parts of it were true and what was pure fiction. But, if it is true, I’ve got to wonder if the end result of the poverty and conditions in Jamaica contributed to his anti gay views and his attitude towards females.

Although I had a great time at the resort, hanging out with the amazing people I was fortunate enough to travel with, someday I would very much like to make it back to Jamaica. I want to experience more of the real Jamaica. And then I would like to find ways to help them.

Saturday morning started pretty much the same way as every other day on the trip: breakfast buffet and hanging out in and around the pool. One of the things that made the day so different and special was that one of the bridesmaids and her boyfriend went para-sailing. While in the air, he busts an engagement ring out of his pocket and proposes to her in what was the coolest engagement story I have ever heard. She said when she saw the ring the first thing she said to him was “Oh my God, don’t drop it!” even before she said yes. But seriously, how fucking cool is that, what a way to propose. Than again, if she said no that could have made for a very awkward time in the air.

Meanwhile, around the pool we met three guys from Chicago. I guess I should clarify, one of them is living in New Jersey but is from Chicago. I found two of the three guys to be hot and just my type. Unfortunately, their type are actually men that have a wo in front of the men, so outside of us having a good time hanging with them for much of the rest of the trip, it went nowhere. Later on they said they voted me the coolest person they met on the trip.

Many of us had plans for an excursion of snorkeling and a boat trip over to Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville on a three hour tour. A three hour tour. The boat trip included open bar but not until after the snorkeling. However, since I was not planning on snorkeling, I was able to start drinking earlier. I ordered a rum and Pepsi and much to my delight, was surprised to find that he filled the 12 ounce cup with about two-thirds run and a third pop. Holy fuck, one of them had me kinda drunk. By the time I finished my second one I was hammered. As for Margaritaville, it was pretty cool too, they had a slide that ended in the ocean. Although I REALLY wanted to do it, the water was too deep for me to feel comfortable enough to do it, however a few of the people I was with did it and loved it. The slide was extremely fast and shot you out hard, fast, and far out of the end of it.

So being that I was on vacation it would only be a matter of time before I do something embarrassing. Since I spent the better part of my speech at the wedding embarrassing myself, this meant that anything else that I did to embarrass myself would be bonus embarrassment time. Of course, to be embarrassed you have to have shame, which I have very little of. Which brings us to Saturday night. The resort was having a men versus woman competition in the theater in which they picked four guys and four girls from the audience to go on stage and compete. I was not one of the chosen. But that doesn’t mean I couldn’t embarrass myself. Or should I say em-bare-ass! One of the games involved a couple of the contestants going into the audience to get a pair of trousers. Now I’m going to fully blame the alcohol on this one because I do certainly know the difference between a pair of trousers and boxers. But, at that time I didn’t. So I quickly dropped both my shorts and boxers and struggled to get my sandals off. Meanwhile my friends sat their yelling at me “what are you doing, they want pants not underwear!”

Sunday morning, a ton of the 53 people who were with us for the wedding were leaving. The rest of us partied on without them. There was a disco and very tiny casino that we could go to that was two resorts over. Sunday night, a group of us started to walk out of the lobby when a drunker than fuck dude came up to one over the girls (who is hot) and tried to get her to come over by him. We all just kept on walking. Remember him for later though.

We soon found ourselves in the smallest casino I had ever been in. I swear this place had like 12 slot machines and that was it. I lost a buck. We then went over to the disco and hung out there for, I don’t know, an hour or so? There were about six of us who decided to go hang out back at our resort. We walked out and saw a worker driving a golf cart so we hopped on for a ride. Well as it turns out, the damn thing was not working so well. It seemed like we were riding in Fred Flintstone’s foot powered car. So we actually had to push the damn thing back to the resort which of course, defeated the purpose of getting a ride.

Once we got back, we went to the lobby bar where we saw the drunk guy from earlier. This time he was even more drunk and very hard to understand. I swear you needed close captioning to understand him in spite of the fact that he was mumbling English. He was kind of an asshole as well, although we couldn’t understand him he seemed to be trying to start shit with us. So we went down to the beach for a bit. We come walking back in 20 minutes later and there he was wandering around the first floor attempting to start shit with us again. We asked him where his room was and he mentioned a room number somewhere on the first floor. We told him he should go to it and walked away but instead he just followed us, mumbling something. We came across an elevator and put him inside and I pressed the button for the highest floor and sent him on his way. We eventually made it back to my room to hang for a while and when everybody was finally leaving my room they said they saw him being escorted back to his room by hotel employees.

