My brother's wedding

My birthday is on April 7th. That doesn’t sound big to you, but it will also be known as the day before my brother Eric’s Wedding Anniversary. It’s not everyday you get a sister in law for your birthday, but I managed it.

Instead of getting a big day for myself, I had some cereal, did some chores, and then let my dad drive us several hundred miles to Rexburg Idaho. Dad is a very old Idahoan driver in style, and it drove me nuts. He would drive very close to a car before deciding he needed to pass. This included semi trucks who couldn’t see us very well unless you knew to not get into blind spots. My Dad would stay in the blind spot before finally deciding to move on. Then he would spend time eating food, or other things that would distract him from driving. I really did wonder if he stopped himself from writing a note at one point.

He also doesn’t believe in giving himself a gas buffer. We were nearly out of gas when we got to Butte Montana. He wanted to keep going, and not eat there, because it would make better time. So he ate his food while driving as it got dark. I had to hand him food, and he held it while eating. And My Mom spilled my fries in a bag, even though I tried several times to do something other than her idea.

Not only that, they said they would leave around 2, so I stopped what I was doing around that time and waited. We left at 3:30, with me sort of sitting there. Mom has this bad habit of suddenly needing to do every little thing in the world before a big trip. I think its her being nervous from it, but I never know. She wanted to prepare lunch, and I decided that for my birthday, it would be great if we went to McDonalds. I got a shamrock shake.

The rest of the trip was actually pretty nice. I tried out a new usb charger for traveling with music, and it worked great. We had music the entire way to the hotel. I had two playlists on my phone, and we played both. Mom asked what my favorite birthday was, and I said 7th, because it was great and didn’t have bad side effects. I still remember the mistake I made by having a party, and forgetting my friend Drew had a birthday the day before. He invited me to a party, and I declined because I was at mine… Sorry Drew!

We didn’t arrive in Rexburg that night. Instead it was a hotel in Dillon Montana. Dad was tired, and confused so it took us a bit longer to find the hotel. We did see the town a bit though.

The wifi worked great, and I was able to update info on how things were doing. I dreamed of traveling.

Hotels are actually really nice. John Carmack says they are the best vacation spots. He would go into one, and just hang out doing stuff he enjoyed. He made an entire game engine one week while at a hotel. I can’t say I would do something that much different from him.

Breakfast was a bagel in the car, and some yogurt. There was no cellular coverage in Montana, so we chatted. There was an argument about when a specific figure in the Book of Mormon died. Dad believed it was closer to 100 BC, and Mom and I thought it was closer to 550 BC. We were researching references, and thoughts on the trip.

We arrived at my Brother’s new place to hear the stories of horror from my sister and soon to be sister in law. Eric stayed at his old apartment, but Sara and Wyssa were at the new place. The water heater was not turned on, and neither was the heat. They had to boil water pan by pan to make a hot bath. It wasn’t fun.

There was also a change in timing, because a snowstorm was headed directly towards us. We would take pictures of the wedded couple before the wedding instead of after. I took pictures, and enjoyed what I could of the event. This meant my time at the arcade would be cut short.

We all went to the local Family Entertainment Center. I have talked about it before, but most everyone else had never been. So I told them stories about how the building was just a run down store lot with apartments above it. The owner let people place laser tag in the abandoned part until someone realized it could make money. One of the laser tag crew eventually took on ownership of the place, and has been doing fun stuff ever since.

There were a bunch of new games. My personal favorites were Batman, H2Overdrive and Time Crisis 4. I will cover Batman in the notes for ECCC, but it was just as fun as the last time I played it.

H2Overdrive is made by many of the same guys who made Hydro Thunder. In that sense, it feels more like a new sequel than a new game. I raced a motorboat with rocket engines, while trying to collect more fuel, and outrace my opponents. The graphics were better, and the feeling of the seat was a little different from the original. Since I loved Hydro, I loved H2O.

