Jared's One Blog

As all of you who read this blog know, I love to take photos. Lots of them, generally. So you can all imagine how irritating it’s been to have not had a well-functioning camera for three and a half months.
I own a Canon PowerShot S5 IS, which I purchased back in spring 2008 for about $300 (maybe a little more, I forget). My camera’s problems started suddenly back in the beginning of September this year. I was at the meteo grad tailgate before Penn State’s football season opener vs Akron, when the first picture I took that day had a horrible exposure problem — almost everything in the photo was bright white. The exposure problem seemed to go away after taking a photo of the ground, at least until I turned the camera off and then on again. That was annoying and puzzling enough, but then I discovered that my photos from that day forward all had some horizontal banding on them.
This problem steadily worsened through September and October. The banding was getting more and more noticeable, and the “trick” of taking a picture of a darker scene to effectively reset the exposure (or to “hide the decline” of my camera’s performance) was no longer working reliably (or often, or at all, eventually). I got really frustrated with my camera’s performance in mid-October, when I went on a hike in the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon, when I took a bunch of pictures of the historic October snowstorm in State College, at the PSU-Minnesota football game, and then a couple pictures that I tried to take when I visited Alex at Michigan. My camera was taking such poor photos, every single one ruined with noticeable banding, and most of them with overexposure issues (often manifesting itself as something like a “feather-focus” if it didn’t wash everything out), that it was like I didn’t have a camera at all. Here’s a sample of some of what my camera was doing (unfortunately I deleted some of the worst examples before I sent in my camera):

After searching and posting in some online forums, I brought my camera into Geek Squad at the local Best Buy here in State College on Halloween. I described the problem to them, and they shipped it out to whatever camera repair company they outsource. The camera repair company diagnosed the problem, and said they were going to “replace the contact and all associated connections.” Whatever that means. I figured they knew what they were doing, so I approved the $84 repair. I was hopeful that I’d get the camera back in time for my trip to Washington state, and even called Best Buy the night before I left town, because I knew it was en route. The Best Buy guy said it’d been sitting in Harrisburg for a couple days already and so *should* be delivered first thing in the morning, but he couldn’t make any guarantees. So I stopped by Best Buy the next day (17 Nov) around noon on my way out of State College, but it still wasn’t there. It was still sitting in Harrisburg, for some unknown reason. ARGH!! Good thing I didn’t take up their offer of waiting around until the afternoon shipment came in to see if it’d arrive, because it didn’t arrive at the State College Best Buy until after I arrived in Washington. Sigh. That has to be about the longest a shipment has ever taken to go from Harrisburg to State College, at least since the advent of motorized vehicles. Fortunately my brother Nathan loaned me his small Canon A-series point-and-shoot camera by sending it out with Jake on his visit to PA, so that I could at least have a camera on my trip if mine wasn’t ready in time.
So when I rolled back into State College after my Washington/Thanksgiving trip on the night of 29 Nov, before I even went back to my apartment, I stopped by Best Buy to pick up my camera. But since I didn’t have my batteries or memory card with me, I didn’t test the camera at the store. I took a couple pictures that night in my apartment, and at least on the camera LCD, it seemed okay. One morning later that week, however, there was a cool scene outside that I wanted to photograph, and with the first picture I took, the same exact problem as before manifested itself. Over-exposure and banding. ARGH. Despite having been charged $84 and told it was fixed, my camera wasn’t fixed.

Over the next couple days I took several more photos in various lighting conditions with various camera settings to document the problem more fully. If anything, the banding issue was worse. I also discovered that the bands are located in the same positions on each photo, which made me pretty convinced that it was a problem with the CCD. When I brought my camera back to Best Buy on 5 Dec, I brought along my laptop so that I could show plenty of “before” and “after” pictures, to prove that the “repair” that I paid for had done absolutely nothing. The Geek Squad employee remembered me from when I checked out my camera six days earlier, and did everything he could to help me, including shipping it out by 2nd-day air instead of standard ground to expedite the new repairs. He said he’d personally fill out the paperwork to tell the camera repair company that I would not be paying anything for this second repair, and that they’d better actually fix it this time. He said the repair company needed to “own” this repair, and that I absolutely shouldn’t have to pay anything more (also because he said Best Buy obviously doesn’t want angry customers).
I was really beginning to wonder what was going on with my camera because I hadn’t gotten a call asking me to approve a repair or anything like that. I was starting to lose hope that I’d get it back before I leave for Christmas break on Monday 21 Dec. This morning, however, I got a robo-call from Geek Squad informing me that my camera has been repaired, shipped, and is now ready for pick-up at the State College Best Buy. I was pleasantly surprised it was back already. This time I made sure I tested the camera plenty before I leave the store, and verified that it didn’t have any problems. Because the easiest way to verify if the camera was fixed or not was to take some photos outdoors during the daytime (that’s when the banding and overexposure was most prevalent and noticeable), I thought that was a plenty good reason to take off from work early today (as a reward for making it through yet another IPR).

