So this has been a fun weekend. :)

Yesterday Joe and I went to a wedding. This was a surprise a month or so ago, because previously we were planning to have my parents come out for the holiday weekend, and we were going to take them to the baseball game last night, because it was Buffalo vs. Syracuse, followed by a concert by the BPO, followed by fireworks. And that would have been kinda neat. But the wedding invitation was certainly a very pleasant surprise for Joe, and how can you turn down a wedding invitation!

It was a lot of fun too. Joe was afraid he wouldn't know anyone except the bride and groom. His friend Mike was supposed to be there (supposed to be a groomsman actually!) but Mike is in the Army and due to a series of unfortunate events, it turned out he was unable to make it. :( I know Joe was a little disappointed, having not seen Mike since he left for basic in March, so I hope they'll get a chance at some point to hang out and catch up. It is tough not seeing good friends for long periods of time. :/

But anyway. The invitation specified that this was an "informal Hawaiian wedding" so Joe and I borrowed Hawaiian shirts and leis from his parents. Wow. I had no idea he looked so good in Hawaiian. :D His shirt was bright red, which is a color I don't believe I've ever seen on him before. It was neat. ;) Originally I was going to try and come up with something of my own to wear... even went so far as to buy a shirt from Old Navy... but ended up with buyer's remorse. I don't know where one buys Hawaiian shirts for girls, because I couldn't find ANYTHING, except for that one I bought, which was a halter top, and made me feel like a total slut when I put it on. Seriously. It didn't look TOO bad, especially when I had my hair down so I could sort of hide how much skin was actually showing. But even so, I felt naked and as though my boobs were going to fall out of it. It is now unofficially dubbed "the skank shirt" and will be going back to the store tomorrow for a refund. ;) I don't know exactly what's changed with me over the past year in terms of modesty but I'll tell ya... the red bathing suit is in the clothing donation bag and I doubt I'll ever wear a bikini again... and all my tank tops are still stowed away in a bin under the bed. I don't know whether they'll make it out at all this summer. :P I'm not psycho, I just don't see the point in walking around half-dressed. Oy. Protecting the eyes and minds of our nation's young men? Having a little self-respect? Yeah. My guy drools over me in a tee shirt and jeans. And quite frankly, I have no desire to make any other guy drool. (Not that it isn't fun to dress up every so often and really knock him dead. And, maybe that turns other heads besides just his. But that's not the intent, just a side effect.)

"Gee Leslie, you sure think a lot of yourself if you think any guy would be drooling over you just because you're in a tank top." Yeah well, I just go by what Joe tells me. I trust him and I know he doesn't lie. So if he says I'm beautiful then I must be. :D And if he says random guys occasionally check me out, then, well, I guess they do! And besides, this is my blog, so screw off.

So... to return from that, um, tangent thing... we went to an informal Hawaiian wedding yesterday. And, Joe looked hot. Did I say that already? Well, he did. :D But the wedding wasn't until evening, so beforehand we drove down to Dunkirk and wandered around Point Gratiot for a bit. We stopped at Tops on the way and had a mission to eat dinner (for two!) on $3.70. It was fun scouring the store for picnic items! We ended up buying a 6oz package of ham ($1.67), 2 rolls ($0.34 each), and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups ($0.33). And then stopped at Bob Evans who gave us a big 32oz cup of water for free. :) And then later we went to McDonald's and bought a package of McDonaldland cookies for $0.63 with 2 free large waters (I love how you can always get water free!), which Joe said is the cheapest he's ever taken me out for. Honestly, it was much fun. We can be frugal when we need to!

And of course the wedding (yes, I am getting to it!). They could NOT have asked for a better day, the weather was absolutely perfect, and they had the wedding outdoors overlooking Lake Erie at sunset. It was GORGEOUS. The bridal party were all wearing matching red Hawaiian outfits (the girls had dresses and the guys had shirts in matching fabric), the groom had a white-on-white Hawaiian shirt and the bride, of course, a wedding gown. ;) Joe mentioned how smart it was, saving all the money the guys would have spent on tuxes because they had the shirts and then just black pants. And yeah, but, I don't really pity the guys much anyway because generally speaking I think the girls usually spend a lot more on their outfits than the guys do. With exceptions of course (my bridesmaid dress for Molly's wedding cost $25). But still. ;) It WAS a cool idea though and they pulled it off really well. They were all barefoot, and the "aisle" was lined with tiki torches. And bride and groom's flowers were red roses. Ohhh. *puddles onto the floor* I SO want to carry red roses at my wedding. I love the way they look with the white dress. I mean obviously it depends on the color scheme you go with. But yeah. I love red roses. ;) (Boy I'm on a roll with tangents tonight!) So yeah it was neat. They had a lady with a guitar doing the music (and she sang the Hawaiian version of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" which I adore, although, I think she screwed up the words) and the ceremony was very nice. Wrote their own vows (couldn't hear a word they said though) and had a tiki torch as a unity candle which I thought was a cute touch. And since they're expecting a baby in a few months, they had a little blessing said for him as part of the ceremony which I thought was very sweet. :)

