Best Men

Last night, my brother told me he would not be able to make it to my wedding.

My brother, as you may remember, was my best man. He has his reasons, obviously, and all of them are good ones and important financially-based ones more than anything else.

No, I'm not mad at him. I have no reason to be mad at him; I knew long ago that asking him to be able to come to the wedding and participate in it would put him in a rather tight spot both personally and financially, and in the months since, that spot has gotten tighter and tighter until it basically disappeared, making the trip out here pretty much infeasible and impossible. I'm disappointed, yes, that my brother won't be there, but I'm not disappointed in him at all -- my brother knows how much I admire and respect him for what he's done both family-wise and life-wise, and if anyone understands really rough financial situations and time/work constraints, believe me, it's me.

My dad has agreed to take on the role of best man in my wedding in my brother's stead, as my rule with that has been "family first"; I want someone in my family in, or otherwise involved with, the wedding. I linked my dad to the tuxedo t-shirt we are all wearing so that he could get one (his response: "you're still doing that?") and my parents plan to arrive in Omaha on the night of the 29th, more than likely shortly before or during the time Daisy is having her bridal shower and I'm having my very loosely-defined "bachelor party." This isn't a big deal as I'm pretty sure my 64-year-old dad doesn't want to go out drinking and partying with us in and around Omaha.

As an aside, we really have no major plans for the "bachelor party" as of right now; I might suggest something simple like Dave & Buster's with a buffet dinner somewhere beforehand, but who knows. I'd rather not be hung over or otherwise incapacitated the next day -- I have shit to do, so to speak, once everyone gets to town. Rae asked me a few days ago about what we plan to do for it, and I had no real answer for her.

I'm waiting on a few things in the mail still; today I should receive my Citi Card statement, and hopefully I'll get my state tax refund either today or Monday so that I can give Daisy some actual cash while she's here. Yesterday I received everything from Amazon, including my backup external HD and groom's party gifts. The external HD is smaller than Daisy's cell phone -- it's tiny. And it's 500GB. That's crazy to me. I remember when I was in undergrad and 512mb flash drives were $50 or more, and were in super-high-demand. This thing is about the size of a pack of cigarettes and was a little more than the same price, but holds almost 1,000 times more data.

The case for said drive (which I had to order separately, for about $6) will arrive at some point next week, as it wasn't Prime shipping and was from a private seller. I'm fine with that. It's going to be a good week or so before I use it anyhow.

Last night I sat down and did all of my grading of my students' papers, and did all of my lesson planning for the week, before posting said grades online and emailing all of my students with their weekly updates of what's coming up. Then I ran the dishwasher and folded all the laundry, took a shower, cleaned the cats' box and gave them more food, and baked a big dish of penne. I organized and boxed more things for the yard sale at the beginning of next month.

Today I clean the garage -- that's my big, major task for the afternoon and evening. It involves gloves and actual pants and shoes (so that I can avoid any spider bites or anything like that) and a lot of trashing/recycling things. Once my trash/recycling cans are full, I have to stop whether I'm done or not, as I don't have much choice there. They can only hold so much, and I have so much shit to throw out one way or the other. Once they're full, the rest has to wait another week until they're emptied by the trucks. My recycling can is already half full as it is, since I've been cleaning and tossing basically everything I could over the course of the past several days.