So far, so good, it appears. I’ll be testing it plenty more and putting it through its paces in the next few days though, just to make sure that it really is fixed (and to make up for lost time!). I really wish they would’ve replaced the CCD the first time around, but oh well, it seems to work correctly now. I’m just excited to have a working camera for the first time in three and a half months, and just in time for Christmas break!

I’m only about eight weeks late blogging about this. But hey, why not. 🙂
Back in late October I made my first-ever visit to Ann Arbor, to hang out with Alex for the weekend. After I got there we went to dinner at an Irish pub downtown called Connor O’Neill’s. The place was packed, and had quite a few Penn State fans there (the Penn State at Michigan game was that weekend). There were occasional “We Are” cheers while we were there, but they weren’t very loud and a bit halfhearted, so we thought the place was maybe one-quarter Penn State fans. Right before we left the pub, I shouted “We Are!” as loud as I could, and we were both surprised to hear about two-thirds of the pub shout back “Penn State!” So I did the full cheer, with three “We Are!”s and then the “Thank you!” “You’re welcome!” call and response at the end. We got outside and Alex said, “Wow, you really can lead a cheer!” You betcha!
And then later that night Alex gave me my first guitar lesson, teaching me the opening chords to “City of Delusion” by Muse on his electric guitar. 🙂 I’d never played a chord on a guitar before, so it was tough to get my fingers to do the right things on the frets. Playing guitar’s a bit harder than it looks! I would like to learn how to play guitar at some point though, at least a little bit.
On Saturday was the Penn State-Michigan football game, and it was the first game either of us had been to in Michigan Stadium (it was my first Penn State road game as well). We tailgated with a several people from Alex’s department (plus others), in a parking lot across the street from the Michigan Marching Band practice field. I was the only Penn State fan at this particular tailgate, but they were welcoming to me. For any other Penn State fan that’d walk past, however, they’d all shout a coordinated “3, 2, 1, BOOOO!” It was kind of funny actually, and the PSU fans were good-natured about it. Other than some scattered showers making things cold it was a fun tailgate. I still prefer the tailgate setup at Penn State though, out in the grass fields, with tailgaters as far as the eye can see, rather than a few isolated tailgaters in a random paved lot in a city. The other odd thing was that everyone was tossing their empty bottles onto the grass by the sidewalk, instead of into a trash/recycling bag or something. Then someone explained to me why: there are people who walk around collecting empty bottles, because they can get 5 or 10 cents per bottle. I’m so used to throwing bottles and cans away in the free recycling bags that are handed out in the PSU tailgate lots, it felt wrong to toss these on the ground deliberately.
Alex & I walked up to the stadium in a sea of yellow (and no, it’s not “maize,” it’s yellow). Alex had bought two Michigan shirts for us to tease me a bit (since it was a “Maize-Out”), but I wore my white Penn State shirt instead. Before I left State College, Alex told me, “Leave your white and blue at home, there’s no need, I just bought two Michigan shirts for us!” Nice try, Alex. 🙂 There was just no way I could put that thing on when my team was playing THEM, haha. (I still have the shirt, by the way.) With all the bricks and the nice gates, Michigan Stadium looks a lot nicer from the outside than Beaver Stadium, but it’s not nearly as imposing as Beaver Stadium either. Alex & I had tickets in the corner of the end zone, in the opposite corner of the stadium from the Michigan student section (about 40 rows up from the field, about 40 rows below the Penn State visiting fan section). There were a few PSU fans scattered around, but basically I was surrounded by adult scUM fans. I was a very vocal PSU supporter, cheering loudly, waving my shakers, singing the fight song with the Blue Band, etc. It was kind of irksome to all the Michigan fans that I was surrounded by, probably especially because we were beating them so badly. There was some good-natured verbal back-and-forths that I was fine with. Still, I wasn’t taunting the Michigan fans or anything, I was just exuberantly cheering FOR Penn State.
[All of these pictures were taken by Alex, who borrowed his roommate’s camera. With the rain and the ban on bags of any type at Michigan Stadium, including camera bags, I didn’t bring mine along. Mine was acting up anyway and not taking good pictures.]

