Baltimore Wedding

I flew to Baltimore this past weekend for my uncle's wedding. It was a pretty good wedding, definitely the best wedding I've been to in at least the last ten years. The ceremony was in a Catholic church not far from the hotel that everyone was staying in. I'm not much of a church-goer, so that wasn't really my favorite part, but the reception that followed was really great. It was held in an old warehouse which has been converted into someone's home that they rent out for events like this. There was an eclectic mix of people in attendance and the DJ was playing some good music. The toast was accompanied not by champagne, but rather by a strong Scandanavian alcohol similar to Vodka called Aquavit. Everyone was warned that this particular beverage should be gulped, not sipped, because if you take just a sip you won't take a second. It was funny to see my grandma slamming back a shot of hard alcohol and then to hear half the people there coughing and hacking after they took their shot. Apparently this is now going to be a Swanson family tradition, unfortunately I don't think there will be any more Swanson weddings for some time still (I guess that since I am the oldest of the next generation of Swansons that I would be expected to get married next, but I'm pretty sure either my sister or one of my cousins will beat me to it).

At the reception there was an official photographer who must have taken about a million pictures, most of which I think were actually shot in 3-D, so that will be cool to see how those turn out. There was also someone taking Polaroid pictures for the guest book. My mother and my sister and I were wearing nearly-matching colors and we were quite a handsome trio if I do say so myself. Our first Polaroid didn't turn out very well though, so we stole it and had them take another which turned out much better. Here's the first botched one though. I didn't like it because I look drunk, but I think I might have just been mid-blink. Anyway, you can see how good we looked.



After the reception we could have gone to a local bar to listen to some music, but I was too exhausted and I fell asleep for 12 hours instead. The next day everyone went to the American Visionary Art Museum, a museum exhibiting works of art by untrained or self-taught artists, many of whom created their art while they were living in mental institutions, for example. It was pretty interesting and there were some pretty neat things there. But after that, it was time for several of us to go to the airport to catch our planes back to Denver, so we walked back to where the rental car was parked only to find that it had been towed. Apparently there was some sort of sporting event going on in Baltimore that day and the parking rules are different for game days. So with some teamwork we found out where it had been towed to, drove there even though none of us really knew our way around Baltimore that well, payed the $278 + $15 credit-card-fee, and sped to the airport to catch our planes. It was a stressful time to say the least.

Overall it was a pretty good weekend though, despite the towing incident. I am finding that the older I get the more I enjoy hanging out with my extended family for some reason. Really I have a pretty fun/cool/funny family. It was good to see everyone and weddings are almost always fun anyway. Also, Baltimore seems pretty neat, although it's hard to really get a good impression of a city when you are there for little more than a day and a half and don't really go to many places. On our trip to the museum we did spend some time driving around both because we took a big wrong turn and also because we couldn't find a parking spot. While many people would find this frustrating, I enjoyed it because I got to see a bit more of the city that way. Baltimore has lots of cute row houses and old neighborhoods with narrow little streets that make for lots of character. I loved them! I think Seattle is still safely in the #1 position as my favorite US city though.

So yeah, that was my trip to Baltimore. It was fun.

Today's video is a song by Lilly Allen that the DJ played at the reception. I'm not going to describe it because she spends the first 30 seconds of the video doing just that. She is a year younger than me and is from about the same part of London as Lady Sovereign. If you despise Lady Sovereign, you might actually like Lilly Allen, but then again, you might not; no promises. And if you get halfway through the video and still don't like it, go ahead and stop watching it because there aren't going to be any surprises later on, I can tell you that much.