The River Green

Despite my good friend and her family bailing on us at the very last minute, Marieke and I went ahead with plans to host a Memorial Day cookout. It was the first time we would see our friend from Canada, Jenny Jesty, since she came back to Pittsburgh. We also extended an invitation to Suzy, who made Marieke’s coin bracelet and Kara’s Irish coin necklace. Suzy has a friend, Anita, who is in the same field as Marieke and brought her along as well. My mother rounded out the guest list and I was noticeably the only guy present.

Our menu was, as usual, quite robust. Even though our good friend was supposed to bring the meats that we were then going to grill, forcing Marieke into the den of the grocery store the morning of the shindig- which we scheduled for Sunday before Memorial Day, it all turned out very nice. Perhaps even better than originally planned, since we treated ourselves and our guests to the finest in grillable meats. Our beverages included a gallon jug of iced tea and a case of Yeungling Bock Beer. Also, anything our guests bring to drink for themselves is also often shared. Suzy and Anita brought some Straub beer and Jenny brought ice.

Just before we came inside for dinner, there was a National Geographic moment brought to us by the lovely orange cat that gave me my wounds and his grey long-haired mistress. In the middle of the street. No doubt, breeding more kittens to become territorial over.

The dinner-time conversation was sporadic, which has become endemic of the exquisite fare our guests have become accustomed to at our house. So, most of the conversation took place afterward, on the porch, as we took part in Marieke’s Southern-Style Banana Pudding.

It was such a beautiful evening to spend outside and in the company of new and old friends and family. I didn’t want it to end. But soon enough, everyone departed for their own homes and we were left with not much cleanup at all, since we opted for disposable dishes and flatware.

We were expecting a much larger crowd, so we had so many leftovers and it was hard to fit it all back into our fridge. Luckily, we were smart and only made half as much of all the salads that we planned, even before we found out that our friends were bailing on us. On the menu were deviled eggs, macaroni salad, coleslaw, chips, baked beans, Mom’s tomato-onion-lemon salad, watermelon and an assortment of condiments. It was all very delicious.

The day before, we were invited to our across the street neighbor’s house for a cookout and live music. It’s always fun and the previous occupants of the house- whom we hadn’t seen in a while- were there as well, along with our new neighbor and a couple other people we knew from their large New Year’s bash.

Labels: friends , holidays

For this year’s milestone birthday, I decided to have a three day extravaganza, topped off with a gift to myself. The gift was finally, at long last, my own website. richwertzonline.com is up and running. The time it took settling on a theme was a bit longer than anticipated, but in the end, it is a bamboo inspired design with some pretty impressive and cutting edge css style renderings. Of course, I had to make a statement along the lines that it looked and functioned better with either a Chrome or Firefox browser. I imagine some people might say that I am incapable of designing anything that is viewable in Internet Explorer. I say to them that IE hasn’t been able to match my level of creativity as yet. I’ve always been one to push the boundaries of web design. I remember spending so much time creating images for a table layout that mimicked public transportation with the content located where the adverts would be. It was a while before I could show it to anyone without Netscape or Mozilla. Just for kicks, I re-created the same concept using purely css constructs and it took about a tenth the amount of time.

So that’s how I spent the first half of my birthday week. Tweaking my new website and doing school work. The other half consisted of my birthday dinner (on the day of my birthday) at Hokkaido; Kara joined us and she gave me an iTunes gift card in a really awesome card. I managed to stuff an entire plate of crab legs into my gob, but half of the shells ended up on the floor when I tried to open a particularly difficult shell and slipped. The wait staff literally standing next to our table didn’t find my antics amusing at all. Afterward, we all went to Dave & Buster’s for some game time. Kara won me 1,000 tickets at the bass fishing thing- which was really awesome. I couldn’t get enough of the coin games. Jovanna met us there and had some fun, too. Some of the nearly 3,000 tickets we have on the card covered the purchase of a new mug.

Thursday was stamppot day. Kara, Jen and my mom were invited, but mom had to cancel because of her back. Everything was delicious- even the turkey sausage turned out better than I thought.

A few days after my birthday, we went to mom’s so that she could give both Marieke and I our birthday presents. She gave me a really neato existentialist book about chaos theory and the philosophy of physics. It’s kind of hard to read, only because certain sections need some devoted time to finish and I can only read it in smaller bits until class is over.

Labels: family , friends , holidays

The last time I saw Dawn Zuckerman, Marieke and I were shopping at Wal-Mart for our new apartment (Wendover pl.) and Dawn was shopping at Wal-Mart for her stint in the Peace Corps. The very next time I saw her, it was just under 10 years later at the Starbucks on Murray Ave. Another successful reunification courtesy of Facebook.

True to expectation, she is saving the world, one refugee at a time.

We had so much in common, it was hard to tell where one of us began and the other ended. While drinking coffee and eating our lunch, it was as if no time had passed at all.

After helping me with mailing my Christmas cards, we parted with a date for lunch on the following Monday. It was nice to remember what it felt like to be 22 years old again. Few things are comparable.

Labels: friends

The day is upon us. Time for turkey, mashed potatoes, friends, family, beer and Marieke’s sweet potato oranges. Unlike last year, we are hosting this time around and are welcoming eight people to our ginormous table.

