3 weddings, 8 days..and a ton of gas

Let me start out with letting out a big SIGHHHHHHH. I am sitting at work and relaxing for the first time in a few weeks. The past two weeks has been quite a bit hectic for Emily and I.
Emily has been out of school for 2 weeks and has been running around like a mad woman ever since. Emily has this fear of relaxing for too long because she feels like she is just being lazy and should be doing other things. This phobia of not being too able relax is called drivejoshcrazy. But, she likes to keep busy, and this time of year there are plenty of things to do.
Lauren, one of Emily’s best friends, flew into town on Wednesday for Dan and Kristen’s wedding Saturday. From Wednesday on Emily was slammed helping out Kristen for the wedding. I had to work at the store all day on Wednesday and Thursday since we had Herman in an insurance class and the test on Friday morning. I had my renter moving in on Friday and had a ton of things to get done at the house, and Friday morning Justin, Meg, Norah and myself were heading off to Kansas City for my cousin’s wedding. So, it was a nice cram week for me. Wednesday and Thursday I left the house around 8:30 am and didn't get home until 8:30 pm. Now I realize that some of you work those crazy 12 hour days on a regular basis and I applaud your efforts, but I don't enjoy them and choose not to work 60 hours week.
The wedding Friday night was outside and very nice. It was great to see our family. I stayed out till 4:30, which I am slowly realizing; I am just too old for that. We wake up Saturday at 8:30 and hit the road. We had to stop a few times since Norah peed thru her diaper and soaked her shorts three times of Friday. We land in St. Louis around 2:00. Starting Friday, we had 7 people staying at the house, so quite the full house, but always a good time. Saturday’s wedding starting at 4:00 and by 2:00 and a metal rail gash in my shin, I am home and in bed.
Thursday I am back to Kansas City for a wedding that I am a groomsman in. His bachelor party, which I have organized, is Thursday Night. I am keeping the roads hot this summer! 3 weddings in 8 days: Come Sunday I will be sick of “Love is patient, Love is kind…blah blah blah…”PICK A NEW VERSE!

A new member of the Tyler household

No No, we did not adopt a baby from Vietnam, Angela and Brad took the last one. Emily finally got a damn cat.
She has been wanting a cat since we starting living together, but when she first moved in Pat and Paul were still living there and we decided that 3 guys, a dog and Emily is enough people in the house. Then once they moved out put the house on the market so she decided to wait until we moved into our new house; but she couldn’t wait.
If you didn’t know, I am not a huge cat fan. I am okay with having a cat in the house, their just no dogs. Winston is sad when I leave and super excited when I come home. He needs attention and if he doesn’t get it, he pouts. He has his own attitude and if you piss him off, he will let you know; he is damn near a human. Now, a cat needs you to feed them, and that is about it. Sorry to piss in your cheerios if you love cats; to each their own, just not for me.
So, Emily brings a kitten home and now we have to pick out a name. We decided to name him Truman, after Harry S. Truman, who is from Missouri and with Winston named after Winston Churchill, we figured having him named after another leader was appropriate.
Now don’t get me wrong, Truman is a cute kitten and it is fun to watch him catch his own tail, but until he gets de-clawed on Tuesday, all I can think about is Truman tearing up the new couches. Truman also loves to play when we are trying to sleep, which is annoying as hell, so he spends his nights in his room (the office). So, once he gets his claws out and he calms down, I think I will grow to love Truman. But right now he is that annoying kid that just never shuts up and constantly has to be watched.
Winston seems to be adjusting to Truman nicely, he has his moments of jealously, but he pouts in his laundry basket for 20 minutes and is over it. When they first met Winston wanted to sniff Truman, and Truman kept hissing and trying to claw at him. Not sure what Truman was thinking, Winston could end him with one little snip, but Truman kept hissing. Over the past week Truman has learned that Winston is not going to eat him and they just ignore each other. Truman will play with Winston’s tail when it is wagging, until Winston gets pissed. I think Winston hates Truman, but knows that he has to put up with him, so he has accepted it and so have I.


Emily and Truman


Truman looking for the couch to shred up.


