Now my August calendar: that's nothing like my July calendar. No weddings, no out of town events, nothing much at all planned so far, actually. The whiteboard calendar in my room (they're great, btw) is as-yet uncluttered.

(Part of me knows I'll get sick of that, start panicking on some Friday when I realize belatedly that, these days, I actually have to plan in advance in order to get something social going. I'd be more sympathetic if that part of me weren't so terrible at saving money.)

This weekend was the Main Event, my youngest brother's wedding. Just not being sick this time around, as I was for Matt's wedding, was enough to make me enthusiastic.

My boss let me off work a couple hours early on Thursday, so I had time to get all of my stuff together and then to remember everything I would have otherwise forgotten.

I actually stopped to get Josh and Erin's gift on the way up north, knowing full well from watching the registry all week that there was no way they'd already have all the cool stuff they wanted from Williams-Sonoma.

Oh Williams-Sonoma. If I were a millionaire...

Some poor driving — not entirely uncharacteristic of me, I'll admit, but still unexpected — took a sizable chunk out of my bonus free time, but I still arrived in B-town before dinner, the usual three meal's worth of food that my mom likes to cook up for company.

(She'd procured all the meat for this weekend locally from this cool meat market by Pine River, which was really cool as it meant I didn't have to feel awkward about my "happy meat" thing. Usually if it's a really special occasion I just make an exception and feel a bit guilty about it afterwards.)

I opened up my homebrewed Dangerweizen before dinner, but the bottle was mysteriously flat. Not sure if everyone believed that bottle was the first dud, but in any case when it was clear that would be a dealbreaker I got to finish the bottle by making colaweizens. And those were great.

That night we went to the Pickle Factory up in Nisswa and played a fair bit of bar shuffleboard. NOT a bad game. Although I'm not a huge fan of that bar: they have ads up for beers they don't carry, which always bugs me in a dive, but it's a decent place and probably the best in that area for our purposes. It was a good time.

As always when I go home I had to disable whatever ticking clock my parents had in my room before I could actually sleep. This one was better than the last one, they know my issue, but it was still audible. I'm totally used to the background sounds of my own home these days, but I still can't stand a ticking clock.

On Friday morning I attended a pre-wedding golf scramble, i.e. there are four people on your team and you play the best shot out of the four each team. Way less frustrating than regular golf, which I'm quite terrible at. I was on the amateur team with the groom and two of his friends and we did... not well, comparatively, but over the course of 18 holes even I had some shots I liked, shots our team used.

Afterwards we had a snack and some beers at the clubhouse with the rest of the teams, I think there were about 20 of us, and then went home to prepare for the rehearsal.

I'd brought three different shirts for this: my first choice I didn't wear because everyone else was wearing long-sleeved rather than short-sleeved dress shirts, and I was ready to leave in my second before I tore the collar while adjusting the tie. My first choice pants, at least, were deemed acceptable despite their cargo pockets. I ended up wearing what I call my "young Southern preacher" outfit.

It's strange being back in our church these days, just hanging out, after the countless hours I spent there as a kid for mass and bible study and puppet practice (I have mentioned that, right?). The geography of that place is one of those immutable impressions that reminds me it wasn't totally someone else's life, all that back way back.

Since they were hosting the groom's dinner at their place, we'd done most of the last-minute prep work at my parents' house before we dressed for church, and by the time we got back there the party was getting started.

There were surprisingly few of my relatives present, so I spent a lot of time talking to Paul (my brother's brother-in-law, or "brother from another brother" as I started calling him last Wednesday) and a few of Josh's friends whom I'd met earlier.

After dessert Matt and I gave a funny speech we'd prepared, which went over pretty well but suffered a bit from our mutual lack of practice. Our practice readings were so much snappier! I don't know why I thought we could pull off delayed wordplay at the actual event.

(I'm not used to working off of a script on the fly, although I wouldn't say my extemporaneous speech at the wedding reception was particularly great either. Years of speech and debate can only carry you so far when you're years out of practice.)

It had been a long, sleepless week for me already so when everything was winding down I went up to my room to sleep. I tried to read Maelstorm for a bit beforehand but I could barely keep my eyes open.

On the day of the wedding, Saturday, we went to the church at 11 for some getting ready pictures, but since we were guys and wouldn't take long at all to get dressed, all the guys ended up playing Scrabble downstairs for at least an hour. I think I cared a little too much that my team was winning: another good reason why I shouldn't be playing Scrabble very often.

My tux fit fine, black with a creamy green vest, although I had to enlist someone else's help to figure out the suspenders, with the usual running joke about how Matt had taken all my mechanical aptitude.

I'm not sure I'd recommend the Men's Warehouse in the future: two of the guys had white suspenders randomly, and one of the other groomsmen had two shoes with different sizes. My dad and grandpa barely got their tuxes in time: M.W. lost the dimensions my brother had called in and had to ship them from Texas at the last minute.

For the wedding my other brother Matt and I were co-bestmen, but I guess because I was the oldest I had the traditional place in the lineup. The maid of honor and I walked behind the flower girl and ring bearer to make sure they made it up to the front OK. That part went better than at rehearsal.

Everything about the actual wedding was great. I don't like the way this priest sounds when he preaches, but the homily was short and to the point, and the rest of the ceremony went smoothly. I ended up holding the rings for longer than expected when we mixed up where we were in the program, but that was just amusing. I kept worrying about dropping them of course, everyone hearing a metallic clink in a pause between songs.

After the wedding we hid out downstairs while people filed out, then walked to the waiting party bus through the now-traditional gauntlet of bubbles.

Pictures, drinks (surprisingly tasty champagne), etc. On the way to the reception, which was at the same resort we'd played golf at on Friday, Matt's wife Amy managed to get a request through to the radio station to play "Small Town Girl" and everyone rocked out.

The reception was more my element than a lot of the rest of the wedding. A lot of the same people I see at my cousins' weddings were there, and I talked to all the usual suspects, drank some beers, and went out on the patio whenever I needed to cool off. Danced to the hoped-for club songs and (by request) that Darkness song I like. There was a surprising lack of slow or older music for the other generations, but I think that's just what most weddings do now.

All the food was amazing: I brought a big styrofoam container of cake back to the Cities with me the next day when everyone was leaving. Josh and Erin did not do a public gift-opening, which I think is a great decision all around.

I'd planned to do a few hours of work when I got back to the Cities on Sunday, but I ended up splitting my time between character creation for Monday's Shadowrun game — that's this fantasy-meets-cyberpunk RPG I've started to play with Jess and Rae's friends — and the end of Maelstorm, which was pretty good.

Interesting post-apocalyptic setting, especially the conception of the Internet. That said, I still did fall asleep reading it, again, a few times on Sunday after that long weekend.