One of the only excursions I really wanted to do was something called the Luminous Lagoon. Here is a link if you want to read more about it:

http://www.jamaicans.com/tourist/articles_travel/JamaicaLuminousLagoon.shtml

Let me just summarize it for you in case you don’t have time for the link. The lagoon is the home of a rare phosphorescent microbe – a dinoflagellate – that lives where the warm fresh waters of the Martha Brae River meet the salt waters of the Caribbean. The constant movement and flowing of the river causes the microbes to move and glow with a neon-green color. The phosphorescence is so marked that the fish swimming in the lagoon have been likened to moving stars. The activity stirred up by tourist boats and swimmers only enhances the effect. This unique microbial phenomenon can be found in just four places in the world, and Jamaica’s Luminous Lagoon is considered the best place on the planet to experience it.

The problem is that it can be hit or miss. Depending on cloud cover and the moon, you might not see a thing. This was the case when my friends went the first night we were there. So they were given free vouchers for another trip which we took on Monday. There were four of us from our group along with another five other tourists from the resort who got onto this small boat to make the trip. Now as you know, I’m not much of a swimmer. I’m also a giant pussy. And the boat ride out there was about the most frightening thing I’ve ever experienced. The waves were so hard and the boat ride was so bouncy that I was petrified. In fact, I spent the entire trip out there gripping a pole in the middle of the boat with all my might. So tight that my hand was sore when we were done. And we bounced so much that my ass and back was sore. Now it wasn’t bad enough that I was the only person on the boat who put on the life jacket, but it was made even worse by the fact that I would not remove my hand from the pole to put on the jacket. My friend put it on for me! Again, very embarrassing.

The lagoon though was really fucking cool. Although the water was only three feet deep in that area, I decided not to get in however just about everybody else did. When they were in there, they moved their arms in a swimming motion and would start to glow. The tour guide would fill up a bucket with water and throw the water into the ocean and it would glow as soon as it hit the water. It was about the most fascinating thing I had ever seen and actually worth the scary boat ride out there.

Tuesday was pretty uneventful until the evening when the show at the theater was an ideal couples show that featured couples being brought on stage to compete to see who was the “ideal couple”. One couple in our group got pulled onto stage much to their own horror and embarrassment. I could sit there and tell you everything they had to do or I can wait until somebody gets me copies of the video as my description could not nearly do it justice. Good times though.

And of course, Wednesday we came home. Fun trip. Can’t wait to travel again.

I’m finally back from my week long vacation to Montego Bay. I should start by saying that I was going there to stand up in a wedding. We were staying at a newer all inclusive resort called Iberostar, here is a link to their website:

http://iberostarrosehall.com/

While it is nearly impossible to give all the details to the whole seven day trip, I will try to summarize it as best I can in about two posts. The night before the trip I could not sleep although I did go to bed fairly early about 8:30, which was probably the earliest I have ever gone to bed. My plan was to get up at 3 in the ungodly morning. I woke up at 2:30 and could not fall back to sleep. The groom, J.T., picked me up at 3:40. 19 of us left on a party bus for O’Hare Airport at 4:30 in the morning. I will skip much of the commute to Jamaica because outside of a delay during our connecting flight in Miami, it was pretty uneventful.

We had a total of 53 people down there for the wedding. By the time we got down there everybody else was already there. We wasted no time getting checked in and starting to party if you consider unpacking and then hitting up the buffet partying. Since the friends of the bride and groom and each of their families would be meeting for the first time, we had a meet and greet at one of the bars at the resort. It was at that time that the bride and groom gave us a tote bag filled with cool freebies like a book of crossword puzzles, a disposable waterproof camera and other goodies.

I don’t know how many of you have been to an all inclusive or to Jamaica but the employees were all very friendly and nice and interacted a lot with the guests of the resort. They took the time to learn your name and remembered it throughout the week. They were constantly asking if you were okay and if you needed anything. And they loved to play around with you, heck one of the days my brother and I played horseshoes with another guest and an employee of the resort. She told us if we missed we had to give her a piggy back ride. I asked her if she missed if she had to give me a piggy back ride. She said yes and then proceeded to give me a piggy back ride after she missed. Around the pool bar I kept saying asking the bartenders if I was their Caucasian which is a line from Curb Your Enthusiasm. By the end of the trip I had several of them saying it to me quite often.

