Sunday, May 16, 2010

ain't nothing but a heartbreak

For those of you who weren't at the wedding or didn't see the paper, Adit and Priyanka's wedding announcement was in the New York Times today -- and they're cute enough that they were one of the couples featured with their photo: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/fashion/weddings/16agarwal.html?ref=weddings

Today was utterly lovely until around five p.m., but I shall get to that in a moment. I managed to drag myself out of bed a little after nine a.m., feeling remarkably sound despite the "sugarcane drain" that came near the end of the previous night. Claudia, Ritu and I all got cleaned up and packed up, and then headed to brunch with the other wedding guests. This turned out to be a lovely, fun-filled morning; nearly all of our friends were around until one p.m., Adit and Priyanka were done (enough) with the wedding stuff that they could hang out for a bit, and so a bunch of us sat around for a couple of hours telling jhokes, laughing, and making fun of Ritu (three of my favorite activities!). The fish also made an appearance at brunch; while I don't know what the rest of its life will entail, it did at least make it into Adit and Priyanka's car, so wherever it dies, it won't be in the Dumpster of a Virginia Marriott.

After brunch, our friend group parted ways for an indeterminate amount of time -- with no weddings looming in the near future, it's unclear when this particular group of people will get together again, since we have different class reunion schedules and are spread out across both coasts. Vidya, Ritu and I packed our stuff into the ridiculously small trunk of my Volkswagen Beetle and headed into DC proper, where my GPS device managed to get us lost long enough that Claude was able to catch up with us despite having to drop of Katrina, Zach, Johanna, and a cooler full of leftover drinks. The four of us met up with Stephanie and proceeded to have a v. late lunch/v. early dinner at Matchbox, a tasty pizzeria near Steph's apartment. Over several delicious pizzas, we discussed the fun times we had and set a course for world domination. Then, we v. sadly parted ways, with Steph/Ritu/Claude going off in search of sightseeing and Vidya and I taking the car towards Vidya's friend's house, where I dropped her off and said goodbye (I won't see her for two whole weeks - shocking).

Just as I was about to get on the freeway towards the airport, I found out that my flight to London was cancelled due to volcanic ash (this is where the day went horribly wrong). I sat in the car on the side of the street for an hour and a half, part of it on hold with United, part of it figuring out hotel accommodations for DC and rebooking my rental car. United said the wouldn't be able to get me a flight to London until at least Thursday, which would likely mean a Friday morning arrival -- and the only reason I'm going to London is for a Thursday meeting, so that wouldn't work. Instead, I ended up switching my arrival city to Paris, and so now I'm going to fly to Paris on Tuesday night, arrive Wednesday morning, and take a train to London. My London hotel is successfully rebooked for this, and I found a hotel in DC for the next two nights (actually, the same hotel I stayed in the first two nights I was in DC last year, right on Dupont Circle). My company has an office in DC, so I'm going to go there tomorrow, and then probably work from the hotel Tuesday morning until it's time to leave for the airport.

All of this could continue to go horribly wrong, of course, but at least I'm trying to get to my destination. But despite those annoyances, the glow of the wedding and parties and friends hasn't worn off, and hopefully it won't wear off for awhile. If you're lucky, I'll post pictures sometime -- but now I need to go to bed so that I can get into the office at a decent hour tomorrow morning.

One final note -- happy twenty-fifth birthday to my brother Michael!!! Yay!! It's also my grand-niece's birthday, but as she is only one year old and can't read, this is probably less exciting for her. Goodnight!

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