Then in the 3rd quarter a guy who was originally sitting three rows in front of Alex & me snuck up to our row. I was sitting there, holding my shakers in my lap, when this guy (around 40 years old?) lunged at me from my right and was on top of me, trying to wrestle my shakers away from me. The struggle lasted for about 5-10 seconds before Alex and a bunch of the other Michigan fans around us lifted the guy off of me and started yelling at him. A few seconds later the guy tried to shake my hand and said, “This was all just in good fun, right?”, and everyone else started yelling at him again to go away and leave me alone. Alex asked if I wanted to leave (because he wanted to, after all this and the verbal abuse I was getting), but I said I wanted to stay and enjoy our victory over Michigan (at that point we led 32-10, and the final was 35-10). It was my first road game, and the first time Penn State won in Ann Arbor since 1996. So I was staying.
As the Michigan fans around us gradually left (it was cold and rainy and they were losing badly), they all came up to me and asked if I was alright, and said they hoped I realized that that behavior wasn’t representative of their fan base as a whole. However, there were two other jerks right behind us who were making awful and lewd comments to me and about me the entire game (mostly about how I was gay for having shakers), who a few times commented to each other about how disappointed they were in the other Michigan fans for their reaction to the guy attacking me. They thought I totally deserved it, that the guy was justified in jumping me. When others would call them on this, they’d try to defend the attack and their comments, to which everyone else would respond, “He paid for his ticket just like all of us did. Leave him alone and let him enjoy the game!” They were dismayed that their fans condemned the attack and they thought the other Michigan fans turned into a bunch of “pussies.” They said, “We may lose the game on the field, but we should never lose the stands. … This is what’s wrong with our country and our fans, nobody has any fight in them anymore.” I ignored those two jerks the entire game, though it was hard to do at times, especially since it seemed like they were practically leaning up pretty close to my ear to leer at me. I actually stayed and kept waving my shakers and cheering loudly partly to spite those guys, and not give them the impression that they intimidated me and chased me away.
In retrospect, perhaps I went a bit overboard with the shakers. At Penn State everyone has them, but at Michigan not too many of the PSU fans who made the trip had them. And Michigan fans don’t have any shakers or towels or anything. I probably wouldn’t have been attacked had I just been loudly cheering and not had the shakers, but still, that doesn’t excuse the behavior of those three jerks at all.
And that wasn’t all of the boorish behavior we witnessed that day, either. As we were walking back to Alex’s car, we were waiting to cross a street at an intersection when some old guy (seemed to be a Penn State fan) rolled down his window and yelled at Alex, “What the hell’s wrong with your friend that he’s hanging out with a Michigan fan?!” We were both speechless. So we got abuse from both sides, it was ridiculous. In the end the whole day’s events were enough for Alex to tell me that he no longer had any interest whatsoever in gaining an interest in sports. I don’t blame him.

Physical assault aside, I really enjoyed my visit to Ann Arbor. It was fun to experience the tailgating and traditions at another school (even a huge rival school), to experience some of Ann Arbor, meet some of Alex’s friends, and to visit his new church. Ann Arbor really seems like a nice town, and I look forward to visiting several more times in the future while Alex is at Michigan.

For Thanksgiving I flew from Spokane to Minneapolis on the afternoon of Tuesday the 24th. I figured that as long as I had to fly back through Minneapolis to get back to Detroit, I may as well get off and stay a few days to see my family. 🙂
After a fairly lazy day on Wednesday the 25th at my parents house in Cumberland, we drove out early on Thanksgiving morning to go to Eve’s mom’s place out near Stewart, Minnesota, about a 4-hr drive. We had Thanksgiving there last year with Eve’s family after Aaron’s death, and it seems like our families will continue getting together for Thanksgiving for the foreseeable future. It was nice to see everyone again.

