Update

In the infamous words of Mr. Cyrus: "I DON'T HAVE ENOUGH TIME TO RECORD MY LIFE! ARGHH!!"

Backstepping a bit to my trip to Michigan. 16 hours driving out there, split over two days. Wow. I did a lot of sleeping, reading and thinking. I read a 900+ page book in about 6 or 7 days. That's good for someone who is also balancing things like shopping in Charlevoix, helping repaint my grandparents' garage and shed to match the new house colors, swimming, using my now-uncle's Sea*doos, playing Eucher with my grandparents, listening to my whole extended family spontaneously and randomly burst out singing off-key "Goin' to the chapel and I'm goin' to get ma-air-air-reed," putting out my brother/cousin's bonfire, making s'mores, exploring my old favorite haunts, and seeing everyone and their mother, literally, as they all poured into East Jordan days before the wedding.

Wedding day, Friday, we all get ready and assemble at the adorable stone chapel of Saint John Nepo-something-or-other. At 4:00, the priest came out with the groom, just as planned. At 4:10, the groom is wondering if he's been stood up, at the altar. Whispers in the back, "runaway bride" abound. For those of you who don't know my aunt, which is probably most of you, she's been engaged four times, but never married until now. It seemed to be the real-life runaway bride story.

She finally shows up, much to the relief of my new Uncle Dan. They are exchanging vows, and the priest says, "please indicate your intentions to commit..." or something along those lines. They both said something like, "I do" or "I will." The priest looks at them and says, "That would be a yes." They sort of falteringly said yes, and then he continued. The next time, they said yes without the priest correcting them and he stopped and said, "See? They learn! That's good."

When the service was over, with the priest's characteristic and corny "Aaayyy-MEN!" whispers began. Why was she late? What happened? There were multiple stories going around, but here's what I gathered: The limo shows up to get her and its rusted out with cracked leather seats and the stuffing showing inside. She says "No way in heck I'm getting in that on my wedding day." Good thing because the limo wouldn't even start after that. So the bridesmaid loaned the chauffeur the use of her Escalade. Which took them 10 or 15 minutes to sort out.

Yep. East Jordan. Surprising they actually had a limo service.

Anyway, on to the reception. Aparently, there used to be a dairy farm in Charlevoix made of stone walls. In the 60s, the ceiling collapsed. In the 70s, a stage was built for outdoor rock concerts. Finally someone realized, "Hey, these walls sorta look like a castle, complete with turrets. We could fix this place up and hold wedding receptions here. I bet we'd make a lot of money." And they did. The stage was removed and replaced with a giant chessboard. The dairy wings on either side of the stage became the King's and Queen's castles. The silo gained a set of stairs and an elevator to the King's banquet hall in the loft. The backside of it all became the Queen's tavern, with a tent for an outdoor reception. And the separate barn on the other side became the Knight's castle, which is where my aunt's reception was. And this whole thing is made of stone, and its gorgeous now that they've fixed it up.

Anyway... with the exception of my cousin's girlfriend of 8 years getting wasted enough to sleep in his car in a pool of her vomit... the reception went beautifully. There was even a point where the groom was called out on the dance floor (he didn't know why) so that all the women in the place could come up and put little lip stickers all over his body. Kind of a weird concept, but it was fun. At the end, my aunt got to place the last "kiss" sticker and they danced to the funky hip-hop music. It was cool, and the food was fabulous. The music was not my generation, but there were three good songs, although during two of them my mom made me talk to her cousin, who it turns out, has a blue belt in Brazilian Jujitsu. So that was kind of cool because he was the only one in the room who really understood anything I said related to any form of jujitsu. Eveyone else either avoids the topic or tries to make conversation on something they don't understand. And its nice to know there's a fellow jujitsuka in the family.

It was also cool seeing my cousins dancing with my grandparents, and Uncle Dan's children (my new cousins) dancing with my old cousins. I guess there's something about weddings that really pulls people together. With the exception of my Aunt Wanda (she's now divorced from my Uncle Chuck, so not really Aunt anymore, except that she's my cousins' mother) and my cousin Gena and her husband and two kids, everybody descended from my grandparents was there with their spouses and children. It was cool. I haven't seen some of them in many years.

