Nov 3, 2025
Busy Weeks!
Nov 3, 2025
Busy Weeks!
Texas wedding edition
Man, I've been busy lately! After my last trip to go see a friend's wedding, I got to go to another wedding, this time in Texas! I was one of the groomsmen, which was pretty neat/weird for me. It was definitely a much larger wedding than the previous one, so the whole weekend was pretty packed with wedding events. As a result, I didn't get much time to do serious tourism stuff, but I *did* have exactly 1 (one) amazing quesadilla at a smaller place near the hotel. If you're ever in Austin, check out Taqueria del Diaz. Easily the best quesadilla I've had.
The first night, some of the other groomsmen and our partners hit up a tiki bar before the first event. I'm a pretty big fan of tiki drinks, and I always enjoy the extra presentation you get from going to a dedicated venue for them. I think I got a 3 dots and a dash, which was very well prepared, and very tasty. Then, we shared a big rum bowl, which got set on fire and dusted with a copious amount of cinnamon. It smelled/tasted great, and I had a great time chatting with friends. Solid pre-game!
Then, we had a slightly more formal (but still casual) cocktail party at a bar nearby that the bride was a fan of, and we went through a few rehearsals for how we'd stand and enter and stuff on the wedding day. Mostly, this was just an opportunity to chat and have some light snacks/finger food, so I had a pretty good time catching up with some people that I'd otherwise have not seen in years (decades?). Kinda wild to me seeing a bunch of people from high school for some reason. I guess I mentally kinda just wrote that part of my life off with regards to some people I didn't keep in touch with. Also, there was a solid chance that night of a nasty storm rolling through, but luckily it never materialized other than some nice wind and thunder.
The day of the wedding was pretty busy! As one of the groomsmen, I needed to get to the venue quite ahead of the ceremony with the rest of the groomsmen, so we carpooled over there relatively early in the day. We participated in some nice pre-wedding ceremony stuff, and got some light refreshments. The venue was a beautiful botanical garden about 45 minutes out of town. The weather was threatening pretty much the whole time, so it was pretty touch and go as to whether or not we'd run the rain or shine plan for the wedding, but I suppose that was more stressful for the bride/groom than me, haha. There was a pretty torrential downpour that lasted all of 10 minutes while we were doing some rehearsals, but luckily the weather otherwise held up. The ceremony was very beautiful, and I was happy to see my best friend from high school get married to a really cool lady.
It was pretty hot that day, so I was kinda baking in the suit. So, after the ceremony when it came time for dancing and dinner, I was pretty happy to pop the suit jacket off to vent the excess heat from the day. The dinner was really tasty, and dancing with friends was good fun. I also got a bit more of a chance to wander around the venue grounds, and appreciate the nice greenhouse and tower on site. To cap off the wedding, they gave us all giant sparklers to light, and we made a giant sparkler tunnel for the bride/groom to "leave" through. It was really pretty! Immediately after all of the festivities were concluded, the skies opened up and pretty much dumped all the rain they'd been saving up for the rest of the night. We had plans to visit a rooftop bar for an afterparty, but the bar had to close due to the rain, so we just went to a hotel bar instead. Pretty fun day! Exhausting, but fun!
The last day of the trip ended up being pretty uneventful, since we booked a bit of an earlier flight home. Just got some continental breakfast, met up with a friend who stayed at the same hotel for said breakfast, and hit the road to make sure we had enough time for security/customs. The weekend really took it out of me, so on arrival back home, I passed out right away and woke up with a nasty nasty headcold that I'm still kinda recovering from. C'est la vie!
This is pretty much the end of a cluster of trips I had planned, so I ended up taking pretty much all of last week off to recover, due to general headcold sickness and social battery drainage. I don't think I'd slept quite so much in the last week as I had in the previous couple weeks combined (or at least it felt that way). Lots of soup, sleep, and brain-off video games (I'm making solid C++ progress on Balatro). Yesterday, I had some friends over to start planning our next D&D campaign, and it looks like we're gonna run the 5.5 version of D&D, and do Wilds Beyond the Witchlight. We also played a nice game of Arcs where I was playing the Warrior, and mostly attacked people without much of a strategy, leading to a pretty unimpressive last place showing, haha. So, that's pretty much what I've been up to over the last little while!