Science Bless America.

Live free or go crazy.

No workation without awesometation.

These are the credos by which I have always lived some parts of my life; this past weekend was some more of those parts. I must apologize up front for having forgotten my camera but there are some pictures on facebook so I will try to put them (or a link to them) here. However, before I do that I have to determine which ones are to be seen so soon by my adoring readership because, as my father always says, "if you don't care who sees the pictures, it wasn't a good party." He does always say that, doesn't he?

Over Saturday and Sunday, my Larry friend hosted the latest in his 2009 line of great hangs: BBQ 4: The Reckoning 3 - Red Dawn, the highlight of which was a fake gay marriage between Nick and his long-time friend Mike. The joke has always been that if gay marriage were to become legal in NH, Nick and Mike would get married so when the marriage bill finally passed, we didn't let the fact that these two had already screwed up everything by marrying excellent young ladies ruin what was meant to be. Another friend, himself gay, took some online justice of the peace course and obtained a marriage license for Nick and Mike; Jill and Larry wrote vows; Michaela baked a multi-layered wedding cake. At 5 pm, after a good crowd had gathered as was preparing to be reckoned, Nick and Mike were led unaware to the center of the lawn and the ceremony was performed before they had a chance to figure out what the hell was going on. Well, in truth, they figured it out pretty quickly so I ought to say that the ceremony was performed before they could stop laughing for long enough to understand the implications. 

All parties happily partnered for eternally (in some complex way that would have Joseph Smith and his golden tablets rolling in his grave), the party began in earnest. We drank wine and beer we ate meat and chili, and we played wiffleball and yard games. Jim and Russ (on guitar), I (on mandolin) and hordes of hangers-out (on vocals) played a very satisfying set of mostly bluegrass numbers.

And on and on...

We woke up at our leisure on Sunday; conveniently, many of us were on a similar leisure schedule and so met at Week's for a huge-gantic breakfast. The day-after hang was equal to the party proper in its ability to provide us the opportunity to sit in the sun, run around just enough to keep the blood flowing and enjoy a wee spot of the dog's hair. In the afternoon, Russ, Nick, Jim and I met a few other friends at the cigar shop for our monthly scotch club meeting (Russ chooses two high-end single malts at the beginning of the month, we vote then contribute money by the end of the month) where we reviewed the Glenlivet 21-year archive, smoked cigars and played video games. This, I have decided, is a much better way to spend my money than watching baseball games at the Brickhouse. Back at Larry's we worked up one last good sweat by throwing around the football, frisbee and a wiffleball....at the same time, a feat that required six people to perfect. Larry made more food and I broke my sandal. Later that night, I went to see the new Star Trek, which was excellent.

I will attribute all productivity this week to the sweet weekend I just had.