We were only there for a fairly short time though, about 4-5 hours, because my parents and I had a 5-hour drive ahead of us to their new house near Two Harbors, Minnesota.
Yep, that’s right, my parents’ new house. They’d been looking around for property on Lake Superior for over a year, and there were some places that they liked, but those didn’t work out. Then in late August they found this place near Two Harbors. They looked at it on a Saturday, looked at it again the next day, put an offer down, and on that Monday their offer was accepted (after a counter and counter-counter offer). Everything just fell into place so quickly with that, and I was shocked to hear that Monday morning from my mom that they’d just looked at this place and put an offer down, and then to hear a couple hours later that the deal was done. So they closed on the place at the beginning of October, and have spent every weekend up there since they took possession, moving some stuff up there, but mostly doing some maintenance on the place in preparation for winter. They’ll eventually be moving up there permanently, once the Cumberland place sells. Moving up to a house on Lake Superior has long been a dream of theirs, so it’s exciting that it’s finally happening.
As for the house itself, it’s kind of smallish, at 1500 sq. ft. (the Cumberland house has that much space upstairs alone). There are three bedrooms, two of which are upstairs in the loft, along with one of the two bathrooms, with the upstairs bathroom having a clawfoot tub. And to get to the loft there’s a really cool spiral staircase! The living room and dining room are open, with windows facing the lake (naturally), letting in tons of bright sunshine all day, but especially in the morning. With a big brick chimney and new gas fireplace, it’s a really nice, cozy house. There’s also a smaller guest cabin with a weird floor plan (that 3-inch drop from the living room to the kitchen is a doozy! almost killed myself that first night when my Dad was giving me the tour, haha), which was the original house on the property. The place has a big huge yard that’s mostly flat, and has about 350 feet of lakeshore. Much of it is loose stones, but there is some ledge rock and even some smallish 10-ft cliffs at the northern end of the shore. Pretty cool.

My parents don’t have internet up there yet or satellite TV, and won’t be getting it until they move up there more permanently. So that’s why I basically just sat around most of Friday and Friday night finishing reading the last half of “Chainfire” by Terry Goodkind. Very relaxing day. It would’ve been nice to hear the waves coming ashore during that time, but it was a tad cold to have the windows open. They do get some local channels from Duluth though, and I have to admit, it was rather amusing to watch the weathercasts. Here are some of the lines I heard from the two on-air meteorologists:
“When the high clouds are overhead the temperature goes up, and when they go away the temperature goes down, so the temperature will be porpoising tonight.”
“Temperatures tonight are a bit cooler in Wisconsin, through no fault of their own.”
“Temperatures are in the 20s across for the region, except for Grand Marais, which is all the way down to the single digits.” [It was 18 in Grand Marais.]
Pretty funny gaffes! I think I’ll be looking forward to the evening news when I visit in the future. 🙂
On Saturday my parents drove me down to the Twin Cities and dropped me off at Alex’s house in Mahtomedi. I spent the evening hanging out with Alex some and playing some rummy and Monopoly with him and his younger siblings. It was a rather early ride to the Minneapolis airport from Alex’s mom though, as Alex’s flight to Chicago took off at 8am and mine to Detroit took off at 8:30am. My friend Kelly, who was in my physics class at Gustavus and is currently a 5th year physics PhD student at Michigan, was nice enough to pick me up at the airport, so we got to catch up a bit and have lunch in Ann Arbor before I picked up my car and drove back to State College (even though Alex left before me, I made it to Ann Arbor before him, go figure). It was an enjoyable two-week trip, but I was glad to be back at my apartment finally.