Time Crisis 4 is a shooting game with a small lever near the bottom. Unless you press it, you are ducking away from the enemies. The story is nonsensical, and the action is pretty funny at moments, but the ducking and shooting mechanics are fun. The best part is the two player mode is from two different perspectives. You can see the other player in the game shooting or ducking. My partner was some random 8 year old who wanted to pull the trigger. So I plopped some tokens in for him to enjoy. When I ran out of time, he got the rest of our tokens as well.

I need to introduce a word to you. Concuñado. It means with brother in law or Brother of Brother in law. It’s an important word to me because my two all time favorite roommates are actually concuñados with each other. My Brother’s wife’s family joined us at the arcade. It turned out the kid I gave the tokens to was the son of a concuñado.

My sister decided to show off her new phone camera, and took some awesome shots. She has a lot more color depth, and pixel count. I tried it out later and got a much easier time focusing on small things. So I was jealous.

The big thing we did was laser tag. There was two floors, and I seriously wish I could take photos of the entire thing. One concuñado stayed in a single spot, and sniped us using mirrors and other higher level techniques. My laser was sideways, so I had to adjust for that.

My sister figured out that everyone was playing downstairs, so she sat at the top, and sniped as many as she saw. It took three of us to finally stop her, and even then she was getting amazing shots.

There was also a team of 10 year olds who joined up with my consuegro -brother’s father in law. They did not do as well. My Mom would just appear out of nowhere, hit you, and then disappear. We expect the next time she plays it will be even scarier and Predator like.

After this we went to the hotel to get dressed. The men dressed first, and I dressed quickest. So I went downstairs to talk with my mom and sister.

Soon the roles reversed, and we were waiting for Mom and my sister. During this time I took pictures of random things, and one amazing shot of Eric.

A Snowstorm was coming with my brother Greg, so we had to have the wedding photos before the two lovebirds were actually married. It felt like I was back at NBC shooting some random kid signing up for college ball, or going pro. Instead of taking direct shots, I took a lot of shots of people taking pictures.

The biggest problem for us was that a lot of family members were arriving right at the wedding time. It meant having to say hello in a temple while being quiet. My Dad’s Dad -Opa- is sort of loud even when he whispers. We may have been told to be quiet.

The temple is one of the most sacred places you can go to in Mormon culture and religious beliefs. It is a place where no evil spirit can reside. A friend who isn’t a member asked why they seemed so large and castle like. It’s to make sure people know our feelings about them, they stand above all else to us.

Marriage in the temple is the biggest ceremony you can have. To be married in temple, you need to go through all of the other ceremonies first. So now you know why Mormons are very strong about marriage and how the family works. To us, it is the most sacred thing you can have.

I admit to crying a bit at the ceremony.

The snowstorm arrived as Greg arrived. It snowed and blew all around us after the wedding. Luckily the themes for the wedding were snow, blue, white, and silver. So we had snow with clouds of silver white and blue.

Greg and his family got a picture with us, and then left. He didn’t want to stay with a snow storm around him. I didn’t even get to speak with him at all.

We took some pics of Eric and Sara as they exited the temple. During this time, I tried to play catch up with long lost family members. An uncle told me he hadn’t really seen me since I left for Hawaii. It finally kicked in, I had been missing out on family reunions for nearly a decade. This wasn’t planned, it just happened, but it made me realize I needed to put more effort into it. I suddenly understood why so many of my cousins wanted to hang out when I mentioned I was in Idaho Falls for a moment to get gas.

I was introduced to many young cousins as their oldest cousin. I was both an uncle, and a cousin to them. The welder of some magical knowledge. For example, I knew why there were holes and trap everywhere around my grandparents old house. We were making forts.

After getting pictures, we had the family dinner with all of the concuñados and other such family members. I have no idea how to say cousin in law. Cunprima?

The families mingled, and I chatted with aunts and uncles of all types. Honestly I sat with my Duvall relatives, because there was an open seat. But what hit me while observing things was the realization that my grandparents on both sides are getting a lot older.

