Chris Lutz is rare among my friends in that I have no memory of us meeting. Not that we’ve known each other since some time immemorial but just that there was a time when I didn’t know him then there was a time when I did and I’m not sure what event separated the two.

Today he was getting married in DC to his partner and I was asked to serve as the photographer. I arrived only a few minutes before the service started but I had two cameras thanks to Joe Naylor and I looked like several tourists combined or in my head, a total bad ass. The pastor approached me before hand:

Pastor: So, you’re the photographer.
Me: *looks at cameras* Yep.
Pastor: Ok, you’re welcome to take all the pictures you want.
Me: Thank you.
Pastor: I’m not done, you’re welcome to take all the pictures you want from anywhere you want before the service but once the service begins there are some restrictions.
Me: Like?
Pastor: Please don’t stand in the center aisle, do not stand behind us at all, don’t stand in front of any of the guests, and don’t make noise during the important parts of the ceremony.

Is that all?

The ceremony went off without incident and the reception afterward was a study in smooth operation. I took some more pictures and headed out to meet a friend of mine my high school I hadn’t seen in about seven years.

Me: Sorry I’m late. I stayed a little longer than I thought I would at the wedding I was shooting.
Her: Oh, are you a photographer?
Me: Nah, nothing so fancy.

There are few people with whom the contrast of knowing me vs. knowing my life is so strong. I know many people who know my life but not me and the reverse was novel.

Kyle and I left at 3:40 PM and ground to a halt to the forces of “Rt 1 and the Infinite Backup”.  Playing the local, I tried a convoluted set of back routes to get onto the turnpike via a rarely used on ramp and saw the source of the delay:

Der Accident

Der Accident

This was compounded by having spent more than six seconds behind this person:

IMG_6446

Popemobile circa 1982

Driving was dull, asphalt passing at about 70 MPH on the 65 MPH areas of the turnpike.  After about two hours I noticed that the GPS’s arrival estimate hadn’t changed meaning that the device was programmed to assume we were speeding.  That little bastard.  Kyle started driving an hour or two after the snow started and I remembered that my least favorite form of precipitation is brine.  Every mile we covered was red in tooth and claw salt and topical microfissures with time slowing as our maximum speed dropped to 45 MPH due to the conditions.  Time lapse failed to make the progress seem faster:

IMG_6452

A side effect of tooling along at 45 MPH behind a salt truck was setting  a record of 34 MPG on a single tank.

We arrived in Columbus after midnight and caught Chris and Stephen in their element:

Chicago-6798-20100108

Chris Lutz, fortified with Vitamin Beard

Chicago-6800-20100108

Stephen surrounded by the trappings of modern domesticity: Rock Band and SceneIt

Meeting Chris’s dogs was fun in the sense that they had a matter-of-fact view of people which divided our race into either petters or chair-warmers, each having no compunction with stepping on your junk, lungs, or face should you occupying any corner of their domain.

Chicago-6847-20100108

Daisy, the Junk Stepper

Chicago-6859-20100108

Emma, the Face Crusher

Chicago-6896-20100108

Small Dog (yes, that's the dog's damn name), the Underchair Warmer

I want to get the two an acrylic or plexiglass chair so I can see Small Dog in her native element.  Alternatively, maybe an IR-sensitive flipcam would do.

Chris situation seems best described as restless comfort.  I sympathize with his feeling that his job takes care of him but is far from the last step he’ll take.  I look forward to seeing him turn into a preacher’s wife at some time in the future but Stephen’s Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring could use some polishing.  I consider it a personal triumph that I’ve made no “polishing the organ” joke otherwise but did find it hilarious that he had a collection of nutcrackers.

Chicago-6797-20100108

A Reminder of the Hazards of Boxer Shorts

Stereotypes either inspire humor or loathing in me and I immediately picked up on Chris’s collection of scrapbooking shears.  He insists they aren’t his but I’m skeptical.

Chicago-6867-20100108

A Scrapbooker's Armory

I hoped there was some ritual in receiving each new set of sheers may they be egg/dart, sinusoidal, or traditional pinking shears involving defeating another scrapbooker in a scrapbooking duel but that doesn’t appear to be the case.  Or it’s like Fight Club and even if it were the case I could never know.  The day ended at 4 AM after my first trip to a Waffle House which didn’t involve my vehicle being cased and falling a sleep on a hide-away single bed that could have been more comfortably packed with gravel.

A friend of mine apparently has a picture of me on his refrigerator several hundred miles west of here.  I’m not normally a fan of being in posted pictures but I’ll make an exception in his case.  His family was visiting him and whenever one of his relatives walked by the fridge she’d break out laughing, someone else asked her the cause and she said “this guy” pointing to my picture.

For the rest of the stay, whenever she needed a pick-me-up she’d walk by my picture and laugh.  She wanted to make a copy to bring home to help her out of funks.  I wonder if I replaced the people that come in stock frames that’d prove therapeutic for department store workers.