As it turned out, since Mike wasn't able to make it to the wedding, Mike's mom came in his place, along with his girlfriend Sara. So Joe did in fact know somebody there (he also knew some other guy he used to go to high school with, who had a bitchy girlfriend (maybe she wasn't but that was the vibe I got from her)). As did I, having met Mike's mom a couple of times. Very nice lady. I talked to Sara a little bit too, she seems pretty nice. She is crazy about Mike which is so cool to hear, since so often you hear girls just complaining about their boyfriends. I do feel bad that they are so far apart right now. She seems like a nice girl and I know Mike is a nice guy so I wish them the best. :) It was cool having people to hang out with at the reception, at any rate! Joe and I had fun dancing too, we do a mean box step to those slow songs. Slow dancing is so much fun. :) He also taught me the "one-legged frog" which is just about the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life. :D So yeah... that was a very nice day. :)

Oh... and Joe wrote us down in the guest book as "Joe and Leslie G". Which is such a neat thought. :D I wonder if they'll notice and wonder about it later.

Today was the fourth of July! That mean we sang "God Bless America" at Mass and Joe's parents had a cookout with some of the family at their house. Joe's extended family is a riot when they get together so that was fun (they are LOUD too, hehehe). Tonight was "Uncle Sam's Jam" in downtown Buffalo featuring the Goo Goo Dolls. A FREE concert. So of course we headed down to check it out! But unfortunately the weather today did not cooperate. It was nice when we first got down there, which was pretty early. We had a great parking spot (our favorite area which seems to be mostly forgotten about) and walked down to Lafayette Square to scope things out, sitting up at the base of the sculpture there for a while, watching people stream off of the Metro rail and make their way to city hall. The forecast called for severe thunderstorms in the evening, although it was actually quite nice when we first got there. But the sky got dark and it started getting cooler, so we wandered back to the car to pick up our jackets and the umbrella. It was raining but not too hard, we got down to city hall without being too wet, staked out a tree which offered some protection. The rain let up so Joe spent a while constructing a makeshift canopy in the trees out of plastic '103.3 The Edge' signs, and then we spread out his jacket and sat down. That worked out well, and when the rain started up again we huddled up against the tree trunk, shielded by the umbrella, and I draped my jacket over my side to make up where the umbrella didn't cover. The worked really well for awhile but the rain just got worse, not better. And my jacket, unfortunately, is not waterproof... so even though for awhile it did a decent job of keeping the rain off me, eventually it was soaked through completely and my arm and neck were getting wet. And the wind and rain picked up, making it harder to position ourselves in such a way that we were both staying dry. Eventually we stood up, but that just made it worse, and finally Ani Difranco (who was on stage right then) got called off for a 10-minute rain delay. So we decided to give up and head home. We were SOAKED. I don't mind a little rain but that was a LOT of rain, for Buffalo anyway, and it was supposed to keep storming on and off until 10... when we left it was 8, with still an hour before the Goos were supposed to be on. So yeah... sorry guys, but we just aren't that hardcore. We went back to Hamburg, stopping at Blockbuster on the way (and freezing our little wet tushes off in their air conditioning), and spent the rest of the evening at Joe's watching "The Muppet Movie" (which I pathetically had never seen before). After the movie we put the news on to see whether the concert had ended up being called off. Nope, the show did go on, despite the storm. Shame they had such bad luck with the weather, it would have been cool to see them in concert since I've never seen them before (Joe has), and it also would have been cool to see 70,000 people swarming the square in front of city hall (which was Joe's real reason for going). I give them props for sticking it out 'rain or shine' like they promised, but, 'shine' would have yielded a much better crowd and a much better show.

Now I'm home, in a borrowed shirt of Joe's, typing when I should really be asleep. ;) But this shirt smells SO GOOD. Hehe. I love how the littlest thing can make me think about him. It's not so much that I'm wearing his shirt, it's that it smells like him. I wonder what it will be like someday when we're married and all of our clothes smell the same. What a travesty that will be. I'll have to resort to even stupider things when I miss him, like using his soap. I mean, not that it has to be a smell I guess. I could listen to his voice on saved voicemail messages or something. Squeeze his teddy bear and look at pictures. But there's something about a scent... I think the sense of smell just might be the most underappreciated sense, and it's a most unfortunate thing. Certain smells make me think of particular things. Like the very faint hint of smoke in the hallway of my building makes me think of my grandmother's house when she was still alive. Especially when you can also smell someone's cooking wafting from beneath a door. My deodorant reminds me of France, when I take the time to smell the stick, because that was the first time I used this particular brand (Secret Shower Fresh). There used to be a certain comfort in my Caress Wild Blossom body wash, which is now discontinued, to my utmost dismay. There are other smells I love... the smell of rain before a storm, the smell of fresh cut grass, the smell of roses... those don't bring up anything in particular, I just like them. And Joe's shirt, because it was washed in the laundry detergent he uses, makes me think of him, like his deodorant in my bathroom does (even though he doesn't actually use that kind at home anymore), and Irish Spring soap does too, even though I don't think he uses that regularly either, but the first time I brought him home while we were dating, for Amanda's wedding, I remember he brought a bar of it with him and after he showered I could smell it from the top of the stairs. It's funny, the way things work sometimes. :)

*breathes deeply of shirt scent*
Heaven.

Yeah... I'm weird. Go away. :D