The next day, pretty much everyone from the reception came to my grandparents' house for the annual pig roast, which was much larger this year in order to celebrate Aunt Jill's wedding, Aunt Charnell's birthday, and a family friend's anniversary. There was even a blues/jazz guitarist hired to sing for the day.

The best man at the wedding was there at the pig roast, and he took us out on the waverunners to teach my brother how to waterski. I got to be the spotter, which meant that while he's skiing and we're going really fast, I'm sitting backwards on the seat. It was kinda cool. My brother got up in three tries and then went about 5 times, on some pretty rough waters that we had that day. We came in, ate, and then my brother decided to go out again to try the wakeboard. I didn't get to be the spotter for that one because the kid with mono who knew how decided it would be cool to be the spotter in rough water on a chilly day with the risk of falling in the water and having his liver fail from stress on top of the mono. Bright child. Anyway, my cousin Luke took me out on the other waverunner while they were doing the wakeboarding thing. He promptly baptized us both by flipping the Sea*doo, leaving it upside-down, idling in the water. After turning it off, we had to figure out how to get it upright again (this was the second time that day that it had been upside-down) and to top it off there's a storm coming, so its breezy with no sun, making the water a really nice temperature.

We got everything straightened out, we had a blast, and then came in out of the rain. (It wasn't rainy all day- storms brew quickly over the lake.) Then my dad decided he wanted to leave. We had another 16 hours of driving to do before Monday when he had to go back to work. None of us wanted to, but we all knew there was no other choice. It was as late as we could possibly let it get. It was the first time I've been out there when not one of us wants to leave. Which is saying a lot about my homebody brother who wasn't even going to come until the Creation Festival was cancelled. It was nice to see us bonding. It was also nice to see how grown up my cousins are now. I really respect them and look up to them, despite the fact that many of them are younger than I.

Anyway... driving home I had finished my book, so I did more thinking, and interupted it with reading my Nordstrom manual. Not much to talk about there.

I went straight back to work on Monday, and on Tuesday went to jujitsu. Barb talked about how a lot of the blue belts have had a sort of apathy lately, or their techniques will sort of plateau and then stay there because they aren't interested in what feedback the blackbelts can give them. She made it sound like it was a mental thing- when we do a technique we don't do it whole heartedly anymore. Which makes sense. I'm not sure about anyone else, but I could identify the feeling. I thought it was just me though. I didn't realize it was pretty much all the blue belts. Which is why I haven't been going lately- because I'd rather not practice than practice with my heart not in it and have that lack of heart enforced by the practice. But since Barb doesn't know that is one of my reasons for not going, she might even see that as my lack of heart. She said something about all the people who were absent.

So our focus of the day was on intentions. How to do something, even just walking up to someone, with intention. When you parry and grab a wrist, you parry and grab the wrist because the wrist is yours and belongs to you. Not because that's how the art is supposed to go.

We each got to pair up with a blackbelt, which was cool because we don't often get that one on one blackbelt attention. I chose to work with Scott, because I knew that I respond well to his teaching style. Better than some others. It was good. I could feel myself improving in ways I haven't done before.

However, at one point, he said, "Ok that's good. Your intentions are good. Now, try having the same intention, but smile a little. Even in self defense, you are allowed to enjoy what you do. Its an art."

I wasn't feeling it, but I did. I allowed myself a little smile as I did a stime (aerial somesault sort of thing- like throwing myself) and said to myself, "Smile, mean it, mean the art, do it because you love jujitsu." I had this gnawing feeling. "I don't know if I love jujitsu." But I smiled anyway and discovered that a simple smile can change your outlook. After that, I told myself "Do this because you love it" before doing anything that terrifies me or with which I struggle. Sometimes, I don't love it. But I told myself that in such a way that I could actually believe I do love it.

Its scary because it lends truth to the idea that when you live as an actor, you lose sight of who you are, in place of all the characters you've learned to put on. It means that if I smile enough, eventually I will believe I want to smile.

Anyway... on that note. I'm tired. Its 5 am. It took forever to write that. I'm going to bed now. Bye.