I flew down there on Thursday night, so I had a bit of time to hang out with Jack and Cathy, so of course we ended up playing video games, and in the list of choices was Ninety Nine Nights, or N3 for short. I had seen footage of this game with hundreds of enemies and one dude killing them all, and I asked if it was any good, and Jack revealed that he had never played it because he got it super cheap through some promotion at work and because he thought it was a role-playing game. It turned out that it is not an RPG, it’s super fun, and Jack was all bent about the fact that this fuckin' awesome game has been sitting in his closet of almost six months. At least he had something to look forward to when he got home from the honeymoon.

On Friday, Harrison and Shaft showed up at Jack's before the rehearsal. The three of us didn't really know how the day was supposed to go, and I figured I would just follow Jack's lead. Every-so-often, someone would ask Jack about the plan, or what was next, or when something was going to happen. As we got closer to leaving time, the questions got more frequent, including a myriad of cell phone calls with similar questions. At one point he answered a question with, "The next person to ask me that gets a punch in the nuts." I told him he could divert all questions to me, and I guaranteed and answer to every question, whether it was right or not. I would not admit to not knowing the answer to any question, but I would admit to lying if it was important. He liked this idea more than answering questions himself, so he agreed.
Later, while trying on tuxes, Jack's mom, Sue, asked how Cathy was getting to the rehearsal. Jack kept his trap shut and looked at me. I looked at Sue and said, "Her friend Tawny is picking her up and giving her a ride." Sue looked content with this answer until she noticed both Jack and Harrison giving me the what-the-fuck-are-you-talking-about looks, so I admitted that I had just made that up. She found this much funnier than I did, and Jack was mildly impressed that I had held my word against his mom. I'm still not really sure how Cathy got there, but I think she drove herself.

Later, at the rehearsal dinner, possibly for the first time in my life, I was very happy with a few choices I had made in my life. Choice 1: For Jack’s bachelor party, we went rafting. Choice 2: I did not have more than two drinks until after all the parents were gone. Harrison had followed suit, and we could not have been more happy about this when the topic of bachelor/bachelorette parties came up. The girls had gone to Vegas, so they had to carefully choose their words when asked what they did. A few had a bit too much wine, and some word popped out here and there that grandma might not have appreciated. However, sober as birds, Harrison and I didn’t have to dance around our speech when telling tales of rapids and evacuation and so on. It was a proud moment in Not Disappointing a Friend’s Family; I don’t get many of those.

After the dinner, we all ended up at a huge shit-kicker bar, which I was fairly unhappy about until I had more beers in me than number of people with us, and we were rolling deep that night. The original plan was that all the girls were going to this cowboy bar, and the guys would go do whatever the hell we wanted. But a few of the girls decided that we were all going without any consent from any of us guys. Before we left, I voiced this concern, and one of the girls, whose company I already didn't really enjoy, yelled in my direction, "No one fuckin' cares what you guys want." I'm sure you can guess how amped I was to go to the square-dancin' saloon called Stampede with an 8-dollar cover.
Bonus: they had a mechanical bull. I was looking forward to feeling like John Travolta for 8 seconds, but that was 5 bucks, and the only guys riding were actual bull-riders. By the time I had enough beers and "practice" was over, it had become a zoo of a line, and the price of beers had gone up, so we left. What kind of place has different prices for drinks starting at 10pm? Perhaps I didn't notice any signs about Happy Hour, but $2.50 to $3.75 for Bud Light means it's time to bone-out.

The wedding itself was very nice, and super-fancy. Cathy came out on a horse-drawn buggy, and they had some dude to hand out cold towels to the groomsmen as we walked out because it was hot as eff in those suits. I think I liked the picture-taking part more than anyone else did. Shaft told the coordinator he needed a Captain and Coke, and she had a guy come out to take drink orders. Instead of taking orders from everyone, we counted people and just told him to come back with 18 rum and cokes, and he did. It was awesome. Then, as we were hanging out with our cocktails, putting them down only if it was picture-time, another girl showed up to take orders for round two. The reception hadn't even started yet, and we were putting away more than the guests.

The rest of the night was mostly drinking and dancing, much like any wedding reception, or KCPR party for that matter. Even toward the end, shortly before they were going to kick us out, a group of us were sniping unfinished bottles of wine and gathering them at one table with the intent of finishing it all. We did, glass by glass, toasting to nothing.