A wedding, the roller derby and other odds and ends

Such an odd weekend, a lot of fun though. I often come across instances in my life where I can’t believe where I was/what I was doing hours before compared to what I’m doing at that instance. On Friday morning I was typing the drasha (something similar to a sermon) for my boss, an Orthodox Rabbi. Friday night I was drinking too much and trying to keep my composure while I drank too much at a bar in the ‘burbs. Saturday afternoon we were guests at extremely traditional Baptist wedding and Saturday night we were yelling, drinking beer and watching girls in roller skates knock each other down.

We are so much of an old married couple that we are rarely out past 10:00PM any night, even the weekend. However, this past Friday night a co-worker and friend of Doug’s invited us out (past 10:00PM!) and we went. While there we ran into some of friends of mine so they sat with our group. I drank 2.5 glasses of Woodchuck Cider and it was a little too much. I have almost no tolerance for alcohol so I was buzz-y. I did drink enough that in the morning I felt kind of crappy and realized why I don’t drink that often. Blah.

Saturday afternoon we drove to Olive Branch, Mississippi to attend the wedding of the daughter of my former boss - it was a very Southern Baptist wedding. The bride was lovely and it was a very sweet ceremony. It was however one of those “come to Jesus” type services where at the end, after the vows and the ring exchange the minister tells you to take this opportunity to dedicate your life to Jesus. I’m not sure if they do these elsewhere but they’re pretty prominent in the South. What was more interesting was where we went afterwards.

After the wedding we had just enough time to drive home, change clothes and hit the ATM before driving over to the Mid South Fairgrounds to go to a Memphis Roller Derby bout. It was flipping awesome, excellent people watching and PRONTO PUPS. We got there late so we ended up standing most of the night but that was no big deal. These girls are kick-ass, they all have names like “Gwen Reaper” and “Robin & Stealin” and they are fast. The Memphis team is called the Hustlin’ Rollers and they played Birmingham’s Tragic City Rollers Saturday. Memphis won by a large margin. Being there I realized how small of a town Memphis really is. Doug saw and spoke to his former co-worker/director Craig Brewer (Doug worked with him a long time ago at a bookstore I think) and another friend of his that he hadn’t seen in a very long time. I saw an elementary school classmate of mine that I was going to speak to but I lost him in the crowd and I also saw someone who I had not seen since 2001 and knew only briefly. I didn’t speak because I thought he probably wouldn't recognize me and even if he did it would have been an awkward conversation. In the end, the derby was a great way to spend our Saturday night and I can’t wait to go to the next one.

We spent most of Sunday vegging out. Doug worked on one of his models and I knit. We finally watched one of the Netflix movies we’ve had for at least a month. It was “Paris Je T’aime” and it was a film made up of several short films all about Paris, with directors like Wes Craven, the Cohen brothers, Alexander Payne and others. It was a nice movie with gorgeous shots of Paris. For dinner I made Lemon-Tarragon Chicken from the At Home with Magnolia cookbook. It’s such a good recipe, I’ve made it many times and it’s great every time. I served it with plain couscous to soak up the sauce. We had this week’s TWD selection for dessert (so good and so bad for you).

I was really proud of us because we went out and we were social and some weekends that doesn’t happen. This coming weekend I’m volunteering (for the first time) at the WEVL’s Blues on the Bluff concert. So we’ll do something else we’ve never done before this Saturday too.