My Mom’s family is quiet, but do things. My grandfather has a doctorate in chemistry, and worked in some big to do labs, and a few labs you never heard of. He still splits logs for the fire place every week, even in his eighties. He and my grandmother have toured the world doing missions for the church. They retired, and have been busy ever since.

My Dad’s family is very loud. As I explained, my grandfather’s whisper can fill a room. We can tell where my aunts and uncles are in large buildings because they will loudly talk to each other. I am not joking either. When we have family reunions, one of the big things is to sit in a small room and talk to everyone at the same time. It’s like putting your head into a jet engine.

“My speaker goes to 11.”
“My grandmother just spoke over it to say hello.”

Grandma is literally a Chuck Norris joke to us. Chuck asks her to check under his bed for Batman. She is this tiny force of nature that can accomplish tremendous things, and show you how much she loves you. Every single Grandson has a plan for their Eagle from Boy Scouts written out by her, and she knows what they need for any merit badge, or activity they are doing. Right before we left, I found a card from her with a note talking about life and things for my birthday.

To give you an idea, if my grandmother walked in with a mythic totem like Mjolnir or Gungir, I would be more shocked it existed than she had it. In fact, her having it would be the easy thing to understand. Of course grandma has the weapons of the Norse Gods, she’s grandma.

I can just imagine her demanding my uncles get jormungandr out of the house because she hates snakes. Could someone please feed Fenrir, he is begging at the door. Watch your hands and face, he bites when hungry.

And that day I saw them as old. The magic was starting to go away. That was hard to take. They still had it, but they were going slowly now.

The entire reason why I am writing these notes is not because of the arcade, though that was fun. It was because of the things I realized at that dinner. I thought about them late into the night as my Dad snored and I lay on the ground because my sister had the other bed.

For the day, everyone slowly left. Then we found out Eric and Sara had presents that needed to be opened. It was all really nice gifts, and I took pictures because I knew no one else would think to do that.

Eric had to become the Eric he is now to meet the love of his life. That sounds really weird, but I remembered Eric when he was younger. He was really excited, but didn’t know how to talk about things. He wanted to learn Flash from me, and I promised I would when I woke up. So he woke me up early, and I yelled at him. Yes, I felt dumb about it, but he honestly forgot to tell me why he did this.

When he was a kid, he would walk the fence and not talk to anyone. He was scared of even saying hello to people. In fact, he didn’t even know if he wanted to be social.

He had to learn to be social, and love being around people. He had to allow himself to be geeky and talk about it with others. He had to show he loved someone even if a subject bored him. He also had to talk about his feelings.

I was told later that Sara was the same. Instead of being social, she would be on the swings enjoying her lonely time. Others would leave the trampoline, and she would still be there, jumping to her heart’s delight.

It took him a long time to do this, but what I saw at the wedding wasn’t just the ceremony. I saw all the work he had to do to become this guy who Sara would fall in love with. He was so happy because this wonderful woman was his best friend. I have never seen him smile so much and so sincerely as then.

In my Dad’s family we have these ideas. My great grandmother was just as much a force of nature as my grandmother. She once had a heart attack, and we knew she was fine when she went to play 9 holes of golf. I knew something was wrong when she admitted she couldn’t play golf anymore at her 90th birthday.

And slowly it hit me. To my younger cousins, I am one of the heralded forces of nature.

If you ever see the show Phineas and Ferb, just make Candace in on the ideas and even planning them. That was my brother Greg and I when Kay -only 3 years older than me- lived at my grandparents house. We would go on long journeys. We went sledding in July using cardboard and steep hills. We made underground forts.

A lot of my writing will have an underground fort, or mention World War I, which had underground forts. It’s from all those holes I dug so many years ago. The family dog Mike is buried in one of them.

The ideas pushed into us were never said out loud, just shown and expected. Grandma expected us to be forces of nature just like her. It didn’t matter where you started, just that you moved forward and got better. The motto was to start at crap and build up. We were always ready to do work, learn from our mistakes, and plan ahead.

