Welcome back

So its been a long while since I last wrote, around three months or so since I posted what I thought was a fascinating discussion about the effectiveness of Prozac ... but that is so July. A lot has happened in my life since then, and that very busy-ness has been what has kept me from writing here more often.

I went to a wonderful conference in DC about the kind of grant I have from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which was both inspiring (because of the wonderful people I met and the view of where my career could go) and terrifying (because it was very clear about the amount of work and time I will have to put in just to have a chance at getting there).

I spent a wonderful weekend with my Dad in southern Vermont, near Grafton and Saxtons River, hiking in Jamaica state park.

I went to the Jersey shore (for the first and likely last time) with the Buchmans to celebrate Bucky and Tanya's 40th wedding anniversary. Awesome.

Went back to Vermont to for Amy and Max's wedding and got trapped in the wonderful Inn at the Round Barn when Hurricane Irene turned the state into a pool.

Attended Christines beautiful wedding in New York.

Spent two weeks in London, Paris and Scotland before attending Alex and Kathys highland wooding on Loch Tay in central Scotland.

Went back to Cherry Hill for a wonderful (as always) Rosh Hashanah.

Went back to DC to give a seminar at NIDA. It went really well :)

Joined a synagogue (Sha'rei Tikvah) in time for the Jewish holidays and spent Yom Kippur and Sukkot with our wonderful new congregation. They are all a tad incredulous that we joined before we had kids.

And, all of a sudden it was mid-October and I had not spoken to any of you in forever. I can't promise anything, but lets try not to do that again.

Benson-Trotter Wedding

So anytime any of the following things happen at a wedding, you know it has been a great party -

- The bride does a keg stand.

- The groom does a keg stand.

- Someone you don't know walks up to you, and says that the 48 bottles of wine, three kegs, 100 or so other bottles of beer and the half-liter of jagermeister is not enough alcohol.

- The groom hurries up the officiant by shouting, "Can I kiss her already?"

- The grooms "step-father" makes up a late night tub of hot dogs by filling an aluminum tray with beer, dumping hot dogs in it and then dumping it on the bonfire to cook ... its even better when all the girls go to town on the hot dogs.

- You learn that there is a new drink called a "truck bomb" - apparently an Irish car bomb for real drinkers, its a pitcher of guiness with a pint of half baileys/half jamesons dropped in it.

- The maid of honor decides, after the bride has gone to bed, that she is not celebratory enough and polishes off two bottles of wine by herself.

- Temperatures as low as 40°F do not end the party, which lasts until 2 or 3 in the morning.

- Breakfast the next day features massive amounts of bacon, hash browns and bloody Marys.

All of this and more occurred in just nine hours at Kate and Sam's fantastic wedding last weekend. The beautiful ceremony and fantastic party took place at Judy and Ivan's farm in Exeter, New Hampshire. I had never been to New Hampshire before, and it was every bit as picturesque as I had heard. The farm was fully decked out, as Ivan had made, by hand, everything from wedding arches to a outdoor powder room to an entire bar from scratch - a side note about Ivan, he is an artist whose preferred medium is wood and metal, and he is basically incredible. The wooden and metal objects (like the door on the left) he had built which we scattered around the farm were amazing.

We arrived about 2 hours before the wedding, just after making a pit stop at the New Hampshire state liquor store to pick up several bottles of relatively inexpensive scotch I had been wanting. We got to the farm, set up the tent and started chatting with people. The ceremony, which was pretty fast, started soon after and after a stream of colorful bridesmaids and groomsmen walked out, Kate was escorted down to Sam by her father. And then we all stood up hill from the beautiful birch wedding arch that Ivan made as Sam and Kate, stared at each other, smiling and became man and wife.

The wedding vow may be something that is entirely overdone in today's culture, seeing and hearing it everywhere, but when you see two people who are deeply in love share their own vows, there is something magical about it regardless.

After the ceremony, and the long ass receiving line, the party started and as I described above, did not stop until the bonfire was put out at 0230 am. Not that I was awake at 0230; nope, I have realized that I am a lot older and less fun than I used to be and I could not hang with either the Bensons or the Trotters. I had my eight or nine beers in the afternoon, and basically stopped drinking at about seven ... Aviva was taking antibiotics and never really got started, so we pooped out, happy, sober and freezing, after watching Ivan walk through fire and eating some fire-roasted ribs around 1130. Those ribs were just settling in the next morning when we got up and headed over to breakfast to cover them with a handsome helping of bacon and potatoes.

Overall the wedding was a blast, we danced, drank a bit, jumped around and I got to meet a couple of Aviva's old friends from RISD, as well as spend time with Kate, Sam, Jackie and Jackies new, awesome guy Dan. It was a fantastic time.

Gettin' to Czech

So the first step in our big summer trip was getting to Europe, something that used to be easier to accomplish than it is these days ... the purpose of my return to Czech after 4 years was two fold, first and foremost, Aviva and I were attending my ex-girlfriend Pavlas wedding and second, Aviva had never been to Czech, and I really wanted to meet Pavla and her family and to see the country where I had maybe the funnest (sp?) year of my life.

So back when I lived in the Czech republic a ticket across the big pond was only about 600$, but these days, with the completely crapped out dollar and the rising price of gas (and therefore airline tickets) the tickets were more than twice that. Still, with a bit of finagling (meaning 5 hour phone conversation with Stella, the helpful United ticket agent and several long and frustrating follow up calls ... gotta say United used to be a lot better at this) we were able to get across the ocean without inducing complete bankruptcy.

We flew into Czech on a Friday afternoon, having left New York on Swiss airlines (highly recommend them) the previous evening and spent 4 or 5 hours in Geneva on layover. The short flight from Geneva to Prague is very pleasant, and the approach to Ruzyne, Pragues international, reminds me of how much I love Czech, flying over the lush, green fields punctuated by orderly, quaint towns of small, red roofed houses. It is remarkably beautiful.

Hana, Pavlas mother, picked us up from the airport and when we got back to her house Pavla was waiting for us. Hana had made dinner, delicious of course as Hana is a tremendous cook, and we just sat around the kitchen table and talked long into the night, about literally everything under the sun. Aviva made it to 9 pm, quite good considering the serious jetlag, and I was so excited I managed to stay up until around midnight. We decided that we would spend the next day at Kutna Hora and And after I said dobro noc and walked down the stairs to the guestroom (guest floor really as the whole bottom floor of the house was turned over to us), I was struck by how unlikely this whole situation was.

I mean, here I was, with my fiance, spending the night at my Czech ex-girlfriends mother house, in my ex's old room, having traveled halfway around the world to attend my ex's wedding with said fiance. Pavla and her whole family treated Aviva and I wonderfully the whole time, like we were distant family. Aviva and I both spent the entire trip feeling remarkably fortunate, I especially, as I my relationship with Pavla and her family has become something more wonderful than I could have ever imagined.

Anyway, I went to sleep, exhausted from travel but still a bit wired, excited for Kutna Hora and thrilled to be among such friends.