A Wedding! Well, -ish...

So this past weekend was the long-awaited wedding celebration of Kimberly, one of my friends from UT grad school.  She was actually already married...in small ceremony in Canada, where she's been living for last 3 or so years and where she met her husband. But they had to wait until his visa stuff was worked out before they could have a big wedding celebration in Arizona with all of their friends and family.  It was originally planned for May but got postponed till October.  Anyways...the festivities finally happened and fun was had by all.

The celebration was held at a golf resort place in Phoenix.  Even in October, it was 100+ degrees all weekend...sooooo hot. It was impressive how hot it was.  But the resort was nice...undergoing construction which led to us getting lost a lot.  I may have also disengaged my brain for the weekend...oops.  Anyways, we took the long way around...saw the sights...got our money's worth.  In any case, trying to find where we parked at the end of the weekend was amusing.  Another thing about the resort...they were always watering some part of the lawn or another.  One had to constantly dodge the sprinklers or walk through puddles.  But the grass was not green...brownish really.  Not really worth the wasting of water if you ask me.  Zero-scape it, people!

The rooms were huge (Mary and I split the cost of a room...and a rental car), beds were comfortable, bathrooms were humongous but strangely only had one smallish hook on which to hang towels (I am a two-towel girl so this is really important to me).  The door to the hotel room had an open patio that let out near the gate of the pool area.  It should be noted that the back door did not have a key card lock.  This was unfortunate because due to the location of the room, we ended up always leaving out the back door.  When we returned, we had to use the front door.  However, if you forget to undo the deadbolt, the key card doesn't open the door...much less undo the chain.  This oversight on our part led to two consecutive trips to the front desk.  The first trip was to get new keys because Mary had already lost hers and mine was strangely not working.  Of course, we weren't entirely confident at first that we had the right room number...   The second trip was because it dawned on me why the new key cards were not working.  I really hate being defeated by double-entry hotel rooms and their electronic locks...   Anyhoo, the security guy met us and let us in the patio door.  We didn't use the chain or deadbolt for the rest of the trip to avoid a repeat faux-pas.  We saved that one for later...

A wedding is a fantastic reason to have a mini-reunion with old friends.  It was a great gathering of the UT geotech folk (yes, there were occasional geotech-y discussions like how "liquefaction" doesn't mean what you think it means...that's just what happens when you get us in the same place).  Not everyone was there but I'll take what I can get!

  Albert and his girl, Alix

Ranjiv and his girl, Emily

Jeff and his wife, Lou (Also, I got to meet Ella, Jeff & Lou's little one, for the first time.  She's such a happy little girl and so precious. Check out their blog for better pictures).  And yes, this picture is from the reception...  Kimberly had a photo station where you could dress up and get professional photos taken.  I can't wait to see how all of them came out.

  And of course, me and Mary.  We look really flowery, especially with the flowers behind us...and my shoes are very shiny.

It was sooo good to see them all...especially since we are scattered all across the US.

One of my favorite things about Kimberly is that she loves, loves, loves to dance.  And dance she did...for her and Erick's first dance at the reception (they danced to "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You" by Lauryn Hill), she ended up tap-dancing to certain parts of the song.  It was very sweet and very well done.  After that, once the dance floor opened up to everyone, we spent the rest of the night dancing.  Sooo much fun...I love to dance.  I miss going out dancing sometimes...ok, a lot.  Kimberly, Albert and Ranjiv were my friends that I always went out dancing with.  They all just love to dance and they all definitely have their own dancing style which I realized I miss...  Action shot!

Well, the party had to end and so Mary and I departed Sunday morning...or tried to.  We discovered the battery to our rental car was deader than a doornail when we went to load it up with our stuff.  This naturally meant another trip to the front desk.  The maintenance guy helped us out and jump-started the car.  We thanked him, got in and drove around for a bit.  Thinking that was enough, we went to grab breakfast and say good-bye to our friends.  When we got back to the car, it wouldn't start again.  Booo!  So back to the front desk we went, feeling rather sheepish.  Mary said something on the order of "I promise we are leaving after this but can we get a jump-start again?"  The maintenance guy tracked us down again and once again, jump-started the car.  We jumped in and we were off.   I dropped Mary off at the airport since we were now cutting into the buffer time before her flight.  I went to drop off the car and was annoyed when the gas gauge wouldn't show that I had filled up the tank.  I had to show my receipt of gas purchase as proof.  Silly little car, that Hyundai Accent.  I was glad to be rid of it.  Oh and yes, I did tell the rental car agency about the battery issues...but no, I did not demand my money back.  It's not my style.

Anyhoo, I made it back to Denver safe and sound and grateful to be done with the comedy of errors that was the trip.  Oh and because of silly airport security and the 3-ounce rule, this is all I have of the gift we guests received from the bride and groom: a bottle of Tapatia hot sauce. But don't fret...I went out and bought some.