The Raven

Check out the Raven Run.

Raven is Robert Kraft, a resident of South Beach in Miami, Florida (who looks amazingly like my friend and co-worker, Trent). Since 1 January 1975, Raven has run every day on the beach for around eight miles. That's eight miles per day, every day, without missing one, for over THIRTY YEARS. Every day, for many years, people have shown up to run with Raven. He welcomes anyone that wants to come and run the eight miles (on one of four different routes) every day. There are some pretty cool pictures of some of the crowds that run with him sometimes.

There's a good article on this guy at the Miami New Times, which explains Raven's life and the benefits and hardships this running has given him. His streak shows amazing dedication. While I don't think I could ever do that (I have enough trouble running eight miles once, thank you very much), I stand in awe of this. I am also somewhat amazed that he has not left South Beach since starting and feels very anxious whenever he leaves the beach even for a couple hours. He hasn't experienced much outside of his area. But that suites him and I cannot judge that; it's good for him so it's good.

Wow.

John Bolton

On Monday I went to a special event at UD that was a speech by the US Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton. I've disagreed with alot of what Bolton has said over the past couple of months. However, I found this talk to be very enlightening. Two of the main issues that Ambassador Bolton sees facing the UN right now - 1) Iran and its nuclear program, and 2) the current genocide occuring in the Darfur region of the Sudan. I was very pleased to see the inclusion of Darfur in this list. It's a big problem and the US isn't doing anything about it. I understand the problems with doing anything in a country where the government doesn't want any intervention, but the horrors that are occurring there are insane.

Anyway, I found this talk to be very good. I learned alot about Bolton's perspective on the UN, which I think is the same position as the current administration. Bolton views the UN as one tool in the arsensal of US foreign policy. If the US wants to do something and the UN could get to that goal, we'll do it that way. If not, we'll do it some other way. It's just another tool in the toolbox.

Now to agree with that point of view, you need to accept that the US has a solution to almost all of the world's problems. And you have to accept that we're right and we'll do what we know to be right no matter what method we take. Now that's not the perspective I tend to take when thinking about world affairs. But I do now understand John Bolton's perspective and, based on that understanding, I understand alot of what he has said publically alot better.

Good talk, Ambassador Bolton. Thank you for being so frank and so honest. It is very refreshing. I don't agree with all of your prespectives, but I understand where you are coming from alot moreso than before.

I have a sister in law

The result of all the fast-paced developments concerning my brother and his wedding was that he got married this weekend and me and Cindy had to go down to Greenville, South Carolina, for the wedding.

I had used some Hilton Honors points to reserve a room at the Embassy Suites in Greenville for May, which is when the wedding was planned for. After finding out the wedding was now going to be this weekend, I called Hilton and pleaded for them to move my reservation to this weekend and explained all of the circumstances. They were very happy to change the reservation and all worked out very well. Kudos to Hilton for handling this situation very well. I knew there was a reason why I always prefer their hotels.

So we left on Thursday afternoon around 4.15pm, which meant we sat in DC traffic for hours. Luckily, we got to use a new bridge of the always-under-massive-construction I-95/I-495/I-395 Springfield interchange, and that was cool. Then, once we got south of the Capitol Beltway, we got to use the HOV-3 lanes despite only having two people in the car, since my new hybrid car gets mad benefits from the state of Virgina. Very sweet. So, we drove down I-95, to I-85, stopped at a Subway for dinner, stopped at a BP for coffee and a bathroom break, and eventually pulled into the Embassy Suites parking lot around 1.15am. It was painful but the drive wasn't that bad and we got to sleep in on Friday. Very nice. The night manager was waiting for us, knew I was coming and the details of why, and we got our nice room. All very well handled and off me and Cindy went to bed.

On Friday, we woke up around 11am and went to Cracker Barrel for lunch. Delicious. Then we drove into Clemson to see Jim. We met up with him and Sara, got some Clemson-logoed merchandise for Cindy, and went to his favorite bar for some beers. I had a Highland Mocha Stout that was really good. From there me and Cindy headed back to Greenville and the Manager's Reception with my parents where we enjoyed free beer and wine, as well as popcorn and vegetables. They left to have dinner with Sara's parents (first meeting!) and we ordered a pizza from room service, ate it, and went to bed after watching some crappy TV.

We woke up on Saturday early (7.15am), expecting to go shooting. It was Jim's wedding day and he wanted to go shooting. Plus neither Cin or my dad had ever done this so it would be fun. But it was raining and that became a no-go. So we went back to sleep. Then we got up, went shopping so Cindy could get a new dress for the wedding, got some Cold Stone Creamery ice cream, and headed back to the hotel. We got dressed, I picked up Sara's ring (I was the best man!) and we got dressed, met mom and dad, and headed to the church.

We got to the church and met some of Jim's friends and Sara's family. There were six folks from my family (me, Cin, mom, dad, Anne, and her boy, Ross). There were about sixty folks from Sara's family (most of them live in SC). Here's Sara's family...