Thursday was one of the better days of the trip. Most of the day was spent with everybody drinking around the pool and having a good time. That afternoon was one of my favorite moments of the trip as we were playing with a football and Frisbee in the very warm ocean when it started to rain. This made things even better; the weather and ocean were both so warm that it made the rain feel really good. Thursday night we had the rehearsal on the beach and then rehearsal dinner at the Japanese restaurant which was really good.

After hanging out for a while, I went to the lobby bar where I found the groom’s family talking to a German couple from Milwaukee who were celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. Turns out they got married exactly 50 years to the day before the bride and groom were scheduled to get married. How cool was that? We invited them to come and watch the ceremony and to take pics with the bride and groom.

Friday was the big day: the wedding. The bride and groom were not going to see each other until the wedding so that meant that the other best man and I had custody of the groom the entire day. Much of the day he was giddy with excitement and anticipation as we hung out drinking around the pool. Get used to this, as we did a lot of drinking in and around the pool. I also took part in something called Beach Olympics which was really fun and made even better by the fact that my team won. The prize for winning was a t-shirt and a medal.

The wedding was to start at about 5 in the afternoon. We were supposed to have the groom down on the beach at 4:45. Being that I’m always early, I told them I would have him down there by 4:30. He went up to my room to relax and get ready about 2:30 which was way more than enough time to get ready. He was kind of anxious though; I could sense he was excited. We were ready by about 4:15 and were about to walk out the door when he gave me a hug. I almost lost it then. We have been through so much that it was just such a surreal moment. I knew then that I would probably cry during my speech.

After stopping off at the other best man’s room, we headed down to the beach for the ceremony, which started late. Outside of the bride, groom, and officiator, I had the most important job in the wedding: carry the rings. There was a wedding alter and about 50 chairs set up on the beach right in front of the ocean. There was a steel drum band playing music on the beach the entire time we waited for the bride and while we walked down. We started off at the top of some stairs near the building. First the groom walked down. Next was the other best man, Dave, and maid of honor. Then myself and the other maid of honor. And of course, finally, the glowing and beautiful bride, escorted by her two brothers. 

The ceremony itself was pretty brief yet beautiful.  Right after the ceremony, the bride and groom had to walk over and sign their marriage certificate right after and it left myself and Dave standing up in front of everybody. It was then that I noticed and old man sitting on a chair right near the ceremony wearing nothing but a Speedo. Of course I had to point this out to Dave.

After the ceremony we took pictures before killing time before the reception. The bride and groom sat at a table by themselves and the rest of the wedding party was scattered about the other tables. The closer it got to speech time, the more nervous I grew: not because I was going to speak in front of 53 people, but because I knew I would probably cry. First speech was the maid of honor I walked down with. Then I was up. I walked up and started with what I thought was the funny part of the speech. Turns out, it sucked. Bad. In fact, within the first two sentences, people were yelling for me to stop. I guess when giving a best man speech, the last thing you should do is mention the other girls the groom dated. While I read the first paragraph, I late found out the groom apologized to the bride.

But, then I got to the mush. I talked about how wonderful she was. Next I moved onto the groom and proceeded to start to lose it. As I started to cry, the bride felt like she was going to start crying so she held up a napkin so that she could not see me. Soon the groom was crying. And so was his dad. And a hell of a lot of other people at the wedding. Later on I regretted the first part of the speech as it really took away from the better and more heartfelt part of the speech.

Dave gave his speech next which was hilarious and put mine to shame. The closing speech was the other maid of honor who was actually the bride’s mother. Her speech was great as well. I know it all sounds like a lot of speeches, but they seemed to move quickly.

The reception featured a bonfire, a deejay and dancing on the beach. Even after the deejay stopped playing we dancing and sang songs at the top of our lungs for a while, which probably really endured us to the guests in the hotel who were trying to sleep at 11:30 at night. Ahhh, fuck it, they were on vacation too they should have been living it up.

So that was the first few days. Will probably finish up the trip in the next post.