Between a celebrant who had known both participants well since high school and Ben's choice to write and perform his vows as a song (accompanying them on guitar), the ceremony was touching and personal.
The few pictures I have from the day are not mine; I had a minor technical setback on the eve of the wedding. I decided it would be a good idea to clean off my camera's memory chip for our vacation, so I wanted to transfer my photos (90% of which were pictures of cats... literally every photo I have taken of the boys since we brought them home a year ago!) Because of the massive number of pictures in my collection (mostly from our wedding), I save pictures on an external hard drive, which iPhoto indexes. It's a pretty smooth workaround for the most part, but apparently this means that using file>import does NOT transfer the files to the external drive; I managed to "import" thumbnails of my pictures only to discover that the originals were nowhere to be found! Unfortunately, I had emptied the chip prior to this realization.
On the day of the wedding I picked up a replacement memory card at Walgreens, with the hope that I could get a new, larger capacity card and preserve the "blank" one to attempt a recovery of my lost pictures. I didn't realize until we were on the way to the church, however, that the replacement didn't work. Apparently it was an "HC" card, which was incompatible with my rather elderly camera. We zipped into another Walgreens after the ceremony to try and fix the problem (where the helpful clerk pointed out that I had been sold the wrong card for my camera) and purchased a standard card. I tested it in the store, at first getting an error message, but after formatting the card and taking a test picture it looked like we were good to go. Until, that is, we got to the reception. The error message returned, and the only way to get the card working was to format it again. Obviously, having to wipe the card every time one turns on one's camera is less than ideal. I fiddled with my camera for a while, but the problem only got worse: soon the error message was constant and I couldn't even reformat the card again. The card worked fine in another camera and the pictures I had been able to take were still on it, so I thought my camera was done for (and, of course, I had purchased a new rechargeable battery pack for it only days before!)
Thankfully last night I finally had the opportunity to try and recover the deleted pictures. I found a free utility and was able to figure out how to use it (amazing since I'm slightly terrified of working in the command prompt) and save all my kitty pictures!
I still haven't figured out what settings I need to monkey with in iPhoto to get it to import the full files to my external drive, but at least I saved my pictures. Plus, the original memory card is available again, and apparently it does not give my camera indigestion, so I have a working camera again. I also borrowed my mother-in-law's camera for use on the trip (since mine was still unusable by the time we left Wichita) so I think we'll be in good shape from here out!
Speaking of the rest of the trip, there have been other developments besides my camera issues! The wedding reception was a great party, even though one of the hall's air conditioners broke down on a near-record high temperature day! (Wichita hit 108 degrees, two degrees below the highest ever recorded.) Many braved the warmth to hit the dance floor, including Grandpa Nigh!
Grandma cut a rug as well (unfortunately not pictured) and was awarded a CD of Glenn Miller hits by the DJ for her trouble. Mike and I opened up the floor when dancing started and got an 80's mix for "winning" the unannounced "dance contest." We stayed until the end of the night, emerging into a bout of heat lightning that was sadly devoid of cooling rain.
We spent the following morning with Mike's extended family at Grandma and Grandpa's house, until around noon when my brother and his wife-to-be picked us up. Serendipitously, Katelynn's grandparents also live in the Wichita area, so we went out to lunch with them and then spent the afternoon at their house, chatting about our families, our jobs, his career in engineering, and telling pet stories (Steve and Katelynn had brought their petite dachshund Sadie along for the visit).
In the early evening, we hit the road for Oklahoma City (more specifically Edmond, OK, where Katelynn grew up). Her parents are traveling, but they had generously offered for us to stay at their home and borrow their camping equipment. Steve and Katelynn took us to Pop's in nearby Arcadia for dinner, the first major Route 66 landmark of our journey (I'm not going to count the "Route 66 museum" in the truck stop in McLean, IL on our Megabus trip to St. Louis, because that was basically a hallway with glass cases full of pamphlets on the wall!)
We lucked out and got a table right away and had our first "road food" burgers, but the focus of the place is soda. There are over a dozen flavors that can be mixed into fountain drinks; I tried a peach Sierra Mist, while Steve and Katelynn added blueberry and blackberry, respectively. Mike decided to try the local root beer, Round Barn, which is named after another Arcadia Route 66 landmark located just up the road.
In addition to mixers, Pop's has a huge selection of bottled soft drinks for sale in an entire wall of refrigerator cases, organized by flavor. Mike and I were excited that the root beer section filled an entire case and then some! We consider ourselves connoisseurs to a certain extent, but they had a few even we haven't tried. Familiar stock included St. Louis favorite Fitz's, Chicagoland's Goose Island (Mike's current all-time champion) and Gale's (mine), as well as IBC, Virgil's, Dad's (which we haven't tried) and several more esoteric options including Judge Wapner's root beer (??!!). On our way back through Edmond in two weeks we may have to purchase a mix-and-match six pack to sample the variety! There was also a wide choice of ginger beers/ales, birch beer, and even Almdudler! (Almdudler is an Austrian import that is most like a ginger ale, and a favorite of Mike's from visiting his mom's side of the family growing up.)
When I woke up this morning to say goodbye to Katelynn and Steve before they left for work, I was surprised to find that my computer battery had failed to charge despite being plugged in all night. Luckily the problem was the battery itself rather than the laptop or charger cord, because I could still use it plugged in with the battery removed (in fact it started up more easily with the battery out). It's not an old battery, either, so I was a bit worried we'd have to find an Apple Store along the way and see what they could do. Now it looks like that won't be necessary because I think an SMC reset has fixed the issue. I don't know if it's just that my 5-year-old laptop doesn't travel so well anymore or if it's related to all the heat we've been in lately, but I'll be glad if we can get through the rest of the trip without any technical disasters!
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