Four-Part Harmony

It's four... FOUR 'blog entries in one!

Get Me To The Chapel On Time

Friday night was Chris and Joe's commitment ceremony. Friday was also the opening day of The Mall at Millenia, where Dan's American Eagle store is located. All mall employees had to park off-site and get bussed in, to try and maximize the way-too-few parking spaces. Unfortunately, they commandeered the shuttles to help mall visitors reach the mall, as people began parking in every open field they could find within a mile radius.

At 4:55, I got a call from Dan: he had just walked back to his car and was attempting to reach home. Of course, I-4 was a parking lot, so he had to navigate back roads to make it to the house. When he was about 15 minutes away, I threw a frozen pizza in the oven for him; while he showered, I ironed, and we managed to make it out the door only 5 minutes later than planned. We arrived with time to spare, and weren't even the last to arrive.

The ceremony itself was beautiful. The vows and the items read by the officiant (Asa, one of Chris's friends) were so lovely they made me want to cry.


Mall-ed

Saturday morning, I ventured to Millenia myself. I got there about 11, and found the parking lot only half-filled. (By the time I left around 12:30, it was a different story. I had three different cars try to follow me to my parking space. It was tempting to drop my bag in the trunk and return to the mall just to be spiteful.) It's very pretty inside, and yet very cold — all stone and steel and glass. It probably won't be my day-to-day shopping place, but the Apple Store, Bloomingdale's and Crate & Barrel (once it opens) will probably command most of my attention when I do visit.

Speaking of Apple: yes, I was one of the geeks who lined up for Grand Opening-day entry and a free t-shirt. For what it's worth, this is perhaps their smallest store. They have eliminated their signature "theater" section, and moved both the cash wrap and software displays to the very back of the store, narrowing the store's footprint by about half. One of the employees said that the theaters cost over $40,000 to install, so they'll just use one of Apple's grand Cinema HD displays to do presentations.

When I mentioned before that it was virtually a holiday for shop-a-holics, I should have said it was a holiday for gay men in Orlando. As I text-messaged Dewayne, in 90 minutes of shopping, I encountered 10 Known Homosexuals and at least 150 suspected ones. It was as bad as the opening weeks of Expo Design Center, two blocks away.


BlogMeet

Saturday evening, I had dinner with Dewayne, Tim, Robbie, Pat, and Tony, at the Wolf. Dewayne has done a better job of telling the story than I could. Read it here. Call me unobservant, but I didn't notice the same-ness of eyewear between Dewayne and our server.


Music To My Ears

I enjoy making compilation CDs for friends. It's therapeutic somehow, to focus on choosing the songs, getting the mixes just right, and designing the cover and label. It was extremely gratifying that Chris and Joe played one of my discs after the ceremony, and mentioned they've made copies for friends. I found out Brian C. has done the same, so I'm getting wider distribution than I thought. And to top off the weekend, about 2/3rds of the songs the DJ at the 'Moon played Sunday night were on a 2-disc set I'd done in August. I really like his choice of music normally, but for him to play songs I'd already chosen — icing on the cake. Maybe I do have some taste after all.