Part of the reason we opted out of hosting last year was because we didn’t have the energy to clean. Having to spend most of our physical and emotional strength dealing with our friend’s accident meant that we just could not hack hosting. The decision did not go over well with our normal crew- one person in particular responded to our decision with static. I did expect a little more understanding, but I knew it was just expecting too much.

Our day began with some coffee and planning. My first task was to make room in the former Gecko room, for all the stuff that doesn’t belong where we plan to eat dinner and socialize. Marieke’s first task was cleaning the bathroom. An hour later, we seriously considered cancelling. Aunt Flo paid us a three-day-early visit, so that wrenched up the whole works.

It is a mystery to me, how, in under twelve hours, the house looks like a palace- granted a small palace. Maybe a gnome palace, but a palace nonetheless. Speaking of Kabouters (Dutch for gnomes), the vacuum we had to borrow from mom was made for use in only the residents of gnomes. This is the only possible conclusion to draw, given the ridiculous angle one must stand in order to operate it. My mother is what I would call average in height for a woman in her demographic. Marieke and I are what I would call above average in height. I can see over everyone’s head on the bus and in crowds, I tend to be the first to know when it starts to rain. So maybe it’s a matter of perspective.

In digression, I’ll say this: the turkey looks quite defrosted, having spent the last five days sitting in the fridge. Our prep work for tomorrow- food wise- seems like it will be smooth sailing, since we have a CuisinArt hand-me-down that slices carrots faster than the speed of lightning and chops onions like nobody’s business. I’m sad to see our ‘manual’ chopper go, but I won’t miss nursing the wounds suffered to my knuckles from the mandolin slicer that it doubled as. Also gone will be the nearly ninety minutes of slicing four pounds of carrots. It’s a tradeoff, but those things were invented for a reason. Now I can sleep in.

My cousin, David, shared a quote from Melody Beattie that I thought appropriate:

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.
Melody Beattie

Have a good Thanksgiving.

Labels: family , friends , holidays , house , Thanksgiving

Just after Kara got into her accident in October, Shannon and Will bought a house in Monroeville somewhere in the middle of an epic hill. Move-in day was the first week in November, but I couldn't help because of my finger and Marieke just doesn't do the 'moving' thing and besides, they had a team of movers.

We got a bunch of stuff as a result of their move: one large dining room table (capable of seating eight), six red chairs, one air conditioner, two wooden, fold-able shelf units, the square cat food table, and a few other odds and ends.

All they asked in return for this stuff was to help Will take the larger, unusable pieces to the dumpster, which I was too happy to help with.

Bill came with his giant truck to help us move the giant table and carry it up our front steps.

Mom's old kitchen table/dining room table/Marieke's sewing table is finally retired and now resides in the basement. Our antique dining room table that Neil and I rescued from the trash is now Marieke's sewing table. The process we used for switching the two tables was in fact so complicated, that it became the subject of a writing assignment I had for College Comp I.

The cats love their new eating spot, but it needs a little fixing since it wobbles under Opie's massiveness. Summer will be bearable at night thanks to the air-conditioner, which sits in the gecko room for now.

So instead of 'doing the dance' of bringing the office table downstairs and crowding everyone around a taller-than-the-available-chairs-can-comfortably-accommodate, not-sturdy-enough-for-the-people-we-have-over two table mish-mash for Thanksgiving, we'll have one, nice, long table with chairs enough for everyone.

Labels: friends

You know how when you look back at a particularly momentous occasion in your life, you can remember the main details very vividly, but the surrounding details are a little fuzzy? I've been having a few of those moments for most of the week.

I'm not one to leave any details out, so I thought I might record the 'fuzziness' for future reference.

I think it was Monday of this week that I found an old friend on Facebook who I lost touch with several years ago. That I found this friend is the momentous occasion. The fuzzy comes with the emotions I experienced when I got her first set of updates and saw how her life changed. It is exciting... it's like looking at an old photo album and hearing the stories that go between what this person or that house looked like then and what it looks like now. Even though I saw all these pictures on her profile, in this particular case, a word is worth a thousand pictures. Who, after all, carries their camera around and takes a picture at each and every moment of life? Pictures are good for some things, new things, maybe. But it cannot capture the emotion that can be expressed in a conversation of how the changes occurred- weather by email or even a simple wall-to-wall update. I can't wait to hear more.

The other momentous occasion is that one of our closest friends looks to be starting out on a new relationship and it looks pretty serious. That she is starting a relationship is the momentous part. The fuzzy seems to be how happy Marieke and I are that she is happy. I mean seriously happy. For the first time in a very, very long time, she is grinning and we are grinning right back at her. She is grinning so much that her cheeks are revealing the rare and hidden double dimples. We are also finding the occasion to revisit some of the feelings we had when we first started our relationship. It is very exciting and we are so happy that she is happy. Another fuzzy is that we got a virtual play-by-play via text during the evening while we were at work. We did so little work while we were texting. But that's ok... work owed us a few and we took one tonight. So now work only owes us a couple.

The fates, it appears, have chosen to give us a reason to only observe, but not obsess, over the impending unpleasant anniversary through the happiness of, and re-connection to, our friends. That is the best kind of reason I could imagine and I am actually spending this week being happy instead of being sad. It is a privilege and I am grateful to have the opportunity to dwell on happy things this week.

So, to friends and friendships. We gain so much from them and realize it so little.

Labels: friends