(written on the 12th)
Happy Wedding Day to my biggest brother!!!
Gratefully, I woke up this morning having been undisturbed through the night at my chosen parking location way up Provo Canyon by the dam.
Unfortunately, I still was in a pretty bad place. I don’t know if it was everything going on with the van or what it was, but it just hit me pretty hard yesterday.
Anyway, feeling the crappy way that I was feeling, I didn’t head down the canyon into town right away I just drove to the bridal veil falls overlook parking lot and spent the next few hours just chilling there, wasting my life in front of my phone.
Eventually, I knew that I had to get going or risk being late to my brothers wedding festivities, so I drove into town to the Planet Fitness in Orem to take a shower, only to realize once I was already inside and ready to go but this particular Planet Fitness doesn’t provide soap, so I rinsed myself off, knowing that I was going to need an actual shower still.
When I got back outside and started walking toward my van, I noticed that both rear doors were open.
😶
I didn’t remember leaving them open, but there they were wide open. Plenty of stuff to steal inside.
Gratefully, there wasn’t anything missing, so I must have left the doors open while getting something from the back before I went in.
Phew!!!
From the Planet Fitness in orem, I headed north to Salt Lake County to run more needed errands.
Before leaving, I dug out my hair clippers and attachments and spent the drive from Orem to Sandy cutting my hair. 🙃
For those of you who don’t know, I have cut my own hair ever since I was I think 11 years old, with the only exceptions being while I was a missionary in the MTC and once, I think, on my mission before I bought Clippers, so I’m pretty well versed at cutting my hair. 🙃
There was definitely hair flying around everywhere, though, before I realized that I had both front windows down, which kept the hair from blowing out the window as I drove to some of it blowing out the window with the rest of it swirling around inside..
Oops.
So I got probably 2/3 of the way done with the haircut before I knew I would have to wait until I wasn’t bouncing around to finish it up and make it look relatively decent.
In Sandy ish, I stopped at either Lowe’s or Home Depot (I don’t remember which), where I bought bolts and nuts and washers to try to reattach my exhaust that I had undone Sunday night.
It took me a little while, but eventually I was able to find all the bolts and nuts and whatnot in the correct sizes.
It also took me a little while to prepare the meeting surfaces of the two sections of exhaust to be smooth enough to where I was comfortable trusting at the gasket would be able to properly seal the connection.
Once again, I got my grinder out to grind down the old piece of gasket that had basically welded itself to the metal. And once again, I opened my doors and whatnot, so I wouldn’t have people thinking I was trying to steal the catalytic converter that I was trying to properly fasten back on.
After getting that all put together, I spent a little while digging through my bins of stuff trying to find my dress shoes and at least some decent looking clothing to wear to my brother’s wedding events.
Gratefully, I’ve labeled all the bins, and gratefully, what I needed was right at the top of the bins. 🎉
So I got the clothes ready, and then I drove to the Planet Fitness that was between the home improvement store and the wedding event center. Gratefully, this time I remembered to bring in my own soap, and I got myself halfway decent looking.
I’m not very comfortable in big social situations like that with lots and lots of people whom I don’t know. I generally prefer small groups of people I know well, but it was really good to be there to support my brother and new sister-in-law. And it was great to see two of my sisters whom I don’t see very often at all. And it was great to see cousins who, despite the fact that I don’t see them almost ever, are so warm and friendly and personable and as though we just saw each other days ago.
I really do have a great family and extended family. Lovely people. 🥰
Had myself a little mini crush on the wedding photographer, who, of course, was engaged, not that I would have done anything about it anyway.
Spent nearly all of the time during the festivities chatting with family and extended family. One of my cousins is getting ready to go to New Zealand which is exciting. I love to be able to share my love for that amazing country with others.
Spent a little time decorating my brother’s car in typical post wedding fashion.
At the married couple farewell, complete with two rows of people and really huge sparklers.
Fun stuff. 😊
The bride and groom came back probably 30 minutes after they left because my brother had left his computer and phone at the wedding venue. 🙃
The vast majority of everyone had left by then, and the event crew was cleaning up. There were a massive number of leftover flower arrangements from the huge and gorgeous flower display, and they were just being thrown away unless claimed by guests who wanted them, so I grabbed a couple of sections to give to my friend Cory’s mom and to my friend Robyn.
Robin had just touched down coming back home from a business trip and was exhausted and not home yet, so I headed over to her house and put the flower arrangement on her front porch as a welcome back for her before heading over to Cory’s mom’s house to bring him the flowers to give to his mom.
I stayed and chatted with Corey for a little bit, and he offered to let me park for the night there, so I took him up on the offer, and crashed for the night.
Gratitude:
- I’m grateful that I was able to pull out of my funk enough to be pretty much normal by the time I got to my brother’s wedding festivities.
- I’m grateful to have been able to give those flowers to people to try to brighten days.
- I’m grateful to see my brother and new sister-in-law so happy.
- I’m grateful that my freeway haircut, so not what I normally would have wanted as the result of a haircut, looked decent enough for people to say that it looks nice.
- I’m grateful to have been able to get the exhaust bolted back together successfully without people calling the police thinking I was trying to steal stuff.
- I’m grateful that though reattaching the exhaust ended up blowing the hose back off the DPFE system, at least that seems to lend more Credence to the apparent fact that the issue, after all, turned out to be the downstream catalytic converter. It seemed so clearly to be the upstream on the driver’s side, but I never blew the hose off the DPFE system again until I put the downstream catalytic converter back in the equation.
Success:
- I reached out and was social even though there were occasions where I didn’t want to be
Improvement:
- Got distracted driving thing is really a major Achilles heel for me. 😅 I’m not very good at monotasking. I just don’t feel like I’m making the most of my time.
Love and hugs
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 