In the notes for ECCC, I realized all of the cool things I do. A lot of people love to talk about doing stuff, while I have done many things. That day I realized my entire family was like that. We wanted something, so we worked to get it.

In our minds, we can do it. We put our heads down, and keep going.

For a lot of people they see themselves as bad at something, so they don’t get into it. I know the feeling. I moved a lot, so I couldn’t get into sports like I wanted to. When I could get into sports, I sort of sucked. Everyone else had been practicing for years, and I hadn’t.

Instead of seeing where I was, I set a goal to get better. I worked at it until I could keep up and be useful for the team. This could take months, or an entire season. Eventually I was making goals at soccer games, or not walking at 5Ks. Believe me, I am not built for long distance running. I will never go to state, or win any trophies.

Another thing we think about is asking ourselves what we can do now. For example, when I realized I couldn’t draw because my hand isn’t steady, I looked up tutorials for using a computer and mouse. The same is for writing. No one can read my handwriting at all. As said before, I descend from Doctors and scientists.

When I lived away from college, and couldn’t afford the bus, I walked. This impressed people, but is normal for my family. It’s what we can do at the moment.

With that is a recognition of our own mortality. I can’t lift a horse. They are too big, and would kick me. However, I can lift a foal, and slowly build up. I can’t move my hands correctly for drawing or writing out sentences, but I can use a computer.

There is also a trick. If I take a week or two off, no one will notice. I needed a break, and did some planning, but also did a lot of minecraft. To everyone else, I am just living a normal life. Then they see some picture I made, or some other cool thing. To them, I was working the entire time. If I need to be mortal, my friends, and everyone else will simply not notice. It’s ok to take time to recuperate from events.

Not only that, I have gifts to use. I have an amazing memory. I can remember things like they were seconds ago. If I want to, I can close my eyes, and look around the memory to see what date it was or how things worked. This also means I can do this with anything I imagine as well. The heat, the movement of machines, the sounds, all of it. For example, I can write notes for an event several weeks after it.

Using that I can observe, and ask questions. I can tell stories on the fly because I see more details faster than most people. It has helped me analyze, and create worlds. It also helps me recognize my own mortality when I want to do something, I can see my own skills and what I need to do to do what I want. If I need to ask questions -which is often-, I can give details and ideas that are good enough for the people I am talking to.

This also lets me know the spots I can cheat at. My art is not using a pen tool at all. I do a lot of tracing, and other stuff. It still looks great, and I can see myself improving a lot. When I need something greater I know what I need to do to learn to make it better, and who to talk to for getting it done in the meanwhile. For example, my arcade book has mostly my art, but the spots I had trouble with have hired artists. They do great work, and it blends in perfectly.

As Grandma gets older, she has been passing the torch on to her children, and older grand children. I hadn’t realized that my younger cousins view me this way. It should have kicked in when my cousin Cade asked what it was like being so tall. I was a frost giant to him. I welded the ancient norse weapons, and built the underground fortresses they only know a little bit about. I was their legend, their force of nature, and I had been missing for years.

The realization that I should be helping out with the family, and taking charge as the eldest cousin finally sunk in. I honestly never thought about it until then. I think Grandma had been trying to pass some of the torch on, and I hadn’t been noticing it.

After the majority of people left, we realized two things had not been done. The first was opening the many presents given to Eric and Sara. Then we noticed no one caught the bouquet. We settled the bouquet part easily, especially since there was only one single girl at the dinner anyway.

There was also presents to be opened. Sara’s parents said they really didn’t want to drive with all of the boxes in their car. So the last of us stayed around and watched them open up the many presents and cards they recieved.

Afterwards, we carted things back to spots, and listened to the echoes around the building. Wyssa had a better voice apparently. So I stopped singing with them, and went to check out the board game area below.

The area did have pool tables, an air hockey set, and some ping pong set ups, but nothing was in perfect order. The board games were the worst since they had gotten old, and were missing parts. This was the majority of the board game stuff in BYU-Idaho I was told. This was a bit sad, because someone had asked about the gaming scene at the university, and my best answer is that the outside stores were it. The school itself does not have anything for a gaming geek to meet and greet fellows of the nerd mind. This makes Sara and Eric meeting even that much more amazing.

