Back from our four-day trip to Boston for my cousin Jessica’s wedding. It’s a long drive, around twelve hours. I went with the rest of my family, seeing as how they’re a short drive down the road and it would save me hotel and gas money. We got there Thursday evening, crashed, woke up Friday, went to an extended family breakfast prepared by my aunt Lucy (my mom’s sister) at her house in Framingham, and whittled away the rest of the day going to the gym next to the hotel (they got free passes for my brothers and me), and watching the NBA game. Friday we visited the science museum in downtown Boston again, then attended a dinner party thrown by the groom’s family, who live in a rather idyllic, Gatsby-esque home in neighboring Hatfield (another suburb of Boston). Sunday afternoon was the wedding in King’s Chapel in downtown Boston, a huge, ornate affair, followed by a reception at an adjacent hotel, Maison Robert. We stayed late, got up early this morning, and drove back, arriving around six.<\/p>\n
This weekend, while generally pleasant, established several things for me:<\/p>\n
1. The next time a member of my family (extended or otherwise) decides to participate in one of the major offices of life (getting married, dying, etc), and I’m invited to the ceremony, I need to go on my own terms. I love my family, and our roadtrips always go smoothly and calmly, but there’s something about functioning as my own unit, walking into the party and being my own entity, not an accessory to my family, that is facilitated by making the preparations independently. I just need to.<\/p>\n
2. The first realization and the second are connected. I don’t do large groups of unknown people well, but this is in large part my own fault for resigning myself to be an adjunct of my family instead of venturing out to the other tables on my own, something I very well could have done, and don’t know why I didn’t do other than from sheer apathy. Regardless, I don’t know how many times I repeated the phrase, “I graduated from NC State in 2001, and now I’m working for UNC as a graphic designer.” Small talk OD.<\/p>\n
3. I really suck at dancing. I’ll get out there, but holy cow… My brother David, on the other hand, can cut a mean rug. Maybe it’s genetic? (meaning: he got the gene; I didn’t)<\/p>\n
4. I shouldn’t watch Masterpiece Theater reruns til 2 a.m. Saturday night, especially when I have to be quite alert far into the evening the next day. But you watch it and tell me it isn’t addictive.<\/p>\n
5. I don’t want a big, big wedding. Just a small affair, leaving lots of money left over for the honeymoon :o)<\/p>\n
6. It was difficult being so near New Hampshire again. Many miles of driving were spent gazing, out of focus, at the landscape spinning by…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Back from our four-day trip to Boston for my cousin Jessica’s wedding. It’s a long drive, around twelve hours. I went with the rest of my family, seeing as how they’re a short drive down the road and it would save me hotel and gas money. We got there Thursday evening, crashed, woke up Friday, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}