Arrival

San Jose del Cabo
Sunday
11:58 pm
100 mph

The town is revealed in sudden burst of light from houses and store fronts. There are no street lights really to speak of and the bubbles of illumination do little to ease my mind. The excited disorientation of a new environment is all I feel while speeding through the dark streets. I strain to see where I am in the world, to no avail. I will spend my first night in a wondrous veil of not knowing.

I wonder if Jenny B can feel me smiling into the darkness. My best friend and now my wife sits beside me in the hotel shuttle/ race car. Maybe experiencing the same feelings as me. The last few days have been a whirlwind of happiness. Less than 24 hours ago the wedding we planned and worked on for so long went off almost flawlessly. My mind reviews every detail of that night continuously. I still see her ivory and red dress as she rounded the back row of chairs into the isle into my arms. Still feel her hand tremble as I speak my vows...
"I love you is an understatement. I adore you. I dream about you every night and live for you every day"

So perfect.

She taps me and I come back from yesterday to see the lights of our hotel appear. The driver takes the last nascar turn into the drop off area and I'm not sure whether to tip him for getting us here so fast, or smack him for wrecklessly risking our lives for no damn reason. I stop short of smacking dude but keep my money to myself. I'm about to get my bag and the bell boy(man) politely stops me.

"Please. I will get you, my friend. Please check in." he says in his accented English.

We head over to the front desk. I walk past the fountain and behind it I can hear the crashing of waves. Through the archways that bookends in the bar area, past the romantically lit infinity pool, out in the warm darkness is the ocean. I feel it.

We're greeted with Moet champagne and big chocolate chip cookies. It's a weird combination for sure but washing down cookies with champagne made more sense at that moment than any idea I've ever had on my own. They explain our amenitities included with our room. 24 hour room service. Meals at any of the 5 restaurants. All drinks from any of the bars. Daily restocking of the refridgerator. Use of all facilities and the spa during open hours. The concierge would arrange our romantic dinner, breakfast in bed, and our spa treatments whenever we wanted them. Then we were being escorted to the room.

"Thank you" we say. We didn't remember seeing all that in the brochure when we made reservations. I for one certainly was not about to complain about getting more stuff than I ordered.

"Its a pleasure." they reply happily.

The room was great. King sized bed, 2 bathrooms, 2 tv's, a living room area, and a balcony blanketed in the same warm ocean breeze.

I guess it was that rhythmic rushing of water that got me. Perhaps it was the 12 hours we spent on the ground in airports and in the air in airplanes. Maybe the rush of energy I expended during the day of the wedding. Could've been the resltess nights I had leading up to the wedding. But I was tired. My wife and I laid in the bed on the second night of our new life together. My body told me now was the time to relax because my sole focus in life was to get to this point. Alone with the woman I will spend the rest of my life with.

Tomorrow I will awake in paradise.

Coming Soon

I'm not sure but I think I may have had the best wedding ever. Now I could be a little biased. Just a little bit. I'm pretty sure it was one of the great events of human history. The marriage of Solomon will be spoken about and remembered by all that come after me...Ok that may be a bit too much. Let's just say it was a good time. I'll write more about it as I get pictures to post. Some of the events would be hard to describe with my limited mastery of words. Pictures would do a much better job. I'll apply my colorful commentary of course. That won't be too long from now.

Then there is the matter of my extended stay in Mexico. That's right. For my honeymoon me and the Mrs. spent a week at the Dreams Resort & Hotel in Cabo San Lucas on the Baja Pennisula. It was a beautiful hotel in a beautiful place surrounded by a beautiful ocean. We had a wonderful time. I have a ton of pictures from last week. I kept me a little sketch journal too. So you can look forward to some pretty interesting and extra colorful commentary on my adventures out of the country.

Leave me a comment and let me know what I've been missing. If you came to the wedding leave me a long comment and tell me what you thought. Other than that you have to wait long enough for me to organize all my thoughts and post stuff. Until then I'm OWt!!

Eulogy

This weekend Mr. Married Solomon is taking Mr. Single Solomon out to pasture. There won't be any tears shed for Mr. Single Solomon. He had a good run.

