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weddings and water

you may have heard about all the water here in tennessee. last week, the city of chattanooga was pretty well submerged under water for about 4 full days. this made travel difficult, and had everyone involved with JosiahQ's wedding a bit worried. for my part, i tried unsuccessfully to avoid the runoff. taking morris home one evening i was forced to drive through a slightly-too-deep puddle (okay, it was a small lake, but i thought i could make it) and in the process caused my car to drink up about half the contents. according to my mechanic, engines and water don't mix well. if you paid attention at all in chemistry 101, you'll remember that liquids don't compress quite as well as gases do, and when said water got into the the cylinders where the pistons were firing, well, the piston didn't get to fire. my mechanic used words like "wadded up" and "smushed" when referring to the metal internals of my engine. it's really amazing and kind of sad. i'm quite impressed with myself for killing a vehicle so quickly; it couldn't have taken more than 5 seconds to get throught the 3/4s of a puddle that we did.

for a while there the insurance people were telling me that it would be totalled and i'd just get a check for the value of the car (read not much). but thankfully, they found a cheap used engine and are actually going to repair the beast, freeing me from the trouble of car shopping and loan shopping - two things i don't much enjoy.

aside from the car fiasco, everything went well with Josiah and April Roe's wedding weekend. the weather cleared up just in time, and the casa grande del rio was perfect. even the sight of trees underwater in the flooded tennessee river couldn't dampen the high spirits. isaac wardell, as usual, was the hero of the weekend. without a doubt he put more time and energy into making this thing happen than everyone else combined. it was all pretty incredible. ranks right up there with lang and ty for best wedding festivities ever.