This past weekend, Mina and I drove to Binghamton, NY, for the wedding of my best friend from my college days. Binghamton being about a half-hour from Elmira, we headed down there a few times to tromp through our old stomping grounds.

I wasn't born in Elmira. I only, in fact, lived there for two years. But I still think of it as the place where I grew up, and I still get nostalgic "homecoming" feelings whenever I go back - something that I really don't get whenever I return to Greenfield, wherein I spent most of my life. I think it's because the two years I lived there were the first two years of my "adult" life - the first two years I spent living on my own, with my family nowhere nearby. I don't buy for a second that the "formative years" happen any younger than that. :-}

Elmira is also the home of the best restaurant in the entire world - Pietro's. I highly recommend anyone who will be in the area to visit Pietro's - you won't be dissapointed. And the prices are quite reasonable - Mina and I got a very filling meal, an appetizer, and desserts and spent a little more than twenty dollars. But I digress.

I had been looking forward to going back to eat at Pietro's since about last June (coincidentally, when I left Elmira). It was the second time in my entire life that I looked forward to something for a period resembling a year and still had it exceed my expectations. That's an excellent feeling - to be totally, completely satisfied with something one has been waiting for for so long.

The wedding was wonderful. Sharon (the friend I mentioned above) was an absolutely beautiful bride (not that I expected anything less of her), and there were several people there whom I have not seen in entirely too long. There were two hundred guests at her wedding, and it made me all the more relieved that there are only thirty guests invited to mine. It was fun, but it was hectic.

It's hard to imagine Sharon being married. I mean, I have other married friends (Sam and Leen, Issachar and Mrschar [sorry, Iss, but that pun is too much fun to pass up :-}], just to name a few), but with Sharon, it's a little different, partly because I attended the ceremony, and partly because I knew her quite well before she was married. I'm not quite sure how to describe how I feel thinking about it.

It has started me thinking about my own upcoming wedding, though - it's even stranger to think of *me* getting married. It's an opposite feeling, though - for Sharon to get married seems perfectly natural to me, but it seems odd to think of her *being* married. But, while I have no problem thinking of myself being married, it just seems strange for me to be *getting* married. Maybe some others of you who have been through this already will know what I mean. :-}

On the way back from the wedding, our timing belt broke. As such, our engine died out in Richmondville, NY (a town so small even the people who live there haven't heard of it) - on a Sunday night. After several hours of walking and talking, we finally called the State Police (my thanks to Governor Pataki - the New York State Police have now bailed me out of *two* automotive catastrophes on I88 in New York), and they got us a tow to the Best Western in Cobleskill, where we were able to find a mechanic to fix our car. Still, it wasn't ready until Tuesday morning, and, at that point, the charges for the hotel, the tow, and the repair came up nearly to five hundred dollars - and all three of them gave us a discount. But you know what? We got out of it ourselves. Even though (and my father confirmed this afterwards) we could have called my parents and asked them for money (we are now just about out of money and available credit), or to come get us, or whatever, I wanted to try to get out of it under our own power first. And we made it. Not by much, but we made it. And that's a good thing.

Guess I really am getting old after all. :-}

Dar "Timing is everything" ien