Catherine's right: the wedding was great. The abstract concept of the ceremony still seems impossibly weird to me, a strange cross between commodifying women and playing feudal lord for a day. Most likely that's just my subconscious shrieking in terror, but it all still seems a little bizarre.

But the reception made perfect sense: drink a bunch and eat a big meal. Even I can grasp that. Special thanks to Julie for entertaining my drunken crackpot theory about why bowing your head to pray is an evolutionary artifact. Or maybe I was just reflecting on how awesome it was when they all the evil monkeys got cut by lasers at the end of Congo. It's hard to keep it all straight.

One word of warning to fellow attendees, though. You may have noticed that in addition to their already amazing levels of generousity, Jason, Corbin and their families succubed to the slowly growing tradition wherein every attendee at a wedding gives a present to every other one. So Corbin and Jason had a basket of golf tees and monogrammed packets of coffee for departing guests. The packets say "A Perfect Blend" under their names. Awww.

Well, enjoy the sticker, but please -- don't actually brew and drink it. I had three cups when I woke up this morning, and suddenly I couldn't read. Seriously. I couldn't focus on words properly to string them together, and I had to try identifying objects to make sure I wasn't going blind -- and it wasn't just that I was jittery or overstimulated. I feel like I now have a vivid idea of what dyslexia might be like. Catherine had a bit less and just got a nasty headache, but for me the effect was unpleasant and really kind of frightening -- enough that, unsure the coffee was to blame, I went out and bought some aspirin to thin out my blood, just in case. Was I being a crybaby hypochondriac? Well, yes. But still.

Fortunately I eventually went through the headache stage and now feel pretty much ok. But I won't be repeating the experiment with the other packet we picked up. Partially burned foods like coffee have an incredible array of weird molecules in them; probably this is just a slightly unusual coffee with extra theophylline or something, and I may be unusually sensitive to whatever it is. But yeah -- that was bad.

The other working theory is that, spiritually infused with Jason and Corbin's virtuous and sanctified love, the coffee affected my twisted misanthropy like holy water sprayed on a vampire. For now we're sticking with the theophylline thing, though.