It’s kind of hard to get my mind back on track for the end-of-semester push after basically being on vacation for two and a half weeks. The start of that vacation was Jake’s visit to State College three weekends ago. I did manage to get some work done after I dropped him off at the airport that Monday morning, but the evening was spent mostly scrambling to get ready. Tuesday morning the 17th I did go into campus to attend Jon Petters’ PhD defense (congrats, Dr Petters!), but that was about all I accomplished before I decided to head out.
On Tuesday the 17th I drove to Ann Arbor in a shade under 6 hours, the quickest I’d ever done that trip. Taking only one stop between here and there sure helps cut down travel time. I was in a bit of a hurry to get there because I wanted to make it in time for the start of Alex’s Bible study with some of the other grad students and young professionals from his church. (I did make it on time, but I had a bit of a close call in central Ohio when the woman in the car ahead of me got pulled over. Phew!) It was cool to be there for that Bible study and to meet so many of his friends from his church. They really seemed like a good group of people. And I got to join them for their usual post-Bible study tradition of going to B-Dubs for half-price wings too. I’d definitely say all that was more fun than sticking around for my NWP class that afternoon. 🙂 Before we went to bed I parked my car on the street in front of Ash & Heather’s house in Ann Arbor that they’re renting out. It sure was nice to have a place to park for free for a week and a half where I didn’t have to worry about getting towed! I did loan Alex a key just in case there was plowable snow before he left for Thanksgiving, though.
Alex dropped me off at the Detroit airport early the next morning, on Wednesday the 18th. I had a short layover in Minneapolis on my way to Spokane, and it felt odd to land at MSP and not go straight to baggage claim. While in Spokane I stayed at my uncle Larry & aunt Marilyn’s house. My cousins Jonathan, Maren & Melissa all live in Spokane too (Melissa & Jeremy moved back to Spokane from Phoenix a couple months ago, but Marci & Marc are still down there), so I got to see quite a bit of them too. Jonathan was basically my chauffeur while I was out there, picking me up and dropping me off at the airport, both for my flights and for my rental car that I got so I could go down to Yakima for Tim & Hilary’s wedding. That first night that I was there, Melissa & Jeremy and their kids came over, and Jonathan and his girlfriend Lindsey made Thai chicken pizza for everyone. Mmmm, delicious! Jonathan & Lindsey had rented “Star Trek” on DVD (they hadn’t seen it yet), so I watched it with them at Lindsey’s apartment after dinner. I was a-okay seeing that again, it’s such a good movie!
On Thursday the 19th after Jonathan got back from work, he & I went to an Irish pub in downtown Spokane to meet up with Lindsey and Jonathan’s best friend Craig for dinner and a few beers. And with Craig’s brother being the bartender, service was great! 🙂 The walls of that pub were covered with dollar bills, and I could’ve gotten a dollar bill pinned up there too had I hopped atop the bar and sung a song. I did think about hopping up there to sing “Fight on State” or something like that for a little bit, but wound up chickening out, hehe.
On Sunday morning the 22nd I awoke to snow falling and covering the ground — at which point I was a bit relieved that I came back from Yakima the night before instead of waiting until the morning. After going to church with Jonathan we dropped off my rental car, and then had lunch at Lindsey’s while watching a little football. As an aside, I’ll just say that it felt odd to come out of church before noon and have the early NFL games already be at halftime, or to have the night games end by 8 or 9pm. As far as that goes, while it’d take some getting used to, I think I like Pacific time more than Eastern time (everything starts so late here!), but I still really like Central time zone.
Later that afternoon was the highlight of my visit to Spokane — learning how to make lefse! For those of you who don’t know what lefse is, it’s potato flatbread. Basically, think of it as Norwegian tortillas, haha. Jonathan, Lindsey & I got back to the house as Melissa was almost done peeling potatoes, so I jumped in and helped peel a couple. After they were done I went up to the bedroom and updated my facebook status to say that I was making lefse. I came right back to the kitchen after that, at which point Jeremy, who was on his iPhone and apparently taking a break from Bejeweled Blitz (which he proceeded to get both Jonathan and me hooked on), gave me a hard time and told me, “I don’t think peeling a couple potatoes counts as ‘making lefse.'” I laughed because it’d been maybe 10-15 seconds since I’d updated my facebook status, haha. Melissa was also giving me a hard time, telling me that I needed to do more than peel two potatoes if I wanted to eat any of the lefse. 🙂 Melissa showed Lindsey, Jonathan and me how to mix the dough, and we each took our turns at that. I also learned what a ricer, lefse roller and lefse stick were. Then after Melissa let Spencer & Madeleine roll a few doughballs into lefse, the rest of us took over. When Jonathan ran over to Maren’s place to pick up a second breadboard and griddle, that sped things up even more. We made a lot of lefse, around five dozen. Marilyn was excited that I was learning a family tradition, and called my parents to tell them. Now it’s my job to teach my parents, brothers and my future kids how to make it too. 🙂

