As always, I came back from Wisconsin feeling fat and happy. Rachel's sister Colleen got married over Labor Day weekend up in Appleton, which is a pretty cool city. It's a little bigger than Albany, but without the meth problem (at least from what I saw.) I mean, it had a performing arts center, where actual performers come to perform! None of that community theater stuff with a bunch of amateurs. Not that I have anything against community theater - it's just that I'd rather watch someone who sings/dances/acts for a living than someone who sells refurbished furniture live out his dream of playing Hamlet on Broadway.
Back to the wedding. Jonah was the ringbearer, but right before it was time to walk down the aisle, Jonah got cold feet and didn't want to go by himself. So I got to be the ringbearer-bearer, which was alright, until we got to our seats and Jonah decided he wanted to check out the pond that was just behind the altar. I followed him up there (outdoor weddings provide a myriad of problems for people with small children, fyi) at which point he tries to make a break for it. I was able to corral him and distract him from his unhappiness with my iPod, so score one for technology. Unfortunately, the ceremony was starting, so there was no going back the way we came. So we made this huge loop around the wedding and rewalked up the side aisle as quietly as possible, although Jonah kept asking why there was no sound on the iPod. We finally get to our seats, and to his credit, Jonah stayed quiet, only whispering when he wanted something. Unfortunately, I missed almost the entire ceremony because my focus was radar locked on Jonah, making sure he didn't make a break for it or get upset at anything.
Halfway through the wedding, Jonah hands me the iPod and says "Daddy, I want to stand by Mommy." Rachel was a bridesmaid (or is it bridesmatron because she's married? I'm not real hip on the proper wedding lingo), and the original plan was for Jonah to stay up there next to Rachel and the Jr. Bride (which apparently is like a flower girl, only without flowers). I said alright, and he quietly took his place with the rest of the wedding party.
When the wedding ended, Jonah and Carley, the Jr. Bride, headed down the aisle, but not before Jonah got a fist bump from his papa. Then they danced down the rest of the aisle, with Carley twirling Jonah and Jonah giggling the entire time. It was completely unscripted and pretty cute.
After the wedding, the wedding party all hopped on a party bust to go drinking prior to the reception. I mentioned to Rachel that I'd never heard of this happening before. She said "it's a Wisconsin thing, honey." Ok then. Things got off to a rocky start when the driver of the party bus clipped a parked car while picking us up. He came to a stop, opened the door and said "alright, are we ready to go?" Greg, the groom, said "ummm, you realize that you just hit that car right?" Of course he hadn't, and we sat their for an hour while the cops showed up to sort out the situation. I'm not sure if cops are required to show up at fender benders in Wisconsin, or it was because this was a bus, or it was just a slow crime day (of which I can imagine there's quite a few in Wisconsin), but it provided for a couple good pictures of the bride frisking the groom while he had his hands on the hood of a police cruiser.
The reception was a lot of fun. I had a great time, but not quite as great as Rachel and Jonah. Rachel doesn't drink often, but she's the good kind of drinker, the kind that just gets extremely happy and wants to dance....and dance she did. At one point Rachel's mom requested "Unchained Melody" because she wanted to slow dance. Rachel starts yelling about how her mom's "putting everyone to sleep with this lullaby!" and requests the DJ play "Pour Some Sugar on Me" when the song is over. When Rachel's mom pointed out that people were leaving the dance floor when Def Leppard came on, my wife turned into a rap hype man, running through the reception hall from table to table urging people to "get on up and dance!" I overheard a few people say "who is that girl?" which made me laugh. At one point I turned to a guy standing there and said "you see that one out there dancing by herself? That one's mine, buddy!"
I also found out that I'm the third best dancer in my own family, as Jonah danced his little butt off. He was twirling glow sticks and chasing the laser lights on the dance floor until after midnight. He did take a brief break before coming back down from the hotel room to rock the party in his Buzz Lightyear jammies.
After that, the week was pretty low key, with a lot of laying around the house and playing in the yard. I did get to experience the Richland County Fair, which is like any other county fair, except with lawn mower races. Jonah and I watched the 10-11 year old race. Picture kids on lawnmowers painted like race cars whipping around a dirt track at about 30-40 MPH and you might have an idea of how awesome this is. What made it more awesome was how into it the crowd was. I also loved the PA guy who kept saying things like "Ladies and Gentlemen, this is Lawnmower Racing at its finest, right here in Richland County!" which is now my favorite thing to say in my bad Wisconsin accent.
The only other major highlight of the week was a trip to Madison to see the Badgers play San Jose State. However, when we got there, the tickets we had bought on StubHub wouldn't scan. The pimply faced kid at gate six kept telling us that the tickets said "transferred." I asked what that meant, and he said he didn't know. So we were referred to a supervisor, who didn't know either. Then were sent to customer service, which informed us that the season ticket holder who purchased the tickets had requested that the tickets be transferred to himself, thereby initiating a set of electronic tickets which automatically voided out the paper tickets that we now had in our possession. Essentially the guy had requested duplicate tickets, then sold both sets online. Anyways, the ticket office told us they were sorry, but we weren't getting in with those tickets. So I called StubHub, which took the better part of half an hour. I can't say anything bad about StubHub though, as it really wasn't their fault, and they tried to find us a way into the game. When they didn't have any luck, they offered me a full refund and told me that if was able to purchase tickets outside the stadium to call them back the next day and they'd work on compensating me for those as well. Right about this point, the guy in the Wisconsin ticket office came out and said that he felt really bad for us, and to go to Gate 8 and they had some tickets we could use. Very classy move, and I was very impressed with the level of service I got from both StubHub and the University of Wisconsin. Goes to show that customer service isn't dead quite yet, only in the cable/satellite television industry. The tickets we ended up getting were in the players family section, which was about the tenth row behind the Badger sideline. So we ended up seeing the game for free with better seats than we ever could've dreamed of having. Sure we missed the first quarter, but I call that a win in my book.
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