Emily's Wedding in CA

After my time in the spotlight, aka 40 ft behind the spotlight behind the 2nd tier extras, I slept for a few days and then headed off to CA for a wedding. Well, I tried to. Tracy, one of my closest friends and a flight attendant for US Airways, graciously gave me a buddy pass to fly as a standby passenger home. I went to the airport and tried to get on any flight that would get me home. I sit at the bar at 11am, wait for my first chance to leave and lose. Then I am told that I can wait for the next flight, but it doesn’t look good. I wait, lose again and 4 hours later, leave the airport, defeated. Grouper picks me up we get some lunch, go to a movie and try again the next day. The next morning I am back at the airport bright and early, hoping that today I will get out. It doesn’t look good. I can get to PHL but I’d get stuck there. I can overnight there or come back to the airport again tomorrow. I ask the gate manager to look up alternate routes and success. If I go through Vegas (and lay over for 6 hrs) instead of Phoenix, I can make it home around 1am that night. Done, Im off. I get into Vegas with 6 hrs to kill. So I take a cab onto the strip to see what Vegas has to offer. I start at the Bellagio and do a drinking tour of all the hotels I can fit in. From the Bellagio I move onto Ceasar’s, NY NY, the Venetian, gambling and drinking the whole way. I won a total of $50 on the slots within 5 minutes, cash out and end at Paris where I have my final nightcap before taking a cab back to the airport for my last leg home. I get home around 1am, my sleepy mom picks me up and I pass out after a long day of flying. I don’t do much at home. I fulfill the shopping lists my Bahamian friends have sent me home with, run, read, sleep, and catch up with my high school girlfriends. My sister flies in at the end of the week for the wedding. A good family friend of ours, Emily is getting married to a wonderful Canadian guy named Jason. The wedding was a bit controversial for our Indian community because Jason isn’t Indian and the wedding wasn’t pre-arranged, but in the end, everything worked out. We spent the weekend in the bay area, attending the henna party the day before the wedding and dinner with Emily and her family that night. Henna is a traditional adornment for the bride and the ladies of the wedding, so usually a party is hosted by the bride where everyone can get it done. After that, we hit up California Pizza Kitchen with Emily’s family for dinner and then went to the wedding the next day. The wedding was outdoors in the green hills of Oakland. The wedding ceremony was Indian so Emily wore a traditional Lengha, the bridemaids wore Saris, and Jason a Sherwani. (Pictures below) It was nice to see family friends that I haven’t seen in ages, and to see Emily so beautiful on her wedding day. My mom was heartbroken when she saw me with a glass of wine (my family is dry) otherwise the wedding was pretty low key. We headed back home the next morning, my sister flew back to TX and I continued to loiter at my parents place until I left around the 1st. I went to see the premiere of Sex and the City with my HS friends and went to a house party and flew thee next day to Nassau with nearly the same difficulty as my leg home. I got to Vegas just fine, had a another 6 hr layover (where I did more of the same hotel bar hopping) but when I got back to the airport for my overnight to Philly, it was trouble. There was a problem with an earlier flight and they bumped a ton of passengers to my flight. So now there was 1 seat left and 17 people on standby. And I was last on the list. I was totally screwed, drunk and tired. I had to be back in Nassau the next day for work, so I was a bit stressed out. Since the slots took my money earlier that night, it seems that my luck was a bit delayed. It turned out that all 16 passengers before me where flying in pairs or groups. And they wouldn’t break up. So I completely lucked out and made it on as the only single flying. I still can’t believe I got on the plane. I made it into Philly, then into Nassau and started my final push of work and last couple of months in paradise.