Last minute San Fran tips?
Man, I totally miss blogging about, like, random Internet stuff instead of my life all the time. Only five more days til we’re home! In about twelve hours we fly off for San Francisco. We’re staying in this funky hotel and so far all we have booked is the Anchor Steam Brewery tour on Wednesday and Alcatraz on Thursday. Any last minute recommendations? I’m thinking of maybe making a pilgrimage to the Apple Store…

Well, it’s over.
In the end it was all bright smiles and happiness. I made a minor error coming down the aisle when I forgot to stop at the right place and continued on with the rest of the bridesmaids, but luckily the preacher (and half the guests) waved me back. (Fortunately, both Snookums and my uncle Ron – the official videographers – were aiming at the little flower girl and ring bearer behind me, so my mistake has already been expunged from posterity.) Everybody said I looked really pretty in my orange dress, even though my sparkly dyed shoes turned my toes red. The Snook, as always, looked pretty fly. He completely cemented his place in the family with a stunning karaoke rendition of “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” during the reception. Afterwards we headed to the hotel for a little jacuzzi and Papa John’s action. *sigh* And now all this wedding crap is over, so hopefully we can all get back to more meaningful pursuits… (like the second season of The O.C.!)

It’s four hours til the Wedding of the Century begins, and the tears and recriminations have already begun. It’s gonna be a long day, folks…

Australians often talk about going to “the snow,” as if seeing snow was the equivalent of visiting Disneyland or Paris. Other than a few flurries in London, Snookums had never really been to “the snow” before. Last night, the snow came to him. It started yesterday afternoon and fell throughout the night. Hooray for winter! This morning he was introduced to the duty of all Indiana husbands: scraping the ice off the car. After dinner Joey’s going to teach him how to make snow angels. Pictures are forthcoming…

Since nobody in Indiana seems to believe me when I tell them, let me just end all the speculation and confirm that I’m not Mrs. Snook. I mean, yeah, I married the Snook and all, but I’m still Ms. Howard legally and forevermore. Mrs. Snook is his Mom, and even she approved my decision to stay me. You are, however, permitted to informally refer to me as Mrs. Snook if it amuses you, which it seems to do for a lot of people. But only if you call him Mr. Howard. 🙂

Check it out everybody! I met yet another previously-known-only-via-the-Internet buddy tonight in the form of our very own Moire. (It’s always weird meeting people with blogs, because they never sound the way they do in my head. Moire, on the other hand, sounds exactly like the Hoosier I expected her to be.) She even brought us a wedding present! How nice is that? The Snook came along to listen to us chatter and have his first Applebee’s experience. All in all, a very successful meet-up.

We just finally watched the wedding. We are such dorks!

Back Home Again in Indiana…
Our plane touched down in South Bend tonight and we stood for a few minutes waiting for the doors to open. In front of us were some local 9th graders that were evidently flying to visit relatives for Thanksgiving. “Oh my God,” the girl said. “We’ve been flying since six a.m.! That’s, like, twelve hours. All the way from Wisconsin.” People around us started smirking. I couldn’t help myself: “You should try flying fourteen hours on one flight from Australia.” Her face lit up. “Australia? Oh, wow!” Her boyfriend asked, “Where’s Australia?” The grown-ups all looked at each other incredulously. She answered him: “It’s where the toilets go backwards and there’s kangaroos.” Him: “But where is it?” Her: “I don’t know. You know I’m not good at geography.” Snookums could take it no longer. He leaned over and explained, “Basically you fly from LA like you’re going to Hawaii and you keep going about twice as far. And that’s where Australia is.” The boyfriend: “So it’s, like, on the other side of Hawaii?” Mercifully the airplane door opened and we were able to shuffle past them. “How such an educational system ever produced me,” I said to the Snook, “I have no idea.”

Good Things:

• We got back to our room Saturday night to discover a bottle of champagne and a huge gift basket from my PW girls! It was awesome. Thanks so much to Kel, Eileen, Liz, and Crawfy.
• Helen sent us a bunch of CouchCam pictures of Dr. Amy Jones playing. We miss her!
• The Sydney Airport lady e-mailed to say that she had the hat and she’s sending it on. Sweeeet.
• Ed McMahon was on our flight home! He’s really, really old and scary now.

Bad Things:

• Vegas got really cold and windy Saturday night. They cancelled the “Sirens of Titan” show so we didn’t get to see it.
• The weather got worse today and it rained and rained. Our flight home got delayed four hours. I’d had a great time in Vegas but damn I was glad to finally get on the plane.

I’m off to bed. Tomorrow’s another travelling day as everybody makes their way to Indiana for the Wedding of the Century. ‘Night, folks!

Just Married…
Hey everybody! Sorry about that whole delay thing. We got there on time but the chapel was absolutely swamped. We ended up starting about an hour late so that’s why you had difficulty. (Apparently my Mom was phoning them repeatedly asking where we were, which explains why people kept barging in and asking for us.) As you probably saw, we had a hella good time. It was so much fun. Thank you guys so much for watching and cheering for us! We’re gonna go party up in Vegas for another 24 hours or so and then head back to LA before flying to Indiana on Monday. We’re getting the photos developed soon so we should have some to show you in a few days…

Hey, Sister: Flight gets in at 6:15pm tomorrow night. See you at the airport!