His story was the story of many men daring to traverse the dating landscape. He lived the single life. There were good nights. Can I get a amen? I said there were good nights! There parties that wouldn't stop. I tell you they wouldn't stop so bad he had to take off work the next 2 days. (That boy wild!) There was Jose and Green Dragon all over the floor. And there were women. Oh lawd! There were women. Boy let me tell you.(Tell It! TELL IT!) Beautiful women that blessed that young man with the gifts only GOD can create. and it was beautiful. Gorgeous. Wonderful.

There were some not so good nights. Can I get a amen? I said it won't all good in the hood. There times he was alone with some drawings and a fifth of Jack. Late nights after work with no one to keep him warm. Yall don't here me. No one to keep the boy WARM... at night. Mr Single Solomon couldn't work away that pain even when he tried. When he got tired of the rejections and loneliness and and and isolation... he went to the job to get away from the pain. That would never work would it? Turn to your neighbor and say "IT WON"T WORK!" (IT WON'T WORK!)

You don't stop being hungry by going for a walk! You can't get your car going down the street by fixing the tires and checking the washer fluids!! I SAID YOU NEED GAS IN THE CAR BOY!!

I said he was out of gas y'all. He needed that woman to get him going. Y'all don't here me. That woman... was the only thing...that could get him going. What the book say? I Corinthians 13:1. What it say ?

("What if I could speak all languages of humans and of angels? If I did not have have love..")

There it is. LISTEN TO THE BOOK!!

("What if I could speak all languages of humans and of angels? If I did not have love then I would be nothing more than a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal,")

Like the blind man said when he was touched by God. "Now I see". You need love. I said you need love. Turn to your neighbor and say "You need love". (You need love.)He found his love with Jenny B. That's what he needs now. Her love. Mr. Single Solomon has lived his life and gone so far as he can go. He can do no more.

You don't mourn for the moon when the sun comes out.

There will be no tears because this is not the end. It's the beginning. A fresh start. Let's say goodbye to Mr Single Solomon. haha I say we don't need him no more. haha You're unnecessary. haha You're obsolete. You've been cast out of this LIFE!!

Let's wish Mr Married Solomon well as he goes forth.

Congratulations.

Balony (Bologna)

I realized that I don't like balony (bologna, I long ago labeled the actual dictionary spelling to be wrong). It's no metaphor or clever word play. I'm talking about the actual sandwich meat.

Back in the day I used to love me some balony. I used to run around eating balony sandwiches all the time. Balony and spaghettios. The classic ghetto child meal. Lunch. Dinner. Hell breakfast if ma ain't get up early enough for me. Back then there was this ghetto store called Wimpy's (like the dude from Popeye that ate the burgers all the time). You could get a balony burger and a little bag of chips for $1.25 (no tax!). It was a half inch thick piece of balony fried to perfection with onions and cheese running all inside the foil wrapper. That was the ghetto life. Decatur Street, Richmond VA.

I don't touch balony now. Last time I tried to eat it I spit it out and went hungry for the night because that's all we had at the time. I'd like to think I abandoned balony because of the texture of it. It's all types of s@*# processed together into a roll and cut into slices. When you put it in your mouth, it was never meant to be put together anyway and breaks into disgusting little clumps. Real meats don't do that.

Who knows why I don't like balony anymore. I'm thinking that maybe now it could be a part of me that is rejecting what I used to be. Think about it. You leave home and face a whole new world. It gives you perspective on how the world is setup. Looking back I was a ghetto child running around in the hood. Oblivious to the fact that we didn't have a lot. Surrounded by a big ghetto family of everybody like me dealing with the same circumstances. I lived in the hood. Now that I have left and did other things going back is not a realistic option. What would be the point of going back to having nothing and doing little with no hope of ever leaving? Perhaps I've taken something as mundane yet incredible fundamental to living in the hood(like sandwich meat), something that I have nothing but the fondest childhood memories of and made it the focus of my contempt for my past position. Simply put I could hate balony because I loved it then when I had nothing and now that I have achieve a slight but sure measure of success I look down on myself for ever accepting less . Refusing to embrace anything from a period of my life is my way to show that going back to that life would mean living in a world I don't like the taste of.

Or it could be that show I saw that showed them putting cow noses and left over meat into a grinder and squeezing that s#&$ a balloon made of that red lining around the edges of the slice.

We may never know.