And for comparision, here's our family...



After the wedding, in the receiving line, Jim looked very flustered when he was meeting them all. Sara's family seems very nice and very large. The wedding was short and went off without a hitch. It was quite good and my responsibilities as best man were minimal. Sara's dress looked wonderful.

Here's a good wedding picture of the bride and groom...



And here's the wedding party (bride, groom, maid-of-honor, best man)...



After the short ceremony, we headed off to the reception.

The reception was at the Westin Poinsett. Ross told us that when he was in high school, this place was an abandoned building where homeless folks lived and his friends would all bet each other to spend a night there. It's really nice now. The reception was beautiful and looked like it was planned for months. They did have a cash bar, largely because the open bar would have been multiple thousands of dollars. The dinner was steak and was delicious. The cake was from Sara's favorite cake place and was really good. There was no DJ; for dancing they used Jim's iPod. The dancing time was kind of short, but that was OK. The best man (myself) gave a rather short and ill-planned toast, but I think it was OK. The maid-of-honor gave a much better one. Sara's dad explained the legend of the Nurenberg Wedding Cup and Jim and Sara did it and succeeded (it didn't look that hard) - this was the first time I had seen this and it was pretty neat. After some dancing, we all headed back to the hotel and Jim and Sara went up to their free Westin room.

Here's Jim and Sara entering the reception...



Well, they absolutely pulled this off. I was so concerned after a wedding planned in one week. Yet they had a full wedding. They were in a church with alot of people there. They had a full reception with a sit-down dinner, a bar, dancing, toasts, a (small) wedding party, a real wedding cake, presents, and everything else that's normally at a wedding (except a DJ :)). It was really impressive. If Jim and Sara could pull this off in one week, a wedding planning in two months would have been amazing.

So, congrats to James and Sara Six. Sara's the most recent addition to our family since Jim. And she's very welcome.

total randomness

Things have been very strange in my family for the past couple of weeks.

A couple weeks ago, we got some indications that my brother, Jim, was going to propose to his girlfriend (not dating a year yet, if I recall). Now I like Sarah, as does the rest of my family, but this couldn't be real, could it?

Yep, it's real. Originally they were going to get married in May in Greenville, SC (right outside of Clemson). The wedding was going to be right after they graduate. The day after. So they had a wedding to plan in less than two months. This is largely because it looked like Jim's Army Reserve unit was going to get called up in the summer and Sarah (who is in Air Force ROTC) was going to Florida for two years of training right after graduation. So they needed a wedding quicker than the usual year or so away. That was going to be amazing if they could pull it off. And they were doing a good job. Jim asked me to be his best man, they selected a church and reception location, started on the food, Sarah ordered her dress, and so on. Progress was being made and the mood changed from "what the..." to "this is actually going to be a good time."

Until Friday night.

Jim's Army Reserve unit got called up. To go to the sandbox. In the middle of April.

Ouch. So much for those plans. Now, we're heading down to Greenville next week. Yes, one week from now, I'm attending my brother's wedding that we just started to think might possibly happen some day in the future about two weeks ago. I'm really, really, happy for my brother. But I'm very disappointed that this is how he's getting married. He deserves a ceremony and a reception and a shower for Sarah and lots of family and friends at the wedding, and so on. With one week to go, I have no idea what this wedding will look like. And then he's off to the sandbox (before college graduation that is only weeks away!) while his fiance stays here. This is a very strange situation and it's evolving so quicky that I cannot even figure out how I really feel about it.

Well, atleast I don't have to give a speech. :)

excellent Italian food

Me and Cin have found a wonderful new restaurant, the Aida Bistro in Columbia. Some folks from work had been talking about this place so we tried it out a couple of weeks ago. We went back for the second time last evening and it was just as good as the first time, discounting the possibility of a fluke.

The place is Italian and it shows. They make all of their pasta (most of their menu is pasta or includes pasta) homemade, each day. It is absolutely delicious. Cindy can explain much better than I why freshly made pasta tastes so much better than packaged stuff but she's right - it's delicious. The first time I had spaghetti in a garlic and olive oil sauce. Last night I had the same thing but with whole-wheat linguine instead. It was incredible. The whole-wheat pasta had a much different taste than the "normal" pasta and I liked each on its own, so I have a good choice between the two next time I go there. The table next to us had a salmon dish that looked fantastic, so I might try that next time.

Other nice features: they have a large wine list that starts quite cheap and gets really expensive, they have "small entree" selections which cost somewhere around $12 for a smaller portion of a delicious meal than you'd expect elsewhere (the pasta portions are smaller than most restaurants which is wonderful since they always give you too much pasta - this smaller portion approach is apparently much more inline with how they approach pasta in Italy), and everyone there is very friendly and helpful.

In short, this is a wonderful place. It's also small and hard to get into so if you wanna go, call and make reservations atleast a day or two early, even for a party of two.