On Sunday night Jonathan, Lindsay & I went over to Craig’s house to hang out a bit and watch the end of the Sunday Night Football game in his hot tub (he has a big-screen TV right there, best seat in the house!). Then on Monday night, my last night in Spokane, the four of us met up with some other friends of theirs to go to the Eric Hutchinson concert downtown. I’d never heard of him before Jonathan asked me if I wanted to go, but I’ve found that I enjoyed his music. It was a fun concert, and he really has a good stage presence. I also liked how he and the other band members all had a shirt and tie on. They looked (and sounded) sharp and professional. Eric Hutchinson’s an up-and-coming musician, who does mostly what I’d call “piano rock,” though he also plays acoustic and electric guitar. Here’s a music video for one of his most popular songs:

For the most part I basically took it easy and relaxed during the days at Larry & Marilyn’s while Jonathan was at work, putzing around on my computer, reading a bit, and chatting with Larry & Marilyn. I also helped out with taking care of Marilyn a few times while Larry was gone at business appointments. Marilyn has been fighting cancer for about three years now, and back in mid-October a CAT scan surprised everyone (including all the doctors), revealing that the tumor in her neck had grown too big and too dangerous on which to operate. They also decided to stop doing chemotherapy treatments, so the prognosis wasn’t good. But she’s hanging in there and still fighting. She has good days and bad days, as might be expected. We’re all praying that God will work a miracle and heal her completely, but whatever happens, God is sovereign. Through her illness she’s impacted many people for Christ, including when, shortly after the bad news from the doctors in October, she & Larry invited all their neighbors over to their house, and Marilyn shared her testimony with them. That was pretty inspirational and glorifying to God! I won’t soon forget that. I’m so glad that I was able to see her and spend some quality time with her over the few days I was there.
It was a good first trip to Washington. I was glad to have the opportunity to hang out with my cousin Jonathan too, and to see Melissa and Maren again. I look forward to other visits to Spokane, including hopefully making a drive there across the Cascades around the time of the AMS Annual Meeting in Seattle in January 2011. I’ve been trying to coax Jonathan to come out for a Penn State football game too, but things haven’t worked out yet. Hopefully it will work sometime before I graduate, I’d love to show him around State College!

[On location in Cumberland, Wisconsin]
Last Friday afternoon I rented a car and drove out from Spokane, heading for my former roommate Tim’s wedding in Yakima. I was glad to get a chance to see some of the countryside in eastern Washington, even though it turned out to be a rather dull drive. And for those who think Washington state is all mountains, you’re very wrong. Interstate 90 between Spokane and the Columbia River Gorge is pretty flat and dry (though at least there are some pine trees near Spokane to break up the landscape), with very few signs of civilization (a town every hour or so, generally). The foothills of the Cascades were finally just ahead of me when I had to turn southeast at Ellensburg on Interstate 84. Oh well, I guess I’ll have to leave a drive through the Cascades for my next visit to Washington.
I got to Yakima about 20 minutes before the wedding rehearsal started. The rehearsal lasted an hour and a half or so, and was somewhat chaotic and at times frustrating when there were obvious misunderstandings of what various people were suggesting or requesting. Maybe they’re always chaotic, or maybe it had something to do with there being eight groomsmen (including myself), eleven bridesmaids, three flower girls and one ring bearer. That was a lot of people on stage, and sure took awhile to figure out how to get everyone positioned. That was the largest wedding party I’ve ever seen or heard of! But when you take into consideration that Hilary has 9 sisters and 2 brothers, and that she naturally has other cousins and good friends too, and that of course you can’t really leave anyone out, you can see why the wedding party was so huge. 🙂 It was fun though, and eventually we got the whole rehearsal thing sorted out.
At the rehearsal dinner (which featured homemade lasagna from the moms, mmmm!) every table had a packet with lyrics to about 20-some hymns. So when we were done with the food, people just shouted out a number and we’d sing that hymn, with accompaniment from a guitar and djembe. We sung about a dozen hymns before we had to clean up and vacate the church for the night. I thought that hymnsing was really cool, and I’m going to file that away in my memory banks for awhile, as I’d like to do the same thing someday when it comes time for me to get married.
One of Hilary’s uncles offered to put up all the groomsmen for the night at his house in Yakima, so that’s where I stayed (two or three of the groomsmen stayed other places though). That’s where we had a rather short and low-key bachelor party for Tim as well, which mostly consisted of us introducing ourselves and how we know Tim, Tim handing out his gifts for us, and then Tim asking for advice from the groomsmen who were already married, about all sorts of things. It was cool to hear. We all (and Tim especially) had to be up fairly early in the morning, so we called it a night pretty early too. It was the first bachelor party I’ve been to, but I’m guessing it was a pretty non-standard one. 🙂
All the wedding photos were taken before the ceremony, so we had to be there quite awhile beforehand. I actually preferred having all the photos taken before the ceremony, instead of right after. It was a gorgeous day though, especially for mid-November in Washington, partly cloudy with temps in the 40s, so most of the photos were able to be taken outdoors. I didn’t have my camera with me while the wedding photographer was taking all our pictures, but I ran back in to grab it when he was done with us, and just needed to take some bride and groom pictures.

