“Rejoice” is, in my opinion, an underused word in today’s day and age. I was reminded of this word yesterday at the wedding of Jill Aldalpe and Xanti Alcelay. The ceremony was at the remodeled version of the same church where Andy and I were married, St. Mary’s on State St. in Boise. It was a packed house full of people excited to “rejoice” in the union of two of Boise’s awesome citizens with Basque heritage. Near the end of the mass, the priest implored the people in the room to support and rejoice with Xanti and Jill and I thought to myself, we all need to rejoice more often…and why is the word rejoice reserved for church-affiliated affairs.
If we thought the church was packed, you should have seen the Basque Center where the reception was held. I had never seen the place more packed and I had a few flashbacks to some public places in China. It was not a place for the claustrophobic or crowd-weary. All three floors of the Basque Center were filled with lavishly and wine-themed tables for a full sit-down dinner for around 800 people. After dinner, Jill and Xanti went around to each floor and genuinely thanked each and every person for coming and reiterated that despite the fact there were so many of us, we all meant a lot to them. Next, instructions were given on how to change the dining hall on the main floor into a dance hall and the party began. People rejoiced by dancing, drinking, conversing and having a good time. Later into the evening, some of the Basque dancers did a serenade to the happy newlyweds and then my favorite part of the evening, the second band, “Amuma Says No” played.
Amuma Says No is actually a Basque band that Jill is the lead singer of. I was SO impressed to see her up on stage in her wedding dress, rocking out and singing lyrics in Basque. And the entire dance floor was digging it. Even later in the evening, there was a nice dessert buffet with a white cake, baby white cupcakes with some kid of berry sauce in the middle and some sort of chocolate brownie-like goodness. Since I couldn’t enjoy the free flowing wine, this was my indulgence for the evening. Around 9, I started to get tired, especially since I am not used to standing up for so long with all of this extra weight. The itinerary for the reception said that there would be a “hamarrataro” or 10 o’clock snack of “chorizo sliders” that Andy had been talking about since we were at the church at 2PM, so I figured I could hang on for one more hour so that Andy could have the classic Basque snack. It turns out that a chorizo slider is different than a traditional chorizo and is more a mini-burger where the chorizo is a patty rather than the traditional sausage-shape. It was covered with some sort of pepper and mayonnaise and a bun. It was quite delectable.
Needless to say, the wedding was a blast and we weren’t expecting any less. All of the Basque functions are always so much fun. I think I have been wishing I had some percentage of Basque in my blood since I was about 12, when I saw how much fun my friend Sage had in the Basque community. It was also great to see a group of my friends from college and my sorority and catch up with people.
Jill of "Amuma Says No" singing at her wedding
Besides that, the excitement for the week was that I failed my first glucose test and had to take the three-hour version on Friday morning. I was nervous mostly because I had to fast for 8-10 hours and basically not eat from 10 PM to 11:30 AM the following day. This is not something I generally do, but it turned out okay. Andy came with me to the doctors office, bless his heart, and waited the three hours while I had my blood drawn four times and drank a double dose of the glucose drink. According to the technicians, it is rare to fail the second test so hopefully I am not an anomaly. I will find out on Monday.
Other than that, I got my hair done, had investment club where we recruited two new members (yea!), painted my fingernails a bright pink/orange shade for something different (I never paint my nails) and had a fairly typical week of work. Oh we did go look at a really cute 10-week old puppy that was a mixture of chocolate lab and short-hair pointer. It was very tempting to buy her and get her trained up before the baby comes, but ultimately we decided it would be too much for now. We do want to find another running companion for the family, but we will wait until we have had the baby and things have settled into their routine a bit before we add a puppy or new dog.
How could I forget, the economic downturn that we have all heard so much about became personal this week when Andy and I and all of the people at HP were given a five-percent pay cut along with the removal of a percentage of our 401K matching and the 15% discount we used to receive on our stock purchase plan. We were happy for this instead of another round of layoffs, but it is still disappointing, mostly because we have no idea if these changes are really temporary and if so, when the previous salary amounts and programs will be reinstated. We are happy to have jobs though! We do need to rework our budget with the looming cost of daycare and in light of the recently announced pay cuts.
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