Wedding in Stanton

I can't let another blog post go by without saying something about the shooting at Westroads Mall in Omaha last week. These kinds of horrible events are the things you hear about happening far away, in much larger, crime-ridden cities, not the town you practically call home, at the mall you visit every so often with friends when you're in town. Much has already been said about the event. My good friend Eric already has a very heartfelt post about the shooting, and there's nothing more I could say that wouldn't just be piling on. What I did discover after the event is that a couple of my friends from the web comic world immediately tried to contact me to see if I were all right, and their concern touched me deeply. It's great to have friends so far away thinking of you in times like these.

On to happier news. Another pair of good friends from my bible study got married over the weekend in the tiny, tiny town of Stanton, Iowa. Vivian and I drove up to see them, promptly getting lost along the way when highway 34 wandered out from underneath us and left us spinning through Glenwood onto a scenic byway wondering where on earth we were. We arrived at the church half an hour late, just in time for the shortest wedding ceremony in the world to be over. We were able to crash into the reception to have punch, cheese, and crackers with our friends.

Afterwards, Vivian and I did a little sightseeing in the tiny town of around 800. Their claim to fame was being the home to Virginia Christine, an actress known best for playing "Mrs. Olson" in a series of Folgers Coffee commercials in the 1960s. In her honor, they had decorated their water tower as a giant coffee pot. There was supposed to be a second water tower painted as a coffee cup somewhere else in town, but I wound up sliding through a stop sign while we were looking for it and decided to give up instead. We did find time to get a picture of one of the town's fire hydrants, a long and skinny one that was just too weird to pass by without a picture.

After getting a good dumping of snow last Thursday, it seems the winter season had us in its firm, icy grasp, so Viv and I spent the rest of the weekend indoors whenever possible. We stopped by the Apple Store at the Village Pointe shopping mall so she could play with an iPhone for the first time. We also curled up warm and cozy indoors watching Ghost, Hook, and listening to some romantic music powered by Pandora while admiring the soft glow of a fully-decorated Christmas tree.