We groomsmen were ushers as well, but about 5 minutes before the scheduled start of the ceremony (2pm) we got the hook to go line up. Before everyone lined up though, there was a group prayer for Hilary, then for Tim, then for both of them together, and then we all sung “Doxology” a capella. Everything about their wedding and wedding preparation was extraordinarily God-focused.
So all of us in the wedding party lined up, but then stood there at the back of the church for a long time because the organist kept playing “Be Thou My Vision” (the song to be played as the parents were seated) over and over and over again. And again. And again. And again. The wedding hostesses were trying to flip a light at the organ to signal him to move on to the processional, but he wasn’t getting the hint. So eventually we just started the processional, and about halfway through the organist finally switched to the song for the processional. I suppose nothing ever goes 100% as planned at a wedding. 🙂 The ceremony was really good though, and was about an hour long (a long time to stand still on stage). The homily from the pastor was very Gospel-focused, the two congregational hymns were “O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus” and “Holy, Holy, Holy.” While Tim & Hilary were signing the marriage certificate (something that’s required by Washington state law to happen during the ceremony itself), one of Hilary’s sisters sang “I Love You, Lord” as a solo, and while Tim & Hilary took communion as the very first act of their marriage (even before the kiss, which was their first kiss ever), another of Hilary’s sisters sung “What Wondrous Love Is This?” as a solo. Near the end of the wedding, Tim & Hilary’s parents came on stage to pray for them as well. It was a really nice wedding!
The reception was right after the ceremony at the church, and was a big pie and ice cream social. There seemed to be a never-ending supply of pies of all kinds that kept being brought out! Tim & Hilary chose not to have a dinner at the reception, and also chose not to have any alcohol. Instead they had sparkling cider for the toasts. Several people gave toasts to Tim & Hilary, and I gave one as well, partly since I was the only Penn Stater who could make it out to the wedding. The reception wrapped up at about 6pm though, when Tim & Hilary drove off to start their honeymoon (Leavenworth, Washington -> Victoria, British Columbia -> Seattle, Washington). In preparation of their car, some of the other groomsmen decided to pull a couple little pranks — setting the radio at high volume and the windshield wipers so that they’d come on when he turned the car on, a piece of tagboard over the ignition, and then some whipped cream underneath the driver’s door handle. Just a little harmless fun. 🙂

With the reception ending as early as it did, and with the weather still being good (I knew snow was coming the next morning), I decided not to stay in Yakima another night, and instead to head back up to Larry & Marilyn’s house in Spokane. Right before I left I got invited to an impromptu after-party with some of Hilary’s sisters and cousins, but 3.5 hours of night driving in good weather (and then being able to go to church with Jonathan) was far more preferable to me than more hours of daytime driving on icy/snowy roads.
Even though I didn’t know anyone other than Tim & Hilary, I had a great time going out there for their wedding. They’re so happy together, and love each other and love God tremendously. It’s cool to see. 🙂 It was also an honor to be a part of their wedding, and I wish them nothing but the best in their marriage!
More about the rest of my Washington trip in an upcoming post. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!