More from the 5th

More notes from the 5th Jan. 

Another sister has arrived with her family - Cathy and Dave, and their three boys.  This family is staying in a nearby motel (although nearby in Nampa terms can be several miles.) 

We’re supposed to be having a Thanksgiving Dinner (somewhat out of season) and there’ll be a host of people here, though the turkey was taking its time to cook through.  The best man has arrived with two of his brothers and the girlfriend of one of those brothers.   They've been in Houston, Texas for a family reunion, and have made this part of the USA stay.  Liz's brother and sister are here, and her grandparents.  There seems to be people everywhere.  

Most of the men had gone shooting this afternoon, including those who've never touched a gun in their lives. The ones who do know what they're doing gave the others careful instructions, and they were only shooting at targets anyway.   The only accident of any sort was when the gun the best man was holding recoiled onto his face and nearly gave him a black eye to sport at the wedding.  You can see this on You Tube, believe it or not: the video has the title, The Moneyshot. 

Meanwhile, Celia and I were taken into Boise by Sarah to pick up Chris’s sister, Carol, and she came with us while we went around the Capitol (see photo) and some of the streets nearby. (There was even the leftovers of an Occupy movement tent site in the park nearby - and squirrels frolicking.)   This was the first time we'd done any touring around, and it was nice to see a different side of the area: more built-up and not nearly so spread out.  

We met a woman from Glasgow in the Basque museum shop; she’s married to a bloke from Idaho who came over to Glasgow to ask her father for his daughter’s hand (!)  

Carol is from California (Newport Beach) and has a nice wit.  We were talking about Dom being a toy-boy at one point, because he’s six months younger than Liz (whose birthday is the day after the wedding!) and someone else said it was more the other way around. I can’t remember what word they used, but I suggested cougar.  Carol said she’d told someone who said she was a cougar she was more like a sabre-tooth tiger.  

Shopping and rehearsal

Notes from the 5th Jan. 

In the morning, we got onto dealing with the potatoes and coleslaw, and while we were doing that Christin and Rick arrived. They're staying in a caravan parked outside the garage.  Christin is Cindy’s younger sister (one of several) and they’d driven from California, taking some fourteen hours with a bit of a sleep at some point.  They’re a great pair: she’s lively and funny and full of beans.  Rick seems laconic at first, but like all the others he’s full of stories and humour, though he takes more time about the telling. Christin chipped in and helped with the coleslaw sorting-out the moment she arrived. 

In the afternoon we went to the shops again and the three blokes (Ben, Rick and I ) initially went into Wal-Mart with the women, but later on went for a drive around Nampa by ourselves.  It just seems to go on and on, and it would be pretty much impossible without a car.  There don’t seem to be any buses either, so I don’t know how people without cars get on.   We had kind of gone out to see what the place had in the way of ‘tourist’ attractions, but all there seems to be - and no doubt we’re wrong - is retail and more retail and bigger retail. 

Anyway, home for dinner.   Meals here lean towards Mexican-style food, with chilli beans and tacos and ground beef (something like the equivalent of mince) and things like Bell peppers (our capsicums) and Jalapeños (pronounced halapeños).  This last item is another pepper, but dangerously hot if you happen to get the right one in the batch.  I refrained. 

Everyone was up fairly sharply to get to the rehearsal at nine this morning.  It’s the first time the household has really been up early since we’ve been here.  Chris normally gets up at 5.30 am and goes to work early and gets home early after a ten hour day.  So he's finding these late starts a bit disorientating, I think.  

We're expecting upwards of 200 guests to the reception.   Hopefully there'll be enough food (us Crowls always like to have more than enough, just in case - it's one of our traits.)

I slept very badly last night - took ages to get to sleep, and then woke early.   Not enough exercise and too much strolling round shops - getting ‘shopping legs’ as Cindy called them in the process. Chris reckoned it’s a world wide phenomenon: women enjoying shopping; men not.  (I think more that we tend to go into a shop to get something, not just browse.  Although that does happen: in my case in a bookshop, in the case of other men in shops like Cabela's.)

Chris is a brilliant hobby furniture-maker, (his job is carpentry) but he also does a lot of other bloke things like diving and fishing and so on.  Anyway, he dives in the local river every year and collects all the stuff that people lose in the river, or throw away for some reason.   He’s got a collection of sunglasses, and has picked up all sorts of other things, including laptops!   Last night Ben fitted two memory cards that had gone into the river into the two laptops we’ve got here.  Both Dom and mine were struggling with memory (and ours with having far too much loading at start-up)   After a bit of jiggling, both of them worked, so both the computers are running a good deal better.   

We went to the wedding rehearsal this morning: for me it was a bit chaotic with the young people clowning around. The minister was very pleasant - a little fellow called Harold (I think) - and very patient.  Perhaps he’s used to young people these days being so all-over-the-place at the rehearsal.   Liz’s grandparents were there (Cindy’s father and his second wife).  It's their second marriage in each case, and they met at the Sacramento Opera where both of them sang in the chorus.  So we had something in common. 

I’m supposed to be reading a Psalm at the wedding service.  I hadn’t heard about it till this morning, and so checked up on the Psalm that I was supposed to read - Psalm 45 - and found that while it had some connections with the wedding ceremony, it also talked about the groom shooting his enemies with arrows.  Decided there might be a better Psalm to try and eventually we went for Psalm 130, a psalm I know well and enjoy reading.  

I thought I might have to play the piano at the service too, because the church organist wasn't available.  However, a friend is happy to do it, and so that relieves me of that duty.