One more of Truman


Just one of the best dog in the world...Winston

Golf, guitar, a support beam and a piece of Styrofoam.

As I get older, (and I admit, at the ripe old age of 26 I am still young but none the less, I have started my decline) I enjoy sitting and doing nothing with a few close friends. No plans to go out, no cell phones ringing, no worries about work…Nothing. I used to be the party guru who wanted to go out and party all weekend long. And not that I don't enjoy that from time to time, I just can't recover like I used to. The few hour hang over has turned into a few days. So, I myself leaning towards doing nothing. As the summer kicks in to full gear Emily and I find ourselves with no free weekend until August 23rd, the weekend before our wedding. So, I knew a few months ago that if I wanted a do nothing guys weekend, I better get it planned. Luck would have it Pat has a lake house and was planning this type of weekend.
He invited 20 people, which we all knew that only 5 or 6 of us would show up. It takes a special kind of person to sit on a dock for 7 hours doing nothing. I knew that Bear, myself and Pat would all go and have the time of our lives. We convinced Ben to come along and we proceeded to dream about the do nothing weekend.
(Follow this link and click on wedding party on the left hand side. You can meet Ben, Pat and Bear.

The Tuesday before we are set to go, Pat tells us that his folks sold the Lake house and we need a plan B. We had all 4 already taken off work, so come hell or high water, we were doing something. So, after a day on the phone, I found a nice little house on the lake with a private dock. . The private dock was the key, and the hardest thing to find. Most houses with a private dock will sleep 15 people and cost $300 a night and that was out of our price range. The plan was to stay at Mom’s on Friday, have a bon fire and enjoy the guitar playing of Pat.
We head down Friday morning so we could golf.
Ben was supposed to ride down with Bear and the week of says that he has to work that day and he will head down after he got off work on Friday, which he has said many times before and never showed up. The three of us prepare for the weekend without Ben.
After golf my uncle Mike calls and tells us about an all you can eat king crab leg buffet. Most of you don’t care what we had for dinner, but this was one of the best buffets we have ever had. $21 for all you can seafood buffet and all the king crab legs you can handle. If you ever find yourself in Greenview, MO on a Friday night make sure you go to Tupelo Honey's, I promise it will be worth it.
Much to our delight, Ben calls during dinner and says he has made it. Ben had called our bluff and actually showed up, we are proud of you Ben! Friday night went just as planned: golfed, ate dinner, drank some beer, and sat around the bon fire listening to Pat and Uncle Mike play guitar. We did this until 3:00 am.

We woke up Saturday and headed to the house and planted our fat asses on the dock and didn’t move for the next 7 hours.

Pat and I on the dock

When we finally did get the energy to get up and eat some food, we found out that Bear had drank just a little too much. Heading up the stairs he falls backwards off a four-foot drop off into a support beam. Now, Bear used to be a very large man, 330 pounds. He has lost 110 pounds this past year, but still is a big boy. The support beam apparently was not doing a good job supporting, because as soon as Bear hit that beam, it went shooting off a few feet. This would be the last we saw of Bear…he sleep the rest of the night. Before Bear went down for the night, he had the great idea to put a chair on a piece of Styrofoam and float out.

Bear on the S.S. Styrofoam in his now lost at sea Chiefs Chair


Luckily, he was too drunk to realize he had no way back, so I had to swim out and get him.



After dinner, Pat, Ben and myself really like the idea of sitting on the Styrofoam. So, we found a hose (no, there was no rope) and tied it to the dock and grabbed a cooler and pushed off. For the next 3 hours we floated in the middle of the cove…doing nothing, all while Bear was sound asleep in the house 100 yards away. The Styrofoam did end up floating away, with Bear’s Chiefs chair firming planted. The next morning we ate breakfast at Miller’s Landing, a restaurant in the same cover as us. We jokingly asked the waitress if she saw a large piece of Styrofoam floating away, and she said she did. Whether she was lying or not, we still like to believe that the S.S. Styrofoam is bringing joy to someone else!
Thanks to Ben, Pat and Bear for one of the best weekends I have had in quite some time. Next stop...Bachelor party part II