Galvane 24, 30.

The long weekend was busy and wonderful and fun, but I don't want to ramble on for too long about it. The low point, fortunately, was Thursday morning, when I spent hours duelling with one DMV and two SSA offices. The goal? A legitimate drivers license that I will need to move to Chicago. The good news is that a SS card is on the way, and that ought to be followed in short order by a Drivers License. After that particular five hour adventure, I took the A train up to Harlem and spent a few hours at the Studio Museum. Also, I called my wife from a Verizon pay phone, but the machine ate my four quarters. I passed a Verizon office on the street though, and went in and was directed to Customer Service. I told them I thought I should be able to make a long-distance phone call to my wife, and they let me call out of their office. So that was a kind of funny encounter.
On Friday I went to the Met and was there all day. I spent the first several hours in the collections from Africa and the Americas (Oceania, sadly, is closed until 2008), and then looked at art from South Asia (India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Tibet) and Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, and Burma). I had about an hour to spend in the Chinese collection, which is huge, before heading home. I was in a mood for Lamb Vindaloo, so my wife and I ate from Kinara's and watched Deadwood.
On Saturday we got up early and took a cab out to LaGuardia. We flew out to Columbus (with a fifteen-minute holdover in Detroit... we were running to make our connecting flight). My sister- and father-in-law picked us up at the airport and drove us out to a hotel, where we had time to shower and get ready for the wedding. It was at the historic Darby Creek Farm, and the outside ceremony was over in about fifteen minutes. There was an open bar followed by dinner and dancing, all oscillating between two rooms on opposite sides of the farmhouse, a huge, barnlike structure with polished and glazed timber beams. The last song was Stairway to Heaven, and my wife drove us back to the hotel, where the Indians finally beat the Red Sox 11-6 in the 11th inning.
On Sunday my inlaws and I checked out of the hotel and went to Bob Evans outside Columbus for breakfast. We said goodbye to my brother-in-law and his wife (sister-in-law-in-law?) and the rest of us drove on to Zanesville, then Cambridge. My wife's parents had found us a used car (a Kia Rio) at a good price, and it ought to get us through the next year-or-so in Chicago. We stayed in Cambridge with her parents that night, and had pizza and Greek food for dinner. We stayed up late talking, though I've been taking it easy on the coffee.
Yesterday, we got up early and left at about 8:15. We made great time all the way through Pennsylvania, only to be caught for two hours in a traffic jam a few miles outside New York. My wife was late to her class, and I was exhausted by the time I got home at around seven. All around, though, what a great weekend. I had a nice long talk with my mom on the phone, and when Jess got home we had leftover vindaloo for a late dinner.

- QUESTION OF THE DAY -
Should I restore the weather/almanac/news/quotes/links/countries of the week? I mean, did you ever check them out? Were they interesting? Or skim-overable material? (They take a bit of time, but I kind of miss them, so I'm having a hard time making up my mind.)