I also saw Idahoan things. I claim the entire Pacific Northwest as home, and that includes Idaho. If you ever read Gifted, the school Myron goes to was in Caldwell ID, and called Washington Elementary. They have since taken it down, but there are still pictures and things. In fact, the entire first book takes place in Caldwell. You get the idea. If you ever meet me, you will hear a softened Idahoan accent when I am trying to sound American.

So, as part of this, I played a game where I tried to spot the most Idahoan thing possible. The all time winner was nearly a decade ago at an arcade. A farmer was talking on the cellphone, and playing a shooting game. You could hear the state anthem being played as he shot.

In Rexburg, the first thing I really saw was while driving in. A girl had finished a soccer game, and was calling her mom on her phone. She wore cowboy boots to play in.

Then my very young cousin wore her sunday best for church, and bright pink cowboy boots.

There was a bear park. There were bears in the mountains, that a ranger had caught. Instead of kill the animal, they brought them to this drive through park. You paid to see live bears.

Then there was the potato museum. Also the TV museum. Idaho is so boring that a farm kid went nuts and invented television. His name was Philo T Farnsworth, just so you can google it and realize how much I am not joking.

At a rest stop on the Idaho Montana border is a display about all the nuclear bomb testing the in the area. It talks about it with proud zeal.

My Dad drives like an Idahoan, which is dangerous because we don’t live in it anymore.

At church, there was a girl dressed as a 1970’s rodeo queen. She was 10.

A 12 year old boy had a scriptures case that was in camouflage cloth.

That night I chatted with my sister, and family at the hotel room in Rexburg. I got jealous of my sister’s phone even more. She pointed out that Eric seemed to not stop smiling. As a kid he had a hard time smiling, and even seemed in pain when trying.

We also decided the arcade was amazing. It brought the two families together and bonding in the act of shooting each other with laser guns. My Mom fell in love with it, and challenged everyone to another match the next time we are all together. It may become a tradition to have a laser battle whenever in Rexburg.

The next day we went to church, took the sacrament, and left. My sister had to be at Idaho Falls for a ride to her college in about 30 minutes. So we drove her, met her ride, and then left. My Dad didn’t want to change in the bathrooms at church, and instead drove us to the rest area. I stood around and took pictures.

After they changed Dad let me drive. I drove the dullest part of the entire drive. It was still nice though. I wasn’t cringing. But the truth be told, I was starting to fall asleep, and thought it would be safer if Dad drove. I simply cringed a lot or slept.

The conversation went to finances, and how to prepare for retirement. Dad could not see a financial way to retire at all. He wanted to work until he was 80, like my grandfather.

My grandmother saw a kindred spirit in my grandfather. He once decided he needed to make extra money for his kids college tuition, so he bought several acres of nearby land and started a plum orchard. This was on top of his regular job as a dentist. He retired at 80, and still worked when he could. It was just part of him.

My Dad was raised to be a force of nature. It is hard for him to see beyond it. Instead, he thought he needed to work harder. Every time my Mom brought up maybe working less, or going on missions, Dad thought he needed to work harder. He wanted to escape the hard office life, and the only way to do it would be harder work.

The problem was, to work harder meant controlling other people. He can’t bring in more people so he can work harder. It’s hard for him to accept.

The entire time I was thinking about all the things I had accomplished in my life thanks to Grandma and Grandpa’s example. But I recognized that Dad had missed the important lesson of realizing his own mortality. It was hard to listen to, especially with how he drives. The view though was great.

We got home eventually, and my parents went to bed shortly after that. A week later I went to a North West Pinball and Arcade Show meeting. After I got home, I chatted with my parents. I told Dad that maybe he could become a force of nature as a retiree. He had never thought of something like that. I pointed out Mom’s parents seemed to be doing a lot of cool things. He said he would think about it.

And that, is the end of my notes.