Why Do You Ask?

Flirtatious: The descriptive adjective associated with  not releasing the arm of the wedding escort leading you to your seat.

Read Mood? Heat induced rattle off at the mouthicated.

"So whatcha been doin'?"

"Nuttin!"

That's just not true. I think we often respond to that query based on what we think the inquisitioner would consider SOMETHING. The truth is if he or she poses the question, he or she ought to be made to just sit there and listen to everything you've been doing since last you met.

"So whatcha been doin'?"

"Well since you asked. In between watching Tiger and Lance be excitingly predictable, Peggy and I met with for an early lunch with my cousins Joy and Marlene and their friend Elyse from Del Rio Texas which Elyse feels is out of range of the Hurricane slipping into the gulf. 

Marlene just flew in from Chicago last night and forgot her nebulizer and had an incident and ended up in the hospital until 2 o'clock in the morning. That's why they got a late start and showed up at a time that made it not an early lunch afterall. But since Peggy and I had a wedding we needed to get to,  we ordered early and then had to leave them looking out a window that overlooked the city except there was a lot of air pollution and the view wasn't that good.  But since they all, including Peggy spent a good portion of their lives in Chicago,  the view was probably okay for the standards they were used to. Maybe they weren't just being polite when they said, "What a great view." We had the wait person take a couple of pictures and then we raced off to the wedding.

My ex-student and friend Michelle Gutierrez got hitched to Macario Griego, her long time boy friend. Since I didn't really know anybody from either family except Amaya, Michelle's daughter, who was the flower girl, we didn't know which side of the aisle to sit on.  So we guessed, and we guessed wrong. But they all seemed like nice people who would not likely hold that against us.

It was a very nice upbeat ceremony with lots of "almost Mariachi style"guitar accompaniment. At the reception that followed we sat with most of the people involved with putting on the weekly campus TV newscast, the Met Report (Michelle was the News Director and Co-Anchor). At the table was Dan and his Girlfriend, Alex, Geoff, Tom, Carlos and a Cousin of Carlos who grew up here but went to school at Berkely and spent some years surfing in California.  You'll often find that surfers are not able to be specific about how many years they've been surfing.

I took a bunch of pictures with my new camera. If you go to a wedding that has a lot of media people around, a lot of pictures get taken. When Peggy and I got married our still photographer, who just saw us at the courthouse and decided to follow us around,  is a Pulitzer Prize winning Journalist. On one of the rolls of film he gave us we also ended up with a picture of  the Mayor and two City Council people. I said still photographer because one of the moving picture photographers from the station also showed up and followed us around.

Back to this event. I got to meet Macario, hug Michelle and do a high five with Amaya followed up by a short conversation and a very quick photo session.

Then we drove home but pulled through a Burger King and got an iced drink a piece along the way. We also got caught trying to get on the highway at that onramp that doesn't give you enough time to merge, but it was Saturday afternoon so we finally made it. 

The next time somebody says to you, "whatcha been doin'?"

Let 'em have it.